Chapter Twenty-Seven Dust to Dust
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dust to Dust
After another moment, Michal tenses with the breeze, and I scent why almost immediately—
Decay.
It drifts toward us over the ferns like a harbinger, and I stiffen too. Because I recognize that stench; it smells slightly different here, laced with traces of lichen and earth and fur, but the putrefied base notes remain the same. Revenant. Sure enough, Michal pulls away from me with narrowed eyes. When he turns to search the clearing, I relace my bodice instinctively, my fingers blurring as I glance around him for anything unusual. Though the fronds ripple in the wind, I detect no other sign of movement. The overcast sky feels a bit brighter than before, perhaps—the forest around us remains unnaturally quiet—but other than that, nothing seems out of place.
My gaze catches on a slight disturbance to our left, where the undergrowth shifts again. My eyes narrow. It could be the wind, of course, but—
With a shriek, I tackle Michal aside the instant before the revenant bursts from the crystalline foliage, and it collides with the tree as we vanish beneath the fronds. Cold earth cushions our fall—snow flying in every direction—but Michal explodes to his feet before our bodies fully settle, thrusting mine behind his. He curses viciously at his first unimpeded sight of the beast before us.
And it is a beast, I realize, gaping at the misshapen creature as it shakes its head to clear the pain of collision. More than that, however, it’s a— “Loup garou,” I whisper in horror.
Michal nods tersely.
But this creature is unlike any loup garou I’ve ever seen. His maw—caught halfway through transformation, torn forever between man and wolf—curls over both jagged and blunt teeth, dripping fresh blood down his pelt. Though his torso remains humanoid and male in shape, his hind legs resemble that of a wolf; sharp claws jut from the paws where his feet should be, the tip of each elongated finger. Except—several of them have fallen out. Several of his teeth, too, and his flesh appears swollen in some places, sagging in others. I resist the urge to retch. He hasn’t started to liquefy, at least, which means he must be recently dead. No more than a few weeks.
Swallowing hard against the stench, I clutch Michal’s arm. “No sudden movements, Célie,” he murmurs, his voice unexpectedly calm.
I almost scoff at that. Almost. He needn’t warn me about the precariousness of this situation. Panic already lifts the hair at my nape. If not for Michal, the Archbishop would’ve eaten me in Cesarine, demonstrating a supernatural speed and strength to rival even vampires. And he started without a supernatural bone in his body. Not like this loup garou. For all we know, his abilities could surpass ours completely. If we flee now, we might not be able to outrun him, but even if we could, we cannot simply leave him here to terrorize the isle.
Ashes to ashes, Mathilde said. Dust to dust.
A heaviness settles over me as I gaze at his agonized body.
No one deserves such a fate.
The wind picks up again, catching our hair, my gown. Michal’s cloak. The revenant’s eyes—vicious and yellow—roll with torment as he straightens, turning toward us and sniffing the air as if catching a new scent. A bone-chilling growl issues from his chest. And in that moment, I realize the danger is greater than I feared—because the blood on his muzzle is fresh, yes, but it mingles with the slightly darker, crusted blood upon his chest, disguising the torn bits of flesh and teeth marks above it.
All at once, the cause of his death becomes painfully clear.
A vampire tore out his throat.
My fingers tighten on Michal’s elbow as the loup garou’s growls become louder, as he bares his teeth in unmistakable hatred. Though Michal’s lip curls in response, I make a split-second decision before he can escalate the situation. “We need to help him,” I say hastily, beseechingly, at Michal’s ear. “If we can just reason with him—if we can encourage him to see sense—there might be another way to deal with the revenants, one that doesn’t involve setting them on fire .”
Michal shifts wholly in front of me, his eyes never leaving the revenant. “Mathilde said they cannot be helped—”
The loup garou steps closer then, with a garbled and guttural, “ Dimi—tri ,” and my stomach plummets straight through the forest floor. If he knows Dimitri, this situation has just gone from bad to catastrophic, and his next ones only serve to underscore that point. “Where”—the revenant chokes, jerks, and I strain to understand him, leaning around Michal’s arm—“Dimitri?”
My vision sharpens on those brutal wounds at his throat while Coco’s explanation of a revenant drifts back to me: One who has died and risen again with the express purpose of terrorizing the living, particularly those the corpse in question once knew.
Oh God.
With another vicious growl, the revenant lurches forward, lifting his nose again. Scenting the air around us before his malignant gaze settles upon Michal, who braces to strike. “He hasn’t attacked us yet.” I seize his surcoat swiftly, my nails piercing the leather, and Michal hesitates. “That counts for something.”
At last, Michal tears his gaze from the revenant to search my face, and in his own expression—the tense line of his jaw, the bright unease in his eyes—I sense he understands exactly what I’m asking. For my sister, we need to try. We need to succeed. “Please, Michal,” I repeat quietly. “There has to be another way.”
To my shock, he doesn’t brush me aside as the Chasseurs would’ve done; he doesn’t tell me to flee or implore me to see reason. Instead he nods, and I nearly weep in relief at the momentousness of such a small gesture. Because it means he is with me. It means he won’t kill my sister on sight.
Turning to the revenant, I ask, “Do you remember your name, monsieur?”
The revenant snarls in response, hunching to shake his head. Jerking and twitching as if unable to keep still. My heart twists at the sight of it—of his pain—and suddenly unwilling to stand it, I take a tentative step around Michal. “Stay close,” he says in a low voice.
