A Fistful of Charms th-4

by Ким Харрисон

  The click was loud when Peter fastened his belt. We were going to be run over by a Mack truck. I didn't think it would make a difference if he had on his seat belt or not.

  Oh God. What was I doing?

  The traffic light finally turned green, and I pulled onto the bridge, headed for St. Ignace on the other side of the straits. I gripped the wheel tighter, stomach knotting. The bridge was a mess. The two northbound lanes were closed off, making traffic two-way on the southbound. Midway down the span there were big machines and powerful lights to turn the coming night to day as the workers tried to meet their pretourist-season deadline. They had missed it. Red cones separated the two lanes, allowing traffic to easily switch to the other side when needed. The bridge was an incredible five miles long, and every foot of it had needed repair.

  Peter exhaled as we accelerated to a steady forty miles an hour, the opposing traffic doing the same an unnerving three feet away. Past the vacant northbound lane and thick girders, I could see the islands, gray and smudged from the distance. We were really high up, and I felt a moment of quickly stifled fear. Despite the stories, witches couldn't fly. 'Least not without a staff of charmed redwood that cost more than the Concord.

  "Peter?" I said, not liking the silence.

  "I'm fine," he said, his grip tensing on the statue. His voice was cross, sounding nothing like Nick. I couldn't help my awkward smile of understanding, remembering Ivy bothering me with the same question. My stomach gave a lurch.

  "I wasn't going to ask how you were doing," I said, fiddling with the two charms about my neck. One was for pain that wouldn't cover the hurt caused by being hit, the other was to keep my head from meeting the dash. Peter had refused both.

  My eyes lifted to the rearview mirror to see that Ivy and Jenks were still behind us. "Do you want me to turn the lights on?" I asked. It was our agreed upon signal to abort the plan. I wanted him to say yes. I didn't want to do this. The statue didn't matter right now. Peter did. We could find another way.

  "No."

  The sun was setting past him, and I squinted at him. "Peter…"

  "I've heard it all," he said, his voice rough as he kept his stiff position. "Please don't. It comes down to one thing. I'm dying. I've been doing it for a long time, and it hurts. I stopped living three years ago when the medicine and charms quit working and the pain took everything away. There's nothing left of me but hurting. I fought for two years with the thought that I was a coward for wanting to end the pain, but there is nothing left."

  I snuck a glance at him, shocking myself when I saw Nick sitting there, his jaw clenched and his brown eyes hard. It sounded like it was a story he had told too many times. As I watched, his shoulders slumped and he let go of the door. "This lingering isn't fair to Audrey," he said. "She deserves someone strong, able to stand beside her and meet her bite for bite in the passion she's aching to show me."

  I couldn't let that go without saying something. "And becoming an undead is fair to her?" I said, making his jaw clench again. "Peter, I've seen the undead. That won't be you!"

  "I know!" he exclaimed, then softer, "I know, but it's all I've got left to give her."

  The whirl of air under the tires rose above the sound of the engine as we went over the first of the grates designed to lighten the bridge's load.

  "She knows it won't be me," Peter said, his voice calm. He seemed to want to talk, and I would listen. I owed him that.

  He met my gaze and smiled a scared little-boy smile. "She promised me she'll be happy. I used to be able to dance with such passion that it could drive her wild. I want to dance again with her. I will remember her. I will remember the love."

  "But you won't feel it," I whispered.

  "She'll feel love for the both of us," Peter said firmly, his eyes on the passing bridgework. "And in time, I'll be able to fake it for her."

  This was not happening. "Peter—" I reached forward to turn on the lights, and he stopped me with a shaking hand on my wrist.

  "Don't," he said. "I'm already dead. You're only helping me move forward."

  I could not believe this. I didn't want to believe it. "Peter, there's so much you haven't done. That you might do. There are new medicines every day. I know someone who can help you." Trent could help him, I thought, then cursed myself. What in hell was I thinking?

  "I've had all the medicines," Peter said softly. "Legal and otherwise. I've heard the lies, I've believed the promises, but there's nothing left to believe in but death. I'm moved around like a table lamp, Rachel." His voice faltered. "You don't understand because you aren't done living yet. But I'm done, and when you're done…you just know."

