Dying Light

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Natalie,” Nikki says. “She was my wife.”

  I feel like she’s punched me in the gut. The little air in my lungs goes whooshing out again. “Wife?”

  “For all of four months,” Nikki says. “Before she was shot and killed.”

  Another eruption of blue fire shines through the windows.

  “You’re going to tell me all about it later.” For now, I have to stay focused on rescuing Jesse.

  The layer of demolition bricks is finished. “We’re ready,” someone says.

  “Okay, move back,” Nikki calls out, and we all move away from the cathedral, back across the street, back behind the armored trucks. When everyone is safe behind the trucks, Nikki gives the order. “Demolition in 3…2…1…”

  Chapter 55

  Jesse

  Caldwell is screaming.

  The more he screams, the more invigorated I feel. A powerful pleasure as intense as the flames burning around me, rolls through my body.

  Yes, I think. Yes, I want to see you hurt for what you’ve done.

  An explosion rips apart the wall on my right but I don’t let go of Caldwell. Someone is going to have to rip my arms off to make me let go of him.

  “Jesse?” Ally’s voice is carried into the room by the wind blowing in from the giant hole they made.

  “She’s going to kill him,” Nikki says, her voice surprised.

  Yeah. I’m going to kill Caldwell. Right here and now and I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.

  “No!” Ally rushes forward and throws her coat over me. It disintegrates in the flames, the remnants of the fabric burn to ash and float up and away. “No, Jesse, stop! You can’t absorb all his powers at once, it’ll make you crazy!”

  Still I don’t let go. That is, until a huge chunk of what-the-fuck sends me flying across the room. I slam into the wall, breathless. A stabbing pain racks my spine, causing me to scream out.

  I’m still screaming as a shadowy shape climbs over the debris, an assault of gray light filtering in behind her. Then the form solidifies and I see Ally’s face, her eyes fixing on me as she clamors over chunks of marble.

  “Can you hear me?”

  I can’t answer her. All I can do is scream and squirm against the pain.

  “Be still,” she commands. “Be still, I can see you healing. Just give it a minute.”

  “Caldwell—”

  Ally looks around the room. “He’s gone.”

  “What about Georgia and Maisie?”

  “Maisie I see. No Georgia.”

  “Rachel?”

  Ally turns away from me for a third time and has an exchange with someone I can’t see.

  “She’s dead,” Ally says, voice low.

  “Dead dead, or like just-for-the-weekend dead?” I speak through gritted teeth, but at least I can speak. Ally is right. I am healing.

  “We’re not sure,” Ally says at long last. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  My skin and flesh tingle. I can feel tendons tightening around bones and the strange feeling of those bones shifting back into place. It feels like an army of ants have swarmed my body, doing these repairs with their tiny ant hands.

  “What the hell hit me?”

  “Marble,” Nikki says, kneeling down in front of me. “How’s your head? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  I flip her the bird. “This many.”

  Nikki groans and wanders away from me.

  “Close your eyes! Close your eyes!”

  Ally is screaming her head off. I crane my neck in time to see an Asian woman standing in the middle of the room. A burst of bright white light floods the room.

  “Shit.” I cover my face. “What the hell?”

  Gun fire goes off, the rat-tat-tat-tat of bullets flying ricochet off the walls. The sound is deafening, making my ears ring horribly. Then the light stops.

  I blink open my eyes and squint against the dots floating there. It’s a full minute before the room comes into focus.

  Nikki and Ally are staring down at the corpse of the Asian woman. Her brains are spread all over the floor.

  “So what happens now that she’s dead, but no one absorbs her power?”

  Another is called.

  “Just great,” I groan, pulling myself to standing. Ally rushes forward and slips her arms under mine. “Now we’ll have one partis out there that we don’t know about.”

  Chapter 56

  Jesse

  “Come on, buddy.” I call for Winston. I see him lying against the wall where Rachel had slammed Georgia into the ceiling. I call his name again.

