Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5)

by Kory M. Shrum

“Fine, fine.” I wave her on. “Why were we in New York?”

  “Remember when I said Rachel was going out at night alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was meeting a friend.”

  “What friend? We’re her only friends.”

  A strange look crosses over Ally’s face. “Do you remember the snuff films Henry Chaplain was making?”

  I did. In the months while we planned our retaliation against Caldwell, I read Brinkley’s journals. Part memoir, part final instructions, it was sad for a lot of reasons. Mostly because it sounded so much like him, every word like his voice in my mind. And when I’d learned about how Rachel had come into his life, how a crime boss with mind powers was using her to make these horrible films, I was devastated. And when it was Rachel’s turn to read the journals and she realized that we all knew what she had been through, I think it changed our relationship. Would I have wanted anyone to read a journal about the fucked up things Eddie had done to me? No.

  “There’s a girl in New York that Rachel knew from Chaplain’s sex ring, or whatever you want to call it.” Ally tucks her hair behind her ears. “She was another Necronite that they were killing on camera for the films.”

  “So they are meeting up to what, remember the good old days?” I ask. “Oh hey, remember when we were raped and stabbed to death on camera. Fun times, yeah?” Doubt it.

  “It’s more than that,” Ally says with an arched eyebrow. “Do you remember what Caldwell said about how the partis are chosen? They gravitate toward one another. They tend to be people we know for whatever reason.”

  It was Liza who’d said that actually, but I don’t correct her.

  “So this friend is partis? She’s the one who got Minli’s power?”

  “That’s what Gideon says,” Ally goes on.

  “So what? Is Rachel going to invite her to come along for the ride? Join up with us against Caldwell?”

  Ally’s smile falters. “Not exactly. It seems like they had another plan altogether.”

  Chapter 15

  Rachel

  “I’m partis,” Nivedha repeats, her brown eyes searching mine. “But I don’t have an angel.”

  Nivedha stands from the leather sofa and begins to pace in front of the great windows. She wraps both arms around body. She squeezes tight as if trying to hold herself together. The day is dying behind her, the horizon orange, fading to red.

  “Because she was not chosen,” Uriel says. “No one serves her.”

  Then why does she even have the power? I ask him.

  “So what does it mean?” Nivedha asks again. She stands in front of the big windows. “If I don’t have an angel, am I damned?”

  “No.” I comfort her on reflex. The surge of compassion muddles my mind. Focus. You have one job here. You’ve spent weeks reconnecting with this girl, cultivating your connection through shared horrors. Don’t get confused now. Remember the mission.

  None of my self-talk is helping. All I can see is Nivedha. Small, shaking with fear as she sits huddled in the floor with a dozen other girls. I can still see the bruises on her throat, the slow healing that came after every death, every attack. The way we would have to lean on one other as we hovered over the toilet, teeth clenched. When they finished with us, everything hurt. Even taking a piss.

  “We’ll die here,” Nivedha had said to me, her hand on my shoulder to steady herself. Her legs trembled violently.

  “No,” I’d told her, though I didn’t believe it.

  And here I am lying again.

  “No, you’re not damned. We’re unlucky.”

  “What am I supposed to do? You’re saying this man Caldwell has Chaplain’s power. That he wants to kill every one of us. I’ve seen him on television, and if he’s the new Henry, I’d rather die than see what he has in store for me.”

  Big wet tears fill her eyes. She stops clutching herself and comes to stand in front of me. She’s searching my face for answers I don’t have.

  “Tell me this is different,” Nivedha begs. She places her hand on my shoulder, echoing again those long nights in Chaplain’s harem. As we would wait in the dark to see who would be taken upstairs, each one praying it wasn’t their turn.

  “Please,” Nivedha says, squeezing my shoulder until it hurts. “Tell me he won’t hurt me.”

  I swallow the thick lump blocking my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why me?” she asks and her voice breaks. She steps back from the window. “Why me again?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice fails me, cracking around the edges. I need a drink of water, but asking her for one would send her from the room and I need her here. Right here. For what I’m about to do.

