by Meg Kassel
I turn in Michael’s grip. She stands there, so close. Facing me. Eyes wide, overflowing with tears. No hatred. No disgust. No fear. I pull in a ragged breath, ludicrously close to tears.
Michael lets me go, and I move to her. She reaches out, and we fall into each other. Her face crushes against my shirt. Her body fits against mine so perfectly, the thought of letting her go brings physical pain. I’ve never been this close to her. Her hair smells like lavender, feels like the finest satin. My mind reels—her closeness is a gift I never imagined I’d experience outside of my own imagination.
I could die like this, with her hair in my hands and her scent in my head. A shudder runs through me, and I feel them—tears falling from tear ducts unused for centuries.
“Amazing,” Michael murmurs. His voice is wistful, but rough edged.
“You came back,” she says against my chest.
“Always,” I reply hoarsely. “Are you okay? Did he—” But I know he didn’t. Aside from a tear at the shoulder of her T-shirt, her clothes are intact. Her faculties are fine, considering the circumstances.
“I’m okay.” She leans back, wipes the wetness on my cheek—her, comforting me, after she was nearly violated by her doctor.
“Your doctor was stung by a beekeeper. Not me,” I quickly add. “It turned his unhealthy attraction to you into a violent obsession. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I tried to—”
“Ssh.” Her fingers brush my mouth. “You’re here now. Don’t leave again, okay?”
I pull her close again, so she can’t see the tortured expression on my face. I will not promise this. If I do what I set out to do, I will leave her, and this life. She will be free to live a life she deserves. Love someone worthy of her, if such a man exists. I doubt he does.
He certainly isn’t me.
The man on the floor groans, staggers to his feet. He blinks at Michael, then at Essie and me. His expression turns livid. Foul energy sprays off him like acid. He’s fully gone. Nothing is left in him but the darkness that had been nibbling the edges of him for many years before Henrik came along and stung him.
“You let this monster touch you, but not me?” he snarls.
Essie goes tense as a rod. “You’re the monster.” Her eyes flash with righteousness and her unique flavor of mania. “And a shitty doctor. I’m still reporting you!”
Michael is restraining laughter, but I am finished with Dr. Roberts. I won’t kill him, but he has spoken his last words to Essie. I step forward, blocking her view of him—and me—and open my mouth. Bees pour out in a violent buzzing cloud and fan out between us. A profound dread rolls over his face, and a whimper escapes Roberts’s lips. Then he turns and hurls himself through the window behind his desk. Blood streams off him as he runs into the heart of the storm, shrieking.
“Oh no.” Essie points after him, her face stricken. “Should we—”
“No,” Michael cuts her off. His eyes have turned deep garnet, as they always do when he’s about to harvest death energy. “His fate is irreversible. His choices have brought him here.”
“But he won’t survive out there.” She swallows, clearly conflicted.
“Neither will you, if you don’t get someplace safe.” Michael turns toward the window. Wisps of black fog curl from his lips. He leaps through the broken window, disappearing into the torrent outside.
Essie gasps. “What is he doing?”
“He’s a harbinger of death,” I say, snatching her around the waist before she rushes after them. “He’s following his nature.”
It is then that I notice how quiet it is suddenly. Still. Perhaps the storm has passed by this area. I look to the window the same moment Essie does. The sky is black. On the street outside, a car rises from the ground, delicately, as if suspended by wires. It wavers for a moment, then disappears upward.
“Run!” Essie screams in the split second before that car slams into the side of the building.
28
Essie
riding out the beast
The rest of the windows blow out. Glass sprays like rain. Dresden shields me from the worst of it, but this is really the least of it.
The roar is back, louder than ten jet engines, more deadly than a pack of demons. Wind howls through the punched-out windows, hurling everything that’s not nailed down.
The carpet glitters with broken glass. Dresden scoops me into his arms like I weigh nothing. That may or may not be real. I close my eyes and hold on tightly when Dresden turns toward the door. Right now, I want to survive.
