Die and Stay Dead (28 page)

“Don’t be such a baby,” she said. “The bruise isn’t that bad. It’ll be gone in no time, and then you can go back to jumping onto moving trucks like a maniac.”

I pulled my shirt back on. “Your bedside manner could use some work.”

Bethany stood, picked up the bottle of rubbing alcohol, and started collecting the cotton balls off the floor. “Are you ready to come downstairs?”

“Give me a second,” I said. “I’ll catch up.”

“Don’t take too long,” she said, heading for the door. “Isaac wanted to see us ASAP.”

When she was gone, I called Jordana. Once again, it rang and rang until the voice mail picked up. I was starting to worry.

“It’s me again,” I said after the beep. “Arkwright ambushed us. The son of a bitch stole the fragment right out of our hands. I don’t know where you are, but call me soon, okay? Let me know you’re all right.” I ended the call. It was just after nine in the morning. Where was she? At work, presumably. Maybe her cell was in her purse and she couldn’t hear it. I dug out her business card and called her direct work number. Again there was no answer, just her voice mail. I ended the call without leaving a message.

I tried not to worry, but I kept imagining Arkwright going after her. Blasting her with the Thracian Gauntlet, or worse, gutting her like Calliope. But Arkwright didn’t know about Jordana, did he? She wasn’t like Calliope or Yrouel. She wasn’t on his radar.

Was she?

Kali blinked at me from the corner of the room.

“Where the hell is she?” I asked, but the cat didn’t have any more answers than I did.

*   *   *

Downstairs in the main room, I found Isaac and Bethany already seated at the big table, waiting for me.

“Arkwright attacked you in broad daylight, in full view of the public?” Isaac was asking.

“He wants to end the world,” Bethany said. “I don’t think he cares if anyone sees him running through traffic or taking shots at us with the gauntlet.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, pulling up a chair. “Arkwright was wearing a mask. He’s hiding
something
.”

“I suppose you were seen, too?” Isaac asked.

“By pretty much everyone, yeah,” I said. “Probably a few security cameras, too. Especially when I ran that red light on Sixth Avenue. Sorry.”

Isaac sighed. “You did what you had to. If we’re lucky, people will just assume it was another movie shoot.”

I looked at the empty chairs on the other side of the table. After losing the fragment to Arkwright and learning the demon was still in New York, I would have felt better if we were back up to full strength, all five of us working together. It felt wrong, just the three of us. Like everything was off-balance.

“Still no word from Gabrielle?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Isaac said. “She hasn’t answered a single phone call, text, or e-mail I’ve sent.”

Damn. Now I was getting really worried about her. “Where is she?”

“I wish I knew, but we can’t wait for her,” Isaac said. “Especially now that we know Nahash-Dred never left New York City.”

“Does Arkwright know the demon is here?” Bethany asked.

“We have to assume he does,” Isaac said. “But even so, he still needs the Codex Goetia to bind Nahash-Dred to his will.”

“Okay, but if the demon’s still in New York,” she asked, “what’s he been doing all this time?”

Good question. If the Destroyer of Worlds was here, why hadn’t he begun destroying it yet? From the trail of carnage he’d left over the ages, I got the sense Nahash-Dred wasn’t exactly shy about wiping out entire civilizations. So why hadn’t there been reports of entire cities, countries,
continents
left in ruin? Fourteen years had passed since Arkwright’s cult summoned him here. If Nahash-Dred never left, what had he been doing since then? Preparing? I could see how destroying the world would take a lot of effort and energy. Maybe he needed to rest up first, let his power build. But fourteen years? Did it take
that
long?

It occurred to me there might be a much simpler answer. Maybe Nahash-Dred had no interest in destroying the world because he liked it here. He’d been summoned into New York City, after all. We had more murders every year than just about any other place in the world. On paper, we were practically a city of homicidal maniacs. Where else would a death-dealing demon want to live but someplace where he could kill with impunity, as often as he wanted? As a shape-shifter, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught, even if there were witnesses. All he had to do was change what he looked like. White to black. Tall to short. Male to female.

For Nahash-Dred, New York City was the perfect killing field. It was fucking Disneyland.

