Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“Because the registration process is just so intense,” she explains.
“My name and pictures plastered everywhere on the internet. Medical boards, fingerprinting, the whole shebang. Not exactly compatible with my…lifestyle.” She shudders, remembering something else. “Also, I’d probably have to get old.”
“Getting old isn’t that bad,” I say.
“Yes it is,” Leila insists. “I won’t deny that Rose makes for a very handsome older woman, but the joint pain? Menopause?” She pulls a face. “And on top of that, you become invisible. I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.”
It occurs to me that I’ll never experience my mother’s hot flashes or complain of my grandmother’s back pain, all things I had once looked to with dread and suddenly wish for myself, more than anything.
“I think Alphonse understood something that you don’t,” I say softly. “Your view of life is myopic. Entirely driven by fear of what is, for us, inevitable. But I’ve seen enough people die young to know the truth. That even with all its inconveniences, growing old is a blessing.”
The look Leila gives me is indecipherable, some part contempt, and something else I don’t quite understand. Longing? Then I see her eyes shift to something behind me, soften.
“Look,” she says.
I turn. The sun crests the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of pink and lilac and blinding orange.
The distant hills are shrouded in fog that glows golden as it is touched by the light, and a breeze blows by that carries the heavy, heady smell of pine.
For a moment, I’m so awestruck that I forget that Robbie is still looming behind me.
That this glorious view might be the last thing I will see before I die.
Instead, I think, I wish Jules could see this too.
I hear him, suddenly, in my head. I know it’s not really Julian—just the comforting encouragement of a memory, the last words he said to me.
I imagine him next to me, shrouded in this morning’s angelic light.
It hugs close to his high cheekbones, runs the line of his proud nose, and traces the curves of his lip, turns his brown eyes clear as maple syrup.
I’ve seen this sight before, woken up to it in Alphonse and Mary’s cottage, the day I finally accepted him as mine.
Fight, Sean, he says. I know you know how.
I don’t think after that. I let my shard slide into my palm, yanking Leila’s shoulder down at the same time as I drive it into her neck.
The glass slices open my skin—as suspected, it’s too wide to easily grip—but I can feel it diving into hers as well, the bright, blooming scent of fresh blood cutting through the wintry, clean air—
Pain explodes in my jaw, my brain ricocheting in my skull, and I’m launched into the air with such force that it knocks the breath out of my lungs.
I land hard on the twiggy forest floor, my vision coming together just in time to take in the heaving, colossal creature in front of me.
I try to stand, but Robbie is faster, yanking me up by my fleece and hoisting me into the air like I’m a sack of potatoes.
His face barely looks human. It’s contorted with rage, his pupils so dilated that they turn his already beady eyes black.
I scrabble against his hold, my core tight and legs flailing over the abyss below.
To my despair, Leila hobbles next to him.
Her eyes are wild with rage and wet with agony, one hand holding on to her neck as blood pulses out of her wound.
She yanks his shirt up, places a hand on his bare side.
Robbie’s mouth contorts, and the breath whooshes out of my throat as his brown whiskers begin to gray.
She’s healing. Shit.
I never had a chance after all.
“You fucking bitch,” Leila hisses, regaining her voice.
I’ve failed, I realize. Robbie is going to toss me over, and I will plummet to my death, leaving Winona, Sophie, and Onix to Leila’s nonexistent mercy.
“Not like this,” Leila suddenly barks. Robbie stills and then pivots and suddenly the world is spinning and I land back hard on solid ground. I almost rejoice until I hear a decisive click: Robbie’s gun, trained on me.
I’m a rabbit caught in a trap. From my vantage point, all I can see are Robbie’s scuffed boots until dainty sneakers come into view, then knees as Leila squats beside me.
She grabs my chin with a hand still tacky with blood and yanks it to her.
Her blond hair is back, her green eyes electric with wrath.
“I was going to make this relatively painless for you, but now you’ve pissed me off,” she spits.
“So here’s what’s going to happen instead.
I’m going to go inside and get everyone up.
We’ll bring you in so they can have last one look at you.
Then I’m going to kill your goddaughter while her mother watches.
I’ll tell her why—that they’re gathered here because you couldn’t just disappear, that you put them at risk to protect your own pitiful little life.
I’ll wait for Winona to understand, for her last words to be a curse upon your name, and then I’ll kill her too.
I’ll save your stupid little mutt for last. Let him whine and cry, and then get him right between the eyes.
And you? Well, I’ll give you a little time to steep in their blood, before I kill you too. ”
I’m in a hell of my own making. Whatever scenarios I’d dreamt up last night pale in comparison to this.
Robbie presses one gun to my temple and then pulls another one off a hidden holster at his hip and hands it to his master.
I watch, sick, as Leila skips back into the cabin.
She yells loud enough that I can hear her call out their names, telling them to come to the living room, There’s a deer outside, come look.
I know when they see me, when Leila must pull out her gun and train it on them, by Sophie’s blood-curdling scream.
“Come on in,” Leila sings.
Robbie yanks me to my feet and drags me, limp, to the back door. Onix runs up to meet me, and he kicks him aside with a steel-toed boot. My gasp of horror is eclipsed by his pained yelp, and in the living room, I can hear Winona sob.
Julian, I try, knowing that he won’t hear me. Knowing that I have never been the sort of damsel whose calls for distress are answered. Julian, where are you?
The night I met Julian feels like a dream of the best kind.
The golden light of the sunset cast a natural spotlight over the piano, and the distant thudding of the bass from the live band pounded an alien beat under my feet.
And then there was the man. So beautiful that I had to blink away.
So alluring that I couldn’t help but follow him to the end.
The scene before me, however, is a nightmare.
Leila is holding Sophie in a tight embrace, her chin resting in her dark curls, her gun pressed to her temple.
Winona is on her knees, bulbous eyes too wide with shock to cry, frozen in place.
Lingering behind them, lips tucked with shock but making no effort to save my family like she claimed she would, is Rose.
“Sean,” Winona whimpers. “What’s going on?”
“Yes, Sean, tell her what’s going on!” Leila sneers.
I open my mouth, but I can’t find my voice. This is my fault, I want to say. Please, forgive me—
“You know what, I’m bored already,” Leila says. “Let’s do you first instead. Robbie, the honors?”
There’s a sound of ruffling, a metallic clink of his gun being raised. Another scream: Sophie’s, maybe Winona’s, not mine, because I’m too terrified to make a sound.
My skull feels pressurized. Suddenly, I can hear everything in my body, my stomach churning, air whistling through my lungs, the eighty-eight drum of my heartbeat.
This is it, I think. The result of my meager efforts.
I’ve saved countless lives on my cath lab table, but I can’t save my own, can’t save the people I love.
“Winny,” I say hurriedly, my final words, coming to me at last. “I’m so sorry—”
I hear the gunshot before I feel it. A deafening boom, heat, wet, the smoldering stench of smelt iron.
I fall and hit the ground and my world goes dark.