The Devil Is a Gentleman (22 page)

Three together fell on me and I felt them pulling at my clothes, tearing, trying to get at my flesh. I reached out hard with my hand and felt the skin break and pulled at the first thing my hand grabbed. A heard the man scream as his insides came out with my fist like a handful of snakes. He grasped at his guts as I moved so fast around the other two I couldn’t even fathom how I’d moved. I wrapped the intestines around them and with a bestial scream they lunged for the smell of meat and the screams cut off after two beats. I cracked the heads of the two gorging off their friend together and felt their skulls collapse under my hands.

I heard Yuri come in through the door and I felt his shock reverberate through my bones. I heard his gasp and the fast beating of his heart. But he recovered quickly and went to work. I heard the sound of his ring hitting the butt of his gun, a gun so big it would have been hard for my hands to hold. I smelled the blood and the meat, but forced myself to ignore my hunger. I went after Dorrance as I heard three shots, one after the other and felt a hot spray of blood across my back. I wanted to rip Dorrance’s neck open and let his blood run down my throat.

I could feel the fire going through my veins. I could feel it eating me, taking away the living parts and replacing them with seared, blackened things. It brought me back to reality with a shudder. Frank Bradley had taken far less angelwine than me and had lived for a few hours. Long enough to kill his mistress, talk to me, and get to his cabin before the fire consumed him. How much longer would I have? Minutes? Seconds?

I could feel myself dying. I stepped toward Dorrance, his eyes like round, dark coins, the knife held out in front of him. “This is for my family,” I growled. This was why I had taken the angelwine, this was why I agreed to work with Yuri. This was what had driven me this whole time. Family. My family. The Blood had offered my father an escape from poverty, but had forced him into a world even more cruel than the one he left. They had used him as a guinea pig. They had taken my sister and broken her, too. It was my family I was dying for. I wouldn’t let them find Sasha. They wouldn’t find anyone ever again. They were all dead now. All except Dorrance. I felt the flames lick at my hands. He shoved the knife toward me, a frightened growl whining from his thin lips. I watched as the red fire burst from my hands. I was on Dorrance in a second. I felt a vague tug in my ribs and looked down to see the gray hilt of the knife sticking out of my ribs. The handle was polished stone, I saw, a match to the bowl I had smashed into the wall. It didn’t hurt, but Dorrance screamed and pulled his hand back to his chest. I looked down to see the fire pouring out of me like blood, spurting out in arcs and sizzling out on the floor.

My hands were torches now. I could see Dorrance through a veil of red on my eyes, the fire coming from my mouth and shooting out of my chest. I grabbed his face with my hands and forced his face towards mine. “This is how the angelwine kills them,” I said and was amazed at how clear my voice rang out through the flames filling my mouth. “This is the pain you’ve caused, the people you’ve hurt. You did this.” I looked up and saw Yuri frozen, staring at me. The door behind him opened and Gage came running in. It was suddenly quiet. The only sound was the crackle of fire in my ears. Looking down I realized Dorrance had stopped screaming. His face had blackened and his body had burned down to the bone. I let go of him and his charred remains fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. He may as well have been a pile of dust on the floor.

” Niki,” Gage said. He grabbed his head in his hands. “No, goddamn it, Niki!”

I tried to tell him it was okay, but the words wouldn’t come. I felt the fire taking over. I couldn’t move or speak, and Gage was fading in a red fog.

” Goddamn you, Niki, you have no right,” I heard him say, his voice a garbled, thick scream. “It’s not your choice,” he rasped. I heard a thud and saw his form through the red falling to his knees, his body shaking. He was sobbing. I couldn’t take the sight of Bobby Gage sobbing. I had to go to him, to tell him to stop, that I didn’t want it, but I fell to the floor instead. The burning didn’t hurt, I couldn’t feel anything. I felt light and then the world was soft just for a minute. There was no hardness or pain or noise. There was only me, and a shudder of relief went through my body.

