Nicholas Kaufmann - Dying Is My Business

“Let him go,” Isaac warned.

“Stay where you are, mage,” Melanthius said. “Make a move, any of you, and the vampire dies.”

“Drop the knife,” I said. “It’s over. Reve Azrael is gone.”

Melanthius laughed. “My mistress is never far.” He pulled Philip up onto the rubble.

We followed, keeping a cautious distance. “You’re outnumbered, Melanthius,” Isaac said. “There are only two ways out of this. You stop, or we stop you.”

“No, there is another way.” Melanthius plunged the silver dagger into Philip’s chest, then shoved the wounded vampire toward us. Isaac caught Philip before he fell.

Melanthius ran into the ruins of the Cloisters. I sprinted after him, Gabrielle right behind me. We chased him into a crumbling, dark corridor of stone. Each step I took brought a cloud of dust raining down on my head, making me wonder if the whole structure was going to come down on top of us at any moment. In the distance, Melanthius produced something small from a pocket inside his cloak. I was too far away to see what it was before he threw it down on the ground in front of him. It broke open, and a hole appeared above it, an opening in the air itself that swirled like a vortex and flickered a bright blue. I’d seen that flickering light before, I realized, the first time I saw Melanthius outside the safe house. The same light had been coming from the alley he disappeared into.

Melanthius leapt into the flickering hole. At the same time, Gabrielle threw something at him, though I didn’t see what it was. A weapon of some kind, I supposed, but she must have missed because Melanthius didn’t cry out or slow down for a second. Then the vortex swallowed him, and the hole in the air closed. He was gone.

I stopped, putting my hands on my knees and catching my breath. Gabrielle did the same. The front of her shirt was red with blood from the reopened wound in her shoulder.

“What the hell was that … that hole?” I asked.

“He had a charm that opened a portal,” Gabrielle said. She winced and touched her bleeding shoulder. “Damn it. I should have guessed he would have an escape plan.”

We walked back to where Isaac and Bethany were tending to Philip. Bethany was cradling his head against her knees while Isaac rubbed dirt on the knife wound. The vampire’s face was twisted with pain and glistened with sweat.

Gabrielle told them about the portal. “But a portal to where?” I asked.

Isaac shrugged and shook his head. “Who knows? Another dimension. Some other part of the city. Timbuktu. It could be anywhere.” He turned to Gabrielle. “Did you get him?”

Gabrielle nodded. “I think so.”

“Get him with what?” I asked.

Isaac looked at the ruins where Melanthius had disappeared. “Plan B.”

We made our way back through Fort Tryon Park toward the parking lot. The northern half of the park was in ruins, the Cloisters destroyed, the grass littered with body parts from revenants, gargoyles, and the three festivalgoers. I wondered how they were going to explain it to the press, or the authorities for that matter, but I was so exhausted I didn’t really care.

Philip wasn’t in good shape, not even after Isaac rubbed dirt into his wounds. Between the burns he’d suffered from the hit of direct sunlight and Melanthius stabbing him with the silver dagger, the vampire was weak and barely conscious. That he could walk at all was a miracle, even with Isaac propping him up as we talked.

“You’re saying Willem Van Lente remembered who he was?” Isaac asked.

I nodded. “I think so, right at the end.”

“If that’s true, it means the infection can be broken,” he said. “It can be reversed. At least the hold it has over people’s minds can be. I wonder if, given time, the physical changes could be reversed, too. Trent, you have no idea what a breakthrough this is.”

“Let’s not start celebrating yet,” I said. “Van Lente was a powerful mage. It may not work with everyone.”

“But it’s hope, ” he said, and I couldn’t argue with that.

Because it meant something else, too. It meant that forgotten memories, even those wiped away by something as strong as the infection, could come back. If Willem Van Lente could remember who he was after forgetting for four centuries, it meant there was a chance I could remember, too. It meant nothing was truly lost.

I walked farther ahead and came up beside Bethany. She looked over at me and asked, “Are you okay? It’s been a hell of a morning.”

I nodded. “I’m fine. I know I freaked out a little back there…”

She arched an eyebrow and gave me a skeptical look. She’d already given me that look so often she could have trademarked it.

“Okay, I freaked out a lot, but it’s over now. Just don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. I don’t fully understand it myself.” That was a lie. I understood just fine. Part of me had wanted to die, and since I couldn’t, I was going to take down everyone and everything else instead. The new power inside me was dormant for now, but it was still there, waiting. I had no idea if and when it would surface again. It had brought out something dark in me, something frightening. What if it had changed me in ways I couldn’t control? Magic infected people when it got inside them. Was I infected now?

Bethany didn’t pry any further, but I felt the need to change the subject anyway before I drove myself crazy. “I’m sorry I broke the charm you made for me. It was a good charm. It worked.”

“Of course it worked,” she said. “I’m good at what I do. So are you, provided it involves punching, shooting, or breaking things.” She looked at the bullet hole in my shirt. “Did it hurt?”

“Nah,” I said.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she said. “I’ve never killed a friend before. Don’t ask me to do that again, okay?”

“I’m not dead yet,” I told her. “Besides, if it’s any consolation, it was a good, clean shot. You killed me like a pro. The Saint Aurelius Home for Orphaned Girls would be proud.”

“Don’t joke,” she said. “Not about this.”

“Sorry, but I’ve died eleven times already. Joking is the only way I can deal with it without losing my mind.”

She squinted at me as though she wasn’t quite sure what was about to come out of her own mouth. “I’m sorry if I hurt you when I shot you. Is that a weird thing to say?”

“I’ve heard weirder,” I said. “But I suppose I’m getting used to all the weird stuff now. Anyway, the way I see it, I almost killed you yesterday, and today you got to shoot me, so we’re even.”

To my surprise, she put her arm through mine as we walked. I liked the way it felt. It let me put the questions about the darkness inside me aside for a while. I wondered if this was what people meant when they used words like happy. I’d never really felt happy before.

A sudden downdraft lifted the dead leaves off the ground. A shadow fell over us. I pushed Bethany back with one arm, and looked up. A pack of gargoyles hovered against the gray cloud cover, two dozen of them at least, the wind from their wings blowing my hair back.

“Bethany, Trent, get behind me!” Isaac cried. He crouched down, laying Philip gently on the ground. Beside him, Gabrielle pointed the morningstar up at the gargoyles, but I waved at her to put it down.

“Don’t,” I said. “I don’t think you’re going to need it.”

She looked puzzled, but she lowered the weapon.

The gargoyles landed in the open field before us, folding their wings behind their backs. I could feel Isaac and the others tensing, preparing to fight, but the gargoyles didn’t attack. Instead, they remained still in an almost military formation. One gargoyle moved through the ranks toward us, a walking stick tapping the ground at its side.