Chapter Twenty-Four Sylas
Resurrections are divided in two categories: simple and complex.
Simple resurrections are a two-step process, requiring the materialized ghost and the body of the dead. Note: Bodies will come back as they are at the time of resurrection.
Complex resurrections require human sacrifice.
twenty-four | sylas
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1939
Mara cuts me faster than Railesza can heal me. Her hideous figure looks like a cross between a ghoul and a skeleton, with the strength of two elks. Haal, she reeks of death and unwashed clothes.
Now I understand why DOTS forbids this magic.
I understand why the founders trapped Grimm in his relic, dooming his ghost to an eternity in limbo—this kind of power in the wrong hands would be the undoing of centuries of peace among Houses.
That Faro’s Cuff has been missing needs to be at the forefront of DOTS’s investigations.
The cuff was already powerful, and now it could be so much worse.
Raiku bites Mara for the twelfth time in vain. Fantastic. Aspier venom is useless on puppets. Her knifelike claws swipe, and I jerk away at just the right time to not lose an eye. It catches on my neck instead, peeling the skin. I throw a punch straight to her face, and she staggers backward.
“Why do you not die, weaver of serpents?” Mara hisses in an inhuman voice.
“Well,” I scoff, “you hit like a toddler.”
For that, she smacks me across the face so hard that I land on my side. I’m still reeling from the throw when the door opens. No. No. No. Viola shouldn’t be back here. I told her to run.
But it’s not her at all.
Victor walks through the door, spinning the spare relic from our safe. He is an even bigger idiot. I told him to hide for a reason—Railesza won’t be able to heal him if Mara attacks. He is an Arkani, and Aspieri cannot heal different classes unless bonded to them.
“Remember me?” he taunts Mara.
Mara spins around. She croaks, “You’re dead. I killed you myself.”
“And what a piss-poor job it was,” Victor drawls.
Mara forgets about me, zeroing in on him instead. He sidesteps her with ease. In a second, he’s in front of her, his right hand waving across her face. In his left, the silver laurel relic glows. Mara stops and stares at him for a second.
He smirks, a quiet arrogance exuding from him.
I gasp when I realize what he’s doing. His illusion magic is reaching through the puppet to confuse the puppeteer.
Using illusions on a puppeteer is something I’ve only seen Firstline Arkani do, and not for long.
Sure, he’s a Grand Magus, but this particular magic requires a Mortemagi bond…
because I know Victor’s not a crossmage.
Victor’s fingers twitch, and Mara’s shoulders drop. “They’re all dead. They don’t have the relics we seek.” It’s not Mara speaking; it’s the puppeteer speaking to someone else. Her words slap me with shock. Haal, there’s more than one puppeteer, and they are looking for more relics.
Victor is good. No, he’s excellent at his Arkani magic. He’s managed to trick the puppeteer into speaking their thoughts in a puppet. In a single flick, he’s brought answers we haven’t found in a week.
“I must find the girl. I need the cuff.” Mara drones in a slightly different accent this time, quieter, calmer.
She tries to lift her arm and curses when she can’t.
She’s fighting against Victor’s magic and losing.
After a few seconds, her limbs go still, her head dropping to her chest. Now is our time to leave.
“Beau?” I ask Victor as we rush through the back door onto the veranda. A low creak draws my attention to our left, but it’s only the half-open metal gate of the cemetery swaying with the breeze.
“Beau’s fine.” He hesitates a moment too long. Why isn’t he saying anything about Viola?
“Vi-Viola?” My head whips around, cursing the clouds shrouding the moon. I can’t see them anywhere. My legs go still, my mind reaching for my worst nightmare: Viola dead.
Inside me, something breaks, every crack anchors deeper than the last.
“I need help,” Beau yells from a few feet away, his voice laced with anguish.
My legs propel me forward, and my brother is standing by a willow tree, Viola leaning against him, a hand on her abdomen.
She’s not dead. I breathe out, my steps slowing down.
