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

by Kory M. Shrum

  “What did Monroe do?” Ally asks, her irritation mounting with each question.

  “What the hell was in that chicken blood?” I ask, resting my head against the seat. Feeling Rachel die was a hell of a drain on my energy. But why? That was the million-dollar question.

  “Chicken blood?” Ally asked. “Is that what was all over your face earlier?”

  With everyone in the car and seatbelts on, Gloria turns the Jeep key and we pull away from the little house on Rue Dauphine. A heartbeat later, a big black van pulls off the curb too.

  “Are you going to stop Nikki from following you?” Ally asks, turning in her seat to look at the van.

  “She has her orders,” Gloria says without any sign of irritation. “Let her do as she is told. Less trouble for all of us. I will lose her.”

  Pedestrians scamper across the street as Gloria swings a left at the next intersection.

  “I’m still waiting for the explanation as to why the chicken blood gave me mush brains,” I say from the backseat. I swallow down a wave of nausea.

  “Should you sit up front?” Ally asks, leaning over me with a worried expression.

  “I want to be back here with you.”

  She presses a cool hand to my forehead and frowns. “You’re burning up.” Then she leans forward and touches Maisie’s head. “So are you. An explanation, please.”

  Gloria considers the road for a moment longer before turning out of the French Quarter onto Canal Street. I-10 signs tell her to proceed straight ahead.

  “When Caldwell killed Chaplain all those years ago, he severed the connection. Originally, the twelve partis were meant to use their powers in unison. There wasn’t supposed to be one apex, but a unified force that protected all of mankind together as long as was necessary.”

  Maisie and I exchange a weary look. If she’s thinking what I’m thinking, then she’s picturing us there, in the circle on Monroe’s rocky beach, hands clasped until one of us can’t go on anymore.

  “Partis tends to run between those who have a connection. The affection that you have for one another, the emotional connection, was meant to strengthen this original bond.”

  “But Caldwell fucked that up for everyone. Of course.” The pain in my jaw starts to recede enough that my anger returns.

  “To be fair,” Gloria says, her eyes meeting mine in the rear view. “That murder was necessary.”

  No one contradicts her perspective. She was there the night Caldwell killed Chaplain. We weren’t.

  “His murder of Chaplain changed the flow of power. As Monroe put it, it broke the bond. Monroe believed he could reestablish the bond.”

  “With his voodoo shit,” I grumble.

  “Hoodoo, actually,” Gloria says. “I was very skeptical, but it worked. It seems that Maisie now has a connection to her mother and you have one with Rachel, Jesse.”

  “Presumably, Caldwell died from his wound earlier, but Jesse nor Maisie reacted then,” Ally says.

  Gloria runs a hand across her forehead. “Monroe believed he could do it for those who at least hold affection for one another. That was the primary component of the original connection. It could be so again.”

  Maisie’s shoots up. “So we can share the power. We don’t have to fight.”

  “Maisie—” Ally warns, but Gloria beats her to it.

  “I am not sure Caldwell will be so easily swayed,” she says gently. She spares Maisie a sad look as she turns onto I-10 W.

  “But my mom might,” Maisie says. “Even if Jesse has to kill Dad, maybe me, mom, Jesse and Rachel can share the powers. Then we can be together and no one has to fight.”

  Gloria gives me a look in the rearview mirror.

  I hope she can read my face. You started this empathy shit. Don’t make me out to be the monster here! You started this ‘let’s all be friends’ shit. Because it’s clear I don’t share an emotional connection with Georgia, and Rachel doesn’t share one with Maisie. So how the hell we’ll bridge that gap, I’ve no idea.

  Ally is staring at her lap in deep concentration. “Maisie, when did you get called?”

  Maisie turns around in the seat to look at her. “I was fourteen.”

  Ally turns to Gloria. “When did Monroe’s son die?”

  “Yes,” Gloria says.

  “Yes what?” I ask.

  “Monroe’s boy was partis,” she replies. “And Maisie was called the night he died.”

