Page 168 of Dead Vengeance

Images come to life in my mind’s eye, blood seeping up from the grass and the ground, dripping back into the wound in Archer’s body. The flesh healing itself, the bones the bullet snapped apart cracking to life. I hear them. Viscerally. Above the screams, I hear the sound of Archer’s body healing.

Marsden convulses, then goes still. But the pain hasn’t stopped. It thrills through me, on and on until finally it weakens in that one hand, finishing the journey up my arm. Life energy. The last of it. Marsden’s dead now. Whatever’s left of him speeds up my arm, through my chest, then boom! Archer’s heart slams to life beneath my palm.

Two hands dig into my shoulders and I’m thrown back, but Jem catches me, braces me as my eyes fling open just in time to see it: Archer’s first breath—a deep, gasping breath that shakes his entire body.

He’s alive.

He’s alive!

“Archer? Are you okay? Archer!” I throw myself on him, hands grasping all over him, desperate to hear a word from him, desperate to know this really worked, that he’s whole again, that he’s come back to me.

He doesn’t speak. Only slips his arms around me and pulls me to his chest, fingers deep in my hair, holding me to the bloody shirt that bears the mark of the bullet that killed him. He kisses my head, his tears mingling with mine, his hands shaking.

Finally, I hear him ask, “Did you do this?” But when I look up, his eyes are locked onto Jem.

Jem laughs and shakes his head. Archer’s gaze moves first to Simon, then Fabian, then Edgar, who flaps down and lands on Marsden’s bloody, fleshless corpse.

“Holy fuck!” Archer shouts, flinging us both back from the mess of bloody pulp in his urgency to get away from it.

“I didn’t do that!” I blurt out. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t… flay people. That wasn’t me.”

“What?” he rasps. “Why would I think that was you?” Again he surveys the corpse, looking like he might be sick. “Who the hell flayed him?”

“Well…” It doesn’t look good either way, so I may as well come out with it. “Jem did it,” I admit. Archer’s eyes grow even wider, as if he’s just discovered we’re in a Stephen King novel gone wrong, so I rush to add, “But Marsden was very evil. More evil than we even realised. And Tezcatlipoca demanded a sacrifice—”

“A sacrifice?” he whispers. “Tezcatlipoca was here?”

“Yeah. In order to bring you back, he wanted a sacrifice.” He stares at me a long moment. “Because Marsden killed you.”

Archer’s hand falls on his chest. He looks down to see the damage to his clothes, pressed against the firm and unblemished skin beneath.

“I felt it,” he says. “I felt when I died. When he shot me. But then I felt…” He knows. I can see right there in the mixture of terror and adoration in his eyes, fixed on mine, that he knows. “I felt you. It was you, wasn’t it?”

I nod, tears spilling over. “That was me. He gifted me… um… what you have. I can see them now.” I look around at the ghosts still watching us, still providing their mumbled commentary. “I see them all. Just like you do.”

“Honey, no.” His hand falls on my cheek, his head shaking, a great sadness, the pain and fear so clear in every expression. “Not for me. No, not for me.”

I wrap my fingers around the neckline of his bloody shirt. “I would do anything for you. I’ve fallen for you, Archer. And now I’d do anything.” I wrench him in, kiss him. His arms enfold me. He kisses me back, and I’m exactly where I belong. I know I am. I don’t care about the future, or about the difficulties I’m yet to face. This is right. This is… fate.

“Hmmmm?” The sound is deep and warm and unmistakably familiar. It breaks our embrace, and we both freeze when we register the sight before us.

Tezcatlipoca, parading around the graveyard, wearing Marsden’s skin, looking very pleased with himself.

Jem claps his hands, laughing. “You look incredible.”

“Thank you,” says Tezcatlipoca. “It’s been a while since I’ve had one of these.”

He does a little twirl, and both Archer and I turn to look at Jem. He gives a small raise of his shoulder. “He’s very fashion conscious, actually. In his own way.”

Clearly we’re both having trouble finding words, but I get there first with, “How… How can you know that? Why is he… What are you two?”

“Aw, Tez? He’s… I met him on the other side, a few months back, and we just got to talking. One thing led to another…” He grins over at Tezcatlipoca, who grins back at him. “We’re friends now. But… good friends.”

Tezcatlipoca chuckles, and so does Jem, and there’s a distinct bashfulness about him.

What the fuck?

“You and… Tezcatlipoca?” I vaguely manage.