by Eli Constant
“He never told me much. And I never really asked. I guess I thought I knew him better than I actually did.” I contemplate the bar behind us, at the building that was more to Jim than just a business. Even if it had started out as a spiteful thing to buy, it had become so much more than that over the years. To him and to me.
“Guys trusted Dad. He helped his friends from prison start fresh. He wasn’t a bad guy. Not the best Dad, but not a bad guy.” Kyle swipes a hand roughly across his chin and the five o’clock shadow darkening his skin. “I think he was always trying to make up for killing during the War. He…” Kyle stops and I don’t press him for more information.
“Jim wasn’t a bad guy at all, Kyle. I cared about him deeply. I wouldn’t care about a guy who was anything but truly good. In his soul, I mean.” I put intensity into my words. And I believed what I said, especially now, knowing why Jim smelled like he’d killed. He had. In the War. He’d fought for his country, doing things that he carried in his soul like a black mark. And he’d been trying to erase that mark.
Kyle’s standing beside me now, also looking up at the bar. “I hope they find whoever did this.”
“They will, Kyle. I’ll help them.” I think about Blackthorn and I feel empty and cold. I don’t know what he is, but I know for damn certain he’s not human. He scares me, but I’ll find him and I’ll avenge Jim. Even if it takes every ounce of strength I hold in my pudgy, average-height body.
“It’s mine now, you know.” Kyle tries for casual, but grief teases each word.
“What?” I look sideways at him, not grasping his meaning.
“Dad left me everything. Bar’s paid off.”
“Oh.” I’m quiet for a moment. “Will you sell then?”
“No. I can’t sell it. I won’t.” He shakes his head vehemently.
“But you’re a psychologist, Kyle. You’re not a barkeep.”
“What better person than a head doctor to tend bar?” His face is soft now, a decision forming behind his eyes. “You listen to people’s problems. You offer them some relief. I’d be good at it.”
“Of course you would be, but is that what you really want? To take your degrees and experiences and put those to work serving people wine and beer? Isn’t it—”
He interrupts me, his voice firm and just this side of sharp. “What? A waste of my skills?” He shakes his head, stuffs his hands into his jeans. There’s finality to the motion, like he will not put his arms around me again. And I find that I want him to, that his touch will help hold me together. It’s a selfish thought considering what he has lost. “I’m going to do this. For Dad.”
I don’t argue. This is his grief playing out in technicolor. The stages, one by one, in whatever order his mind needs. He’ll be noble now, wanting to do something to remember his father. That’ll change though—possibly into resentment—when he comes to realize the life he’s given up in memory of the dead.
Because the dead don’t care what we do once they’re gone. Their pain is over. Ours is just beginning.
“I need to sit down again,” I murmur the words, but Kyle hears me. He nods and we head to the edge of the sidewalk to sit down. The third step sends a shooting pain up my right leg and directly into my heart, like an arrow shot by an archer with perfect aim. “Shit.” I grasp my chest and suck air through my teeth.
“Victoria, what’s wrong?” Kyle snakes an arm around my waist and holds me as I bend over and breathe heavily. I hate the pain, but love that he’s holding me once more.
“Few broken ribs. Maybe some deep tissue bruising. Nothing four ibuprofen and a cup of coffee won’t cure.” I say it flippantly, trying to act like I felt better than I did. But my act didn’t fool him.
“You need to get to a hospital, Victoria.”
“Terrance will take me.” More pain shoots upwards from the soles of my feet. It is so intense that I close my eyes. My knees give way. I can feel Kyle’s hands and arms around me. I can smell him as my head comes to rest against his chest. The muscles beneath his shirt are firm and comforting.
And that’s all I remember until I wake up in a hospital bed, a monitor beeping rhythmically away. Outside, the sky is darkening. Twilight, bring the night. Give this lonely spirit flight.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
Shifting my body, I hunt for the oversized remote thing that controls the hospital bed. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t go to hospitals, not for small injuries or big injuries. I just don’t. Fuck.
