Be Careful What You Wish For
I took quick stock of the garage as I struggled to rise; Nic’s hands locked on my arms and held me steady. Ellie was on the floor, shaking, Ryann crouched over him. Someone had already grabbed the kid a bottle of Jack D and he was drinking madly. Zara stood slowly from a crouch, where she’d been poised like a cat ready to strike me down if I didn’t come back as myself. Hell, she’d probably kill me regardless but she had to be happy Sean wasn’t there.
Sean. He could’ve been lying. He could’ve worked with others—and I had absolutely no one to ask now.
I gave myself a mental shake. Forced my shaking legs to hold me, straightened my spine, and met Zara’s gaze. “You need to move everyone.”
“What the fuck just happened?” she snapped.
I scooped up my gun, tucked it back in the pocket of my lab coat. “Sean is gone, okay. Like forever-gone. But it’s entirely possible I just let the Veil—who want you dead as well—know exactly where we are by doing that. I figure half of what he says is bullshit, but in case that part is right, they could be coming here.” I nodded to Ellie and Ryann. “Get them to one of your safe houses. I’ll stay here and see what shows up.”
My legs held as I started walking for the elevator, little tremors working through my muscles but not dropping me on my ass. I had one fucking hell of a headache, the air swirling like I hadn’t entirely left my demonic home dimension behind. Get your fucking brain on straight, dumbass. Evacuate. Take precautions. You could take me out of Bravo, but couldn’t take Bravo out of me, apparently.
I’d have to fortify upstairs with the blinds popped off the window. There were no other exits that the Veil would know of—just the elevator, and I could cover that. I glanced back at the others still where they were. “C’mon—move!”
Zara didn’t help Ryann with Ellie, just eyed the pair from a distance and pointed to one of her cars—the dark blue Porsche Nic had picked me up in earlier. The Hunter slung her psychic boyfriend’s arm over her shoulder as he swayed drunkenly at her side, and started with him toward the car near me. I moved to give them breadth but his arm snapped out, hand locking on my wrist. Deranged green eyes peered up at me through red hair fallen over his brow.
“Sweetie, c’mon.” Ryann gave him a tug, but he held on.
“Split vote,” Rhys whispered.
“Huh?”
“Split vote. The Veil. He...” He gasped, winced, and swayed but remained standing. “The Veil was split. Pro-apocalypse, anti-apocalypse. They didn’t help him kill your family but when he took over, that tipped them to anti. I don’t—he doesn’t—know how it would go now. But you should run.”
Jesus. His body’d been hijacked ’cause of me, gone through all kinds of torture, and he was still trying to help me out. What an odd little human. I gave him a nod and he let me go, let Ryann drag him to the car.
Zara jogged after them, car keys jangling in her hand, and she looked back at Nic. “Let’s go.”
“I’m...staying,” Nic said, swallowing visibly hard.
“Are you fucking mad?” I snapped. “Get your ass in the car! You can’t fight, you can’t shoot—”
“I’ll find a way to help.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I looked to see if Zara would argue, but she’d already loaded the others in and was peeling out of the parking spot.
I make my own decisions. And I stand by them.
What a goddamn idiot. I turned, shaking my head, stalking for the elevator. My steps rattled the grating that served as a floor and I nearly switched the thing to take me upstairs without her when she swiftly stepped in next to me. The industrial elevator took us up, mechanical noises of metal grinding the only sound.
Idiot.
The elevator halted and I jerked the door up, stomped into the apartment. The lab coat flapped behind me; I yanked it off and tossed it to the floor. It thudded loudly, magazines rattling, and the butt of the gun stuck out of the pocket. Hardwood creaked under my thumping steps and my arms tremored like electricity danced through them. I blinked a few times and realized the space had suffered a loss of colour, like a few filters had been thrown on. A little blurry around the edges.
Shit. I’d almost stayed there.
I could’ve, so easily. It was quiet and comforting. Instead I’d chosen to come back to this world...and for what? Ellie confirmed it. Avenging my family began and ended with killing Sean—really, truly annihilating him—which I’d done. Now what?
Well, that was simple. I would wait to die.
