Half-Resurrection Blues (14 page)

T
revor stares at me. His eyes are soft, sleepy. We’re in a mostly dark room; my heart beats heavy in my chest; tears streak my cheeks.

Trevor rubs a hand over his face. “What is it, Sash?” My screaming woke him up. Again.

I shake my head; a nightmare’s tendrils still cling to me. Frozen faces, mouths open, reach out of the darkness. Trevor’s always known how to be there for me. I know this instinctively more than anything else. In one of my few shards of memory, I had squeezed my little body into the back of our closet, lost in the forest of Mom’s and Dad’s long winter coats. Trevor squatted patiently outside, telling me stupid stories until I giggled and finally emerged, still teary eyed. Now he watches me for a few seconds and smiles, waits a beat, then asks, “You want to talk about it?”

I don’t even have words. I’m just tired. My whole body sh
akes.

“You want some tea?”

“No.” Voice gravelly; I try to push back the sound of irritation. He wants to help and, after all, I woke him up.
But it feels like something’s clawing up inside of me and I have no strength to play nice.

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“Video games?”

The smile opens across my face so fast I don’t see it coming. I hate video games. Trevor knows this. But he loves them, and that mischievous chuckle of his has always been contagious. It’s one of the few things I remember from life. A laugh powerful enough to survive the shredding of most of my other memories.

I can’t say no to that and even feel a glint of joy surface as he scrambles to set up the game console. The blue light of the screen throws his shadow back against the far wall, and then he turns to me. His face is in darkness, but I can still see his smile.

*   *   *

I wake up dead.

I must be dead, because my blade has been shoved through the right side of my abdomen and into the couch. I’m literally stuck like a goddamn butterfly. And whatever life force I had is fading fast. I’m thinking it must be a dream and then I remember my own dream, which was Sasha’s dream: a memory. Which means we both opened while we slept.

And she must’ve had one of mine.

She knows about Trevor.

I gasp and then cringe as needles of pain dance up and down my right side. Sasha walks into the room. She’s not holding anything in anymore. Rage dances a maniacal circle around her head. She doesn’t have to speak for me to understand that she saw everything while I slept. Everything.

I groan, and pain radiates along my midsection. She’s putting on her jacket, moving toward the door. There are words trying to come out of me, but even breathing feels like it tears the wound deeper. Nothing leaves my mouth but a cruel gurgling sound.

Sasha opens the door and someone’s standing in the hallway. Someone tall, with long greasy hair. At first she looks terrified; then she nods at him and shoots me a glare that is two parts rage and one part regret.

And then she’s gone.

The man that I watched cut open Moishe’s head strides up to the couch and smiles down at me with long, rotting teeth.

“Hello, Sarco,” I say.

“Hello, my
son.”

G
et away from me.” It doesn’t sound very convincing coming from a man with a shard of steel in his gut, but it’s all I got. Some supernatural entity types really respond well to basic instructions.

Not Sarco.

“They named you Carlos Delacruz. How interesting.”

I squint at him, partially through the pain but also because it’s such a cryptic and absurd thing to say. Yes, they named me Carlos. The fuck? “They named you Sarco.”

He laughs, a hoarse and humorless gargle. “One of many names I’m known by, yes.”

“What’s so interesting about my name?”

“Who gave it to you?”

Ugh. I don’t feel like playing twenty fucking questions with this junky while I’m all speared up. “I don’t know, man. Riley, I guess.”

He just nods, smirking.

Great. Now what? I try to relax into the moment. There is, after all, not a single goddamn motherfucking thing I can do to make my situation any better. But getting even remotely comfortable is out of the question. Sarco rolls within a sour cloud of dread. I can feel it all over my body
like it’s some contagion; the feeling grows as he gets closer. My muscles tighten involuntarily, and all my damn hairs stand tall. Everything inside me screams to run, rebelling against the obvious physical impediments.
Just fucking go,
my body begs me.
Blade in your gut be damned. Just go.

