Chapter Six Revenant
Chapter Six
Revenant
Michal arches forward at the impact—his eyes widening, his skin hissing—and I move without hesitation, without thinking , throwing myself at the shadowy creature and tackling it into the street. We land hard, rolling once, twice, before it snarls and pins me against the cobblestones with unusual strength. With unnatural strength.
Oh God.
My body thrashes helplessly against its grip, and I choke and gasp as the overwhelming stench of decay washes over me. When lightning flashes overhead, however, true fear grips my heart—because I recognize this creature. I recognize its tattered choral robes and the twin crosses embroidered on its chest. Though no flesh remains except half of its putrefied face, I recognize the steely eye still decomposing there too. It—along with the rest of this body—once caught Reid and me together in the confessional at Saint-Cécile. He humiliated me there. He reprimanded Reid, his would-be son and favorite of all the huntsmen.
Now he gnashes his teeth, wild with hunger, and tries to sink them into my cheek.
The Archbishop.
With a shriek, I thrust my knees upward to force him away, but they overextend, meeting only the hard bone of his spine. And his skeletal fingers—three silver rings still gleam upon them as they scrabble at my throat, my jaw, my shoulders, blistering my skin and shredding my clothing. He’s too strong. Though I wrench my hands free of his robes, I cannot push him away, cannot move him at all, yet I still seize his skull, determined to hold him off somehow. He will not eat me . He will not—but his teeth graze my collar anyway, tearing into my flesh as if it’s paper.
I clamp my mouth shut, refusing to scream again. Refusing to make any sound at all that might goad my friends into—
Too late.
Someone wrenches the revenant away from me, and my fingers clutch at empty air as the creature soars backward, landing several feet away with the sickening crunch of bones. Eyes shining with cold fury, Michal kneels and lifts me to my feet. “Are you all right?” he asks, and I nod mutely, staring at his back as he turns to face the revenant. Blood still gleams on the black leather of his surcoat. Wet blood. Hot blood. My throat constricts at the scent of it, and my entire body shudders, tightens, as my mouth begins to water.
Fresh blood.
Vaguely, I realize the Archbishop’s silver rings have prevented Michal’s ability to heal. He’s... hurt. That doesn’t stop my hand from reaching to touch him, however. It doesn’t stop my fingers from trembling with need. Indeed, the rest of the world—the street, the houses, even the snarling revenant—seem to fall away at the sight of Michal’s blood. Inexplicably and startlingly possessive, I cannot stop myself from having it, from tasting it, from fantasizing about how it would feel on my tongue; even Lou’s and Coco’s magic pales in comparison to the rich, languorous scent that is Michal. As a human, I couldn’t smell him properly. I thought he had no scent at all, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Eyes wide, I now watch in a surreal sense of slow motion as my fingertips brush his back.
As they come away scarlet.
His head jerks toward me at the slight touch, and the instant our eyes meet, something twists low in my belly. His gaze darkens in response. His mouth parts.
The revenant lunges.
“Look out!” At Lou’s scream, the moment shatters in a blur of limbs as Michal whirls, catching the Archbishop by the spinal column and snapping it in two. Footsteps thunder behind us as the others race into the street. The hair on Reid’s forearms lifts as he stares down at his forefather’s broken body, horror-stricken, while Lou blinks rapidly, her breathing louder than usual. Panicked. Of course.
Reid might’ve called the Archbishop his father, but to Lou, the creature before us actually was her father—and her abuser. To my knowledge, she didn’t shed any tears when Reid killed him last year. She regards him now with a pained look, like she’s struggling not to be sick.
“A revenant,” Odessa says simply.
Michal glares first at Lou, then at Reid. “By your expressions, I assume you know him.”
“Yes.” Lou nods—the smallest dip of her chin—before touching Reid’s arm. He seems unable to speak. “We, er—killed him last Modraniht. It’s entirely possible that he came here seeking vengeance.”
“Vengeance,” Michal repeats flatly. Shaking his head in exasperation, he drops the two halves of the Archbishop’s body to the ground. “I suppose we should be grateful for the confirmation. We now know Célie’s blood has reached the shores of Belterra—”
He stops short, however, as the bones at our feet begin to twitch. Frowning, he nudges the Archbishop’s hand, and in the next second, it seizes his boot, swiftly digging its fingers through the leather and impaling his foot.