  No one says anything for a long time after that. I don’t know what’s going through anyone else’s head while we cruise down the interstate, heading west with the sunset, but I can’t help but obsess about chance.

  Caldwell is the first one of us that was called.

  Presumably Georgia was called before me, also because of her emotional connection to Caldwell. Then when Monroe’s boy Kevin died and a new partis was needed, the powers that be chose Maisie, the NRD-positive child of two partis. Probably because her mother loved her so much.

  So where the hell did I come in? I wasn’t connected to anyone. Was my friendship with Rachel enough to call me into partis-dom?

  If not, that leaves me with only one connection. Caldwell himself.

  Father or not, I have doubts that by the time my powers started up, Caldwell still held any affection for me at all.

  Gabriel, I think, searching for him in the back of my mind. Gabriel, who called me?

  I chose you, came his faint voice over the roar of the interstate with its cars whooshing by and the torrent of air assaulting the car. You are partis because I chose you.

  But who loved me? Who brought me into this?

  He doesn’t answer. He leaves me alone and questioning as we drive toward the approaching night.

  Chapter 29

  Rachel

  I’m dreaming of Jessup. She’s standing in a park with an ice cream cone as big as her face. One scoop cookie dough, one scoop mint chip, and a third cookies and cream. Her favorite combination. No, this isn’t a dream. This is a memory.

  In the early days, we’d made it a habit. A ritual. For every death replacement, when one or the other was in rigor mortis hell, we would walk down to the ice cream stand south of our apartment and load up. Jesse was stiff and cranky, complaining that they hadn’t put enough whip cream on top of her waffle cone, when I decided to lighten the mood.

  I shoved the ice cream into her face. Not hard. Just a little push that succeeded in smearing mint chip along the tip of her nose and cheek.

  Lucky for me, it’s easy to outrun a stiff zombie. So I twirled and danced circles around her while she tried to pay me back.

  At first she was mad. And the more she chased me without catching me, the angrier she got. Until something changed and the smile broke out on her face. She tried harder than ever to catch me, while she laughed and laughed. This was the first time I’d seen the kid happy, really happy since she became part of our team. Brinkley had stood a few feet away, lapping up his vanilla cone, and I caught him grinning too.

  He saw what I saw.

  Our girl was healing. She was going to make it.

  Remember who your heart is.

  Fear seizes my chest.

  Fear and pain.

  The first sensation I ever encounter upon waking. Not the most pleasant way for a girl to wake up. My body, as durable as it may be, never appreciates the demands made of it.

  The memory-dream falls away as I reach up and touch my jaw, half-expecting to touch a cavity or bone. Perhaps my fingers will brush exposed nerve endings and send a fresh jolt of horror through me like a live wire. Instead, I feel the rough gauze wrapped around my whole head. But beneath the gauze it is definitely the shape of my jaw.

  Gideon comes to sit beside my bed.

  I take in the tacky décor, the lifeless paintings of vague landscapes and know that we must be in some dingy motel. I look down to see I’m wearing cotton pajamas of all things.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Gideon says, pulling up the chair. “You’re wonder
ing if I had my way with you while I had you naked and at my command. You’ll be relieved to know I’m not completely depraved.”

  I’m actually thinking: Cotton? Really?

  I can’t give him a smile or even a laugh. What comes out of my closed mouth is more like a patronizing grunt than recognizable speech.

  I reach up to pull off the gauze.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” Gideon stops my hands with his. “I tried to line up the bone and flesh as best as I could, but it wasn’t pretty, love. I would give it a little more time to heal before I remove the gauze, if I were you.”

  I make a writing motion with my hand.

  “Pen and paper?”

  I nod.

  “Yes, I believe even this motel can accommodate such a request.”

  He goes to the desk beneath the mirror and grabs the notepad and pen off the tabletop. He hands them to me. I get a whiff of soap and note his wet hair. He showered. Why? Because I bled all over him? What a baby.

  It isn’t easy writing. Rigor mortis doesn’t really lend itself to fine finger movements. But I do my best to scrawl some sloppy letters on the pad.

  How long was I out?

