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“Gee, I don’t know. You’re the one with experience killing Geistwalds. You tell me.”
I look at him and keep looking until he turns away.
“You’re not a Geistwald, so don’t give me any family outrage over Eleanor. And she was a vampire. She was already dead when I got to her.”
“But she was still walking and talking. That’s an okay kind of dead. Not the best because she needed blood to keep going, but it’s better than nothing. And you had to take that away from her. Were you jealous that for all your supposed powers, you’re still going to die like all those anonymous sheep back in town? You should have been smart and let Eleanor bite you. Or do you have something against living forever?”
Interesting question. I hadn’t thought about Eleanor’s death beyond it being one more thing I regretted. But Aki has a good point.
“I don’t have anything against immortality, but I’m not begging for it either. Are you? Is that what this is about? You think you found some way around death? How? As one of these things? Jesus, kid, I hope your brilliant idea isn’t to somehow get yourself turned into a Savant.”
“You don’t understand one damned thing that’s going on.”
The angel whispers something in my ear.
“Are you sure, Aki? If you’re not going to night school to become a Drifter, what was Eleanor doing with the Druj Ammun? Where did she get it? From you?”
“How do you even know about that?”
Aki thrashes around. Almost grabs me before falling back down.
He says, “You’re dead. You are so fucking dead. And not like Eleanor. You’ll be the kind where your soul is trapped in your rotting flesh while the city sucks it dry. L.A. belongs to the Death Born. It always has and it always will.”
That’s interesting.
“Who are the Death Born, Aki? Not you. You’re just a suburban brat. You learned your magic from watching Bewitched. Who are the Death Born?”
“Your ass is grass, man. I cannot believe how fucking dead you are.”
The angel speaks again and things fall into place.
“How’s Mutti doing? Not your birth mom. Your fun mom. Koralin. Is she all right? I hope she’s somewhere safe and sound.”
He blinks, slowly.
“Eleanor wanted me to apologize to her mom for her. To tell her that Eleanor was sorry and she only took the Druj to scare her mom the way Mom scared her and Daddy. Is what Eleanor said right? Did Mutti own the Druj? Was she controlling the Drifters? Is she the one behind this? What does she want? Does she want to join the Death Born, too?”
Aki looks away. He’s talked too much and he knows it.
I bark a couple of Hellion words. A Drifter behind Aki bursts into flame. I say the word again and another zed goes up. I tell all the dead in the neighborhood to close in on us. I start burning them all. Aki and I are in the middle of a walking bonfire.
I slap the kid and hold him down on the pavement as the temperature rises.
“She knows you’re not Rainier, doesn’t she? What is she up to? What does she want? Tell me!”
Aki’s head swivels back and forth and he’s letting out a kind of high-pitched moan that hurts my ears.
I haul him to his feet and turn him around so he has to look at burning Drifters closing in around us. Thirty more seconds and it’s officially un-fucking-comfortable in the circle. The air ripples and greasy corpse smoke hurts every time I suck in a breath. The kid goes limp in my arms and starts screaming.
“It’s Mother. Mother runs everything. Who else? Father is useless. Hiding and weeping for poor dead Eleanor. Boo-hoo.”
I turn Aki around so I can look at him. His crazy fear has turned just plain crazy. He snarls when he talks.
“We’ll own this place soon and the rest of you are going to be gone or you’re going to be food.”
I could let Aki go and turn the Drifters back, but I don’t. I hold him and let them close in. My skin turns red and starts to blister. So does Aki’s. Stark likes the pain. The angel doesn’t care.
Aki starts doing the panic moan again, so I drop him and shout another Hellion word. The Drifters fall to the ground, sizzle, and ash out. Gray flakes still red-hot at the edges float away like dirty snow.
