Chapter 31
River
Looking back at the timeline of events, we had only really known each other for a few days—but I trusted her. I trusted her completely.
Even when she had a gun aimed at my chest.
I held Laurie’s gaze, felt her terror, but not once in that dingy little hellhole of a laboratory did I ever doubt her.
The Doctor didn’t even see it coming. If he’d been a little more cautious, if he set aside his bloated ego, he might have noticed the slight shift in her expression.
He might have seen the fiery rage igniting in her eyes.
But he didn’t. Not until the gun was aimed at the middle of his forehead, and Laurie was pulling the trigger.
The shot rang through the lab like a firecracker, deafening in the small space.
The Doctor dropped like a stone, electricity sizzling out at his fingertips. At such close range, that single bullet did more than enough damage. One shot was enough to make sure the Doctor would never bother anyone ever again.
How could he, when he was missing a head?
Silence settled after that shot, the lingering force of it left buzzing in our ears. The glyphs on the gun blazed red in Laurie’s trembling hands, and I witnessed the real damage that weapon could do to my kind.
I climbed to my feet and hobbled toward her—then paused, halfway across the floor, looking down at the monstrous man she’d shot. The Doctor’s body was burning away, crumbling from the neck down and dissipating into ash.
One bullet did all that? A vampire killing weapon indeed.
Behind me, Dylan crawled to her feet, swaying slightly and still twitching with the remnants of that electric charge.
Laurie stared at the crumbling corpse, the pistol still raised in the air where the Doctor’s head had been.
Then her arm wilted, and she crumpled beside him, knees hitting the floor with a hollow smack.
The gun clattered away, cast aside with a vehement twitch of her hand.
She drew one shuddering breath, then another, but no sound left her lips. She just sat there and stared as his body disintegrated, with the wide-eyed shock of a survivor who had just learned that monsters can bleed.
I knelt next to her, my own body still buzzing with residual electricity. “Laurie…” I reached for her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, didn’t jerk away. Her eyes were fixed on nothing at all, glassy and distant. She simply… wasn’t there.
Everything the Doctor had said to her, every word was fresh in my mind. I understood now how that monstrous man had twisted love into chains, balanced praise with possession, taught her obedience, isolation—and convinced her that was the only way to live.
“This guy’s not doing too good.” Behind us, Dylan was crouched over Arlon, who she’d hauled out of the locker and onto the floor. He was conscious now—kinda—blinking groggily and murmuring something faint. Dylan glanced back at me. “He’ll live, but he might have a concussion.”
“Get him back to Leyore headquarters.” I turned back to Laurie, brow wrinkling as I tried to get a read on her aura. “Tell Jordan what happened here and let her know I’ll be around tomorrow to discuss what to do next.”
“What about you two?” Dylan lifted Arlon over her shoulders and the guy muttered something unintelligible at the rough handling.
I kept my eyes on Laurie, who was slowly rocking back and forth with her arms clasped tight around her knees.
Her aura was going haywire, but it wasn’t the usual flavor of rage or terror.
This was a thunderstorm tainted with grief.
Untangling that confusing web of emotional turmoil would take time. Patience.
I set my jaw, but softened my voice, drawing her gently into my arms. “We’re going home.”
I got Laurie in my car and home in a heartbeat, carrying her up the front steps like she could shatter if her feet so much as touched the ground—and considering the quake in her hands and the way her body trembled in my arms, that felt like a very real possibility.
She didn’t say a word, mute and checked out of the world around her. It was only her aura that gave me any indication of what was going on in her head.
I could guess what she was thinking right about now. She’d just taken out someone on her list, one of the monsters who had caused her so much pain during her time in the facility: She was wondering why it didn’t feel good.
The catharsis of pulling the trigger was no doubt short lived, replaced instantly by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions.
Guilt, anger, grief, betrayal and more. All of it tied to the vampire man she’d killed.
He was gone now, but the Doctor was still hurting her.
He’d left his mark and that mark would remain.
I had no words to comfort her. All I could do to soothe her was keep the turmoil of her emotions at bay.
In the guest room, I helped her out of her jacket and guided her to the bathroom, making sure to keep the gun I’d been carrying for her well out of view. The glyphs had stopped glowing, but the metal still felt charged, radiating with magic long after the bullet had left the barrel.
Laurie swayed, unseeing and unresponsive when I sat her down at the edge of the bathtub and pulled out a cloth to clean her face.
There was no blood to wipe away—it had fizzled to nothing just like the rest of the Doctor’s body, but her cheeks were tearstained and her forehead was hot, sweat still beading on her brow.
I crouched in front of her and looked into her vacant eyes. A storm of emotions warred inside her head, leaking out and washing over her, bowing her shoulders low. I poured calm back in, gentle waves lapping at a splintered hull.
She didn’t put up a fight when I fetched a fresh set of pajamas for her and gingerly lifted her shirt over her head.
She lifted her arms when I asked her to and she stepped into the silky soft pants with one hand on my shoulder to steady herself.
She moved like a mechanical doll, going through the motions without really registering what was happening.
Too far gone from reality to feel embarrassed about it.
When she was finally dressed, looking smaller and more fragile than ever in layers of soft white cotton, I wrapped her in a blanket left strewn over the chair and guided her over to the bed.