Finding the controls to the bed, I depress the one that will raise it so that I can sit up. Repositioning sends sharp pangs through my stomach and chest, but I manage. When I’m sat up, I see that I’m in a private room. The curtains are mostly closed, but there’s a gap between the two pieces that is a straight sightline to the door that exits into the hospital hallway.
A uniform is sat there, right beside my exit. It looks like Steve from the back.
I lift my arm and wince. Looking down, I see an IV line leading to a needle taped to my inner wrist. Fuck. Fuck.
They’ll have taken my blood. But it’s okay, right? It’s okay, because why would they do the test? There’s no reason for it. It’s not mandatory now on patients, because everyone was supposedly tested at birth. And I’m not a newborn. During The Rising, hospitals were made to test anyone that walked through the doors, just in case. But not now.
Not now.
That’s it; I’m signing up for a concealed weapons course and buying a damn gun. And I’m taking those damn self-defense courses Terrance is always yapping about. I can’t risk shit like this. I have to learn to defend myself. And I have to find an alternative method of getting stitched up if things ever go badly again. The Columbia underworld is too far away. There’s got to be someone nearer willing to work for cash and able to keep a secret. I’d ask Jim, if he were alive. He’d known everyone… everyone that was a little (or a lot) on the seedy side.
Weighing my options, I sit in bed and gently finger the sorer parts of my body. My chest and stomach ache something fierce and when I fold down the bed blanket and lift the flower-print gown, I see bruises have sprouted all across my pale skin. They look sickly, a poorly composed painting of purples, blues, greens, and browns.
I concentrate on the rest of my body, the parts I cannot see. Closing my eyes, I feel through my muscles and veins, looking for necrosis. That’s something useful about being what I am—I can sense where I’m damaged. I know what parts will never heal fully. I can even encourage my body to heal, although that side of my power is very weak.
My powers of death will always outweigh my powers of life.
There’s a small mound at the base of my spine, right above where my buttocks begins. It’s like I’m leaning against a golf ball cut in half. It’s deep trauma that’s caused the blood to pool in one place. I can’t remember the medical term, but I know that if it were severe enough, they’d have drained it. I listen to the injury… I don’t know how better to put it… and it tells me that it will disappear in time, leaving me the way I was.
A knock at the door pulls my focus from my body. “Come in.”
I push the gown back down and lift the blanket so that I am covered from neck to feet. Terrance enters the room, his thumbs are pushed into his belt and his fingers thrum against his pants pockets.
“Hi.” I say, sensing immediately how guilty he feels about what’s happened.
“Hey, Tori.” He moves towards the gap in the privacy hanging. He doesn’t pull it open or close it fully. He simply walks through, the curtains fluttering behind him, and he comes to sit in the reclining chair at my bedside. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.”
He smiles. I try, but I can’t manage the simple gesture. I should though. God, I should be happy. I’m alive. How can any person breathing be depressed or sad? We could be gone. In a second. It could be a heart attack while fishing. Or a tragic car accident.
Or the brutal bite of a fucking monster.
“Tori, I know you’ve been through hell and back, but I need to know anything you can tell me about what happened to Jim.” His face is cop-serious. I’ve seen the expression before, often directed at me when I’ve given him a detail of a person’s murder that I couldn’t possibly know.
“You won’t believe me, Terrance.”
“Try me.”
I think about lying for a moment, worried that somehow I’ll expose myself in the process. But this had nothing to do with my necromancy and it had everything to do with being a friend. So I opened my mouth and I told Terrance every single detail. Well, every detail apart from being able to feel the death on Blackthorn and being able to see Jim’s spirit before it passed to the other side.
Those little tidbits I kept to myself.
Terrance listened, no signs that he didn’t believe me apparent on his face or in his body language.
“Do you believe me?” My voice is pleading. I need him to believe me. I wasn’t crazy. I had seen Blackthorn become a monster. I knew things besides me existed. Other preternatural creatures. But Blackthorn… He was a monster.