  Winston doesn’t move. A chill runs down my spine and a knot forms in my chest.

  “Get up, buddy, we’ve got to go.”

  Winston still doesn’t move after I cross the room and kneel down in front of him. I pull him into my lap. He falls into my hands, heavy and a little cold.

  “Winston?”

  Dead.

  Winston’s dead. I roll him over and see blood coming out of the corner of his mouth.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I scream, my hands igniting in blue flames. His fur singes under my touch, blackening like a plague. I fall back, scooting away, terrified I’m going to ignite his little body.

  Tears stream out of my eyes.

  “Jesse?” Ally asks.

  “He’s dead,” I say to no one in particular, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. “Winston’s dead. He laid there and bled out with no one to hold him or tell him he’s okay or fucking save him.”

  My flames die. I can’t sustain them without anger. And I’m not angry now. I’m crushed. Totally crushed.

  I blink back tears and see Maisie coming onto her knees beside Winston.

  “No, Maisie, don’t.” I get up. “Leave him alone.”

  She turns him over in her hands, her palms slicking red with blood.

  “Stop it.”

  She bends down, and I think she’s going to kiss his little nose. But she doesn’t kiss him. She puckers her lips and blows a thin, steady stream of air up into his nostrils.

  She does this three times, and on the third time, Winston’s eyes come open. He rolls over and pushes himself on to his feet, shaking off like he does when I pull him from the bath. The blood is still stuck to his side, but he’s alive. He’s breathing.

  I snatch him up and squeeze him. I kiss his nose a hundred thousand times and cry into his fur. He wheezes. I’m probably choking him to death.

  “Oh god, sorry. Sorry.”

  Maisie places a hand on his fur, meeting my eyes.

  “You’re really partis,” I tell her. “I thought maybe Caldwell was just fucking with my head.”

  “Life,” she says. “Mom’s Death, and I’m Life. Death gave birth to Life.” She half laughs.

  “That’s why he locked you up.” I’m putting all the pieces together.

  “He didn’t want any of the partis finding me.”

  “You have to come with us,” I tell her. “You can’t stay with him, especially not if you’re partis. He’ll kill you, you know that right? He’s probably murdering your mom right now.”

  “No,” Maisie says. “He can’t kill his human heart until last.”

  Winston licks my face and I’m so happy his little snot face is breathing, I don’t give two shits that he’s snotting in my ear. I search his fur for injuries but I don’t see any.

  “The human heart can’t die until right before the apex ascends.” Maisie looks at Ally. “Haven’t you wondered why he hasn’t killed her yet?”

  I follow her gaze to Ally.

  “She’s my human heart?” I ask. “I’m assuming this is some kind of weird metaphor, right? Because I’ve totally got a muscle beating in my chest right now, and I’m pretty sure it’s human—unless someone slipped some pig’s heart in there when I was dead and didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s why he planted Lane,” she says. “He was trying to make a new human heart for you, one he could control.”


  My chest aches. “I hoped he was lying about that.”

  “No,” Maisie says, she looks away as if ashamed. “He brought him to Chicago once. He was wearing this smiley face button.”

  I know the button she pulls out of her bag.

  “How do you know about the heart?” I ask her.

  “Because Mom is his human heart,” Maisie says, scratching Winston behind the ear. “And I’m hers. We’re all sort of stuck together, the three of us.”

  She looks around the room and a darkness fills her eyes. She’s too young for all this. She should be reading comic books and eating chocolate. She shouldn’t be breathing dead dogs back to life in a room full of bodies.

  “It’s like one of those cubes,” she says. “Where you have to move it right so all the colors line up. He needs you to be mad so you fight, but not too mad, or you’ll win. He can kill everyone but me and mom. Then he’ll have to decide who he wants to challenge. If he kills me first, mom will be stronger. If he kills mom, we will be evenly matched, both heartless.”

