Chapter Twenty
………………………….
Henri
“FANCY SEEING YOU HERE.” ILY smiled and waved, beckoning me to join her where she lay on a silver picnic blanket. Her black hair glowed as if the very darkness had transformed into ebony light. A stunning white sari floated around her stunning form. Diamonds glittered in her hair, ears, and around her throat. Hundreds of thin silver bangles clinked on her wrists. But it was the luminous designs painted on her fingers, palms, and hands that enraptured me. Flowers and swirls, runes and scripture. They looked as magical as her wand tattoo.
I went to her in a dream.
She stood and reached for me. “We’re together now. Just like we were always meant to be.”
I smiled with such relief, such an overwhelming sense of home. “God, I’ve missed you.”
“And now you never need to miss me again.” She gathered me close and stood on her tiptoes.
I shuddered as she hugged me.
I groaned as she kissed me.
My arms threaded around her starbright form and crushed her to me.
A familiar arc of energy hummed from her skin to mine. A spark, a fuse, the chemical reaction of our forms, bonding with love and lust and a lifetime of pure, perfect happiness.
Happiness.
After so many years of loneliness.
After so many days and decades of feeling nothing but loss and pain, this was…heaven.
Wait .
I paused as I looked past her to the landscape around us.
Everything shimmered with light. The grass beamed white, the sky almost blinding. A giant weeping willow draped its sterling leaves in a babbling brook of quicksilver.
“Where are we?” I pressed my forehead to hers. “What is this place?”
“This is our wedding day,” she whispered, showing me her hands. “The henna on my skin represents our mortal story. That story has ended, but…this is our true beginning. We get to make a choice. Stay here for a time or…”
Taking her hand, I kissed the starburst on her palm. “Or?”
“We can try again.” She rested her head over my heart. A heart that no longer beat like a man because I had no such need for such fragile things. The heart inside me was pure energy. Pure love. Everlasting and eternal.
Ily kissed that heart.
It vibrated to the same song as my beloved.
“I think I’d like to stay…for a little while,” I whispered.
“Yeah…me too.” She smiled.
But as we stood on our own personal star, veins of black webbed across the glittering grass. Faster and faster, blacker and blacker.
Shoving Ily behind me, I tried to protect her from the threads of evil.
But I was too late.
The cracks grew wider.
A chasm appeared.
I fell.
Screaming.
* * * * *
“Get him stable!” a man yelled.
“I’m trying!” a woman shouted back. “Keep the fucking helicopter still, and I can do a better job!”
“You heard her!” the man bellowed. “Fly better.”
“Fly better, Mr Mercer?” A short huff. “We’re doing the best we can. We’re overweight. We told you—”
“And I told you to get us to Paris immediately!”
“Yes, sir.”
Something sharp pierced my vein.
The discomfort dragged me out of the endless black chasm where I’d fallen. My eyes cracked open. All I saw was hell.
Dr Belford hovered over me. Jewels crowded the dark and noisy place. They all swayed and bumped into each other as we jarred and swooped through the sky.
My heart leapt with debilitating hope.
Ily.
Peter…
Not there.
Horrible memories choked me.
T-They were so cold .
Covered in blood…
I squeezed the trigger—
No.
What?
Why was I here?
Why wasn’t I dead?
I moaned and tried to push Dr Belford away. “Let me die.” Words were such a struggle. “I don’t want—”
“Hush up.” Dr Belford grabbed the line she’d inserted into my vein. “No speaking. Save your strength.” Pushing something cold and thick into my bloodstream, she barked orders to someone I couldn’t see.
And then, I couldn’t hear anymore.
Couldn’t feel.
Couldn’t move.
I faded.
* * * * *
“Hello, Master H.”
I jerked awake and sat upright.
Flames surrounded us. A cathedral of them formed a vaulted roof and red bright walls, trapping me in some sinister burning church. “Where am I?”
“Where you belong.” Peter sat on a large rock before me. A tiny island of protection from the river of magma lapping around my waist.
My skin smoked and shrivelled the longer I sat in molten fire, but I didn’t try to move. “Where’s Ily?”
“Safe.” He gave me a soft smile. “You did right by her, Master H. It was the only thing you did right.”
“Stop calling me that. We’re friends. We’re—”
“I’m not your friend.” Peter shook his head. “How could I ever be friends with a monster like you?” Standing on his rock, he looked above us to a single gleaming star. The fire couldn’t touch it, couldn’t swallow it.
Ily.
I’d been on that star with her.
I’d been so fucking happy.
