Dying Is My Business

Thirty-five

“Did the oracles help?” Philip asked as Bethany and I returned to the Escalade.

I crawled into the backseat. “It was a colossal waste of time.”

“I figured,” Philip said.

“They weren’t exactly forthcoming, but I wouldn’t call it a waste of time,” Bethany said from the front passenger seat. She was more optimistic than I was, but I didn’t see any reason for it. The oracles hadn’t given us anything but gibberish and bad attitude. “They said Stryge’s body was in a tomb somewhere to the north.” She gave him the five names the oracle had supplied, but he’d never heard of them.

She pulled out her cell and got Isaac on speakerphone. She ran the names by him, too. “Do they mean anything to you?” she asked. “Were they in any of the books?”

“No, but hold on a moment, let me get to my computer,” Isaac said. The sound of tapping keys came over the speaker. “I put the names into a search engine, but it’s weird, none of them have anything to do with New York City. Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa is a Benedictine abbey in the Pyrenees. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a medieval abbey outside Montpellier. Trie-en-Bigorre is a Carmelite convent near Toulouse. They’re all religious sites in France.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Bethany said. “Stryge’s body has to be here. The Lenape Indians hid it somewhere after the battle.”

“Maybe they shipped the body to France instead,” I said. “It’s a lot harder to join the head and body when they’re on two separate continents.”

“Impossible,” she said.

I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms. “Fine. Here’s something that’s more possible: the oracles don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

She ignored me, turning back to the phone sitting open in her hand. “Are you sure there’s no connection between those names, nothing that applies to New York?”

We heard Isaac’s fingers on the keyboard again. “This might be something. It’s from a Web site of New York City walking tours. Listen to this. ‘Throughout the grounds, visitors will find the authentic hallways, chapels, and gardens that once stood in such famous French cathedrals and abbeys as Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, and Bonnefont-en-Comminges. Each structure was disassembled brick by brick before being shipped to New York and reassembled in the 1930s as a public museum.’”

“Where is this?” Bethany asked.

“Fort Tryon Park, up in Washington Heights,” Isaac said. “It’s the Cloisters. That’s where Stryge’s body is. They built the Cloisters right on top of his tomb.”

Bethany nodded. “Of course, Washington Heights. That must be where the battle took place. ‘To the north.’ The oracles were right.”

“Lucky guess,” I said. Even to my own ears I sounded as petulant as I felt. Even if it meant the end of New York City, part of me didn’t want the oracles to be right, because if they were right about this, it meant they were also right about me.

“How many millions of people visit the Cloisters every year, completely unaware of what’s sleeping right under their feet?” Isaac said. “Good work, guys. Get back to Citadel, we’ve got work to do. And Trent?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got something you need to see,” Isaac said.

I leaned forward in the backseat. “What?”

“Get here now, guys,” he said, ignoring my question. “We don’t have a lot of time. The equinox is coming.”

Bethany ended the call. Philip started the engine and pulled the Escalade into traffic.

I watched the New York Marble Cemetery grow farther away in the rear window, and heard the oracles’ voices in my head again. I couldn’t help harping on the things they said about me.

A threat.

A danger.

An abomination.

They weren’t all that different from the things I’d wondered about myself in the dark of my room during all those sleepless nights when my thoughts got tangled in knots and turned on themselves like rabid dogs. But even if the oracles were right and I was some kind of menace, it still didn’t answer the big questions hanging over me.

Why couldn’t I die?

How did I know how to fight as if I’d been doing it all my life?

Why couldn’t I remember anything from before?

I put it from my mind. If I hadn’t been able to answer those questions in the past year, I wasn’t going to do it now. Besides, something else the oracles said had stuck with me too, something more pressing.

Willem Van Lente yet lives.

That Van Lente was still alive after all this time was impossible. It was insane. But by now I was willing to believe a lot of crazy things I wouldn’t have thought twice about before. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more sense it suddenly made, and pieces of the puzzle began to slip into place.

When we got back to Citadel, Isaac took me up to the second floor. At the end of a hallway lined with marble busts and draped with heavy, red cloth panels was a simple wooden door. He took me inside to a small, cluttered study. Crowded bookshelves lined one wall and a leather couch covered with loose papers stood against another. An Oriental rug covered most of the hardwood floor. The morning light filtered through a stained-glass window on the far side of the study and fell on the cluttered desk, illuminating two objects resting on the blotter. The first was a big, empty, glass Erlenmeyer flask stopped with a thick cork. The other was my Bersa semiautomatic.

