Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2)

by Kory M. Shrum

  Caldwell catches my movement and grabs the back of my coat and a bit of my hair because of how long it is. He has a death grip on me when gunfire cuts close. It isn’t Caldwell’s gunfire.

  I look up to see Nikki and Jeremiah with reinforcements. My relief is immeasurable.

  Caldwell takes a step back and is gone. Just gone as if he never stood there at all.

  Nikki wraps her arms around me but I don’t let her hold on to me. I’m turning wildly to make sure Caldwell doesn’t reappear.

  “Did you get Jesse?” Jeremiah asks. Flames dance in his glasses as he looks at the engulfed house.

  “Yes and I think we found the people from your list,” I tell him. “We moved them to the field. You’ll need to order transport. And there are still about ten more inside. They don’t have NRD. But I don’t think you can go back inside for them.”

  “I can,” Nikki says.

  I grab ahold of her.

  She grins and gives me a deep kiss. “I told you you’d like me.”

  She disappears before I could say more.

  “Did you see Caldwell disappear?” I ask

  “New York to San Diego,” he says. He presses his earbud. Whatever he heard makes him run into the house after Nikki. Gunfire erupts in the corn all around us. Caldwell’s men and Jeremiah’s men clash but I don’t see Caldwell. Jesse is still bent over Lane crying, but he isn’t shot in the head. I am about to check on them when I hear crying, the soft, frightened whimpering of a child. And I still don’t know where Caldwell or Gloria or Brinkley is.

  I run through the dark to the place where I laid Julia down.

  I cut two more rights around tall stalks and I see her in the firelight filtered through the corn. Julia is awake, sitting up with her face on her knees as she rocks herself back and forth. I lift her from the dirt and whisper gently into her ears.

  “It’s okay, baby. Hush, hush. You’re okay.”

  “Mommy,” she whimpers.

  “I’ll take you home to your mommy, okay? Don’t cry.”

  She cries harder. “They’re dead!”

  “No, they’re just sleeping,” I say, but everyone smells terrible. I am not surprised she would mistake them for dead.

  “I want to go home. I want my Mommy.”

  “Look at me,” I say. I push hair away from her eyes and see her face is grubby and snotty and little strands are stuck to her wet cheeks. “Do you recognize me?”

  She sniffs. “You came to my birthday party.”

  I nod and smile. “Yes, I came to your party. So that means I know where you live, right?”

  “We had cake.”

  “We did, yes.” Part of the house collapses and I worry about Nikki. Please get out of there. I hold her tighter and she wraps her little fists around my neck. “So you believe me when I say I can take you home, right?”

  Caldwell steps out of the corn in front of us. I turn to run but he is behind me. It’s like a bad dream. A hallucination. I put Julia down on her feet and step in front of her. I don’t want her near him. I push Julia farther away, but she clings to the back of my legs. I’m pinned. Because I can’t move an inch further without touching Caldwell. And I can’t take a step back or I will fall on Julia and knock us both down.

  Caldwell strikes me. He hits me hard across the face and the night erupts with stars. I am knocked off my feet and Julia topples to the dirt behind me. She is frantic and her cries reach the hysterical volume that only a child can achieve.

  Caldwell turns just for a moment as if to strike her and I grab him. I grab his arms and turn his back toward me. He grabs my shirt in one hand and he punches me. The stars above whirl and slide. The fire coming from the house swirls too, and coupled with the starlight, I feel like I am on a carnival ride, one of the topsy turvy ones that sling you this way then that, reducing the crisp night sky to nothing more than an impressionistic painting, a colorful smear. I close my eyes.

  When you protect her, you’re protecting Chaos and Destruction. Caldwell’s voice slithers through my mind, slimy and cold. You don’t know what she is, Alice. You have no idea what she will do to this world.

  He hits me with a flood of images. So hard so overpowering that I’m sinking to my knees. Only to have him hold me up. Images of Jesse as a devil, feral, destroying the world. An image of a man, a beautiful winged man blowing a horn is superimposed over burning cities, dead bodies. So much death. So much destruction.

