At this detail, Ambrose glanced proudly at me and flexed a bicep for my benefit. I rolled my eyes and shook my head, not managing to hide a grin.
“It doesn’t seem we were followed,” Jean-Baptiste concluded. “Kate”—he turned to me officiously—“would you kindly take over the narrative here?”
UNTIL I DIE OUTTAKES
ALTERNATE WALK HOME FROM NEW YEAR’S PARTY
“Henri sees two of them, just a few streets down, walking in our direction,” Vincent said darkly. “This is getting to be ridiculous! You can’t step out the door nowadays without a half-dozen numa getting in your face. Now tell me you’re glad we’re with you, Kate.”
“Um,” I said nervously as we began walking at a faster pace, “I doubt they would be following if it were just me. I’d probably be safe enough if I weren’t with two walking targets.”
“Aw, man. Not even an hour into the new year and they’re already cramping my style,” said Ambrose, loosening his bow tie. Although he pretended to complain, his expression of excitement gave him away. Ambrose loved a fight. The fact that the Mississippi native had saved his entire World War II tank battalion from German attack with just one machine gun said a lot about his character.
We jogged across the avenue, the boys supporting me by either arm since my high heels made me a bit wobbly. As we headed down a side street toward my grandparents’ building, Vincent said, “Henri says they’re still tailing us.” He looked around at the empty street and said, “Just two blocks to go, Ambrose. Fight or flight?”
Ambrose smiled widely and patted the leather sheath strapped to his side underneath his long coat. “Are you really asking me that question?”
There was no one on the street. If we had stayed on the larger avenue, where the odd couple was roaming, nothing might have happened. Revenants and numa didn’t fight in front of humans, if they could help it. It was part of their attempt to “stay under the radar,” as Vincent had said. Whether it was out of fear of reprisal—being hunted down and destroyed, perhaps, by humans or by other supernatural beings—I had no idea. Ambrose had told me that there were “others,” without being specific. But whatever their motivation, they would not begin one of their crazy heavy-weaponry fights with witnesses around.
The numa could, however, stab and run like they did to Ambrose a few months earlier. If they got both Ambrose and Vincent, Henri would have to return to Jean-Baptiste’s to alert the others to recover the bodies before the numa could take them back to their lair, cut off their heads, and burn them. Because that was the only way a revenant’s death could be permanent.
I shuddered at the thought and threw a glance behind me. Ambrose followed my gaze. “And . . . here they come,” he said in his molasses baritone. Two shapes separated from the side of a building as they came around a corner toward us. One was tall and thin, and the other even taller and brawny. They didn’t seem to be much of a match for Vincent or Ambrose, but I hoped the situation wouldn’t get to the point where my theory was tested.
“Half a block,” murmured Vincent. “Let’s try to get Kate into her front door before they reach us.”
“I second that suggestion,” I said. “I’m not much help dressed like this.” I quickly leaned down and took off my shoes before turning to sprint across the frozen pavement toward my front door. Glancing back, I saw Vincent and Ambrose turn and pull together, walking backward arm against arm and moving slowly in my direction, creating a defensive wall behind me. I reached my door and quickly typed in the digicode. The lock clicked and I flung the door open. “Hurry!” I yelled, standing just inside.
Vincent and Ambrose were ten feet away from me and the numa the same distance from them. They had all four drawn swords and held them low beneath their coats. The numas’ faces were visible now, their evil scowls making them look like demons, which, if you took them at face value, they basically were. Humans who died after betraying someone else to their death. And then spent their immortality killing off whoever else they could in the same manner.
I revised my “who’s stronger” theory and switched into full panic mode. My heart was racing as my protectors stood directly in front of the door and waited as the monsters approached. Just outside sword-waving distance, they stopped. The skinnier one flicked a piece of mud off the toe of his shoe with the tip of his sword and said, “Looks like a pretty ritzy party you’re coming from.”
