Awaken

Henry, of course, I expected — though I didn’t approve. A Fury battlefield was no place for a child, even one who’d lived a century and a half in the Underworld and had grown used to life without a mother.

But Reed, who’d found a shirt and a pair of long pants somewhere, and also armed himself with an ancient harpoon gun? Chloe, her hand wrapped tightly around Typhon’s collar, against which the enormous dog was lunging in excitement? Mrs. Engle and Mr. Graves, both with their hands wrapped around the bridle of a snorting Alastor, who barely fit through the tiny opening? When the horse finally managed to squeeze through it, he kicked the first Fury who was foolish enough to come close to him, square in the chest.

“John,” I said in horror. “No.”

John shrugged. “They volunteered to stay behind. Not only volunteered, they insisted.”

“John, Mr. Graves told them that if they came out that door, they’d lose any chance whatsoever at moving on to what awaits them in the afterlife. Now they’ll never be able to —”

“Pierce,” John said in a patient voice. “They know that. I explained it all again to them. None of them cared. I don’t know what went on down there while I was dead, but you developed some loyal subjects. No way were they going to leave you behind.”

I shook my head, tears filling my eyes. This was all too much. “John, I can’t let them do this for me. They’re revenants now.”

John looked me straight in the eye, a small smile playing on his lips, even as a man with a pair of pruning shears came charging at us.

“Pierce, a revenant is someone who’s returned from the dead,” John said, snatching away the shears. “You’re a revenant. So am I. We’re all revenants. Did you ever think we were anything else?”

Stunned, I stared at him. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? No wonder my grandmother hated me so much and kept calling me an abomination. An NDE was simply another, more pleasant name for a revenant. Both Mr. Smith and I had actually died and come back to life, exactly like Reed and Chloe and Mrs. Engle … and Alex and John and Mr. Liu and Henry and Mr. Graves.

John was right. We were all revenants.

John gave the man who’d been holding the pruning shears a jab in the jaw that sent him spinning. Across the way, I heard Reed whoop admiringly. “Dead boy can punch!”

John turned to give a little bow of acknowledgment in Reed’s direction. Reed saluted, then sent the butt end of his harpoon gun into the sizable stomach of a nearby Fury.

I was still trying to puzzle out the intricacies of male camaraderie when I felt a hand on my arm and spun around, my whip flying, only to see Henry’s face peering up at me.

“Miss,” he cried, ducking beneath my lash. “It’s only me, miss.”

“Henry,” I said, relieved. “Don’t do that. You shouldn’t be here, it isn’t safe.” My point was illustrated as my bicycle went flying past us both, hurled by an outraged Fury. “What is it?”

“My slingshot,” he said. “The one I made you. Do you still have it? You should use it. Put your diamond in it, and shoot it at them, and then once they’re hit, they won’t be Furies anymore.”

Again with the slingshot.

“Henry,” I said, pulling him to the side of a nearby crypt, out of the range of flying bicycles, since Mr. Liu had picked up the shattered remains of mine, and was hurling it back at the original thrower. “Your slingshot is in my tote bag, which I left over there —”

I pointed across the blossom-strewn path, to where Mr. Smith was engaged in what looked like a fight to the death with my grandmother, something I’d only just noticed.

“Oh, no,” I said, my heart sinking.

“I’ll get it,” Henry cried, misunderstanding my disappointment, and darted towards the bag.

“Henry, don’t!” I raced to stop him, nearly colliding with a woman who seemed to come from out of nowhere, swinging a pickax at the little boy. I kneed her in the stomach, then struck her hard on the back of the neck with the butt of my whip. As I did so, the diamond at the end of my necklace brushed her skin. A puff of smoke trickled up from the small burn.

I didn’t have time to stick around to watch what happened next. Mr. Smith — and Henry — needed me.

Besides, no sooner had the woman collapsed than she was replaced by a man who came running up with a machete. They just kept coming, and coming, and coming. Every time one of us managed to disarm or knock a Fury down, another one seemed to rise up in his or her place, while overhead, ravens screamed so raucously, my ears had begun to ring.

Maybe we were revenants, I thought dimly. But this could be the day we all died, as my grandmother put it, “for good.”

Considering her broken arm, she and Mr. Smith were almost evenly matched, but she was still a Fury and so possessed inhuman strength. Also inhuman emotions.

“Sinners,” she hissed at Mr. Smith as her hands closed around his throat. “Abominators.”

Henry had landed, unscathed, beside my tote bag and was rooting through it.

“Hold on, miss,” he shouted at me. “I’ve almost found it. You’ve got a lot of things in here.”

Mr. Smith was incapable of making anything but a gurgling sound, but I believe he was saying something else. His eyes, behind his spectacles, which were askew, seemed to be saying, Do it.

I was happy to oblige.

I cracked my whip, sending it wrapping around my grandmother’s throat multiple times, enfolding her as tightly as a warm, hand-knit scarf … one that a loving grandmother might send to her granddaughter in the mail for her birthday. Then I yanked on it as hard as I could, so it was more like the grip of a boa constrictor than a muffler.

Grandma’s hands instantly left Mr. Smith’s neck and flew to her own throat. Now she was the one who was gurgling.

I pulled even harder on the whip, bringing my grandmother to her knees, and went to crouch beside her.

“How do you like the scarf I made you, Grandma?” I hissed in her ear.

Her dead eyes rolled towards me, showing no sign of fear, only hatred and contempt. She was unable to speak, because she was unable to draw in air to breathe. I knew the sensation. It was the one I’d felt when I’d been sitting at the bottom of the pool, after I’d tripped over the scarf she’d made me and drowned.

“Pierce.” Mr. Smith coughed out my name. He was finally able to speak. “Don’t.”

I barely heard him. All I could see was red, and all I could hear was the cawing of the ravens.

“So I’m an abomination, am I?” I whispered to Grandma. “You did all this so I would destroy John, and the Underworld? Kind of like Eve in the Garden of Eden, huh?”

Grandma nodded, an evil smile spreading across her face, even as she gulped for air.

“Pierce, no,” Mr. Smith said. “You mustn’t. I know it seems like it, but it isn’t her. It’s the demon inside her ….”

Dimly I became aware of footsteps striding up behind me. I heard Chloe’s voice saying my name, then John calling, Pierce. Pierce, don’t.

But I didn’t release my grandmother. If anything, I held on to her more tightly.

“Well, nice try, Grandma,” I said, reaching out to hold her close to me, so close I could feel her pulse beating next to mine. “You just made one mistake. I’m not Eve. I’m smarter than that. I’m the snake.”

Then I lifted the Persephone Diamond and crushed it to her heart.

28

“Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more;

Not any torment, saving thine own rage,