Serpent's Storm Page 8

  It’s amazing what your mind decides to settle on during times of high stress, I thought to myself as I tried to remain clinical about my friend’s situation—as if that were really possible.

  Another piece of Jarvis’s flesh detached, denuding his right shoulder of skin and muscle. Like a fool, I tried to catch the blubbery stuff in my hands before it could splat on the floor, but it was no use. The subcutaneous fat was as slick as baby oil, and the gelatinous skin and muscle slithered right through my fingers, splattering against the leather of the adjacent seat like tallow.

  Jarvis’s metamorphosis was moving at an accelerated rate and I deduced that his skeleton would be stripped clean of flesh within the hour. A school of piranhas couldn’t have done a more thorough job if they’d tried. Jarvis’s skin loss problem was gonna need a very quick fix—the word “superglue” kept flashing in my mind—or I was going to be left dealing with a silent skeleton instead of a helpful faun.

  What do I do? I thought, frantically racking my brain for some kind of an answer, but I didn’t have any experience with a situation like this.

  In the pilot’s seat beside me, Hyacinth spoke abruptly into her headset, gesturing at me wildly, but in my freaked-out state I couldn’t understand what she wanted.

  “What are you saying?!” I yelled over the cacophony of the helicopter blades, but Hyacinth only shook her head and gestured again, pointing down to the floor of the cockpit where my headset lay, twisted in its own cord. I swallowed hard then reached down and scooped up the offending thing, sliding it back over my head.

  “. . . can’t do anything for him right now,” Hyacinth said, the last half of her sentence crackling into my ears as I eased the headset in place. “Please stop freaking out and collect yourself. You’re behaving like a child.”

  I started to protest, but I knew she was right. I was acting like a little shit. I needed to calm down and put everything into perspective. Jarvis’s face may have fallen off, but that didn’t give me permission to lose my shit.

  “What’s happening to him?” I asked, aiming my words into the headset’s protruding mouthpiece, having a bit more control over my hysteria now. There was a moment of radio silence—and I assumed Hyacinth had decided not to answer me—but then she began to speak:

  “He was dead, Callie, and you roused him out of Death to do your bidding.”

  “He can’t be dead,” I said, my voice rising. “He’s immortal. You can’t kill an immortal with a blow to the head. Besides, he was healing, I saw it myself, and FYI, if I were going to ‘rouse’ someone out of Death, I think I would know about it!”

  “Yes, I would hope that that would be the case, but you’re very unskilled in the art of Death, so who knows what you’re capable of,” Hyacinth said, her disembodied words like thoughts being implanted into my brain. “And what you saw earlier was the beginning of the turning process. You should at least know from your own experiences that immortals don’t heal that quickly.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, I deserved the disparaging tone Hyacinth was using on me. I was a kindergartner when it came to the supernatural world. I knew next to nothing about the subject. I know being the Daughter of Death should’ve made me an expert on that kind of stuff, but I don’t think you can ever learn about something you’re not interested in. Like in school, you see kids who hate being there, and no matter what you do, you just can’t inspire them to retain the information they’re supposed to be learning. As far as I could tell, you had to want knowledge; you had to be really interested in a subject in order to absorb it.

  And the last thing I had ever been interested in as a kid—or as an adult—was Death and the supernatural world it encompassed. But because I had experienced the healing process of an immortal firsthand (I’d banged myself up pretty good here and there growing up), I did recognize it didn’t happen as rapidly as what I’d observed in Jarvis. If, like Hyacinth said, this turning thing was really happening to Jarvis, then it explained a lot.

  “Okay, say it’s true,” I said, “and Jarvis is turning. What does that actually mean?”

  Hyacinth sighed, which translated into a loud hiss in my headset.

  “I won’t know for certain this is what is truly transpiring until we arrive at Sea Verge—”

  “We’re going home?” I interrupted, excitement and relief flooding my body. “Thank God!”

  “Let me finish,” Hyacinth said in a sharp tone, deflating the good vibes I’d just conjured up. “As I said, I won’t know the veracity of this hypothesis until I can verify that your father is no longer among us.”