Not dead at all. She must have gotten injured when Mara threw her around in Dearly Departed.
Railesza hisses at me, giving me a disapproving stare before slithering off my arm toward Viola, sinking her fangs into her ankle the moment she reaches her.
“Sylas,” Victor yells. “Relic’s out of magic.”
I turn to see Mara drag her feet out of the back door of Dearly Departed. Pieces of rotten flesh hang from her legs, and her arms are infested with black maggots crawling in and out of her ivory bones. From the veranda, Victor watches her in horror as she trudges past him, paying him no mind.
“The puppeteer controlling her is running out of magic.” He nods at the decomposing body. As the words leave his mouth, Mara straightens, her eyes locked on me, but she doesn’t move, and neither do we. Now that we’re outside, my senses pick up on every sway of leaves. Poachers could be anywhere.
Raiku awakens, slithering up my finger, watching, waiting.
Muttering something under his breath, Victor draws up his sleeves. His borrowed relic hovers over the veins of his forearm.
“Stop,” I yell. If the puppeteer is running out of magic, I can control Mara. Victor doesn’t need to use the blood arts to create another diversion. At least, not yet.
“Beau,” I say without looking at him. “Keep Railesza with you. I don’t want you to become a deserted Aspieri.”
“But…” he protests. Silver is gone, and he knows Aspieri cannot be without a relic for long, else they’ll break covenant with Haal, the God of War, and he’ll desert them.
“Heal Viola,” I speak up, glancing at them over my shoulder. My brother’s eyebrows shoot up, but he nods without saying a word. And I realize that this is the first time I haven’t wished the bond away.
I turn my attention to Mara’s frozen figure. This feels like a trap, like the puppeteer’s waiting for us to let our guard down before they attack again.
“Can you fight, Victor?” I don’t wait for his answer and throw him a dagger. He catches it by the blade as he approaches.
“I prefer to keep my hands clean, but there are exceptions,” he says, stealing a glance at Beau. Victor Carver is an enigma, but right now, I have to trust him as we fight Mara.
Like I thought, it is a trap.
Mara lunges first. My knees buckle under her weight, but I don’t drop. I shove her away from me. Victor swipes at her, yelping as a chunk of rotting flesh splatters on his pants.
Mara is on the ground, but her eyes aren’t on us anymore.
They leer at Viola with unbridled thirst. I don’t have time to blink; she slides past me, diving straight for her.
Beau pushes Viola aside, and Mara’s claws cut across his shoulder.
I grip her elbow, pulling her back. She flails, her long, skeletal hands still reaching toward Viola.
I loop my arm around hers and jerk her away.
The upper half of Mara’s body twists, and she drives her claws into my ribs. Haal, have mercy. It hurts.
Out of the corner of my eye, Beau urges Railesza toward me, but she doesn’t move.
At least someone around here is following orders.
Mara kicks me in the abdomen, and my back clashes with the pavement before my head meets the ground.
She straddles me, tilting her head as if she’s trying to figure me out.
Up close, her face is drooping, with large veins coming out of her eye sockets.
Her eyeballs seem to be her only remaining human attribute, and they’re now a deeper shade of green.
“I can handle her. The puppeteers can’t be far,” I shout to Victor, and he immediately sets off through the cemetery, quietly stalking into the woods.
Mara swipes at my neck, and the metallic smell of blood fills the air. My vision blurs, but regardless of how Raiek feels about me, I know the Imortalis won’t let me die.
One after the other, three knives sink into Mara’s neck.
I look past her, and Beau readies a fourth.
She removes them one by one and throws them back toward my brother with a wicked grin that crawls down my spine.
I will my body to move, but it won’t so much as twitch.
Without Railesza to heal me, I’m as good as dead.
The corners of my vision fade to black, and my eyes roll back.
