Worth Dying for (A Dying for a Living Novel Book 5) (14 page)

What is that?
I try to ask. But my voice doesn’t materialize in my head or in the dreamscape.

I’m tiring
, Liza says. Her voice shocks me back to my present moment and my bizarre suspension in the cyclone current.

This seems to mean something to everyone else. They reach out and clasp hands. Monroe beside me clasps my hand and Jason on the other side takes the other. I look up from our clasped hands in time to see Liza grow bright white until her entire form is washed away.

The white light spreads, moving into Caldwell and Cindy’s hands where they stand holding her. The light leaks from Liza’s form into their bodies. The white light that I understand to be what is left of Liza, travels around the full circle until it reaches me. There’s a moment of panic just before it touches me that I think to let go, but Monroe’s hold on my hand tightens.

The white light is warm, pleasant. But as soon as it settles into my chest, the torrent kicks up, the cyclone growing more violent around me.

Then Minli gives up her power too—and that’s when I understand what is happening. They hold on until they can’t, then they pass their gift to the others in the group.

The only problem is that the power grows more violent, more turbulent with the lesser number of conduits.

The numbers dwindle down. I watch each partis fade to bright light that my body absorbs until it is only me and Caldwell, holding hands of all things.

The storm rages and I think it will tear me apart. I think the lightning from above might strike me and burn me to a crisp. I imagine it would be painful. The amount of power rushing through me already feels like lightning under my skin. I don’t think I can possibly absorb any more.

Then Caldwell says, “Take it.”

No
, I think. It was never supposed to be housed by one. It was supposed to be all of us for as long as we could.

“Take it, Jesse.”

He begins to glow, lightning filling his eyes, and pouring from his opening mouth. It trails his jaw, neck, and limbs, rushing from his fingers into mine.

I take it, drinking it all down but it’s too much. There’s too much.

I scream.

I scream and scream, falling back into the black cyclone. I’m falling as I’d done so often in death. The sensation is the same, the immense and impenetrable darkness rising up to envelop me. I try to breath but can’t.

I’m dying.

Oh god, no, I’m dying.

Jesse

“
B
reathe, Jesse,” a voice says. It’s neither male nor female. And it sounds so far away. “Come on, breathe.”

Feeling as though I’ve broken the surface of an enormous lake, I suck in a great gasping breath. I come up on my elbows, and then roll onto my knees and heave. My hands scrape against the wood. My chest burns as if I’ve been holding my breath for a long time.

“Thatagirl,” Monroe says and slaps my back. “In through your nose.”

I open my eyes and the first thing I see are my hands. They’re pressed against the wooden floor in the small room inside a tiny house off the Rue Dauphine. I remember the little sidewalk and the rotting screen door. The place comes back to me. I sit back on my knees and find out how shaken I am.

Maisie is sitting against one of the walls, a blanket wrapped around her. She’s shaking too, with sweat beading across her forehead and face. Her cheeks are flushed bright red and her eyes dilated. I can still smell the blood, but also ash and the stench of an extinguished candle.

“Why was she in the dream for so long?” Maisie asks. Her teeth chatter around the words.

I reach up and wipe my brow. I’m as sweaty and gross as she is. I feel like I’ve come out of a feverish delirium, my eyes focusing on the first tangible object I see. Gloria’s face.

She pushes a cup toward my face. I take it, but the cup trembles so badly in my hand that Gloria doesn’t let go. She holds onto the bottom of the cup.

I take a big gulp of coffee. I know it’s coffee from the rich smell, but the taste is off. It’s so strong, bitter. “What. The. Fuck?”

“Chicory,” Gloria says, holding the cup up to my face until I push it away. “It’s better than Dr. Pepper.”

“If you say so.” I rake my teeth across my tongue. The flesh feels burnt. “Seriously, what the hell just happened?”

“You saw the truth,” Monroe says. He’s unwrapping the half remaining inch of his cigarette and tapping the unused tobacco out onto his palm.

“O-kay.” I pull at my face again, trying to shake off the feverish sickness clinging to me. “What the hell is the truth?”

“We wasn’t supposed to be killing each other.” He stuffs the last bit of rolling paper in his pocket and slides the sealed container of tobacco back into his front shirt pocket.

Maisie’s teeth chatter. “But there’s supposed to be an apex. There’s only supposed to be one who holds all the power.”

“No. It was never meant to be a burden for one soul to bear.” Monroe looks absolutely exhausted. Deep puffy bags sit under his dark eyes. He rubs his forehead. “The shield is a gift. If we want to keep this rock spinning, we’ve got to recharge the shield. How do we recharge?”

“Electricity,” Gloria offers. Probably because Maisie’s teeth are chattering too wildly to speak and I feel like my head is split in two.

