Chapter 21
“I got a patient,” Doctor Death said. “This dumb shit head of a guy who tried to make himself some girl’s Soulmate.
I don’t know why. He’s crazy. Soulless.” She blew out smoke.
“Most of us are nuts. Anyway, she wasn’t Soulless, she had a Soulmate, but he killed her Soulmate and tried to connect himself with her.
Anyway, it didn’t work, of course. His heart wasn’t beating as it should.
But, as always, hers beat again after the death of her Soulmate so that she could find her next Soulmate.
And when she found her next Soulmate? The guy killed him too!
Ha!” Doctor Death landed into a coughing fit from laughing too hard.
“This Soulless guy kept going around, killing off all her Soulmates, doing his best to stop her from connecting to anyone but him. I think he ended up killing a dozen people. Anyway,” she cleared her throat, “eventually, get this shit, they did end up connecting. Funny how that happens.” She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair.
“It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Maybe connections don’t have to be with strangers. Maybe it can happen environmentally. Who knows why people are destined for certain people? Whoops, my patient died.”
She got off her wheely chair and strode over to the next bed/table and checked the pulse on her other patient. After determining that they had died, Doctor Death clicked her fingers, and her guards cleared the table.
I pressed my fingers over my own pulse.
Flat. Dull.
A languid thump here and there.
I tumbled through an ocean of too many emotions, each one a drop, filling me up as if I were about to explode with water.
There was one thought that hindered all the rest: Magnus.
“Why would my brother do this to me?” I prodded the wound on my arm, making it sting. I needed to feel it. I needed to feel anything.
I searched through all the doors of my childhood and adulthood, peeling back the layers of memories with my older brother, attempting to find an answer.
There was no reason Magnus would try to stop me from connecting.
He loved me.
I paused.
Did he?
I wasn’t quite sure what love was.
I could not cry, I could not feel… and love was a feeling. Did I even know what love was? And if I did not, did I really know what Magnus thought of me?
“You guys are pretty rich, aren’t you?” Doctor Death asked.
“I suppose, compared to most.”
“And your parents died when you were kids?”
“So?”
“Inheritances go into trusts until you’re old enough and there’s always a condition when you get it, for example, at what age you get the money. What is the condition on yours?”
“I get my inheritance when I connect with my Soulmate—oh freckles.”
She laughed. “He’s a smart guy.”
I buried my face in my hands. I did not want to be here right now. I just wanted to sink into the earth, cover myself with dirt and stay there.
“Doctor,” one of her guards interrupted. “You got a patient out here who’s lost his arm—”
“Tell him to go away.” She waved dismissively.
“But Doc, he’s bleeding out.”
“This conversation is way too interesting to leave.” She turned back to me, stroking her chin.
“What do you think he’ll spend all the money on?
He a car guy? He sounds like a car guy. He’ll probably cry on TV when you’re dead, and the next day he’ll buy a Lambo. Green, I’m guessing. You think green?”
I threw up.
Cocooned by the window, I leaned my forehead on the cold glass, needing something, anything, to make me feel.
Outside, the others let me know I should be scared.
A hundred, probably more, Soulless had gathered around the hospital, toes just touching the line of blood, shouting to me their promises of tearing me apart. Once word had been caught of where Delphine De Astor was, every inmate came to find me and wait.
They even stopped killing themselves.
For once, there was unity, and that reason was a common enemy: me.
They set up a council and discussed which part of me they would get and who would do what.
I sunk into my myself, watching the rain fall in its parachutes and hit the window.
Before, I had clung to hope that Magnus was coming.
This was evidently not true.
I stroked my heart, urging it to beat faster. I would never be able to find my Soulmate even if I wasn’t Soulless… but I wished I could feel it. I wished I could know what it felt like to have proper, true, undiluted, unconditional love.
My parents were chopped from my life, friends were never within my reach, I attempted false love, I never met my Soulmate, and now my brother, the only real person in my life, had faked his adoration for me.
Hollow sadness slunk inside of me like some new and terrible organ.
I slapped my cheeks. “Cry!”
The guard let himself be known at my side. “Time’s up.”
I was pushed outside the hospital and left to walk alone.
Just on the other side of the bloody line over a hundred faces, briming with cruel grins, pinned their sights on me. They licked their lips like hungry dogs. They called me names that were not my own. My death had been planned by them all. A slow death, it seemed most had decided.
I had never done drugs before, but I had a sudden urge to try cocaine.
The heaviest steps I had ever taken were to the bloody line.
Wind played with my hair. I clasped the wound on my side as I looked upon my gravestone.
Their faces buttered with ire held lifespans of pain and resentment.
I could not blame them. My own life had been snipped short in an unjustified manner.
All of theirs had as well. Was it their fault that they were Soulless?
That I was? No. It was a cruel joke played on us by mother nature and the construct of our society at the expense of our very lives.
The people in front of me would be the ones to kill me, but they were not my enemy.
“Hello, good day.” I waved to them, forcing my smile not to crack.
“I would like to thank you all. It is a true privilege that all of you would gather here on my account, to bring about my death in such a celebratory fashion. Many people die alone in this world, at least I will be surrounded and have company as my eyes close. Because, once you kill me, there’s going to be a bloodbath.
When I am lying on this very ground, you will all then turn on each other.
So really…” I flung out my middle finger to them all. “You’re all fucking fucked.”
I didn’t step across the line.
I ran.
I ran as warriors did into battle, adrenaline rushing through my veins, I tasted ice on my tongue.
Hitting into my first opponent, I fuelled myself with fury, kicking a man who attempted to punch my throat.
I dodged, he missed. I bit his neck, tearing out flesh and growling like a wild animal. He screamed, I laughed.
Yes, I said I was going to die, it didn’t mean I was doing it without a fight.
Someone whacked me from behind and I fell into the dirt, black spots consumed my vision. I looked up at the swarm of Soulless darting toward me with hands leering to rip me into shreds.
And then… a sound.
An engine roar came from behind the crowd, so loud it forced everyone to stop. People gasped and dove out of the way as a motorbike sped through the crowd and skidded in the dirt in front of me.
Donning full black motorcycle gear, the rider flipped up the visor on their helmet.
I looked up at him and his heart-shaped sunglasses.
Dig offered me his hand. “Come on Princess, I didn’t say you were allowed die.”
I fainted.