“Yeah,” said the other in a thick-tongued, gangster-sounding accent. “We were wondering where our invites were.”
“Well, you numa are kind of on the C-list,” explained Ambrose mockingly. “It’s just one of those good zombie, bad zombie things. I hope you understand.”
If possible, their scowls got even deeper. “I’m guessing that humans make it to the B-list?” the thin one said, casting a glance at me.
“No, B-list would be Hitler. Bin Laden . . .” Vincent glanced over at Ambrose, as if looking for help.
“Satan?” Ambrose ventured.
“Satan. Good one.” Vincent nodded. “Yeah, we’d rather invite them than you. But then again, you’ll probably take that as a compliment.”
The wicked smiles that stretched across the two numas’ faces affirmed Vincent’s guess. “If you’re done with the flattery, we can get to business,” the thin man said, lifting his sword from beneath his coat. His partner leaned over to pull a knife from his boot and held it parallel with the sword in his other hand.
“All right!” growled Ambrose. “Bring it on!”
Just then, the noise of a speeding car came from the direction of the avenue, and headlights lit up the dark street. The four men dropped their weapons back beneath their coats and hid their faces from the oncoming vehicle.
ALTERNATE BUFFY-STYLE ENDING OF PHILIPPE’S FUNERAL
I looked directly up into a pair of pale gray eyes. Sneering lips parted to show nicotine-stained teeth, which clenched as the enormous man grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me over his shoulder as easily as if I were a rag doll.
“You’re ours now, little girlie,” he said as he joined two men who waited under a nearby tree. The three men practically oozed evil. There was only one thing they could be. Rising bile stung my throat as I realized that I was being carried off by a band of numa.
The rain had cleared the tourists from the cemetery, allowing us to move unimpeded toward the front gates. Even though there was no one to hear me, I screamed, kicking and hitting my captor as I tried to flail out of his grasp.
“We were planning on using you as bait, but I have nothing against killing you right here on the spot if you so much as wriggle,” the numa walking behind us said. “In fact, girlie, I take that back. You just keep on moving. I feel like eviscerating something today.” He pulled a gigantic hunting knife out of his coat and twisted it inches from my face. I shut up and went limp, letting myself be carried like a bag of potatoes past row after row of tombs.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked softly after a few minutes.
“Home,” the man carrying me grunted.
“Our home,” the knife wielder said.
“Where we’ll have plenty of time to play with our new toy before her boyfriend comes to rescue her,” said the third, with a deranged-sounding laugh that paralyzed me with fright.
“Playtime’s over,” came a fourth voice from nearby. “Put her down.” I knew this voice: It was the voice I heard in all my dreams. I allowed myself a split second to close my eyes in relief before giving one violent thrash with my entire body, causing my captor to lose his hold on me. I dropped to the ground on my hands and knees, and using an evasive technique Gaspard had taught me, rolled a few feet out of the way before springing back to my feet, my hands lifted in fists before me.
Vincent was striding toward us through the tombstones, his dark face lethal. In his clenched jaw and stone-cold eyes I caught a glimpse of the wild, inconscient warrior he must have been during his vengeance-wreaking years after the war. Without slowing his pace, he passed a
statue of a guardian angel, grabbed the marble sword from its hand, breaking it off at the hilt, then swung it at the head of my attacker, felling him with one violent blow. The man lay motionless on the ground as his two cronies backed up a step, one brandishing the hunting knife and the other drawing a sword.
Vincent ran to my side, pulling me farther away from the numa, and revealing Ambrose and Arthur, who stepped out from behind him.
“Just having a little fun,” said one of the numa, in a creepily reptilian voice. His eyes darted from side to side as he backed up, and I could see him weighing whether or not he could make a run for it.
“Us too,” Ambrose said, and wrenching an iron spike off a metal gate, he thrust it through the knife-wielding monster, picking him up off the ground as if he weighed as much as a pillow, and threw him to one side.