When I come back to my senses, a tall male figure—a second puppet— drags Victor from the cemetery toward me. Haal, is he dead? The darkness takes me away. What good am I if I can’t keep anyone alive? I don’t deserve the Imortalis when all I do is push people to their deaths.
Light seeps through my eyelids again. Across the yard, Mara’s long, sharp fingers pin Victor to a tree through his shoulder. He’s alive. With his relic, coated in blood—his blood—he distracts her every few seconds, but his magic doesn’t hold, and she punctuates every gap with a hit.
“Vi,” Beau pleads, his voice faint. “Victor’s going to die again. Aspieri cannot heal Arkani. Please cut the puppet’s threads.”
“I don’t see the threads.” Viola chokes. “I don’t see them—”
I pass out again.
This time when I wake, Viola’s legs are swinging, her hands trying to pry Mara’s death grip from her neck. Behind them, Beau helps Victor toward the street. At the slightest movement, my neck hurts.
Will I have to watch everyone die by the hands of Mortemagi as I lie here, useless?
“Do not speak of Olivia.” Viola’s yell pierces through the chaos.
When my eyes find her again, her right palm is open, her fingers ebbing and flowing, like she’s weaving invisible threads. Mara drops her abruptly, and Viola lands on her feet, scrambling away from the puppet.
“Something is tethering the threads,” she calls out. “They’re impossible to cut.”
A moment later, Beau careens toward me, and Railesza half wraps around my arm, biting into my veins, healing me just enough to get up.
I inhale, and my lungs fill with relief as I stagger to my feet, stumbling forward.
My harness is empty, and Raiku doesn’t respond when I call out to him.
I scan the area, but my killer aspier is nowhere to be seen.
A dagger flies past me, landing straight between Mara’s eyes. From the street, Victor falls to his knees, the other puppet lying still at his side. It looks deflated, empty. I only hope this means he’s somehow found the second puppeteer.
Like a parasite who refuses to die, Mara pulls the dagger out and takes a step forward, aiming it toward me. If I can’t fight, I can at least distract her with the little strength I have left. I close my eyes, bracing for the hit. It can’t kill me, I remind myself.
Nothing comes. Or maybe it did, and I somehow died so fast I have no recollection of the moment.
A whimper forces my eyes open.
Viola is in front of me.
Her shoulders sag, and I catch her midfall, a dagger below her rib cage, so close to where I stabbed her days ago.
This woman is out of her mind. Does she forget that I am immortal?
My limbs refuse to move. I am a statue of confusion, anger, and guilt.
She threw herself in front of me. She just tried to save me.
Mara spits, blood splattering in the air. She drags her limp leg forward. “Beau,” I call out, and my brother wraps his arm around Viola’s waist, holding her weight.
“Rai and I have her,” my brother says.
I don’t have time to reply when Mara darts toward me, her hands reaching straight for my neck.
My arms slide between us, and I twist her hands away, kneeing her hard in the stomach.
She recoils, the green of her eyes fading—the puppeteer is distancing themselves.
Mara stumbles back to her feet, but I don’t yield.
I charge at her, and she drags me with her to the ground.
This time, I have the upper hand. I throw punch after punch until my vision is hazy again, until I no longer know what is and what isn’t.
One moment, Beau is yelling, and the next, my body lies flat on the grass.
“Sylas,” a voice calls.
Lifting my head, I see the silhouette of a man in the forest. Is this the God of Death? The hooded figure peels away from the tall evergreen trees and glides toward me. Is it over, then? Surely I must be dead. But then, Raiku slithers from the person’s arm to mine.
Struggling to sit up, I take stock of the courtyard around Dearly Departed. Two Firstline Mortemagi are binding Mara and the other puppet by the street—they’re both still, and both in an advanced state of decomposition now that the puppeteers have gone.
I squint to have a better view of the hooded man.
My question is immediately answered the moment the figure steps in front of me. He doesn’t have to lower his hood; I would recognize the smell of burned sandalwood anywhere.
Overseer Paltro stands before me with the fury of a thousand gods.