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And standing beside him had been a man whose face seemed only slightly familiar. But if I paged through my yearbook, I knew where I would find the younger version of that face.
Right next to Kellerman Lourdes's name.
And I knew what I'd seen, even if my eyes were blurred with tears. I'd seen the stick-thin figure of Headmaster Mirovitch, his hands on his hips, silhouetted against the diseased blue light. I had smelled him.
Blood and other fluids bathed my arm. "Jace," I whispered. His head lolled back obscenely far, throat slashed all the way down to the vertebrae; the wet red of muscle sliced too cleanly for a blade. The flesh had parted like water; I saw the purple of the esophagus, a glaring white chip of cervical spine.
His sword, the blade twisted into a cockeyed corkscrew, chimed against the ground as his hand released it. "Jace." My tattoo burned as I drew on all the Power available to me. The room shook and groaned. Books fell off shelves, and glass implements broken by my kia and the welter of backlashed Power from the Headmaster and Keller shivered into smaller pieces. I poured out every erg of my demon-given strength to do what a Necromance should do—bring a soul back, and seamlessly heal a hopelessly shattered body.
The light rose from him. I could still see it, the shining path made by a soul leaving the body, the foxfire of dying nerves giving a last painless flash. The blue crystal hall of Death rose around me, my emerald drenching the hall in swirling green light as I stood on the Bridge over the abyss. Jason! I howled his name, the crystal walls humming with the force of my distress, and then the God of Death came.
Anubis stalked to the very edge of the abyss in His full form, the obsidian-black, smoothly muscled skin of His arms and legs gleaming wetly. His ceremonial kilt rang and splashed with light, gold and gems glittering; His collar was broad and set with more jewels. The god's slender dog's head dipped, regarding me with one merciless, pitiless Eye, a black Eye that held a spark of crystalline blue light in its orb. He stood at the end of the Bridge anchored in the hall of Death, the Bridge I had walked so many times to bring a soul back.
His arms crossed, one holding the ceremonial flail, the other holding the crook. His will stopped me on the Bridge, my not-self wearing the white robe of the god's acolytes, my golden feet bare on the stone. Please! It was an agonized cry, with all the force of my Will behind it—the sorcerous will I had learned to use, used all my life; the will that pushed Power to do my bidding, the will every practitioner had to create and use if he or she expected to cast any spell. My throat swelled with the agony of that cry, a physical ache in a nonphysical space. Please, no! No! I will give you anything, I will go in his stead, please, my Lord, my god, give him back!
The God of Death looked down on me, His daughter, His faithful servant, and shook His head.
Bare, laid open, I struggled against that kind implacability. I offered it all: my own life, my service, every erg of power and heat and love I possessed. I could never give Jace what he wanted from me, but letting him go down into Death's dry country… No. The stubbor
One hand extended, one finger, weightless, touched the crown of my head. There was a price for the balancing of Death's scales. Was I prepared to pay? Was that what he was asking me?
Anything, I whispered. I will give You anything I have, anything You ask.
And Death paused again. I read the refusal in His ageless, infinite eyes, and struggled uselessly against it. My cheek burned, the emerald flaring with drenching light, driving back the blue flame for one eternal moment. On and on, the strings of my psyche snapping, tearing, rent…
I was shoved back, pushed out of the space between worlds, rammed choking and sobbing back into my body. I cradled Jace's empty husk to my chest, tilted my head back and screamed again, a sound so massive it was soundless, rising out of me like light from a nuclear fission. I was still screaming when the cops arrived, still screaming when Gabe fought through the press of sound, her nose bleeding from the wall of psychic agony. She fell to her knees, taking me in her arms. Her human warmth folded around me while I sobbed, mercifully robbed for a short while of every shred of demon power. I screamed again and again with only a broken human voice while I clutched the breathing, living body to my chest.
Breathing, yes. Living, yes. But nobody had to tell me that the soul inside was gone. My demon-given Power had mended Jason Monroe's shattered body in a mimicry of a sedayeen's miraculous ability to heal, but he was dead all the same.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I folded my hands carefully around the paper cup while late-afternoon sun slanted over the street. Gabe spoke softly to someone, they were processing the scene. I huddled in the back of an ambulance hover, a brown woolen blanket around my shoulders, my clothing stiff with dried blood and noisome fluids. I shivered, the black liquid masquerading as coffee inside the paper cup slopping against the sides.
It had been the middle of the day, everyone at work, nobody home except Hollin Sukerow. Which was a good thing, my scream and the explosion of loosed Power had taken out a good chunk of the building. Debris littered the street, smoke clearing on the air. It looked as if a wandering shark had just cruised by and taken a big half-circle bite out of the brownstone.
I shut my eyes. Gray shock closed over the darkness behind my eyelids again. Again the spiked warmth from the mark on my shoulder fought it back. Tears leaked hotly between my eyelids, dripping down my cheeks. My tangled hair was full of dust and blood and dirt.
They had taken Jace's body to the hospital. He was breathing, his heart beating, everything apparently fine… except it wasn't. It was an empty shell, an empty house, the soul fled but the housing that contained it intact. All the Power granted me by a demon's touch could not change Death's decree.
My sword, tucked up against my leg, hummed softly. I sat on the cold rubberized floor of the ambulance hover and exhaled softly. The whine of a slicboard rattled over the scene, and I realized my lips were still shaping the prayer to Anubis.
Anubis et'her ka. Se ta'uk'fhet sa te vapu kuraph. Anubis et'herka. Anubis, Lord of the Dead, Faithful Companion, protect me, for I am Your child. Protect me, Anubis, weigh my heart upon the scales, watch over me, Lord, for I am Your child. Do not let evil distress me, but turn Your fierceness upon my enemies—
I stopped, choked on the rising tears, and forced them back down. Just like a kid, crying because a toy had been taken away, sobbing messily and completely.
No. I was not a child. I would never be a child again.
"Thank the gods you're here," Gabe said.
I opened my eyes to see Eddie heeling his slicboard as the cell powered down, ending with the board neatly racking itself against the step of the ambulance hover. "How is she?" For once, Eddie didn't growl or sneer. Instead, he pushed his shaggy hair back from his face and stole a few worried glances at me in between examining Gabe. He didn't even glance up at the hole in the side of the brown-stone.
Gabe shrugged, an eloquent movement. "Da
Both of them approached me, Eddie's rundown boots scraping the wet pavement. His long dirt-colored coat flapped. His aura, smelling of earth and pines, sweat and beer, meshed with Gabe's swirling Necromance sparkles.
I swallowed bile, looked up at their worried faces. Sunlight glittered in my reactive-dry eyes. I blinked.