Dying Is My Business

Thirty-three

The force of hitting the water was as painful as landing on a hardwood floor. The freezing cold waves of the Hudson closed over me instantly. Swallowed me whole. Underwater, it was too dark to see. I was too stunned and disoriented to know up from down. I thrashed and twisted in the cold, black void until my lungs burned for air. I was panicking, I realized, and if I didn’t stop I would drown. I went as still as I could and let myself rise like a buoy to the surface. It seemed to take forever, my lungs like overinflated balloons threatening to burst. When I finally broke the surface, I sucked in so much air that the astrophysicists at Columbia University probably thought a new black hole had formed off the coast of Manhattan.

I hadn’t dropped far in that final free fall, maybe forty feet, but still, I was lucky I hadn’t broken my neck on impact. Yellow Eye’s dead body floated a few feet away. Damn. The gargoyle had been trying to help me, and had gotten killed for its trouble.

I treaded water, keeping an eye out for Long Face, but there was no sign of the gargoyle. They were tough creatures, though. I knew that if I survived, Long Face probably had, too. I didn’t like not knowing where the gargoyle was, but I had other priorities at the moment, like getting the hell out of the freezing cold water.

I swam toward Manhattan, fighting against the strong current that kept trying to pull me downriver. I was sore all over, a man-shaped contusion, but I didn’t let myself slow or stop. I kept reaching for the city lights twinkling in the distance like a beacon, until finally I felt the bottom of the river under my feet. Then I stood and stumbled like a madman through the surf. Cold, wet, exhausted, and in pain, I collapsed onto the slick, unyielding rocks that formed a narrow ribbon along the shoreline.

I didn’t pass out. I never do, it’s one of drawbacks of my condition. I lay there a long time, though, and was conscious for all of it. I was also painfully aware of something poking me in the thigh, something that felt different from the hard stones underneath me. I reached into my pocket—a simple, commonplace action that suddenly took Herculean effort—and pulled out the object that was poking me. It was the cell phone Isaac had given me. I almost laughed, but all I could manage was a throaty cough. I flipped the phone open. Water poured out of it. The display screen stayed dark. The phone was dead. That’s what it got for hanging around the likes of me. That’s what everyone got, in the end.

The cell phone dropped out of my hand, and my hand dropped to my side. I didn’t have the strength to move anymore. I knew this feeling, and I knew what would come next. I’d wondered on occasion what would happen if I died and there was no one around whose life force the thing inside me could steal. Would I just lay there, inert, until some unlucky soul wandered by? What if no one did? How long could I stay dead before it was irreversible? I had a feeling I was about to find out.

I waited to die, but I was wrong. Death didn’t come for me. Rejected again. Maybe it was done trying at this point.

Once my strength had recovered enough that I was able to get up and leave the shore, I stumbled inland. I made my way through trees and up a slight incline. I heard the distant sounds of traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway, but the first road I arrived at was something else. Narrow and deserted, it was little more than a paved path. An access road, probably designed for emergency or sanitation vehicles. A single lamppost beside the road struggled to fend off the dark all on its own. I sympathized.

I stepped onto the road. Aside from being cold and wet, my bones ached and my legs shook, barely able to support my weight. The idea of walking very far was a joke, though I wasn’t sure what the punchline was. Still, I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and hoped I would wind up somewhere.

Something dropped from above, crashing through the treetops and landing on the road in front of me. It was Long Face. The gargoyle was bruised and battered, but still alive. We had that in common, at least.

Too weak to run, I just stood there, wobbling, and said, “Oh. It’s you.”

I braced myself for the gargoyle’s inevitable attack, hoping that if Long Face killed me he would at least stick around long enough to contribute to my resurrection. Provided it worked with gargoyles. I didn’t know if it would. The thing inside me had only ever stolen the life forces of human beings before. It’s funny, the things you wonder when you’re about to die.

I thought I heard the revving of an engine in the distance, growing louder and nearer. Long Face chittered angrily. The gargoyle crouched like a jungle cat ready to spring.

