Awaken

“Dead,” my grandmother said with delight. Her cackle was echoed eerily by the ravens. “Dead for good, this time, the way all of you walking abominations should be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, though the tear tracks on Kayla’s face seemed like explanation enough.

My grandmother sneered. “Look for yourself,” she said, and nodded towards a nearby crypt.

Made of white marble, very old and weathered, the crypt bore an epitaph dedicated to MY BELOVED WIFE, MARTHA SIMONTON, 1820–1846.

At first I saw nothing but a fat green iguana lounging in the sun on top of the tomb. Then I noticed a pair of familiar-looking black leather boots. They were attached to a pair of legs sticking out from behind the vault. Flung into the weeds not far from the boots lay a heavily tattooed, muscular arm.

I recognized the tattoos. They were rings of thorns, the same tattoos I’d seen around Frank’s biceps the first time I’d met him in Mr. Graves’s kitchen.

“They were waiting for us at Mr. Smith’s house,” Kayla said. Her voice was a barely audible whisper. I had only seen her looking as frightened and sad once before, and that had been in this very same cemetery, the night we’d whisked her to the Underworld, assuring her she’d be safe there. How wrong we’d been. “We tried to fight them, Pierce, we did. But there were too many of them.” Tears streamed freely down her face. “I think they killed Patrick, too.”

I swung my head to stare at Mr. Smith.

“No,” I said, feeling as if I’d been punched in the chest.

He was staring up at the sky again, scanning it, I guess for that glimpse of hope — or Hope — he’d mentioned before. He didn’t meet my gaze.

“Yes,” my grandmother said with a smile, still holding the knife to Kayla’s throat. “Did you think you could go around flouting the laws of nature and never have to pay? Did you think you could kill one of ours, and there’d be no repercussions? Now we’re even.”

Now we’re even. Her words echoed again and again in my head, like the cries of the ravens. Now we’re even.

Even? She thought we were even for what she’d done to Frank, to Patrick, to Kayla, to Jade, to me, to my family, to my friends, and to John?

The red blanket of poinciana blossoms beneath Mr. Smith’s feet seemed to spread and grow before my eyes until it covered the ground not only beneath my own feet but my grandmother’s as well. The soil beneath Frank’s prone body turned as red as the drop of blood slowly trickling down the knife blade my grandmother was holding to Kayla’s neck. The path that curved through the cemetery went scarlet, looking like a twisted play on the children’s song “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Only now it was the Murder Brick Road.

Had the poinciana blossoms really moved, blown by one of those strong winds left over from the hurricane, or was my vision playing tricks on me again, because I couldn’t control the red-hot wind that Mr. Liu had said fuels my anger?

I didn’t know. I didn’t care. For once, I had no interest in controlling my anger. I let it sweep over me the way the poinciana blossoms swept across my feet.

I slipped the whip Mr. Liu had given me from my belt. It was the string he’d told me to hold on to when I felt the wind might blow me too far away.

But it was also a string I knew from experience could steer the direction of that wind.

“We’re not even,” I said to my grandmother. “Because this isn’t a game. This is war. And I’m going to win.”

Despite the red swimming before my gaze, my aim was unerring, just as it had been in my mother’s kitchen that morning. This situation wasn’t so different, really, than when Alex had taunted me with the butter knife. All I had to do was remove the blade my grandmother was holding, the same way I’d removed the blade from Alex’s hand.

The only difference was, I had to do it without hurting Kayla. I didn’t care if I hurt my grandmother.

It happened so quickly, she didn’t even realize what had occurred. One millisecond, the knife was in my grandmother’s grip, and the next, the shining blade was lying harmless at Mr. Smith’s feet, and Kayla was free.

“Snake!” my grandmother screamed, clutching her wrist and looking around, stunned, for the serpent she thought had leaped from the ground and bit her. It was many moments before it dawned on her that that serpent was the granddaughter she had, for so many years, considered a useless, dim-witted fool.

“Go to Mr. Smith,” I said to Kayla, because she looked equally stunned, not certain she was entirely free.

Her face crumpled, and she ran to the cemetery sexton, who dropped the broom and took her in his free arm, the other holding the knife in a ridiculous defensive stance he must have seen in an Isla Huesos Community Theater production of West Side Story.

“It’s not over, Pierce,” he warned, as Kayla clung to him. “There are others.”

“Of course there are others,” I said, taking off my necklace and walking towards my grandmother, who was staring at me with her tiny, dead eyes narrowed in hatred and disbelief, cradling what appeared to be a broken arm. “There will always be others. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life fighting evil Furies. With great power comes great responsibility. I know, I saw the movie.”

I wasn’t really listening to Mr. Smith. I was trying to figure out how John and I were going to revive Frank. Patrick wasn’t going to be a problem, if he actually was dead. He hadn’t been dead to begin with. But Frank?

Frank was going to be a problem. His soul wasn’t being held hostage by Thanatos. Because there was no Thanatos anymore. So how could Frank be dead?

“No, Pierce, you don’t understand,” Mr. Smith said, his voice rising with something that sounded a little like hysteria. “There are many, many others. And they’re coming this way. Right now.”

I turned around to see what he was talking about. Then I froze.

Every single one of the people who’d been in the cemetery tidying up their loved ones’ tombs was now moving steadily in my direction, their rakes and shovels held high in the air, like villagers intent on driving a monster from their princess’s castle.

The problem was, these people had mistaken the princess for the monster. I could tell by the direction of their flat, dead-eyed gazes, and the name their slack-jawed mouths kept murmuring over and over, the same name Officer Poling had been shouting through his squad car’s loudspeaker.

Pierce Oliviera.

It wasn’t my grandmother they were coming after.

It was me.

27

And I beheld therein a terrible throng

Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind,

That the remembrance still congeals my blood …

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXIV

I rushed to stand in front of Kayla and Mr. Smith, my whip ready. I wouldn’t be able to hold off the amassing hordes of Furies for long, but I was determined to go down trying.

“What’s wrong with your grandma?” Kayla demanded. Her “high adaptability” had apparently returned. “Grandmas are supposed to be sweet and bake you brownies and love you unconditionally. Why is yours such a bitch?”

Mr. Smith cleared his throat disapprovingly at Kayla’s strong language. “Mrs. Cabrero can’t help it; she’s possessed by a demonic —”

“Screw that,” Kayla said. “I’m tired of that excuse. She’s possessed by a Fury, she had a bad childhood. You know who had a bad childhood? Me. But I don’t take it out on innocent people.”

Kayla’s rant was reminding me of someone else’s. Then I remembered whose. Frank’s, when that guy in the