My feet halted; I faced the wall of windows, chunk of metal blinds bent back and late fall wind howling through the frame. The window faced south, not toward the bright lights of the city, but the dark harbour in the distance. It would be nice to see the city—the lights, the tall dark buildings. A bit like being in Osaka.
“You’re staying here to let them kill you, aren’t you?”
The vise around my heart gave a twist and I squeezed my eyes shut. “You don’t get it.”
“Don’t I?” Steps touching down, so much lighter and more careful than mine—one, two, three. Stop. “You want to know why Zara raised me? Why I had no one else?”
“No. I don’t care.”
Silence. Then: “Because Sean O’Connor killed my wife.”
Fuck.
“Twelve years. Twelve years I was with Annalise and I thought I’d be with her a thousand more. And while I was buried in the ground, he took her and...and he made her into a monster. A monster who forgot herself, forgot me—who couldn’t be saved and was killed. And since I’ve been awake, I cannot stop thinking of her imprisoned for those two years—how she would have suffered. How...scared she would have been.” Her voice cracked and died, like a frayed thread snapping and drifting to the ground.
Scared. I wondered, too, if my kids’d had time to be scared before the building blew them to pieces.
“I...” Her voice had a rasp to it now, and I didn’t need to look to know she was crying. My own eyes were squeezed shut still and I wouldn’t acknowledge the salty stream leaving them. “I knew, when Zara was there and not Annalise, that something had happened. I didn’t know how...to live. I didn’t want eternity without her. I still don’t. But...I live as much as I can bear to, for her. To have a life that would make her proud.”
The words didn’t just sting—they dug deep, worming in, locking in place until I couldn’t force them out from under my skin.
“I understand,” she continued. “More than you know. I know what it’s like to lose someone like that...to have it happen when you’re gone, to know you would’ve been too weak to save them even if you’d been there...to wonder why. Why Sean couldn’t have waited. If he’d started later, he could’ve taken me too—I could’ve been there with her. Could’ve spent eternity with her, like I’d always wanted—even if we were both damned, both monsters.
“And I keep throwing myself into Zara’s world, into your world, into danger, just to see what might happen. If I would’ve survived or died with Annalise. I’m not made from what you are, or what Zara is, or even Ryann. Instead I spend all my time being scared and hating myself for knowing, if I’d been there, I couldn’t have even helped.”
And she still didn’t get it. No one ever did. Once again, Nic seemed to think the best of me—the best of what I was mourning, what I missed, what I would have died for.
“It’s not the same thing,” I whispered darkly.
“I know you—”
I shook my head. Opened my mouth. The words hovered there—the ones I hadn’t even let myself think about for five years now, let alone spoken to a single human being.
“Ken and I were getting a divorce.” Just saying it, I felt like the air had been punched out of me and I sucked in a deep breath. The D word just tasted sour, bitter against my tongue. “I...cheated on him with someone at work.” I swiped at my eyes. “Raising twins with both of us working was hard. We were distant. And I slept with a guy from the marketing department and...” And I threw it in my husband’s face. I’d always been a horrible person. Always. For a time, Kenjiro brought out the best in me, but it didn’t last. Nothing ever lasted. We grew apart and then someone else seemed to bring out the best in me. And then we were going to divorce. The cycle would’ve kept repeating if my life hadn’t all gone to hell.
Maybe that was better, though, that my life was destroyed before I could destroy anyone else’s.
“Peri...”
I held up a hand abruptly to stop her—if I was going to get this out, I needed it to be totally one sided. “I’m not mourning some picture perfect marriage to the love of my life. The kids were turning seven that weekend and afterward we were going to tell them about the divorce. Only he wanted to reconcile. He wanted dinner at home with the family so didn’t make the reservations at the restaurant I’d asked him to. And instead of staying home, in that building, with my kids and dying that day like I should have—next to my babies—I stormed off to argue with the manager and get us into the stupid fucking restaurant.” I stared at the blinds, at the darts of light reflecting, and my head spun a little as if I’d stood up to quickly. If I closed my eyes, I’d feel the rumble of the ground again, hear the cell phone I’d been arguing with Ken on fall and strike the cement at my feet. Spinning. Plastic cracking. Dust. Shouting, horror, sirens—
It never went away.
