“I can’t. Evy, promise me.”
“Anything.”
The hand holding mine squeezed harder. “Live.”
My insides quaked. Everything in me screamed to get help, to fight and save him—even though I knew I couldn’t.
“Evy?”
“I promise.” I brushed my lips across his. When I pulled back, a single tear had marked a slick track down his cheek. My chest ached. Scorching tears pooled in my own eyes, stung my nose.
I held on until his hand loosened around mine. His eyelids drooped, forever hiding his glimmering black eyes. His chest rose once more and stopped. He lay so still I thought the world had frozen in place. Then an anguished scream broke the spell, and I realized it was me.
Until that moment, I’d never known the word “heartbroken” as anything other than a metaphor. Yet as I gathered Wyatt in my trembling arms and held him to my chest, I felt it happen. Something inside me shattered, releasing rage and anguish unlike anything I’d ever felt—whole and feral and never-ending. I pitched headlong into the despair of loss, with the last person I cared for in the world dead in my arms.
My descent into grief, however, was cut short rather rudely by a blinding gray light. Even with my eyes closed, it was all I could see. It blasted through me like a lightning bolt, electrifying every nerve ending. I was falling into consuming fire that did not burn. It invigorated me and, within the chaos of pain and ecstasy, a life played out in my mind’s eye.
A little girl so lonely she prefers playing with stuffed animals to other children, misunderstood by unknowing parents, misguided by well-meaning counselors. A misfit in high school who acts out and makes bad choices and ends up in trouble more times than her beleaguered parents can bail her out. Coping with the loss of everyone important to her and the desperate need for a fresh start.
They could have been my own memories, save the faces of the players and the point at which they diverged. For while my story ended in a fulfilling job with the Triads, this girl’s story ended in a tub of hot, bloody water. It was Chalice’s life that I experienced, all of her memories coming to the surface as the pact made between Wyatt and Tovin shattered.
Wyatt was dead. I got to live. Forever trapped in someone else’s body, with her life tucked into the back of my mind. Alive. Whole. And furious.
I see her walking across a college campus, balancing too many books and a coffee cup. A clumsy, harried young man knocks the books to the ground, getting coffee on his khakis. Alex. He gathers her books, smiling his sunny smile at her. I felt her love for him—genuine affection for a gentle soul who accepted her, warts and all. So undeserving of his violent fate.
How was I seeing these things? Chalice Frost was long dead, her soul at rest. Was memory more than just consciousness? Had some of her remained behind, her body as much a part of memory as her soul had been? I had enough trouble with my own memories and emotions; I didn’t need someone else’s crowding my head.
The gray light faded. Still holding Wyatt, I no longer felt the hard pavement beneath me. The cloying odor of earth and leaves clued me in before I got a good look. I had transported us both, quite by accident, into the woods. I could still hear the distant hum of voices, the occasional spatter of gunfire, the residual stink of the explosion.
Had my release from Tovin’s spell made me powerful enough to transport not just myself, but others? The evidence was in our new location, and the very faint ache between my eyes. My entire body thrummed with energy. It cycled up into me, like a lifeline to the earth itself. With full possession of Chalice’s body, I had tapped into the Break and was helpless to turn it off.
I eased Wyatt to the carpet of leaves. His head listed to the side and lay still. I touched his cheek, his forehead, memorizing his face. Revenge hadn’t felt so good when I enacted it for myself, but I had a feeling revenge was going to taste wonderful when I tore it out of Tovin’s ass.
Something poked my thigh as I rocked back on my heels, preparing to stand. I dug into my jeans pocket, the tips of my fingers sliding around something solid and hot. The crystal Horzt gave me. I pulled it out and held it between my forefinger and thumb. The clear crystal had turned cloudy white and was fiery to the touch. It seemed to pulse with life of its own.
When the time comes, you will know how to use it.
A tiny flare of hope burned bright in the back of my mind, but I refused to acknowledge it. It was too much to expect. I had lost everyone I loved. Wyatt was no different. So why did the crystal burn with life of its own?
I untied the blood-soaked bandanna from Wyatt’s arm and ripped a hole in the sleeve of the shirt. The wound was small, maybe the size of a dime. I poised the pointed tip of the crystal above the bullet hole. My stomach fluttered. I couldn’t dare to hope. I pushed the crystal in, down through torn flesh, until its length disappeared and blood oozed out to cover its presence completely. I kept my hand over it, uncertain what to do next.
“Please,” I said.
The skin beneath my hand warmed—from the crystal or my pressure, I didn’t know. The hard butt of the crystal softened until I no longer felt it. It seemed to melt into him. Hotter still, for only a moment, and then it cooled. I let go and brushed away the drying blood. The skin on his arm, once torn, was mended. I checked the other side—no exit wound.
My heart dared to hope, pounding hard, threatening to choke me, but Wyatt didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes or suck in a ragged breath. Hope shattered into despair.
I put my right hand on his chest, threaded the fingers of my left above it, and depressed. One, two, three, four, five. “Come on, Wyatt.” One, two, three, four, five. “Come on, damnit.”
Again, nothing. I pounded with a closed fist. Fury and tears blinded me, choked me. No reaction. The crystal had been too little, too late.
“Fuck!”
I collapsed against his chest, too exhausted to sob. No more energy for grief. I couldn’t make his heart beat. I couldn’t force him to breathe. I couldn’t do anything, except finish the task we’d started together. Tovin had lost his vessel for the Tainted, but I had no illusions that he’d just roll over and give up. Creatures that cunning always had a failsafe.
Force his hand. You can win.
“I hope so.” I touched Wyatt’s lips with the tip of my finger, positive the warmth I felt was a figment of hope. “If I don’t, I’ll see you soon.”
I stood up, tapped into the Break with little effort, and thought about the line of Jeeps. Colors swirled. The world dissolved into a pale ache that lasted only until movement ceased, and I found myself face-to-face with a very stunned Kismet.
“Where the hell did you come from?” she asked. “Where’s Wyatt?”
“Dead,” I said, surprised at the even tone of my voice. “What’s our situation here?” She frowned, but I didn’t care how she interpreted my question. I had to finish this before I let myself fall to pieces.
“No movement inside the Center,” she said. “The Halfies aren’t attacking, but the Bloods are getting itchy, and we still can’t get past that barrier.”
“What about the thing they used the first time?”
“They only had the one, and getting another takes both time and money.”
“What if I can get us through? Well, me and maybe two others.”
“How?”
“A little trick I picked up along the way, but I don’t think I can carry more than two. Hell, I might not even get us across the barrier, so I’d pick two volunteers who don’t mind the distinct possibility of being smashed into putty when we try and spectacularly fail.”
“I’m in,” Tybalt said. He fell in next to Kismet, his mouth set in a grim line. “How about you, boss?”
She gave him a sideways look. Nodded. She pulled her walkie-talkie. “Baylor, come in.”
It crackled briefly. A male voice said, “Go ahead, Kis.”