“My gun!” I said, as excited as if I were seeing an old friend for the first time in years. I picked it up off the desk. Even with an empty clip, it was remarkable how much better I felt with it back in my hand.

“You left it here last night,” he said. “But the moment I touched it, I knew something was wrong with it.”

I looked at it, inspecting the grip and the barrel. “It looks fine to me.”

“It is, now,” he said. He pulled over a standing magnifying glass on a brass stand, and positioned it in front of the Erlenmeyer flask. “This is what I wanted to show you. Look inside the flask.”

“It’s empty,” I said.

“Use the magnifying glass.”

I tucked the gun in the back of my pants and bent closer, putting my eye to the magnifying glass. The flask wasn’t empty after all. Inside it, a tiny shape flittered around on thin, batlike wings. I blinked, surprised, certain I was imagining it, but when I looked again, the winged shape was still there. Somehow, it was aware I was watching it because suddenly it stopped flying, clung to the wall of the flask, and turned its head toward me. I sucked in my breath. It resembled a tiny naked man, albeit horned, tailed, and winged like a child’s idea of what the Devil looked like. Its skin was the color of mud or clay, and it seemed to be coated in clear, slick goo. Instead of hands and feet it had barbed suction cups at the ends of its limbs. The creature flicked its forked tongue at me disdainfully.

I turned to Isaac, amazed. “What is it?”

“A homunculus,” he explained. “It’s a very advanced, very special kind of spell. It acts as the eyes and ears of its creator. It’s a way to spy on someone without being detected. I found it attached to the grip of your gun. It’s so small it’s no wonder you never knew it was there.” He bent down to look at the Erlenmeyer flask. “I believe this is how Reve Azrael found you at the safe house, and how she found Citadel.”

I took a quick step back from the desk. “Then she can see us right now?”

“Don’t worry, the psychic link has been severed,” Isaac said. “Without it, Reve Azrael is flying blind. She won’t know where you are or what you’re doing, not anymore.”

I looked at the flask again. With only my naked eye, I couldn’t even see the homunculus inside. How could something so small have caused so much trouble?

“How did it get on my gun?” I asked. How many times had I held the Bersa without knowing the homunculus was right there on the grip, stuck there like glue just centimeters from my hand? Even right under my hand, so small I wouldn’t have felt it?

“One of her revenants must have put it there,” Isaac answered. “Bennett, I’m guessing. That’s the only revenant who could have gotten close enough.”

Isaac’s theory sounded good on the surface, but it didn’t hold up under scrutiny. Reve Azrael had already found me at the safe house before she could have gotten close enough in Bennett’s guise to slip the homunculus onto my gun. No, I was convinced there was something we weren’t seeing. Something we’d overlooked.

I studied the homunculus through the magnifying glass again. Inside the flask, it flitted back and forth like a restless mosquito. “You said it was a spell, but it looks alive.”

“It’s not,” a voice said from the study door. I looked up. Gabrielle walked into the room. She had one arm in a sling, but otherwise she looked pretty good for someone who’d been shot just last night. Whatever was in the Sanare moss they’d put on her wounds had worked wonders. “The homunculus is made of paper, clay, and magic, nothing more. Think of it as a machine. And like a machine, it can be reprogrammed.”

“How?” I asked.

She picked up the flask with her good arm. “Reve Azrael can’t use the homunculus anymore, but with just a few tweaks to the existing spell, we can.” She walked back to the door. “Give me five minutes and I’ll have it ready, Isaac.”

“Be quick,” he said. “The others are gearing up downstairs. We’re leaving in ten.”

When Gabrielle was gone, I said, “Why do I get the feeling you’ve got something up your sleeve?”

“It’s always good to have a Plan B.” He led me back out into the hallway, then closed and locked the door to the study. “Trent, after everything you’ve already done for us, I hesitate to ask you this. It’s a lot to ask of someone I’ve only just met, but we need all the help we can get.”

“You’re asking if I’m coming with you,” I said.

“Are you?”

I nodded. “But she’ll know I’m with you. She’ll know you’re coming.”

“Not anymore. Not without her homunculus.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I said. “I don’t think we’re seeing the whole picture. Reve Azrael could just as easily have used the homunculus to track Bethany or Thornton, right? But she chose me. She knows things about me that a homunculus can’t explain. The oracles said she knows who I am. I want to know how.”

