Chapter 30 #3
There’s no resistance, telling me Devon must have warned them.
So much life floods through me at once, it nearly chokes me at first. Different textures, colors, emotions—including fear and joy—I can’t sort it out, only consume it before it overwhelms me.
But in another moment, I adjust and gulp it down, feeling it flood me with heat and strength.
Nova’s expression goes from determined to shocked. “You said you didn’t want—”
Before she can recalibrate, I yank at the stolen life powering Nova.
She resists, creating a tug of war over that thick rope of power.
But there are five of us, and only one of her. We are a system, working in unison, the four of them feeding into me and me pulling everything I can out of Nova.
The tension on her end slackens, and I wind faster.
She was so full. I don’t know how she held it all. And now it’s all streaming into me. Filling me with life. I catch flashes of the lives she’s taken—the man down in the waiting room, the nurse at the desk. Quick mental images, there and gone. That’s never happened to me before.
As I watch, fine wrinkles appear on her forehead, by her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth. Her skin starts to sag and ripple. Her hair turns brittle, falls out.
When she reaches up, her fingertips have turned ghostly pale. She tries to extend her hand toward me, but her forearm bends like it’s made of paper.
She’s going to be a husk if I don’t stop. Nothing but little bits of disintegrating bone held in a layer of skin.
Good. The greedy sense of triumph, vengeance, digs into me, settling itself within me with clawed feet. I want her dead. I want her dust.
Time slips away from me, and I have no idea how long I’m standing there, locked in on Nova. All of a sudden but also an eternity later, she crumbles.
A heap of empty, bloody clothes collapses to the floor. One of her clogs tips over on its side.
The tether to Nova snaps, sending everything back into me, and it’s just me, brimming with all this life. Like when you draw in the deepest breath you can imagine, stretching your lungs until they ache.
Only it’s not just my lungs, it’s everywhere. My skin, muscles, bones, the formerly empty space between atoms. Blood gushes down my face from my nose. It’s too much.
I can feel all the life glowing bright in me, pressing against the edges of the container that is me. I try to swallow it all back down, but there’s nowhere for it to go.
Devon’s worried face appears in front of me. He’s alive, thank God. I didn’t take too much from him.
“Is she okay?” Maggie asks from somewhere behind me.
“Jo,” Devon says. “You have to let go. You haven’t prepared for this. You can’t hold this much at once.”
No. I can’t. But if I let go, I don’t know what will happen. Dimly, I’m aware that there will be consequences if I dispense this much life. I don’t know exactly what those will be, nor do I have the capacity to contemplate it right now. But that’s enough to keep me holding on.
Devon looks past me for a second, gaze pleading.
“Jocasta.” Carter’s voice. Gentle, coaxing.
He appears in front of me, next to Devon. Carter kneels in front of me, and I tremble, caught in a torrent of mixed emotions.
“It’s okay, you can let it go,” he murmurs to me, his hand on mine, guiding me to kneel on the floor next to him.
“I don’t know how.” The word turns into a howl, and life trickles out of my mouth with it. But not enough.
It’s going to tear me apart. I can feel myself disintegrating at the seams.
Carter leans in closer, ducking to make me catch his gaze. I reach up to touch his face. So beautiful. A beautiful face for a beautiful liar.
“Just let go,” he whispers, wiping a tear away from my cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until that moment. “You can do it. You’ve been braver, smarter than anyone should ever have to be. You know what you need to do.”
I don’t. I don’t!
Except, in the storm raging inside me, I find a tiny calm center. Instinct, maybe. It whispers to me.
I close my eyes. Pulling my hands away from Carter, I slap them palms-down against the cold floor, imagining the iron beams and concrete holding up the floor and the building itself, dug deep into the earth.
The second I have that image fixed in my head, it’s as if a valve twists open. The power funnels down my arms through my hands and into the floor.
The floor trembles in response, and then the power … spreads.
I feel it when it finds the emptiness in Carter, Devon, and Maggie, where they have shared their energy with me. It fills them as it pours out, but then it keeps going. Taking part of me along with it.
I throw my head back and scream. Images flash and flicker behind my closed lids. Tree roots, wires, stop signs. Houses, yards, asphalt streets. Campus. Quimby, P. Edgars, Wibberley, Branwick.
And it keeps rippling outward, until I smell and taste salt. The ocean.
Then it just … stops. Abruptly.
I lurch forward, catching my weight on my still-outstretched hands on the floor. My face is damp with sweat, even in the creases of my eyelids. Blood slows to a drip from my nose, splatting onto the tile.
Arms trembling, I drop to the cool floor on my side, and then, after a moment, flop to my back, panting.
I’m here. I’m alive, I think.
I hold my hand up in front of my face, half expecting it to be see-through or just not there.
All five fingers are present and accounted for, though. They even wiggle on command. I still feel … off somehow, though. Different.
“Holy shit.” Devon leans over me, an astonished grin on his face. A faint glow seems to encompass him. “You did it.” He presses a kiss on my forehead.
When he takes my hand and tugs me upright, I brace myself for a wave of dizziness. But it doesn’t materialize.
“Are you all right?” he asks with a frown, his gaze searching my face.
I smear a hand under my nose to wipe away the blood. “I feel … strange.” Connected. Like thousands of invisible strings are spiraling out from me in every direction. But I’m at the center, and I’m tethered to each one. Every time I move, the strings shift with me.
Realization dawns in a sudden blaze. “Oh, shit. I think … I think I claimed Beecher.” That’s what this is.
Devon hesitates. “I think you did more than that.”
Oh, no. “What do you mean?”
“Well, more than Beecher, for certain. But also…” he points.
I shift to see Maggie and Shane staring at each other.
“You’re glowing,” she says, pointing at him.
“No, I’m not. But you are. This is so weird.” Shane scrubs a hand over his buzzed hair. “Maybe I’m still high.”
“They’re both glowing,” I say to Devon. “So are you. Not a lot, but…”
He gives me an uncomfortable look. “Side effect, I think. It will probably fade.”
Because I claimed Beecher and the four of them along with it.
Well, shit.
That also makes me wonder about the babies down the hall, especially any of them who might be ill. If Death’s story about how I came to be is true, I might have just accidentally created a whole bunch of spawn.
Wait. The four of them. “Where’s Carter?”
Devon shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “He … left, Jo. As soon as he saw you were okay.”
My heart sinks. “Probably for the best,” I say. Though what that will mean now that we’re apparently tied together, I have no idea.
Devon nods in agreement or relief or both.
I know I’m right. Carter can’t be here. He killed Lennie. He lied.
But he came when I needed him. The memory of his careful touch against my cheek makes my chest ache. And it shouldn’t.
I stand up, expecting a protest from abused joints and stretched tendons, but there’s nothing. I feel … good. And I don’t know how to feel about that.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear the clatter of boots that sound official and the buzz of walkie-talkie chatter.
I toe the pile of clothing on the floor. Dust rises from it in small plumes. Nova is definitely gone.
“We should probably go before—” I start to say to Devon. But then the double doors burst open, and police in SWAT gear swarm into the space, shouting over each other.
“On the ground, on the ground!”
“Hands up where I can see them!”
Devon sinks to the floor in a smooth motion. Maggie tosses me a panicked look over her shoulder, and the tension travels to me through the new spiderweb-thin thread between us.
Well, that’s going to take some getting used to.
I nod at her. It’s okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to her, to any of them.
Lifting my hands, I kneel on the floor and wait for the cold click of handcuffs.
That, at least, is starting to feel familiar.