The blood is thick, sticky and pretty damn gross. Worse, I can smell it. An acrid stench with a hint of grass and Monroe’s tobacco. His thumb is rough and callous and I hope to god he hasn’t scratched my skin. That’s all I need, some seasoned chicken blood infection in my face.
Maisie swallows and squeezes her eyes shut when it’s her turn to receive the bizarre blood blessing. Her nose wrinkles as he swipes his thumb across her forehead. As soon as he takes his hand away, she pantomimes vomiting. Watching her makes my stomach curl.
“Stop that,” I beg.
I look over my shoulder at Gloria. “Why aren’t you getting blood paint on your face? You’re more of a warrior than either of us.”
“Mrs. Jackson’s done did this. She’ll tell you firsthand it works.”
Gloria gives a short nod.
The blood starts to itch as it cools on my forehead.
“This is so awesome.” Maisie makes a dry heaving motion with her body, cupping her hand over her mouth.
“Seriously, if you do that again, I’m going to puke on you.”
“Focus on my voice.” Monroe gives my hand a gentle squeeze.
I close my eyes again, trying to do as I’m asked.
Maisie fidgets beside me. “How are you going to do this dream share? I thought your power was the wind thingy.”
Monroe squeezes our hands harder. “Shhhh.”
At last, we fall quiet. I’m not sure what we are supposed to be listening to exactly. I’m trying not to think about my aching butt on the hard floor or Monroe’s blood caked hand in mine.
Then, subtly, I do hear something. The unmistakable sound of waves lapping at a shore.
I open my mouth to ask what the hell is that when Monroe gives my hand a gentle squeeze. I swallow my questions. And the sound of the ocean grows louder.
Maisie makes a little sound of surprise beside me and her hand tightens on mine. But she doesn’t say anything more as the sounds of the ocean grow louder. A gull cries out, making me jump. Then the heat comes, and with that the feel of sunshine on my bare skin.
I open my eyes expecting to break the spell, to see the dingy little room off the Rue Dauphine.
I see the beach.
The beach is different than the one Gabriel takes me too. Large pebbles and rocks litter this shore, where the ocean meets the land. The smell of salt is strong though, so I know it must be the ocean even as pebbles shift underfoot.
Maisie is standing beside me looking out over the water. She shields her eyes from the sun. “Where are we?”
There’s a strange moment when I hear both her voice in my head and with my ears, back in the room on the Rue Dauphine.
Monroe takes a rolled cigarette from his pocket and puts it between his lips, lighting it in his cupped hand. “Speak with your mind, not your mouth. It’ll be easiest that way.”
“Is this part of your dream?” The words come out of my dream mouth as if I’d spoken them, but I don’t hear the echo of my physical mouth back in the room. So it’s like talking to Gabriel. Unfortunately, the ache in my real butt from sitting on the wood floor is still very present.
“This is the meeting place,” Monroe blows smoke into the sky. “I think y’all have both been here before, haven’t you?”
“Mine is different.” I think of the beach house near the shore. The dense jungle that overtakes the beach at a certain point. Here the land goes on and on in all directions. But there is no house. Only a sharp cliff rises behind us. The mossy mountain disappears into the mist high overhead, leaving me without an idea of how tall it really is. It’s strange to look back and see the misty mountain only to turn right and see all the sunshine and open sea.
“I see Lake Michigan,” Maisie says. “Chicago but with no people.”
Her voice begins with the physical echo, but trails into dream speech. Monroe smiles, nodding as if he’s pleased with our progress.
“So if we are at ‘the meeting place’,” I say using air quotes. “Where is this dream we are supposed to see?”
“We’ve got to go a bit deeper for that.” Monroe turns and begins to walk away from us. We follow him down the beach, clamoring over rocks that feel so real. I use my hands to steady myself and the stone is moist with the mist under my palms and my sneakers slide over the surface as if I could really fall and hurt myself on their jagged edges. Dream sneakers, I realize. Courtesy of seasoned chicken blood.
About halfway down the beach I see a group of people. I’m fairly certain that they were not here when I looked up and down the beach before.