A chill came over me. It occurred to me I might have already seen Nahash-Dred’s handiwork. Given the bizarreness and brutality of Calliope’s murder, and how different it was from Yrouel’s, could the demon have killed her? Maybe it wasn’t just Arkwright she’d gotten too close to. Maybe it was the demon, too.

“The fact that Nahash-Dred is a shape-shifter isn’t going to make this any easier,” Isaac said. “Though now I understand why no two artists could agree on what he looks like.”

“How do you track down a shape-shifter?” Bethany asked. “No description would matter. Even his fingerprints could change. He’s been hiding in New York City for over a decade without drawing attention to himself, so he clearly knows how to cover his tracks.”

“And what do we do if we
do
find him?” I asked.

Nahash-Dred was much more powerful than we were. We would be like ants taking on an elephant. Slingshots against a hydrogen bomb.
Nahash-Dred took them apart with but a thought.
None of us had signed up for the Five-Pointed Star because we thought the job would be easy or safe, but I didn’t exactly relish the idea of being taken apart by a greater demon. Was that something I could come back from, or would it be as much the end for me as for anyone else? Nahash-Dred wasn’t from our dimension. He was a demon with powers I knew nothing about. If he killed me, would I stay dead? Or would I come back like all the other times? I took it a step further, following the train of thought down the rabbit hole: What happened if we failed and Nahash-Dred eradicated all life on earth? Would I still be here? Just me, Nahash-Dred, and Erickson Arkwright on a smoldering rock in space?

That raised another question, one I hadn’t thought of before. What was Arkwright’s endgame in all this? Did his insane desire to see all life extinguished include his own? Arkwright was clearly nuts, but was he also suicidal?

“For now, our mission hasn’t changed,” Isaac said. “We keep looking for the fragments. Once we have them all in our possession, we can use the Codex Goetia to banish Nahash-Dred back to his dimension before Arkwright has the chance to bind him.”

“Even if we manage to get the stolen fragment back from him, and even if we successfully banish the demon, Arkwright’s not going to give up,” I said. “He’s that tenacious.”

“Then we’ll be waiting for him,” Isaac said.

“How do you propose to use the Codex at all?” Bethany asked. “None of us know how it works.”

“Jordana does,” I said.

“Will she help?” Isaac asked.

I nodded. “Definitely. She wants to help.”

Bethany leaned forward in her seat. “Wait, so Jordana is part of the team now? When did that happen?”

“If she’s the only one who knows how to use the Codex, then we can’t do this without her,” Isaac said.

Bethany shook her head in disbelief. “You can’t be serious. You’re really going to hand over a powerful and dangerous artifact like the Codex Goetia to someone we barely know?”

“I can vouch for her,” I said.

“You only just met her,” Bethany insisted.

“You vouched for me once,” I pointed out. “I’m doing the same for her.”

Bethany sighed and rubbed her forehead. “How do you even know she can work the Codex properly? Arkwright’s cult thought they could, too. The minute they slipped up, Nahash-Dred butchered them. You’re putting a lot of faith in someone you don’t really know.”

“It’s not like we have time to take out a Craigslist ad looking for an experienced demonologist with references. We’re working with what we’ve got,” I said. “Besides, I trust her.”

“With your life?” she asked. “Wow. That must have been one hell of a date.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Isaac interrupted quickly. “Enough, you two. Whatever’s going on here, give it a rest for now. The clock is ticking.”

Bethany put up her hands. “Fine. Let’s just get on with it.”

“Trent—” Isaac began.

“Lucas,” I corrected him. Bethany rolled her eyes.

“Sorry. Lucas,” Isaac said. “I need you to get in touch with Jordana. Ask her if she’ll help us with the Codex once we have it.”

“I will if I can get ahold of her,” I said. “I’ve tried twice already. All I’ve gotten is her voice mail.”

Isaac knit his brow. “Do you have any reason to be worried about her?”

“No,” I said, which was true enough, but it didn’t mean I
wasn’t
worried. I kept thinking how Arkwright had already killed at least one person connected to this, maybe two. He wouldn’t balk at another. “I’ll keep trying her. I’m sure I’ll get through eventually.”