Cursing viciously, he tries to kick it away, but it holds tighter still, levering itself upright and snapping at Michal’s thigh. Though Reid and I both spring forward, it isn’t necessary—Michal parts the revenant’s skull from its neck, hurling its head aside, before crushing its fingers into dust. The rest of its body keeps coming, however, except now—somehow—it seems to have recognized Lou and Reid.
It snarls and gurgles unintelligibly because it does not have a tongue.
“Get behind me.” Voice sharp, I pull Reid backward as the upper half of the Archbishop’s body drags itself toward Lou. She lifts her hands dubiously, stumbling backward, but Michal follows, trapping the revenant under his foot. Though it claws at his pant leg, shredding skin, Michal doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t let it go. “How do we kill it?” I ask desperately.
He looks to Coco. “Well?”
Her voice is an indignant whisper. “Why are you looking at me? I told you my aunt refused to tell me anything.”
When he arches a brow at Lou next, she returns to herself at once. “Oh, don’t even think about it. I’ve never killed an undead— thing before. Shouldn’t that be your expertise?”
Michal’s lip curls. “Are you not reputed to be the most powerful witch of the age?”
Lou’s turquoise eyes flash with the lightning behind her. “And are you not reputed to be the most powerful vampire of all time? An immortal king ?” The rain has dwindled to a fine mist now. It settles in her hair, on her skin, until she sparkles with each lightning strike—small and pale and alone in the street, but still fierce. Always fierce. Her hands remain raised as thunder continues to rumble around us. “How have you been dealing with these revenants on Requiem? We can do the same here.”
Unexpected silence descends as Michal says nothing, and the two glare at each other.
To her credit, Lou doesn’t cower beneath his cold perusal, waiting until he abruptly returns his attention to the revenant before allowing herself to exhale.
“We’ve been capturing them.” Michal presses his heel harder into the revenant’s spine, cracking several more vertebrae. “Our witches have been incapacitating them until we find a permanent solution.”
“Gasp.” Lou’s eyes widen in a scornful parody of surprise. “ Shock. The almighty king of the vampires has sullied his hands with witches? I would’ve thought our magic beneath you.”
“You would’ve thought correctly.”
With a scowl, Lou drops her hands, looping one elbow through Reid’s and the other through mine. She drags us back toward the front door. “Fine. Good. Carry on without us, then—go home to Requiem—as you clearly know what you’re doing. We’ll figure things out on our end without your help.” Barely discernible over the thunder, she whispers to me, “This is still what you want, right? To stay here?” Her wide turquoise gaze searches mine, and I stare back, helpless, before glancing over my shoulder at Michal.
He looks positively lethal, still bleeding in the rain, his eyes burning as he pins the snarling, scrabbling revenant underfoot. “Is it, Célie?” he asks, equally quiet. “Is this what you want?”
His previous words echo between us, as dark and ominous as the storm clouds overhead.
I’m not the one who left, Célie.
Lifting my chin, I nod. “Please leave, Michal.”
Cold disbelief breaks across his expression at my words, replaced almost instantly with colder amusement. He glances from Lou to Reid to Coco and Beau and Odessa, to the lower half of the revenant’s body, which has risen to its feet, scuttled into a nearby tree, and fallen over. Then his eyes find mine. Something shifts deep within them as he stares at me. Is it pity? Remorse?
Disgust?
Before I can name it, he lifts his foot from the revenant’s spine and walks away.
My breath catches as he goes, and part of me—the worst part, the smallest part, the most wretched part of all—hopes he’ll look back. He doesn’t, however. No. Tucking his bloody hands in his pockets, he gives me what I want, and he leaves.
The revenant snarls and dives toward us.
“Right.” Coco’s foot instantly replaces Michal’s, and she unsheathes a thin dagger from up her sleeve before handing it to Beau. He gazes down at the revenant with palpable disgust. “It’ll need to be a powerful cage—he must’ve clawed his way out of his casket to find us. Solid wood.”