Of course, most people would say that I’m a monster too.
“You’ve no reason to make something like this up.” He says it quietly, an edge to his voice that is not anger. It’s almost… fear?
“I’m not making it up, Terrance. I give you my word on that.”
He nods. “I believe you, Tori. I do.” He gets up, wringing his hands together nervously. I’ve never seen him nervous. Not like this.
“Terrance, do you know something that you aren’t telling me?” It’s my turn to put on the cop-serious face, although I probably do a piss-poor job of it. In fact, I’m positive I do a piss-poor job. Even Terrance, who is dealing with something at the moment that I don’t understand, can’t suppress a little smirk at my expense.
“Maybe. But not until I’m sure, Tori. When I’m sure, I’ll tell you. I promise.”
It was the best I was going to get out of him, but it made me wonder—what could a small town Southern cop know about a monster that a big bad necromancer didn’t?
Chapter Twenty-Three.
I’ve never been in shock before. Not really. I don’t know if I’m even in shock now. All I know is that I want to cry. I want to cry for the loss of my friend, for Jim, but my eyes will not give me the relief.
They want to keep me overnight. I just want to get home and into my soft bed. I could feel that I was already healing, the little death that had creeped into my veins being pushed away by the vitality of my cells. It would only take a few days of easy-going until I was close to normal.
And lying in the damn hospital made me so antsy, like any minute some nurse would stride through the door, tell me that they’ve tested my blood, and I’ll be taking a one-way trip to burn-at-the-stake city. And it’s odd… because the nurses haven’t come back in hours. Only once, when I pressed the button so insistently that a younger nurse, one I hadn’t seen before, came back. And she’d had the doctor in tow, her face nervous.
But they couldn’t have tested my blood. I’d already have been taken into custody. Right? I have police protection right now also. Surely, if they had done the test, Darryl would have come in and strapped cuffs on me, his face smug and smiling.
Right, everything’s fine. I’m just being paranoid. A paranoid little necromancer… who just realized that the test results are automatically sent to the Preternatural Prevention Agency and not released to the hospital to avoid panic. The nurse was just nervous because she was young. The hospital wouldn’t even know if the PPA was coming for me.
No, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.
I had tried to convince the doctor and younger nurse that I was fine, but they weren’t having any talk of me being released early though, no matter how I grumbled and moaned.
Kyle comes before visiting hours end. He has a time getting past Darryl who is positioned outside my door. It had been Jake earlier. I could stomach Jake. He was a bit on the egotistical side, but not so bad that I wanted to wring his neck every time we talked. I must have dozed during the changing of the guard. Jake would have said goodbye. At least I think he would have.
“What an asshole.” Kyle breathes the words as he pushes past my privacy curtains, which are mostly open at the moment, and bends over to grip the footboard of the bed. “It’s been a damn long time since I’ve instantly disliked someone.”
“Darryl has that effect on people.” I shrug and the motion hurts. Particularly, there’s a stinging on my inner left wrist. I look at it, curious. I see nothing at first, but when I lift it even closer to my face, I see what looks like a small suction shape—like something you’d get if you squeezed a water bottle then held it against your skin. The vacuum it creates sucks a lump of you inward and, eventually, you get a bruise. But…I look closer. There’s a tiny hole at the center of the round bruise. It’s very odd. I stop studying my wrist when Kyle speaks again.
“He saw me at Dad’s bar. He even fucking talked to me and offered his condolences. Yet he’s out there acting like he doesn’t know me at all. Threatened to cuff me and haul me in. I had to call Chief Goodman on his cell to get by the scumbag.” He’s angry, rightly so.
“Terrance gave you his personal number?” That surprises me. Normally, Terrance just gives out the station line.
“Yeah, in case I thought of anything that might help them find the son of a bitches that killed Dad.” Kyle sighs, rubbing a hand roughly across the back of his neck, mussing his lovely hair which is untied and swinging freely. He goes back to gripping the bed, as if it will calm him down somehow.