“The last words I said to him were that I couldn’t pretend to still love him for one more day and at least at the restaurant, I wouldn’t have to look at him.” My voice went monotone, colourless, hovering on a knife’s edge between breaking down with grief and total, scary detachment. “So all my kids knew before they were blown to pieces was that their ka-chan and to-san were fighting. That I was gone.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child. To lose two of them. But—”
I spun, raging, fury dancing through me, and blinked because she was right there, somehow a foot away without me hearing her. One step back and I regained myself, steeled myself. “But you don’t get it, like you said—”
“Then why are you still here?” Her eyes were wide, red-rimmed, and tears had streaked down her cheeks, leaving a sheen in their wake.
“I won’t be for long,” I said darkly.
“Really? Because I think when the Veil shows up, you’ll fight. Five and a half years and you could’ve killed yourself—”
“Because I needed to avenge them!”
“No you didn’t, because Sean was already dead. You knew that when you got here. You pushed to find people who didn’t actually do anything—you inadvertently brought Sean back so you could kill him again. You clung to any reason to keep living.”
Stupid fucking bitch—she didn’t know what she was talking about. I did the only thing I was real good at; I cocked my fist back and swung it her way.
My spine hit the brick wall behind me, my raised fist in her grasp and locked over my head. She leaned in, the blue in her irises glittering almost dangerously. “Do not raise your hand to me. I may not fight, but I am not weak.”
Oh, now I wanted to kill her. I fumed a beat longer before she released me, and then I pushed her aside, stalked across the floor, raked my fingers back through my hair and clawed my scalp with blunt nails. My chest heaved and panic twisted through me, burrowing deep, as the whole world seemed to tilt on its axis and threatened to dump me on my ass.
What if she was right? Totally and completely fucking right?
My lungs burned like I’d been running that last mile out in the cold. I could plop myself down in front of the kamidana and maybe actually face my kids this time. Maybe even face Ken and apologize for being a shitty person, a shitty wife, for my part in everything.
I could also pick up the fucking gun and blow my brains out.
I spotted it there on the floor, in the dirt-streaked white lab coat, dull gleam in the low light—Drew’s Glock. Save the Veil any trouble and do it myself. Nic was bound and determined to stick it out with me here for some reason, but if I was gone before they arrived, she’d have no reason to stay and get killed.
My head spun as I walked, air shifting and moving thickly as if I was still there, still back in my father’s dimension. It tickled the back of my brain, Oblivion, as if I could let my eyes lose focus and see that other realm, see it take shape—just slip away into nothingness. Maybe that’s where I would go when I died. Even it seemed better than I deserved.
I knelt. Fingers wrapped around the grip of the Glock. It had gone cold, just lying there. Gun locked in my hand, I rose again. Turned it over to stare at the barrel, at the gaping hole I would soon point at my head. Where was the best spot to shoot? Not the one with the least amount of pain, but the place to guarantee nothing would bring me back. People survived bullet wounds to the head all the time and I didn’t want to be one of them.
I didn’t hear her. That’s how quiet the vampire was. Twenty steps away at least and I didn’t hear a one of them, just felt a warm hand on my arm, wrapping above my elbow, half turning me around. Her other hand came down on the gun, around the barrel, easing it away from my face and to the side. It went blurry because I was crying again, right when I didn’t think I had any tears left, and when I tried to dredge up some rage, I failed at that too, like I’d been pounding and screaming at a wall and it wasn’t budging so I burned out.
The gun left my grip to be set on the floor. I was shaking, badly, straight into my bones, real deep in the marrow. Hands came up to my face, cupping my jaw, tipping my face back. I looked up through the blurry wetness over my vision to meet her eyes.
She was so...bright. Like the yellow room, her yellow hair. A creature who couldn’t go out during the day managed to be like the warm summer sun. Cut and damaged, yes—she had scars enough. Underneath. But they were healing. Part of her without taking over, like she’d just left them without picking at the wounds, without slicing over and over as I did.
Could I ever be a person like that?
“It’s okay to miss them and still want to live,” she whispered. “It’s not betraying them.”
I think that sometimes you only realize you’ve been in the light when it goes dark once more. If you seek out that light again, perhaps you’re not entirely broken.
And perhaps my mind still wasn’t my own then because I kissed her.