I’ve never been through a tornado like this. Little ones that can be seen in the distance, more of a curiosity than a threat, have been my experience.
I wrap both fists in the front of Dresden’s shirt. “The basement,” I scream above the screaming wind.
He pauses. His body tenses, but then he barrels down the hallway, through a door torn off its hinges. The basement entrance is in the kitchen. He seems to know the way.
There’s a crushing, splintering sound. Patches of dark light and wind pass through openings above us—the roof has been ripped off the top of Stanton House. Dresden lets out a stream of foreign words that must be curses in another language. “I’m sorry, Essie,” he says to me. “We lingered too long in the doctor’s office. It will be my fault if the tornado pulls you away from me.”
I want to tell him to shut up. I’d be dead if I was still up there with Dr. Roberts. The whipping air steals my breath and is so clogged with dirt and dust I can hardly breathe. I tuck my face against Dresden’s shirt and breathe through the fabric, letting the smell of honey flood my senses and calm me.
I peek up and I wish I hadn’t. Through gaps in the torn-up upper story, I can see the mouth of the monster. It’s wavering, as if trying to decide what to destroy, who to kill.
Planks in the wood floor overhead pop off like matchsticks, pulled into the vortex. The building shakes violently. Hiding in a doorway won’t help. We have moments to get underground, seconds, if that. A desk slams into Dresden’s back, but he only stumbles a bit. He bolts for the kitchen. He’s fast, but not fast enough.
The tornado makes its decision. It shifts toward Stanton House.
Dresden flies down the stairs as the roar threatens to split my eardrums. He makes a cage around me with his body, and we tumble downward. Despite the buffer of Dresden’s body, it hurts. White light fills my vision when my head hits the corner of a step.
I’m completely jumbled up and bruised when we hit the bottom, but Dresden rolls easily to his feet and plunges into the first room to our left—it’s a small root cellar of sorts, located on the opposite side of the basement from where the patients and staff are taking refuge. A narrow plate glass window provides a small amount of light, but the thick, warped glass offers no view outside, which is just as well. This small space is packed full with file boxes and old office supplies—computer monitors, printers—but the ceiling and walls are brick.
Dresden wedges between some boxes and crouches next to the wall with me, holding my bruised body with care. He lifts my hand and rests it on my chest. I hurt in so many places.
The monster passes overhead. The sound is unreal. The house is being torn apart, but the individual sounds of tearing wood and flying debris are swallowed by the rolling roar of the tornado. Dust rains from the ceiling as dirt-thick air pours into the basement. It’s so hard to breathe, impossible to hear. Dresden curves his body over mine. His mouth whispers reassurance, sweet words just out of reach. I count the seconds. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. It feels like it takes an hour to get to twenty, twenty-five, twenty-six seconds.
And then it eases. The noise. The wind. The destruction.
Suddenly, my breathing is the loudest thing, and I can’t quite get a hold on it. It’s hitching all over the place.
Dresden falls silent. He cradles me against his chest, gazing at me as if committing my features to memory. His fingers shake as they brush hair from my face. His thumb tracing over my chee
kbone. “Essie,” he says softly.
I gaze up at him, following the kaleidoscope of features molding, reforming over his face. He’s different from the cold boy with the chilling words I met in the playground of Baxter Park a month ago. I can’t imagine the Dresden I met then holding me in his arms, looking down at me with so much emotion my heart squeezes. I forget the sparks dancing in my peripheral vision.
Can you forgive him?
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I give him a lopsided smile. “I’ll be fine. Are you okay?”
His lips twitch. “Of course. I bungled that rescue terribly.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are too kind to me.” He leans down, rests his forehead against mine. “My sweet, brave Essie. I was afraid I’d lost you.”