“She’s not going to sit still for an interrogation if that’s what you’re thinking,” Isaac said.

“I know, but I aim to get the truth out of her, one way or another.”

He shook his head. “Let it go, Trent. Reve Azrael is dangerous. Not just to us, but to this whole city. If we have the chance to put her down once and for all, we can’t risk waiting around. We have to take it. You would be smart to do the same.”

Not without getting some answers first, I thought, but I nodded as if I agreed with him.

“Good,” he said. We started down the hall toward the staircase. Halfway there, I noticed an open door to a room off the hallway. Bethany was inside, standing at a metal table in the center of the room, her back to me. The room was small, its walls covered floor to ceiling with little drawers, as if it were one big apothecary chest. I told Isaac I’d join him downstairs in a minute, then leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms. I watched her pull open a drawer and take out a small, tubular charm with a glass bead on one end. She placed it on the table next to a selection of charms she’d lined up there.

“This is a familiar sight,” I said. “Tomo, Big Joe, and I used to do this all the time before a job. Only we were loading up on guns and ammunition, not charms.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “The principle’s the same, I suppose.” She opened the pockets in her vest and started unloading charms from it onto the table. “Gabrielle told me about the homunculus.”

“Isaac showed it to me,” I said. “Ugly little thing.”

She smirked. “They say homunculi take on the physical features of the people they’re spying on.”

“Really? Come to think of it, the little guy did have a sort of rugged charm to him.”

She rolled her eyes. “The important thing is that you know the truth now. You know what happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it? Reve Azrael would never have gotten the box if she hadn’t followed me here.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “You blame yourself for Ingrid’s death. You have from the start, even if you won’t admit it. I can see it in your eyes every time someone says her name. Maybe now you can stop beating yourself up over it.”

“If I’d known about the homunculus…”

“You couldn’t have,” she said. “It’s not your fault Reve Azrael used the homunculus to find us. It’s not your fault you weren’t there when the shadowborn came. You need to start believing that, or the guilt will eat away at you. Believe me, I know. Guilt was a constant companion throughout my childhood. When I wasn’t busy hating my parents for abandoning me, I was busy blaming myself for driving them away. The guilt ate away at me a little more every day, until I couldn’t feel anything else. Don’t let it do the same to you. Find a way to move past it.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s worth it.” She turned away from me again and took off her vest. Beneath it was a dark blue, formfitting turtleneck top. The material was snug, clinging to the planes and curves of her body like a second skin, and it turned sheer where it stretched across her shoulders. I could just make out the phoenix tattoo covering her back, bisected by the black band of her bra.

I caught myself staring and looked away. “The others are waiting downstairs. I should probably—”

“You okay? You sound weird.” She turned around to face me again. Her eyes were as bright and blue as the clearest water.

“I’m fine,” I managed to say.

She handed me a small cardboard box about the size of a wallet. “Here, this is for you.” I opened the box. Inside were seven nine-millimeter bullets. I grinned about a mile wide. “I found it in one of the drawers and thought of you. They probably won’t do you much good, but I figured you might like them anyway. If I didn’t know better, I’d say your gun was your talisman.”

I loaded them into the clip of my gun. “First the amulet, now this,” I said. “What would I do without you, Bethany?”

“Probably die a lot more,” she said.

I looked into her eyes again. She looked back at me. Something passed between us then, a moment where it felt like I could do or say anything because anything was possible. I opened my mouth to speak, not even sure what was going to come out, but the oracles’ words started banging around in my head again. Danger. Threat. Abomination. A man that is not a man. I closed my mouth again. Who was I kidding? Bethany wouldn’t waste her time on someone like me. I felt like a fool, and the moment was gone.

“We should get downstairs,” she said. She put on her vest, its pockets bulging with charms. We went downstairs in silence.

Downstairs, the main room was still a shambles from Reve Azrael’s attack, the floor covered in shattered crystal obelisks, books knocked from their shelves, and broken statuettes, all covered in a coarse layer of ash. The others had already gathered amid the mess. Gabrielle was holding a morningstar she’d taken from Isaac’s vault, weighing the balance of the spiky-headed mace in her good hand. Philip had a long-handled broadsword, its elaborate hilt carved in the shape of a roaring dragon’s head. The vampire was covered head to toe in a flowing black hooded cloak to protect him from the sun. Even his hands were shielded inside black gloves. If I didn’t already know him, I would have found him terrifying.

Isaac came up and tossed me a staff. “Catch!”