  The car ahead of me flashed its brake lights and I took my foot off the accelerator. "But a lamp can light a room," I protested, my will weakening.

  "Not when the bulb is broken." His elbow was on the windowsill and his head was in his cupped hand. The setting sun became flashes on him as the girders holding the bridge arched up. "Maybe by dying I can be fixed," he said over the rumble of a passing truck. "Maybe I can do some good when I'm dead. I'm not good for anything alive."

  I swallowed hard. He wouldn't do anything after he died, unless it met his needs.

  "It's going to be okay," Peter said. "I'm not scared of death. I'm scared of dying. Not dying, but how I'm going to die." He laughed, but it was tinged with bitterness. "DeLavine told me that being born and dying are the only two things we do perfectly. There's a hundred percent success rate. I can't do it wrong."

  "That sounds funny coming from a dead man," I said, my breath catching when a big truck went past, shaking the grate we were on. This was wrong. This was so wrong.

  Peter pulled his elbow from the window and looked at me. "He said how I feel when I die is the one thing I have control over. I can be afraid, or I can go boldly. I want to do it bravely—even if it hurts. I'm tired of hurting, but I can take a little more."

  I was starting to shake, though the air from the setting sun coming in was warm and my window was down. His soul would be gone forever. The spark of creativity and compassion—gone.

  "Can…can I ask you something?" I ventured. The oncoming traffic had grown thin, and I prayed that they hadn't shut down the southbound lane for some reason. It was probably just Nick driving slow so we would meet somewhere in the middle as planned.

  "What?"

  His voice was tired and weary, and the sound of lost hope in it knotted my stomach tighter. "When Ivy bit me," I said, darting a glance at him, "some of my aura went to her. She was taking my aura along with my blood. Not my soul, just my aura. The virus needs blood to stay active, but is it more than that?"

  His expression was unreadable, and I rushed forward with the rest of it while I still had time. "Maybe the mind needs an aura to protect it," I said. "Maybe the still-living mind needs the illusion of a soul about it, or it will try to get the body to kill itself so that the soul, the mind, and the body will be back in balance."

  Peter looked at me from Nick's face, and I saw him for what he was: a frightened man who was stepping into a new world with no safety net, both extremely powerful and tragically fragile, reliant upon someone else to keep his mind and body together after his soul was gone.

  He didn't say anything, telling me I was right. My breath quickened and I licked my lips. Vampires take auras as their own to fool their mind that a soul still bathed it. It would explain why Ivy's father risked his own death to provide her mother with his blood and his alone. He bathed her mind in his aura, his soul, in the hopes that she would remember what love was. And perhaps, in the instant of the act, she did.

  I finally understood. Exhilarated, I stared at the road ahead, not seeing it. My heart was pounding and I felt light-headed.

  "That's why Audrey insists on being my scion," he said softly, "even though it's going to be very hard on her."

  I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop right there in the middle of the freaking bridge and figure this out. Peter looked miserable, and I wondered how
long he had agonized over remaining as he was and causing her pain, or becoming an undead and causing her a pain of another kind. "Does Ivy know?" I asked. "About the auras?"

  He nodded, his eyes lighting briefly upon my stitches. "Of course."

  "Peter, this is…is—" I said, bewildered. "Why are you hiding this from everyone?"

  He ran a hand over his face, the angry gesture so reminiscent of Nick that it shocked me. "Would you have let Ivy take your blood if you knew she was taking your aura, the light from your soul?" he asked suddenly, his eyes fixing on mine vehemently.

  I glanced from the road, blurting, "Yes. Yes, I would have. Peter, it's beautiful. It brings something right to it."

  His expression went from anger to surprise, and he said, "Ivy is a very lucky woman."

  Feeling my chest clench, I blinked rapidly. I wouldn't cry. I was frustrated and confused. I was going to kill Peter in less than three miles. I was on a train I couldn't stop. I didn't need to cry, I needed to understand.

