The chrome plating of my Bersa semiautomatic glittered at the top of the heap, its magazine full again thanks to Bethany. I made a mental note to buy her something nice, and reached for the gun.
Big Joe tackled me from behind before I could pick it up. I got a faceful of dirt as I went down. The heavy revenant pinned me to the floor. I managed to squirm onto my back, and face him. His glowing red eyes stared into mine. “This is foolish, my little fly,” Reve Azrael said through him. “You cannot escape. Not from me.”
“I’m not your little fly,” I said. My fingers scrabbled along the dirt floor until I found a good-sized stone. I brought it up and smashed it against the side of Big Joe’s head. It tore a chunk of skin off his skull. He tumbled off me.
I moved quickly, scrambling on all fours for my gun. I grabbed it and spun around just as Big Joe came at me again. I pulled the trigger. The top of Big Joe’s head blew off in a spray of blood dust, bone, and brain matter, and he keeled over. This time, he stayed down.
“Trent, behind you!” Bethany shouted from inside the cage.
Before I could turn around, a dead, foul-smelling arm snaked around my neck in a sleeper hold. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Tomo’s half-burnt face glaring back at me. “Enough,” Reve Azrael said through Tomo’s mouth. “Why do you keep trying to thwart me? Give up. You cannot win.”
The sleeper hold tightened, cutting off my oxygen. I started to feel light-headed. I had to act fast. In another few seconds I would black out. I brought up the Bersa, positioned it under Tomo’s chin, and blasted a nine- millimeter slug straight up through his skull. Tomo’s hold relaxed, and he fell off me. I wiped his thick, sludgy blood off my face and looked down at the bodies.
God, I’d just killed Tomo and Big Joe. My hands were shaking.
“Do not lie to yourself,” Reve Azrael said, back in Thornton’s body. “It gave you pleasure to destroy those two. No doubt it is something you wanted to do for a very long time. There is so much anger in you. We have that in common, you and I. There is much anger in both of us. The only difference is that you keep yours bottled up, while this wretched city will soon feel the brunt of mine.”
Just the sound of her talking infuriated me. I pointed the gun at her and cocked it. “We have
But not before I got some answers out of her.
Her revenants came at me in a rush. I only managed to squeeze off a couple of shots, neither of which did any good, before they were upon me. Cold, bony fists struck my face, stomach, and sides. Overwhelmed, I doubled over to protect myself from the pummeling. The gun was pulled out of my hand, and finally the beating stopped. I was pulled upright again, my arms pinned behind my back. I was winded, weak, and in pain. There was nothing I could do to stop her.
“Now,” Reve Azrael said, “let us proceed.”
The beam of sunlight coming through the hole in the ceiling moved to the middle of the rings on the wall, where it illuminated the blank circle at the center. As soon as the light touched it, the stone circle spun around on hidden gears. The blank side disappeared into the wall, and on the reverse side was the carving of a grotesque face, like something out of a nightmare, its tusked maw open in a roar, its eyes hollow black pits. A loud grinding noise came from above, echoing through the chamber. A huge stone slab began slowly lowering along the wall above the archway, held by thick ropes attached to an ancient pulley system. It was a system designed to seal Stryge inside at the moment of the equinox, I realized, a backup plan in case anyone was foolish enough to awaken him. The Lenape Indians had been clever. Maybe a little too clever. I didn’t see us getting out before the stone slab blocked the exit.
“The time has come,” Reve Azrael said. She climbed up onto one of the throne’s armrests and lifted Stryge’s head toward the stump of his neck.
“Don’t!” I shouted. The revenants pulled my arms back harder to shut me up. It did the trick. I winced in pain.
Reve Azrael placed Stryge’s head over his neck. A bright, sizzling light appeared between the two ends. The head and neck began to knit together, tendrils of flesh, muscle, and bone reaching toward each other, joining and pulling tight. Reve Azrael let go of the head and jumped down to the floor.
“Awaken, Stryge!” she said, looking up at her handiwork. “Awaken and become my weapon!”
The light that had filled the seam between Stryge’s head and neck vanished, as did the seam itself, and the Ancient became whole again. His chest swelled suddenly, filling with air. Stryge’s first breath in centuries, and the sound of it was like the howling of the wind.
“What have you done?” I said.
“Given birth,” she replied, “to my glorious city of the dead.”
Surprisingly, the revenants let go of me then. Reve Azrael turned away, and she, Melanthius, and the revenants walked to the archway. Above them, the stone slab continued to lower slowly.
“Wait, where are you going?” I demanded, hurrying after them. A fat revenant like a walking boulder pushed me back. The message was clear: This was as far as I went. I watched them file out into the tunnel.
“The rest is for you to do, my little fly, not me,” Reve Azrael said.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Why, kill Stryge, of course.”
I blinked at her, dumbfounded. “What? How? He already had his head cut off four hundred years ago and he’s not dead yet. There isn’t a weapon on Earth that can kill him!”
“Isn’t there?” she said. “You’d better figure it out quickly, unless you want to see your companions die. Stryge despises all humans with a bitter passion. What do you think he will do when he wakes up and the first thing he sees is a cage full of them?”
“Why did you bother waking him if you just…?” I trailed off as I pieced it together. In that moment, her plan spread out like a roadmap in my mind, and it all became horribly clear. “Oh, God,” I said. “You woke Stryge in order to kill him. You’re going to turn him into a revenant.”
She smirked at me. “And then all Stryge’s power as an Ancient will be mine to command. My most powerful revenant yet. Undead. Unstoppable. A perfect storm of destruction.”
A chill ran down my spine. Gregor had warned us an immortal storm was coming, a force so powerful it threatened everything. Even if I didn’t believe in prophecies, I had to admit this one was starting to sound pretty damn accurate. Stryge as a revenant under Reve Azrael’s control would very much
“You’re insane,” I said. “I won’t help you.”
“Then your companions will die, and this city will be destroyed regardless.”
“He’ll kill you, too,” I pointed out. “You won’t be safe from him.”
“You think I fear death?” Reve Azrael said. “Death bends to
The stone slab dropped down over the archway then, striking the floor with a heavy thud. It cut me off from Reve Azrael and sealed me inside.
I looked back at Stryge. He sat on his throne, his eyes still closed, his chest swelling and falling with breath. How much time was left before he was fully awake? Not a lot, I guessed. And was I imagining it, or did the broken stubs of his tusks suddenly look longer than they had before, as if they were growing back?
I grabbed my gun off the floor and pocketed it. I pulled Gabrielle’s morningstar off the pile of weapons, then ran to the cage. “Stand back from the door!” I shouted. I swung the weapon’s spiked head into the lock. The door didn’t budge. Damn. If Isaac were awake he probably could have blown the door off its hinges with a wave of his hand, but the mage was still unconscious on the floor, bleeding from the back of his head. I hit it again, with no effect.
Bethany came up to the door. “You’re just going to bend the lock out of shape like that, and then you’ll never get it open. There’s a charm in my vest, third pocket down, right over my stomach. It can get the door open, but you’re going to have to reach in there and get it. I can’t.”
She pushed herself up against the bars. I dropped the morningstar and tried to put my hand in her pocket, but the angle was off. She pushed herself closer, as close as the bars would allow, and I did the same, until we were so close I could smell a faint floral scent coming off of her hair. I managed to slide my hand into the pocket over her stomach. I could feel the unusual warmth of her skin radiating through the material.