  “But he’ll have more powers,” I say, kindly overlooking the fact that she just ran an entire scenario where I’m clearly dead and have failed at life.

  “If Mom dies, I won’t want to live anyway.”

  “Are you sure he brainwashed Lane?” I ask her. “I mean, you were locked in a tower when we met. I’m not sure I believe you’re his confidant.”

  “I listen,” she says. “I know things.”

  Unfortunately, I believe her.

  Her face softens. “Maybe he did really like you. Before dad talked to him, I mean. Maybe the feelings are real.”

  Maybe.

  “We need to go,” Ally says, pulling on my arm. “Nikki has a truck.”

  Nikki and more men in black vests file into the room. They got a couple of body bags between them, but Rachel gets a stretcher. Jeremiah and the black man are left standing.

  I point an accusatory finger at the black man. “He’s partis. He can’t come. He’s going to slit my throat when I’m not looking.”

  He holds his palms out. “I ain’t got no problem with nobody.”

  “This is Monroe. We found him hiding in a closet,” Nikki says. “He wasn’t fighting. Cindy was dead on the floor, but it doesn’t look like he touched them. Not a drop of blood on his hands or person.”

  “Would there have been blood?” Ally asks.

  Nikki arches her eyebrows. “Yes. Definitely, the bodies—”

  “No details, please,” Ally begs.

  “Georgia killed Cindy.” My heart aches.

  Nikki sees my face. “I’m sorry for your loss. I know she worked with you.”

  I see Cindy in my mind the day she came to tell me she’d started seeing her angel, Raphael. I can see her huge wet eyes and the way she held herself protectively, looking for answers I didn’t have. I told her we were going to be okay.

  And now she’s dead.

  Ally squeezes my arm, and I see Nikki stiffen. Normally, I’d enjoy it. I’d lean into Ally, let her hold me, really play it up. But right now I feel numb. The only feeling I can manage is relief that Winston dodged a bullet. My mind doubles back and I turn to Maisie holding Winston. “Your power doesn’t have a time limit or anything does it? I mean, he’s not going to be alive for a day or something?”

  “Not that I know of,” Maisie says. “But this is only the third time I’ve used it. And the first time I used it twice in one day.”

  “You brought your mom back,” I say, realizing just how smart it was for Caldwell to bring the kid here and keep her close, but out of the way. They probably intended to split the powers between them, using Maisie to make them revive faster than ever before.

  “You have to come with us,” Ally says to her. “We can’t leave you here.”

  Maisie looks like she might object, but after her eyes circle the destroyed room once, she agrees. “But he’s going to come and get me again.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I say. “I’ll carry Winston.” She obediently hands the dog over. “Go get your backpack.”

  Nikki looks to Jeremiah to give the order.

  Jeremiah nods, looking half-dazed himself. “We’re done here.”

  Chapter 57

  Ally

  We find a second armored truck waiting on the curb behind the first. They begin with the business of loading up the bodies—Cindy, Minli, and Rachel.

  Our attempt to load up is interrupted by a siren and the shadow of a massive truck blocking the road.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Jeremiah says, stepping off the sidewalk, heading toward the vehicle. Before he reaches it, two familiar faces emerge from the smoke.

  “Gloria,” I call out, relieved to see her alive.

  “It took us a minute to find another ride,” Gideon says, companionably. “But we found this beauty, unattended and waiting for us.” He pats the driver side door of the fire truck.

  “How’s Jesse?” Gloria asks.

  “Alive,” Jesse says, stepping out from behind me.

  Gloria grabs each of Jesse’s shoulders and inspects her. Then she nods as if reaching a conclusion.

  “Where’s Rachel?” Gideon asks.

  “Dead,” I say.

  The smile falls off his face.

  “They think she’ll wake up,” Jesse says. “Her body was sort of crushed against the column, but her head is okay. No reason to think she won’t wake up.”

  Gideon doesn’t look any happier despite this news. “Put her in the truck.”

