Dying Light (34 page)

I scream and erupt in the brightest
flames yet. My shield shimmers and fades, leaving me exposed.
Caldwell grabs me again, and I clamp my arms on his, pinning him
against me.

I fully ignite, the blue white fire
engulfing us both.

I swallow my pain, refusing to let him
go. “You want to burn? Let’s burn.”

Ally

B
lue fire erupts on one side of the cathedral. At first, I
think it’s a trick of the light. Some cop car has cut down a side
street or a helicopter beam was momentarily reflected in the glass.
Then I see it again. A bright blue explosion.

“
There,” I say and squeeze
Nikki’s arm. “They’re in that part of the church.”

Just as I say it, windows blow out the
other side and glass rains down onto the pavement.

“
Jesse is on this side,” I
insist. “Unless someone else is shooting blue fire. Unless someone
was just murdered.”

I have to believe she’s alive. After
all, everything in me tells me that if Jesse were to die, I would
know it. But everyone believes that, don’t they? They think their
love and connection is so strong that if one were to die, the other
would surely know, instantly.

I take a breath, but it’s hard. It
feels as though there is very little air in my lungs.

“
You have to at least put
on the vest,” Nikki says.

She’s trying to strap thick black
material over my body, and I’m resisting, shrugging her off like
the dark water of my thoughts.

“
Wear it, Nat, or I’m
going to lock you in the back of the truck,” she says, angry with
me.

I freeze.

Nikki’s face blanches. “Sorry. Shit.
I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“
Who’s Nat?” I ask as
members of her team come up and lay explosives against the side of
the cathedral. So that’s the plan—blast our way in. Jesse would
certainly approve.

“
Natalie,” Nikki says.
“She was my wife.”

I feel like she’s punched
me in the gut. The little air in my lungs goes whooshing out again.
“
Wife
?”

“
For all of four months,”
Nikki says. “Before she was shot and killed.”

Another eruption of blue fire shines
through the windows.

“
You’re going to tell me
all about it later.” For now, I have to stay focused on rescuing
Jesse.

The layer of demolition bricks is
finished. “We’re ready,” someone says.

“
Okay, move back,” Nikki
calls out, and we all move away from the cathedral, back across the
street, back behind the armored trucks. When everyone is safe
behind the trucks, Nikki gives the order. “Demolition in
3…2…1…”

Jesse

C
aldwell is screaming.

The more he screams, the more
invigorated I feel. A powerful pleasure as intense as the flames
burning around me, rolls through my body.

Yes
, I think.
Yes, I want to see you
hurt for what you’ve done.

An explosion rips apart the wall on my
right but I don’t let go of Caldwell. Someone is going to have to
rip my arms off to make me let go of him.

“
Jesse?” Ally’s voice is
carried into the room by the wind blowing in from the giant hole
they made.

“
She’s going to kill him,”
Nikki says, her voice surprised.

Yeah. I’m going to kill Caldwell.
Right here and now and I’ve never wanted anything more in my
life.

“
No!” Ally rushes forward
and throws her coat over me. It disintegrates in the flames, the
remnants of the fabric burn to ash and float up and away. “No,
Jesse, stop! You can’t absorb all his powers at once, it’ll make
you crazy!”

Still I don’t let go. That is, until a
huge chunk of what-the-fuck sends me flying across the room. I slam
into the wall, breathless. A stabbing pain racks my spine, causing
me to scream out.

I’m still screaming as a shadowy shape
climbs over the debris, an assault of gray light filtering in
behind her. Then the form solidifies and I see Ally’s face, her
eyes fixing on me as she clamors over chunks of marble.

“
Can you hear
me?”

I can’t answer her. All I can do is
scream and squirm against the pain.

“
Be still,” she commands.
“Be still, I can see you healing. Just give it a
minute.”

“
Caldwell—”

Ally looks around the room. “He’s
gone.”

“
What about Georgia and
Maisie?”

“
Maisie I see. No
Georgia.”

“
Rachel?”

Ally turns away from me for a third
time and has an exchange with someone I can’t see.

“
She’s dead,” Ally says,
voice low.

“
Dead
dead, or like just-for-the-weekend dead?” I speak through
gritted teeth, but at least I can speak. Ally is right. I am
healing.

“
We’re not sure,” Ally
says at long last. “Let’s get you out of here.”

My skin and flesh tingle. I can feel
tendons tightening around bones and the strange feeling of those
bones shifting back into place. It feels like an army of ants have
swarmed my body, doing these repairs with their tiny ant
hands.

“
What the hell hit
me?”

“
Marble,” Nikki says,
kneeling down in front of me. “How’s your head? How many fingers am
I holding up?”

I flip her the bird. “This
many.”

Nikki groans and wanders away from
me.

“
Close your eyes! Close
your eyes!”

Ally is screaming her head off. I
crane my neck in time to see an Asian woman standing in the middle
of the room. A burst of bright white light floods the
room.

“
Shit.” I cover my face.
“What the hell?”

Gun fire goes off, the rat-tat-tat-tat
of bullets flying ricochet off the walls. The sound is deafening,
making my ears ring horribly. Then the light stops.

I blink open my eyes and squint
against the dots floating there. It’s a full minute before the room
comes into focus.

Nikki and Ally are staring down at the
corpse of the Asian woman. Her brains are spread all over the
floor.

“
So what happens now that
she’s dead, but no one absorbs her power?”

Another is
called.

“
Just great,” I groan,
pulling myself to standing. Ally rushes forward and slips her arms
under mine. “Now we’ll have one partis out there that we don’t know
about.”