“Yes, ma’am,” Monroe nods, still rubbing his forehead. “They turned on the switch. They be sending the electricity down the wire.”

“Who?” I manage.

“The angels. But they need wires. They need batteries to store the juice.”

“That’s us.”

He puts one hand on his knee. “That’s us. But the energy transfer will kill us, no avoiding that.”

“So then why twelve partis? Why the competition to be the wire?”

“To be the battery, not the wire,” Monroe says. “We’re all the wires. It’s the battery that will power the shield long after the body is gone.”

“Why twelve?”

“It be a kindness,” Monroe says with sorrow etched deeply in his face. “We were never meant to do this alone.”

Before I can process this, Ally bursts into the room. “He’s MIA again.” Ally’s brow furrows when she sees Maisie in a blanket shivering in cold sweat and me wiping my brow. “Are you guys okay? Is that blood all over your face?”

“What the hell was in the chicken blood, Monroe?”

I roll to one side again and dry heave.

“Monroe!” Gloria screams.

Monroe reaches down and grabs the bloody knife off the floor. I look up in time to see the two men collide. Monroe slams into Caldwell, burying the knife to the hilt in Caldwell’s neck, in the place where the shoulder meets the collarbone. Caldwell lets out a screeching wail like an animal being gutted alive and stumbles back. Monroe throws his hands up and the torrential wind comes, throwing everyone to the floor except Caldwell who is lifted up and thrown through the wall with the gale force wind. I crawl on my hands and knees toward Maisie. Trying to reach her takes tremendous effort, but then I clasp onto her ankle and yank her into my arms.

Ally’s arms wrap around my waist. I want to find Gloria next but the vertigo and nausea keeps washing over me in waves and I feel like I’m on a huge boat out to sea. I don’t know what Monroe did with his weird chicken blood shit, but something isn’t right.

“Gloria, get over here!” I scream but she stands with her back to the wall, gun raised and waiting. I realize she’s covering Monroe. No one in this room believes Caldwell’s truly disappeared. Through the hole in the side of the house I see at least four armed guards fully geared. They have their guns up and ready, half pointed at the dense trees behind them, the other half at the space between the lawn and Monroe.

I pull away from Ally and Maisie.

“What are you doing?” Ally demands an answer more than asks a question.

“Keep shielding Maisie,” I tell her. “This could be a trick to get Maisie back.” It sure feels like he’s fucking with us. I’ve seen Caldwell when he means business. It’s all break necks and leave. This cat-mouse game is different.

I power up. I feel the itch of raw energy flow from my chest out to my fingers and toes. It goes to my fingertips crackling electric in the air around me. The hairs on my arms stand up but I don’t ignite. I wait. I wait for Caldwell to show his face.

Caldwell appears behind Monroe and Gloria gets two bullets into his chest, then a third a little higher than the first round. But adjusting her aim isn’t enough.

He’s ripped the knife from his throat. Great spurts of blood hit the floor like a geyser but he acts like he couldn’t care less. He stabs Monroe in the chest and Monroe cries out. His eyes go wide and he cries out again as Caldwell twists the handle.

Gloria gets off a fourth shot and it rips through Caldwell’s right ear. He lets go of Monroe and has the good sense to cover his head before Gloria can blow Caldwell’s brains out. I would fire bomb his ass, but I don’t have a clear shot. Jeremiah’s soldiers in the yard must feel the same way. They adjust their positions but can’t get a direct line to Caldwell without catching Monroe in the crossfire.

When Caldwell turns around I see his glassy, unfocused eyes. He looks right through me, one hand on his bleeding ear and the other over his cut throat. He’s lost too much blood. He’s going to pass out and die. As if he decides I’m right, he falls and Gloria’s gun goes off.

He never hits the floor. His body simply disappears on the way down. Gloria’s bullet goes straight into the floor without having hit its target.

Monroe drops to his knees, clutching his throat and grimacing.

He makes a half-hearted gesture for me to come closer. His eyes slide to Maisie and he waves her forward too.

“Hurry now,” he croaks but his voice is strange, probably because of the wound. “I ain’t got long.”

I crawl across the room, still trying to fight the wave of nausea. Maisie pulls away from Ally as soon as I drop the shield and we reach him at the same time. Maisie is the first to grab his hand.

“No,” I say and knock her hand away. “You’re going to take his power. Let him die and when he wakes up he’ll be fine.”

“There’s no time for that,” Monroe says. “I’ve got to show you now.”

Monroe grabs my hand and Maisie’s. It’s too much like the dreamscape with our doppelgangers in all their Kumbaya glory.