“You mean our new and completely untested demon expert is proving unreliable?” Bethany muttered. “I’m shocked.”

I gave her a look telling her to back off. Yet some part of me wondered if Bethany was right. How much did I really know about Jordana? Maybe I
was
taking too much on faith. But I’d always trusted my instincts, and whenever I was with Jordana I didn’t have any doubts about her. So how come when she wasn’t around I felt less certain?

*   *   *

We’d found one fragment of the Codex Goetia, only to lose it to Arkwright. But the race wasn’t over yet. There were still two more fragments out there, and like Isaac said, the clock was ticking.

The next clue from Calliope’s notebook was
Mariner lost at sea
. The phrase wasn’t part of a poem or inscription this time, but knowing the fragments were all hidden beneath monuments helped us narrow our Internet search. New York City was one of the country’s oldest port cities. We figured there had to be a monument somewhere dedicated to those lost at sea. We were right, it didn’t take long before we hit pay dirt. There was an American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial in Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan.

“Is that the place?” Bethany asked, leaning over Isaac’s shoulder to get a better view of the laptop.

“Can you pull up a picture?” I asked.

Isaac brought up a photograph on the screen. On top of a small pier off the shore in the Hudson River was the bronze sculpture of a tipped, sinking lifeboat. There were four bronze figures as well, three men on the boat and one, in a macabre touch, below them in the river itself. The grimacing figure in the water was reaching up with one arm, about to either be saved by his comrades or lost to the waves, depending on the whims of the sea. The bronze had turned green from exposure to the elements. It made all four of them look like drowned spirits who’d risen from the sea.

I was certain I’d seen this image sketched in Calliope’s notebook. I flipped through the pages until I found it. Her drawing of a sinking boat mirrored the monument exactly, except for one startling difference. Calliope had drawn herself as the figure in the water, desperately reaching up to be saved as the waves closed around her. The hopelessness of it put a knot in my gut, a reminder that I couldn’t protect her. She had reached out to me for help, just like the figure in the sketch, and I’d failed her. I’d let the sea take her.

Isaac read the monument’s inscription off the computer screen. “‘This memorial serves as a marker for America’s Merchant Mariners resting in the unmarked ocean depths.’”

“That’s the one,” I said. “Calliope drew it in the book. That must be where the second fragment is.”

“If we figured it out, Arkwright will have, too,” Isaac said, standing up. “We should get it now, before he does.”

“You’re coming with us?” Bethany asked.

“If Arkwright shows up again, I want to be there,” Isaac said. “He’s already got one fragment. There’s no way I’m letting him get the other two.”

My cell phone rang, startling me. I fished it out and looked at the name on the screen.

“It’s Jordana,” I said. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you at the car.”

“Don’t take too long,” Isaac said. “Arkwright might have a head start already.”

Isaac and Bethany went out the front door. I answered Jordana’s call.

“Are you okay?” I blurted into the phone. I didn’t even say hello.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I was in meetings all morning, but I got your messages. Are
you
okay?”

I sighed with relief. “I’m fine. I was worried something had happened to you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. No one’s getting past the Bay Ridge Harpy at the front desk,” she said. “But are you sure you’re okay? You said Arkwright ambushed you. You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?”

“I fought him off, but he got away with the fragment,” I said. “Jordana, I want you to be careful. If Arkwright knows you’re helping us, then you’re in danger. He’s already got blood on his hands. Don’t take your usual route home tonight. Don’t let any strangers approach you.”

“You’re being silly,” she said. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“Then just humor me, please,” I said. “I know what Arkwright is capable of.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Message received. I’ll be careful. I suppose I should be flattered that you’re so concerned about me.”

“There’s more,” I said. “Nahash-Dred is already in New York City. Apparently, he never went back to his dimension after the cult summoned him here.”

She didn’t answer me. The line was silent for what felt like a very long time. When she finally spoke, it was with a fearful urgency.

“Lucas, if Nahash-Dred is here, you can’t waste any more time,” she said. “He’s a prince of demonkind. He’s bred for destruction. It’s what he does. He destroys, he kills, he annihilates. You have to bring the fragments to me. I know how to send the demon back, but I need the Codex Goetia. All of it.”