Chapter 13 Grim
With those words, the essence of my soul, still gathered in my rib cage, shattered, the darkness splintering off to shoot down the lengths of my limbs, wrapping my bones to the tips of my fingers and toes.
The flesh I didn’t currently have wanted to take a breath, to gasp and expand with the overwhelming influx of whatever sensation this was.
This mixture of emotions, never mind their inexplicable potency, made no sense to me.
Still, these… feelings fought to take a more definite shape.
Most prominently, something that resembled guilt but wasn’t—not exactly—echoed through me. Rage toward Cedric boiled in the mix, too, but that had been there before. Now that I’d ensured her safety, my wrath slithered to the background of my being, sated if not slaked.
An unexpected possessiveness swirled in me as well, fueled by the weight of the librarian in my grasp—stoked, too, by the warmth that radiated from her, and the way she clung to me.
Mysterious pain enwrapped it all, an unfamiliar brand hammered into me by the thudding of her heart, the muscle that pounded against the cold bone barrier to where mine might have dwelled, as if calling—pleading—for an answer.
I needed to sever our connection, release her. That would stop this barrage. It had to.
This embrace, after all, must be the catalyst for my… discomfort.
Because I’d never held anyone before. Not that I could remember.
Maybe I had once, during the life I’d led, but I kept those memories at a greater distance than anything or anyone.
I’d certainly never held another soul like this since my rebirth as the usher of the dead.
The moment I let her go, these feelings would die, allowing me to once more be what I was: the impartial hand of death.
Having won the battle against Helena’s Beetle, the bus shoved the car out into traffic before swerving off somewhere. More horns blared and shouts rose on the chilled wind that assailed us, sending the tattered hems of my garments into a dance around both our legs.
Shivering from the cold, fear, or both, Helena kept her face buried against my shoulder as if the world had become too much for her. No doubt, with Cedric’s macabre interference, it had.
I sank slowly to the asphalt, all too cognizant that the danger for the librarian had not passed. Yet I couldn’t transport Helena elsewhere with my powers, not so long as her spirit remained attached to her body.
But then… there were other, more worldly means of transportation at my disposal.
The soles of my boots rejoined the pavement half a beat before Helena’s feet reconnected, and the instant she had the earth beneath her again, I released her.
She unwound herself from me with a reluctance I was sure I imagined, and freed, I brushed past her.
While I waited for—and willed—the mire of emotions her touch had inflicted upon me to depart, the infection remained. Worse, with every step I took away from her, the madness—I didn’t know what else to call it—intensified. As if our embrace, born out of necessity alone, had branded me.
Only now it was the absence of her heat that blazed even hotter.
Which wasn’t fucking good.
Somewhere in the distance but growing nearer, an engine growled. Then, at the far end of the alley, a sports car appeared, its high beams slicing their way through the night to bathe us both in their eye-searing light.
“Please,” Helena called after me, her voice shaky and desperate. “Where are you going?”
Did she think I would leave her here to deal with this mess on her own? My mess?
Why did that thought piss me off?
I tossed my scythe aside, sending it unfurling into the Netherworld ether that remained ever at my command. With my other hand, I summoned forth the means of our extraction from Cedric’s cat-and-mouse shit show game.
My car.