  “Eliot won’t understand,” Nivedha says, referring to the owner of the loafers I’d seen by the door, the long suit jacket in the front closet. “He knows I have NRD, but this is different. I’m scaring him. If he throws me out on the street, I don’t know where I’ll go.”

  I swallow half a dozen empty promises: you’ll come with me. You’ll be safe with us. We won’t hurt you. We aren’t Caldwell. Lies. Because the truth is more apparent to me than ever.

  I need to be stronger. And I know of only one way to do that.

  I take a step toward Nivedha, then another until I’m face to face with her, only inches between us.

  “I know you’re scared,” I say, but it’s my voice that’s shaking. “But you don’t have to worry.”

  She reaches up and wipes at her eyes with her sleeve, smearing her makeup. “Really? Do you promise?”

  I try to breathe around the thunderous pounding in my chest and head. I feel like I’m going to faint. I’m going to stop breathing and fall over.

  “You must do this,” Uriel says, breaking into my thoughts. “You need the strength. She doesn’t want this power.”

  “You don’t want the power,” I echo, whispering it, or at least it seems so over the monstrous roar of my thrashing heart.

  “No,” Nivedha croaks. “I never asked for any of this.”

  “Do it,” Uriel commands.

  But I see Nivedha in the white gown crying.

  Do it.

  Nivedha clinging to my side in the dark.

  Do it.

  Nivedha’s eyes when she first wakes to the pain of living again. Her first words devolving into sobs.

  Now!

  My hand shoots from my pocket into Nivedha’s chest. Her thin gossamer clothes give easily, providing no barrier to speak of. Nivedha’s eyes go wide with surprise. She stumbles back with a little “Oh” slipping from her lips between a gasp and a cry. She looks down at the knife protruding from her chest then up into my eyes again.

  “You—?”

  Sobs erupt from my throat. I fall on her, tearing the knife from her chest. I take her into my arms.

  “You—?” she says again.

  “I’m here,” I say, rocking her. Crying into her hair. “I’m right here.”

  I can’t catch my breath as Nivedha pushes against me, trying to squirm away. I crush her to me tighter, cooing into her hair, kissing the top of her head. She struggles in my arms, but each push is a little weaker than the last until she isn’t moving at all.

  “Shhh,” I say. “You don’t have to worry about any of this. Any of it. I’m here. I’m here.”

  I let go of her only long enough to toss away the remote and lift the stone Buddha from the coffee table. I slam it into Niv’s skull. I can’t look at what I’ve done. I feel for the head wound with my fingers inching over her breasts, chin, cheekbones, all while keeping my eyes closed. Inches above her eye I feel the warm, wet wound. The skull feels like the cracked shell of an egg. I push my fingers in deeper until a burst of bright blue fire explodes and consumes me whole.

  Chapter 16

  Jesse

  Gloria may not have been getting sexy with Monroe after all. It’s somewhat implied by the sheer volume of sketches crowding the walls of not one but two back rooms of the little house. Who would
have the time with all of this drawing going on? I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure people can’t have sex and draw at the same time. I feel like the lines would be jagged at least and the drawings would lack a certain finesse.

  Also, it seems that Monroe has been sleeping in the upstairs apartment and Gloria has been sleeping down here in the cramped room by the kitchen. Maybe it feels cramped because there are four of us trying to fit into this tiny space. Add the sofa with a pillow and sheet thrown over it. On the pillow lays a battered paperback with the title barely legible on the cover. The Things They Carried.

  My chest aches as I imagine a scene described in Brinkley’s journal. Gloria healing from a gunshot wound in the hospital and Brinkley at her bedside reading to her from this book. I want to pick up the book and ask if this is the same one from so long ago. Ask her if she’s really carried it around for twelve years, but Gloria’s look stops me. She’s braced for my question.

  I turn away without touching the book, focusing on the pictures taped to the walls.

  “Gloria.” I hope my voice is casual as I circle the room. My eyes search one picture then another. “I gave you the sketchbook so you wouldn’t do the creepy drawings all over the wall thing.”

