Not without getting some answers first, I thought, but I nodded as if I agreed with him.
“Good,” he said. We started down the hall toward the staircase. Halfway there, I noticed an open door to a room off the hallway. Bethany was inside, standing at a metal table in the center of the room, her back to me. The room was small, its walls covered floor to ceiling with little drawers, as if it were one big apothecary chest. I told Isaac I’d join him downstairs in a minute, then leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms. I watched her pull open a drawer and take out a small, tubular charm with a glass bead on one end. She placed it on the table next to a selection of charms she’d lined up there.
“This is a familiar sight,” I said. “Tomo, Big Joe, and I used to do this all the time before a job. Only we were loading up on guns and ammunition, not charms.”
She glanced at me over her shoulder. “The principle’s the same, I suppose.” She opened the pockets in her vest and started unloading charms from it onto the table. “Gabrielle told me about the homunculus.”
“Isaac showed it to me,” I said. “Ugly little thing.”
She smirked. “They say homunculi take on the physical features of the people they’re spying on.”
“Really? Come to think of it, the little guy
She rolled her eyes. “The important thing is that you know the truth now. You know what happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it? Reve Azrael would never have gotten the box if she hadn’t followed me here.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “You blame yourself for Ingrid’s death. You have from the start, even if you won’t admit it. I can see it in your eyes every time someone says her name. Maybe now you can stop beating yourself up over it.”
“If I’d known about the homunculus…”
“You couldn’t have,” she said. “It’s not your fault Reve Azrael used the homunculus to find us. It’s not your fault you weren’t there when the shadowborn came. You need to start believing that, or the guilt will eat away at you. Believe me, I know. Guilt was a constant companion throughout my childhood. When I wasn’t busy hating my parents for abandoning me, I was busy blaming myself for driving them away. The guilt ate away at me a little more every day, until I couldn’t feel anything else. Don’t let it do the same to you. Find a way to move past it.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s worth it.” She turned away from me again and took off her vest. Beneath it was a dark blue, formfitting turtleneck top. The material was snug, clinging to the planes and curves of her body like a second skin, and it turned sheer where it stretched across her shoulders. I could just make out the phoenix tattoo covering her back, bisected by the black band of her bra.
I caught myself staring and looked away. “The others are waiting downstairs. I should probably—”
“You okay? You sound weird.” She turned around to face me again. Her eyes were as bright and blue as the clearest water.
“I’m fine,” I managed to say.
She handed me a small cardboard box about the size of a wallet. “Here, this is for you.” I opened the box. Inside were seven nine-millimeter bullets. I grinned about a mile wide. “I found it in one of the drawers and thought of you. They probably won’t do you much good, but I figured you might like them anyway. If I didn’t know better, I’d say your gun was your talisman.”
I loaded them into the clip of my gun. “First the amulet, now this,” I said. “What would I do without you, Bethany?”
“Probably die a lot more,” she said.
I looked into her eyes again. She looked back at me. Something passed between us then, a moment where it felt like I could do or say anything because anything was possible. I opened my mouth to speak, not even sure what was going to come out, but the oracles’ words started banging around in my head again.
“We should get downstairs,” she said. She put on her vest, its pockets bulging with charms. We went downstairs in silence.
Downstairs, the main room was still a shambles from Reve Azrael’s attack, the floor covered in shattered crystal obelisks, books knocked from their shelves, and broken statuettes, all covered in a coarse layer of ash. The others had already gathered amid the mess. Gabrielle was holding a morningstar she’d taken from Isaac’s vault, weighing the balance of the spiky-headed mace in her good hand. Philip had a long-handled broadsword, its elaborate hilt carved in the shape of a roaring dragon’s head. The vampire was covered head to toe in a flowing black hooded cloak to protect him from the sun. Even his hands were shielded inside black gloves. If I didn’t already know him, I would have found him terrifying.
Isaac came up and tossed me a staff. “Catch!”
It was the Anubis Hand, new and improved. The blackened, mummified fist had been mounted to the tip of a metal staff this time. I tapped the staff against the floor. It was solid, strong. There was no way this one was getting chopped in half.
Isaac checked his watch and addressed the group. “Two hours until the equinox. Two hours to stop Stryge from waking up and destroying New York City. I’m not going to lie to you, this isn’t going to be easy, and it isn’t going to be safe. We’re severely outnumbered by Reve Azrael’s revenants and the Black Knight’s gargoyles. I can’t guarantee we’re all going to come home from this, or that any of us will. I wanted to take a moment to tell you that you’ve all done your jobs remarkably well. I couldn’t be prouder to work with each one of you. But what we’re about to do is more dangerous than any job I’ve sent you on. This isn’t like securing an artifact. This is Stryge we’re talking about. He has all the powers of an Ancient, and he revels in death and destruction. If something goes wrong and Stryge is awakened, there’s no amount of money I can pay you that’ll be worth the danger you’d face.”
“This isn’t about money, not anymore,” Gabrielle said.
Isaac nodded. “A very wise man once told me there comes a time when you have to rise up and make a stand, even if no one else will. I didn’t listen. I sent you all out into danger instead. You risked your lives for me, while I hung back. No more. But this is the most dangerous thing I have ever asked you to do, so if you have any reservations, if you’ve changed your mind about coming, leave now. The door’s right over there. No one would blame you.” He looked at each of us. No one spoke. No one left.
“Fun speech,” Philip said. “So, are you gonna drive, or am I?”
Philip drove us north on the West Side Highway toward Fort Tryon Park. Seated in the back of the Escalade, I watched the city roll by and gripped the staff tightly. I didn’t know what would be waiting for us on the other end of the ride, but I had some nasty ideas. Were we strong enough to handle it? Prepared enough? I wondered if this was the same trepidation Willem Van Lente had felt as he’d approached the battlefield to face Stryge four hundred years ago.
It was Willem Van Lente’s own fist that had become the Anubis Hand. He’d used magic—dangerous magic —to transform his own flesh into a weapon. The more I thought about that and everything it implied, the more the puzzle pieces slid into place.
The oracles were right when they said Willem Van Lente was still alive. And if I was right, he would be at Stryge’s tomb today, too.
Up front, in the passenger seat, Isaac shared his plan. “Reve Azrael will most likely have already gone underground to the tomb by the time we get there, but it’s a sure thing Melanthius will be lurking somewhere close, acting as lookout. We can use that to our advantage. Wherever Melanthius is, Reve Azrael won’t be far. He’s our signpost. Find him, and we’ll find Stryge’s tomb.”
Fort Tryon Park sat at the north end of Manhattan like a small island of green amid a vast sea of concrete, nature’s last gasp at the top of an overdeveloped urban landscape. The Cloisters loomed over the treeline in the distance as we approached, an enormous brick and stone Gothic fortress. When we reached the park, we pulled into the public parking lot.
The lot was surprisingly crowded. It took us a few minutes to find a parking spot, weaving through the cars