  "Not everyone sees it like that," he said, the shadows of the passing girders falling on him. "You're truly odd, Rachel Morgan. I don't understand you at all. I wish I had time to. Maybe after I'm dead. I'll take you dancing and we can talk. I promise I won't bite you."

  I can't do this. "I'm turning the lights on." Jaw clenched, I leaned to reach the knob. He wasn't done yet. There was more for him to learn. More he could tell me before he dropped his thread of consciousness forever.

  Peter didn't move as I pulled the knob. I leaned into the seat, my face going cold when the dash remained dark. I pushed the knob in and pulled it back out. "They aren't working," I said as a car passed us. I pushed it in and tried again. "Why aren't they working, damn it!"

  "I asked Jenks to disengage them."

  "Son of a bitch!" I shouted, hitting the dash and hurting my hand through the pain amulet. "That damn son of a bitch!" Tears started leaking out, and I twisted in the seat, desperate to stop this.

  Peter took my shoulder, pinching me. "Rachel!" he exclaimed, his guilt-ridden expression looking at me from Nick's face tearing at me. "Please," he begged. "I wanted to end it this way because it would help someone. I'm hoping that because I'm helping you, God will take me even without my soul. Please—don't stop."

  I was crying now. I couldn't help it. I kept my foot on the accelerator, maintaining that same fifteen feet between me and the next car. He wanted to die, and I was going to help him whether I agreed with it or not. "It doesn't work that way, Peter," I said, my voice high. "They did a study on it. Without the mind to chaperone it, the soul has nothing to hold it together and it falls apart. Peter, there will be nothing left. It will be as if you never existed—"

  He looked down the road. His face paled in the amber glow. "Oh God. There he is."

  I took a breath, holding it. "Peter," I said, desperate. I couldn't turn back. I couldn't slow down. I had to do this. The shadows from the girders seemed to flash faster. "Peter!"

  "I'm scared."

  I looked over the cars to the white truck heading for us. I could see Nick, Peter's doppelganger disguise gone and the legal one in place. Hand fumbling, I found Peter's. It was damp with sweat, and he clutched it with the strength of a frightened child. "I'll be here," I said, breathless and unable to look from the looming truck. What was I doing?

  "Please don't let me burn when the tanks explode? Please, Rachel?"

  My head hurt. I couldn't breathe. "I won't let you burn," I said, tears making my face cold. "I'll stay with you, Peter. I promise. I'll hold your hand. I'll stay until you go, I'll be there when you leave so you won't be forgotten." I was babbling. I didn't care. "I won't forget you, Peter. I'll remember you."

  "Tell Audrey that I love her, even if I don't remember why."

  The last car between us was gone. I took a breath and held it. My eyes were fixed on the truck's tires. They shifted. "Peter!"

  It happened fast.

  The truck veered across the temporary line. My feet slammed into the breaks, self-preservation taking control. I stiffened my arm, clenching the wheel and Peter's hand both.

  Nick's truck swerved. It loomed before us, the flat panel of the side taking up the entire world. He was trying to get entirely across the lane and miss me. I spun the wheel, teeth gritted and terrified. He was trying to miss me. He was trying to hit the passenger side only.

  The truck smashed into us like a wrecking ball. My head jerked forward, and I gasped before the inertia-dampening curse took hold. I couldn't breathe as the air bag hit my face like a wet pillow, hurting. Relief filled me, then guilt that I was safe while Peter. Oh God, Peter…

  Heart pounding, I felt as if I was wrapped in muzzy cotton. I couldn't move. I couldn't see. But I could hear. The sound of squealing tires was swallowed by the terrifying shriek of twisting metal. I managed a breath, a ragged gasp in my throat. My stomach lurched, and the world spun as the momentum swung us around.

  Pushing at the oil-scented plastic, I forced it away. We were still spinning, and terror shocked through me as the Mack truck plowed into the temporary guardrail and into the empty northbound lanes. Our vehicle shook as we hit something and came to a spine-wrenching halt.

  I pushed the bag down, fighting it, shaking, blinking in the sound of nothing. It was smeared with red, and I looked at my hands. They were red. I was bleeding. Blood slicked them where my nails had cut through my palms. Yes, I thought numbly, seeing the gray sky and dark water. That's what the hands of a murderer should look like.

