by Sienna Skyy
They were not sleeping a natural sleep.
And insane though it was, knowing that a deadly collision was nearly certain, Bruce felt tempted to lie down on the floorboard and go to sleep himself. He wrestled toward wakefulness and shouted again at Ichabod. The look in the fortune-teller’s eyes was one of determination and bloodlust. He darted his gaze at Bruce and then back to the road, and a grin formed at the corners of his mouth. Bruce recognized that grin. He’d seen it in the clenched grimace of a truck driver who’d parked his petroleum tank on a treacherous bend of a highway off-ramp.
Ichabod’s foot pressed the gas pedal all the way down.
Bruce lunged at him. But Ichabod’s thin body seemed made of iron. Inhuman, unswayable. He backhanded Bruce with surprising strength, sending him tumbling backward. The van shifted to a slightly new angle. Bruce used Bedelia’s slack arm to climb to his feet and saw a gas station looming directly in the van’s path.
He looked around wildly. They were all going to sleep through this!
“Ichabod!” Bruce lunged at the fortune-teller again, and again Ichabod shook him off as casually as brushing a cobweb from a stair rail. The sheer steely power of him was humbling. Bruce had no prayer of fighting him off. And even if he did, he would likely crash the van in the process.
For one sick, stupid moment, he thought of tearing open the van door and throwing the others out, one by one. They’d almost certainly die in the process, but they were absolutely going to die when they crashed into those gas pumps.
The air escaped his lungs. There was no way out. They were really going to die. Perhaps that strange, peaceful slumber that overwhelmed them all was a merciful thing.
In a flash, Bruce’s mind raced through all that would be lost. Bedelia, so willing to walk away from her job to help a stranger reclaim his love. Forte’s music, so inspiring and energizing, Shannon’s humor, sharp but always human, Emily’s compassion, both blind and wise.
The van advanced toward those gas pumps at a sickening pace. He saw trotting movement in the distance, converging toward the pumps from a different direction. A pack of coyotes.
In the front seat, Jamie’s head lolled to the side, and her hand fell from the armrest. She’d devoted her life to protecting him. Ensuring that one day he would give to the world those creations he had yet to conceive. Things he would now never conceive. But it wasn’t just him. Jamie might have cared about him more than she did anyone else, but she cared about everyone. Just look at the way she treated the others. How could that spirit incinerate now?
And somewhere far away, Gloria stood in the shadow of evil. She was about to disappear into that shadow. If only he could at least say good-bye. If she were here right now, he would tell her . . . if she were here right now . . . he would touch her hair and say . . .
Bullshit.
If she were here right now, he’d make damn sure some Jack Sprat fortune-teller didn’t blow everyone he loved to smithereens.
And he did love them. He loved them for their sake and he loved them for the beauties they bestowed upon the world.
Bruce seized Ichabod from behind and wrapped his arm around his neck. He clamped down thinking of Forte and Shannon, a phenomenal musician and a sprightly soul who made everyone laugh. He imagined he was forcing the beauty Forte and Shannon created straight into the fortune-teller through his Adam’s apple.
Ichabod gripped Bruce’s arm with one hand, the other still clamped on the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, Bruce could see the grimace of fury on Ichabod’s face, and beneath that, a bloom of surprise.
In that moment, Bruce knew he had him.
He doubled his concentration, calling on Emily, who despite being abandoned had found it within her heart to watch over the lost children of the park. He thought of Bedelia, and his beloved Jamie, whose heart had such capacity. Bruce gripped that Adam’s apple and let it all pour in.
Then he let Ichabod feel the electricity of his own vast love for Gloria.
He bore down on that Adam’s apple as if to fill it with love and ideals was to free Gloria.
The accelerator let up ever so slightly.
The gas station loomed closer. Bruce drew from everyone around him, leveraging this new strength that was not physical. The same strength that woke him from his dream when he should have been stuck in dreamland under the demon drug.
