Being Light has taught me a very important skill. I have used it many times since Gabe left for Dallas, and before then during my training days. Some part of me felt its presence the day I first saw him and even the very first time I saw a Hellion back in August, but I didn’t know quite what it was then.
Now it’s an order blaring through my mind.
Fight through your fear.
It’s not easy. Parts of me are in direct opposition to standing up straight and getting things done. But there are things that have to get done—like telling Beatrix what happened, calling Grayhem, getting us girls dressed so we can leave her house, and actually leaving the house. I even drive her car because she’s not in a strong place of her own. In fact, she’s in pieces.
No, it’s not easy, but I do it. I do everything. And I do it without stopping to curl into a ball and cry.
I don’t expect to be able to persevere forever, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my darker thoughts overtake me before I’ve done my part.
When we get to the Sanctum, Grayhem is standing in the receiving room with two older men I’ve never seen. I briefly wonder if they’re the ones who live here like me; it would explain how they beat everyone else here.
“Ladies,” Grayhem greets us gravely as he flips through the channels on the TV. “We’re trying to see if Dallas is on any of the news stations.”
“Is it?” Beatrix asks frantically, her tear-stained face pinched with worry.
“Not yet, but if it only happened within the hour, they may not have had a chance to broadcast anything.”
“Do you need me to do anything?” I ask him. “Make any calls?”
He smiles thinly at the TV. “No, dear, but thank you. I called Mark and Red and told them to make a few calls of their own. And Tye and Anton here helped spread the word, too.”
I direct a quick wave at the two of them, and they nod back politely.
“Did someone call—?” Beatrix starts right as the door opens and Trenton walks in. “Oh, speaking of,” she amends with a relieved sigh.
“Hey,” he says, looking between her and me, dropping a full backpack onto the floor. “This really happening? I was told to get out of bed, pack a bag with clothes and some food, and get here fast because that warning from the other day might be coming true.”
Despite my resolution to be tough, I find I can’t answer him for some reason. Beatrix is just as unsuccessful, so Grayhem says, “Thus far, it’s kind of like an educated guess. We’re trying to catch something about it on the news.”
Trenton rakes a hand through his hair, and I realize he looks like he really did make haste to get here. One of his shoelaces is untied and his hoodie is inside-out. “All right. Need me to do anything?”
Grayhem shakes his head and sighs. “Not yet.”
There isn’t much for any of us to do, so we do a lot of waiting. When we finally spot news about Dallas on the TV, it’s 1:30 in the morning and there are thirteen of us in the room instead of six.
“Reports are saying the city of Dallas, Texas is burning,” the female newscaster says in her too-calm voice, “and has been for a couple of hours now. Allegedly, it began when bombs started going off in the heart of the city—”
A strangled noise leaves Beatrix, and she grabs my hand. I squeeze back, trying not to freak out even knowing the Sanctum there wasn’t located in some suburb. It was in Dallas.
“—unable to get any information from people inside Dallas itself due to the destruction—”
A video taken from the air flashes onto the screen, and pure horror rips through me.
“Oh my God,” Beatrix wails as the others in the room gasp or cuss.
Where there should be dark streets and car headlights and lit-up buildings and business logos and billboards, there is nothing but bright, violently blazing fire. Nothing but furious flames of the hottest colors reaching high into the sky and crawling outward and devouring everything.
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“There we have a clip of the city,” the newscaster goes on. “As we can see, the fires are raging and totally taking out everything. We’ve been told emergency services are being called in from other areas to help with the damage as well as the certain injuries and probable deaths of any people caught in this inferno.”
They play the video on a loop for minutes that stretch into eternity, and it’s like a car wreck none of us can look away from.
I stare at the blazes for so long that when a second video replaces the first, my eyes still see the billowing flames on the screen, only in inverted colors.
It takes me a few long seconds to adjust to the darkness of the new clip. There are actual people in this one, and as I regain my focus, my heart leaps savagely into my throat.
“Holy—”
Beatrix lets out a choked sob.
The rest of the room falls dead silent.
“This just in, viewers,” the newscaster says. “Here we have a very special live interview with some witnesses to the horrible bombings—Greg, are you there?”
The male reporter on the left side of the video looks at the camera with wide, energized eyes, and after a few seconds, he nods. “Yes, Suzanne, I’m here with quite the opportunity, indeed, to find out what’s been going on. In our attempt to get closer, my crew and I came across these three watching the chaos from up here.” He gestures behind him to where Dallas burns a safe distance away. “Guys, can you tell us about what you’ve seen?”