  “We’re happy to transport her to our facility,” Jeremiah begins, pushing the glasses up on his nose and moving toward us.

  “No, thank you. Please put her in my truck,” Gideon says again, his gaze heavy on Jeremiah.

  Nikki makes some motion beside me, and the two men holding Rachel’s stretcher behind the armored truck, carry Rachel toward the fire truck.

  “We need to get out of the city,” Gloria says.

  “You’re leaving?” Nikki asks, her hand soft on my arm.

  “There’s no need,” Jeremiah says. “We have a medical facility, state of the art, in the south of the city for this exact situation. The danger has passed.”

  “The danger has not passed,” Gloria tells them, heading to the truck herself.

  “Fighting is inevitable,” Jeremiah says. “You cannot simply decide you won’t.”

  Gideon laughs. “Oh sir, that is exactly what we can do.”

  With Rachel in the truck, Maisie and Jesse hoist themselves up into the main cabin, pug in tow. Gideon and Gloria climb in after, leaving me alone on the sidewalk with Nikki and Jeremiah. Their own men wait in the armored trucks for their next orders.

  Jeremiah stops in front of me, his hands on his hips. “You can’t go off alone, not with so few of you.”

  “You say it like I make the decisions,” I say, with a short laugh.

  “You influence Jesse.”

  I laugh harder. “Do I?”

  It’s not true. I can no more to control Jesse than I can control the sun in the sky.

  “You don’t understand,” Jeremiah says, nostrils flaring as he shoves his glasses up on his nose with a finger.

  “Explain it to me,” I say. “Please explain why you feel like you should manage Jesse. Have you seen something horrible in these visions of yours?”

  Jeremiah shoves his glasses up on his nose. “The very first vision I had was of Caldwell, eleven years ago.”

  This certainly gains my attention.

  “I saw him take Henry Chaplain’s gift. I’ve seen him take every gift he has, and I saw Jesse take Jason’s gift too.”

  “How is that possible?” I ask. He’s not talking about remote viewing.

  “Caldwell called me the observer. The prophet. It is a good enough name for my role in this. I am meant to see.”

  “So what did you see that makes Jesse seem like such a liability?”

  “She kills us all.”

  My breath catches in my th
roat. “Excuse me?”

  “She becomes the apex and instead of saving the world and recasting a new shield, she destroys it. She can choose anything, but she chooses to destroy us.”

  “I don’t understand. How can Jesse decide the fate of the whole world? She’s one girl.”

  “I thought if she worked with us, understood that there were good people here, people worth saving, I could change that.”

  I don’t know what to say. I open and close my mouth more than once.

  Jeremiah doesn’t wait for me to process what he’s said. He climbs into the armored truck and turns the key. He pulls away from the curb, driving off into the half-destroyed city.

  “He’s just angry,” Nikki says. “He doesn’t actually believe you’re responsible for Jesse’s actions.”

  “But he does believe she’s going to destroy the world?”

  Nikki reaches out and takes my hand.

  “And you knew?”

  “I didn’t want you to worry. He thinks we can change it. He’s changed a vision before.”

  Jesse is already walking toward the fire truck, Maisie in tow. Maisie likes her. Jesse will never believe it. She believes everyone hates her as a rule. But Maisie has the same look on her face that I often give my brother.

  Nikki grabs on to me and pulls me into a hug. Her lips are soft on my neck and for a moment, I think I won’t be able to leave her.

  “Natalie?” I ask.

  Her hold falters. “She had NRD and was killed. A bullet to the stomach and she bled out. Jeremiah recruited me at the height of my depression. He gave me a purpose again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You knew about Minli. If you hadn’t warned us about the light, we would all be blind.”

  I nod, not sure what to say. “Jeremiah has visions?”

  She looks away, her eyes falling on the fire truck. “It looks like we’ve both been keeping secrets.”

  I take her hands in mine. “We can’t do this right now.”

  She searches my face for meaning.