A big black Escalade came roaring out of the darkness, barreling down the road right for us. Startled, I threw myself out of the vehicle’s way on a surge of adrenaline. A moment later, it slammed into the gargoyle like a battering ram. The Escalade’s front grille crushed inward and a single headlight shattered. The vehicle skidded to a halt while Long Face was sent somersaulting through the air. The gargoyle collided with the metal lamppost with a painful-sounding clang. Long Face tumbled to the ground, but the gargoyle was a resilient bastard. Almost immediately it rolled back up onto its feet.

The driver’s-side door opened, and Philip stepped out, the streetlamp’s light reflecting in his mirrored shades. He marched grimly up to Long Face, undeterred by the gargoyle’s threatening hisses, and punched it in the face. Or rather, through its face. Philip’s fist, covered in blood and gargoyle brain matter, came out the back of Long Face’s head as if the gargoyle’s skull was made of papier-mâché. Long Face stopped hissing, twitched a bit, then fell still.

I got up on wobbly legs. “You should be more careful. You almost hit me when you were aiming for the gargoyle.”

“Aiming for the gargoyle? Sure, let’s go with that.” Philip pulled his hand free from Long Face’s skull and shook the gore off of it. “Get in the car.”

I wasn’t about to argue with someone who could punch a gargoyle to death, so I went around the other side and got into the passenger’s seat. I shrugged out of my sopping wet trench coat and tossed it in the back. It didn’t help much. The rest of my clothes were wet, too, and I was still cold. “What are you doing here?” I asked Philip as he got behind the wheel. “How did you know where to find me?”

He started driving, following the access road. The light of his one working headlight briefly lit up Long Face’s body on the side of the road, then left it behind. “The cell phone Isaac gave you has a GPS chip inside it. I followed it until the signal died, and after that…” He paused and glanced at me. “Let’s just say you have a peculiar smell for a human. Spicier, like gumbo. Definitely not the same as everyone else’s. All I had to do was follow my nose.”

I lifted my arm and sniffed my armpit. I smelled like the Hudson River, but I had a feeling that wasn’t what Philip meant. First Ingrid had said my aura was wrong, and now Philip said my scent was wrong, too. Just more unanswered questions for me to obsess over instead of sleeping.

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” I said. “I told Isaac Reve Azrael was following me. I can’t go back.”

“It was his idea. Me, I think if someone wants to run off and get themselves killed that’s their prerogative, but Isaac doesn’t leave people behind. Ever.”

“He should have this time. He knows it’s safer for me to stay away.”

“Let me tell you something about Isaac Keene,” Philip said. “I was in the Towers the day they came down. The South Tower, the first one that fell. I was trapped for hours with the sun coming through a hole in the rubble above me and burning me alive. It was Isaac who pulled me out. He’d been there all day, rescuing people from the wreckage, never stopping, never resting. He didn’t care that I was a vampire, or that the only reason I was there was because I was feeding on a janitor when the shit went down. All he saw was someone who needed help. Isaac saved my life.”

“Yeah? Is that why you stuck around?”

“According to the laws of my kind, I owe him one hundred years of servitude in return, and I give it gladly. Isaac may have his flaws, but he doesn’t give up on anyone.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Flaws? I thought he was Mr. Perfect.”

“Oh, he has his flaws,” Philip said. “For instance, he won’t let me feed the way I want to, and that is a definite flaw. I haven’t had fresh human blood in over a decade. It’s unnatural. Do you know what happens to a rutting bull when he’s not allowed to mate?” He glanced at me. “You have no idea how close I came to tearing your throat out when we met. The smell of your blood…” He trailed off. I was glad not to hear the rest of that sentence. “You have Isaac to thank for keeping your throat intact. He gave you a second chance because that’s who he is. It’s what he does. He did it for me, and he did it for Gabrielle and Bethany, too. They have their own stories about how Isaac found them at their lowest points and gave them a purpose. He cares. In fact, he cares too much, and that’s his biggest flaw. It makes him weak. It will get him killed one day. Luckily, he’s got me around to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Isaac had surrounded himself with special people from the start, I realized, each with his or her own talent. He’d been putting this team together for a long time now. He’d been preparing all along to take up the fight, even if he didn’t know it.

