Four months later #11
I run toward Bay, my lips trembling. "What happened to me, Bay? I took their energy and then I controlled them, I wasn’t using my own energy, why did this happen, why do I look like one of them?"
Bay gazes at me and says, as he drags a crate into the cage, "We’ll get to that, but Alex, focus for now, can you bring those zombies here? They should burn with Eugene and the beta."
"Why are you ignoring it? Look at me, look what happened to me."
Bay stops, turns, walks toward me with quick steps, and lifts my head.
"It doesn’t matter how you look, I will always love you, Alex.
You will always be my whole world. But right now you need to stay focused.
In situations like this, the most important thing is erasing the evidence.
The police cannot know we were here. As you know, I already made mistakes in the past, and that’s why Eugene found us. "
I nod slowly, tears running down my cheeks.
"I agree, but… I don’t understand, I just don’t understand!"
"I promise we’ll deal with this, but I have to do the cleaning…" And he’s already moving bodies, stacking crates over them…
All I do is stare at my hands. Gray, horribly gray, like ash.
"Bring me back to life, Bay," I whisper.
"Give me a moment," he says, still pulling that heavy crate.
Then he looks up and motions with his hand.
"The zombies, Alex. Bring them to the cage."
With the last of my fading strength, I follow his command and tell them to lie inside, tears sliding down my face.
I watch Bay pick up the gun lying on the ground, dropped by the beta, and search the pockets of the rest of the Hanson family members. But I feel numb.
"You are my guardian angel, Bay, don’t you know it?" I whisper weakly, still staring at my hands.
Bay slowly lifts his head from over the pile.
"I saw your wings, you know? When you grabbed Summer by the throat. After he destroyed the city."
Bay stares at me in silence.
"They were shining and white, shimmering, not fully materialized, but still there… You are an angel, so you have the power to bring people back!"
Bay lets out a huff. "Alex, even if I’m something like this, I’m surely not a white heavenly angel, a fallen one at best, I can’t…"
"Don’t you see? When our souls split, your powers split too. A part of them, that splinter, ended up in me. That’s why I can bring the dead back, even if it’s not to full life. It’s like a twisted reflection of something godly, only corrupted, blasphemous."
Bay only makes a small shake of his head, as if saying, ‘please, we’ll talk later,’ and goes back to piling crates.
"Bring me back to life, Bay," I whisper again, pleadingly.
Bay pours some chemical over the bodies and then tosses the lit lighter onto the floor.
"Bring…"
"We are getting out of here, Alex. Now!"
"Bring me back to life, Bay!" I shout, collapsing to my knees.
I feel his strong arms wrap around me, lifting me from the ground. I hear his footsteps in the corridor but it barely reaches me. Then there are voices, gunshots ring out, Bay fires back, and I sink into darkness.
◆◆◆
When I open my eyes, I find myself lying in a bed. For a split second, a nervous shiver runs through me, because the last time I woke up, I was in a morgue. But that’s not the case now.
I look up at the ceiling and recognize the familiar lines of my own house.
Slowly, I turn my head to the side, but I am alone in the bed, surrounded by a few scattered pillows, remnants of my destroyed nest.
Feeling dirty and sweaty, I slip into the small bathroom next to my room, and take a quick shower, discovering with shocking clarity that my body is still gray…
As I stare at my hands, their color like a winter twilight, I see flashes of the cage. Everything floods back at once. The kidnapping, the zombies, the fight…
And me, turned into a necromancer.
After I emerge from the bathroom and go back to the bedroom, I try to put the pillows into some semblance of a nest, feeling strangely ashamed of its state.
Voices drift up from downstairs, then fade, and I hear footsteps. The voices seem vaguely familiar, but I can’t pinpoint whose they are.
Soon, Bay walks into the room.
He looks completely normal, wearing a dark green tank top and black jeans, his eyes focusing on my face with calm clarity.
On his brow bone, there’s a tiny bruise, and that’s the only reminder of what happened in the cage.
As he approaches, I sit on the bed, squeezing a pillow tight in my arms.
His eyes move over my face searchingly, obviously concerned.
A sound of despair escapes my chest.
"Will I be like this forever?"
Bay sits next to me.
There is a moment of silence, then he slowly places his hand on the surface of the sheet and turns it palm up.
He moves it toward me, and when it is close enough, I lift my gray necrotic hand toward his, and our fingers slowly lace together. The blackened veins look creepy.