I really had to plug Terrance’s cell into my own so I had it handy anytime Darryl took things over the line. I’d play that card. As often as I liked. “I’m so, so sorry, Kyle. I don’t know what to say.” I reach a hand out to him, but I don’t lean forward. My side hurts too much; just sitting upright is a total bitch.
“Me neither. God. I can’t believe he’s gone.” He lets go of the bed rail. My mind is playing tricks on me, maybe side effects of the pain medicine they gave me an hour ago, because it almost looks like the metal is slightly indented where he was gripping.
Kyle moves and sits down in the chair beside me. He leans forward, cradling his head in his hands. His dark hair falls forward in a soft waterfall of darkest brown.
Something’s been bothering me, but I know voicing my question will be insensitive. I ask anyways. I’m a bitch like that. “Kyle, why was Jim alone at the bar? I mean, you’d just checked him out of the hospital. He shouldn’t have been alone so soon.”
It’s then that I see Kyle’s shoulders moving up and down, a gentle motion, and tears are slipping from between his fingers to splash against his light wash jeans. I feel instantly guilty about bringing it up.
“Damn stubborn ass,” he murmurs, sitting up and swiping at his eyes roughly. “I didn’t expect him to do it. Just thought he was making idle threats. He hated sitting around doing nothing. He wasn’t even one to sit in front of a ball game for more than twenty minutes before getting up and finding a task.”
“He was stubborn.” I try to reach out to Kyle, to offer him some comfort, but a sharp pain in my side forces me back against the bed to nurse my wounds.
“Don’t move too much.” Kyle looks at me, face still damp from crying, but the tears have already stopped.
“I’m really not that bad. Three broken ribs, some bruising, bit of a hematoma above my ass.” I smile softly, the barest curve of lips. “It could be a lot worse.”
He nods, not smiling. “A hell of a lot worse.”
I could be dead, like Jim. I think. “So, um…” I let my thought trail away. I don’t think it’s right to ask him again. He’ll answer if he wants.
“We’d just gotten home when Dad asked me to go grab more beer. And he didn’t have a damn thing to eat in the house. The whole way home from the hospital, he was pushing to go check on the bar. I’d been by it already—on the way from y
our house to pick him up. It looked fine, nothing amiss. I thought he’d let it go, thought he was going to sit and rest while I ran to the store. I was wrong.”
“So you took the Harley to get groceries?” I want to depress the button to dispense pain medicine, but I can’t give into sleep yet.
“No, no. I took my car.” Now he does smile, but it’s a twisted and sad thing. “Guess it’s mine now though. I’d rather have him than the motorcycle.”
“So you went out for groceries…” I lead him on gently. I’m a bit like Jim- not good at letting things go, even when I decide to.
“And when I came back, Dad was gone and so was the Thunderbird. It wasn’t hard to figure out where. I took the Harley because I was mad at him. A little different than me taking it for a joy ride to see you.” The twinkle in his eyes was smoldering, trying to light back up. And then it was gone as quickly as it had reappeared. “Dammit. He was an old man. He couldn’t have hurt them.”
“Jim was tough, Kyle. They took him by surprise or I’d bet he’d have gotten a few knocks in before going down,” I try to make my voice soothing.
“They wouldn’t let me see him there, but I had to go to the morgue to identify the body. It was… fuck… what human could do that to another person? It was brutal. I told them it was Dad, but they’re still pulling his dental records to check. That’s how bad it was. Jesus, his face…” Kyle’s hands are across his face again, hiding the pain.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle. I’m so sorry I didn’t get there sooner.” I do lean forward now, despite the pain it causes me. I can only get close enough to brush my fingers across the top of his head, before falling back against the pitiful hospital pillows.
“What could you have done? The only thing good about all this is that they didn’t kill you too. I’ve thought about it, you know? If that police officer had been just a few minutes later and hadn’t interrupted…” he trails off, as if imagining what my body would look like lying next to his father’s.