39. Daphne Dark, Violent Things
thirty-nine
Daphne: Dark, Violent Things
I blinked in the quiet of Thay’s room, noticing the crumpled sheets, a pile of dirty t-shirts, and hundreds of newly sketched images of me taped onto the plaster.
Thay didn’t do messy. He was constantly lining things up and creating structure, unless his internal world was on fire.
If you caught his boots in the middle of the floor, you could almost always predict a storm heading your way.
But this time, it was me. My being in Maine had broken him, messy sheets and all.
The thought barely settled before something slammed against the door, and I jumped, stumbling back toward the window when another thud jolted the floorboards. My heart raced, flooding my mouth with silver as I scrambled for the gun on the bedside table.
The weight of it hit me harder than the noise.
How I had survived in this world without ever pulling a trigger was beyond me. Still, it didn’t feel right in my hands. Maybe it was because Thay had always held the gun.
SLAM.
My head jerked north toward the unsettling screech of something dragging above when another sound hit. This time closer. Too close.
Bang!
I fell on my face, calling out the only name my mouth knew how to form.
And then I saw it.
My eyes caught on the edge of a familiar tattoo beneath the doorway.
“Thay?” I mouthed again, but this time for a different reason. “Thayor.”
Something fractured behind my eyes, and before I could stop myself, I reached for the doorknob and swung it wide.
“Thay!” I cried out, tossing my hands over my mouth when everything sputtered, breaking the smear of red on the floor into strange, jagged pulses. Nothing felt real.
Pulse.
Blade’s door swayed in the absence of wind.
Pulse.
But he wasn’t screaming. Maybe he was still asleep?
Pulse.
My eyes shifted to the window at the end of the hallway, where a pair of Converse shoes scraped the glass.
No!
Pulse.
Blood rushed into my ears before another set of shoes hit beside them.
Red laces.
Jessie.
Pulse.
And then a third, slipping and twisting, until his rope snapped.
Nathem.
Pulse.
“Wolfe,” I cried, scrambling to my knees when I crashed into the body that slumped before me. The curve of his shape was so perfectly familiar. So fucking mine! “Thay?!”
I turned just in time to vomit against the wall, my stomach twisting from the inside. Holy fuck.
I blinked hard, forcing myself into something like clarity. Something like breath… but all of it was floating, and I couldn’t touch any of it.
“We’ve got to go, Thay,” I said, dragging him under the arms, scanning the walls for any sign of movement.
“Daph?” he grumbled, swatting me from his body, but I ignored it, using everything I had to pull him behind the door. “Let me go,” he ground out when I shifted him an inch and buckled onto his shoulders.
He was so heavy.
Fuck, no.
“Why did you do this?” my voice broke as I attempted again, this time sliding him a little more.
“I didn’t want them going into the room and finding you,” he mumbled, his head falling to the side. “I knew they’d leave if they took their shot.”
Fucking asshole.
“Wolfe is.. um.. he is…”
“Shhh,” Thay whispered. “You need to go. Take the gun from my table and climb out the fire escape,” he ground out through the pain. “But stay by the wall in case they are still up there. Don’t let them see you.”
“What?” I shook my head in protest. “I am not leaving you here. Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“GET THE FUCK OUT of here, Daphne!” It took everything he had to force the words out, but I refused.
Instead, I kept my mind moving.
I leaned forward, catching sight of his stomach, swallowing hard when I discovered pieces of his intestines pushing through. Grabbing one of his shirts, I moved fast, straddling his lower half while I wrapped it around him.
“We will stop the bleeding until the ambulance arrives," I explained, pulling out my phone and sending for help.
“You don’t understand.” He tried to grab my wrist, but he was too weak to hold it.
I slid a second shirt behind his back, pressing hard over the wound and tying it tight. It would not hold, but I needed time. Just a little more time!
“My last name is on your skin, and that makes you a traitor. Don’t you get it? They will hang you next to Wolfe!”
No, Wolfe’s not dead! He’s going to fix this like he always does. He wouldn’t die.
“Daphne,” Thay groaned, keeling over in an agonizing sob. “Go. Please go!”
I stopped to keep my mind from folding in on itself. The scrape of shoes, the snap of rope, Nathem falling. None of this could be real right now. This wasn't real!
“Please, Daphne. Please listen to me.”
I bent low, pressing a wet kiss on his already chapped lips.
“We’re going to get out, okay?” I said, shaking my head. “Trust me.”
“Babe,” his throat clenched. “I love you,” he breathed, smoothing the hair from my face.
“And that day on the beach, that was fucking it for me. It is all I needed from this hell of a life. But you’ve got to go.
I climbed in your window to save you, and now you have to climb from mine to save yourself. ”
“No,” I shook my head. “You die. I die,” I whispered through a sob, watching the world dissolve into ash.
“No!” He grabbed my face, the blood in his eyes dripping into his mouth. “I don’t want you to. I’ve only ever wanted you to live, Daphne.”
“But that is not how we work. Either I die, or you stay alive,” I crawled over him, lifting from under the shoulders and pulling. “Final offer.”
“That is selfish.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I broke, yanking even harder.
Thay was massive, and I barely got an inch before I had to stop and try again.
