Dodge shakes his head helplessly and I buck savagely against Quinn’s arms, wanting to tear them from his body if it means I can get to Luke and stop Ranya but she’s reaching for those cords again and I’m shouting and struggling and I can’t get free and she’s really about to do it –
“Stop,” comes a blunt voice from the door, and we all swivel to see Raven. She is expressionless as she takes in the scene. Her eyes move to rest on her boyfriend. “Let her go, Quinn.”
Quinn hesitates, then does so. I wrench myself away from him and try to catch my breath. If Raven stops this, then I will forget every bad thought I’ve ever had about her.
But, still completely wooden, Raven says, “Let her say goodbye first.”
And hope dies in my chest. I look between them all helplessly, but there’s no changing their minds.
“We’ll be just outside,” Quinn warns, and they troop out.
I turn back to Luke, unable to believe that this is really happening. Until yesterday I thought I would sit here and wait forever. I knew I wouldn’t give up. I knew I might walk heavy with longing every day, I might feel sad in every movement of my limbs as I scythed the wheat and learned to fight, but I wouldn’t give up. I thought I would teach The Inferno something about hope.
But this is what I think now: He’s really going.
And I have to find some way to say goodbye to him.
Impossible. Brutally, unforgivably impossible.
I climb onto the bed beside him and I press my face against his cheek. My tears slide over his skin. “Darling,” I whisper. “How am I supposed to do this? I can’t say goodbye. I can’t.”
I start to cry, holding him as tightly as I can.
“I wish I knew you better,” I tell him. “I wish so many things, but even if it meant I could never see you again, I would still wish for you to be alive.” And then the truest thing of all: “Luke. I’m so angry with you. But I would still trade places with you. I’d give anything to be the one dying, if it meant you’d live.”
He doesn’t stir, and I rise slowly from the bed, watching his face. This is it. This is the last time you will see his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, his lips. This is the last time you will ever touch his skin.
I kiss his mouth so gently our lips barely touch. I’m trembling. I whisper, “Bye, darling.”
And then I walk away. My ribs are cracking open and my heart is being shredded. It hurts and I can’t breathe and I’m crying and in this moment as I walk away I decide a very dark thing: the only way I’m going to be able to get through never seeing him again is to take the sadness cure.
*
There’s so much screaming inside me that I almost don’t hear it.
It’s a sound, the whisper of a sound, the ghost of one. Drifting past my ears. Making me freeze at the door. A sigh, almost.
I feel strange, parts of me knowing, other parts refusing to believe. Don’t you dare turn back, I tell myself. Don’t allow yourself even the barest sliver of hope. It will kill you. But I do. I turn back slowly. My heart is exhausted from the force of my longing and my grief and my farewell.
But the hope is real. On the bed, Luke is moving.
I draw a sudden, shocked breath. He makes another sound, an uncomfortable groan. In a moment he will open his eyes and see me here, because he is conscious at long last, just as I have wished every second of every day for the last two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-six hours.
Abrupt terror strikes. Now that it’s happening I am completely unprepared for it. What will be in his eyes when he looks at me? What will be missing from his eyes?
I study all the sharp, lovely lines of his face. He stirs more, his hands clenching on the sheets. I watch his throat move as he swallows. I watch the flicker of his eyelids, and then I see them open.
Dashing from the room, I sprint past three bewildered people as fast as I can, as fast as my tired muscles will allow me, running and running and running, because I don’t know how to do anything else. Behind me is a life I said goodbye to, a version of myself I am not ready to face. And no matter what is or isn’t still in his eyes when he sees me, I’m scared it will have the power to turn me once more into the girl who was foolish enough to trust when she shouldn’t have.
*
Luke
I wake numb.
Blinking against the brightness of the light, I peer around the room. People are entering, but they are blurred and slow-moving and silent. The two women have familiar faces. I open my mouth but only a rasping sound comes forth.
Someone puts a cup of water to my lips and I drink gratefully. “Josephine?” I manage.
Neither of them answers.
“Where is she?” I ask, trying to lift myself. They push me back down and I’m so weak I can’t resist. “Is she alright?”
“Luke, just rest.”
The only thing I remember is that fucking lab. The drugs and the blood and Anthony. Oh shit. Oh, Anthony.
“Where?” I groan, but no one will answer me. “Where am I?”