The tattooed man has a Hellion standing on either side of him, but I can’t even focus on those two. My eyes are only on him and his spine-chilling face. His spiky red tattoos are in bold contrast with his white skin and pitch-black eyes and mouth.
When he speaks, his voice is every bit as disturbing as Gabe said it was. His bottomless eyes seem to cut through the miles and peer through the TV screen to look straight at me as he purrs, “We have seen what is only the beginning of something momentous.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
“Why do you think that?” the reporter asks, completely unaware of who he’s talking to.
“I do not think that. I know that.”
“Where did you get your information from? How do you know what this is? Is this is the work of a random terrorist group or gang? Who was involved?”
The tattooed man lets out a nightmarish laugh.
“This is my doing,” he reveals, sounding as proud as he can in his terrible voice, “and I am hardly arbitrary. I prefer to think of myself as a spearhead: well-chosen and purposeful.”
I catch the subtle flick of his right wrist, which is hanging by the inked skin of his thigh, before movement to the left attracts my attention. I look at the reporter just in time to see him sinking downward, his neck bent in a strange direction, his eyes suddenly blank. Then he’s out of the frame.
“Greg?” someone off-screen calls. Then, “Oh my God! He’s dead!”
The camera shakes before toppling toward the dark ground, momentarily coming to a rest at a crooked angle on pale, tattooed feet.
The receiving room bursts into horrorstruck chatter, save the few of us who remain silent and frozen, eyes and ears still focused on our enemy. He’s crouching down and reaching for the camera.
As he lifts it, he repeats, “Only the beginning.” The view halts on his ghastly black gap of a smile. “Enjoy your lives while they are still yours.”
Then the camera is flying through the air. We get another brief glimpse of the blazing city before it cuts off.
*
Mark and Beatrix start getting people down for rooms on the residential hall.
Even though Red has been working on more weapons for the past day or two, Dr. Roterra draws more blood yet so we can further strengthen our armory.
Trenton, Janssen, and Wright start moving the food people brought with them to the lounge, where the food from Claire’s apartment still is.
I’m helping put the food away, and also trying to call Gabe.
Nothing.
Wes.
Nothing.
Claire.
Nothing.
Rafe.
Nothing.
I don’t know what I’d even tell my sister and Rafe. I can’t explain the blatant threat the tattooed man gave on the TV. Even if they were watching it for some reason and heard what he said for themselves, I wouldn’t be able to explain it to them. But I still want to warn them to be as careful as possible.
Not that I’m sure Claire would even be worried about an attack like this.
I tune back into the news, which is reporting that Rockwall, Fort Worth, and Grapevine have seen some bombing (that’s what they’re calling it, anyway. We know it’s probably just the insane power the tattooed man has). And the more fire they show on the screen, the more my brain tries to tell me people can’t live through things like this—that Gabe can’t live through it.
The more I think that, the more I fight to not-think it, which leads to me telling myself he did live through it and will come back. Is on his way back. Will be here in a matter of hours. But that is a very, very dangerous thought for me to have.
And knowing that—no matter how badly I don’t want to know it, no matter how badly I wish I could just live in blissful ignorance…it leaves my whole I’m Not Going To Freak Out attitude balancing on a thin wire. I find myself alternating between being chilled to the bone and flashing hot, between being unable to stand still and feeling like I need to sit down or I’m going to pass out. My brain feels like a wild animal and my skull like a cage. My stomach won’t stop twisting with anxiety.
And the time is crawling by.
After a little while, once I’m back in the receiving room, I go down my phone call list again.
Still nothing.
I look at the TV. They’re showing a new video of Dallas being consumed by fire.
‘Only the beginning.’
“I need some air,” I blurt out in the middle of Trenton asking me something.
“Mari, no!” Beatrix exclaims. “Do not go outside!”
I’m already bolting for the stairwell. When I get there, the frigid air feels good on my temporarily scorching skin. It seems to only get better the higher up I go, the closer I get to the air outside.
My name echoes up to me, as well as the sound of feet pounding up the steps after me. But I don’t stop. I don’t even slow down until I get to the door at the top, which will take me to the back hallway of The Room.
I burst out of the stairwell and run straight into the wall opposite the door. Even though the exit to the outside world is just to my right and there’s a whole cold, empty building waiting for me if I go left, I don’t walk another foot. I just put my back against the wall and try to catch my breath, try to hold my head above the torrent of unbearable thoughts and feelings rushing through me.
