Chapter 59
Electra
Gael’s knees buckle, and he lists sideways. I go down with him.
As he falls in a heap of suede and denim, a raw, feminine voice murmurs, “Always wanted to sink a bullet into that man. Hope I didn’t clip you.” Quinn looks me over before offering me her hand.
I blink up at her, my throat aching like it’s packed with sand, like I haven’t taken a sip of water in days, unlike my eyes, which are wet.
Once I’m steady on my feet, Quinn lets go and turns toward Reeve. The cry that erupts from her mouth is so shrill it splinters the silence.
I close my eyes, shame and grief gnawing on my insides.
I was too late.
Too late.
Too late.
My ears buzz.
My fingers shake.
Quinn falls to her knees in front of Reeve.
“Oh my God!” She palms her lover’s neck as though to stop the blood from exiting his body. But it rushes out until the puddle beneath him grows as thick and viscous as the one spreading beneath my inert genitor. “Electra, save him!”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You’re an Atlantean!”
“We can’t bring the dead— We can’t…”
“I heard you could.”
I shake my head, setting the tears clinging to my lash line free. “Only Tarian, but…” But only if the person still has blood in his body.
The reminder snaps me from my daze. I replace Quinn’s fingers with my soiled, trembling ones and call on my magic to repair Reeve’s flesh.
May he still have blood in his body.
May his gushing artery not have stolen all of it.
“Stay with us, Reeve,” Quinn croaks, tears tripping down her puffing cheeks.
I can’t bring myself to tell her that he can’t stay with us, because his heart no longer beats.
Once I feel that his skin has mended, I sit back on my heels and study his listing face. I gently remove his glasses and lower his lids, loath to stare into his sightless eyes.
“What are you doing?” Quinn demands, her tone raw.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur—to her, to him.
I feel the weight of her gaze. How I wish I could feel the weight of his.
I stand, fold the branches of his glasses, holding them out to her. When she doesn’t take them, I slide them into my pocket, next to the knife.
“Where are you going?” Quinn shrills.
“I need to check on Mal and Dorian.” I pivot to leave.
“No!” Quinn grabs onto my ankle. “Stay. Bring him back.”
“I can’t bring back the dead.”
“You just healed him! He’s not dead.”
My lashes lower in shame. I don’t dare say, “For now, he is,” because it feels cruel to give Quinn hope that Tarian can reverse Reeve’s fate.
I’m about to shrug her off and stalk out, but instead, I crouch and dig through Gael’s pockets until I come up with his phone. His screen is full of missed calls—six of those originating from Calanthe.
I press on her number, hoping the phone won’t prompt me for a passcode. It doesn’t.
“Fucking hell, Gael. It’s about time someone calls us back!” she screeches. “What the hell’s happening?”
“Callie, it’s me.”
“Elle?”
“Gael turned on us.” I proceed to tell her everything from the moment Ines’s chopper went down, up till now. In Atlantean, I say, “I don’t know if he has any blood left in his body, but if he does, would Tarian consider—”
“Where are you?” Calanthe barks.
“In the main house.”
“Where in the main house?”
“In the basement. Pantry.”
A heartbeat later, the thud of feet shakes the house.
“You’re here?” I croak.
“Of course we’re here,” Calanthe huffs, but not through the receiver.
She stalks into the pantry, curly hair heaped atop her head in a bun. Tarian enters right behind her. The large pantry suddenly feels tiny.
“Fucking Monta,” Tarian grumbles, stepping over his inert form.
Quinn swallows and edges backward, her good eye so wide her iris bobs in a sea of bloodshot white.
Tarian spares her a glance as he splays his palm over Reeve’s heart.
Calanthe spears her arm through mine, holding me close. “How long has he been…?”
“Not long.”
“Good,” she says.
I lean my head against her shoulder. “Don’t give her false hope,” I murmur in Atlantean.
“Her…or you?”
I decide not to answer. “Dorian and Mal—”
“Diego’s got them. I’ve never seen him so frantic. I actually thought he might jump out of the chopper and try to swim the rest of the way.”
“Ines…”
Her eyes track across Gael’s body and taper. “I heard.”
I don’t ask if she can be brought back, too afraid of the answer. “We made peace.”
“Did you?”