  “What!” I cried, the meaning of her words like a sharpened stake plunging into my soul. I may’ve been oblivious at times, but I wasn’t an idiot. I understood what she was driving at.

  “Callie, you can’t turn the dead unless you are Death.”

  She didn’t even bother to look at me as she let this callous statement hang in the air. Not even an iota of compassion from the woman. She continued to pilot the stupid helicopter like nothing had happened, the rigid set of her shoulders and unbroken line of her mouth giving only the barest hint that there was emotion bubbling somewhere inside her—a fact that was hardly encouraging.

  “I think you’re full of shit,” I said after a protracted silence. “I think it’s all bullshit, so there. My dad is immortal. No one can kill him . . .”

  The syllables streamed from my lips without thought. I sensed this nauseous rush of invective was an intuitive reaction to information I wasn’t ready to process yet, but I had no control over it. It was like if I could just keep talking, just keep my lips in perpetual motion, I could purge the growing terror Hyacinth had stoked inside my gut. For her part, my former boss remained silent—although I did notice that her grip on the steering shaft was so intense the skin of her hands was bloodless.

  All around us, the sky began to darken, going from pale blue to foreboding gray in an instant. The change in air pressure screamed that the threat of rain was fast approaching, and as if to prove its point, the helicopter was snared in a massive downdraft. Caught by the unexpected violence of the encroaching storm, we lurched to the left, my head slamming into the side of the door. Mind-numbing pain engulfed every synapse of my body as the metal hinge on the side of the door sliced into the thin skin of my scalp. I felt something warm and viscous on my face, shrouding my vision in a blurry haze. I tried to wipe the stuff away with my hands and clear my vision, but I couldn’t seem to get my fingers to do what I wanted them to do. It took me a few moments to comprehend that it was blood pouring from the gash in my scalp and not some unknown liquid cascading into my face. I wanted to scream, to rage against the stupidity of what was happening to me, but my throat was like a vise, allowing no sound to escape. All I could manage was a strangled gurgle—which did nothing to relieve the pressure enveloping my brain and sending me into a miasmic veil of nausea.

  I closed my eyes, fighting back the urge to puke. I didn’t think my getting sick would help the situation very much. Opening my eyes again was like trying to pry open two rusted window frames. All I wanted to do was to sink into a black abyss and then wake up back in my bed in Battery Park City, but the rocking of the helicopter wasn’t helping my wish one bit. It only seemed to stoke my nausea, dragging me back into a more alert state.

  “Crap,” I moaned, reaching up with my right hand to feel around in my scalp for the bloodied gash.

  I winced as my fingers palpated the tender skin around the cut, biting my lip against the pain. When my speculative probing got too intense, I yanked my hand away and wiped my blood-coated fingers on the underside of my seat. The wound didn’t seem very deep, and if I remembered correctly, the scalp tended to be a heavy bleeder even when the wound wasn’t really that bad.

  More like a dog’s bark being worse than its bite, I thought miserably.

  While I was musing about scalp wounds and barking dogs, Hyacinth was working hard to hold the steering apparatus steady, keeping the helicopter on
an eastwardly course. As my eyes refocused on my surroundings, I realized the rocking sensation I was feeling stemmed from the terrible lightning storm our tiny helicopter was entering. I watched, surprised at how quickly the storm was enveloping us.

  Rolling black rain clouds had eaten up all of the sky, making it hard to see farther than a few feet into the distance. A flash of white-hot lightning split the horizon, producing enough light, at least for a few seconds, to verify that the darkness around us was absolute.

  “What’s going on?” I asked uncertainly. The intensity of the storm was making my arm hair stand on end.

  “What did you say?” Hyacinth asked, not daring to breach her concentration by peeling her eyes from the windscreen. It was taking everything she had just to pilot the helicopter away from the encroaching rainstorm.

  “What’s. Going. On?” I said again, slowing down my speech and enunciating as best I could.

