Epilogue #2
Then there was Lechuza. She was helping Brawler’s wife, Emily, with the food, her dark hair caught by the sea breeze, a smile gracing her lips that still had the power to stop his heart.
She caught his eye and winked, and a warmth spread through his chest that had nothing to do with the sun.
This was it. The simple, beautiful chaos of family he’d always fought for by serving with his brothers. Recently, it had been across lifetimes.
"Flash!" Tex boomed, his voice cutting through his thoughts. "You gonna stand there looking all moody and poetic, or you gonna grab some plates? Your woman's domesticating you, man. Turning you into a kept man."
A chorus of laughter and agreement rippled through the group. "He's gone soft," Bondo grumbled good-naturedly, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Used to be a hard-charging operator. Now he's just a guy with a mortgage and a ridiculously hot girlfriend."
Flash just grinned, flipping them the bird. "Jealousy's an ugly color on you, boys. Besides," he said, his gaze finding Lechuza again, "some of us know a good thing when we see it."
As the sun began to dip toward the horizon, painting the sky in strokes of orange and purple, they built a bonfire on the beach.
The kids were getting sleepy, bundled up in towels and nodding off in their parents' laps.
The fire crackled, casting a warm, flickering glow on all the faces that meant more to him than his own.
This was his brotherhood, his family. His everything.
Lechuza came to stand beside him, her shoulder brushing his. "It's a good life, Jae," she said softly, her voice barely audible above the fire and the waves.
"It is now," he replied, his heart starting to beat a little faster. He took her hand, his palm suddenly sweaty, the cool sand soft under their feet. The moon was rising, a silver sliver in the darkening sky. The fire was a warm orange glow behind her, framing her in light.
"Killa," he started, his voice thick with an emotion he was no longer afraid to show.
Every conversation ceased around them. The guys knew this was coming, and it was right that he do it here in front of them.
"I have loved you in a dozen lifetimes. I've loved you as a conquistador and a warrior, as an eagle.
I've loved you in silence and in screams. Five hundred years ago, I was trapped between history and the font. "
He dropped to one knee in the sand, the grains digging into his skin.
He pulled the small, velvet box from his pocket, his hands shaking slightly as he opened it.
The firelight caught the silver of the ring, the intricate chakanas etched around the band, and the deep, celestial blue of the lapis lazuli stone at its center.
"Francisco del Castillo said it first. You are my heart.
I remembered later when I was dying again.
Killa, qammi sunkuy kanki," he said, his voice clear and steady.
"I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you.
The next question absolutely needs your consent.
Marry me, Killa. Be my wife. Let me spend the rest of this life, and every other one that might follow, making sure you know it. "
Tears welled in her eyes, shimmering in the moonlight. She didn't say anything at first, just sank to her knees in front of him, her hands cupping his face. Her thumbs stroked his cheeks, wiping away tears he hadn't even realized were falling.
"Yes," she whispered, her voice choked with joy. "Oh, Jae. Yes. A thousand times, yes."
Flash slid the ring onto her finger, and it fit perfectly. He pulled her into his arms, kissing her with all the love and relief and hope he'd been carrying for five hundred years. It was a kiss of beginnings.
"It’s about time," Easy's voice cut through their moment, loud and full of mock exasperation. "That's the longest courtship on record. It took you five centuries."
The spell was broken. Laughter erupted from the group around the bonfire. Before Flash could even form a retort, the guys were on their feet. They descended on Easy, whooping and hollering as they hoisted him over their shoulders.
"Get him!" Tex yelled.
They charged toward the surf, Easy's protests lost in the roar of the waves and the peals of laughter as they unceremoniously dumped him in the ocean. Mayhem ensued, a joyful, ridiculous tangle of splashing and shoving in the moonlit surf.
“Peace is a nice word,” Lechuza said.
Flash watched them, a huge, unstoppable grin spreading across his face. Lechuza was laughing beside him, her head resting on his shoulder. "With those guys," he said, pulling her closer, "it always will be mayhem."
He kissed her again, a softer, slower kiss this time.
He had traveled untold years and across unimaginable distances to reach this woman.
