Fourth Debt
Page 25

Who did this?
How long had we been here?
How much time had passed?
Was this perhaps purgatory? A place of in-between, a deplorable existence where only the worst went to pay penance?
We couldn’t possibly be alive. Could we?
A flickering light in the corner kept the vampires of the crypt at bay, but it offered no warmth—no reprieve from the ancient ice seeping into my bones from the godforsaken catacombs.
I stared fuzzily at the shape of a man cocooned in blankets. Only, he hadn’t moved, moaned, or made a sound in hours. My gift—no, my curse—no longer worked.
There was someone else down here with me. Yet, there were no thoughts, no fears, no pleas.
I didn’t want to admit it, but my brother…he was no longer alive. However, I had to try to bring him back from the dead. I had to remind him I was there for him—for him not to give up, even though slipping off the cliff became more enticing every minute. “You—you still a—alive, K—Kes?”
I never heard his reply.
The moment I finished, I fell into a stupor that lasted God knew how long. My energy flat-lined and I drifted into dreams, nightmares, and fantasies.
One moment, I flew through the forest on Wings.
The next, I was back in that hated room hurting Jasmine to fix myself.
One second, I made love to Nila, sliding inside her heat.
The next, I was shivering with ice running away from Hawksridge when I was fourteen.
Each hour, I grew weaker. Each hour, I slipped a little more.
If it weren’t for the terror at leaving Nila in the heinous world I’d helped create, I would just let go and disappear.
I want so fucking much to disappear.
I wanted freedom from pain.
Sanctuary from agony.
I wasn’t strong enough to live with such soul-crushing torment.
But no matter how hot and flaming my pain became. No matter how delirious and wracked with trembles I was, I couldn’t die.
I refused to fucking die.
I can’t. Not while they’re alive.
It was my duty to end them. To end the madness of my heritage that’d gotten away with murder for centuries.
Only once I’d balanced the scales of right and wrong could I relax and let go.
Only once I’d saved the one who’d saved me could I say goodbye and slip into the void.
My heart occasionally stuttered, out of sync, out of power—almost as if it recognised death and wanted to give in. I forced it to do the bare essentials, keeping me from a grave. I was in the coffin ready to be buried, but I wasn’t a corpse just yet.
I squinted in the lacklustre light, following the contours of my brother’s body.
He still hadn’t moved.
Time had an odd context down here. It could’ve been decades since I’d asked if he was alive, or only seconds.
I could turn to face him, expecting to see a blood-flushed body, only to come face-to-face with a dusty skeleton instead.
Anything was possible on the cusp of death.
My dying lungs did their best at working through ash and mildew to speak again. “K—Kes…”
A minute ticked past or maybe it was an hour—but, finally, my brother shifted. His grunt of agony echoed around the walls.
I wasn’t alone.
Not yet.
More time passed.
I had no way to measure it.
I raised my head off the scratchy pillow, staring at the iron bars.
Our coffin was the same catacombs that housed my ancestor’s bones. The same cell where Daniel beat me on Cut’s command. The same dungeon where I’d started the course of drugs to numb me.
Those memories had been sharp and recent. But now they were muddy and distant.
Same as all my memories.
Nila’s voice faded from my heart. Jasmine’s promises disappeared from my ears. My life deleted itself as if I wasn’t allowed to carry any memento from this world to the next.
I didn’t want to forget.
I don’t want to forget!
I willed my dried-up, malnourished brain to remember: how we arrived here. How a night of intimacy and love had transformed into my murder.
But try as I might, I couldn’t.
There was nothing but splatters of mismatched images.
Blazing hot pain.
Jasmine’s screams.
Bonnie’s barks.
Nila’s sobs.
Then more pain shoving me deeper and deeper down the drain of consciousness.
My blood was weak, diluted with agony. My soul broken but refusing to abandon a body that was hours away from succumbing to the black shroud of everlasting sleep.
Help us…
The bars were locked. There was no way out.
However, they could’ve been wide open and there wouldn’t have been a hope in fucking hell of moving.
We were dead.
The fact we were holding on was merely a formality.
More time passed and I stopped trying to catalogue it. I was drifting, twisting, fading…
Not long now.
A sudden burst of strength let me say something I should’ve said many times in the past. Something I always took for granted. “I—I lo—ove y—you, Kes.”
A cough wracked my body, clutching my pain, increasing it tenfold.
As the fever bathed my skin and my lungs rattled with sickness, I sighed and gave up. I’d said goodbye. I’d done everything I needed.
My senses slipped across the room to my dying brother and I held on. Hopefully, we’d find each other again. Hopefully, I’d find Nila again when I deserved her and paid for my sins.