46. Blood For Blood
forty-six
Blood For Blood
Liam
Blood everywhere, all over me, my hands soaked, so much blood pouring out of Archer’s chest, seeping through his clothes and mine.
“Archer? Archer, no. No, don’t. You can’t.” I can barely speak. I can’t even process what’s happening. Nothing makes sense.
Not a thing until I hear Jem say, “You,” his voice dark and filled with rage.
“What the fuck?” comes the reply, stark on the night air. I look up, and Peter Marsden steps out of the treeline, gun high, aimed directly at Jem.
“You fucking bastard!” I scream. “It wasn’t enough? You killed my brother and now…” Archer’s head is limp on my chest, blood flowing hot from the wound. And I know. I can feel it. I can sense he’s not there anymore. He’s dead in my arms and…
“Not this time.” Simon materialises out of the darkness, waves a hand, and the crack is audible as Marsden’s wrist snaps backwards.
The gun drops to the ground, torn to pieces by Simon’s supernatural abilities.
His arm shoots out, and a strangled sound rips from Marsden as he goes flying back into a tree, held tight against it with some invisible force even as he struggles, eyes bulging with fear.
“Simon!” I shout. “Help Archer. There must be someone else. Someone like him. Where? Where?”
But Simon only stares down at Archer’s body on the ground, the impossibility of what I’m asking clear in his broken expression. “I’m sorry, Liam.”
“No. No, you’re a ghost. You can find another necromancer. I know you can! He can’t be the only one!” Tears pour out of me, strangling my words, killing every thought of everything but Archer.
He’s still warm. How can he still be warm, here, and gone? Just like that.
I cradle his head in my arms, press a kiss to his cooling lips. “Please don’t be gone. Archer… If anyone can control this, it’s you. Please, please come back to me. Please. Tell me what to do. There must be a spell. There must be something. Please…”
Jem’s hand falls on my shoulder. Even in my heartbreak, I can feel that he’s oddly… unperturbed. Confident? “It’s all right,” he says softly. He squeezes into me, then calls out, “Tez?”
Tez?
Who the fuck…
A familiar scent hits me. Tobacco. Incense. The grass turns hard beneath me, flaming torches appear out of nowhere, walls form all around us, and we’re back in that giant temple chamber, once again… “Tezcatlipoca?”
That tap-scrape sound echoes off the walls as the god himself steps into view, one human foot touching the stone, the mirror-foot hitting it in tandem.
He’s just as terrifying, just as awe inspiring, but this time, there’s something different. This time, I don’t think I care what he might do to me. Because I can’t take this pain. I can’t. Archer healed five years of hurt, then life ripped a fresh hole clear through me.
“He took both of them,” I cry out, shocked at my voice stark in the temple, begging Tezcatlipoca. “That man. He took my brother. Then he took my love. I can’t stand it. I can’t.”
Tezcatlipoca surveys me coolly, then raises his eyes to Jem. Next, his head turns slowly to take in Marsden. He opens his mouth, and says, “What an asshole.”
Time stops. Stills utterly. There’s an ancient Aztec god of fate and creation standing over the dead body of the man of my dreams who just resurrected my brother in a London cemetery and… that’s his assessment?
It’s a fair one, but…
“Do you think there’s anything you can do?” Jem’s voice, clear and calm on the night, like he’s asking a plumber how to fix his tiling over a cup of tea.
“Can’t resurrect him,” Tezcatlipoca says. “That was his thing.”
“His…” His thing? What the fuck am I even witnessing? “But you’re a god! You’re an actual god. You can destroy worlds.”
“Destroy, yeah,” he mutters, giving me a shrug. “I can go find his soul for you, keep him for whenever—”
“Tez!” Jem cuts in sharply.
“Yeah, I know. It’s not ideal. But I can’t just…” He waves a hand, like any of us are supposed to understand what that means.
I cast my eyes back and forth between Jem and ‘Tez’, trying to divine whatever’s unspoken between them while they’re holding each other’s gaze. Jem’s eyebrows rise higher. Tezcatlipoca’s brow draws deeper.
“Please,” I rush out. “Please. If there’s any possibility, I’ll do anything.
I’ll… I’ll go anywhere. I’ll find you whatever goods or treasures I can.
” The idea slams back into me. “I can get your mirror! I’ll have it for you in a few hours.
I won’t stop looking for it until I do. Please. I’ll do anything you want.”
Tezcatlipoca stalks over to me, beads and golden jewels clinking as he crouches down by my side. He runs tender fingers, now soft and flesh-covered, down Archer’s cheek. More tender than I could have imagined him being capable of. “He was a good one.”
“The best,” I agree, trying to hold back my tears. “I don’t think there was a cruel bone in his body. He’s the sweetest, nicest man. And this can’t be his time. It’s not fair. It’s not right. The world is not better for this. Please help him.”