Jesse

“C
ome on, buddy.” I call for Winston. I see him lying against
the wall where Rachel had slammed Georgia into the ceiling. I call
his name again.

Winston doesn’t move. A chill runs
down my spine and a knot forms in my chest.

“
Get up, buddy, we’ve got
to go.”

Winston still doesn’t move after I
cross the room and kneel down in front of him. I pull him into my
lap. He falls into my hands, heavy and a little cold.

“
Winston?”

Dead.

Winston’s dead. I roll him over and
see blood coming out of the corner of his mouth.

“
No, no, no, no, no,” I
scream, my hands igniting in blue flames. His fur singes under my
touch, blackening like a plague. I fall back, scooting away,
terrified I’m going to ignite his little body.

Tears stream out of my
eyes.

“
Jesse?” Ally
asks.

“
He’s dead,” I say to no
one in particular, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand.
“Winston’s dead. He laid there and bled out with no one to hold him
or tell him he’s okay or fucking save him.”

My flames die. I can’t sustain them
without anger. And I’m not angry now. I’m crushed. Totally
crushed.

I blink back tears and see Maisie
coming onto her knees beside Winston.

“
No, Maisie, don’t.” I get
up. “Leave him alone.”

She turns him over in her hands, her
palms slicking red with blood.

“
Stop it.”

She bends down, and I think she’s
going to kiss his little nose. But she doesn’t kiss him. She
puckers her lips and blows a thin, steady stream of air up into his
nostrils.

She does this three times, and on the
third time, Winston’s eyes come open. He rolls over and pushes
himself on to his feet, shaking off like he does when I pull him
from the bath. The blood is still stuck to his side, but he’s
alive. He’s breathing.

I snatch him up and squeeze him. I
kiss his nose a hundred thousand times and cry into his fur. He
wheezes. I’m probably choking him to death.

“
Oh god, sorry.
Sorry.”

Maisie places a hand on his fur,
meeting my eyes.

“
You’re really partis,” I
tell her. “I thought maybe Caldwell was just fucking with my
head.”

“
Life,” she says. “Mom’s
Death, and I’m Life. Death gave birth to Life.” She half
laughs.

“
That’s why he locked you
up.” I’m putting all the pieces together.

“
He didn’t want any of the
partis finding me.”

“
You have to come with
us,” I tell her. “You can’t stay with him, especially not if you’re
partis. He’ll kill you, you know that right? He’s probably
murdering your mom right now.”

“
No,” Maisie says. “He
can’t kill his human heart until last.”

Winston licks my face and I’m so happy
his little snot face is breathing, I don’t give two shits that he’s
snotting in my ear. I search his fur for injuries but I don’t see
any.

“
The human heart can’t die
until right before the apex ascends.” Maisie looks at Ally.
“Haven’t you wondered why he hasn’t killed her yet?”

I follow her gaze to Ally.

“
She’s my human heart?” I
ask. “I’m assuming this is some kind of weird metaphor, right?
Because I’ve totally got a muscle beating in my chest right now,
and I’m pretty sure it’s human—unless someone slipped some pig’s
heart in there when I was dead and didn’t tell me.”

“
That’s why he planted
Lane,” she says. “He was trying to make a new human heart for you,
one he could control.”

My chest aches. “I hoped he was lying
about that.”

“
No,” Maisie says, she
looks away as if ashamed. “He brought him to Chicago once. He was
wearing this smiley face button.”

I know the button she pulls out of her
bag.

“
How do you know about the
heart?” I ask her.

“
Because Mom is his human
heart,” Maisie says, scratching Winston behind the ear. “And I’m
hers. We’re all sort of stuck together, the three of
us.”

She looks around the room and a
darkness fills her eyes. She’s too young for all this. She should
be reading comic books and eating chocolate. She shouldn’t be
breathing dead dogs back to life in a room full of
bodies.

“
It’s like one of those
cubes,” she says. “Where you have to move it right so all the
colors line up. He needs you to be mad so you fight, but not too
mad, or you’ll win. He can kill everyone but me and mom. Then he’ll
have to decide who he wants to challenge. If he kills me first, mom
will be stronger. If he kills mom, we will be evenly matched, both
heartless.”

“
But he’ll have more
powers,” I say, kindly overlooking the fact that she just ran an
entire scenario where I’m clearly dead and have failed at
life.

“
If Mom dies, I won’t want
to live anyway.”

“
Are you
sure
he brainwashed
Lane?” I ask her. “I mean, you were locked in a tower when we met.
I’m not sure I believe you’re his confidant.”

“
I listen,” she says. “I
know things.”

Unfortunately, I believe
her.

Her face softens. “Maybe he did really
like you. Before dad talked to him, I mean. Maybe the feelings are
real.”

Maybe.

“
We need to go,” Ally
says, pulling on my arm. “Nikki has a truck.”

Nikki and more men in black vests file
into the room. They got a couple of body bags between them, but
Rachel gets a stretcher. Jeremiah and the black man are left
standing.

I point an accusatory finger at the
black man. “He’s partis. He can’t come. He’s going to slit my
throat when I’m not looking.”

He holds his palms out. “I ain’t got
no problem with nobody.”

“
This is Monroe. We found
him hiding in a closet,” Nikki says. “He wasn’t fighting. Cindy was
dead on the floor, but it doesn’t look like he touched them. Not a
drop of blood on his hands or person.”

“
Would there have been
blood?” Ally asks.