The Lazarus Heart Read Online Free PDF

lip.
    There comes a rumbling sound like thunder, except Lucrece knows it isn't thunder; it is much too contained and close for thunder. It rolls slowly across the roof, and she looks up at the ceiling as the windows are blown open by a sudden violent gust. The candle flames flicker, and the room fills with the smells of rain and hot wax and ozone.
    "Benjamin?" she says, louder this time. The storm seems to draw its breath, and for a moment there is only the sound of the rain coming in the window, falling on the bed and floor, peppering her face.
    And then the sound of wings, and she almost screams as the huge crow lights on the headboard and the windows slam themselves shut behind it.
    "Jesus Christ," she gulps. The bird caws loudly as if in reply, puffs out its black feathers and shakes tiny beads of water all over the damp bedspread. As it cocks its head to one side, beak like an assassin's dagger, Lucrece wonders what her sorrow has conjured from this haunted city, what dark spirit might have come to wonder at her vigil.
    She takes one step toward it, leaning forward. The crow blinks and caws again, spreads its ebony wings. Lucrece steps back and crouches at the edge of the bed.
    "Who sent you?" she asks. "Who sent you to me?"
    "Lucrece," a voice behind her says, a voice as familiar and as alien as anything she could ever imagine, a voice that carries everything it's felt and everything it's seen wedged fiercely between every word. She's too afraid to turn and see, her heart going mad inside her chest, but she knows that despite her fear she will have to turn around sooner or later. Like Orpheus or Lot's wife, never mind the penalty of seeing. The not- seeing is a thousand times more horrible.
    "Jared," she says, whispers more quietly than a whisper. "Is it. . . ?" "Yes, Lucrece," he says. "Yes," and she turns to see.

    Jared has been following the bird for what seems like miles, down the wet streets of leering, suspicious faces and cars that honked when he didn't get out of their way. He thinks that the bird has put something inside him, a burning thread so bright it could blind him and blot out the rest of the world, a hungry cutting thing that has dragged him through the storm to this place he never would have come on his own.
    When the crow led him to the Quarter, he'd stood for a while across the street from the apartment, silently watching the bedroom window through the rain. He wondered at the dim flickering light visible through the lace curtains, at who might live there now that he was dead. Then the bird leaped into the air from its perch on the lamp post and the wire coiled inside Jared pulled taut again, and he followed the black wings.
    Downstairs the security door was standing open, so that anyone might walk in off the street, any crackhead with a gun, or thief, or killer. He'd pulled it shut behind him and the iron bars clanged hard and hollow like the door to a prison cell.
    And now he stands in the doorway of the bedroom where Benny died, and Lucrece is on her knees in front of him. The crow is watching him from the bed. He feels the wire in his soul slacken and he swallows, still tastes the chemicals, still tastes stale death like a hangover, an aftertaste like old vomit and alcohol and cigarettes.
    "Why?" he says. The voice seems to come from somewhere nearby, but not really from his throat or his tongue. Jared can think of nothing else worth asking, nothing else that could possibly matter except that one word, "Why?" and so he says it again.
    Lucrece seems incapable of answering him, stares unbelieving and speechless. She looks so much like Benny it hurts to see her there, Benny's impossible, identical female twin. Jared feels as if he's falling, holds on to the door frame for some support, but there's nothing to combat the vertigo sucking at his bare feet. The apartment, this fucking room, kept like an altar because she's too weak to let go. The bird seems to smile, and he wishes his hands were around