The moment our skin comes into contact, a sweet shiver runs through me, so strong it nearly pushes the despairing moan out of my lungs and replaces it with a moan of pleasure.
"You’re not disgusted to touch me?" I whisper. "I’m a monster."
"And who isn’t."
I fall onto the pillow, landing flat on my back and lifting my gaze to the ceiling.
"Moon Ferro called me a ‘revenant’. I guess I finally look the part…"
Our fingers stay linked, and Bay’s thumb drifts over my wrist, tracing slow circles along my forearm.
"You know, that’s how I look on the inside, so we match," he says, and a smirk curves his mouth.
Almost against my will, but not entirely, I return the smile.
"Did you kill all of them?"
"Of course. But in this case it’s hard to say if all the loose ends are tied up, because I don’t know how they got us there. If we’re on any city cameras, someone might want to ask us a few questions."
Bay’s finger drifts higher along my forearm and over my shoulder.
He tilts his head slightly, his eyes strangely devilish.
"You look kinda sexy in this dark, eerie way, I totally dig it," he says, smirking again.
I bite my lip. "Seriously?"
His fingers brush the side of my neck, my gland, sending sparks racing across my skin.
"Yeah," and wow, that is a sexy voice, no doubt. "Those dark lines on your veins, almost artistic."
Then something crosses his mind as he stares at the place where our bodies touch, because his perfect brows pull together.
"What if I stay like this, Bay, what then, what about my life?"
"What would it change? Besides, they make incredible masks now, ones that mimic human faces and skin…" he says with that strange smirk. "I’m sure you know. You were tricked by the one I often used for my secret dealings with Ennio."
I just stare at him, and he gives a small, apologetic smile.
"Please, don’t worry about your looks. You didn’t turn away from me when I was sinking into the worst period of my life.
When I didn’t believe anyone could ever want me.
When I saw myself as a scrap of a person.
You picked up that scrap. You made it whole again, and painted colors on it. You brought me back to life, Alex."
I stay silent, and that wetness gathers in my eyes again…
"You believed when I didn’t that the therapy would work. I doubted it quietly, you know? But you were right in keeping hope up. When I had already said goodbye to our relationship in my heart, you didn’t. Thank you, Alex. You fought for us."
Bay’s hand keeps drifting along my neck, then over my cheek. I draw a deep breath, because that touch awakens things in my revenant’s body that have nothing to do with the undead.
"I kept your diary, Bay, you know?" I whisper.
I look toward the nightstand with meaning. He arches a brow. I nod. Bay leans over and opens the top drawer. He pulls out his old pink diary, a shadow of surprise crossing his face.
"You kept it?"
He opens it slowly, page by page, all of them held together with clear tape, but aligned perfectly. I spent a lot of time making it flawless.
"Wow. You truly put us back together, Alex," he whispers, looking quite amazed.
His fingers move over the pages.
"All these memories, so sweet. I chose to leave them behind, but you held on to them and…" He lifts his eyes to me. "You took care of them, preserved them…"
I sit up, my throat slightly constricted.
"You know… I know all your poems by heart, Bay, all the ones you wrote about me."
Bay gives an almost amused look.
"My teenage poems? There’s no way they’re worth anything, pure melodrama…"
"They are precious to me."
Then I recite:
"When I first looked
into your face,
you struck me
like a fiery blaze.
I went blind
lost in darkness,
searching for you
every day
becoming less
Bring me back to life, Alex.
Only you can do that.
Put me back together,
make me whole…
Once more.
Only you, I adore…"
Slowly, I lift my hand and find the little aluminum tab from a soda can on my neck. It is still there.
Bay’s eyes focus on it.
"You know, for years I went through that diary over and over. The power of your love, saturating the pages, fueled my hope and my will to fight. I refused to give up," I say.
Bay closes his eyes. "There’s a second part to it. I never stopped writing about you, Alex."
I raise my hand and touch his face.
"Will you let me read it?"
"It’s full of depression and misery…"
"It’s still you."
He slowly nods. "If you want, you can read it."
My fingers lightly skim over his chiseled cheeks.
"I dreamed of this moment for years, wanted it with everything in me. You were always the only man I desired. There was never anyone else, Bay. It couldn’t have been otherwise.
We are True Mates. That’s why I couldn’t touch anyone else, couldn’t lust for anyone else without a feeling of discomfort and wrongness. "
Bay smiles softly.