Philip found an exit off the access road that brought us onto the Henry Hudson Parkway, where we merged with traffic heading downtown. I was starting to feel much better, almost fully recovered. Even my bones hurt less. The sun wasn’t up yet, but it was getting close as the black sky brightened toward gray. The headlights of oncoming traffic speared through the dark and reflected off Philip’s mirrored shades.

“Can you see in the dark with those glasses on?” I asked.

“I’m a vampire,” he said. “I can see in the dark with a blindfold on.”

“Do you ever take them off?”

He turned to me with a slight grin. I could see the tips of his fangs. “Trust me,” he said, “you wouldn’t want me to.”

Something in the tone of his voice told me to drop the subject.

He continued, picking up the thread of our conversation, “Isaac didn’t just send me to get you because you were in danger. He needs you, Trent. Just like he needs the rest of us. It’s all-hands-on-deck time. The question is, are you going to be a man and step up, or are you going to keep running?”

I sighed and looked out the window. “All I ever wanted was to find out who I am and where I came from. I snuck into a warehouse to steal a box because I thought it would get me the answers I needed, but instead it turned my world upside down. Made me question everything I thought was true. As if that wasn’t enough, now you’re asking me to help stop an unkillable million-year-old creature from waking up and destroying everything?”

“Welcome to New York,” Philip said. “You didn’t say no, so I take it you’re in?”

Outside the window, I saw the passing lights of the city. How much longer would those lights burn if Stryge got loose? How many thousands, millions of people would die? I already had too many deaths on my shoulders. “Fine,” I said. “I’m in.”

He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it to me. It was identical to the one Isaac had given me. “Isaac’s number is in the contacts. Call him and put it on speakerphone. We need to know what our next move is.”

Once again, Isaac’s number was the only one programmed into the contacts. I put it on speaker and hit the send button. A moment later Isaac’s voice filled the inside of the Escalade.

“Philip, tell me you found him.” He sounded harried, like he’d had a long night. That made two of us.

“It’s me, Isaac, I’m here,” I said.

“Trent! Thank God you’re all right.” He actually sounded relieved. That surprised me. I still wasn’t used to people giving a damn.

I filled him in as quickly as I could on everything that had happened since we last spoke: Reve Azrael’s ambush in the cemetery; the Black Knight’s plan to steal Stryge’s power, and mine; and the brewing gargoyle rebellion. He wanted to know if I was okay, and I told him I was fine, but that the Black Knight was pissed. “Right now, I bet every gargoyle in the Tri-State area is out looking for me,” I said. “Once the sun comes up it’ll buy us some time, but right now I’m more worried about Reve Azrael. She’s a lot harder to shake. She could be tailing me as we speak, or she could already be with Stryge’s body. Either way, I don’t like it. Tell me you found something useful in the books.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Unfortunately, the conspiracy to keep the location of Stryge’s body a secret was executed perfectly. We have a couple more shelves of books to look through, but I’m not feeling hopeful.”

“Reve Azrael isn’t the only one who knows where Stryge’s body is,” I said. “It stands to reason the Black Knight knows, too, or he wouldn’t be planning to steal Stryge’s power.”

“Are you suggesting we ask the Black Knight?”

“Actually, I was thinking maybe we should just hang back and let them kill each other.”

Isaac laughed, but it sounded weary, exhausted. “Believe me, I’m tempted, but it’s way too dangerous. Still, I think you’re on to something. The gargoyle that helped you…”

“Jibril-khan,” I said.

“Funny, it never occurred to me that gargoyles would have names. I always thought of them as animals,” Isaac said.

“You and everyone else. But they’re not. They’re a lot more complicated than anyone gave them credit for.”

