Chapter 14
“No, no, no, no!” I’m shouting at the girl, as if there is any convincing to still be done.
Her fall takes barely a second, maybe two. She just … collapses forward, like a tree cut at the base. It isn’t a jump, nothing so active as that. Just face-first toward the ground.
She hits the frozen ground with an audible thump, as I race toward her, slipping and sliding across the asphalt, a step or two behind Devon.
It’s only the second story. People can survive second story falls, right?
Devon reaches her first and stops short. I have to sidestep, almost twisting an ankle, to avoid slamming into his back.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
But following his gaze, I see what he sees. People may survive short falls on a regular basis, but this girl will not be one of them.
She missed the grass, assuming she was aiming for it. Or anything. Instead she is sprawled face down on the concrete sidewalk leading up to the sorority house. She didn’t try to brace herself or tuck into the fall or even turn her head to one side. And the damage is so much the worse for it.
Bright red blood is pooling under her head, which looks oddly …
lumpy. As if her forehead and scalp have been pushed backward.
And that prickly, tingly sensation of magic against my skin is even stronger, this close to her.
It feels like standing next to a torrent of water, where you can feel the power of it surging, even if it’s not touching you.
“Someone…” I whisper, unable to force the words past the horror clogging my throat.
“Yes,” Devon says.
One of us did this. One of us is feeding off her.
Sanguine spawn, for her blood. One of Life’s offspring, using her energy to renew the ground, even though it’s winter.
Or an Oneiros feeding off her dream, blending a nightmare with reality until she dies from it.
There’s a reason humans have recurring dreams about falling.
But odds are, it’s the War spawn I’ve been searching for. This would certainly count as violent.
And with that recognition, the moment of horror shifts to a wildfire of grim, relentless fury, like one of those blazes started by a simple firework.
“Where?” I demand, through gritted teeth, even as I turn, searching for an unfamiliar figure, a challenger reveling in the chaos and suffering they’ve caused.
But there’s no one on the street, no one lingering by the cemetery or hanging out on a porch next door.
“I don’t know,” Devon says tightly, shifting to look as well. “I didn’t see—”
“Oh my God, it’s Izzy!” The scream comes from inside the sorority house, followed by the loud thumping of feet and more loud exclamations.
“What happened?”
“She’s outside?”
The sisters are on it; Devon and I should definitely not stick around for the aftermath. There’s nothing we can do to help.
But then the girl on the ground, Izzy, I guess, moans, a soft, guttural sound mixed with a whimper. She’s still alive.
Fuck.
There’s certainly nothing Devon can do, but me …
No! It’s something you’ve never even tried before, something you’ve never even witnessed. Who knows, maybe Death was just bullshitting you from the beginning?
This could end very badly, Jocasta.
That voice for that last bit sounds exactly like my mother, which, for better or worse, pushes me into a split-second decision.
Stepping toward the girl, I shrug out of Carter’s coat. “See if you can figure out where it’s coming from,” I say to Devon. “If you do, don’t go anywhere near them. Just come back and tell me.”
“What are you doing?” Devon stares at me.
Something stupid.
“Just go, hurry!” I tell him.
He hesitates, then nods, turning away and heading back for the street.
Three Delta Pi Gamma sisters burst out onto the porch. “Stay back! Call 911 and bring blankets,” I say, injecting authority into my voice, as if I know what I’m doing. “Lots of blankets. We can’t move her.”
And I really don’t want anyone touching her besides me.
Two of the girls immediately return inside. The other yanks her phone from her leggings pocket and starts tapping in numbers.
Bracing myself, I lean forward and drape Carter’s coat over Izzy’s prone form. The tingling intensifies immediately with my closer proximity, and my hands go numb, as if I’ve shoved them into an ice bath.
When I kneel next to her, the concrete digging into my skin, the numbness spreads, but I ignore it.
I’ve never tried to shove life back into someone before. I don’t know where to start. I don’t even know if I can do it. I’m not Death. Also, there’s probably a huge difference between saving a fetus and a full-grown individual bleeding and broken on the ground.
But maybe I can at least try to break up the feed. Give her a chance to survive, a chance Lennie never had.
“P … please,” Izzy whispers.
“Just stay calm. I’m going to try to help.” I rest my hand on her shoulder, and it’s like biting on a metal plug that’s still partially in the wall socket.
I clench my teeth against the sensation, refusing the instinct to jerk away.
Closing my eyes, I focus until I can sense the flickering of life within her, a dim flame, a candle devouring the last of its wick. It takes effort to ignore my instinct to pull at it. Instead, I try to push energy toward it.