How had I fallen so far?
A pair of white feathered wings sprouted from Peter’s back. “I’ll look after her. I always have. I wish you well in your next reincarnation. You’re going to need it.”
He took off.
I tried to grab him.
The lava sucked me down all while a single white feather tumbled into the fire and sizzled into ash.
* * * * *
“He’s severely malnourished, dehydrated, with numerous fractures. Not to mention the infection that’s set in thanks to the lacerations. All of that has taken its toll, but it’s the fever he might not survive.”
“Give him whatever he needs.”
“I already have. But it might not be enough.”
“What else does he need?”
“The will to live.” A man sighed. “I can pump him full of medicine and set his broken bones, but unless he has a reason to stay…I’m afraid you have to prepare yourself for the worst.”
The softness I lay on dipped. A calloused hand cupped my cheek. “You have a reason to stay, brother. Stay. For me—”
The darkness sucked me deep.
* * * * *
She’s dead.
She’s gone.
She’s never coming back.
I gasped with excruciating grief. I clawed my chest as I drowned beneath loss.
Jack-knifing up, I—
“Ah, you’re awake. We were just about to eat without you.” Ily beamed and blew me a kiss. “Good nap, Hen?”
I frowned and rubbed my eyes.
Colourful spots danced then faded, bringing into focus a sun-streaming courtyard with sparrows squabbling in a blossom tree and pretty orange goldfish in a pond.
“You alright, Ri?” Peter leaned across and squeezed my shoulder. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Is that what you are?” I flinched. “Are you dead? Are we all dead?”
“We’re dead and alive.” Peter smirked like a sage.
“I…don’t understand.”
“Everything is true and untrue.”
“Still super unhelpful, Paavak.”
He laughed. “There is no such thing as time here. Everything is and was. Happening and happened.”
I couldn’t catch my bearings.
First heaven, then hell, and now…this?
“You’ll understand soon enough.” Ily grinned. “All you need to know is…you’re here. With us. Right now.”
“And if I fade again? Where will I go?”
“I think he’s got a touch of sunstroke.” Peter smiled at Ily. “I told you we shouldn’t have spent all day by the river.”
“But it was just too much fun to leave.” Ily laughed. “I’ve never been so happy. All of us together. Free.”
Peter nodded and reached for her with his other hand. They interlocked their fingers on the table. “Together.” Facing me, he gave me a dazzling smile. “Like Ily said. We’re exactly where we’re meant to be.”
I glanced at his hand on my shoulder.
I felt his affection for me. The wonderful intimacy between true friends.
The urge to snatch him in a hug overwhelmed me. He touched me. Willingly. He smiled at me. Happily. He didn’t look at me like a monster or leave me to burn.
Tears stung my eyes. I cleared my throat. “So all of it…was just a dream?”
“Oh, it wasn’t a dream.” He let me and Ily go, reaching for a sparkling flute of champagne. “It was all real. Every bit of it.”
“Even the fire?”
“ Especially the fire.”
I frowned.
Ily left her chair and came to me.
With my heart winging, I shifted back and made room for her.
Sitting on my lap, she looped her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine. “That’s the key, you see. In these realms, we remember. They’re all happening. All at once. We’re both dead and alive. Everything and nothing—”
* * * * *
An awful high-pitch buzzing jerked me from paradise.
Like a beetle in my ear. A bee in my brain.
I groaned and tried to shove it away.
Something held me down.
Something grew hot around my throat.
The noise grew louder, insistent.
“You’d think after removing it from the others, you would’ve gotten quicker at this.”
“The metal is hardened steel, Q, with a locking mechanism that was never made to come undone. It takes time.”
“Just get it the fuck off him.” My brother’s voice hissed far too close to my ear. His fingers flexed on my shoulders, keeping me pinned.
I was aware but…unaware.
Awake but not.
Dust scattered over my chest, itchy and sharp as the buzzing reached its crescendo, then stopped.
“Finally.” Q huffed. “Now remove it.”
A metal cracking.
A sudden draft around my neck.
“There.” The unseen man sniffed with pride. “His collar is off. Now, if you’ll hold up his left wrist for me.”
Q shifted and stole my arm.
I tried to steal it back.
But the tentative hold on reality slipped through my fingers, and I fell again.
As the darkness wrapped me in its web, Q muttered, “I want him scanned for tracking implants. I’m not making the same mistake as I did with Tess. I want all of them scanned. Do you hear me?”
“Of course. Now, hold him steady, please.”
I was gone.