  “A whole day,” Gideon says, leaning forward to read the pad. “Unfortunately, I had to drive us into Oklahoma before stopping. I was afraid we’d get caught by the authorities if we stayed too close to the carnage. So I switched cars and got us across the border before I worked on your face.” He grimaces. “Hopefully, it will not scar.”

  I scrawl another line on the notepad. Women with scars are hot. Gives us mystery.

  “No doubt,” Gideon says and comes forward for a kiss. He’s incredibly gentle, offering only the softest brush of lips on my forehead. “I know you must be hungry, but I don’t advise trying to chew. Do you want to try drinking a shake? Chocolate is your favorite, I believe. I can go out for some.”

  No. We need to get back on the road.

  “One day won’t kill you,” Gideon says. “And you need to be 100% when we confront Caldwell.”

  A broken jaw won’t slow me down.

  Gideon laughs. “A broken jaw, no. But darling, I picked your jaw off highway 127 and wrapped it in a Taco Bell napkin from a sheriff’s glovebox. So this is another case altogether.”

  I pull my stiff body upright and fall against the headboard. I try to remember the last thoughts I had. Was it important? It was. There was something about—Monroe’s voice. Remember who your heart is.

  I grab the notepad and began furiously scribbling another question. What happened with Monroe?

  Gideon reads the words. His brow furrows and his eyes tighten at the corners. He tosses the notepad back to me and grabs an orange off the dresser. He begins to peel it, digging his dark fingers into the flesh of the orange.

  “Monroe is dead. Jackson says Caldwell killed him,” Gideon forces a smile. “Yes, I called because I wanted her to know we were all right, in case she saw your accident and assumed the worst.”

  My mind returns to the moment I saw Monroe grab ahold of me and that tremendous influx of power washing over me. Who did it come from? Monroe? It was like a great hurricane in the distance. I’ve never felt anything like it. If I’d known Monroe had been housing that kind of power, I would have killed him right away. Now it’s all lost. Another unworthy partis will be called.

  But it didn’t really feel as though the hurricane had dissipated. Down the line, I felt—something like—

  I remember being seven or eight when my parents took me to the beach for the first time. We’d driven from Tucson out to the coast near San Diego, where the Pacific Ocean could actually get warm. My mother—adopted mother—forced me to stand there watching the big beautiful waves crashing on the shore while she applied sunscreen to my shoulders and back. I didn’t think I needed it. I’m darker than either of my parents, being Hispanic, not white, but my mother still insisted as if my skin were as pale as hers.

  When she finally released me, I tore toward the beach, squealing. All I wanted, all I’d thought about since the moment my father announced the trip, was what the ocean would feel like. Taste like. Look like. I threw myself headfirst into water and wasn’t entirely prepared.

  The only time I’d been swimming in Tucson was at the city pool and at the Desert Delights water park, which had a wave pool. In my little mind, I thought the ocean was a very large wave pool, even though my parents tried to explain the difference between fresh and saltwater.

  When I hit the water face first, I sucked in a breath, shocked by how cold it was. This was no shallow city pool. But instead of sucking in air, I sucked in a mouthful of saltwater. It burned my nose and eyes like mad and immediately I tried to stand and get my head above water.

  I managed to stand, but I felt the sandy bottom shifting beneath me, sliding out to sea. The great suction caused by an impending wave pulled the floor out from under me and I fell beneath the water again.

  I was certain I was going to drown in the ruthless current and had already decided I didn’t like the ocean one bit by the time my father’s strong arms dipped beneath the waves and liberated me from all the thrashing.

  That’s what Monroe’s—whatever—had been like. All over again, I was standing in the waves, the ocean floor falling away beneath me and a hungry suction pulling at my calves.

  Caldwell has his power? I scribble, my jumbled scrawl even worse this time around.

  “No,” Gideon says and offers no further explanation.

  I imagine who might be called next. What unsuspecting soul out there is going about their day—grocery shopping, paying bills, working in their cubicle, only to suddenly feel different. Would they even notice the change? Would they feel it at all? Or maybe only like a temperature shift? A sudden desire to pull on a robe or a sweater.