It’s awkward and fumbling, like when I broke my arm in third grade. I probably healed within the first couple weeks, but my mother had me keep the cast on for the full six. I had to learn to write with my left hand. Everything about it screamed WRONG, just like this.
Distantly, I’m aware of the two sorority sisters returning with blankets, the third talking to an emergency operator on the phone, but I can’t pay attention to them right now.
The flickering of Izzy’s life brightens momentarily, and I’m relieved.
But then … something changes, shifts like a switch flicking on or a door opening, and suddenly, there’s a magical pull yanking on me instead.
It’s almost like a force coming up from the ground, trying to consume me through Izzy.
Panic jolts me out of my concentration, and I can no longer sense the remaining life in Izzy, let alone attempt to feed it.
The numbness spreads to encompass my whole body, only with a dark gnawing center to it. A black hole of need that I cannot escape.
I can’t feel the cold on my face and hands anymore. The hard press of the concrete against my knees is gone.
I’m caught. Pulled into the feed I was trying to stop.
Shit, shit!
I try to take a deep breath and regain my balance. I can break free of this, I can.
But every time I claw for the surface, for control, that opposing hunger pulls harder. I’ve never felt anything like it.
Is this what it’s like, when I take someone’s life?
My vision shrinks to the smallest pinhole of Izzy’s blond hair, and I can feel myself slipping away, sliding right out of my body, and—
My view judders and shakes abruptly, Izzy spins and whirls away, replaced by grass and then Devon’s worried face above me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his chest heaving against mine. “Jo?”
I can’t hear him over the ringing in my ears, but his words are clear from watching his mouth. I’m disoriented, confused how he’s above me and under me at the same time.
His cheeks are flushed with exertion, but his face is pale beneath that, his eyes wide to the whites with fear.
Drawing in a gasping breath, I start coughing and the world swirls around me, bright fireworks exploding behind my eyes with every jagged exhale.
Devon grips my shoulder, helping me sit up. We’re three, maybe four feet away from Izzy, and on the ground, his coat all rumpled and tangled, my body on top of his. It’s only then that I realize what must have happened.
“You … tackled me?” I ask hoarsely, between coughing jags.
“I couldn’t get you to hear me. You wouldn’t let go.” His full mouth pinches. He looks worried.
“Not me,” I croak. “Did you find them? Spawn.” The incredibly powerful spawn that almost just murdered me.
My throat is killing me, as if I’ve been in a chokehold. I have no moisture left in my mouth, in my gritty eyes. Even my bones feel lighter, more brittle.
Devon hesitates, then shakes his head. “I took a quick look, but I didn’t see anyone. I couldn’t track it, either. It’s as if it came out of nowhere, localized to this one place.”
That is not possible. Feeding from a limited distance, sure. But without any trace of it? No. No spawn can do that. Not even my father can do that.
This is wrong, all wrong. And I don’t know why. Branwick Hall and Lennie, I can kind of understand. But Delta Pi Gamma and a girl I’ve never even met before? They have nothing in common except … me.
My proximity to both. Fuck. Fuck! Is that what it is?
“Can you get up? I think it’s best we move on.” Devon jerks his head in the direction of the sorority house.
I follow the motion to see that the three girls from before are now huddled around Izzy on the ground, her body piled high with blankets. Two more sisters are now on the porch and two others are standing in the yard. The few who aren’t fixated on Izzy are whispering and staring at me.
Oh. Fantastic. I can only imagine what it must have looked like from their perspective—me zoning out while gripping the hell out of their dying friend, so much so that a stranger has to tackle me.
One of the sisters kneeling by Izzy holds Carter’s coat out to me, but pinched between her fingertips as if she thinks whatever I have is contagious.
And now that I’m not distracted I recognize her—auburn hair, freckles, perpetually annoyed expression.
Megan. No, Regan. Regan Something. From English 200 my sophomore year.
Sirens cry in the distance, getting louder by the second. I don’t know how long it will take Detective Morales to get a whiff of what happened here and figure out that I was involved, however tangentially, but I would rather not be here when she does. “Yeah.”
Devon clamps a hand under my arm, holding me up as he gets to his feet. Then he pulls me up with him.
Dizziness swirls over me in sparkly dust, nearly blacking out my vision again. It clears mostly once I’m upright, leaving me feeling weak, used.
Regan steps a little closer to toss the coat at me, which I miss. But it doesn’t matter. Because the second she broaches that roughly three-foot circle of space around me, my hunger roars to life. As strong and fierce as when it first awakened in me, full-force, when I was twelve.
Eat. Take. Feed.
Gritting my teeth, I step back. It doesn’t help. Nothing is going to help but getting out of here.
But what’s becoming increasingly clear today is there’s no place for me to go.