I nod, my eyes warming again. Stinging again. Goddess below, I’m a mess.
Tarian rolls his neck, then lowers his hand and straightens. I wait, with bated breath for him to say something. Anything.
When a minute rolls by, and he doesn’t even turn around, I ask, “Was it too late?”
He sighs.
“Tarian, was it too—”
A rattling cough interrupts me.
“Reeve,” Quinn croaks, wading on her knees through his blood until she’s reached him.
Tarian steps to the side to give her more room. And then he tells us he’s going to check on the others, but before leaving, he cinches Gael’s neck and whispers the undoing spell.
“Don’t kill him yet, all right?” Tarian must rid the others of their runes because he adds, “You can send the rest of them to hell, though.”
When Quinn’s palms rise to Reeve’s cheeks to bend his head to hers, I turn to do as Tarian instructed.
“Electra?” Reeve’s broken timbre stops me in my tracks. “Wait…” He coughs.
“I love you,” I hear Quinn murmur, her declaration cracking the brittle pieces of my heart.
I try to leave, but Calanthe holds me back.
“Let go,” I mutter.
“You should talk to—”
“I will, but not right now,” I say just as Quinn steps in front of us.
“Mind if I end the son, Mrs. Hadez?” she asks.
“Callie. And sure. I didn’t have much of a preference anyway.” Are they really chitchatting about whose life they’re about to take? “Elle, you have a preference?”
“Yeah, my biological father, but the overlord called him.”
Calanthe snickers. “You know, I still haven’t called Tarian that. Pregnancy brain.”
“You’re pregnant?” Quinn asks.
“With triplets,” Calanthe chirps, which makes my teeth slide, because that’s the sort of thing you tell friends, and Quinn is the opposite.
“Electra…?” Reeve’s hoarse voice skates down my spine. “Can we talk? Please.”
I purse my lips but linger, with my back to him and my eyes on Quinn. I watch her sink, not one, but three bullets into Alexander.
“Get Otto, too.” Calanthe crouches, holding her palm over the other guy’s nose and mouth until his skin turns blue. As she straightens, palm on her belly, she asks, “Ouch. Did you do that, Quinn?”
“Do what?”
Calanthe grimaces. “Castrate the man with a bullet.”
“No. That must’ve been Electra.”
Both women look my way.
“Of course that was,” Calanthe says around a smile.
“Brutal. Hey, Reevey, you better respect the woman,” Quinn muses, her puffy lip tugging to the side.
I frown.
Calanthe wiggles her fingers, levitating Gael’s body. “Let me get this one out of the way. Quinn, can you get the door once I float Monta through it? And maybe point your gun elsewhere?”
“Here. You can take it.” Quinn holds it out.
“I hate guns. You keep it.”
Is this conversation really happening, or am I still lying on the kitchen floor, hallucinating from my gunshot wound?
“Callie?!” I hear Tarian shout.
“Be right there, honey! Oh, hey, Mal,” she says just as Quinn draws the door of the pantry shut. “You don’t look too hot,” I hear her tell him.
“Getting shot will do that to you. Where’s Elle? Is she okay?” Malachi’s concern is a balm to my bruised heart.
“She’s just fine,” Callie tells him. “Babe? Where do you want Gael?”
Though Tarian’s voice is faint, I don’t miss his answer, “Six feet under.”
Nor do I miss Calanthe’s snicker.
When my family’s conversation grows dimmer, Reeve tries again to get my attention by calling out my name.
I finally turn. Blood doesn’t faze me, which is fortunate, seeing as he’s drenched in it. I must be as well, but wearing black has its perks.
I cross my arms. “I’m sorry for what the others did to you. I never meant for things to spiral—”
“The love I have for Quinn—”
“I really don’t care, Reeve.”
“I care.” His tone is so sharp that my lids spasm. “I care that you understand that it’s the same sort of love you have for Dorian.” He speaks fast, as though he fears I might cut him off again.
“Why do you think I’d care after how you betrayed me?”
“Maybe you don’t, but I still want you to know.”
“Great. Awesome.” I add a shrug.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
“I didn’t.”
His lips gather to the side in what looks like a crooked smile—or a grimace. Hard to tell considering his extensive bruising.