“Odessa.” I swallow hard, forcing myself to look away as Michal disappears around the bend. “Did Requiem, Ltd., send any stone caskets in their last shipment to Cesarine?”
“Hmm... perhaps.” Odessa meanders forward as well, circling the revenant as it continues to writhe. She casts a swift, probing glance in my direction before turning to Lou. “Though I hardly think such measures will be necessary. Your great-grandmother once trapped me in a hatbox.”
A hatbox.
My eyes fall to her skirts.
“You knew Mathilde?” Lou asks.
“Of course I know Mathilde. I just said she trapped me in a hatbox, didn’t I?” Odessa asks. “She refused to let me out until I promised never to speak to her again—I used to visit on the weekends for access to her library. She hoarded an extensive horticulture collection in that odd little cottage of hers. She always did remind me a bit of a dragon,” she adds thoughtfully. “We got on quite well until she forced me into that box.”
Beau blinks at her, momentarily distracted. “How did you fit inside a hatbox?”
“How does a witch do anything? Magic.”
The bizarre urge to laugh—or perhaps weep—strikes me as Lou lifts her hands warily. Remembering the peonies, I tense in anticipation, but when she flicks her fingers, both halves of the revenant soar into the air as intended. They dangle overhead like a macabre circus performance. I do not laugh, however. Tears sting my eyes instead as the creature snarls and swipes at the lot of us, gnashing its teeth.
“Mathilde was an extraordinarily gifted witch,” Lou says in evident relief. Now that Michal has gone, she has allowed herself to deflate slightly. To shrink. She looks exhausted. “Even my mother thought so—and Morgane loathed Mathilde. The story goes that Mathilde tried to drown her in the toilet when she was born.”
“She sounds like a charming woman,” Coco says. “Now—where is this hatbox, Odessa? Did you leave it on Requiem?”
“Don’t be daft. I never travel anywhere without it.” From her skirt, she withdraws the same velvet box I saw earlier, hardly the size of her palm. I eye it dubiously now. After watching her pull a philosophical treatise from the little box—and shove an entire parasol into it—I have little doubt a powerful witch spelled it. As if reading my thoughts, Odessa taps it with her finger, and the box seems to fold outward, expanding to twice its size, thrice, and so on until she’s forced to hold the fuchsia monstrosity with both hands. Mistaking our stunned silence for admiration, Odessa hums appreciatively and brushes the gold tasseling. “Yes, it’s quite marvelous, isn’t it? You should’ve seen the hat .”
“ That ,” Beau says, “is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, pot, meet kettle.” Rolling her eyes, she unclasps the lid, and I inch closer, curious despite myself. We might have more pressing matters with which to deal—and my teeth still throb, my chest still aches—but this magic reminds me of a simpler time, a simpler life. Enchantments like this once seemed so special, so surreal. If I’d peered into a bottomless hatbox even a month ago, I would’ve felt weightless, giddy at the prospect of touching something so obviously unusual.
Now, however—as I lift a too-pale hand to touch the pea-green piping—a leaden sensation fills me.
If Odessa notices, she doesn’t say, instead reaching deep into the bag and extracting several gowns before thrusting them at me. She doesn’t stop there, however; her parasol follows the gowns, as does a set of glass beakers, a mahogany jewelry box filled with diamonds, a telescope, a chessboard, three pots of rouge, four silk handkerchiefs, a pair of bent spectacles, rusted shackles, a set of bloodstained knives, a broken pocket watch, and—incredibly—five smashed figs. “For my peacock,” she says absently, balancing the last atop the towering pile in Beau’s arms.
Without warning, she upends the hatbox completely, dumping the rest of its contents at our feet.
An avalanche of books crashes to the cobblestones, and Lou and Beau both yelp, leaping aside to avoid breaking their toes. Odessa straightens with a magnificent smile before bringing the box directly beneath the revenant’s suspended body. “Right, then. Whenever you’re ready, Louise.”
With a bemused expression, Lou tosses the telescope and handkerchiefs to the flower bed beside her.
To Odessa’s indignation, the rest of us follow suit.
