Nicholas Kaufmann - Dying Is My Business

The chamber kept shaking. It felt like an earthquake, like the whole world was tearing itself apart. The red beam coming out of Stryge’s form continued shooting past the enormous hole it had blasted in the ceiling, rising higher and higher into the sky itself. The warring factions of gargoyles, so far up from where I lay that they looked like tiny black bats, scattered out of its path. Finally, the beam seemed to explode in midair. The blue sky turned dark with clouds that billowed out of nowhere. Red and black clouds, like nothing I’d ever seen before, roiling like an angry sea.

The strange beam disappeared, but the quaking didn’t stop. Stryge spread his wings and began to flap, lifting off the ground toward the hole he’d blasted in the ceiling.

No, I thought. I wasn’t going to let it be that easy for him.

I forced myself to stand, and ran toward him, scooping the Anubis Hand off the floor. It was hard to keep upright with the whole chamber shaking. I jumped and clung to the lower half of Stryge’s leg as he flew up toward the hole. Stryge roared at me, angry that my weight was throwing him off balance. He tried to kick me off. I held on for dear life with both arms wrapped around his enormous calf, trying not to fall, and trying not to let go of the Anubis Hand, either. Unfortunately, holding on this tight, I didn’t have the leverage to use the staff against him.

We rose to the top of the chamber. I looked down but couldn’t see the others through the dust in the air. I could see the open archway, though, and hoped they’d get the hell out of there as soon as they could. I thought I heard voices below, calling out to each other—was that Bethany?—and then Stryge flew through the hole and was loose in the city. I didn’t know how I was going to stop him, but I knew it had to be done, and soon.

He landed on the park grounds at the foot of the Cloisters. I let go of his leg and ran for the treeline. The ground was shaking up here, too, not just in the chamber below. Stryge was causing it somehow, I was sure of it. The Ancient’s enormous foot came crashing down behind me as I ran, trying to squash me like a bug, but I darted into the forest. I went in deep, dashing around trees, then stopped when I didn’t hear Stryge follow. Only then did I notice all the leaves around me had turned red. The tree trunks and the ground, too. Everything was tinted the color of blood from the light filtering through the red and black clouds above. The air suddenly felt thick, soupy, difficult to move through, as though it were turning solid. It was as if the laws of physics were being altered. Somehow Stryge was doing that, too.

I looked up to see why he’d stopped chasing me. He’d become distracted, looking around with a strange, stunned expression on his face. I guessed a lot had changed since the last time he’d seen this plot of land. His surprise turned to anger when he saw the Cloisters. Stryge hated humans, and they’d built the Cloisters right over his tomb. It must have been like a slap in the face to him, a reminder of how much humankind had thrived in his absence. He roared in rage, and the Cloisters burst apart as if a bomb had gone off. But it was like no explosion I’d ever seen. The stones, bricks, and rubble didn’t fly in all directions from the force of the explosion, nor did they fall to the ground—they just hung in the thick, red air, slowly spinning.

Stryge hadn’t just destroyed the Cloisters, he’d taken the place apart. Unmade it. God, was this what Reve Azrael had meant when she said Stryge would unmake the city?

I couldn’t let it happen. I didn’t know what I could do to stop him, but I had the Anubis Hand and that was a good start. I started running toward him, but the quaking ground made it hard to keep my balance. The air was like rubber cement, any move I made felt like swimming against a strong current.

Stryge bellowed angrily again. He turned to a nearby copse of trees. They uprooted and floated into the air. With them came three shrieking figures, two men and a woman. They wore familiar green tunics and a green dress that I recognized immediately. If I’d been closer I probably would have seen their prosthetic elf ears, too. Damn it, I thought everyone had evacuated the park. What were they still doing here?

The trees broke apart as Stryge unmade them, and then, suddenly, horribly, the shrieking stopped as Stryge unmade the people, too. Their pieces hung in midair, torsos, heads, arms, legs, all floating and spinning like the remains of the trees and the stones from the Cloisters. I felt sick. Some of the Dutch traders Stryge ambushed in New Amsterdam had been found in pieces, I remembered. I had a pretty good idea now what had happened to them.

This had to end before anyone else got killed. Stryge was still facing away from me, as good an opportunity as any to take him by surprise. I ran out of the woods, ready to swing the Anubis Hand, but Stryge spun around and fixed me with his coldly burning eyes. Suddenly I was floating up off the ground. I felt an invisible force stretching me like taffy, pulling at my limbs. I felt a terrible pressure inside, as if my whole body were about to burst.

Stryge was unmaking me.

I gritted my teeth against the pain. In a moment it would be over, and then I would be nothing but a collection of body parts spinning in the air like some macabre children’s mobile. Would I come back from that, I wondered as the pressure in my head built, or would it really be the end this time? I was surprised at how much a part of me welcomed the idea of a lasting death, how much it embraced an end to this unending life.

The pain built, and just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I heard the flapping of wings. A lot of wings. Out of nowhere, I was surrounded by big, black crows. They pecked and clawed at Stryge. He roared and tried to swat them away. The sensation of being unmade instantly subsided. I fell to the ground, then rolled to the edge of the trees. I stayed down, hoping Stryge wouldn’t see me.

The crows flew toward me in a swarm, and then, suddenly, I was looking up at the Black Knight sitting upon his armored horse. I scrambled backward, away from him. I didn’t know why he’d saved me, but I didn’t trust him. He’d already killed me once. Maybe he’d come back for an encore performance.

But the Black Knight only looked down at me with his usual stoic silence.

“Um … thanks?” I said. It didn’t sound convincing.

He lifted one black gauntlet and pointed at me.

“Yeah, I know, I’m alive even though you killed me. You’re not the first to be confused by that.”

He didn’t answer. Then I realized it wasn’t me he was pointing at. It was the Anubis Hand lying on the ground beside me.

“You want the staff?”

His black helmet tipped forward. That was a yes.

I looked at the Anubis Hand. It was his, after all. But there was no way he could have remembered it, or what it could do against Stryge, unless—

Unless something had changed.

I turned back to the Black Knight. “You remember! You finally remember!”

His helmet tipped again. He held out his gauntlet. I stood up and passed the Anubis Hand to him.

“Give him hell, Willem,” I said.

He nudged his horse forward. Holding the Anubis Hand in one gauntlet and the heavy chain reins in the other, he charged Stryge. The tremendous Ancient roared at him, clenching his claws into mighty fists. For a moment it was as though I’d stepped back in time to the seventeenth century, back before New York City even existed, to when the battle between Willem Van Lente and Stryge had played out for the first time.

Van Lente swung the Anubis Hand and struck Stryge just above the knee. There was a bright flare at the point of impact, and Stryge howled in agony. The earth seemed to tremble harder with his anger. He swiped at Van Lente with a massive claw, but he was sluggish from the pain. Van Lente galloped past him, out of reach.