Thick black hair brushes my cheek. It’s the closest he’s ever been to me. The few times he’s touched me have been reluctant, wary, but the arms around me now are strong and sure. His hands move over my back, sliding up my spine, barely testing the curve of my hip. I close my eyes and breathe in honey and the unique scent of him that reminds me of grass and fresh air.
His chest quietly hums with bees. They vibrate against my arm. Somewhere along the line, the bees have become a sound, sensation of comfort, safety.
Dresden’s gaze briefly falls to my mouth, then back to my eyes. The moment stretches, charges with a current I’ve only felt the edges of with him, but was never locked into like this. Even as inexperienced as I am, I can tell he wants to kiss me. And I am certain I would like him to.
It doesn’t even seem weird, and it probably should, considering I could wind up with a number of different lips under mine. But a funny thing happened somewhere along the way—he just stopped looking unusual. He just looks like him, changing faces and all. And I like him. I lean forward to close the distance, to let him know that I don’t care which of his lips kisses me. That I don’t care what features happens to be on his face—I want this kiss, but he pulls back.
“No, Essie,” he says roughly. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’m lucky to have seen you, briefly, through my own eyes, but I won’t kiss you with another’s mouth. Please, don’t ask that of me.”
My heart pounds hard. It aches like my ribs are too small for it.
Stirring can be heard from my fellow patients and the staff on the other side of the basement. There’s a good deal of crying and talking. Someone starts wailing, but it doesn’t sound like anyone’s hurt. Just scared. Just a little more broken than they were before.
“Why did you leave like that?” I ask him.
He pulls back, retracts like a turtle into a shell. “If I tell you, you’ll despise me.”
There is distance here that wasn’t a few moments ago, making me regret my question. “Really? It’s that bad?”
“Yes,” he says so quietly he’s almost inaudible. “I’ve done something I will never forgive myself for. And neither will you.”
There’s nothing to forgive.
“How do you know what I would or wouldn’t forgive, if you don’t tell me the truth?” My heart pounds. Good grief, what did he do? “I deserve an explanation.”
He closes his eyes. “One of my bees stung your ancestor. It was an accident, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m the reason for the Wickerton curse.” His face contorts in self-loathing. “It’s my fault you suffer.”
Air rushes from my chest in a rush. It’s only that, which I already know about and am so ready to move on from, but this is clearly a big deal to him. I get that, I suppose, and at the same time I don’t want it to be this thing between us. “You know, you shouldn’t shoulder the blame for every bad thing even remotely connected to you. What about the people who made you this way? Aren’t they at fault?”
“I–I don’t know.” He raises his gaze on a shaky breath. “How are you not furious?”
“I don’t blame you for my great-great-grandmother’s condition.” I tilt my head to the side. He truly thought I’d hate him if I knew. The thought is so absurd a laugh bubbles up. Literally. The air fills with big, pink bubbles. He sees me watching them, and his expressions fold into sadness. “Dresden,” I say. “I knew already. Stitches told me.”
He frowns. “Stitches?”
“Yeah. That man with the sewn-up eyes and mouth,” I reply. “He visited me in Stanton House.” I want to tell him about the rest of the conversation. About the part where Stitches told me about Dresden being able reverse my condition, and the strange promise I made, but my tongue seizes up around the words. It feels like another brick on his load, and he looks upset enough about Stitches as it is.
“He visited you?” he asks on a sharp breath. “Did he touch you?”
“No,” I say. “He was nice. Polite enough, too. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because ‘Stitches’ is a creature called a Strawman. He creates evil. He likely caused the person who is murdering your family members to become psychotic. Are you sure he didn’t touch you at all?”
I nod. “Positive. Do you think it was Dr. Roberts?”
He looks at me like he has no idea what I’m talking about. “You think your doctor is the killer?”
“After what he tried today, it’s possible,” I say. “He didn’t care that a tornado was going to kill us, he just wanted to—”
He closes his eyes and places a finger to my lips. “Please. Just thinking about that makes my bees want to sting someone. I’m not sure about him. I saw the killer once, although he was covered head to toe and…” He shrugs with a shake of his head. “I don’t know. Something about the body types didn’t match. I’d be very surprised if he was the guy.”