  For me, I knew the moment I woke up from my 212th replacement that the world had changed. Before I even saw Uriel’s face, felt him slip his hands inside me and tear me wide open, I heard the buzz of power that hadn’t been there hours before I’d replaced Mrs. Whimple, a crazy cat lady running the local animal shelter who had a habit of adopting more pets than she found homes for.

  I knew the world had changed then, and I know it’s changed now.

  What did she say? I scribble.

  “She doesn’t see any more trouble for us between here and Arizona. That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  I rest my cramping hand and nod instead. The nod isn’t much less painful than my joints wracked with rigor mortis.

  “How do you feel?” Gideon asks again, oblivious to my desire for silence.

  I give him a dismissive wave and roll over onto my side. I don’t want to talk, let alone answer stupid questions. How does he think I feel? I had my face blown off and died. Hello?

  “He’s hiding things from you,” Uriel says, materializing suddenly. He looks ridiculous in the motel room. Like a king in a squatter’s hovel. It isn’t his ornate outfit or flaming hair. It’s his rigid back and uplifted chin. Like it’s an insult that he is even asked to materialize in a place like this.

  I know.

  Everything about the bed irritates me. The cheap, scratchy coverlet probably covered in semen from a thousand men. The stale scent of cigarette smoke blooming every time the pillow is fluffed. Rain splatters against the window and the sound of it makes my flesh crawl.

  Remember who your heart is.

  No. I have no heart. Perhaps I did once, but now I’m a god. And a god has no use for such weakness.

  Chapter 30

  Jesse

  I start out of sleep, heart pounding. I pull my cheek off the cold window and sit up straight, trying to stretch out the ache in my lower back. Danger, my mind screams. Danger. But I don’t see the danger. Maisie sleeps in the front seat, Winston curled up and snoring in her lap.

  Ally starts awake beside me, rubbing her bleary eyes. “What? What is it?”

  Gloria’s eyes meet mine in the rear view mirror. She seems to be waiting for me to speak.

&n
bsp; “I think I was having a bad dream.” I press my hand to my chest. My heart races like a rabbit being chased by a fox. “But I can’t remember it now.”

  Gloria’s cell phone buzzes in the cup holder, plastic vibrating against plastic. She snatches it up and answers it without Maisie stirring. Maybe the kid is a heavier sleeper than we thought.

  “I’m here,” Gloria says. Then a long stretch of silence echoes through the car while she presumably listens to someone. “We will think of something. Is that all?”

  Another stretch of silence.

  “Understood.” Gloria pushes a button on the screen and dumps the cell phone back into the vacant cup holder.

  A car passes us on the interstate, barreling on toward its own destination in the dark. The green digital clock in the dashboard reads 2:02 am.

  “Is it really so early?” I ask, stretching forward in my seat.

  “We gained an hour when we crossed into Mountain Time,” Gloria says. “It’s one.” Gloria looks behind her at the pitch black darkness of the abandoned highway. There isn’t a headlight in sight. And the car that passed us is barely a red glow on the distant horizon.

  She pulls off on to the shoulder. “I need to stop.”

  “Want me to drive?” Ally asks, unbuckling her seatbelt.

  “I need to draw and would rather not do it in motion.”

  Ally and I exchange a glance which probably means the same thing. Something must have happened if she doesn’t want us to go any farther. God, I hope it doesn’t mean we have to change the plan. Again.

  “I need to stretch my legs. Want to get out with me?” Ally asks and gives my hand a gentle squeeze. Her palm is warm in mine and her smile is so pretty in the dim car that I think I’d have said yes to anything. Will you marry me? Yes. Have a couple of kids? Sure thing. Wear this butt plug?

  Okay. Maybe not yes to everything.

  Ally opens her car door and steps out onto the shoulder. I slide out behind her and try to shut the door as quietly as I can. After I do, I peer into the front seat to make sure Maisie is still sleeping. She is, fogging the glass with each exhale. Winston lifts his head, sniffs my face through the glass, then seemingly satisfied, nuzzles back into the crook of Maisie’s elbow.