Only five seconds elapse between the time I arm myself and the moment they are upon me, and I spend this flash of time furiously peeling bark away from one end of my stick.
I try to strategize as I watch them approach. Panic engulfs me as I see their lumbering forms and realize I have no idea how to take on two numa at once . . . with only a stick. Don’t think. Just act, I tell myself. I breathe deeply and try to put myself into the zone—the frame of mind I’ve learned to slip into after months of fight training with Gaspard.
I don’t have time to concentrate. My fingers are bleeding, and a shard of wood is stuck painfully beneath my nail. But the pain helps me focus. Stumbling slightly from the weight of the branch, I swing up and smash it against the shoulder of the first numa to reach me.
He isn’t ready for the blow. Caught off balance, he stumbles and falls heavily onto one shoulder, crying out in pain as it dislocates.
The second of my attackers is upon me, and I swing awkwardly again, unused to such a heavy staff. It hits him low, striking his shins, but he is better prepared than his kindred. Though he staggers, he keeps his balance. He lunges for me, and I skip aside, letting him plow by before he turns and charges me again.
My enemy on the ground is back on his feet. I have two numa upon me at once, but I am ready, feeling the rhythm of the fight now. Everything I learned comes back to serve me, and I am in control.
I wait, balancing the stick horizontally in both hands, watching the attacker facing me. It seems that the two numa have no strategy besides rushing me individually. As Gaspard explained, one of the numa’s greatest weaknesses is “anarchy in warfare.” Unless they work under a strong leader, it’s every numa for himself. I take advantage of this and focus on one at a time.
My enemy roars and runs for me, and I hit him squarely in the shoulder with the blunt end of the stick. As he falls back, I spot the other numa charging me from behind. Pulling the sharp end of the stick forcefully backward, under my arm, I wait until he is three feet away and thrust it through his chest.
Oh my God. I feel wood pass through flesh and am sickened, my throat spasming in an all-too-human reaction. Don’t think about it, I urge myself. If I take the time to feel, I’m dead. Again.
The numa’s eyes pop wide and he lets out a cry that is more like a groan as he places both hands around the rod protruding from his chest. I jerk the stick backward out of him, and he falls to the ground.
Bringing the bloody end around, I swing the rod back toward my opponent at the level of his head. He reaches up and grabs it with both hands, wrenching it from my grasp. But his hands slip on the blood covering the staff and, fumbling, he drops the rod to the ground. I am too close for him to bend down and get it.
Furious, he roars. Raising his fists, he pulls back his arm to punch me. I strike first, bending low to my left, below his punch trajectory, and kick out with my right foot, planting it squarely in his chest. He stumbles back a step, but lunges low and is able to grab the improvised quarterstaff.
Swinging it like a baseball bat, he lands a powerful strike to my upper back, sending me flying forward. As my face hits the ground, I feel my cheek grind against dirt and rocks, and lie there, bleeding and unable to breathe. I push myself onto my hands and knees, gasping and choking and spitting dirt and blood. My breath has been knocked out, and I see stars and wonder how long I have before I pass out. I hear the numa coming up behind me, and scrabble forward, trying to get away. He catches me by the hair, grabbing my wet, straggly locks with one hand, and uses it to pull me to my feet. With the other, he holds the sharpened end of the rod to my face. With an expression like he will immensely enjoy what he is about to do, he draws my head back to ram it onto the staff point.
In the split second before I die, I see Vincent’s face before me once again. He’s on the quay of the Seine, standing in the sun, hands thrust into his jean pockets, giving me that crooked smile that I now know means, “I love you.” I love you, too, I think, and my fear disappears as I gulp one last breath of air.
But before the stake meets my face I hear a twanging noise, and the numa is knocked off his feet to the side, landing heavily upon the ground. He twitches once, but the arrow lodged through his temple killed him before he even fell.