“You saw him?” I gasp. “When?”
“Outside your house,” he replies with a wince. “I was keeping an eye out, and so was he, I guess. The police arrived before I could get any answers from him, and the Strawman grabbed him, and they disappeared when the police showed up.”
I smack his chest. “You should have told me.”
“I was trying to keep my distance,” he says gruffly. “I can’t think straight around you.”
That makes a nice little warmth unfold in my chest and a smile curl my lips. “Thank you,” I say. “You have the total opposite effect on me. I’m remarkably clear thinking when we’re together.”
He shifts in his seat, and his skin darkens. “Yes, well. Regardless, I’m relieved that the Strawman didn’t harm you. They’re not known to be ‘nice,’ as you put it.”
“What makes him so dangerous?”
“His touch leaves a black scar on a person’s skin that turns off the light in a person, leaving only the dark. The killer who is targeting your family was touched by him.”
His description pricks a memory, but I can’t hold onto it enough for it to fully form. Dresden leans back as someone shuffles near the doorway, then back to the group down the hall. “People are on the move. We should go.”
“Is it safe to leave?”
“I will keep you safe.” Dresden lifts me gently. Keeping his head down, he carries me from the tiny room. The stairs are blocked, filled with debris. We peek around the corner, around a bank of industrial washer/dryers. Part of the basement on the other side is caved in.
There’s no immediate way out that way. With the stairs covered, the bulkhead would be the only other exit, but that’s crushed under the weight of part of the roof and what looks like a refrigerator, but I can’t be sure. Every single nurse is trying to make calls on their cells while comforting patients and handing out water bottles. I hear one nurse mutter something about giving everyone a good dose of sedative until crews come to get them out.
Dresden draws me back to the cellar room we’d been in. He places both hands on the thick plate-glass window and pushes. To my surprise, the window frame comes out, emitting a grinding noise and a fresh puff of dust. Through the opening, I can see outside. What little there is to see. Debris covers
the opening, which sits only a foot above ground level.
In the other part of the basement, the nurse yells at everyone to get away from the stairs as a fresh cascade of wreckage slides down and piles up at the base.
Dresden shoves the debris out of the way. He takes my hand and boosts me through the opening he made, and soon we’re both standing outside on a patch of sodden grass and blinking at the transformed landscape. The rain is lessening. Already, the sun is trying to break through.
I stifle a cry at what I see. A wide swath of Concordia is simply flattened. Where we’re at, in a less densely populated area, it doesn’t look that bad, but to the south, where the center of town used to be, is a trail of rubble. Cars, crumpled and overturned, lie in strange places, like the tops of trees—the trees still standing, that is. Homes turned inside out, their contents disgorged on torn-up front lawns. Leroy Stanton the Third’s once-proud manor house, turned home for the mentally ill, is a pile of wood. The buildings that connected to it that housed Dr. Roberts’s practice are completely gone.
Dresden picks up a golf ball–sized piece of hail and places it against my forehead, where a knot is forming. “The others won’t be able to get up those steps,” Dresden says. “But they have food, water, fresh air, and the rescue crews will find them easily enough.”
Sirens are starting to wail. Not the tornado-warning kind, thankfully those have ceased, but the fire-and-ambulance kind. Somewhere overhead, helicopter blades whip. Rescue is on the way.
A sob pulls from my belly. “My home is downtown,” I choke out. “My aunt…oh, Aunt Bel!”
Dresden catches me as my knees give out. “I’ll find her. Look,” he says, pointing at the street. An ATV with police markings bounces over debris. “You’ll be safe now. Let me find your aunt.”
I nod, recognizing the Concordia P.D. emblem on the side of the ATV. The driver is tall and strong, but unmistakably familiar. “It’s okay, it’s only Detective Berk.”