He hadn’t been able to tell her in that now remembered life that he loved her.
But as the years stretched ahead of them, a clear and endless horizon, he would tell her every day.
With his body, his mouth, his hands, and his words.
She would always know his heart. She held it in her hands.
* * *
The air in the Westwood Sanitarium was always too still, too thick with the scent of lemon polish and underlying despair.
It clung to the back of Marcus's throat as he made his nightly rounds, the squeak of his worn sneakers the only sound in the long, sterile corridor.
He was an orderly here, a job that mostly consisted of mopping up spills and delivering trays of bland, colorless food.
It was a routine occupation, and Marcus clung to routine.
There was always something wrong about the woman in Room Six.
Alice Graves never screamed. Never threw chairs.
Never clawed at the walls or argued with people who weren't there.
She simply existed inside some invisible conversation that no one else could hear.
Sometimes she'd spend hours braiding her long, warm-blonde hair with patient concentration before quietly undoing every strand and beginning again, as if she were searching for a pattern only she remembered.
Sometimes, when she sat by the window, the moonlight found her hair before it found anything else. It turned the ivory strands into something almost luminous, silver woven through champagne gold. She looked less like a patient than a woman waiting for someone who had forgotten how to find her.
She couldn't have been older than twenty-two.
Delicate features. Skin almost translucent beneath the fluorescent lights.
A face that belonged in an old family portrait instead of behind reinforced glass.
Even the hospital gowns couldn't make her look institutional.
She wore them with the absent grace of someone who'd forgotten they existed.
Marcus had learned that beauty could be deceptive.
Her face distracted him, but it was her eyes that disturbed him.
They never seemed to settle on one color.
Most days they were a quiet gray, soft and distant as morning fog.
Then she'd lift her head, the light would catch them, and violet would bloom beneath the gray like twilight beneath gathering stars.
The change was so subtle he often convinced himself he'd imagined it.
Until she looked directly at him. Then he always had the strange feeling she wasn't seeing his face at all. She was looking through him. Past him at something standing just over his shoulder.
"You're going to have a bad night, Marcus," she had said, pleasant as weather, and smiled, the freckles and the sweetness making it worse, not better. "I'm sorry. I really am."
He didn't ask how she knew his name. None of them were supposed to know his name.
Then the scream came.
It wasn't a human sound. It was a raw, ragged thing, a shriek of pure, unadulterated terror that tore through the silence of the sanitarium and seemed to peel the paint from the walls. It came from down the hall. From Room Six.
Marcus's heart seized in his chest. His feet were moving before his brain caught up, his sneakers squealing on the linoleum as he sprinted toward the sound. The door was locked, and he fumbled with his keys, and opened it.
Alice Graves was pressed against the far wall, as if trying to melt into the pale green paint.
She was shaking violently, a frantic, uncontrollable tremor that wracked her entire body.
Her eyes, wide and black with horror, were fixed on the empty space in the center of the room, her mouth open in a silent, continuous scream, and she was covered in blood.
It was slicked through her hair, matting it to her skull. It ran in rivulets down her pale face, dripped from her chin, soaked the front of her thin, white hospital gown until it clung to her like a second skin. It was everywhere, a stark, visceral crimson against the sterile white of the room.
But there was no one else there. No attacker, no victim. Just Alice, alone in her own personal hell.
Marcus stood frozen in the doorway, the metallic scent of blood hitting him like a punch in the gut.
The air in the room was heavy, oppressive, charged with a malevolent energy that made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
His own ragged breathing filled his ears, competing with the frantic thumping of his heart.
From the terrified, blood-soaked woman to the empty floor, there was no explanation.
A cold dread coiled in his gut. He had seen a lot of strange things in this place, but nothing like this. Nothing like this at all.
* * *
Her mind raced, a frantic scramble of disjointed images and fractured thoughts.
She’d killed the Cheshire Cat. He was always whispering to her in riddles and rhymes, his grating purr slithering into her ears, winding her tighter and tighter until she thought she would snap.
This time, there was only one thought, sharp and clear as broken glass. Die.