“This is how it’s supposed to be,” Monroe says. “Y’all see what I’m saying. Hold on to me now.”

I’m trying to yank my hand away. “Live.” I want to scream but he won’t let go of me. His old hand is impossibly strong on mine.

Monroe gasps and his hand convulses in mine.

Warmth shoots up my arm, racing toward my heart. My chest is filled with fire and the fire doesn’t stop there. It crawls up the back of my throat, burning my nose before settling into my brain. It’s like a swarm of fire ants have crawled through my ears and have started liquefying my gray matter.

I want to let go, clutch my skull and scream, but I can’t. I can’t move my body, or breathe, or call out for help. I’m frozen, locked into the pain of Monroe’s death.

I do manage to open my eyes but I don’t see Monroe on his knees in the destroyed room. No soldiers with guns. No shocked Ally or Gloria watching helplessly. I open my eyes and see Monroe in the dreamscape. He’s glowing white, bright as a star, but I can still see his face. His beautiful smile, so full of relief.

“This is what we were always meant to be,” he says and I see the wings. His wings with feathers the color of a dove’s stretch out on either side of him. Then the light overtakes him and he’s gone.

The room comes back into focus and someone is crying.

Maisie. She’s sobbing into her hands, her face covered by her palms. I don’t move or say anything.

“Jesse?” Ally kneels down in front of me. The men with guns have climbed through the hole in the wall and are standing in the room awkwardly. Everyone is waiting for something to happen.

Ally reaches up and wipes a thumb under my nose. It comes away bright red with my blood. “Jess? Say something.”

Maisie is still crying. “Why would he just die?”

She pulls her knees into her chest and wraps her arms around them, hiding her face. Her sobs grow louder.

“He wanted to die.” Gloria holsters her gun and places a hand on Maisie’s head. Her voice is hard and steady, but her eyes give her away. Tears pool in the corner of her eyes as she stares at Monroe’s lifeless body in the center of the room. It isn’t imploding like the others had. No blue fire incineration. His body only lies there.

“Why is he still here? Why didn’t he catch fire like the others?” I ask.

Ally looks up and starts talking to someone in black body armor. “Can you—”

“Of course,” Nikki says. “Kirch, Franklin. Help me with this.”

“Monroe.” I seize her armored calf. “His name was Monroe.”

She doesn’t even fight me on it. “Of course. Please help me with Monroe.”

“No, wait,” Maisie says. “Wait, wait!”

She crawls toward Monroe’s body. She places her hands on his chest and bends over into his face. She’s touching his bloody shirt but doesn’t seem to notice her hands are staining red.

Gloria grabs her and pulls her off the body.

“Let me try!” Maisie wails. “Let me try!”

“No,” Gloria says gently. “It’s not what he wanted.”

Maisie shrugs her off and lunges but Gloria has to seize her again before she can blow up his nose like she did to Winston a few months ago. Three little puffs and then he might stir, might come back to life. Would it work? We won’t find out because Gloria is holding Maisie above the body while the others prepare to take him away.

The body.

Because that’s all that’s left of Monroe.

“Did you absorb his power or was another partis called?” Ally asks, such a callous question. She’s searching Maisie and me for any signs. “You were both touching him at his time of death but neither of you seem to be ‘rebooting’?” Ally uses air quotes around the word ‘rebooting’. She doesn’t like that term, but I agree there isn’t a more accurate one.

“They absorbed it,” Gloria says. “That is what Monroe wanted you to understand. You can share power. You do not need to kill each other for it. You can give it freely.”

I imagine what that might look like: Me, Maisie, and Rachel in a circle, all alive and well. All casting a shield that protects the world. It’s not ideal. It’s not my ‘get the girl and live happily ever after daydream’, but having my friends alive, my sister alive, and the woman I love safe is a decent second place prize.

“I do feel a little—funny,” Maisie admits.

“I do too.” Though it’s hard to explain exactly what’s changed.

“Cast a shield,” Gloria instructs.

“I don’t know how that would—”

“Cast a shield and see if you have more power,” she insists. “The only way you’d have more power is because he gave it to you. Try.”

I cast my shield.

“Shit,” Nikki says.

Ally and I are both speechless. The shield is huge. The entire room is coated in a violet glow. It covers the eight of us easily: me, Gloria, Maisie, Nikki, Ally, even Monroe and the two soldier helpers who’d come at Nikki’s command to move the body.

“I can feel it.” Maisie’s eyes grow as wide as half dollars. “I can
feel
your shield.”

I try to make the shield bigger and it grows, expanding without effort. Not only is it so much bigger, but it moves with finesse. It passes over objects without knocking anything back. And the purple glow is intense, so much brighter than it ever had been in the past.