But here they stand now. Worse, I recognize them and stiffen.
“Caldwell,” I hiss, my ears echoing with my real voice in the little room far away.
“A dream,” Monroe says, palms toward me as if to soothe me.
“Mom!” Maisie calls, relief in her voice palpable. She starts running toward the group.
I take off after her. “Wait!”
“They aren’t really here.” Monroe maintains his patient tone, taking another slow drag on his cigarette. “This is the dream. It always begins this way. I come to the meeting place. I see all of us together, in a circle.”
All of us: Me, Caldwell, Georgia, Maisie, Rachel, Liza, Monroe, Cindy, Jason, and a woman I don’t recognize. Add a couple of men I don’t recognize either. I assume it must be Chaplain and Jake, the only other two partis that I’ve heard of, but never met, given the fact they both died long before I was on the partis scene.
“Uh, are they ghosts?” I ask. “Is this a ghost beach?”
“What are they doing?” Maisie comes to stand beside me and behind Monroe, gesturing to the pulsating, growing orb in the center of the circle.
I wave my hand in front of Jesse—the other Jesse—but she doesn’t seem to react. She’s focused on the object in the center of the circle. Everyone is. Only, I’m not entirely convinced that she is really seeing anything at all. Her eyes—my eyes—are downcast and unfocused.
“What the hell are they looking at?” I turn to Monroe.
He nods, a low chuckle escaping between his lips. “You’ve got to step in.”
“Say what?”
“The blood will only take us so far. You’ve got to choose to see it. You must choose to know the truth.”
I’ve got to look as slack jawed and stupid as I feel.
“Go on now.” He places a reassuring hand on my back. “Step right on in and you’ll see for yourself. You too, Maisie, baby.”
Maisie and I exchange worried glances. “When you say step in…?”
“Step into your body. Put one foot where the other is. You’ll see what I mean.”
Maisie looks as unconvinced as I do.
“If this is some kind of bizarre mind orgy, you’ll feel my wrath, Monroe,” I warn. Then I take a breath—if what I’m even doing here is called breathing—and I step on myself. I lift one foot and set it down about where the other me’s foot is. It’s like stepping through a hologram. There’s nothing substantial to the other Jesse. I can line my body up with hers.
But as soon as my one foot is lined up with hers, I have a sneaky suspicion that this is going to be more complicated than it seems.
It feels like I’ve put my foot in a river. A current tugs at my leg, pulling on me.
“I don’t know about this,” I say to Monroe.
Maisie puts her hands on my back and shoves me forward.
“Hey!” I cry out.
“You first,” she calls.
Her voice is swallowed up by the roar in my ears. As soon as I’m fully in the place of hologram Jesse, everything changes.
The beach falls away. Hell, the world falls away. The current surrounds me, pulling me down and down. It feels like a drain, the way I circle around and around, my hair whipping wildly around me. Yet the other eleven partis seem to keep their formation, each of us equidistant from the other. I look up and try to understand what I’m seeing. It’s like looking up through the center of a tornado. The
cyclone is dark and violent around us. In the center is a brilliant light, flashes of lightning cutting through the torrent. Below, far below from where I’m suspended is…what?
What is that? I try to ask. But my voice doesn’t materialize in my head or in the dreamscape.
I’m tiring, Liza says. Her voice shocks me back to my present moment and my bizarre suspension in the cyclone current.
This seems to mean something to everyone else. They reach out and clasp hands. Monroe beside me clasps my hand and Jason on the other side takes the other. I look up from our clasped hands in time to see Liza grow bright white until her entire form is washed away.
The white light spreads, moving into Caldwell and Cindy’s hands where they stand holding her. The light leaks from Liza’s form into their bodies. The white light that I understand to be what is left of Liza, travels around the full circle until it reaches me. There’s a moment of panic just before it touches me that I think to let go, but Monroe’s hold on my hand tightens.
The white light is warm, pleasant. But as soon as it settles into my chest, the torrent kicks up, the cyclone growing more violent around me.