“You’re lucky Quinn cared enough to beg Tarian to bring you back from the dead.”
“I’m lucky you cared enough to intervene during your father’s questioning.”
“That piece of shit isn’t my father. And we can’t exactly bring down your organization if our intel sources are both dead.”
“Not mine,” he intones. “I haven’t been part of it for the last six years.”
“Yet you seduced me”—the words taste bitter, but I spit them out—“to destroy the mine, so your goals are aligned with the Hunters’.”
“My goal was to save Quinn. Falling for you wasn’t part of the plan, but I fell. I was going to tell you this morning. I even wrote you a message, but then my phone died. If you don’t believe me, click into my phone’s message thread. I bet it’s still there.”
“I’m afraid your phone suffered irreparable damage. I’ll get you a new one in the morning.”
“I don’t care about the phone. I only wanted to show you the message. Electra, I love you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“Impossible.”
“I love you so much it’s fucking ridiculous.”
I snort. “We can agree on the last part.”
“I don’t need you to agree on the first part, since it’s a fact, not an opinion.”
“You’re right. It is an opinion. Yours.”
His lips curve. “Any chance you’d consider cutting off my restraints?” When I don’t move, he adds, “I swear I won’t run.”
Since I released Quinn, I decide to give Reeve back his freedom. “Stab me in the back again, and you’ll wish Tarian never brought you back.”
I reach into my pocket for his knife, grazing his glasses. I don’t return them, preferring to keep him a little incapacitated. I cut off the plastic binding his wrists first, before circling his body and snapping the ties around his ankles. As I straighten, he takes hold of my jacket.
“Don’t touch me,” I hiss at the same time, as he asks, “Is that blood?”
I try to shrug his hands off, but he gathers more leather, prying my ruined jacket open.
“Who hurt you?” he growls.
Keeping my gaze on his bloodstained lap, I whisper, “You did.”
He grows quiet, and then he releases my jacket. “I hate myself so much right now.”
I roll my lips. “I hate you so much right now, too.”
He tentatively brushes his palms against my hips. When I don’t back up, his fingers grow bolder and grip. And then he’s leaning forward and pressing a kiss to my chest, to the piece of black-and-blue flesh beneath the bullet hole.
His touch triggers an ache that’s more than skin-deep. My stupid heart staggers back toward him. My stupider feet stay planted between his.
I exhale the pent-up air in my lungs. Expel the pent-up tears in my eyes.
“Reeve?” My voice is a mess. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he murmurs, pressing another kiss to my chest, so near my nipple the little bud stands to attention. “Love you?”
“No. Yes. I mean…”
He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight, tight, tight. “You’re my happily ever after, Electra Serran.”
“No. I’m not. I’m not even your happy for right now. I’m only your jailor.”
A soft snort warms my chest. “I can get behind being your prisoner.”
I swallow. “Reeve…”
“Yeah, baby?”
“You betrayed me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t forgive you for that.” I try to put distance between us, but my feet still refuse to obey.
My fingers ball at my sides.
“I got a second chance at life, but I don’t want it if I don’t get a second chance at us.” His lips set on my chest, right above the scudding muscle he misled.
“You and Quinn…did you ever…?” I can’t even finish my question.
“Never.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I do. You were going to ask if Quinn and I ever hooked up.” He pulls back, but only to lift a hand to my face and cradle my cheek. “Quinn has always been like a sister to me. We were raised together. We did everything together.”
I purse my lips. “Reeve Rafferty, have you and Quinn ever kissed?”
“Compulsion doesn’t work on me, but to answer your question, yes. We’ve kissed.”
Why does that hurt?
“On the cheek,” he adds.
Masochistic me asks, “Nowhere else?”
“On the forehead.”
“So, you’ve never made out?”
His nose wrinkles, jostling the slight bump along its bridge. “Never.”
I fish his glasses out of my pocket. One lens is cracked. I wipe the other on a clean part of my T-shirt. I’m probably creating a larger smudge, but surely blurry will beat semi-blind.
As I fit them on his face, he says, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“You can say life’s knocked the trust out of me lately.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” He catches my wrist…my fingers. Weaves his through mine.
I stare at our twined hands before stealing my fingers back and stepping away. “I’ll show you to a guestroom so you can wash up.”