“Mari,” Beatrix sobs when she steps into the hallway, “what are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I gasp. I look at her and feel my eyes widen in distress. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She stares back at me—a married, older, teal-haired, pierced, inked version of myself. “I don’t know what I’m doing, either,” she whimpers.
Tears are starting to burn at the backs of my eyes. “I’m trying n-not to lose it,” I wobble out. “But all I can think about is—is—” My hand flies up to my necklace, but I’m suddenly shaking too badly to even grasp it.
She shakes her head fiercely, knowing what I’m trying to say. “I can’t think that way. I can’t. Wes is trying to get back here. I have to believe that.”
“Yeah.” I nod just as passionately, grasping now at her optimism. “Yes. He is. And—”
I can’t even say his name. My throat constricts around it.
And then my body decides it’s time to cry.
Beatrix trips toward me and draws me into a hug, and she cries with me.
“What is this?” I sob. “How is this ha-happening?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, but I am s-so scared.”
“Me, too.”
And as soon as I say that, I feel bad. I feel humiliated and sad and stupid for being as scared as I am.
Standing next to this woman, I’m a fucking joke. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have that link with Gabe, haven’t spent years building a friendship and a romance and a life with him. Here I am falling apart over the probable loss of a future I only wanted, and what is she falling apart over? So much more than that—the probable loss of a whole piece of her, of a past she loved and a future she didn’t just dream about but intended to have with the man she married. The one man she swore to love until she dies.
I don’t realize I’ve said any of that out loud until she pulls back and fixes the sternest look she can manage on me.
“Do not say that,” she commands me thickly, her hazel eyes ringed with red and still spilling tears. “Do you know how Wes and I got to where we are? Do you know how we built what we have?” Abruptly, her face crumples into an expression of heartbreaking sorrow, and she sucks in an aggrieved breath. “We met each other and felt something. Just like you and G-Gabe did.”
I feel like someone has their hands around my heart and is trying to squeeze it until it ruptures.
“You have been building something with him,” she gets out. “Something that sh-shows on your face and makes him happier than I’ve ever seen him.” She sniffles and grips my shoulders. “Mari, you are not so different from me. You are not stupid. You feel how you feel because you care about Gabe and this is a nightmare.”
I can’t say anything back, and she doesn’t keep talking. We just dissolve into more tears.
Standing up becomes too much of a chore, so we sit on the floor with our backs against the wall and let our bodies try to work through the heaviness of our thoughts.
It’s difficult. I hate everything in my head.
After a little while, I start trying to accept that things can go either way—not just with Gabe and Wes, but with all of us. Any of us can die at any time and, honestly, that shouldn’t be news to us. We’re Light. We’ve looked death in the eye before. We know we aren’t invincible.
An indeterminable amount of time passes with us sitting up here in the cold hallway. I can’t decide whether or not I appreciate the chill, the stillness, the silence around us. It makes Beatrix’s confident words about me and Gabe feel warmer. At the same time, I have nothing to block out the very real possibility that he might not come back; the only defense I have against it is to hope he will show up. But that hurts, too, because if I’m wrong....
The dichotomy exhausts me faster and more severely than anything else ever has.
Eventually, the door to the stairwell opens and Janssen looks over at us. His kind face creases with concern when he sees the state we’re in. “Hey, sweethearts,” he greets us gently.
Beatrix says nothing. I try for a polite smile, but I don’t feel like I’m very successful.
“I just came up to check on you two, but why don’t you come on back down with me?” he suggests. “It’s on past 4:00, and you both look ti—”
A huge boom sounds from outside.
The building shudders violently.
Janssen’s eyes widen as he works to keep his balance, and Beatrix and I stagger up off the floor. For a single moment, I’m perplexed.
And then I realize it’s happening here.
“Oh, God,” I get out as another boom comes. It sounds a little farther away than the first, but everything still shakes, leaving me feeling weaker than ever. A car alarm starts wailing from somewhere nearby.
“Girls!” Janssen shouts, holding the door open for us.
We’re in the stairwell in a second. The door has just shut the three of us off from the hallway when my phone rings in my hand.
I’m so immediately exultant and terrified that I feel like my heart is going to burst.
It pains every inch of me to see Rafe’s name on the screen instead of Gabe’s.
But I answer the call. “Rafe?”
“Mari!” he yells. “Mari, where are you? Are you okay? Something’s going down!”
“I know and I’m fine. Are you? Have you seen Claire?”
“I haven’t seen her, Mari,” he says, sounding strained, “and I’m okay, but I heard this really loud noise a minute ago and my apartment shook and I looked outside—things are exploding outside!”