The softness pulled at me and soon I was standing up. I could see Gage through a velvety haze. He was still crying, his body racked with sobs. I took a step toward him, but I felt too buoyant, like I would just float away if I put my mind to it. I looked back and saw my blackened body on the ground and I knew. I knew. It was real. And I knew. I was dead.

I crouched by my body, thinking of how many times I’d seen a spirit do this and how pointless it was. I was a spirit now. A ghost. I reached my hand out to touch the smoking pile of blackened flesh and my hand went through with a feeling like static. It didn’t make a sound. Just silence and a feeling of loss deep within me. I looked back at Gage. Yuri was helping him up. I knew he wouldn’t be able to see me, but I walked over to him anyway.

“Bobby,” I said. “Please hear me.” But he let Yuri lift him up, his eyes seeming to be stuck on my body. I tried to touch him, but there was only static. It was like touching a warm spot. I knew why they were drawn to the living now. I got it. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t anything. Any feeling at all was better than the sheer nothingness of not existing. I watched Yuri help Gage to the door, but Gage stopped him before they got there. He turned back to look at me and I saw his face crumble again. “No, Bobby,” I said. “Don’t cry anymore. I can’t take it.” But he didn’t hear me. I could barely hear myself.

I sat down by the dead thing on the ground, the thing that used to be me but wasn’t anymore. I could feel the beginning of forget, gnawing at my mind, making me a dead-eyed spirit. There was no crossing over. Not now. I would become just another ghost in the haze. A spirit in the street. I tried to remember what it was like. I knew there was a haze but I couldn’t remember what it felt like to go through it. I remembered that I didn’t like it but couldn’t remember why.

I sat and began to forget.

Bobby wouldn’t leave. He screamed at Yuri to go without him and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. I watched him. Saw him staring at my body. At least I thought it was my body. I remembered dying, but I could no longer remember how. The numbness was starting to feel like cold. I would have given anything to be warm just one last time. I felt a shudder in the air and I looked up. The man hadn’t moved. I thought I knew him. Bobby, I remembered. Bobby Gage, my partner. My friend. He wasn’t crying anymore, just staring off into space. I felt the shudder again. Gage didn’t seem to notice.

It eased its way through the open door. I saw it at once, though it was completely silent. Not a sound, not even a whisper of the black cloak dragging behind it on the ground. A forgotten memory blazed in my mind and I knew
it
was a
him
and the
him
was Death. As if in reply, he raised his bone-white face to the light, his sockets blacker than black, his teeth bared, lipless and smiling. A spidery hand eased out of the robe as he came toward me and I felt warm. It was as if I had never felt heat before that moment and I closed my eyes to revel in it.

Another memory surfaced. A hand taking mine, its heat surprising me. Who had that been?Death was coming towards me and I wasn’t afraid. It was relief. I recalled something about Heaven. A war. No crossing over. Death stood in front of me. He raised a hand to touch me and he seemed somehow disturbed by me. I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew that looking at me was hard.

I held out my hand to take the bones in mine, to comfort Death. But as we touched, it wasn’t cold bone I felt, but flesh. Hot flesh that felt like fire. And I didn’t go through. I was solid to him. I remembered. He wasn’t a skull in a robe. He was Sam.

I tried to cry but couldn’t. Sam wrapped his arms around me and if I closed my eyes I could pretend we were back at the Deep Blue Sea and I was alive and Sam was holding me. It felt so natural that I was surprised it had never happened before. I felt the hot hands take my face and it was like coming in from the cold.

“Niki,” he said. “Look at me.”

I looked and I saw Death. A skull stark against the black hood. But I saw features, little by little. The ghost of a cheek, a shift in the eyes, the curve of a lip. I saw Sam in the face of Death.

“Are you afraid of me?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Why would I be?” I could feel breath in his chest, the flesh of his stomach.

I remembered now. There was a white-haired man. Dorrance. I had killed him. We had killed them all. The Blood. I drank all of the angelwine to do it. I had burned up. “I burned,” I said. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop it. And no one could stop me. Not even myself. I killed them all.”

He let go of my face, but I grasped his hands and held onto them. “I can’t cross over, can I?” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Are you here to say goodbye?”