  “I don’t know where this storm came from, but it’s not a good thing,” Hyacinth replied, flicking a few switches on the control panel as she spoke. “Makes it really hard to keep the helicopter steady.”

  There was another bump and the helicopter went into free-fall. My stomach migrated into my throat and I screamed—just as the helicopter righted itself again.

  “Where are we going?” I asked after my stomach had slid back down my throat.

  “It’s not much further now,” Hyacinth said as she banked a sharp left, sending us careening into pitch-black airspace.

  I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of Hyacinth about where we were going, so I turned my attention back to Jarvis. The poor little guy looked the worse for wear, his jawbone hanging from the rest of his skull by a thin filament of flesh. I wanted to do something to help him, but I didn’t think trying to get into the backseat while we were in the middle of an aggressive rainstorm was the smartest course of action. It wasn’t like I was gonna be able to hold his hand or anything.

  “I’m sorry, Jarvis,” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me over the drone of the helicopter and the rain splattering against the windscreen.

  I sat back in my seat, feeling lost and terribly alone. Usually in these situations I had Jarvis’s steel trap of a mind to lean on, but now, left to my own devices, I didn’t have a clue as to what was happening around me—or why it was happening. Was what Hyacinth said true? Was there something wrong with my dad, and had the power of Death somehow transferred to me? I thought back to when I’d first entered the bathroom and found Jarvis. I remembered barging into the room, seething with anger, only to find my friend lying on the ground in a half-inch of water. I knew he was immortal, so I hadn’t been concerned about checking to see if he was breathing or if he had a pulse. No, I’d just squatted down beside him and made sure he was all right . . . but had he really been all right? I racked my brains, forcing myself to remember any bits of minutiae I might’ve missed.

  And then it hit me. Something I’d totally forgotten in the heat of the moment: There’d been a piece of blue-gray metal protruding from Jarvis’s head when I’d first gotten there. I hadn’t paid it any attention then, having no idea the stuff might be important, and had just brushed it away with my hand so I could get a better look at the gash on my friend’s head—but I did remember that it was at this very moment that Jarvis had returned to consciousness.

  Only, he hadn’t returned to consciousness, I realized with horror. No, I had roused Jarvis from a sleep much deeper than anything this reality had to offer: I had woken my friend out of Death.

  Whatever that blue-gray metal was, it was Jarvis’s weakness—like Superman, all immortals had one that could kill them. That was the only thing that made any sense. The Ender of Death hadn’t come to my office just to harass me—he’d come to assassinate Jarvis, and like a fool, I’d let it happen. But if that were the case, then if, like Hyacinth surmised, I was now Death, why hadn’t the Ender of Death killed me, too?

  None of it made any sense.

  But I did know that if I’d been smarter, I would’ve protected my friend instead of leaving him alone in the bathroom. I’d let myself get distracted by bodies in the cupboard and illusions of police brutality, condemning Jarvis—who now sat in a pool of goopy skin and muscle because of me—to a new life as a sentient skeleton.

  “We’re here,” Hyacinth said into the headset, interrupting my thoughts, and I felt the helicopter begin its initial descent.

  The storm had moved on, so now only the fingers of gray thunderclouds were visible above us. Hyacinth had done a pretty incredible job of piloting us through the thick of it, and I couldn’t help but feel kind of indebted to her for her quick thinking. If she hadn’t hustled us out of the House and Yard offices when she did, Jarvis and I would’ve been in a wormhole going God knows where when his skin had started to melt, and I just didn’t think I would’ve been able to deal. I had no idea where we were or what plans my former boss had for getting us home, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt because of all of the above.

  I gazed down at the landscape taking shape below us and was surprised to find we were in the middle of a large marsh. I could see nothing around us but empty land stretching out as far as the eye could see. It was totally desolate out here, with no signs of human habitation, and I couldn’t quite imagine what’d made Hyacinth choose this isolated place as her landing strip.