“This is pointless,” he panted as I slid another foot, ignoring the way his blood left a thin red line across the floorboards. I knew moving him was risky, but leaving him exposed was riskier. With a shove at his window, I flung it open, crawling carefully into the rain.
“You are never,” Thay’s voice wobbled, and I could tell he was holding on like hell to consciousness. “… going to get me down this escape without killing us both.”
“This will hurt,” I warned, reaching through to pull him into the night air.
My God, it was like trying to lift a boulder in the middle of the ocean.
“Stop!” he groaned, but I couldn’t. I had to get him out of this house!
The muscles in my legs stretched until they tore, sending pain up my spine with a thousand electric shocks.
But I didn’t give up. Would not give up.
Thay bit back a muffled scream when he arched over the windowsill, half of him hanging until he dropped into the rain. It reminded me of childbirth during my time as a midwife.
I am not sure what I was now.
Dying?
Dead.
Gone.
“Goddammit, Daphne,” he balled into the fetal position when his body hit, scraping his fingers into the metal below. “This fucking hurts.”
“I know,” I leaned over, wiping the drizzle from his face, planting a kiss on his forehead. “I know, babe, but we need to get to the street. This way, the EMTs can find you. Just a little further.”
I sat on my knees, tucking the gun into my waistband before sliding him to the edge of the metal stairs by the ankles. I was careful to go quietly, taking each step as delicately as I could, but even then, it was sloppy. He hit hard on some and jagged on others.
“I am sorry,” I apologized in a strangled whisper.
I didn’t want anyone to hear us, but staying silent felt dangerous. The idea of him slipping away without me knowing wasn’t a possibility I could stomach.
“Don’t look up,” he mumbled, and I froze in the dark. Blinking. The sound of shoes tapping against my skull… I needed to see. To know. “Don’t! You do not want this to be the last memory you have of him.”
Last memory. What the hell was he talking about?
Something groaned behind me, but it fell away in the sounds of the night. Maybe a cat? A person.
I pulled at him again.
“Remember that time I wanted to go to prom, and you sent Jessie and Blade to find me that horrible dress?” I rambled, taking another step. “And then Nathem went home with that teacher?”
Thay’s eyes fluttered, sending a slight smile to his face.
“Or when you were teaching me to swim, and that eel brushed your leg?” A laugh bubbled in my throat at the memory of him jumping into my arms with a deafening screech. “That sound you made.”
“Shut the fuck up. Those things are gross.”
Another step.
“Or," he coughed, "Remember that time we were about to die in an alleyway?” He groaned, still scowling despite his condition.
Oh, fuck, I loved him. Please God. Help me.
“Seriously, Daph. This is far enough. Go to the street and tell them I am here.”
I glanced down the passageway, then back to him, knowing the second I left, he would fall asleep.
“It’s just a little further, okay?” I held tighter. “I need you to hold on for me.”
“Daph,” he coughed, the color in his face switching from green to pale. “I am tired.”
“I know,” my voice shook as I laid him on the pavement, the blur of the rain making everything cold. “We are almost there!”
He blinked slowly.
“Don’t look up,” he said again, this time shutting his eyes. “I feel so tired.”
The storm crowded around me while I watched the way his long lashes brushed the upper part of his cheek, and for a moment, I wished I had the strength to lie next to him, to be the Undying Lands he wanted so much. But if the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t give up. And neither would I.
I moved to his head, crouching over him.
“I am going to move quickly, okay?” I warned through the crackle in his chest. He was falling in and out of consciousness, and I knew I was running out of time.
Everything in my body screamed at me to stop when I positioned myself under his arms and pulled 280lbs of muscle and strength along the edge of the brick wall.
“Your bones are cracking, madwoman,” he breathed, the words in his mouth going hollow. “I told you not to skip leg day.”
“I don’t even know what the hell leg day is,” I bit back, hearing a laugh die in his throat.
Thay ground against me, contorting me into angles and pulling me apart. When I finally reached the edge of the building, every inch of me was covered in his blood. With the rain, I hadn’t noticed how much of it was leaking out of the bandage I had created.
“Almost there,” I took a breath, but Thay wasn’t talking. His eyes blinked slowly as he stared into mine. The ambulance had to be close; red and blue lights flashed in the distance, weaving together a beautiful song of primary colors that meant help.
I dragged him out of the shadows and onto the street, setting his head down on the broken road before straddling him to press down on the wound.
“Daphne?” Thay said, his fumbling hand moving for my waist. “Daph! Behind you!”
“They’re almost here. You’re going to be okay.” But wrenched the gun from the makeshift holster I had created out of my waistband and fired a shot at my back.
I didn’t understand what had happened at first, not as I stared into the center of his fading eyes.
There was a slight pressure between my shoulders, maybe a sting or a strip of cold rushing into my chest like ice water, but it all felt foggy.
Ghostlike. Almost the way dandelion wisps flutter in the August wind.
Thay took a shot.
Wait? I thought he already had.
I collapsed against his heart, the slow beat of it struggling to keep its rhythm when my mouth sank to his lips in a sleeping kiss.
Thay breathed.
I breathed…
And the last thing I remember is the rush of Thay’s breath filling my chest with the flavor of smoke and rain.