  “Keep your stock images to yourself,” I say. “I know you’re a liar and I know Jesse would never do those things.”

  “You don’t know what she is,” he says. “Or what she’s capable of.”

  “She’s not a monster,” I say. I would never let her become a monster.

  “I know.” He grabs my throat with both hands and squeezes.

  Jesse

  It takes an eternity for Lane to fall off of the porch to the ground below. Another eternity before I can force my legs to move toward him. I’m already running before I realize that horrible sound is my own scream. Lane is already on the ground when I reach him. The ground is cold and damp as I inch my hands under his neck and cradle his head.

  “No, no, no,” I whine.

  Lane coughs blood, spitting it all over his chin. I wipe it away with a thumb but it only smears dark red like war paint across his rough stubble.

  Ally screams and I look up to see Caldwell grab her by the back of her coat.

  Gabriel, do something!

  But he doesn’t have to. People appear out of nowhere, guns blazing and Caldwell runs like the bastard he is.

  “Jess,” Lane whispers. He is twining his hand in mine. “I’m so glad you’re okay, baby.”

  “Shut up, stupid. You’ve got a hole in your throat,” I say. I look at the wound in his neck where the bullet tore open his carotid. So much blood. I press my hands against it but it isn’t working. He’s going to bleed out and die. He’ll die.

  He’ll live.

  “Shut up!” I yell at Gabriel.

  Gunfire erupts around us. Momentarily bursts of light spark in the night as the good guy reinforcements chase Caldwell deeper into the corn. Gabriel shields me, standing between me and the others, wings spread wide. And by proxy he protects Lane from a few stray bullets. The purple shimmering around me, tightening in a warm glow. But there is little point in protecting Lane from bullets now.

  I kiss Lane’s cheeks, his forehead. He gurgles and I don’t know if that was supposed to be a laugh or if he is simply choking on his own blood.

  “Quit trying to talk,” I tell him.

  Ally screams.

  My head snaps up and I look through the corn toward the sound. Sparks of gunfire can be seen deep in the corn, in the rows that aren’t illuminated by the burning house. But her scream didn’t come from that direction. It came from the left.

  He has her, Gabriel warns.

  Then I hear the hysterical screams of a child. I look down into Lane’s face and press a hand to his cooling forehead. His eyes are so big. So desperate.

  “Don’t go,” he says.

  He’ll live. She will not.

  I kiss his lips and taste sweat and blood.

  “Please,” he gurgles. He grabs at me as if to hold me close. “Stay with me.”

  “You’ll live,” I tell him. “I promise. You’ll be okay.” Assuming no one runs over here and cuts off your head or blows out your brains while you’re all vulnerable, I thought. But I had the good sense not to say this.

  I pull my hand from his and he is surprisingly strong considering he must have lost most of his blood at this point.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I say over the sound of gunfire. “When you wake up I’ll be there.”

  He doesn’t care. He reaches for me anyway, vainly trying to sit up but managing only to lift his head. The wound in his neck opens wider and bleeds more.

  The child screams again and I can hear her cries in between the lulls of shouting, gunfire and chaos.

  “I’m sor
ry,” I tell Lane and then I run to find Ally.

  I can feel the pulse of her long before I see her. That distant drumming that harmonizes with my own. And I can even feel Julia’s smaller, separate beat. I cut through a row of corn, silken stalks slapping at my cheeks and realize I’m at the edge between the trees and the corn. A figure crouches beneath me. A gun raised and pointing at me before I can even react.

  “Go on,” Gloria says.

  “But you’ve been shot,” I say. I look at her face, damp with sweat despite the cold air. The wound in her gut bleeds and bleeds. There’s a dead body beside her, face down in the dirt but I can’t really see him in the dark of the trees.

  “You’re dying.” And I could sense it.

  “Go on,” she says. The red of her blood shines like slick oil on the back of her hand and fingers. She points me in the right direction but I stumble into a tree. “Go on or you’ll have to bury her too.”

  Don’t let her die, I command to Gabriel as if he has power over these things. Don’t you dare let Gloria die.