  As we touched down, the land gave way beneath us and I could feel the helicopter’s legs sink deep into silt and mud. Hyacinth pressed a series of buttons on the flight control panel, and the whirring blades above us slowed their pace and then came to a gentle stop. The helicopter lurched forward as the mud it was now shackled to settled, sucking the machine farther into the morass.

  “Where are we?” I asked as I pulled my headset off and let it fall to the floor of the cockpit, glad to be rid of it. It’d put unnecessary pressure on my scalp, so that the gash on my head hadn’t been able to scab over yet.

  “A safe place.”

  That was all I could get Hyacinth to tell me as she opened her door, letting a torrent of fresh air into the stuffy compartment that made me shiver. I could smell the tang of the sea in the air, the rotting saltiness of seaweed and ocean water putrefying just out of sight. I knew we had to be near water for the smell to be so pungent, but since Manhattan was an island, this bit of information wasn’t very helpful in gauging our position.

  I stayed in my seat while Hyacinth slipped out of the helicopter, landing with a squelch—that made me cringe for her shoes—in the marshy muck that had served as our landing strip. I watched as she took a cell phone from her cleavage and dialed a number from memory. While she waited for whomever she was calling to pick up the other end of the line, I made a mental calculation of my “personal space” situation.

  I could feel the matted blood in my hair without having to touch it, and I was pretty sure I looked like the remains of a fatted calf after a trip to the slaughterhouse. I was glad I didn’t have a mirror. I didn’t want to see the monstrosity I’d become: the blood all over my face, my clothes all torn and bloodied, my scarf gone. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and pretend none of this was happening. And if I couldn’t have that—which, at this point, was looking highly unlikely—then I wanted a nice, long, hot shower to wash away the dreck, so I could be returned to a state of quasihuman normalcy.

  Oh, and I wanted Jarvis not to be dead anymore.

  “Miss Calliope?”

  I whirled around in my seat, almost giving myself whiplash in the process.

  “Jarvis?” I cried, not daring to believe what I was hearing until I saw it firsthand. Jarvis—the Jarvis I knew and loved, flesh and all—was sitting in the backseat. I looked down at the floor, expecting to see a pile of discarded skin and muscle, but there was nothing, just the faun’s adorable little hooves.

  “Are you alive again?” I asked, feeling tears I hadn’t even known were there pricking at the backs of my eyeballs.

 
But Jarvis only shook his head.

  “I don’t want to be your shade,” Jarvis said, his big dark eyes full of sadness. “I know you didn’t intend to do this to me—”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, my voice stretched thin as I tried not to cry. “I don’t want you to be my shade.”

  Jarvis nodded. He knew I would never hurt him on purpose. He was my friend—probably the only one I had in the whole world besides my hellhound pup, Runt, and my sister Clio—and I would undo whatever terrible thing I’d done to turn him, even if it killed me.

  “You must let me go, Miss Calliope,” Jarvis said, his voice calm.

  “But I don’t want you to go,” I begged, understanding the finality of what the faun wanted. “I need you, Jarvi. I can’t do this without you. You’re my rock.”

  Jarvis tried to give me a reassuring smile, but it was a grotesque approximation of what a smile like that should be, more of a grimace really—and it broke my heart. I clutched the seatback, my fingers digging into the buttery leather as if it were a lifeline.

  “I’ll always be with you, Calliope,” Jarvis said softly. “You’re my friend. And even in Death no one can change that.”

  I would never make Jarvis my shade. I would never steal his body so his soul would be forced to do my bidding. It was a horrible existence—lonely and utterly cruel—and I would never allow it to be Jarvis’s fate.

  Even if it meant I lost my friend forever.

  “What do I have to do?” I said, breathing hard as I wiped my nose on the back of my bloodied hand. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “So simple . . .” Jarvis began, but faltered as another grimace of pain distorted his features and the illusion of his former self—something he’d been magically projecting for my benefit, I realized belatedly—flickered long enough for me to see the skeletal frame beneath it. I understood that somehow, using whatever vestiges of magic were left in his body, my friend was trying to make me remember him as he had been in life, not as what he had become in Death.