Dying Is My Business

“Looking for you,” Bethany said.

“Me? Why?”

“You’re the only one who’s ever taken him on and lived,” she pointed out. “It’s like Ingrid said, you got his attention. He must have traced your footsteps back to the gas station.”

I looked at the raging fire on all six monitors. “So this was meant for me?”

Isaac shook his head, squinting at the screens. “Something’s not right. This kind of flagrant, wholesale destruction doesn’t seem like the Black Knight’s style at all—”

Philip interrupted, tensing suddenly. “Someone’s here. Citadel’s ward has been breached.”

“What? That’s impossible,” Isaac said, standing out of his chair.

“Just like at the safe house,” Bethany said. “It’s happening again.”

“What the hell is going on? Are wards just giving out all over the damn city?” Isaac demanded. “Philip, how many of them are there?”

Philip looked up at the ceiling, his lips pulling back from his sharp teeth. “I can hear them on the roof, but I can’t see them. They’re not giving off any body heat at all.” He inhaled sharply through his nose, then cringed. “Ugh, they smell stale and dry, like dust.”

A bright flash of lightning illuminated the stained-glass windows. Two silhouettes appeared in the light, one in each window, swinging down from the roof on long ropes. Just before they hit, the shapes vanished and the ropes thumped, empty, against the glass.

A second later, the two figures reappeared just inside the windows, somersaulting through the air above us. I caught a glimpse of lithe bodies clad head to toe in black leather. They landed together in the middle of the room in a graceful, wide-legged stance, turned their steel-masked faces toward us, and drew katanas from the scabbards on their backs.

Shadowborn.

Twenty-seven

Instinct had me reaching for my gun before I remembered I didn’t have it anymore. Philip had taken it from me at the auto body shop, and he still had it. Not that it would do any good against the shadowborn anyway, but I felt naked without it.

Isaac acted quickly, not waiting for the shadowborn to attack first. Something bright and crackling burst from his outstretched hands and raced toward them. The shadowborn brought up their katanas, using the polished steel blades to deflect the blasts into the walls. They left seared, smoking holes in the wood.

Then the shadowborn vanished. Before we could react, they reappeared right in front of us. They pulled back their katanas, ready to strike. Philip moved like a bullet, his supernatural speed allowing him to get his arms around one for a moment before it dematerialized. He skidded to a stop halfway across the room, empty-handed. He turned, ready to go after the second shadowborn, but it chose that moment to vanish, too.

Gabrielle scanned the room nervously. “Where did they go?” Her voice wavered. She was terrified.

“How the hell did they find us?” Isaac demanded.

I turned to Bethany. “I thought we killed these assholes back at the safe house.”

“There are a lot more than three shadowborn in the world,” she replied. “Whoever summoned the others must have summoned more.”

“Great,” I said. “Maybe they got a bulk discount.”

A shadowborn materialized behind Bethany. Before I could shout a warning, it grabbed her.

“Let her go!” I started toward the shadowborn on blind, furious instinct. It raised its katana blade to Bethany’s throat. She flinched, sucking in her breath. The shadowborn shook the sword slightly, but didn’t cut her. I stopped and put up my hands. “Okay, okay, I get it. Nobody moves.”

Across the room, something banged on the closed door that led to the hallway outside, strong enough to rattle the door in its frame.

All I cared about was getting Bethany away from the shadowborn. I didn’t take my eyes off its sword. The edge pressed against her neck, where a film of nervous sweat glistened with each panicked breath she took, but it made no move to slit her throat. For now, at least, the shadowborn was waiting for something.

Another bang shook the door, and another. The second shadowborn materialized in front of the door, and opened it.

A crowd of people spilled into the room like floodwater bursting through a dam. Amid the confusion I smelled the stench of rancid meat. Then I noticed their torn, dirt-smeared clothes and rot-mottled skin. They were dead, all of them. Dead but moving, crowding into the room like an angry mob. A sharp red light glowed inside their pupils. A light I’d seen before.

They were revenants, and there were dozens of them. They smashed the display cases, pulled paintings and artifacts off the walls, knocked over a few of the statues, and sifted through the wreckage. They were looking for something. The box, I figured. Everyone was after that damn thing.

Two revenants came forward and grabbed Isaac. They held his arms behind his back and slipped a heavy chain over his neck. A large iron medallion dangled from it, old and round and carved with weird sigils. Another pair of revenants grabbed Bethany, and the shadowborn who’d been holding her blinked out of sight. Philip and Gabrielle were restrained as well. Everyone had been brought under control but me. For some reason they’d left me alone. Why?

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around.

Bennett stood behind me, a toothy grin on his pale, dead face. “Surprise.”

A pair of revenants came forward and took me by the arms. They were in bad shape, these two, half-faced corpses that looked like they’d died in a meat grinder. But they were unbelievably strong. I couldn’t move in their grip at all. Up close, the odor of rotting flesh wet from the rain was so strong it made my eyes water.

The red glow in Bennett’s pupils flashed. “And so the captor becomes the captive. We’ve come a long way since you had me tied up in the back of your car, haven’t we, errand boy?”

“You can stop calling me that,” I said. “I know you’re not really Bennett. You’re just pulling his strings, making his dead body dance for you. It’s sick.”

The thing with Bennett’s face stopped smiling.

“So why the charade?” I asked. “Why come to me at the safe house in Bennett’s body?”

When the revenant answered, it was still Bennett’s vocal cords at work, still his voice, but the speech patterns were all wrong. Whoever was controlling his corpse had stopped pretending to be Bennett and was now speaking freely. “I chose this body precisely because it was known to you. It was a face you would respond to.”

A chill fell over me. “How did you know that?”

“I know much about you.”

“How?”

“It helped that Bennett’s body was freshly dead,” the revenant continued, ignoring my question. “His brain hasn’t deteriorated yet. It made impersonating him that much easier, drawing upon the memories and information locked in his head. This body was the perfect shill. But every good con needs a mark. So tell me, what does that make you?”

“I don’t understand, what does any of this have to do with me?”

With a grin, Bennett’s corpse walked away, joining the throng of revenants.

I struggled to free myself from my two half-faced guards, but their grip was like iron, and just as cold.

The crowd of revenants parted like the Red Sea, leaving an aisle down the center of the room. There, standing at the far end, was the red-robed figure I’d seen outside the safe house. His hood shaded the golden skull mask over his face. He was flanked by the two shadowborn, their swords back in their sheaths. They walked with him as he crossed toward us. I studied the mask over his face, but I couldn’t see any of the person behind it. There were no eyes in the empty black sockets of the skull mask, no mouth visible behind its leering grin.

Isaac lifted his head, struggling against the weight of the heavy chain around his neck. “Melanthius.”

“You know of me?” Melanthius said. His voice seeped out from behind the mask like poison gas. “Good. Then