The crows flew toward me in a swarm, and then, suddenly, I was looking up at the Black Knight sitting upon his armored horse. I scrambled backward, away from him. I didn’t know why he’d saved me, but I didn’t trust him. He’d already killed me once. Maybe he’d come back for an encore performance.
But the Black Knight only looked down at me with his usual stoic silence.
“Um … thanks?” I said. It didn’t sound convincing.
He lifted one black gauntlet and pointed at me.
“Yeah, I know, I’m alive even though you killed me. You’re not the first to be confused by that.”
He didn’t answer. Then I realized it wasn’t me he was pointing at. It was the Anubis Hand lying on the ground beside me.
“You want the staff?”
His black helmet tipped forward. That was a yes.
I looked at the Anubis Hand. It was his, after all. But there was no way he could have remembered it, or what it could do against Stryge, unless—
Unless something had changed.
I turned back to the Black Knight. “You remember! You finally remember!”
His helmet tipped again. He held out his gauntlet. I stood up and passed the Anubis Hand to him.
“Give him hell, Willem,” I said.
He nudged his horse forward. Holding the Anubis Hand in one gauntlet and the heavy chain reins in the other, he charged Stryge. The tremendous Ancient roared at him, clenching his claws into mighty fists. For a moment it was as though I’d stepped back in time to the seventeenth century, back before New York City even existed, to when the battle between Willem Van Lente and Stryge had played out for the first time.
Van Lente swung the Anubis Hand and struck Stryge just above the knee. There was a bright flare at the point of impact, and Stryge howled in agony. The earth seemed to tremble harder with his anger. He swiped at Van Lente with a massive claw, but he was sluggish from the pain. Van Lente galloped past him, out of reach.
Van Lente turned and rode by a second time, swinging the Anubis Hand again. It hit Stryge in the other leg. Again there was a bright flash, and Stryge stumbled. Van Lente struck him in the chest, and Stryge roared in pain and fell onto his back. He stayed down, his breathing ragged. Was it over? Would Van Lente take his head again and leave the Ancient dormant once more?
Van Lente dismounted, and his black-armored horse vanished like an illusion. He approached Stryge, carrying the Anubis Hand in one gauntlet, and with his other he drew his sword. Stryge’s arm lashed out suddenly, knocking the staff out of Van Lente’s grasp. The Ancient stood, bellowing in rage, and picked up the staff. He effortlessly snapped it in two, as if the metal were no stronger than rotten driftwood. Then he crushed the pieces to dust, including the mummified fist, destroying the Anubis Hand utterly.
Shit, I thought, but Van Lente wasn’t finished yet. He slashed Stryge’s forearm with his sword, and the Ancient’s impenetrable skin sliced open under the sharp edge of the blade. Stryge bellowed in pain, and my heart leaped in my chest. I’d been right about Van Lente’s sword—it was the only weapon that could penetrate Stryge’s hide.
But then, with an angry swipe of his other arm, Stryge knocked Van Lente to the ground. The Ancient loomed over his dazed, prostrate form.
Damn. History should have told me Van Lente couldn’t do this alone. Four hundred years ago, the Lenape Indians had had his back. Today, I was all he had. I started running, but it felt like I was moving through molasses. Stryge lifted his giant foot over Van Lente, then brought it crashing down to the ground. A second before it struck, Van Lente disappeared and a dozen crows flew away into the sky.
The crows stopped in midflight, stuck in the air like flies on a glue strip, and Stryge unmade them. The crows came apart into little black pieces—beaks, wings, legs, feathers, all spinning in place in the red-tinted air. Stryge released them, and the pieces fell to the ground like discarded trash.
I ran to where they’d fallen. When I got there, the birds were gone and Van Lente was lying on the ground, whole once more, but broken. Both his legs and one of his arms were twisted at odd angles, and he couldn’t move them. His helmet remained bent to one side, as though his neck were broken. He didn’t speak or make a sound, but looking at him I could tell he was in agony.
I knelt beside him. “Willem.”
He pointed with his good arm at his sword lying on the ground near me. It had fallen free of its scabbard.
“You want your sword?” I asked. He shook his helmet ever so slightly. “You want me to use it?” He tried to nod, then struck the gauntleted fist of his good hand against his chest, over his heart.
I knew what he was asking me to do, and I shook my head. “No, I won’t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Your armor—your shell is too strong.”
He pointed at the sword again, more emphatically this time, and I understood. Jibril-khan had said Van Lente carried with him the only spell that could kill him. I realized now the gargoyle had meant the sword. Strong enough to cut off an Ancient’s head, it was also strong enough to penetrate Van Lente’s shell, to pierce his heart, his one vulnerable spot.
I looked down at his mangled form. “But you can fix yourself, can’t you? You have magic.”
Van Lente shook his head again, then tapped his chest plate once more. The infection had turned him into this. It had remade him as a monster and kept him alive for centuries. It would likely continue to keep him alive, even now, broken and in agony. He wanted me to put him out of his misery. He’d been a hero once. He’d sacrificed everything, even his own humanity, to save the city he loved. Didn’t he deserve some peace at last? How could I deny him that?
With a heavy heart, I picked up the sword. “I’m sorry, Willem,” I said. He shook his head as if to tell me I shouldn’t be. I took a deep breath, lifted the sword high, and then drove it into his heart.
Van Lente’s form erupted in a fountain of fire, smoke, and crackling, strobing lights. I backed away from the blaze, a hand in front of my face to shield me from the heat. Within the flames I saw his silhouette, the stag horns of his helmet burning like lightning-struck trees, his tattered cape going up like flash paper, his black form now glowing orange from the intense heat. And then all I could see was the burning fountain of fire.
The flames died down almost immediately, fading to a blackened circle of glowing embers and charred grass on the ground. In the middle of the circle, a bearded, middle-aged man lay naked and still, his eyes closed, his face peaceful beneath close-cropped white hair. Willem Van Lente in his true form. I knelt down beside him and reached out to touch his face, but he faded like an apparition before I could, leaving nothing behind but a patch of burnt earth.
And his sword.
I picked up it up, and stood. I turned around to face Stryge.
He was walking away from me, toward the south end of the park, as though Van Lente and I had been nothing but minor distractions. With each step he took, rocks, plants, and trees lifted off the ground and broke apart in the air. Great columns of water exploded out of the Hudson River alongside the park and hung shimmering in the air. Stryge was unmaking everything.
“Hey, asshole,” I called.
He kept walking.
“Stryge!” I shouted.
That got his attention. He turned around, snarling with rage. My courage dropped into my belly. Shit. Now that I had his attention, what the hell was I going to do?
A peculiar feeling came over me then, a sense that I wasn’t alone. I felt others behind me—Morbius, Ingrid, Thornton, even Willem Van Lente—all those who had made a stand against evil before me. They stood with me now as if to say, for better or worse, I was a part of something bigger. Bigger than me, bigger than Isaac’s team, bigger even than Stryge. It was what Ingrid had called the good fight, what she’d begged with her dying breath not to let end with her. It was the mantle she’d asked Isaac to take up, and by extension all of us to take up. And then, like an answer to my question, I knew what I had to do.