“Kate!” Vincent calls, and then he is clasping me against himself so tightly that I can feel his heart beat against my chest. Gasping for breath, I lean against him for support and let him take all my weight as I revel in the fact that he is here. Finally, he lets go and smoothes my wet, straggly hair off my face so that he can see me. He brushes the dirt and blood off my face with his fingertips. The emotion in his eyes makes my own cloud with tears.
“You’re alive,” he finally manages to say.
“Not really,” I respond, my chest still heaving with exertion, and then can’t say anything else because he is wrapping his arms around my shoulders, pulling me to him.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he says. And he takes my face in his hands and kisses me.
It is tender. It is deep. It is my first kiss in my new incarnation . . . since my heart stopped and started again. I am undead, and yet Vincent is kissing me, and my worries that he wouldn’t want me this way—that this would somehow change the way he felt about me—dissipate.
I kiss him back, pushing aside the rest of my fears and doubts and sorrow about what has been lost and abandoning myself to the pleasure of touching him again.
Drawing back from Vincent, I turn to see Charlotte standing nearby with a bow in her hand and a mischievous smile on her face. She’s glowing. Not just in a happy kind of way—the air around her body is actually glowing a golden red, and around her head is the halo of the bardia, “an aura like a forest fire,” as Gwenhaël had put it.
I glance at Vincent. He’s the same: golden haloed and the air around his body shimmers like flames. This is how I see now, I think with amazement, and wonder if I’ll ever get used to seeing my friends glowing and my enemies oozing red mist.
That is . . . if I live long enough. I remember that, though my immediate goal of escape is achieved, we are still in the middle of a numa-bardia war. Violette’s not going to let me dance away from this without wreaking vengeance. She’ll try to get me back, I think with a twinge of anger.
Charlotte pipes up: “Sorry for interrupting you two, but Violette’s boat is long gone and the others are waiting for us back at the cars.”
Vincent nods at her, and then pulls me in to give me one last kiss. He takes off his coat and wraps it around me, and pulls out his phone. He tells someone we’re on our way and instructs them to pick up the bodies of the numa for burning.
Charlotte takes me by the hand. “I know that now’s not the time to talk about this. And you’re going to have all sorts of decisions to make and things to figure out, but . . .” Tears spring to her eyes and she drops her bow and throws her arms around me. “Welcome, kindred.”
FORTY
FOUR VEHICLES AWAIT US AS WE WALK OUT OF the clearing toward the road. One is an ambulance. As we approach, two revenants in paramedic uniforms pull a stretcher out of the back and head into the woods in the direction we came from. “We’re taking ambulances everywhere we go now,” comments Vincent, nodding to them as we pass. “No numa bodies are left behind anymore. We’re trying to clear out the city.”
“How’s that going?” I ask. I know he’s trying to make conversation so as not to have to talk about Things. Whether it’s because he’s not ready, or he thinks I’m not ready, or because there are others around, I’m not sure. But I don’t mind playing along since I’m actually dying to know what happened while I was gone.
“Not well,” he responds. “We ambushed a few of them in JB’s residences, but word spread fast and they evacuated the rest. Now it’s like we’re starting from scratch, with no idea where to look.”
“And violence in the city is getting worse by the day,” Charlotte interjected. “According to JB’s police connections, since Violette left La Maison and became numa chief—full-time, that is—suicides have more than tripled, reports of child abuse and domestic disputes have skyrocketed, and the suburbs are exploding with gang violence. The more numa pour into town, the more incidents of violent crime are reported. We can’t even begin to keep up.”
“And you’ve been spending your time looking for me?” I ask, aghast.
“Of course,” Charlotte says, as if that goes without saying. She walks ahead, leaving Vincent and me alone.
He pauses, staring at the ground for a moment. “You know that Bran identified you as the Champion?”
I nod.
“It makes sense,” he says, his eyes showing concern mixed with something I can’t quite place. Is it fear? He wraps an arm securely around my shoulders as we arrive at the car.
Ambrose and Geneviève leap out and envelop me in a sandwich hug. “You just about scared me out of my wits, Katie-Lou,” Ambrose says.