  He says nothing.

  The air is heavy with the scent of ash and gunpowder. It’s like the scent of fireworks after all the explosions have ended—but more metallic.

  I turn a corner and I see them.

  He is choking Ally. Then he hits her in the face twice, her head rocking back.

  Julia clings to her legs and screams. He could kill her with any one of his gifts. He could mind fuck her into oblivion but he chooses his fists. Why? Why?

  Then it occurs to me he could be doing both.

  I slam my fist into his jaw. I hit him twice more and see the wild fire blaze in his eyes as he tastes his own pain. No one has dealt him physical pain in a long time and I can tell. The shock and surprise. The fury.

  Protect her, I tell Gabriel and he does. He reaches out for Ally’s drumbeat and strikes that cord. He envelops her, wings out, protecting her and the child.

  It is all the distraction Caldwell needs to regain his focus.

  He hits me and I hit the dirt. Something in my shoulder snaps with the force of his blow. Dirt is blown up in my tumble and gets into my eyes. I cough as another blow connects with my ribs and I feel the explosion of pain. My ears are ringing, blocking out the gunfire, the girl’s crying and Caldwell’s own heaving breathing—leaving me with only a high-pitched whine.

  Then I think the mind rape will come. The snap, or earthquake, but Ally puts herself between us. She can barely move, but she won’t let him get close. But then another blow rocks me and for a moment the world goes black.

  “Jesse? Jesse!” Ally yells. I hit the ground, scraping my hands on the little rocks in the soil.

  He snapped and the world went dark. But it didn’t work on Ally. And I recover sooner than he intended by the look of confusion on his face. The power is new to him. Lucky for us.

  Then everything changes.

  I see the gun first. Held by a disembodied hand, the muzzle is pressed firmly against Caldwell’s temple. Brinkley in his leather jacket like a debonair James Dean come to save the day. Brinkley fires a shot without hesitating.

  But Caldwell disappears.

  When I see his face again it is only for an instant as he turns those eyes on me.

  It isn’t the eyes, it’s the hands that matter. The two white hands that close around Brinkley’s neck and twist before he has a chance to change the direction of his gun.

  It’s as if someone has yanked out my engine. I sputter and come to a complete stop. I jump forward but Caldwell is gone. I turn around and around but he doesn’t reappear.

  I turn and see Ally kneeling beside Brinkley. Julia weeping and holding onto her coat tails. Ally puts her face in her hands and that is all the answer I need.

  Brinkley is dead. Dead. The man that pulled me from the wreck of my old life and gave me a job. A purpose. The man who tried to prepare me for all of this.

  Dead, dead. The man who stood beside me, protected me even after the danger grew. The man who’d rather desert his job, his loyalty to his brothers-in-arms than to leave me at the mercy of Caldwell.

  “No,” I say. I kneel beside him and I put my hands on his neck, at the weird angle where the flesh bulges from a displaced vertebrae. “No.”

  “You can’t replace him,” Ally says. “He’s gone.”

  “I can,” I say again as if saying it over and over will bring him back.

  “Jesse,” she warns. She pulls me away from the body up to my feet. She shakes me.

  “I can save him,” I say and fall to my knees again. “I save everyone.”

  I can save him. Gabriel, save him.

  Gabriel stands over me with those brilliant green eyes, his shaggy hair fallen into his face.

  I search the rows for Caldwell but he hasn’t come back.

  “I’m still here!” I scream into the night. “Don’t you want me? You wanted a fight, well I’m right here you, coward!”

  “Jesse,” Ally shakes me again, pulling me up. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Come on!” I scream. I scream until my throat burns and head pounds. “I’m right fucking here!”

  But Caldwell doesn’t come back.

  Ally

  Jesse is hysterical that Caldwell got away. It takes strength I don’t have just to drag her back toward the others. At the line where the trees and cornrows meet, a group of people congregate.

  Gloria is on the ground with someone patching up her stomach. Jeremiah stands beside her. And as soon as I see him I realize the gunfire has stopped. How I could have missed the eerie silence I don’t know but now men are simply walking the corn rows, dressed in black mission gear. Two men lift a dead body and carry him out of sight. Another stoops to pick up a discarded shell.