Ichabod began to tremble under him. Bruce sensed that whatever he was, Ichabod could not be asphyxiated or overwhelmed physically. But somehow, Bruce was overpowering him.
Bruce threw his entire force into that sensation and Ichabod’s trembling intensified. The van slowed even more. Ichabod fought back, his foot mashing at the accelerator in lurching kicks.
The pumps now stood no more than a few hundred feet away and closing. Bruce saw the coyotes again and they darted, confused by the movement of the van, though they hovered near the station like flies over carrion.
Bruce roared, calling out all his reserves as he ratcheted his intensity one more notch. Ichabod jerked once.
And then burst into a cloud of ashes and sparks that rained through the van and out into the desert beyond.
The van decelerated.
Bruce slumped onto the back of the empty driver’s seat, feeling as though his veins were coursing with wet concrete. He cast a gasping glance at Bedelia, and saw that she now wore a fine film of ash. The others did as well.
The van continued toward the island, but the lowered speed caused the steering to become sensitive to shifts in terrain and it veered away and passed the pumps. It rolled on instead with an amble toward nothing, the gas station now falling farther behind. The van loped upon a dusty mound and finally stopped.
Bruce’s arms and legs felt as though they were made of concrete and his lungs failed to serve him. He didn’t know what part of him had battled Ichabod, but that part seemed to have sustained some kind of injury. He thought for one crazy moment that maybe he himself was going to burst into a cloud of sparks and ashes and the thought made him cough out a wheezing, hysterical chuckle.
He crawled to the side door and used his last reserves to open it. Straining for oxygen. The door opened. A wind bloomed into the van, brushing away the fine ashy residue that had settled over the occupants. They stirred.
The coyotes danced, coughing and huffing. One of them came in closer with a warning heckle. Its face was angled into three pie wedges; two triangular ears every bit as long as the triangular snout. Its hair was the color of the dust and sunset.
Bruce tried to struggle to his feet. He pulled his body forward, reaching for the outside.
“Bruce?” Jamie’s voice seemed very distant, as though she’d spoken his name from the other side of a broad lake.
The floorboards fell away from beneath him, and he was tumbling, sliding. He tasted the chalky earth of the Texas soil, and his vision faded to complete darkness.
28
NEW YORK
GLORIA WATCHED THEM as they lay in bed together.
Bruce’s eyes were closed. Jamie stroked his brow. The sight of them sent a dagger through Gloria’s heart. She couldn’t hear them at first; she could only see them. Then their voices emerged and she heard Jamie refer to herself as “your wife.”
“I’ve been connected to you since the moment I was born,” Jamie said to Bruce. “Losing you is something I just can’t handle.”
At this, Bruce reached up and smoothed the top of Jamie’s hair, similar to the way he used to smooth Gloria’s.
“Not going anywhere, Tink. Love you too much.” His voice came groggy, even blissful. Gloria had heard him speak that way so many times before. After they’d been intimate and his body was completely relaxed.
“I’ll always watch over you, Bruce,” Jamie said.
Gloria shook her head, tears welling. “Bruce?”
She sat up.
Bruce and Jamie disappeared and Gloria realized she was in the library inside Aaron’s penthouse. She’d been reading and had looked up
for a moment, spotting the dagger resting inside an ornate Rococo cabinet. It was the one Sileny had brought to her several days ago.
Sileny. What had happened to her? For a time she’d made Gloria feel less alone here. Now that she was gone, no one could do that. Except Aaron.
Gloria must have dozed off after gazing at that dagger. Its shining surface now held no hint of the vision it had conveyed to her. No evidence of the truth it cut into her.
She swallowed. She had known this already, that Bruce was lost to her. Their time together had been blissful. Singular. But it was over.
Sileny had been right to tell her to keep her eyes forward. And eyes forward meant eyes toward Aaron. Though Gloria couldn’t fully guess what Aaron’s ultimate intention was with her, she knew he wanted her. And she sensed that by winning her Aaron stood to achieve some greater gain. Beyond that, everything was a mystery. Maybe Aaron was her salvation. Maybe he was her ruination. Maybe he was both.