He leans back and takes a look at me. I glance down and realize how I appear: covered in blood—my own and the numa’s—matted with mud, dark stains on my clothes that even a swim through the river didn’t manage to wash out, a knife slash through my T-shirt. I hold up my hands; where my fingernails don’t already have dried blood crusted beneath, fresh blood oozes.
“Zombie chic,” he concludes. “Only a Champion could pull it off.”
“You better watch out, Ambrose. I might just fry you with my eye beams if you piss me off,” I say.
He eyes me doubtfully. “You can do that?”
“Honestly,” I admit, “I have no idea what I can do.” I force a laugh, and Ambrose squeezes me to him again.
“You’re going to be okay, little sis,” he murmurs, and carefully tucks me into the backseat.
Vincent has been giving instructions to the driver of the first car, and now he returns and says, “Let’s go!” He settles next to me while Ambrose takes the wheel.
“I’ll ride with the others,” says Charlotte as Geneviève climbs into the front seat. I notice Ambrose’s eyes follow Charlotte as she jogs to the car in front of ours and jumps inside. Clenching his jaw, he guns our motor and spins the car out onto the road, doing an illegal U-turn to head in the opposite direction.
“Steroid rush?” asks Vincent drily.
Ambrose holds up his hands in denial. “This body is a hundred percent natural.”
“Hands on the wheel,” prods Geneviève.
“Thanks, Mom,” Ambrose retorts. “Do you know exactly how long I’ve been driving?”
“Wow. Great to be back,” I try to joke.
Vincent leans over and whispers, “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay,” I say, and then realize that I’m not. I’ve been trying to hold myself together for so long: to keep myself safe . . . to escape Violette. I’ve let myself reason through what happened, but couldn’t afford to let myself feel it.
But now that I’m out of immediate danger and under the protection of my friends . . . my kindred . . . I am suddenly overwhelmed by the events of the last few days and begin to tremble. Vincent takes me in his arms and holds me securely. After a few minutes, my shaking calms, but my teeth chatter and tears stream down my cheeks.
Geneviève turns to me and she places a steadying hand on my knee. “It takes most of us a while to come to grips with our new existence,” she says, her voice steeped in compassion. “Normally you would have time to acclimate to becoming a revenant before being tossed into the middle of things. I cried for two weeks after Jean-Baptiste found me and helped me animate. And it was months before I was mentally ready to face my destiny.”
“I assume Violette won’t allow me any coping-with-newfound-immortality time?” I ask.
“No,” Vincent says. “We figure that the only reason she has postponed a direct attack on us is because she wanted the Champion’s power first. Now that you’ve escaped her, she won’t wait long to make her move.”
He doesn’t want to say it. To call me the Champion. That’s what the look of fear is about. Vincent doesn’t want to think of me that way. I don’t want to think of myself that way. It’s too bizarre, and I don’t even know what it means. I feel like an unpinned hand grenade—about to explode but having no idea whether I’ll fizzle or blow up everything in the vicinity.
“Are we ready?” I ask, forcing that subject to the back of my mind.
“Our first priority was finding you,” Vincent says. “Now that you’re safe”—his voice catches on the last word—“now that you’re with us, we will plan our next move.”
I lean my head against the seat, weighed down by the scope of what is ahead. “We have to protect my grandparents and Georgia,” I say. “They’ll be the first ones Violette goes after now that I’ve escaped.”
“They’re already at La Maison,” says Ambrose, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Charlotte and I took them there from the Crillon. Besides returning to their apartment to get things they needed, they haven’t left our house.”
I hadn’t doubted that Vincent would take care of my family, but feel immense relief knowing that they are safe inside the bardia’s walls. And then something occurs to me and my stomach ties itself back into knots. “Do they know . . . about me?”
Vincent turns my hand over and rubs his fingers up and down my palm. “I told them.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I pull my hand away from Vincent to wipe them away. “How . . . what did they do?” I ask, my voice breaking.