His eyes focus on mine, and he looks into me.
Into me. I can feel it. Like his mind has reached into mine, and it’s sinking threads all through me, down my throat and into my heart.
He’s all inside me, poking and sifting in every corner.
Then I hear a crack, blink, and he’s withdrawn, holding the mirror he’s snapped off of his leg, staring into it. “Liam Locke… you are… broken.”
“Um…” Yeah, that’s probably true. Feels a bit harsh, though.
“Tez, that’s not very nice,” Jem throws in, clearly in agreement.
“No, but he’s… He’s not working,” Tezcatlipoca says. “Like he’s supposed to. Shall I fix him?”
I stare at Jem, and he stares at me, and like Tez before, offers only a shrug.
Tezcatlipoca holds his mirror a little closer to his face, then mutters, “Can you live with the consequences…” But it’s almost like he’s not even asking me. It’s as if he’s asking the mirror.
“Consequences of what?” I whisper. “Of his death? Because no. No, I cannot. I don’t have it in me. But anything else—anything else in this universe—and I’ll take it.”
His eyes turn on me slowly. “That is what I see.”
Suddenly, his hand shoots out, his palm landing on my forehead, long fingers stretched wide over the crown of my head. Fear rips through me, but I hold still, hold on to Archer when Tezcatlipoca tells me, “All I ask for in exchange is one blood sacrifice.”
He squeezes, and a blast like lightning shoots through me. The world turns blinding white, pain sears into my temple. I fall back with a scream, writhing on the ground, my entire body liquid fire.
Then, as suddenly as it started, it stops.
Just stops.
Everything is quiet.
I feel the grass beneath me, damp and real.
I open my eyes, and I’m in the graveyard. In the graveyard, but… I’m surrounded by people. So many of them, staring at me. But not normal people… they’re…
“What d’ya think’s wrong with ’im?” one of them says.
“What did you say?” I whisper.
“Look ’ere! ’e ’eard ya, ’e did,” another shouts.
“What?”
“’e’s another one of them whatchamacallits,” says a third. Then he claps his hands together. “Necromancer!”
A trembling fear shakes my whole body.
Surely not…
I scramble back, directly into Jem. My head turns, and there’s Archer, sprawled on the ground. Then Simon, bright as day, and by his side, out of nowhere… “Fabian?”
He gives me a smile and a nod. “You can see me now?”
“I can… but… are you…”
“Very dead,” he confirms with a grin. Then he adds, “I think you’d better make with that sacrifice. And fast.”
“Kraa!” screams Edgar, who flaps down onto my shoulder. He lowers his head in the direction of Marsden, pinned to the trunk of the tree, whose mouth opens in an appalled expression of horror that surely mirrors mine.
Sacrifice Marsden?
“I can’t do that.” The words come dry and crackling in my throat. “I’m not…” I look down at my hands, sticky and red with Archer’s blood.
But maybe that’s what I am now.
A necromancer.
And a killer.
Because if it’s Marsden or Archer, the choice is clear.
How do I do it? How do you sacrifice a crooked cop in order to appease a god?
I search around for a weapon, but I can’t see anything. Nothing but a dirty shovel on a pile of earth on the far side of the open grave.
I guess it will have to do.
Tezcatlipoca wants blood? I can make blood.
Even if the thought is pure horror to me.
I lean forward, crawling over to Archer’s body, pressing a hand to his cheek. “Did you ever have to do this? Is this how it works?” I lean down to kiss his lips. “I just don’t think you would ever do this. Murder someone. God, I hope you can forgive me.”
“Darling.” The word rings in the air, and it takes me a while to realise it’s directed at me. I look up at Simon, a grin pulling wide across his face. “No one ever said you had to do the sacrificing.”
It’s the slightest twitch of his hand, and Marsden goes flying through the air, slamming down on his back right next to Archer. All the air is crushed out of him, and he lies there gasping like a fish. My brother—my real, flesh and blood, living brother—slams a foot down onto his stomach.
Simon and Fabian take their places either side of Marsden, and “Kraa!” screams Edgar. With that, he swoops down onto Marsden’s face and dips his beak into his eye socket. A scream rips out of Marsden, echoed by my own, as Edgar plucks an eyeball clean out of his face.
“Oh my god!” I cry out, appalled at the sight.
“I’m sorry!” Marsden screams, writhing in agony. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
Jem cackles, warm and loud, a wonderful sound I never thought I’d hear again in the sea of grief and chaos.
He drops down onto his knees, straddling Marsden, a hand tightening around his neck.
“Tell that to all the other boys you did this to. All the other families you tore apart. All those kids you made run drugs for you before you set them up, murdered them, buried them, just like me.”
My heart stops. It’s so much worse—so much bigger than I could have imagined.