  Heat from the engine washed over me, pulled from the breeze on the bridge. Safety glass covered the seat and me. Blinking, I peered out the shattered front window. Peter's side of the truck was smashed into a pylon. There would be no getting him out that way. We had been knocked clean into the empty northbound lane. I could see the islands past Peter and the guardrail they were repairing. Something…something had ripped the hood off Nick's blue truck. I could see the engine, steaming and twisted. Shit, it was almost in the front seat with me along with the front window.

  A man was shouting. I could hear people and car doors shutting. I turned to Peter. Oh, hell.

  I tried to move, shocked when my foot caught, panicking until I decided it wasn't moving because it was stuck, not because it was broken. It was wedged between the console and the front of the seat. My jeans were turning a wet black from the calf down. I think I had a cut somewhere. My eyes traveled numbly down my leg. It was my calf. I think I'd cut my calf.

  "Lady!" a man said as he rushed up to my window, gripping the empty frame with a thick hand, a wedding ring on his finger. "Lady, are you okay?"

  Peachy, I thought, blinking at him. I tried to say something but my mouth wasn't working. An ugly sound came out of me, chilling.

  "Don't move. I called the ambulance. I don't think you're supposed to move." His eyes went to Peter beside me, and he turned away. I heard the sound of retching.

  "Peter," I whispered, my chest hurting. I couldn't breathe deeply, so keeping my breaths shallow, I struggled with my seat belt. It came undone, and while people shouted and gathered like ants on a caterpillar, I pulled my foot free. Nothing hurt yet. I was sure that would change.

  "Peter," I said again, touching his face. His eyes were closed but he was breathing. Blood seeped from a ragged cut over his eye. I undid his seat belt, and his eyelids fluttered.

  "Rachel?" he said, his face scrunching up in hurt. "Am I dead yet?"

  "No, sweetheart," I said, touching his face. Sometimes the transition from living to dead goes in a heartbeat, but not with this much damage, and not with the sun still up. He was going to take a long nap to wake hungry and whole. I managed a smile for him, taking my pain amulet off and draping it over him. My chest hurt, but I didn't feel anything, numb inside and out.

  Peter looked so white, his blood pooling in his lap. "Listen," I said, adjusting his coat with my red fingers so I couldn't see the wreckage of his chest. "Your legs look okay, and your arms. You have a cut above your eye. I thin
k your chest is crushed. In about a week you can take me dancing."

  "Out," he whispered. "Get out and blow up the truck. Damn it, I can't even die right. I didn't want to burn." He started crying, the tears making a clear track down his bloodied face. "I didn't want to have to burn…."

  I didn't think he was going to survive this even if the ambulance got to him in time. "I'm not going to burn you. I promise." I'm going to be sick. That's all there is to it.

  "I'm scared," he whimpered, his breath gurgling from his lungs filling with blood. I prayed he wouldn't start coughing.

  Broken chips of safety glass sliding, I pulled myself closer, gently holding his shattered body to me. "The sun is shining," I said, eyes clenching shut as memories of my dad flooded back. "Just like you wanted. Can you feel it? It won't be long. I'll be here."

  "Thank you," he said, the words terrifyingly liquid. "Thank you for trying to turn the lights on. That makes me feel as if I was worth saving."

  My throat closed. "You are worth saving," I said, tears spilling over as I rocked him gently. He tried to breathe, the sound ugly. It was pain given a voice, and it struck through me. His body shuddered, and I held him closer though I was sure it hurt him. Tears fell, hot as they landed on my arm. There was noise all around us, but no one could touch us. We were forever set apart.

  His body suddenly realized it was dying, and with an adrenaline-induced strength, it struggled to remain alive. Clutching his head to my chest, I held him firmly against the massive tremor I knew was coming. I sobbed when it shook him as if he were trying to dislodge his body from his soul. I hated this. I hated it. I had lived it before. Why did I have to live it again?

  Peter stopped moving and went still.

  Rocking him now for me, not him, I shook with sobs that hurt my ribs. Please, please let this have been the right thing to do.