I try to strategize as I watch them approach. Panic engulfs me as I see their lumbering forms and realize I have no idea how to take on two numa at once . . . with only a stick. Don’t think. Just act, I tell myself. I breathe deeply and try to put myself into the zone—the frame of mind I’ve learned to slip into after months of fight training with Gaspard.
I don’t have time to concentrate. My fingers are bleeding, and a shard of wood is stuck painfully beneath my nail. But the pain helps me focus. Stumbling slightly from the weight of the branch, I swing up and smash it against the shoulder of the first numa to reach me.
He isn’t ready for the blow. Caught off balance, he stumbles and falls heavily onto one shoulder, crying out in pain as it dislocates.
The second of my attackers is upon me, and I swing awkwardly again, unused to such a heavy staff. It hits him low, striking his shins, but he is better prepared than his kindred. Though he staggers, he keeps his balance. He lunges for me, and I skip aside, letting him plow by before he turns and charges me again.
My enemy on the ground is back on his feet. I have two numa upon me at once, but I am ready, feeling the rhythm of the fight now. Everything I learned comes back to serve me, and I am in control.
I wait, balancing the stick horizontally in both hands, watching the attacker facing me. It seems that the two numa have no strategy besides rushing me individually. As Gaspard explained, one of the numa’s greatest weaknesses is “anarchy in warfare.” Unless they work under a strong leader, it’s every numa for himself. I take advantage of this and focus on one at a time.
My enemy roars and runs for me, and I hit him squarely in the shoulder with the blunt end of the stick. As he falls back, I spot the other numa charging me from behind. Pulling the sharp end of the stick forcefully backward, under my arm, I wait until he is three feet away and thrust it through his chest.
Oh my God. I feel wood pass through flesh and am sickened, my throat spasming in an all-too-human reaction. Don’t think about it, I urge myself. If I take the time to feel, I’m dead. Again.
The numa’s eyes pop wide and he lets out a cry that is more like a groan as he places both hands around the rod protruding from his chest. I jerk the stick backward out of him, and he falls to the ground.
Bringing the bloody end around, I swing the rod back toward my opponent at the level of his head. He reaches up and grabs it with both hands, wrenching it from my grasp. But his hands slip on the blood covering the staff and, fumbling, he drops the rod to the ground. I am too close for him to bend down and get it.
Furious, he roars. Raising his fists, he pulls back his arm to punch me. I strike first, bending low to my left, below his punch trajectory, and kick out with my right foot, planting it squarely in his chest. He stumbles back a step, but lunges low and is able to grab the improvised quarterstaff.
Swinging it like a baseball bat, he lands a powerful strike to my upper back, sending me flying forward. As my face hits the ground, I feel my cheek grind against dirt and rocks, and lie there, bleeding and unable to breathe. I push myself onto my hands and knees, gasping and choking and spitting dirt and blood. My breath has been knocked out, and I see stars and wonder how long I have before I pass out. I hear the numa coming up behind me, and scrabble forward, trying to get away. He catches me by the hair, grabbing my wet, straggly locks with one hand, and uses it to pull me to my feet. With the other, he holds the sharpened end of the rod to my face. With an expression like he will immensely enjoy what he is about to do, he draws my head back to ram it onto the staff point.
In the split second before I die, I see Vincent’s face before me once again. He’s on the quay of the Seine, standing in the sun, hands thrust into his jean pockets, giving me that crooked smile that I now know means, “I love you.” I love you, too, I think, and my fear disappears as I gulp one last breath of air.
But before the stake meets my face I hear a twanging noise, and the numa is knocked off his feet to the side, landing heavily upon the ground. He twitches once, but the arrow lodged through his temple killed him before he even fell.
“Kate!” Vincent calls, and then he is clasping me against himself so tightly that I can feel his heart beat against my chest. Gasping for breath, I lean against him for support and let him take all my weight as I revel in the fact that he is here. Finally, he lets go and smoothes my wet, straggly hair off my face so that he can see me. He brushes the dirt and blood off my face with his fingertips. The emotion in his eyes makes my own cloud with tears.