Then Minli gives up her power too—and that’s when I understand what is happening. They hold on until they can’t, then they pass their gift to the others in the group.
The only problem is that the power grows more violent, more turbulent with the lesser number of conduits.
The numbers dwindle down. I watch each partis fade to bright light that my body absorbs until it is only me and Caldwell, holding hands of all things.
The storm rages and I think it will tear me apart. I think the lightning from above might strike me and burn me to a crisp. I imagine it would be painful. The amount of power rushing through me already feels like lightning under my skin. I don’t think I can possibly absorb any more.
Then Caldwell says, “Take it.”
No, I think. It was never supposed to be housed by one. It was supposed to be all of us for as long as we could.
“Take it, Jesse.”
He begins to glow, lightning filling his eyes, and pouring from his opening mouth. It trails his jaw, neck, and limbs, rushing from his fingers into mine.
I take it, drinking it all down but it’s too much. There’s too much.
I scream.
I scream and scream, falling back into the black cyclone. I’m falling as I’d done so often in death. The sensation is the same, the immense and impenetrable darkness rising up to envelop me. I try to breath but can’t.
I’m dying.
Oh god, no, I’m dying.
Chapter 23
Jesse
“Breathe, Jesse,” a voice says. It’s neither male nor female. And it sounds so far away. “Come on, breathe.”
Feeling as though I’ve broken the surface of an enormous lake, I suck in a great gasping breath. I come up on my elbows, and then roll onto my knees and heave. My hands scrape against the wood. My chest burns as if I’ve been holding my breath for a long time.
“Thatagirl,” Monroe says and slaps my back. “In through your nose.”
I open my eyes and the first thing I see are my hands. They’re pressed against the wooden floor in the small room inside a tiny house off the Rue Dauphine. I remember the little sidewalk and the rotting screen door. The place comes back to me. I sit back on my knees and find out how shaken I am.
Maisie is sitting against one of the walls, a blanket wrapped around her. She’s shaking too, with sweat beading across her forehead and face. Her cheeks are flushed bright red and her eyes dilated. I can still smell the blood, but also ash and the stench of an extinguished candle.
“Why was she in the dream for so long?” Maisie asks. Her teeth chatter around the words.
I reach up and wipe my brow. I’m as sweaty and gross as she is. I feel like I’ve come out of a feverish delirium, my eyes focusing on the first tangible object I see. Gloria’s face.
She pushes a cup toward my face. I take it, but the cup trembles so badly in my hand that Gloria doesn’t let go. She holds onto the bottom of the cup.
I take a big gulp of coffee. I know it’s coffee from the rich smell, but the taste is off. It’s so strong, bitter. “What. The. Fuck?”
“Chicory,” Gloria says, holding the cup up to my face until I push it away. “It’s better than Dr. Pepper.”
“If you say so.” I rake my teeth across my tongue. The flesh feels burnt. “Seriously, what the hell just happened?”
“You saw the truth,” Monroe says. He’s unwrapping the half remaining inch of his cigarette and tapping the unused tobacco out onto his palm.
“O-kay.” I pull at my face again, trying to shake off the feverish sickness clinging to me. “What the hell is the truth?”
“We wasn’t supposed to be killing each other.” He stuffs the last bit of rolling paper in his pocket and slides the sealed container of tobacco back into his front shirt pocket.
Maisie’s teeth chatter. “But there’s supposed to be an apex. There’s only supposed to be one who holds all the power.”
“No. It was never meant to be a burden for one soul to bear.” Monroe looks absolutely exhausted. Deep puffy bags sit under his dark eyes. He rubs his forehead. “The shield is a gift. If we want to keep this rock spinning, we’ve got to recharge the shield. How do we recharge?”
“Electricity,” Gloria offers. Probably because Maisie’s teeth are chattering too wildly to speak and I feel like my head is split in two.
“Yes, ma’am,” Monroe nods, still rubbing his forehead. “They turned on the switch. They be sending the electricity down the wire.”
“Who?” I manage.
“The angels. But they need wires. They need batteries to store the juice.”
“That’s us.”