“Are you sure that box can hold him?” Concern twists Beau’s features as the revenant strains for the nearest tree branch, as its skeletal fingers catch in the dead leaves to pull itself closer.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Lou blanches as the revenant reaches for the branch in earnest now, as if it can—as if it can hear us talking, planning to trap it. My brows contract, and together, Beau and I each take a step backward as it snarls at Lou and Reid. Though it makes sense the creature would understand us—I am also dead, after all, and have retained cognitive function—its baleful eye seems to roll with madness.
No. That isn’t quite it.
Against my better instincts, I look closer, peering up at the rotted, distended face, and realize the eye doesn’t roll with madness at all.
It rolls with pain.
“We need to help it.” The words escape before I realize they’ve even formed, and everyone— everyone —turns to look at me like I’ve grown horns. And perhaps I have. Despair wells like a fount inside me at the sight of their bright, incredulous faces, at the garbled sounds of the revenant above. Because it— he —is trying to form words, and that shouldn’t matter, not as he tries to kill us, but it does . It does matter, somehow, and evil as the Archbishop might’ve been in life, he did not choose to become this—this mindless beast .
I must’ve said the last aloud because Beau bends to meet my gaze, grasping my shoulders to make sure I hear every word. “He already was a vicious beast, Célie. Do you understand me? The Archbishop was a cruel, sadistic man, and you are not like him. You never have been, and you never could be.”
“I know that.”
Feeling sicker still, I break his hold and step backward, unable to look at anyone. Unable to bear the confusion on their features. Of course they’re confused—I hardly understand it myself. The Archbishop tormented each of them. He hunted witches to every corner of the kingdom, determined to eradicate them, to mutilate their bodies on the stake. I cannot ever defend what he did. I do not want to defend him, just to—to— I fist my hands in my skirt. I don’t know . Everything has spun so wildly out of control, and I’ve never felt so helpless to stop it.
Turning beseechingly to Lou, I say, “Please, we can’t just leave him in a box to rot. We have to—to do something about this before it gets worse.” I gesture wildly to the pitiful creature overhead. “There are others rising too, innocent people who aren’t like the Archbishop, and it’s my fault—”
“It isn’t your fault,” Lou says at once, but I speak over her, shaking my head vehemently.
“It was my blood. My choice to walk into Frederic’s trap without waking you and Coco, without forming any sort of plan at all except...” Michal.
I cannot bring myself to say his name aloud, to admit how foolishly I acted. My only plan had been Michal—the two of us together, as if that meant something—and in the end, we both suffered for it.
Everyone did.
“No.” Coco frowns and steps to my other side. “Frederic used magic from my aunt’s grimoire to conceal himself, Célie. Powerful magic. Michal stood a better chance than anyone of detecting it, so don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have done anything to stop him.”
The assurance rings false, and we all know it. I could’ve done more. I could’ve done anything , but I cannot convince them otherwise. Not now. The words that spilled so freely before have dried up, and I choke on them, unable to articulate the gnawing fear in my chest. Unsure if I even can acknowledge it. Because the Archbishop, my sister, me —this cannot be the end for us. This cannot be eternity.
It cannot be my fault.
“We’ll lay him to rest, Célie.” Reid approaches cautiously, his voice low and earnest. He does not touch me, however, and relief burns behind my eyes at the small mercy. “We’ll lay all of them to rest as soon as we know how, but until then... we can’t let them hurt anyone.”
The Archbishop snarls as if to punctuate the words, and slowly, I nod.
I’ve been such a fool... so wholly absorbed in my own self-pity that I failed to notice everything crumbling around me. Lou and her magic. Filippa. Grave robbers. Revenants.
They are all connected, somehow. We are all connected.
“Very well.” Odessa adjusts the hatbox, and in the next second, Lou flicks her wrist, sending the Archbishop plummeting awkwardly into its dark depths. Odessa slams the lid shut on its final shriek. She flips the clasp. Instantly, the box begins to fold inward once more, growing smaller and smaller until she tucks it back into the folds of her skirt.
Without the Archbishop’s snarls, the night seems rather quiet.
Rather empty.
“Come on.” With an anxious glance over her shoulder, Coco slips her arm through mine, leading me toward the house. “We shouldn’t linger in the street.”