All Gloria knew was that she was weary from fighting him. Weary from being angry and indignant for so long without relief. Would it be such a terrible thing to get used to this, the luscious finery of Aaron’s lifestyle? She could release herself to Aaron’s heat, allow herself to be drawn in by that intoxicating sooty gaze. The massive, overwhelming power of him. The scent of invincibility.
His heart betrays, and he falters while beneath your gaze. The canteshrike had said that to her when she visited her. When Gloria was certain she would die. What did the canteshrike mean by this?
Gloria steeled herself and rose, trying to dash away the sick heaviness that strangled her. But cobwebs from the dream still lingered in her mind and heart. She shook it off. Tried to shake it off.
How could Bruce forget her so easily? They were supposed to be eternal. How could he turn to Jamie so quickly? And why now after they’d known each other so long?
She faltered, and her knees buckled. She sank to the floor under the weight of her misery as ghastly, searing heartache overwhelmed her. Sobs leaped from her throat.
She allowed the tears and sobs to wrack her. She had no idea a person could carry this much sorrow. She tried to squelch it, but her body would not comply. She could not stop the tremors or the gushing tears, nor could she muster enough strength to stand.
“Gloria?”
She looked up and saw Aaron in the doorway.
She turned her face, unable to speak. Loathed the exposure during such a private moment. Aaron entered the library and knelt before her, taking her hand.
“What’s happened?”
She shook her head, mortified. And yet her strength and her composure still failed her.
“What is it?” Aaron urged.
“It’s—it’s nothing. Please.”
“No, tell me!”
He startled her with the solicitous urgency of his tone. She slid a finger under an eye and then grazed the other with her thumb. “I can’t talk about it. Please, Aaron.”
“No!” He grasped her shoulders, pulling her toward him so that her head tilted back.
His eyes burned. “Don’t you understand, Gloria? I am your lifeline. I am your world. When you are in distress, I shall remedy it. If you are in want, I shall provide. You must confide in me.”
She blinked, stunned, though her breaths continued in gasps.
“It was just a dream,” she said, and she strove to make her voice sound as though she truly believed this. “About Bruce. He was . . . intimate with another woman.” Her chest convulsed, and the words tumbled from her. “He used to tell me they were just friends, but I always . . . wondered . . .”
The pain of it seared through her afresh. She had become so accustomed to the thought of sharing her life with Bruce. So certain of her path.
Aaron’s eyes softened. “But you believe it was more than a dream, don’t you?”
She tried to blink the tears from her eyes. She looked away, unable to speak. She gave a small nod. She didn’t just believe it; she knew it. What she saw in the dream was a vision that the dagger had transposed to her mind, and the dagger relayed the truth with the cold indifference of a steel blade. She waited for Aaron to say something damning about Bruce.
But he didn’t. Instead, he folded her hands into his as one might caress a newly hatched bluebird, and he surprised her with his words. “You mustn’t blame him. He cannot help but follow the inclinations of human nature.”
He reached a hand to her hair and brought her to him. She didn’t resist. She laid her head on his shoulder and allowed the agony to course through her unbridled. It was so soothing to be able to unburden herself.
“He is but a mortal and cannot possibly grasp that a rare jewel has come to be in his midst. He sees every woman as varying degrees of beautiful, intelligent, and witty. They all see women that way. Hear me when I say you would be squandered in his company.”
Gloria could not speak. Could not argue. She wasn’t sure how she’d go about doing so even if she’d managed to remaster her body to a more functioning state. Aaron’s intoxicating heat pulled her in, warmed her frigid bones. She longed to disappear, even if only through an escape of the flesh. She knew she could use her own body to sever the tie with Bruce, and in doing so reclaim some shred of control.
Aaron’s fingertips rested in her hair. And as he soothed her, she sensed his arousal. His flesh had grown taut beneath his clothing. Yet he only seemed to want to comfort her.