  “Next we’ll find a body in a meat locker,” Maisie adds. She’s in one corner of the room, lifting a page when Gloria slaps the page down.

  Maisie makes a sound of surprise. “I was kidding. I know you’re way too smart to use anything as obvious as a meat locker. You’d probably dissolve them in acid.”

  “Don’t look at the drawings underneath,” Gloria says, without an inch of forgiveness in her voice.

  “Sorry.” Maisie gives me a look and I shrug. How the hell am I supposed to know what Gloria is thinking?

  “Gloria is this—accurate?” Ally calls from the other room.

  I’m the first to file into the attached sunroom. It’s a little cooler in here even with the bright sunshine filtered through the windows. Well, through the few windows not covered by her drawings. Ally is frowning at a sketch on the opposite wall, her hands in her pockets.

  I come to stand beside her and gasp. In the drawing, Rachel is mid thrust, a knife about to plunge into the chest of a girl who doesn’t look any older than we do.

  Maisie leans over my shoulder and I throw my palms over her eyes.

  “Hey!” she cries out. “Why is everyone censoring me? I’m practically 17!”

  But we only half hear her. In the next image, Rachel is rocking the girl to sleep, or at least cradling her against her body while blood pools around them on the carpet.

  “So she did it?” Ally asks, sighing out the words. “This is what Gideon said would happen.” Ally turns to Gloria. “Do you think the influx of power will change her?”

  Gloria steps into the room with an eyebrow. “We’ll find out soon.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say. “You think Rachel murdered some innocent girl for her power? Is this what you were going on about in the hallway earlier?”

  I look from Gloria to Ally, recalling all that Ally said about Nivedha, the girl who was apparently in Henry Chaplain’s snuff film harem. “She’s not Caldwell, guys. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to say that if I were you.” Maisie makes her way around the room to find some pictures we wouldn’t slap out of her hands. She gestures for me to look at the drawing between her fingers.

  I lean over her shoulder. In the black and white sketch, we’re fighting. Rachel’s face is twisted in rage, her arms extending out in front of her. The objects in the room swirl around me while I stand in my shield. But I’m not holding my ground very well. I’m bent forward as if resisting a great wind, my shield bending around me.

  “It’s out of context.” I give Gloria a hopeful look. “Caldwell could be behind me or—”

  “She attacks you.” Gloria measures my expression. “As I saw it, she intends to kill you.”

  The world falls out from under me. The room spins as if on tilt, growing hot. I want to pull off my hoodie and maybe even the shirt underneath.

  “Jess,” Ally says. “Jess the floor.”

  Her words don’t make any sense until I look down and see the floorboards of the little room smoking under my feet. I suck in a breath and step back to see a charred circle where I stood. A strange smell like a campfire fills the air.

  I meet each of their eyes in turn. “Rachel wouldn’t betray me.”

  “I saw—” Gloria begins.

  “I don’t care!” I scream. “You saw it wrong!”

  Everyone goes silent and I’m more than a little embarrassed by how stupid I sound. Monroe appears in the doorway. I look away from Gloria, grateful for the distraction.

  “There is another way.” Monroe lifts his hat to scratch his scalp again. He pulls his tobacco pouch from the front pocket of his shirt and pinches a wad of it between two fingers. He holds it there, patting his jeans’ front pockets, searching for the rolling papers.

  “Another way to what?” Ally asks.

  “To exchange powers.” Monroe pulls a thin rolling paper from its case.

  “You’re kidding,” Maisie says, her voice rising the way it might if we told her we’d gotten her a pony. “You mean we don’t have to kill each other? That’s freaking awesome!”

  Monroe tucks the tobacco into the paper. “It was Samael who told me.”

  “Samuel?” Maisie asks.

  “Sam-ael,” he corrects, rolling the tobacco between two fingers and twisting off the ends. “My angel. You’ve got one of them, don’t you?”

  Maisie’s face flushes.

  “Well he told me we did it all wrong before. And we still be doing it wrong.”