Arthur went after the third numa, drawing two short-swords from inside his coat. They sparred for a few minutes, the ancient revenant’s two-weapon technique confusing his challenger. This drew jeers from Ambrose, who was watching them like it was a spectator sport. His taunting befuddled the numa even more, who made a few useless jabs before Arthur moved forward, swinging his swords like a turbine, stabbing the man through the heart with one blade and swiftly beheading him with the other.
“He might be ancient as the hills, but you got to give the guy top points for style,” Ambrose crowed.
Arthur threw one sword each to Vincent and Ambrose, who effortlessly lopped off their own victims’ heads, while Arthur took out a cell phone and notified Jean-Baptiste that they needed to dispose of three bodies. He slipped the phone back into his coat pocket and nodded to Vincent. “Your ambulance driver will pick them up and have them cremated before the day’s out,” he said. “I’ll wait here with the bodies until he arrives.”
“Aww, now that’s a real shame,” said Ambrose. “If we built a bonfire right here, I’ll bet we could attract a whole drum circle of hippie kids from Jim Morrison’s grave and have a regular ol’ marshmallow roast.”
“Ambrose,” I said, my faculty of speech finally returning, “that’s disgusting.” I looked at the mutilated bodies on the ground and felt sick. Vincent was back by my side in a second and hugged me to him, turning me away from the gore.
“Aw, now, Katie-Lou,” Ambrose replied. “They’re just monsters. There’s no such thing as respect for the dead in their case. It’s just good riddance and move on.”
“I know that,” I said, raising my chin to prove it didn’t bother me. “I’ve killed one myself. I’m just not used to seeing . . .” My eyes flitted back to the blood gushing from the headless corpse and I blanched.
“You don’t have to prove anything to us. You killed the big boss. We’re just mopping up the henchmen,” Vincent said. He put an arm around my shoulders, steering me away from the bloody scene and whispered, “I’ll take you home now.”
His voice was calm, but his face showed an emotion that I had never seen there. It was fear. Even though Vincent had looked as dangerous as a mercenary while he fought, underneath it all he had been afraid. For me.
DELETED GUÉRISSEUR SCENE
I wrote this when I was trying to figure out who the guérisseur was and where he was located. Luckily, Bran stepped in and introduced himself before I went much further.
Vincent always drives the speed limit when I’m in the car, claiming defensive driving in a city of crazy drivers. When I point out that a mere car crash wouldn’t take him out, he assures me that it’s for my safety, not his own.
Jules obviously doesn’t feel the same, because we arrived in the little town exactly two hours later, my adrenaline still pumping from his supersonic speed on the highway. “The less time we’re away from Paris, the less trouble I’m going to get in with Vincent,” he explained. I personally wasn’t feeling bad about the going-behind-Vincent’s-back part of things, especially knowing that he was tromping around Paris trying to find a numa to kill, thinking I didn’t know about it.
As we followed the sign into Briançon, I watched the GPS on the dashboard. “Maybe park here,” I said as we got to the town square. “The house is just a block or so away.”
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Jules asked for the fortieth time.
“Nope,” I said as we got out of the car. Spying a tiny café at one end of the square, I pointed to it and said, “But you can wait for me there.”
“The answer to that command is ‘Non, madame la capitaine.’ Not on your life am I going to let you walk into some country guy’s house on your own. You guilt-tripped me into bringing you here by appealing to my sense of duty in guarding you. Now you’ve got to live with what you asked for.”
We stared each other down for a few seconds. But when I saw he wouldn’t budge, I nodded and walked with him in the direction of the house. I was starting to feel nervous, unsure of how I would handle things when I got there.
We walked up to a gated yard filled with a crazy arrangement of bushes and empty flower beds. There was no sense to the garden’s layout, but it was obvious that someone spent a lot of time weeding, pruning, and trimming everything within an inch of its botanical life. Not to mention the ceramic garden gnomes—they were everywhere. I checked the number on the gate again. Yes, this was the right place.
