They were on the A40 speeding away from the city, when Alex realized Edward was checking mirrors and gripping Alex's hand way too tightly.
"I'm not sure we got away cleanly," Edward said with the snap of worry in his voice.
Alex checked his side and rear mirrors for the headlights from cars following them. He panned his senses through the occupants of each vehicle, finally focusing on one, sensing distrust behind them. A sudden frustration cut through him. Did the people who had contracted them not believe that Alex and Edward would deliver what he had lifted? And not only distrusted them but took their suspicion to the point that they had to follow him away from the museum to check? The car drew level with them but Alex couldn't get much of a view through the tinted windows. He just sensed malevolence and he floored the gas.
"What do they want?" There was an edge of concern to Edward's voice. The car swerved close to them and Alex cursed as he pulled the wheel to steer the smaller car away from direct contact.
"Hold on," Alex shouted. He braked with the idea that somehow he could get around the back of the other car but they appeared to second-guess what he was doing. The vehicle that had been following slowed down and the driver's side window lowered as they drew up level to them. A glint of silver caught Alex's attention, causing a tangled knot in the pit of his stomach as he realized they had a gun.
Everything happened in slow motion between one breath and the next, the gun, the shout, a single bullet, and instinctive energy inside him shoving it away, feeling triumph as it veered to one side, then stark horror as the bullet arced into Edward. Slamming on the brakes of his car he watched in horror as the other car sped away. He pulled off his belt and then released Edward, shouting "No!"
The bullet had sliced through his lover's aorta. Edward clutched his chest and started the slow tumble sideways toward Alex. Blood pulsed into the air with each beat of his heart, blood suspended as droplets in Alex's blurred vision. Alex could both see and feel the destruction inside Edward's body as the bullet rampaged through his lungs—no air, no air—and he shuddered with the pain and the terror as he pulled his broken lover to him.
"No. No!" Alex pressed his hands against Edward's heaving chest, trying to stop the blood, willing the energy inside him outward, to his lover, to heal the broken mass of tissue and muscle and Edward's shattered aorta. He saw him in his mind's eye, his gentle Edward, going away from him, already walking where he couldn't follow.
"Go home," Edward choked, blood in his throat garbling the words. Swamped by agony and darkness and Edward's waning conscious awareness, Alex couldn't speak, could only think, Edward, Ed. I'm sorry, don't go. Don't leave me.
Poised at the very brink of going into the darkness himself, so closely were they connected, Alex only partly heard Edward's "Athena…" then, with what strength remained to him, "Greece." Blood bubbles collected at Edward's mouth; Alex could feel the air being driven from the system that held his lover alive in his arms, could sense Edward's blood-starved heart as it slowed, his own heartbeat slowing to match it even as Alex willed both to continue beating.
"Greece," Edward whispered, as he faded into death.
Alex could see the blood as it stopped, could hear—and feel—the last, ever-slower heartbeats, and then the hollow stillness of a heart no longer moving. His own stubborn heartbeat was nearly overwhelmed, so desperate was Alex's need to find Edward. Where had the pain gone? It had to come back because then Edward would be alive if he felt his pain. Edward. Let me go with you. Why was everything so silent? No heartbeat, no smile, no sense of Edward's presence in his head. Silence.
Alex wrapped his arms around Edward's body and lay there in his blood, every ounce of him listening for the last, faint sounds of their connection as it withered and failed. Lay there, shattered and unmoving.
Sirens sounded, their banshee wails keening into Alex's head, the agony they caused driving every other sound out, deafening him. Police arrived at the scene, but he couldn't hear them beyond a hum of broken resonance. Someone touched his shoulder and he convulsed away, with his shields down even the gentlest contact was too much pain to bear. More silence, and Edward gone.
"Home, Alex. Athena. Greece." His imagination? No, Edward had said it when he was dying. Alex's mind latched on to the last words he had said and gradually, so slowly, he returned partway to the moment. Gentle, inexorable hands released his grip on Edward's body and he watched woodenly as they covered his lover's face. He gripped at Edward's soft hands, hands that had traced Alex's tattoos when he suffered his nightmares, pulling him back from the edge, and Edward had asked for nothing in return. Stricken, unable to speak, he kissed Edward's fingers, each kiss a plea for him to return. Each plea unanswered.
The physical pain had receded, but Alex remained buried in confusion and only minimally aware, the grief, the separation too profound for him to cope with quickly.
"Sir, sir, can you hear me? Are you hurt?" A stranger's voice made itself heard through the gray, roiling fog surrounding him, and Alex looked up into pale, gray eyes and an unthreatening face. Hurt? "Sir? Are you hurt?"
Alex looked down at his shirt, the blood on it arterial red. The stranger had been asking about physical injuries, Alex realized dimly. He lifted his head, still unable to focus, shaking it mutely.
"Edward's," was all he could whisper. He couldn't breathe any more words. Edward was gone and he couldn't follow him.
"Can you give me his name, sir?"
"Edward DeChauncey. Viscount Edward DeChauncey." And, with that name, completely overwhelmed, Alex gave way to darkness and lost consciousness.
* * * *
"Alex, it's Colin. Edward's brother. Can you hear me?" His voice was heavy with grief, torn and battered beyond his realization. "Alex, it's Colin."
"Colin?"
"Yes. Colin. Alex, finish dressing. Can you talk to me?"
"Colin." Alex heard the words—a name, a face. Edward's brother.
"Edward is dead."
Colin didn't answer. Of course he knew Edward was dead, otherwise he wouldn't be here in the hospital.
"The family wants to see you. I'll be here, right here. Can you do it?"
Edward's family? The world reached back to Alex through Colin's voice and Alex nodded once, almost falling off the gurney in the process. Colin handed him clean clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, and in a bag was his suit and the jacket with the scroll hidden in the lining. At this point he didn't even care if it had been found. Shuttered behind cracked and crumbling shields, he huddled inside the clean clothes. He sat close to Colin while they talked over him, arrangements to be made. Come with us, Alex. We need to organize the funeral. You're welcome to say a few words. He loved you. Always spoke of you so proudly. We know you loved him. Nothing made sense.
Nothing except what Edward had said, what Edward told him to do.
Edward's family, with the exception of Colin, left him in the cubicle. As soon as they left, Alex resolved to obey Edward's last words. He had no way of measuring the time already elapsed, no care for it either. Colin remained with him, talking and staying still, as patient as Edward had ever been. Until Alex could respond to questions and go through the motions of signing his name on release forms, Colin stayed.
Alex was insistent. He was leaving the hospital; nothing Edward's brother or his doctors could say to him would make the slightest bit of difference. The doctor who examined him debated over releasing him at all, knowing severe shock when he saw it.
"Take care, Alex," Colin murmured as they parted in the parking lot. Alex couldn't risk a handshake, realizing his grip on things was as fragile as a baby's. Alex attempted a smile of reassurance and turned away.
Alone, he called a taxi and asked to be taken to his and Edward's country home. His home now that Edward was gone. The police had said they didn't need to ask him for more information on what they had labeled a case of mistaken identity in a drive-by shooting. Alex couldn't stay. After sending a hurried email to Colin, he filled a bag with clothes and grabbed his passport and credit cards. With not a second thought for anything else, he purchased a ticket to Greece, to Athena.
Just as Edward said he should.