  Jeremiah sees me first. “Caldwell?”

  “New York to San Diego,” I say, feeling cold and stiff as I approach the little group.

  Jeremiah’s jaw clenches then relaxes. “We have Lane safe and ready for transport and we recovered 48 innocent people. That counts for something.”

  “Does it?” Jesse asks. But I don’t think anyone hears her but me.

  “We all knew this would be a long battle,” Jeremiah says.

  For the first time, I see the body in the grass, hidden in the tree’s shadow. “Who is that?”

  “Micah Delaney,” Gloria says. As soon as Gloria sees me she swears. “Your face—”

  “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know,” I say. I nod toward the body again. “This is good news. He’s been the root of our trouble since this began with Caldwell.”

  “We are safer,” Gloria admits, hissing as the medic digs deeper into her wound. “But not good news.”

  “Were you close?” Jeremiah asks. His voice is full of compassion.

  “A long time ago,” she says. But she doesn’t need to. The way she fingers the hair beside the gunshot wound in his head says everything. It’s tender, undeterred.

  A silence falls on us until Jeremiah takes a step forward and gingerly turns my face in the firelight. “Your nose is broken and this cut by your eye looks bad.” It was probably my nose ring that scratched my eye when Caldwell ripped it out.

  The medic moves as if he plans to come to my rescue.

  I raise a hand. “I can wait. I want someone to look at Jesse. Good luck getting her to sit still.”

  Nikki appears at Jeremiah’s call. I’m relieved to see her, unharmed. “It’s done. The transport will move them to the Chicago base. We have six vans to use. I designated one for the bodies.”

  “Two,” Jeremiah interjects. “We will have to use two vans for the bodies.”

  “We don’t have the space,” Nikki argues.

  “We will have to make space,” he says. “We can’t pile Caldwell’s dead on top of our own. Our people will see it as disrespectful—we have to make room.”

  “Just leave their dead,” I say.

  “And the evidence of our having killed them?” Jeremiah asks. “We can’t.”
/>   When I speak Nikki realizes I’m here. She comes around Jeremiah. Her mouth hangs open in shock then closes into a clench. “Your face!”

  “I wish everyone would stop saying that,” I say and wonder just how bad my face really looks. It certainly burns like hell.

  “Who did this?” Nikki asks.

  “Why does that matter?” I ask.

  “Because I want to know who to kill.” Her words sound like a joke, but her face holds no humor.

  I laugh and it sounds cynical even to me. “Get in line.”

  “Caldwell?” she asks, clearly surprised. “Why would he go after you himself?”

  “To get to me,” Jesse says, still pacing like a caged animal. And she isn’t giving Nikki a friendly look. She turns toward the night and screams into the cold, black air. “And it’s fucking working!”

  Nikki reaches out to touch me and something happens. The area around my body hardens, the shield back in place. Nikki is surprised and confused. And it takes me a minute to realize what’s happening.

  “Jesse,” I say.

  “I’m not doing anything,” she says with an arched eyebrow, but she’s stopped pacing, her mouth open a little in surprise.

  The shield doesn’t disappear until Nikki lowers her hand, clearly irritated. She turns back to Jeremiah. “Four vans to move 48 people. Then we’re just going to have to pile them in.”

  “Put them in sitting positions,” Jeremiah instructs. He’s been strangely quiet and observant this entire time. His face is too emotionless for what he’s just seen. I want to know what he’s thinking, what assessments he is making about Jesse.

  “You’ll get people into each van,” he says.

  “No, you have to let me,” Jesse says. I took my eyes off of Jesse for two seconds and now she is arguing with Gloria, kneeling in front of her.

  “You were shot twice,” Jesse says.

  I come closer so I see the second wound. A small, oozing hole in Gloria’s right shoulder.

  “Don’t be so stubborn. Let me help you,” Jesse says.

  “You don’t know that,” Gloria says. “With what they did to me, I—”