“Stop fighting it.”

“What?”

The man is full of surprising and random things to say; I’ll give him that.

“Stop fighting. That feeling you have, it’s not me; it’s you.”

I’m forced to squint at him again, because I don’t know what else to say. I haven’t quite worked up the nerve to be as rude as I feel like being, so instead I just make faces and pant. I’m pretty sure the blade has blocked off whatever major blood vessel it sliced. From what I can tell, I’m not actively bleeding, but I suspect that breathing slightly wrong or, God forbid, chuckling, would jostle it just so and lead to instant exsanguination. Which might be better than whatever Sarco has planned for me, but still . . . I’d like to live.

“I don’t . . . understand what . . . the fuck . . . you’re talking about, Sarco.”

He flashes that toothy smile, and I seriously consider dislodging the blade and opting for the quick out. “That horrible feeling you have when I come near.”

“What about it?”

“It’s your resistance. Your fear, Carlos.”

“I’m not afraid.” I even manage to say it with a steady voice.

He laughs again. “Your body is. And you’re in shock. Concentrate on calming down your body. I’m not going to hurt you. You may not believe me, but it would help you stop shivering if you did.”

I am shivering, dammit, but I figured that was from the stab wound more than anything else. I take a deep, very careful breath and let it out. I believe he’s not going to hurt me, not yet anyway, for the simple fact that he’s already had plenty of opportunity. Surely down the road, I’m in for some torture, but for now, I’m probably relatively safe. Also, cringeworthy though it is, he’s right: allowing the wretchedness to rule me is not helping. Another deep breath and I’m somewhat calmer.

“There,” Sarco says in a chillingly soothing voice. “That’s better.”

I shake my head, very carefully, because nothing’s really better. I’m just more prepped for whatever nefarious nastiness he has planned. Fine, so be it.

“Relax, Carlos. I have a proposal for you. Very simple. Very easy. I need your help.”

“Seeing as I’m in a terrific position to negotiate, by all means, out with it.”

“Excellent.” I wish he wouldn’t grin though, seriously. I remember Sasha’s strange story about Sarco trying to recruit her, but then I get distracted thinking about how she stabbed me in my sleep and can’t concentrate. “I’m sure you’ve heard many strange and terrible things about me, Carlos.”

“Seen some too.”

“Mmm, of course, we’ve had a few unfortunate encounters, yes. Well, I’d like you to understand the context of my actions a little before you write me off as just a mad sorcerer.”

“Wonderful.”

“But to do that, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

I almost laugh but remember it might kill me. “How would you like me to accomplish that? I’m slightly indisposed.”

“Your body, yes. But I don’t need that part of you. You will be quite safe here, I can promise. The blade has successfully prevented a complete hemorrhage, and your body is remarkably proficient at survival.”

“You’re going to take my soul.”

“Not take, Carlos. Merely borrow.” When he laughs, I hear some chunk of phlegm get dislodged in his throat and he sputters and coughs a few times to clear it. Then he swallows loudly, and I throw up a little in my mouth. “With your permission, of course.”

“Of course. And what makes you think I would ever give you permission to separate my soul from my body, Sarco?”

“Because I’ve already done it once, my son. I created you.”

I
think about Russell Ward and his divine infiltration theory. I have no idea what’s in store, and I don’t know how convinced the old wizard will be by me playing along, but I don’t have much choice. Also, there’s a part of me that’s truly curious. It’s almost a relief to stop resisting and give over control. As I come to my decision, I realize another thing: Sarco was right. The rational weighing of options distracted me from being terrified and yes, the feeling of sudden rot has subsided.

“I’m listening.” Trying to ignore the sense that everything I say has been pre-scripted and plotted out by Sarco, from my trembling doubts to my grudging acceptance. He closes his eyes, magnanimous enough at this small victory to not gloat.

“I was once like you.”

“A pincushion?”