She clambered onto the mattress without a word, burrowing into the pillows and hiding her face from view.
The sun was nowhere near close to setting, but Laurie didn’t seem to care.
She looked like she was ready to sleep for the rest of her life.
Her dark hair stuck out in choppy strands, the only visible part of her, while her body coiled smaller under the blanket. I tiptoed around the room, drawing the curtains until the space was shrouded in shadow, and tucked the gun away on the top shelf of the closet.
It was only when I passed the bed, on my way to the exit to give her some space, that Laurie gave some indication that she was even aware of my presence.
“Wait.” The urgency in the way she spoke struck straight at my heart and her hand snaked out from under the blanket, catching my wrist in a vice-like grip. I paused, looking down at her where she peeked out from under the covers.
“Stay.” Her voice was a whisper, a cracked, desperate plea I had never heard from her before. Her dark eyes were rimmed red, lashes damp with the last of her tears. “Please… stay.”
I glanced at the chair next to the bed, the one I’d sat in that first night when I kept up my solitary post, guarding her from the nightmares that threatened to invade her head.
But she wasn’t letting go of my wrist, nails digging deeper into my skin like that short space between bed and chair was still too far.
So instead, I lifted the blanket and slid onto the mattress alongside her. Laurie shuffled backward to give me room, still clinging to my wrist like the slight contact was the only thing keeping her grounded.
I rolled over to face her, the two of us nearly nose-to-nose under the covers, eye-to-eye in the dark. The blanket lay like a cocoon around us, a soft sanctuary while we stared at one another in perfect silence.
I had held her in my arms many times by now, but never before had we been close like this. This was different, intimate. There was something sacred about it, something very fragile hanging in the small space between us.
It was Laurie who spoke first, her voice coming cracked and fraught with anguish. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being… like this.” She closed her eyes, heaving in a breath before the rest of the sentence came out in a rush. “I could have killed you—he wanted me to kill you. I’m so sorry—”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” I closed my hand over hers, the one still wrapped around my wrist, and inched closer, until our foreheads touched. Laurie didn’t pull away. Her skin was hot against mine.
I waited for her eyes to open again, staring into those dark pupils and sending soothing waves her way.
“I’m right here, I’m fine, and the Doctor—” she flinched when I spoke his title, but her eyes stayed locked on mine, hanging on my every word as I continued, “the Doctor got what he deserved. Because of you, he’ll never hurt anyone ever again. ”
Her aura spiked, then softened, wavering like radio waves—subdued for now, but unstable. She closed her eyes again, sinking deeper into the pillows with a long, laborious exhale.
I watched her for a beat, taking in long lashes, the dark rings around her eyes. I wanted to help her, so desperately. But every option I explored led me to a dead end. Therapy was off the table, she’d tried that already and from what little information she offered it had done more harm than good.
You can’t talk your way out of irreparable damage. Some scars to the heart can’t be healed with a few comforting words. And with the Doctor out of the way, she was one step further on her quest for revenge—and one step closer to her final act.
I couldn’t bear the thought. It stabbed at my heart, a twisting knife when I was reminded over and over again that there was nothing I could do to change her mind.
I lay there for a long while, sending out ripples of my aura to smooth out her own. It had become something close to second nature by now. I knew exactly how to weave my calm energy with her chaos, enough to soothe the storm in her head.
Laurie’s breathing evened out, fatigue sending her into a half-conscious phase, teetering on the brink of sleep. I helped her along, batting off the bad energy that poisoned her mind, when a new thought occurred to me.
The rest of the world had already failed her, every method of relieving the ache falling short. But this—my power—helped. Slightly. Not enough to fix things entirely, but it was a start. And if that was the case… maybe magic was the answer.
Exactly what kind of magic, I wasn’t quite sure, but it was something worth exploring. Something that could potentially save her life. I nudged Laurie’s forehead with my own, an idea slowly taking shape inside my head.
“Hey, Laurie,” I murmured, reaching down between us to lace my fingers with hers.
“Hmm?” Her response was barely audible, her eyes crowded with sleep when she cracked them open.
“You’ve exhausted every option in the human world.” I whispered the words, but the flicker of hope they ignited bled into my tone. “I get that. Nothing so far has done any good, but… before you end things—before you give up everything for good… maybe you could give the supernatural world a shot?”
Laurie blinked back at me, lids slowly closing over tired eyes before she dragged them open again. She didn’t respond, probably didn’t understand, or didn’t believe it was possible. I tried again anyway.
“Just… hold off on the plan—for a little while.” I tightened my grip on her hand and lifted it to my chest. Pressed it over my heart.
“Just give me some time. Let me find a solution—a magical one. Something you haven’t tried before, okay?
” I couldn’t keep the desperation out of my words and it cracked my voice when I pleaded.
“Just… Just wait a little longer. Let me help you.”
Laurie watched me for a while, and I could see the yellow glow of my own eyes reflected in hers. Then she closed them again, resting her forehead flush against my own and her breath mingled with mine.
Her voice, when she spoke, was infinitely tired. Laced with an exhaustion that ran bone deep. But her answer gave me hope. A small, flickering spark—easily snuffed out—but hope all the same.
“Okay.” She said it on an exhale, drifting further into sleep, barely present but just audible enough. “Okay… I’ll wait. I’ll wait for a while.”