“Bombs,” I lie weakly as I run downstairs with the others. “They’re bombs and they went off in Dallas tonight, too.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
I feel like I’m going to fall over at any second. The running and stress and fear and agonizing disappointment that I’m not talking to Gabe right now are draining me. “Yes,” I pant. “I—Rafe, I can’t talk—”
“No!” he cuts me off. “Stay on the phone with me!”
“I can’t,” I suddenly sob. “It’s too much. Be careful.”
“Mari!” he bellows.
I hang up.
I have the distinct feeling I’m about to tumble down the stairs. I barely get my phone into my pocket to grab the cold metal bannister with both hands before I fall.
The lights flicker, and a soft whimper leaves me.
I have half a mind to just go slack already, to just sit down right where I am and curl in on myself and block the world out because this is unbelievable.
But some part of my mind yells, No! Do not bitch out right now! Keep going. Keep. Going.
With great effort, I listen to me.
I continue down the stairs, trying not to be slow even though my legs want to stop moving altogether.
Yes. Go. Fight through your fear.
For a second, I stumble, but then I start to move a little faster.
This could be worse. It can always be worse. Don’t give up just because things are looking bleak.
Now I only have one hand on the bannister.
Gabe wouldn’t give up.
No, he wouldn’t.
And if he comes back and asks how I managed while he was gone, I’m not going to tell him I was too upset to even walk down some damn stairs.
I take a deep breath and dash the rest of the way to the bottom floor, even passing Beatrix.
In the receiving room, only Dr. Roterra and Grayhem are around. They look at us when we burst in, and even before we announce that the explosions have started, Grayhem’s expression turns knowing.
“Us now?” he asks.
“Yessir,” Janssen replies.
Grayhem nods and sighs. “All right. Everyone else went on to bed, I think. I’d alert them to this, but it’s been a long night and they’re sure to get longer. I don’t really want to wake them, and I’m certain we’re safe down here.”
The three of us nod our agreement. “I don’t guess there’s really much we’d be able to do anyway,” Beatrix acknowledges with a sniffle.
“Not much at all,” Janssen says.
“Why don’t you three head to bed, too?” Grayhem suggests. “Rest is just as good for the mind as it is for the body.”
If it’ll come to you.
“Okay, well, you come get me if you need somethin’,” Janssen tells him. “I’m up for whatever needs doin’.”
Grayhem smiles tiredly at us. “Of course.”
The three of us leave for the residential hall.
When we get there, Janssen says, “Girls, I’m just here in Room C if somethin’ comes up.”
“Thanks,” Beatrix murmurs. I just wave feebly.
After he disappears into his room, I offer to her, “You can stay in J with me if you want to.”
“I do,” she promptly accepts. “Let me just brush my teeth and stuff and I’ll be right over.”
We part ways a little farther down the hall, and I head into my room.
I feel weird almost as soon as I’m shut in. The place feels lonely and mocking, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out why.
Gabe was in here just a few days ago.
He sat right there in my desk chair and spoke to me, looked at me.
He kissed me for the first time right around where I’m standing now.
He stood here and looked my past in the face and said it wasn’t dark enough to send him running.
For a minute, I remain motionless and silent. Try to separate reality from my imagination and probability from what I only hope will happen.
I hate this.
How did it get like this? Just days ago, things were okay. We were all safe, I was getting used to the Lightforce, and Gabe and I were just beginning. We were all happy. And now we’re scattered and breaking and hurting and wondering and I want to believe it’s going to get better, but what if it isn’t? What if this is my life now?
My fears are smothering me. I have so many of them, and they are all enormous, and so many are about Gabe, and I can’t fight them off. I want him back. My confidence in our ability to sort this situation out will be so much stronger if I get him back.
That frenzied craving to have him here to stabilize us—to stabilize me—coupled with the awful blindness of not knowing anything about where or how he is…it almost takes me out.
But then I feel a flicker of clarity. It’s cold and flat and as ugly as the Dark beings in this world, but it’s better than pandemonium, and I clutch at it.
It’s truth. It’s control.
I need it.
So I close my eyes and draw as deep a breath as I can. My hands clench into fists. While I hold my breath, I try to take control of my thoughts and fears—I bring the worst of them to the front of my mind. I try to fight panic with preparation.
I will never see Gabe again, whispers through my mind. He’s dead. He didn’t make it out of Dallas.
The last thing I heard him say before the call got cut off was the last thing I’ll ever hear from him.
My breath huffs out of me so hard it hurts.