He stared at me. After a long time he said, “I’m here to give you a choice.”

“A choice?” I said. “Why?”

“Because I have to. Because I can’t not give you a choice. Damn you, Niki, you weren’t supposed to die.” His voice was hoarse, as Gage’s had been.

“Everyone dies,” I said. “You know that.”

“Not you,” he said. “How could you? You were a spark. You made me remember.”

“Remember what?”

“What it means to feel.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” I said. “It was the only way.”

He nodded. “A choice then.”

“What are the choices?”

I saw the mask of his lips curl into a smile. “What else? Life or death.”

“Why would I choose death?” I said.

“There are limitations to life. After this, nothing will be the same.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Anything is better than this. I can’t feel anything. I choose life. Can you do it?”

He was silent for a moment. “I can do it,” he said finally. “Are you sure? Don’t you want to know it means? You may find living a hardship. After this.”

“I choose life,” I said. “Please. You can tell me after, just let me feel again. I feel like my insides are full of air. I want to touch again. I can’t stand this. I’ll go insane.”

He nodded. “This is going to hurt,” he said. “You’ll feel everything.”

He glided to the blackened body on the ground and knelt on the ground. He placed his hands on the flesh. It crackled under his fingers. He lowered his face to the blackened head, a skull with seared skin stretched across. All the hair had burned away. It didn’t look like me. It looked like a monster. Sam put his mouth on the dead mouth and exhaled.

I felt a ripping pull and I was under him, and his lips were on mine. He was so hot and felt so good against my mouth. His lips parted and I thought he would kiss me, but he breathed into me again and I felt the pain. I thought at first it would be better than feeling nothing. The feeling of having flesh to feel pain, to feel cold, so cold, was a brittle relief. But then I felt my skin crawl and itch and ache and burn all at the same time. I tried to scream but Sam held his mouth fast to mine. He put a comforting hand on my face and it was agony, but he held it there.

I writhed under him. I felt my flesh reforming, my heart growing, my lungs becoming new again. The black flaked off and I was raw, the bones becoming clean, the muscle scaling overtop like magma, then becoming flesh that burned in the air. I felt my body convulsing and I shook. I felt the hair growing out from my head and my skin coursing down over the muscle. In my head I was screaming. Through the screams I could hear a voice. Gage’s voice. He was yelling. I couldn’t tell if he was terrified or angry or happy. I didn’t know anything but the pain.

And then, as soon as it started, the sharp pain was gone and I was myself, only tender and sore. Sam’s lips were on mine and I felt I could stay like that forever. But he pulled back and looked down at me. I took a ragged breath and my new lungs filled with air. I coughed. I was cold. The only warmth was coming from Sam’s hands. They were still hot, one on my face and one on my stomach. He had brought me back to life. I’d been dead and now I wasn’t.

“Sam?” I said, my voice like shards of glass scraping my throat.

“Sam,” echoed a voice. Gage was pacing around me where I lay. I looked at him. “Sam did this?” he said. He ran a hand through his hair. I thought he was angry, but a tear ran down his face. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, lurching down and hugging me to his chest. “Goddamn, Slobodian,” he said. “I thought you were gone for sure.” He pulled off his tattered jacket and pulled it around me. I realized I was naked but I didn’t care. I was alive. I could feel. “I don’t know how you’re alive, but I don’t give a damn. Sick of people dying.”

“Damn, Gage, would you stop blubbering all over me?” I said. But he didn’t stop. He just laughed and cried and kept right on hugging me. I didn’t have the energy to stop him. I looked for Sam and found him stepping back, away from us.

I felt the ground shake beneath us, a low rumbling became a series of deafening cracks. It came from outside. Sam was looking at me. I could see the movement in his eyes. He looked sadder than I had ever seen him. Gage gave a start, bracing us so I didn’t fall on the ground. “Jesus, what the hell is that?” he said.

The racket from outside didn’t stop, it just got louder. The lights flickered, then went out. We were in complete darkness and the world outside sounded like Armageddon. Sam’s face seemed to glow in the dark and he was shaking his head.