CHAPTER 32
Me of the pithy comebacks stared at Ruthie and said, “Huh?”
“Mait has the ability to raise the dead.”
The light in my brain finally flickered. “Armageddon here we come,” I muttered. “What the hell else was in that book?”
“We’re never gonna know.”
Maybe I was glad Jimmy had burned it. But what about Ruthie?
“Did you tell him to burn the book?” I asked.
“Me?” She seemed genuinely surprised. I didn’t buy it.
“Did you?”
Ruthie shook her head. “Didn’t know you’d found the thing until it went up in flames.”
“You and me both,” I muttered. “Just once I’d like to find out something before it’s too late to stop it.”
“Who said it’s too late?”
I tapped my temple. “I just saw the guy raising zombies—”
“Not zombies,” Ruthie corrected. “People.”
“People,” I repeated.
“You saw what he did. Were the beings that Mait raised shambling, moaning, dropping body parts across the ground as they ran?”
“No,” I said slowly. That they were running at all was a pretty neat trick considering. “They moved normally. Silently. I didn’t see them well enough to know if they had rotten ears and fingers, but—”
“They didn’t,” she said. “They won’t need to eat human flesh to survive, either.”
“Always a plus,” I murmured. “What will they eat?”
“Same thing they always did. Mait raised them to life.”
“He can raise anything?”
“Anything with human blood.”
“Nephilim, too, then?”
“In theory,” Ruthie said.
“I bet he makes that theory into a fact real soon.”
The Grigori wouldn’t even need to escape Tartarus to replenish their Nephilim army. All they’d have to do was raise their cohorts back to life and everything the federation had done would be erased; all those who’d died for this cause would have died in vain.
“Not on my watch,” I muttered. I was so going to kill this guy. But first he and I would have a chat.
Ruthie stared at me, waiting to hear more questions, or perhaps just my plan. I didn’t have one, but I would. I always did. I liked plans.
“Once these beings are raised they’re exactly as they were before they died?” I asked. Maybe Sawyer wasn’t gone forever after all. Which, considering what we were up against, was such good news.
“I doubt anyone’s been dead would come back exactly the same.”
“But you just said—”
“Physically yes. Mentally?” Ruthie shrugged. “They were dead. No tellin’ how that affected their minds.”
“Terrific,” I muttered. “We’ve got crazy un-zombies running around New Orleans.”
“Not yet.”
“I saw them, Ruthie.”
“You saw the future.”
I frowned. “How far in the future?”
Ruthie’s sober dark eyes met mine. “Mait’s been cooped up in that church for a while. Right now I’d say he’s gettin’ lap dances on Bourbon.”
I stood so fast my chair skidded back and nearly fell over.
“Calm down. Sit down,” she ordered.
“If he’s on Bourbon, I could grab him tonight. No one would even notice.”
Not that it would matter if they did. It would just be easier if they didn’t.
“It’s August in New Orleans, Lizbeth, not Mardi Gras. Someone would notice.”
She was right. I sat down. “I can’t afford to let him slip away.”
“You know where he’ll be.”
“I’ll stake out the cemetery,” I murmured.
“I would.”
“Just to be safe, how do I kill an un-zombie zombie?”
“No special way. They’re the same, physically, as when they died the first time.”
“Plain old murder then.”
“Lizbeth,” Ruthie said on a sigh.
“I need to know. What if something happens on the way to the cemetery? What if I fall and I can’t get up? What if Mait does his dirty deed and raises a hundred thousand souls? Then what?”
“Chaos,” Ruthie whispered.
“Worse. The only reason to raise the dead is to create an army for the final battle.”
“And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon,” Ruthie quoted.
Everyone’s heard about Armageddon—and I don’t mean the Bruce Willis movie, but the OK Corral of the Apocalypse. Technically Armageddon is where the last battle between good and evil should take place.
As stated in Revelation 16:16, the word harmageddon means “the mount of Megiddo,” literally the mountain of slaughter, and it’s located in northern Israel. More than two hundred battles have been fought on that extended plain near the mount. Napoleon once called it “the most natural battleground on the whole earth.” He believed all the armies of the world could maneuver across such a vast space, and from the photos I’ve seen they could. From what I’ve read, they’ll have to.
Sounds like I paid attention the day they taught Revelation, doesn’t it? Wrong. I looked it up last week.