DONNIE ZITO STAGGERED, fat fingers clamped around his bleeding arm in a sorry tourniquet. He crumpled to the floor, landing on the pistol that had fallen from his useless hand. The wound still pumped blood, welling around the exposed bone. It didn’t even look real.
Dread pinned me there, watching him lie on the floor. I didn’t want to turn. Didn’t want to see Daniel laying dead from a gunshot wound. I couldn’t take seeing that. Looking at a fat rapist bleeding out on the floor was bad enough. Seeing Daniel dead would destroy me.
I slid the knife back through my belt.
I didn’t know what else to do with it.
My ears were shut, the world muffled in the aftermath of the gunshot. I could still hear screaming, but it was far, far away. I wanted to be far, far away. The torc around my neck tingled, and I opened my mouth to wish when something clamped on my arm.
I turned and found Daniel standing there holding my arm.
What?
He said something. I saw his mouth move. He stared at me and said it again, slower, his lips moving wide as he enunciated. Concentrating, I made out: Car zoo smoky.
What the hell?
I shook my head. He said it again, leaning in, putting his mouth close to my ear. “Are you okay?”
Am I okay?
It took a long second for me to make sense of the question. I was okay, and I wasn’t anywhere close to being okay.
Wait.
Daniel wasn’t dead. Wasn’t shot.
My eyes slid around him. Curson lay on the floor in a slowly widening stain of dark blood. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
Donnie’s bullet had found a home.
“Charlie?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
I’m not, but what else can I say?
Relief washed over his face.
“Who’s screaming?”
His mouth pulled into a hard line. Lifting his hand, he pointed. I turned. It took me a second to see him pulled in on himself, a spider dropped down a line of silk into an open flame. Bony knees hugged high to his chest, his hand scrabbling at his mouth, trying to stuff his screams back inside.
I’d forgotten about Jimmy Deets.
His eyes jumped, flinging themselves around the room from the inside-out man on the floor in front of him, to Donnie Zito’s bleeding bulk, to Brad Curson’s cooling corpse. They flicked up and locked with mine. The longer we stared at each other, the wider his eyes got, until I thought the skin would actually peel away, letting them roll out to bounce across the floor like those crazy balls that come from fifty-cent novelty machines.
I shoved the thought out of my mind before it could take hold of the magick that still hummed and vibrated in my veins.
Daniel touched my arm. “We should maybe get out of here.”
It was hard to pull my eyes away from Jimmy’s—it felt like they were actually tethered to his—but I did it.
I sighed, and it took me by surprise, pulling deep from the bottoms of my lungs and rushing clean out my nose. “You’re right. I’ll wish us away.”
I had started thinking of where in the world we could go when Jimmy Deets stopped screaming and started moving.
He rolled up on his knees and began crawling toward us. He was thin, so thin I could see every jerk and jut of his shoulder blades, spine, and ribs. In high school he had been in ROTC. He’d been fit and healthy. Looking at him now was like watching a hairless, starved rat crawl to you on its last bit of strength. He scurried around the mess of Tyler Woods and hit his knees at my feet.
He looked up and I looked down. Splinter-nailed hands reached but didn’t touch me, hovering in front of my waist in supplication. Tears streamed from red-rimmed eyes, racing down hollow cheeks, skimming around the sores in their way.
His mouth opened then closed, a white gummy substance in the corners of his lips. They opened again, and his voice came out choked. “Please…”
The word shocked me.
He swallowed, a tiny sob breaking at the end. “Please…” he repeated.
“Please what?”
“Please forgive me.”
The dark, ugly thing inside me curled up, rubbing against the pity being born, blossoming in my heart.
His head dropped, muffling his words, but this close I could still hear him. “I am so sorry. I know what we did to you was horrible. I … I can’t imagine what it was like.”
“No. You can’t.”
“I can’t stop remembering it.”
The dark, ugly thing lashed my spine.
“I bet you can’t.”
His face flew up, horror painted there. “No! No! Not like that, never like that. God, I wish I could scrub it out of my head. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard. Crank, pills, drinking … but it never works. The memory is always there. I can’t clear it out of my brain.”
Twist.
I snarled. “Maybe you should have used a bullet.”
His head fell. “I tried.” Scrawny shoulders shook with silent sobs. “I couldn’t do it.” His fist beat against his leg. “I was too weak. Just like that night … I couldn’t stand up to Tyler, and you…”
He choked, an ugly noise shaking his ridged chest like a palsy. “I’m so sorry for what I did, for what I let happen.”
Ragged fingertips moved to his temples, rubbing in circles. “It’s been horrible. I can’t hold a job. I haven’t ever been able to find someone to love. I live off disability and painting houses.” His fingers curled into fists. They beat on the sides of his head. “I barely sleep, I only eat enough to live, and I’m alone, so damn miserable no one wants to be around me.”
The dark, ugly thing inside me came out in my voice.
“I feel really sorry for you. I’m sure it’s been tough.” I fought the urge to spit on him.
He broke, his spine folding until he huddled, compressed over his knees, rail-thin body shaking as he cried.
Daniel touched my arm. I looked at him. He ran his fingers through his hair, not looking at me.
“What?”
It took him a second to speak. “Listen to me, Charlie. Hear me out. I’m not saying he deserves it, but maybe you should forgive him.”
“Forgive him?”
His hands went up between us, warding off the anger in my voice. “Not for his sake, but for yours. I’m watching you right now, and I can feel the anger, the hate … hell, the magick rolling off your skin. I don’t think it’s good for you.”
I looked at Daniel’s face. The dark, ugly thing curled inside.
Screw him. He doesn’t know what this animal did to me.
The look on his face cut through that ugliness. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t pity for me. It wasn’t self-righteousness.
It was a look of care.
A look of love.
It shone in his oh-so-green eyes. He loved me. He asked me to forgive Jimmy Deets because he could see what the anger and hatred were doing to me. The look in his eyes made things clear in a click.
I could feel the hatred inside me, stoking the fire of the magick, eating away my resistance to its siren call. I could let it go. I could drop that burden.
I wouldn’t absolve Jimmy Deets of his sin. I wouldn’t make it okay in any way. I would just let go of the anger I was carrying. The rage. The pain.
I could be free.
Not healed, but closer.
“Stand up,” I said to Jimmy. He looked up at me, scrambled to his feet, and stood in front of me.
I took a deep breath. My heart pounded in my chest. It throbbed at the edges of my vision, making the room seem darker.
Jimmy looked at me expectantly, fear on his face.
I couldn’t do this.
Not after what he did.
My head hurt. The room grew darker still.
Daniel’s fingers found my shoulder. I could feel the strength and support in his soft, reassuring touch.
“I…”
The words stuck in my throat.
I swallowed and tried again.
“I forgive you.”
The air in the room grew thick like syrup.
A smile broke Jimmy’s face open, fresh tears streaming. “Thank you. Thank you. I don’t deserve it.”
The room dimmed as though a lamp had been turned off. A shadow moved behind Jimmy. It swirled and coalesced then strode over, a naked sword in its red right hand.
Daniel saw it too. “What the…?” was all he had a chance to say.
The sword rose then fell like lightning, splitting Jimmy Deets from the crown of his head to the bottom of his crotch. He stood there, a shocked look on his face until his left knee buckled and both halves of him fell apart.
“No one gets to harm my Acolyte.” The Man in Black stepped through the bloody mist, dropping the sword into the eldritch depths of his coat. “Not even ten years ago.”