I already want to stop this, but I don’t. I have to do it.
He will never be back in this building. He will never set foot in this room again.
I need to get used to him not being around. He isn’t going to be around anymore. I can’t touch him again, or look at him, or talk to him. All I have now are memories.
All the plans we made for when he got back don’t matter anymore. Nothing we even briefly imagined for our future together will come to pass.
Some things only last for a little while, and we were one of them.
A deep sadness winds through me. It weighs me down and makes my eyes burn.
There is no ‘we’ anymore.
As badly as I want to believe he’s okay and he’ll come back, I have to do the smart thing: I have to prepare for the worst. If I confront these painful things now and get them out in the open, maybe they won’t cripple me later if it turns out he really is gone. Maybe they won’t send me to the floor like an unexpected kick to the backs of my knees.
I owe it to myself to be ready for anything no matter how much it hurts, no matter how ugly it looks, no matter how unbelievable it sounds. I’m not a child, and I shouldn’t treat myself like one. I shouldn’t handle my feelings with too much care. It would only be to my detriment if I let myself go on believing bad things don’t happen and good people don’t die and everything will go right just because I want it to.
So I keep going. I open my fists and take the time to tune in to every part of me, from my head to my feet. I pay attention to how it feels to only have me in my personal space. How it feels not to have his hands in my hands, or his palms curving around my hips, or his fingers sliding through my hair, or his mouth against my mouth.
This is how it’s going to be from now on, I tell myself. I have to get used to my body having nothing to do with his. Things are different now. I didn’t always have him. I have to go back to that time. I have to just be me.
Next, I open my aching eyes. Through fresh tears, I make myself look at my desk chair until I don’t see his tall, gorgeous frame sitting in it anymore—until all I see is an empty seat. Then I do the same thing with the air around me. I notice how he’s not to my left like he always was in his car, not behind me like during those first few minutes we looked at the tree house, and not in front of me like when he and I sparred.
He’s not anywhere. All there is now is me.
Change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same.
I take a deep, shaky, excruciating breath and let it back out.
And then I start getting ready for bed.
I change into the most comfortable pajamas I have here: gray drawstring pants and a soft white V-neck. Then I head to the bathroom. I’m in the middle of brushing my teeth when Beatrix appears, looking as exhausted and sad as I feel. She half-heartedly waves at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and I wave back.
After I’m done brushing, I floss, wash my face, and comb my hair. Then I turn my lamp on, switch the overhead light off, and head to my bed, where she’s curled up.
“Couple of guys are up watching TV in the lounge,” she tells me. “I stopped by to update them, and they said some city in Louisiana is getting it, too.”
I sigh, not knowing what to say.
I barely even know what to think.
We quiet down and cover up, but we don’t do much situating. We just loll here. I feel numb or something, and I wish I could zone out—out of my head, out of reality—but I can’t.
Even though this has been a long, stressful, emotional day, we lie awake for quite a while.
At length, she says softly, “I don’t know if I can sleep.”
“I don’t know if I can, either,” I whisper. “Don’t know if I want to.”
“We should, though.”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” I say although I don’t even know what the appropriate time to say that is.
A pitiful laugh leaves her. Then she says, “Mari,” and her voice cracks.
“Yeah?” I barely get out.
She grasps for my hand. “It hurts me to breathe not knowing if he’s still breathing.”
The words make my stomach ache. “I know it does.”
As more dense uncertainty and fear settle on me—not just about Wes and Gabe, but about everything—I hold her hand in return and close my eyes.
Eventually, the numbness turns into me drifting, not quite asleep and not quite awake. It goes on for a long time and not a bit of me appreciates it. But as tired as my brain is, it won’t shut off completely, nor will it just go ahead and snap to attention. At one point, I’m vaguely aware of Beatrix moving around beside me, then of the mattress shifting, and then I hear her feet padding across the floor, but I don’t so much as open my eyes.
My thoughts meander through my head with no rhyme or reason. Some are sad, some hopeful, some angry, some ridiculous. I ponder what that monster’s red tattoos mean, if they mean anything. Whether or not my parents are in heaven, and if so, whether or not they’re watching me. I wonder what Audrey has been doing since I cut myself off from her; I wonder if she got with Rafe any more afterward or if that was just something she wanted to try on one poorly-chosen occasion. Briefly, I wonder what the weather is like in Africa right now. And I wonder just why it is that people can’t touch clouds when they look so touchable, when they’re so breathtaking and unique, when they deserve to be touched and admired—science be damned, I want to touch—
I hear, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” from somewhere relatively close by, and my eyes finally drift open.
