Chapter 38
Alfie pushed the panel truck faster than safety demanded, but what the fuck did he care about safety? When a man had lost track of his bullet wounds, taking a curve too fast seemed a small risk.
You’re still breathing, he thought.
The idea puzzled him. His shirt and coat were tacky and heavy with blood.
When he shifted behind the wheel, his clothes peeled away from the seat with a sucking sound.
The weeping bullet wound in his chest pouted like a fish every time he turned the wheel.
He couldn’t see the gasping edges of the wound, but he felt them.
His heart still beat. Weak and lightheaded, he wondered how much blood he could lose and remain conscious.
More accurately, he wondered how much blood the average person could afford to lose, because he was not the average person—not since Root had attacked him in the wreckage of the Imperial Limited.
Darkness pooled at the edges of his vision. His head bobbed. An arm snaked up from the back of the panel truck and struck him in the temple. A bit of smoke wisped up from the sleeve.
“Touch me again and I’ll drive us into a tree,” he growled. He’d thought the monsters were all sleeping.
“Do not speak that way to us again,” Root whispered from the back. “It is still possible for you to arrive at the next sunrise alive.”
Alfie had to clench his teeth to force himself not to respond.
In the passenger seat, the ghost of Joe Hannigan had no such restraint. “Tell him,” Joe said. “Tell the asshole you know it’s too late.”
“It’s not too late for me,” Alfie replied.
“Not if you obey,” Root whispered, thinking Alfie had spoken to him, or to the other monsters in the back of the truck.
Alfie glanced to his right. He could see Joe when he blinked, like something floating in his vision, there from a certain angle but otherwise invisible.
What fascinated him most about this was that Root and the others had no idea Joe was along for the ride.
It forced him to consider the possibility that his twin brother might not be there at all, that he might be an illusion conjured by a man who was dying with unnatural slowness.
The inhuman strength given to him by the touch of a vampire kept him going beyond human endurance, but his gears were winding down.
“I had the same thought,” the ghost said. When he spoke, he seemed to flicker out, so that only his voice lingered. “But then I figured I might be the reason you’re still alive.”
Alfie smirked. Joe always tried to take credit for his accomplishments.
On their twelfth birthday, Alfie had won an essay contest at school, and Joe claimed the competition between them had been what caused his brother to excel.
There were similar declarations on the football pitch, where Alfie admitted there might be a grain of truth.
Friends often remarked about the strange intimacy they observed between the twins, the balance between love and hate.
They needed one another, and sometimes resented that need.
As with all things, Joe eventually pushed too far, insisting that Alfie’s intended, Moira, only fell in love with him because Joe had intrigued her first. I softened her up for you, Joe had teased.
Fists had followed.
“I’m alive in spite of you,” he whispered, “not because of you.”
Joe smiled. How could his smile be so insinuating, so infuriating, when it was the same smile that Alfie saw in the mirror?
“Quiet. Drive,” a voice said from the back.
It wasn’t Root this time but Elias. Alfie didn’t know how all of this worked, but by all accounts, Elias had been a bastard long before Root had a taste of him.
Fat snowflakes had begun to fall. Alfie turned on the panel truck’s windshield wipers.
They worked impressively well. Somehow that small detail put a spike of sadness through him.
All the world’s little epiphanies would escape him from now on.
One way or another, he’d be dead soon. Whatever strings of fate kept him suspended in this life, they would snap before too long. Of that he was certain.
“Why are you doing this?” Joe asked.
Alfie shifted in his seat, flexing his fingers on the wheel. The blood had stiffened his coat and shirt, and this time skin and cloth stuck together.
Joe refused to be ignored. “Root released his hold on you. He left you to die.”
But Alfie hadn’t died. I’m still here.
Elias had control of him now, but it didn’t feel the same as when Root had been pulling the strings.
That might have been because Elias had never hijacked a person before, or because he didn’t yet have the strength to do it properly.
Alfie thought pain and blood loss and grief and sheer rage made it harder for Elias to keep him reined in.
“Or it’s me,” Joe said.
Alfie sniffed. The closest to a laugh he could manage now. “Maybe,” he said softly.
If the ghost were really there with him, he supposed anything was possible.
Whatever spark of Joe remained in the world, maybe his brother had loaned it to him, just for a little while, to get him back on his feet.
If so, it would end up a wasted effort. Whatever had given him this extra juice, it wouldn’t last. He had too many holes in him.
“Whatever little spark you got left,” Joe said, “if you can shake loose from Elias’s control, you really oughta kill some of these motherfuckers.”
Alfie clucked his tongue. “Language, Joseph.”
This time, there was no reply from the back of the truck. Nightfall wasn’t far away, but for now, the monsters were at rest.
“Well?” Joe demanded.
Oh, I agree, Alfie thought. I agree until the last beat of my heart.