  I turn to Gloria. “Translate please.”

  Gloria is about to answer me, her mouth open in response, when Nikki appears in the doorway.

  “Caldwell’s MIA,” she says. Her nose wrinkles at the cigarette that Monroe slips between his lips. She takes a step around him into the room as he pulls a lighter from the pocket.

  “What do you mean?” Ally asks.

  “We have an eye on him at all times,” Nikki says. Her voice goes all stupid soft any time she talks to Ally. “When he’s MIA, it means we can’t see him. I thought you should know—”

  “He’s here.” Gloria whips her gun from its holster in one fluid movement.

  Ally reaches up and covers her ears as if they ache. She grimaces. “Ow, yeah.”

  Maisie whirls on me wide-eyed, Winston in her arms. “Jesse!”

  Several things happen at once.

  A hand clamps down on my shoulder and instinctually I shield Ally. It flares to life, bright purple around her. This knocks Maisie to the floor. Oops. Both she and Winston cry out as they hit the ground. Nikki raises her gun, fires a shot, but the shield blocks it and it ricochets through the window. The glass shatters on impact.

  Monroe removes the cigarette from his mouth, purses his lips, and whistles. A fierce wind comes out of nowhere. Some of Gloria’s drawings are torn from the wall whirling like a paper cyclone. Caldwell is lifted and hurled through a window, only he won’t let go of me, so my ass goes out the window with him. Glass slices across my right cheek and I squeeze my eyes shut and cover my face at the last moment, terrified of losing an eye.

  We hit the ground, Caldwell breaking my fall. He makes an oomph sound when my elbow connects with his solar plexus on impact.

  At last I feel like I can speak again, and of course, I say the dumbest thing. “Let go of me!”

  This is especially stupid when I realize Caldwell has already let go of me, his arms apparently going out on either side of him to break his own fall.

  Ally is screaming and so is Maisie.

  “Shut up,” Gloria snaps and Monroe is laughing again, that low bemused chuckle that seems more natural to him than conversation.

  I fire up whirling around with the intention of blowing Caldwell to kingdom come, but he’s gone. I stand alone in the littl
e garden. I do a full circle but he’s truly gone. I walk up to the broken window and see that Gloria and Nikki still stand with guns drawn. Ally and Maisie are slack jawed and waiting.

  “You okay?” I ask them, looking from one face to another.

  Maisie runs her hands down the length of her body. “I’m okay. Winnie?”

  She stoops, disappearing beneath the window’s frame. She reappears with a fat pug in her arms.

  “He’s okay too,” she says.

  “What the hell was that?” I demand. I look from Gloria to Ally, since they seem to have some magical way to tell if he’s here.

  “Reconnaissance,” Gloria says, at long last, lowering her gun. She looks to Monroe. “It’s working.”

  Monroe laughs.

  “Someone tell me what’s going on.”

  Ally covers her ears, uncovers her ears and then does it again. “That pressure in my head is gone.”

  “Answer me!”

  “We’ve made him blind,” Monroe says with a great belly laugh. “His angel can’t see us. His people can’t see us. He can only see us one way.”

  Monroe looks at Ally. “Through your eyes.”

  Ally turns on Monroe. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “What the hell are you apologizing for?” I’m shaking.

  “We led him right to you. He probably waited until we got here so he’d know where you were.”

  Monroe nods as if he already knew this.

  I glare at Gloria. “You should’ve seen that coming.”

  “We knew, we knew,” Monroe says, with that low chuckle. “But you can’t be sure the fox is blind ‘til you let him in the hen house.”

  I don’t get any of these analogies.

  Ally’s face scrunches. “Why would you bring us here if you knew it’d make you a target?”

  “Being dead is what I’ve been hoping for.” Monroe relights his cigarette and takes a long, slow drag. “But I needed to be sure he was blind first.”

  “Why?” I’m getting tired of asking this. “What does he need to be blind for?”

  Monroe gives us all a wicked grin, baring his yellow teeth. “So he don’t see what we is about to do.”