Rather disoriented, I glance around my room and belatedly realize Beatrix isn’t in it. I guess I was more out of it than I thought if she left and I didn’t notice.
That was her voice, though. I know that for sure. I sit up so I can get out of bed and find her.
Just as I’m grabbing a fistful of blanket to move it, the door to my room bursts open. I freeze, and my own surprised cry gets stuck in my throat when Gabe swings in. His eyes find me instantly, but he doesn’t come to me. He shifts his weight back against the door, causing it to shut heavily and send a jolt through my bones. And for a few eternal seconds, he just stays there, leaned against the door, looking at me with the most wonderful and most chaotic expression in the world.
I’m suddenly wide awake, my thoughts racing, my heart pounding so hard it hurts.
I choke out, “Gabriel?”
He sucks in a loud breath and shoves away from the door. His feet carry him toward me. My feet develop a mind of their own and propel me forward even though the rest of me isn’t ready to get out of bed. I get twisted up in the blanket and fall and my back hits the floor with absolutely no grace.
But I have only a fleeting thought of embarrassment because he drops onto the floor, too—I sit up on one hand as he kneels across my lap, planting one knee on either side of me. He grabs my head with both hands just before his mouth collides with mine, burning and desperate.
I’m shot through with something unnamable and amazing. It rips a moan from me, and a moan leaves him in the form of my name, and I—
—I am touching clouds.
My free hand clutches the front of his jacket, and one of his flattens against my back. He swiftly and effortlessly pulls me away from the floor until I’m sitting up against him, my face tilted way up. He holds me securely in place as our mouths rediscover each other, remember all the things we said and did before, retrieve our future from the jagged edge it very nearly dropped over.
I’m abruptly overwhelmed by the need to look at him again. I have to look at him now or I’m going to explode.
I drag my mouth from his and pull back to gaze up at him, and my throat tightens.
God Almighty, he really is here in front of me—not a picture, not a figment of my imagination.
“I need to just—” I barely get out. Since he’s holding me upright, I put the hand I had on the floor up against his cheek.
He turns into it and lets out a shaky breath. He languidly kisses my palm, making that one place feel red-hot with glorious, not destructive, fire. Then he looks at me again, and even though his perfect eyes were on me ten seconds ago, he looks like he’s seeing me for the first time in days all over again.
It makes my heart swell.
Those eyes drink me in. Scratchily, he agrees, “Me, too.”
Seeing the wounds from his picture makes them very real for me, but I decide they’re not too bad. I’m sure they looked worse when he got them, except for that bruise, but it’ll fade soon. His face is a little scruffier than normal and his hair is unruly as ever. His gaze is powerful on me, just like always and more than ever at the same time.
There are too many emotions in his expression to focus on just one, but together they say the same thing to me: ‘I’m alive and you’re alive and we are both here right now.’
He’s divine.
Something about him doesn’t look quite right to me, though. Momentarily, I figure out what it is: part of him is still in fight mode, still trying to stay alive. I can only fucking imagine why that is. But the longer we sit here and look at each other, the more I can sense the tension leaving him. It relieves me immensely. I don’t want him to suffer any more than he has to; he went through so much while he was gone, and I know some of it isn’t going to go away quickly, if it ever does.
I move to slide both of my hands between his jacket and his shirt, then lay them against his back. He exhales, seeming to calm even more under my hands, and slants down so his mouth can pull mine into a long, deliberate kiss.
When it ends, he says, “After our call got cut off, I…I thought I would never get back here, Marienne. I felt every single mile and it hurt me so much.”
My chest aches even though he’s here now. He told me before the attack on Dallas that he missed me and was thinking about me and that kind of thing, but these words are different than those. These are despondent.
I tell him earnestly, “It hurt me, too.” I gently smooth my hands over his back, partly for comfort and partly because he’s too marvelous for me not to touch after all of this. Thinking he’d been ripped away from me so soon after I found him...I hated that. But, oh, it hadn’t come true. It hadn’t. Thank the Lord. “But you did get back.”
“Yes, I did.”
His eyes rove over my face, then down to my necklace, which I haven’t taken off since he gave it to me. A flash of a smile touches his lips. He trails his hand away from my face and lays it on my collarbone, warm and strong, looking like he has something to say.
But he has only taken a breath before he stops, seeming distracted by something.