“You’re alive,” he finally manages to say.
“Not really,” I respond, my chest still heaving with exertion, and then can’t say anything else because he is wrapping his arms around my shoulders, pulling me to him.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he says. And he takes my face in his hands and kisses me.
It is tender. It is deep. It is my first kiss in my new incarnation . . . since my heart stopped and started again. I am undead, and yet Vincent is kissing me, and my worries that he wouldn’t want me this way—that this would somehow change the way he felt about me—dissipate.
I kiss him back, pushing aside the rest of my fears and doubts and sorrow about what has been lost and abandoning myself to the pleasure of touching him again.
Drawing back from Vincent, I turn to see Charlotte standing nearby with a bow in her hand and a mischievous smile on her face. She’s glowing. Not just in a happy kind of way—the air around her body is actually glowing a golden red, and around her head is the halo of the bardia, “an aura like a forest fire,” as Gwenhaël had put it.
I glance at Vincent. He’s the same: golden haloed and the air around his body shimmers like flames. This is how I see now, I think with amazement, and wonder if I’ll ever get used to seeing my friends glowing and my enemies oozing red mist.
That is . . . if I live long enough. I remember that, though my immediate goal of escape is achieved, we are still in the middle of a numa-bardia war. Violette’s not going to let me dance away from this without wreaking vengeance. She’ll try to get me back, I think with a twinge of anger.
Charlotte pipes up: “Sorry for interrupting you two, but Violette’s boat is long gone and the others are waiting for us back at the cars.”
Vincent nods at her, and then pulls me in to give me one last kiss. He takes off his coat and wraps it around me, and pulls out his phone. He tells someone we’re on our way and instructs them to pick up the bodies of the numa for burning.
Charlotte takes me by the hand. “I know that now’s not the time to talk about this. And you’re going to have all sorts of decisions to make and things to figure out, but . . .” Tears spring to her eyes and she drops her bow and throws her arms around me. “Welcome, kindred.”
FORTY
FOUR VEHICLES AWAIT US AS WE WALK OUT OF the clearing toward the road. One is an ambulance. As we approach, two revenants in paramedic uniforms pull a stretcher out of the back and head into the woods in the direction we came from. “We’re taking ambulances everywhere we go now,” comments Vincent, nodding to them as we pass. “No numa bodies are left behind anymore. We’re trying to clear out the city.”
“How’s that going?” I ask. I know he’s trying to make conversation so as not to have to talk about Things. Whether it’s because he’s not ready, or he thinks I’m not ready, or because there are others around, I’m not sure. But I don’t mind playing along since I’m actually dying to know what happened while I was gone.
“Not well,” he responds. “We ambushed a few of them in JB’s residences, but word spread fast and they evacuated the rest. Now it’s like we’re starting from scratch, with no idea where to look.”
“And violence in the city is getting worse by the day,” Charlotte interjected. “According to JB’s police connections, since Violette left La Maison and became numa chief—full-time, that is—suicides have more than tripled, reports of child abuse and domestic disputes have skyrocketed, and the suburbs are exploding with gang violence. The more numa pour into town, the more incidents of violent crime are reported. We can’t even begin to keep up.”
“And you’ve been spending your time looking for me?” I ask, aghast.
“Of course,” Charlotte says, as if that goes without saying. She walks ahead, leaving Vincent and me alone.
He pauses, staring at the ground for a moment. “You know that Bran identified you as the Champion?”
I nod.
“It makes sense,” he says, his eyes showing concern mixed with something I can’t quite place. Is it fear? He wraps an arm securely around my shoulders as we arrive at the car.
Ambrose and Geneviève leap out and envelop me in a sandwich hug. “You just about scared me out of my wits, Katie-Lou,” Ambrose says.