I had been imagining something more haunted-house-looking. Instead, it felt like I was right back in Brooklyn, where a few old ladies in our neighborhood had specialized in wacky gardens. Like our neighbor, who had three plaster geese in the yard that she dressed differently every day according to the weather. The fear that twisted my stomach for the last couple hours was fading, and quickly being replaced by a sense of bemusement.
A small, round man with poppy-red cheeks walked out of the house, hands in pockets, and said cautiously, “Can I help you folks?”
“He’s all yours,” murmured Jules, and took a step backward.
“Um, yes. Are you Monsieur Pelletier?”
“In the flesh,” he said, looking wary.
“I have a bad case of . . . eczema. My grandfather knew of your family and told me you were the best person to see.”
“Well, did he now?” the man said, loosening up. He walked to the gate and, opening it, put an arm out to herd us into the yard. “Just come this way. What is your grandfather’s name?”
“Um, Mercier.” Might as well keep to the truth as much as possible.
“Hmm. Common enough name, but I can’t say I remember a Mercier visiting us.”
“Apparently it was a long time ago,” I said, smiling as I watched Jules pick his way carefully through the gnomes.
“In that case, he probably saw my father, or maybe even my grandmother,” the man mused as he opened the door to his house. It was dark and warm inside, with a fire burning in one corner. Every surface of the room was filled with little glass and porcelain figurines, punctuated by tacky memorabilia from French tourist sites.
“Just come over here where it’s warm and have a seat,” he said, sitting down in a worn green easy chair and motioning for me and Jules to take two others. “You say you have eczema. Let’s have a look at it.”
“Actually . . .” I paused, thinking fast “. . . it’s not really eczema that I’m here to see you about.”
“A baby then? No. I would have been able to tell right away if you and the monsieur were expecting a happy event.” He glanced over at Jules for the first time, and his jolly expression changed quickly to one of alarm. His eyes narrowed like he couldn’t quite focus on Jules’s face, and he seemed to be trying to melt backward into his chair. The man looked scared to death.
Jules stared at me and cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry that I misled you,” I said, trying to drag the man’s attention back to myself. “I didn’t want you to turn me away. I came because someone told me your family has the power to discern if someone has a latent . . . predisposition.”
The man’s gaze swung back to me. “What type of predispos
ition?”
“I want to know if I am a latent revenant,” I said, wondering if he would even know what I was talking about.
For a moment, he seemed to be trying to remember something. As it clicked in his mind, the confusion left his face and his eyes widened in shock. “Is that what . . . he is?” he asked, pointing his thumb toward Jules.
“Yes, it is,” Jules said calmly, while throwing me a What the hell are you doing? look.
“Then, you do have that ability?” I asked simply, now wondering if this whole idea had been a big mistake.
The man’s expression quickly changed to one of uncertainty. “I . . . I don’t really know. I remember my grandmother talking about it. But she had never been asked to use that gift. I don’t even know if her own mother had.”
With an overwhelming feeling of disappointment, I began to stand. “I am so sorry to have bothered you, Monsieur Pelletier.”
“Now, now,” he said, standing himself but gesturing for me to stay seated. “Let’s not be hasty here. You came to use my gift. I let you into my house. Now I have an obligation to help you. The rules are the rules no matter how out of the ordinary the case might be.” He stared at Jules uncomfortably. “So you’re undead, are you?”
“Yes, sir,” Jules responded, looking as awkward as if the man had asked him if he wore briefs or boxers.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” the man muttered as he shuffled out of the room. “Be right back,” he yelled. “Don’t leave!”
“What are you playing at?” Jules hissed as soon as the man was out of sight. “What do you mean, asking if you’re a revenant? This is completely insane!”
“I know what Vincent is doing,” I said, leaning toward the pissed-off revenant. “I know he’s following the Dark Way.”
“Hey,” Jules said, holding his hands up in the air, “I sure as hell wasn’t the one who told you!”