Her convulsing grief lessened, though she knew she still lacked the bodily strength to stand, or walk. Or push Aaron away.
As if he’d read her thoughts, he said, “You want to go to your room?”
“Yes,” she whispered, though she wondered how she’d manage it and felt self-conscious about making her way weak-kneed under Aaron’s gaze.
He shifted so that his hands moved under her knees and he stood and lifted her into his arms. Her eyes closed at his shoulder, her hand curled around his neck. And she allowed him to carry her. She didn’t have the strength to protest even if she wanted to. The wall of his chest breathed warmth back into her blood. She felt intoxicatingly aware of his hand as it curved from her knee to her thigh in the otherwise chaste manner with which he transported her from the library to the living area to the bedroom. She felt his breath at her spine and it caused her flesh to tingle in a shiver that traveled from the nape of her neck to her shoulders, nipples, and stomach.
He laid her on the bed and kissed her cheek. He made no other advance. She reached up and grazed his fingertips with her own. “Thank you, Aaron.”
He nodded, touching her chin with his knuckle.
And then he left the room and closed the door.
She knew she could have asked him to stay and he would have. She knew she could have lessened her pain, if only for a short while, by sharing her body with him and finding escape. She wasn’t ready for that yet. Still, she wondered how much longer it would be before she learned to fix her eyes forward.
And she wondered about the other side of Aaron, that dark side that she’d only glimpsed. The part that caused a choking fear to seize her breath and send whispers into her psyche, reasoning with her to comply with Aaron’s wishes. That to oppose him may mean her demise.
And beneath it all, the strange, musical words of a canteshrike.
Gloria closed her eyes, and the moment she did, her vision filled once again with the image of Jamie laying in bed next to Bruce.
TEXAS
Jamie lay stretched on her stomach atop the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed. Bruce blinked at her and she could see him struggling to maintain consciousness. An IV ran from the crook of his elbow to a clear plastic bag hanging on a hook over his bed. The scare of his near death still gripped her.
“I’ve been connected to you since the moment I was born,” Jamie said to him. “Losing you is something I just can’t handle.”
Bruce’s hand reached up and smoothed the top of Jamie’s hair. “Not going anywhere, Tink. Love you too much.”
“I’ll always watch over you, Bruce.”
“I know you will, Tink.”
“When the paramedics came, you had such a low pulse and you were barely breathing,” she told him.
“I’m breathing now,” he slurred.
“You want to know something stupid? If I hadn’t told them I was your wife, they wouldn’t have even let me visit you. They’d’ve let you just fight it out alone. How ridiculous is that? As though only husbands and wives can support each other.”
“Doesn’t matter, Tink.”
“No it doesn’t,” an elderly nurse said, a kind, abundant smile sparkling in her eyes as she entered Bruce’s hospital room and laid a hand to his forehead. “But he is going to need to rest.”
Jamie’s heart fluttered, embarrassed at having been caught trying to pass herself off as Bruce’s wife. She pulled herself up off the bed, cheeks burning, and turned away.
But then her breath caught. That elderly nurse—the kind, abundant smile in her eyes!
“It’s you!” Jamie said.
“You who?” Bruce said in a voice that bordered on delirium. “Yoohoo?”
He did not see this nurse. Jamie realized that she was probably the only one who could see the nurse. Because this nurse, with her familiar smile, had first visited Jamie many years ago when she sat in a golden chair and held her hand, explaining Jamie’s purpose in the world.
Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “You’ve finally come. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Bruce shifted, tension clouding his face. “He’s sent her to watch us. Them to watch us. Me and Gloria. Candy stripes.”
A dazzling pearled atmosphere surrounded the nurse and she took Jamie’s hand and led her from the hospital room.
“I’ll be back, Bruce,” Jamie whispered over her shoulder with excitement.
“Tink.”
She paused, afraid to spare a moment lest the visitation disperse. The Auxilium had already left the room.