It was the Anubis Hand, new and improved. The blackened, mummified fist had been mounted to the tip of a metal staff this time. I tapped the staff against the floor. It was solid, strong. There was no way this one was getting chopped in half.

Isaac checked his watch and addressed the group. “Two hours until the equinox. Two hours to stop Stryge from waking up and destroying New York City. I’m not going to lie to you, this isn’t going to be easy, and it isn’t going to be safe. We’re severely outnumbered by Reve Azrael’s revenants and the Black Knight’s gargoyles. I can’t guarantee we’re all going to come home from this, or that any of us will. I wanted to take a moment to tell you that you’ve all done your jobs remarkably well. I couldn’t be prouder to work with each one of you. But what we’re about to do is more dangerous than any job I’ve sent you on. This isn’t like securing an artifact. This is Stryge we’re talking about. He has all the powers of an Ancient, and he revels in death and destruction. If something goes wrong and Stryge is awakened, there’s no amount of money I can pay you that’ll be worth the danger you’d face.”

“This isn’t about money, not anymore,” Gabrielle said.

Isaac nodded. “A very wise man once told me there comes a time when you have to rise up and make a stand, even if no one else will. I didn’t listen. I sent you all out into danger instead. You risked your lives for me, while I hung back. No more. But this is the most dangerous thing I have ever asked you to do, so if you have any reservations, if you’ve changed your mind about coming, leave now. The door’s right over there. No one would blame you.” He looked at each of us. No one spoke. No one left.

“Fun speech,” Philip said. “So, are you gonna drive, or am I?”

Philip drove us north on the West Side Highway toward Fort Tryon Park. Seated in the back of the Escalade, I watched the city roll by and gripped the staff tightly. I didn’t know what would be waiting for us on the other end of the ride, but I had some nasty ideas. Were we strong enough to handle it? Prepared enough? I wondered if this was the same trepidation Willem Van Lente had felt as he’d approached the battlefield to face Stryge four hundred years ago.

It was Willem Van Lente’s own fist that had become the Anubis Hand. He’d used magic—dangerous magic—to transform his own flesh into a weapon. The more I thought about that and everything it implied, the more the puzzle pieces slid into place.

The oracles were right when they said Willem Van Lente was still alive. And if I was right, he would be at Stryge’s tomb today, too.

Up front, in the passenger seat, Isaac shared his plan. “Reve Azrael will most likely have already gone underground to the tomb by the time we get there, but it’s a sure thing Melanthius will be lurking somewhere close, acting as lookout. We can use that to our advantage. Wherever Melanthius is, Reve Azrael won’t be far. He’s our signpost. Find him, and we’ll find Stryge’s tomb.”

Fort Tryon Park sat at the north end of Manhattan like a small island of green amid a vast sea of concrete, nature’s last gasp at the top of an overdeveloped urban landscape. The Cloisters loomed over the treeline in the distance as we approached, an enormous brick and stone Gothic fortress. When we reached the park, we pulled into the public parking lot.

The lot was surprisingly crowded. It took us a few minutes to find a parking spot, weaving through the cars and big white trailers before we finally found a space to pull into. A family walked by, two parents and three kids, the father pushing the smallest one in a stroller. Isaac shook his head. “Damn it. I didn’t think there would be this many people here today. We have to be careful.”

We got out of the Escalade and started toward the park entrance. Philip pulled the hood of his cloak lower over his head to keep himself protected from the sun. The people standing by their cars watched us as we passed. Their eyes went to Gabrielle’s morningstar, my staff, Philip’s cloak and sword, but instead of doing something sane like backing away and calling the cops, they just nodded and gave us the thumbs-up. I scowled at them, confused, but kept walking.

“The Cloisters are on the other side of the park from where we are now,” Isaac said. “That gives us a lot of ground to cover. Keep your eyes open and your weapons handy. Melanthius is out there somewhere, and I’m guessing the Black Knight is, too.”

“Piece of cake,” I said. “How hard can it be to spot a man in a wizard’s cloak or a knight in armor? They’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

Then I looked up and froze.

A dense throng of people waited at the park entrance. There were men in tights and doublets, cloaks, chainmail, and full suits of armor, and women in Renaissance gowns and cone-shaped princess hats. Above them, a banner stretched from one side of the park entrance to the other. It read, WELCOME TO THE MEDIEVAL FESTIVAL AT FORT TRYON PARK.

“Oh,” I said.