“Gargoyles have a centuries-long lifespan,” he said. “Jibril-khan told you he was alive back when Stryge was king, right? Which means he was probably at the battle where Willem Van Lente defeated Stryge.”

“Along with who knows how many other gargoyles still alive today,” I said. “That’s how the Black Knight knows where Stryge’s body is. Oh shit, it just occurred to me. I bet that’s how Reve Azrael knows, too. She probably killed an older gargoyle and plundered its memories for the location.”

“Did Jibril-khan say anything about where the battle was or what happened to Stryge’s body? Think back. Anything could be a clue. Anything at all.”

“I didn’t exactly have time to ask,” I said. “Wait, there was something. Jibril-khan mentioned oracles, and a prophecy about an immortal storm. Gregor said the same thing. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“I don’t know what an immortal storm is,” Isaac said, “but the oracles…” He paused. I could practically hear him stroking his beard in thought.

“They must know something. So where do we find them?”

“Whoa, hold on,” Philip interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere near the damn oracles!”

“Philip’s right, I can’t let you do this,” Isaac said. “If it’s going to be anyone, it should be me.”

“Forget it.” I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “It’s just after six a.m. We have five hours until the equinox. Five hours before Stryge wakes up and everyone dies. You need to stay where you are and keep looking through those books. Leave the oracles to us.”

“Oh, hell no,” Philip said, shaking his head adamantly. “You want to see the oracles, you’re on your own.”

“Fine,” I said. “Just point the way.”

“Trent, listen to me,” Isaac said. “The oracles aren’t human, not even remotely.”

“So what are they?”

“They’re…” He paused, trying to find the right word. “They’re unknowable. They’re beyond our understanding. They have their own ways of doing things, their own rules about who they’ll see and who they won’t—”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t give a damn about rules,” I said. “Like it or not I’m going, and one way or another I’ll get an answer out of them.”

“Trent, you’ll be in way over your head—” I heard a muffled voice interrupt him on the other end of the line. Isaac sighed and said, “Fine, here, maybe you can talk some sense into him.” He passed the phone to someone, and then Bethany’s voice came on the line.

“I thought I heard someone being stubborn and exasperating. I should have known it was you. So, are you still in one piece?”

I smiled at the sound of her voice. I couldn’t help it. It was an involuntary reaction. Philip caught me smiling, shook his head, and groaned.

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not that easy to get rid of,” I said.

“The day’s still young,” she replied.

Philip rolled his eyes and muttered, “Get a damn room.”

“Philip, can you hear me?” Bethany asked.

“Unfortunately.”

“Meet me on Second Avenue, between Second and Third Street. You know the spot.”

Philip blanched. For a vampire who was already quite pale, it was a remarkable feat. “You can’t be serious, Bethany.”

“What’s on Second Avenue?” I asked.

“I can’t allow this,” I heard Isaac say.

Bethany said, “Look, Isaac, the oracles may be the only chance we’ve got left, and Trent shouldn’t go alone. Someone needs to go with him, but it can’t be Philip, and you and Gabrielle need to keep looking through those books. That leaves me as the obvious choice.”

I looked at Philip. “What does she mean, it can’t be you?”

“Bethany, you can’t ask me to do this,” Philip said, ignoring me. He almost sounded frightened.

“I don’t like this,” Isaac said.

“I think we’re all going to like being dead a lot less,” she replied.

Isaac sighed. “You have a point. Okay, do it, but be careful, both of you.”

“This is crazy,” Philip said.

Bethany said, “Philip, if you get there first, keep Trent in the car. Trent, no running off on your own again. I’m coming with you. I mean it. No arguments this time.”

“No arguments,” I said, and ended the call.

Philip shook his head. “Taking you to see the oracles. I must be out of my damn mind.”

He turned off the Henry Hudson Parkway onto Ninety-Sixth Street, heading east into the city. As we drove down the canyon of concrete and glass, a ball of fire burned before us on the horizon, dimmed to a shimmering egg yolk by the Escalade’s heavily tinted windows.

The sun, rising on what, if we failed, would be the last day of New York City.