Chapter 29 Bad August
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BAD AUGUST
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
Chalk dust billows up around me. All my work gone in a puff of powder. Whatever I was missing, along with all those lives, all those worlds, flowers and kittens and clouds and grass and particles of gold and silver, it’s gone. Nothing more than the memory of an equation. One that dies with me.
Leaving one person to think on those lost universes. August Blackthorne.
My heart feels like I’ve swallowed a galaxy whole. Too big, too violent, crushing, pulling, pushing, pulsing. Agony. And I have no idea how to calm it.
But I don’t need to.
Soon, it will all be over. Gone for good. Or for bad. But gone and done, and I won’t be here to worry about it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told him.
Visions of his tear-stained face take my mind. The shock of it, the sadness I put there.
I can’t help but feel that honesty is sorely overrated.
He deserves better than that. He deserves dreams and imagination and all the beauty of the universe that I’ve single-handedly snuffed out for him.
I dust the final board clean of the past, then stack it in the corner with the rest.
I may as well leave my few belongings here. Someone will find them eventually.
Well, someone will find them in about—
The elevator dings outside, right on cue, and I let my back drop against the brick wall to wait for him.
Yellow light bathes his shoulders, and on sight of me, he pauses.
He raises his gun.
It looks even more menacing than it did yesterday, now that he’s got the long silencer screwed onto the front of the barrel.
It whispers premeditation. Someone planning your death.
Which I know he was doing anyway, so why should this shock me?
“Don’t think you’re clever. I gave you directions and everything. Why do you think I came back here?”
He walks in without a sound. The elevator closes, and he’s still wearing his ski mask and sunglasses, even in the gloom of this basement. He must have put them on in the lift. He would have drawn enormous attention to himself otherwise, even on a Sunday morning.
“I won’t make it hard,” I tell him. “But you can do me a favour by making it fast.”
He reaches out, closes his hand around the door handle, and presses it shut with a soft thud.
How strange to die by his gun. He’s hunted me through so many universes. I guess I thought he might kill me, eventually. But I never thought I’d give in.
Yet here we are.
So I get down on my knees, hands behind my head, heart pounding.
Maybe I’m doing that because it’s how films always show people being executed.
Would it make any difference if I stand?
Would I feel the fall? Maybe I should lie down.
But that makes me feel like a coward. “I feel awful for whoever’s going to find me.
Can you leave the door open when you’re done?
So maybe my corpse isn’t as far gone when they do? ”
He doesn’t shift, his gun pointed at me the whole time.
“Or maybe take that ‘Keep Out’ sign off the door when you go. Or… I don’t suppose you’d consider doing this somewhere we could lose the body? Like a river? So the police don’t confuse me with this world’s August?”
The shake of his head is strangely comforting. He’s felt so inhuman this whole time. It’s nice to think he might actually be a person in there. That he can hear me at least.
“Alright. I guess this is it. Sorry for the trouble I’ve put you through. And for what I did. And…” I didn’t want to show him weakness, but my voice breaks on my final request. “Please can you call the police after this? So August doesn’t find my body?”
His head tips in slow agreement.
And that’s it. We’ve agreed to the terms of my death.
I’m scared, but I watch anyway. Watch the barrel of the gun for the flash of steel that will take my brain all to pieces, his gloved, shaking finger just shifting the trigger.
A loud bang jolts through me like a bullet, and the door flies open. He flings around, the sound of the gun whistling in my ear, the graze of the bullet hot against my shoulder.
To my complete horror, the barrel of the gun finds August. But August’s hand snaps out, lightning fast, flinging it to the left where a second bullet flies into the wall, smashing off a chunk of brick.
He lands a sharp punch to the man’s stomach, and as he starts to fall, another to his chin.
His head flies back, the gun clatters to the floor, and August’s on his knees next to him.
He smashes the killer’s shoulder down to the ground and clambers on top of him, wrenching his arms behind his back.
It’s all a muffle of groans and grunts, and it’s over in seconds, Jon standing uselessly in the doorway until August directs him, “Give me a belt to tie him with.”
I scuffle through my mess of belongings for one, while Jon fumbles with the three casually dangling around his waist, eventually deciding on a studded one, which he hands over before I can find anything of use.
The man grunts in protest, but all August’s lean muscle and skill make the job look easy, like he’s done this a thousand times before. When he’s got him bound tight, still straddling his back, he finally looks over at me. “What the fuck, August?”
I hold myself back for as long as I can. Maybe even three whole seconds. “I’m sorry.” Then I dash for him, scrambling across the floor to get my arms around him.
He wraps me tight, our chests meeting, his head falling on my uninjured shoulder, face nestling against mine. “I won’t let you go.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You’re not leaving me.”
“I don’t want to. August, you’re everything to me.” His skin beneath my hands is the most precious reprieve, the life I’m giving up, breathing beauty and wonder. My lips find his, the kiss of life, the kiss of death, my entire being in microcosm, the sum of aeons in one electric beat.
Until a sardonic voice cuts sharp through the lot of it. “Can you get off me if you’re going to do that?”
August pulls back, his expression of horror mingled with shock mirroring mine. In a heartbeat, we’re both on the floor, half lying on either side of the would-be assassin. August wrenches his ski mask off, and there’s… August, scowling back and forth between us.
“Really?” he says, one eyebrow angled sharply. “You didn’t see that coming?”