If I had to guess, it’s the way I suddenly can’t breathe right under his hand. I’m trying—I really am—but my lungs aren’t listening. It’s like my body is just now catching up with reality; my heartbeat can’t figure out how to act with him touching me and my necklace like this when I’d tried before to prepare for never feeling his hands on me again. I’d tried to tell my body he was no more and there was only me, and now it’s finally grasping how very untrue that is.
He just looks at his hand on my skin, his lips slightly parted, as my chest rises and falls faster than normal. He looks like he can’t believe what he’s seeing—like he can’t believe he can do this to me.
Absurd.
So absurd.
This delicious, unassuming bastard.
I work on getting a deep breath. I try to calm down, try to slow my pulse, and…
…and then his scorching eyes slowly move up to mine. They lay all of his emotion right on me.
I feel like I’m going to break into a thousand pieces underneath it.
He whispers, “You astound me.”
“You astound me,” I whisper back, “Gabe.”
He draws his own deep breath before dipping down to kiss me slowly once more, his lips pressing and pulling on mine with tenderness that only barely masks intense promise.
I don’t have words for how it makes me feel.
I’d told myself he was dead, indelibly gone from the earth and from my life—and I worried he really was.
The breathless sound he makes as my tongue grazes his bottom lip assures me he is not.
Suddenly, his hands are flat on the floor instead of on me, and I drop back a little, only kept from totally falling because my arms are around him.
“Have I ever told you,” he asks unevenly, “that you make me love my name?”
I almost don’t get out, “No,” before he kisses me again.
I can’t help collapsing onto my back now. He follows me, moving a hand down to whip the tangle of blanket away from my legs. When it’s gone, his hand seizes my hip and he covers my body with his, propping himself up on one arm while the rest of him settles on me and warms me through. And, oh, it feels so good. So right. Like something I’ve missed even though it’s new for us.
I sigh out of the kiss. He exhales heavily, too, and the nearness of it is wonderful.
His lips graze my lips as he murmurs, “Well, there are a lot of things I need to tell you.” But then his mouth is around mine yet again, no longer just grazing, and I suspect I won’t get to hear these things right now.
I can’t find it in me to mind.
My hands spread across the back of his shirt as my lips part against his. His fingers tighten on my hip, and he’s in my mouth, reminding me with his that he cares about me, wants to be mine, wants me to be his. As my legs graze his and I hug him to me, I hope he knows I still feel that way, too. I want him to kiss me like this whenever he feels like it. And laugh at me even when I think I’m being stupid. And tell me he’s proud of me when I think I’m not quite good enough. And talk about things like tree houses with me even though we’re both way past our childhood days. And get through all of this bullshit going on outside with me.
Both of our breaths catch and my back leaves the floor when his fingers splay shyly over the bare skin just under my shirt. All the nerve endings in my body react to him like they’re tiny magnets and he’s magnetic—for a second, I’m staggered by how such a tentative touch can affect me like this. Then my hands find the hem of his shirt, too, and move underneath it just as carefully to feel the warm skin of his back. His muscles flex as he inhales unsteadily; I wonder if he feels the magnetic thing, too.
He kisses me so unexpectedly sweetly that a shiver dances down my spine, and I think maybe he does feel that way, and as he slides his palm over my bellybutton, skims his fingers over more of my skin, I move my lips from his because I want to tell him he’s beautiful.
And then someone knocks on my door.
We go still, and then we both groan.
“Oh, I knew that was coming,” he says against my mouth.
Instead of what I was planning on telling him, I muse breathlessly, “I guess everything is kind of going to hell outside, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” he concedes. He lifts his head and calls out, “Just a second,” with surprising composure. Then he comes back down to me and we kiss one more time. Two more times. Under my shirt, he gently traces something on my skin with his fingertip. Then he pulls back again. “Guess you can distract me from explosions and Dark-magic-wielding monsters as easily as you distract me from everything else.”
It’s not very funny, but I can’t help a grin.
He grins back briefly, then asks quietly, “But there will be time for that, huh?” His longing eyes drift over me.
Even though I’m not over this yet, either, I feel my smile softening. “Yeah. We’re both alive and well and not three hundred miles apart.”
He takes his hand out from under my shirt to touch my bottom lip, then my cheek. Again his smile matches mine.
“You are very right,” he whispers as I take my hands away from him, too. Then he gracefully lifts himself off of me and straightens his clothes.
The sudden space and chill are unpleasant shocks to my body, but I don’t complain because Gabe is still here. Still in this room with me, in our Sanctum, in Fayetteville.
He helps me up and we head for the door together.
Before I open it, I turn to look up at him.
Hesitantly, I say, “Hey.”