He puts one hand on his knee. “That’s us. But the energy transfer will kill us, no avoiding that.”
“So then why twelve partis? Why the competition to be the wire?”
“To be the battery, not the wire,” Monroe says. “We’re all the wires. It’s the battery that will power the shield long after the body is gone.”
“Why twelve?”
“It be a kindness,” Monroe says with sorrow etched deeply in his face. “We were never meant to do this alone.”
Before I can process this, Ally bursts into the room. “He’s MIA again.” Ally’s brow furrows when she sees Maisie in a blanket shivering in cold sweat and me wiping my brow. “Are you guys okay? Is that blood all over your face?”
“What the hell was in the chicken blood, Monroe?”
I roll to one side again and dry heave.
“Monroe!” Gloria screams.
Monroe reaches down and grabs the bloody knife off the floor. I look up in time to see the two men collide. Monroe slams into Caldwell, burying the knife to the hilt in Caldwell’s neck, in the place where the shoulder meets the collarbone. Caldwell lets out a screeching wail like an animal being gutted alive and stumbles back. Monroe throws his hands up and the torrential wind comes, throwing everyone to the floor except Caldwell who is lifted up and thrown through the wall with the gale force wind. I crawl on my hands and knees toward Maisie. Trying to reach her takes tremendous effort, but then I clasp onto her ankle and yank her into my arms.
Ally’s arms wrap around my waist. I want to find Gloria next but the vertigo and nausea keeps washing over me in waves and I feel like I’m on a huge boat out to sea. I don’t know what Monroe did with his weird chicken blood shit, but something isn’t right.
“Gloria, get over here!” I scream but she stands with her back to the wall, gun raised and waiting. I realize she’s covering Monroe. No one in this room believes Caldwell’s truly disappeared. Through the hole in the side of the house I see at least four armed guards fully geared. They have their guns up and ready, half pointed at the dense trees behind them, the other half at the space between the lawn and Monroe.
I pull away from Ally and Maisie.
“What are y
ou doing?” Ally demands an answer more than asks a question.
“Keep shielding Maisie,” I tell her. “This could be a trick to get Maisie back.” It sure feels like he’s fucking with us. I’ve seen Caldwell when he means business. It’s all break necks and leave. This cat-mouse game is different.
I power up. I feel the itch of raw energy flow from my chest out to my fingers and toes. It goes to my fingertips crackling electric in the air around me. The hairs on my arms stand up but I don’t ignite. I wait. I wait for Caldwell to show his face.
Caldwell appears behind Monroe and Gloria gets two bullets into his chest, then a third a little higher than the first round. But adjusting her aim isn’t enough.
He’s ripped the knife from his throat. Great spurts of blood hit the floor like a geyser but he acts like he couldn’t care less. He stabs Monroe in the chest and Monroe cries out. His eyes go wide and he cries out again as Caldwell twists the handle.
Gloria gets off a fourth shot and it rips through Caldwell’s right ear. He lets go of Monroe and has the good sense to cover his head before Gloria can blow Caldwell’s brains out. I would fire bomb his ass, but I don’t have a clear shot. Jeremiah’s soldiers in the yard must feel the same way. They adjust their positions but can’t get a direct line to Caldwell without catching Monroe in the crossfire.
When Caldwell turns around I see his glassy, unfocused eyes. He looks right through me, one hand on his bleeding ear and the other over his cut throat. He’s lost too much blood. He’s going to pass out and die. As if he decides I’m right, he falls and Gloria’s gun goes off.
He never hits the floor. His body simply disappears on the way down. Gloria’s bullet goes straight into the floor without having hit its target.
Monroe drops to his knees, clutching his throat and grimacing.
He makes a half-hearted gesture for me to come closer. His eyes slide to Maisie and he waves her forward too.
“Hurry now,” he croaks but his voice is strange, probably because of the wound. “I ain’t got long.”
I crawl across the room, still trying to fight the wave of nausea. Maisie pulls away from Ally as soon as I drop the shield and we reach him at the same time. Maisie is the first to grab his hand.
Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) Page 14