Chapter 32 #2
My next attacks had absolutely no kick, and Lazaro had all but given up.
I threw myself into him stake first, and he didn’t block the weapon when it kissed his chest. I looked up at him, searching for a reason.
Everything about him, from his posture to his face, was open for me. I couldn’t do it. Failure. Again.
Lazaro’s forehead rested on my shoulder, and we collapsed to our knees. My stake bounced across the asphalt, and I held him by the arms, unsure if I was pushing or pulling.
“My life is already over. I don’t know what I’m even fighting for.” He shifted back to sit on the road with his legs bent in front of him. His gaze was far off. This gloomy disposition wasn’t a good look on him.
“Well, come on, Reyes,” I said. “You can do better than that.”
He looked at me again with the smallest smile. “You’re infuriating, Hunter. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hate you.” He spoke with an odd fondness that made me laugh. “You’re just lucky I’m not in the mood to drain you yet.”
“I might start to think it’s me that’s the problem,” I said. “On second thought, you’re just the worst vampire I’ve ever met.”
“That might just be rock bottom,” he huffed.
It was over again. I couldn’t end it, and neither could he. I picked myself up off the grimy road and brushed away the clinging debris.
“Lazaro? Can you give up on this killing me thing? You’re terrible at it.”
“As if you’re any better.”
I ignored the rebuttal. “Stop showing up at my house unannounced, and I’ll do the same? Not that I don’t enjoy tangling with you like this.”
“Are you suggesting we exchange phone numbers and give fair warning before our next fight? Next you’ll say we should be friends.”
“You’ll never have to worry about that ever happening.” I crinkled my nose.
“Another truce, then?” He was slow to push himself back up. I worried he might have been planning on staying there until the sun rose. It wasn’t a suitable death for Lazaro.
“Are you just going to break it again?” I wasn’t going to let him forget about that assassin he’d hired. The coward.
“I suppose I’ll have bigger worries than you after tonight, Hunter.” He paused as if he might go, but he turned and aimed a finger in my face. “But if you ever make any deals with that devil again, I’ll kill you myself, truce or not.”
Questions perched on my lips, but I held them back. The camaraderie was already discomforting enough without delving into the details of our personal lives. The threat of the sun was starting to prickle against the back of my neck anyway, and to the east, the sky was denim blue.
The tension of our rivalry had deflated, and there was nothing left to do but part ways.
We’d danced several hundred feet from Lazaro’s car, and I could have walked with him back to the packed dirt road and followed it home to the farmhouse, but like the vampire, I had dawn to fear.
My borrowed powers would disappear. Even after a hell of a fight, my muscles still begged for movement, and so I acquiesced.
I darted over desert sands so fast it was like my feet were barely touching down.
My steps didn’t linger long enough to sink into the shifting surface.
My awareness of Lazaro faded, and the mile between the road and the yard in front of the house disappeared too fast. I collapsed into the grass, sitting cross-legged facing the rising sun, and waited for it all to disappear.
I hoped Nemesh didn’t appear again in that moment, because I was having a hard time coming up with any logical reasons why I shouldn’t accept his offer permanently — as long as I could barter a price that wasn’t my soul.
I wasn’t sure if I would notice the moment the devil’s powers faded in me, and my body was shaking in anticipation of the withdrawals.
The first shards of sunlight crawled over the mountains, and the aura of invincibility shattered all at once.
It was like falling suddenly ill. My limbs were heavy, my skin too loose, and my senses were dull and delayed.
This was what I normally felt like? Even breathing was an uncomfortable effort.
The sudden loss bore a hole in my chest that the morning breeze blew right through, and the edges of it ached with the fresh loss of Peter, of Diana, of Virgil, of all the Hunters, and slipping back through time, there was a loose piece that hurt like Derrick’s death all over again.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to muffle the horrid cry that emerged, though it was so strained it was hardly audible at all.
My legs weren’t mine anymore, and they shook under me like I was a newborn calf, but I had to get inside.
My bed seemed suddenly miles away, and I wasn’t sure I would have the strength to reach it.
The front door was still ajar from when Lazaro had arrived the previous evening.
The girls hadn’t come home, and I should have probably been more concerned about that, but I was too drained to properly care.
My muscles were stiff and awkward crossing the short distance from the door to the stairs.
I grabbed hold of the banister, but something felt terribly wrong in the drab gray light of morning.
I examined the living room. Gabriel was still in his chair, still in the exact position I’d seen him last, and still…
so still. The TV I’d paused the night before was off now, the remote on the coffee table feet away from him.
Had it turned off on its own? I studied the frozen room, the pillows on the couch, the full glass of water, the remote, the TV, Gabriel’s slippers, and why was I so focused on the worthless details?
I couldn’t remember crossing the living room to Gabriel Hope. He hadn’t moved! His chest wasn’t moving! I already knew before I touched his arm that it would be cold, but my knees buckled anyway from the shock. Gabriel was…
Papa was—
I sat for too long on the floor beside him.
The inside of my skull had become an empty white room flooded with a blinding light.
My phone was still in the kitchen from the night before, and crawling across the floor to fetch it seemed at the time more practical than wasting precious seconds on standing up.
I made the call on the chilly kitchen tile with my back against a cabinet.
Time had stretched like an elastic band, but then it snapped back, and everything after that happened cruelly fast.