Ted Dekker: Mortal

“Jonathan… are you sure?” Rom said.

“Yes. Make him Mortal. Give him my blood.”

“We can’t waste your blood on new Corpses,” the Book said, voice wavering. “We put a moratorium on it for a reason.”

Rom lifted his hand. “Jonathan is our Sovereign. He has spoken. We do as he wishes.”

The man in the chair was looking from one of them to the other in confusion. “I don’t want your blood.”

“Because you don’t deserve it,” Seriph said, spitting at him.

“Do it!” Rom snapped. “Now!”

The Keeper moved to the altar, lifted up the edge of the silk draping it. There, in the altar, was a heavy iron ring. He pulled on it and an entire portion of the stone slid open with a grinding scrape. Reaching inside the stone drawer, he drew out several implements: a stent nearly eight inches long, hollow and tapered to needle sharpness on either end, and a piece of cloth. Brown, Jordin thought-but then she smelled it, even from here.

No. Stained in blood. Jonathan’s blood.

Jonathan knelt on one knee next to the Corpse, rolled up his sleeve, and propped his forearm on the chair arm as if it was just another day of bleeding. The Corpse in the chair looked wildly around.

“What are you doing? You will kill me! Please, you can’t do this!”

No one answered.

The Keeper knelt down in front of them, took out his knife, and cut away the sleeve of the tunic the Corpse was wearing beneath his armored vest and quickly disinfected his arm and Jonathan’s wrist. Dropping the sleeve to the floor, he leaned over Jonathan first, blocking Jordin’s view, but she didn’t need to see to know what was happening now: one end of the stent sliding home into the short, permanent sleeve inserted into the vein in the crook of his arm. Jonathan turned slightly, as the old alchemist guided the other end into the vein in the Corpse’s arm. The Corpse grimaced.

Silence in the chamber, except for the breathing of the Corpse. As it grew heavier and more labored, Jordin could not help but remember the day of her own rebirth-the fiery pain of it, like acid through her veins. The way it had subsided into a warmth like that of drink, but more languid, more exuberant, so that she could feel the drumming of her heart too loudly in her ears, as though it had begun to beat for the first time.

The elation. The gratitude. The overwhelming sense of strange loss. Her sudden urge-need-to weep. The way she had collapsed in the old Keeper’s arms, her eyes unable to look away from Jonathan. To see anything but him. Her need to cling to some vision like an anchor against the wave that threatened to overtake her.

The Corpse suddenly gasped. Strained against his bonds. The Keeper was swiftly removing the stent, first from him, and then from Jonathan, taking care to wipe the blood from his skin with the cloth. She could smell it, even from here, well beyond the reek of the Corpse, that was rapidly… changing.

The Keeper stepped away, but Jonathan remained kneeling, looking at the man as he began to breathe deeply, and then to pant, as though in great pain. With a sudden grimace, he arched his back. And then his expression stretched and then fixed into wide-eyed horror.

He stopped there, frozen.

Jonathan looked quickly at the Keeper, who rushed forward, obscuring Jordin’s vision of that hideous face, as the Keeper slapped him, lightly at first, and then with a ringing blow. The man’s head fell to the side.

The Keeper turned around. The look on his face was stunned.

“He’s dead.”

Jonathan was looking between them, at the man’s arm and then his own. The council members were getting to their feet, rising in slow shock.

“Impossible,” Rom said faintly.

“He’s dead,” the Keeper said again.

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know.”

Jonathan staggered to his feet, pale.

Jordin had just moved out of the row of seats to go to him when one of the double doors flew open.

Smell of Corpse-true, mundane Corpse-blew in with the sudden gust of air through the columns outside. A man, dressed in the clothes of the city.

This was Alban, a Corpse spy loyal to Rowan and paid heavily by the Mortals to watch events at the Citadel and ordered to report as needed. As such, he was loyal to the Regent of Order as well as determined to remain Corpse until such time that Order permitted his Mortality.

Which would be never.

“Forgive me,” Alban said, striding down the aisle, right for Rom.

“What is this?” Triphon said, moving to stand in front of him.

“I’ve brought a message from the Citadel,” the Corpse said, staring around himself nervously. He positively reeked of fear.

“Yes?” Rom stepped past Triphon. “What is it?”

“Feyn’s body.” He cleared his throat. “It’s missing.”

SARIC DRILLED ROWAN’S ASHEN face with an uncompromising stare, fully aware that the Regent knew about Feyn already. That she’d been hidden deep in stasis, dead by law. That her body had not decomposed.

None of these disturbed Rowan as they did the rest of the senate, now bursting out in cries of alarm and horror. No, Rowan’s terror was in seeing Feyn’s body here , in the senate, rather than in the crypt that had housed her for the last nine years, her body fed by nutrients. Now the old pillar of Order wavered in his regal robe, threatening to collapse along with the power he’d protected for so long.

Saric ignored the uproar echoing through the great hall, his eyes lingering on the Regent as he savored the onset of crushing victory.

One voice roared above them all. “What is the meaning of this?”

He broke the gaze reluctantly. Turned to Dominic, who stood trembling to his right, hands balled to fists, face blanched with fear. The outrage settled on the floor, all eyes on the scene before them: Rowan on the right, standing like a dead man; Dominic on the left, possessed by terror. Two Legion coated in armor, each on one knee, their heads bowed, undisturbed by the chaos.

Feyn. Nude body supine on the altar of Saric’s making, dead to the world, veins dark with dormant blood beneath pale Brahmin flesh.

Saric, towering over them all, Maker of their destiny, seizing unmitigated power before their eyes.

“What sickness compels a man to exhume a body from the grave?” Dominic thundered. “She has passed to Bliss!”

Saric brushed a thumb over one of her cold eyelids. Saric himself had lovingly braided her hair, washed and perfumed her body, working gently around the long scar in her chest where the Keeper’s blade had cut her down. It had faded some, from what had to have been an angry and grotesque thing to a beautiful seam. The musky scent of her filled his nostrils with promise.

“Has she?” Saric asked softly.

“Yes! How dare you violate the sanctity of this chamber with the dead!”

“She’s no more dead than you who breathe and bleed and piss.”

“This is your purpose?” the man cried. “To use the dead as a lesson? To defile the Maker with profanity?”

He lowered his hand, glanced up at the speechless man, this defender of Order… who would now watch its demise. “And a powerful lesson indeed, wouldn’t you say?”

He turned, considered the senators, many of whom he knew by name. There, Nargus, from the Sumerian house, robed in blue as was their custom. And there, Colena, the aged bat with powdered skin to hide the deep wrinkles that whispered death. Stefan Marsana from northern Europa, Malchus Compalla from Russe, Clament Bishon from Abyssinia-all leaders who served in the senate when he himself had been their Sovereign for a few days. Only a handful were new to him.

Today he would be new to them all.