He slides a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Hey.”
Softly and with more seriousness than I’ve ever asked anyone anything, I ask him, “Can I keep you?”
He gazes at me, managing to look sincere and alluring at the same time. “Yes.” The word is just as soft as mine were. His hand leaves my hair to touch my necklace again. “But only if I can keep you, too.”
“Please do.” I swallow hard and nod toward the door. “Ready?”
He drops his hand. “Sure.”
I open the door and find Grayhem standing in the hall.
“Hello, sir,” I say to him, hoping I don’t sound as surprised and embarrassed as I feel. I guess I thought Wes and Beatrix were at the door—though now that I think about it, they’re probably down the hall in the room she picked for them, going crazy on each other.
Except that in the next instant, I hear her say, “Here we are.” She and Wes step up next to Grayhem, not looking too disheveled, miraculously. She waves enthusiastically at Gabe, and Wes smiles at me, and we reciprocate the little greetings.
Grayhem says, “Oh, wonderful.” Then he gives me a polite smile. “Now, good morning, Mari.” Then to Gabe with relief, “And to you, too. It’s so good to have you back. As soon as Red said he saw you run past, I wanted to get the four of you together…” he turns hesitant and inhales deeply, “…to tell you.”
Gabe nods. “Thank you. What’s going on?”
“Well, I….” Grayhem clears his throat. “First, allow me to say I know you two haven’t been here long and you’re in dire need of rest—”
“Oh, no, stop right there,” Wes interrupts him. “We don’t mind. This must be important.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Gabe agrees. “We really are just happy to be here.”
Grayhem crosses his arms, and for several seconds, he just looks at the four of us.
Then he says, “I’ll inform the others when the day isn’t so young, but I want you to know I’ve been watching the news for hours, and this thing is growing. It’s not just Dallas and us and Baton Rouge that are being attacked. It’s happening all over the country.”
I blink slowly. The atmosphere between all of us seems to cool. The lovely, dreamlike minutes I’d been sharing with Gabe really start dimming.
Shortly, Beatrix asks, “Really?” and I’m right there with her on that disbelief. This is news even to me and her, and there for a while, our eyes were glued to the TV.
He nods. “Yes. It isn’t worldwide, I don’t think, but the United States is definitely getting it.” He looks at Wes and frowns deeply. “I’m—I’m afraid….”
Wes waits a whole second before he asks, “What?”
“I’m afraid…that the unusually powerful Dark figure you two encountered in Dallas is not the only one of his caliber.” Grayhem’s eyes flicker to Gabe and he finishes slowly, “There are many more just like him, and they are spread out around our states, and they are destroying everything.”
Silence falls even colder than before.
It’s thick and heavy and uninterrupted except for the erratic breaths leaving Wes and Beatrix and me and the guy beside me, whose hand is curling around mine, who personally saw the damage one tattooed monster-man can accomplish in mere minutes.
And there are more than one.
I turn my alarmed gaze on Gabe, and he looks back at me with troubled eyes.
At length, he cuts through the silence with a quiet, absent, “We’ll…figure something out.”
I nod just as absentmindedly.
Then the words wiggle their way into some part of my brain that isn’t overcome with shock, and I feel like an electric current is suddenly whooshing through me.
I blink several times, straighten up, and glance at Wes and Beatrix and Grayhem, who all look just like Gabe does. Finally, I look back at him.
Oh…oh, absolutely we’ll figure something out.
We’ll do just what I said the other day to him on the phone. We’ll find the balance between us and them.
We will find it, he and I, because he’s with me again. And not just us—the other three standing with us and all the other Light people we know, and even those we don’t know, will find it. Our defense exists somewhere, I know it.
I squeeze his hand and echo more surely, “We’ll figure something out.”
Gabe’s eyes lighten after a few seconds, like he’s catching on. His fingers tighten around mine. Then he, too, stands taller as he looks at Grayhem again. “Let us get some sleep, and tomorrow we’ll look this thing in the face. It’s not over for us.”
“Fuck,” Wes says slowly, “yeah.”
Beatrix extends a hand to me, and I grab it tightly.
A look of optimism skates across our Director’s face as he studies us. Soon, it turns into a small but proud smirk.
Finally, he says, “I look forward to it.”
“So do I,” Wes says.
Beatrix nods. “Me, too.”
“Me, too,” Gabe agrees.
I’m looking forward to it, too, of course.
And when I glance down at the hand Beatrix is holding, I realize for the first time that the Light mark on my wrist isn’t as faint against my skin as it used to be.