When the revenant hisses, shaking his head as if to ward off bees, I take a small step forward, speaking much slower and softer than before. “You didn’t deserve what Dimitri did to you”—his snarl of agreement punctuates the words—“but hurting him now won’t undo the pain. It’ll only bring more upon yourself.”
He paws at the ground again. He snorts and twitches as I wince, continuing gently, “Perhaps if you try to shift into one form or the other, the pain will lessen.”
But he only snarls, his eyes rolling as he lumbers closer.
Michal materializes instantly at my side. To the revenant, he says, “Stop trying to control your adrenaline.” If he sees my startled glance, he does not acknowledge it. “Allow it to flow freely through your body, and it might restart your transition. First your head,” he coaxes as the revenant hesitates, stumbling slightly with a high-pitched whine. “Then down your neck and through your shoulders to your chest.”
Even as he speaks, however, I realize any lingering scent of adrenaline upon the revenant is just that—lingering. His corpse can no longer produce it, which must be why he remains trapped between forms in the first place. Michal’s eyes meet mine then, holding them, because he knows the same.
Helplessly, I plunge onward, wracking my mind for another solution. “Perhaps Odessa can concoct some sort of stimulant—”
But it’s too late.
Roaring in anguish, the revenant rears up on his haunches in blind rage and splinters the branches overhead. When he hurls them at me, Michal spins us aside, and the full weight of reality crashes through the clearing like an avalanche. This isn’t going to work.
The revenant charges.
Michal seizes my waist, and I scream in blind panic—I flounder, I shriek —as he launches me high over the revenant’s head. Though I land unexpectedly catlike in the boughs of the yew tree, I nearly lose my footing when I whirl on the ice, horrified, to watch him and the revenant collide below in a clash of teeth and limbs. Oh God.
Within seconds, my suspicions prove irrefutably true—this revenant is faster than the Archbishop. Stronger too. He sinks his teeth into Michal’s shoulder with a bestial howl as I search frantically for a weapon. Any weapon. At the sound of Michal’s groan, my grip on the nearest branch snaps it in two, and I fling the pieces aside impatiently. Because I have to do something. I cannot simply watch as the revenant tears Michal into—
My heart leaps into my throat as an idea strikes. Because—the branches, they’re—
Wood.
With another crack, I tear a second branch from the tree, shredding the leaves and splitting it into two pieces, rubbing them together in a blur of brown and gray. Fire. Mathilde said we need fire, but this wood—it’s still cold and damp from the teardrops, too damp, and a frustrated curse rises in my throat as Michal wrenches the revenant’s arm from its socket, kicking the creature aside and clutching his bleeding neck. His chest rises and falls in fury; his muscles clench in pain.
“Come on, come on .” Craning my neck to see below, I rub the wood faster as the revenant rises, as foul liquid leaks from the hole where his arm should be. Licking his lips, he stalks a circle around Michal with hackles raised. Michal turns with him, stepping lightly and blocking his path to the tree. To me . The revenant snarls.
Though the wood warms from the friction, no spark appears. Not yet. But when it does—
“Let him come to me, Michal.” Hissing the words, hoping the revenant cannot hear, I add, “Bring him right to the roots of the tree.”
Though I cannot see his face, Michal does not move, remaining staunchly between us, until—with a vicious curse—he nods once and takes a small step backward.
As if waiting for permission all along, the first flame sparks in my hand as the revenant mirrors his movement, but Michal spins in a blur, flashing to the point just below me. “Here!” He thrusts his hand upward for the kindled wood. The revenant moves faster, however; he leaps before Michal can seize the branch, trapping him against the tree. Horror curdles in the pit of my stomach. As if in slow motion, I watch as the revenant’s claws sink deep into Michal’s chest, as his teeth maul Michal’s cheek, his eye —
Blood pours from the wound as Michal rears backward, temporarily blinded. He cannot see the branch as it plunges toward the ground. He cannot see anything.
I react without thinking.
With a strangled cry, I leap from the tree, snatching the branch midair and landing directly upon the revenant’s shoulders, falling backward to bear us both to the forest floor. Away from Michal. And the fire—at last it erupts, licking down the wood and searing my hands. I scarcely feel its heat, however, instead plunging the impromptu torch straight into the revenant’s chest. He arches with another howl of rage. He twists and jerks as first his ragged clothes catch fire, then his matted pelt. Still he claws at me, however—still he tries to bury his claws in my legs. I wrap them around his neck in a vise, hot tears burning my cheeks. And I hate them. I hate them because I do not deserve them—not as I seize each side of his face, twisting his head to sever his spine.
Michal.
More blood drips between his fingers as he clutches his eye. That scarlet liquid is all I can see. His name is all I can hear, pounding like the beat of a war drum in my ears—Michal, Michal, Michal —and I twist the revenant’s head farther in answer. I wrench it from his shoulders completely.
He continues to fight, however; he continues to whimper and snarl for Dimitri.
I do not release him until Michal pushes from the tree to join us. Though he staggers a bit, he makes short work of the rest, rending the revenant’s body into pieces and tossing each one into a hole between two roots, where they continue to smoke and burn. Except for the revenant’s head. I still clutch it between my hands, and its eyes roll wildly in fear as I choke on the sob building in my throat. Because I want to close them. I should close them.
Instead I hand his head to Michal without a word, and I watch as he drops it atop the fire.
The snow stops falling at once.