He leans back and takes a look at me. I glance down and realize how I appear: covered in blood—my own and the numa’s—matted with mud, dark stains on my clothes that even a swim through the river didn’t manage to wash out, a knife slash through my T-shirt. I hold up my hands; where my fingernails don’t already have dried blood crusted beneath, fresh blood oozes.
“Zombie chic,” he concludes. “Only a Champion could pull it off.”
“You better watch out, Ambrose. I might just fry you with my eye beams if you piss me off,” I say.
He eyes me doubtfully. “You can do that?”
“Honestly,” I admit, “I have no idea what I can do.” I force a laugh, and Ambrose squeezes me to him again.
“You’re going to be okay, little sis,” he murmurs, and carefully tucks me into the backseat.
Vincent has been giving instructions to the driver of the first car, and now he returns and says, “Let’s go!” He settles next to me while Ambrose takes the wheel.
“I’ll ride with the others,” says Charlotte as Geneviève climbs into the front seat. I notice Ambrose’s eyes follow Charlotte as she jogs to the car in front of ours and jumps inside. Clenching his jaw, he guns our motor and spins the car out onto the road, doing an illegal U-turn to head in the opposite direction.
“Steroid rush?” asks Vincent drily.
Ambrose holds up his hands in denial. “This body is a hundred percent natural.”
“Hands on the wheel,” prods Geneviève.
“Thanks, Mom,” Ambrose retorts. “Do you know exactly how long I’ve been driving?”
“Wow. Great to be back,” I try to joke.
Vincent leans over and whispers, “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay,” I say, and then realize that I’m not. I’ve been trying to hold myself together for so long: to keep myself safe . . . to escape Violette. I’ve let myself reason through what happened, but couldn’t afford to let myself feel it.
But now that I’m out of immediate danger and under the protection of my friends . . . my kindred . . . I am suddenly overwhelmed by the events of the last few days and begin to tremble. Vincent takes me in his arms and holds me securely. After a few minutes, my shaking calms, but my teeth chatter and tears stream down my cheeks.
Geneviève turns to me and she places a steadying hand on my knee. “It takes most of us a while to come to grips with our new existence,” she says, her voice steeped in compassion. “Normally you would have time to acclimate to becoming a revenant before being tossed into the middle of things. I cried for two weeks after Jean-Baptiste found me and helped me animate. And it was months before I was mentally ready to face my destiny.”
“I assume Violette won’t allow me any coping-with-newfound-immortality time?” I ask.
“No,” Vincent says. “We figure that the only reason she has postponed a direct attack on us is because she wanted the Champion’s power first. Now that you’ve escaped her, she won’t wait long to make her move.”
He doesn’t want to say it. To call me the Champion. That’s what the look of fear is about. Vincent doesn’t want to think of me that way. I don’t want to think of myself that way. It’s too bizarre, and I don’t even know what it means. I feel like an unpinned hand grenade—about to explode but having no idea whether I’ll fizzle or blow up everything in the vicinity.
“Are we ready?” I ask, forcing that subject to the back of my mind.
“Our first priority was finding you,” Vincent says. “Now that you’re safe”—his voice catches on the last word—“now that you’re with us, we will plan our next move.”
I lean my head against the seat, weighed down by the scope of what is ahead. “We have to protect my grandparents and Georgia,” I say. “They’ll be the first ones Violette goes after now that I’ve escaped.”
“They’re already at La Maison,” says Ambrose, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Charlotte and I took them there from the Crillon. Besides returning to their apartment to get things they needed, they haven’t left our house.”
I hadn’t doubted that Vincent would take care of my family, but feel immense relief knowing that they are safe inside the bardia’s walls. And then something occurs to me and my stomach ties itself back into knots. “Do they know . . . about me?”
Vincent turns my hand over and rubs his fingers up and down my palm. “I told them.”
Tears spring to my eyes, and I pull my hand away from Vincent to wipe them away. “How . . . what did they do?” I ask, my voice breaking.