He chuckles. “Well, that too, but that’s another story. I mean I was destroyed and resurrected, occupied that same uncomfortable inbetweeness as you, my son.” I suppress a shudder. “I was twenty-eight, a soldier of fortune roaming from massacre to massacre in the mess of fortified city-states and marshlands that later became Europe. I
had dabbled in sorcery, of course, but they were burning witches at the time, and I figured there were better ways to die than as a mound of charred flesh.” He scrunches up his face in disgust and then gazes down at me. “Do you believe me?”

I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore, so I just stare back at him. Sarco shrugs. “The head of a small province north of Padua wanted to swallow up all the surrounding battlements and form them into a protective ring around his own castle. A recluse living in a tower just outside of the realm returned all his messengers as dead bodies slung over their own horses. I had just barely made it out of the Florentine Black and White wars. My whole body was a festering wound and I couldn’t see straight, but war was all I knew how to do. We launched our attack on the tower, drunk, cocky, and reckless, as always. The ground started shaking, and before we could grasp what was happening, a hooded army rose straight out of the earth and routed our assault. It was over in minutes. We were torn from limb to limb, tossed aside like rag dolls, slashed, crushed, and beheaded. I landed in a heap beneath three of my fellow mercenaries.”

Deep lines stretch across Sarco’s face. Two crease his forehead, cross each other, and then break off into tiny tributaries that disappear beneath that mane of greasy black hair. His cheeks are sunken in, speckled by dry patches and ingrown hairs. “You died,” I say.

Sarco nods. “Mostly.” He opens his eyes, gazes down at me with something I can only call empathy. “The Towermaster came out at dusk. I sensed him. Even from the edge of death, I sensed him, sniffing through the corpses like a hellhound. He stopped over me—an enormous ancient man with no pupils in his eyes and hands like slabs of meat. Power radiated off him in heavy, nauseating waves. He
pulled me from under those bodies—me and three others. Worked some sorcery on us and threw us in a dungeon to either rot or recover. I was the only one who made it. The others . . . I ate to stay alive. I was his slave and then his apprentice.” Sarco smiles. “And then his killer.”

“And me?”

“I wandered around the world like that, like you, for more than a century before it became tedious. I progressed. Half dead isn’t all there is, you know.”

“Imagine my relief.”

“But it is a necessary beginning. A first step, so to speak. So yes, I did this to you, or had it done, I should say. And you survived. And yes, there are others. I gave you this gift, life, and turned you loose in the world. You didn’t know; you can’t ever fully understand what that means, of course, but now I’m here to ask something of you. You don’t have to decide now. All I want is to show you what I mean.”

The truth is: I want to know what the hell he’s talking about. Even if it’s all lies or insane ramblings, he seems to know a thing or two about who I am. More than I do even. And it’s becoming more and more important that I figure that out. What was once a simple acceptance of the void grew suddenly and steadily into a curiosity and now a hunger.

I look up at Sarco and nod. “Okay,” I say through clenched teeth. “Do it. But don’t think I trust or believe anything you tell me.”

Surprisingly, he doesn’t laugh again. Instead he furrows his brow in concentration and places his long fingers on my chest. And then I black out.

*   *   *

I wake up light-headed. No. It’s not just my head. My whole body. I’m floating. I’m barely there. I scuttle
backward, dizzy with these new strange physics. A wave of nausea rises, but I get a handle on it before anything drastic happens. Sarco stands in a far corner of the room, looking smug. And I . . . No, my body is lying on the couch, still impaled, looking grayer than usual. A dark red splotch has formed on my shirt where the blade sticks out. At first I think I’m dead, that the bastard hoodwinked me somehow, but then my de-almafied body takes a shallow breath. I live, however tentative that lifeline may be.

“You see,” Sarco’s voice says from the absolute wrong part of the room. I whirl around and find myself face-to-face with a devastating void. Something like an empty television screen—just nothingness. Its shape is tall and gangly like Sarco but somehow . . . different. A twisted face glowers out at me—it’s too blurry to identify, but I can see it’s frowning something fierce. I realize the body in the corner is an empty husk, a mannequin. The guy knows what he’s doing if he can leave his physical body behind in a standing position, on a whim apparently. From what I’ve heard, that’s usually the kind of slick move that takes hours of preparation.

I have now established beyond a doubt that Sarco does not fuck around.

*   *   *

The rain doesn’t land on my not-flesh. It sears right through it and leaves a tingling trail of sensation in its wake. I’m still marveling at the lightness, the dizzying freedom of being only spirit. Sarco is all business now that he’s secured my go-ahead. Once I’d gotten my shit together enough to move around, he shot me a quick, “Come with me,” and slid out the door into the rainy midnight streets without looking back.

We’re moving fast, blazing through the darkness like plastic bags blown by the wind. I get the hang of it pretty quickly: thought controls movement. You want to go somewhere, you point yourself in that direction and propel forward on the engine of your own desire to arrive. Our long, translucent legs lunge with graceful steps just above the pavement. We brush past some night walkers, a few crackheads, and a security guard on his cigarette break, and they each shudder and look around as we slither by.

This is what Riley deals with. This is death.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we round a corner past a deserted lot.

“You’ll see.”

Asshole.

We head steadily south. Bed-Stuy passes in a blur of brownstones, corner stores, and Chinese joints; everything else is shuttered up at this hour. Even the Junklot is deserted: no old men malign one another over the domino table; the monstrous yard dogs are huddled away in their little tin shelters. Sarco slips across Atlantic Avenue without pausing, and I don’t want to show fear or hesitation, so I do the same. A tractor-trailer plows right through me, all climaxing shushes of rainwater and grinding engines; I cringe even though I know better, open my spirit heart to accept whatever traumatic death awaits, but of course nothing happens. The truck is not one of those objects that can reach out of the physical world and into the spirit one, and as long as I’m not putting out that special effort to manifest myself onto some real-life object, it’s like we never touched.

I saunter-float along behind Sarco, marveling at the many mysteries this phantom sorcerer holds. My life, my death: I do want to know. I can’t pretend I don’t. I want to
know everything. About my life, my death, the Council, what would drive a man to throw so many lives to the wind. I won’t like him, or the answers I’ll get, probably, but I have to know. I’m done with not knowing. Then I’ll realize it’s all bullshit and walk away content. And then I’ll fuck his operation up. But first I have to know.

I shudder as we pass Mama Esther’s. The block is sleeping, oblivious to the terrible ticking clock that has been born in their midst. Oblivious to the fury of the ngks. I wonder, briefly, where those young lovers from back when have gone to. I wonder if Mama Esther’s up there stewing in her confusion, or perhaps plotting some elaborate scheme to set things right. I’ve seen more of the real Mama Esther in this past week than I had in the whole time living at her place. And then it hits me: this area’s probably crawling with soulcatchers.

I make a hissing noise at Sarco to let him know, but he’s already ground to a halt and is waving at me to do the same. We hover just above the pavement for a minute, panting and taking in rain. Nothing moves on the block besides the windblown oaks. The streetlights show ugly orange splotches of the never-ending drizzle. And there’s the soulcatcher: a tall fellow, all cloaked and helmeted, hunched forward and strutting toward us.

“Back!”
Sarco hisses into my mind. I hurl my body behind a building and wait. The soulcatcher bristles with the knowledge that someone is lurking. I can feel his sudden focus from around the corner. And then it dawns on me that I’m hiding from one of my own soldiers. I know why and how I got here, but still, the thought is jarring. If he stumbles on us, there’ll be a horrible moment of recognition and then . . . Sarco will probably kill him.

We wait for a few minutes, breathing heavy breaths
into the night, and then the soulcatcher wanders off.
“
Come. Quickly.”
We dash across the street, long spirit legs carrying us through the rain, and then move fast down Franklin Ave. and hook a right on Eastern Parkway. And then I realize where we’re
going.