“You’re at The Inferno, Luke.”
I stare in shock. It’s Ranya, I realize suddenly. Ranya and Raven. “How?”
“Calm down, Luke. We’ll explain it all when you’re well.” They’re pumping me with a sedative. I can feel it filling my veins and making me squishy.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please just tell me where Josephine is.”
It’s Raven who finally tells me. “She’s dead, Luke. She died in the lab.”
The room around me vanishes, the women above me blinking out of existence.
It’s so clear to me, suddenly. The white and gray room with the flickering lights and the cold, shiny surfaces. Anthony lying dead in a pool of his own blood. Josi trying to kill Ben and me intercepting her. I can see her face, with the red eyes and the blood smeared over her skin.
That was the last time I saw her. It will be the only time I ever see her again, in this macabre memory.
My brother finds me, suddenly. Dave had the best smile, lots of slightly crooked teeth that were full of character and eyes so sharp they rivalled Josi’s. “Little brother.”
“I couldn’t save you,” I tell him from within the waste that is my heart. “I can’t save anyone.”
My mother is here next, and my father. Then Harley, my Harley.
I’m spinning in this impossible limbo and everywhere I look I see the lost. There are too many of them, too many for one life.
Because last is Josi. She’s my dream Josi, standing in the middle of the road in a blood-smeared dress, telling me she loves and adores me. But then she is the Josi from real life, licking mango off my chin and grinning wickedly. She’s the Josi playing cello and rolling her eyes and throwing food at me. The Josi who lies in the bath and watches day turn to night, the Josi who complains and nags and sings terribly, the Josi who laughs like it must hurt her guts and looks at me as though I am a real person, a valid, worthy man who is meant for more than he is.
It is too much. I have been ripped out of my own skin. Ripped out of my soul. I try to endure but some part of me switches off and it all fades, blissfully, to black.
*
I wake what could be a few hours later. Or maybe it’s days. Ranya and Pace fuss over me, then I get Hal and Will in to see me, then Quinn, of course – bursting with excitement. Last is Raven again, strolling in with that devilish look in her eyes and a clear determination to extract or gain something from me. She is a carrion bird, come to pick at my remains.
I tell her to leave and she does so, outraged as she always seems to be. I used to marvel over her ability to be angry with anything and everything – it’s quite a skill. But now I hate her with an irrational hatred, purely because she was the one to tell me, and she did it without an ounce of compassion.
I lie quietly, gazing out the window.
Ranya makes her way to the chair by my bed. “You’ve been here nearly four months, Luke.”
I can’t summon any feelings about it
. So many days of my life stolen. But really, they were days saved from the reality of having to deal with Josi’s death. I’d rather be back in the coma. I’d rather be dead, actually. I think my brain is preparing itself for that. To die. I think I will, soon. The knowledge occurs to me in a weird, mathematical way, as though I am solving the problem of my life, and the only solution is no life at all.
“Rest,” Ranya insists. “You’ve been in a coma, Luke.”
As if I am unaware of it.
The three musketeers troop back in. Pace, Hal and Will all flock around my bed, reclining next to me or in the chair. “So what the hell happened to you, Townsend?” Pace asks.
I shrug, incapable of more.
“We got pieces of it from Dual, but it’s bound to be a good story.”
“Pace,” Hal admonishes, as though the girl has just murdered a kitten.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
“We’re really sorry about Josephine,” Hal says. His sympathy makes my skin crawl. I hate it and I want them away from me. “But you saved one life, at least.”
It occurs to me belatedly. “How did I get here?”
“Dual brought you.”
“Who’s Dual?”
“Someone who found you at the asylum,” Hal explains. “You don’t remember?”
“I can’t remember shit.” Except Josi’s blood-smeared face.
“She’s surly,” Pace comments with approval.
“And kinda brilliant,” Hal adds.
“Tough,” Will offers. “Like a big old piece of stubborn rock.”
“I really couldn’t care less,” I say frankly. “How did Josi die?”
“Dual didn’t say much about it.”
“Well what did she say?”
“You deaf? Not much.”
I feel it like a blow, her callousness. She doesn’t give a shit that I’ve just lost the love of my life. I am abruptly without a body, without a soul, without anything. I can’t grasp hold of anything. Can’t feel anything.
“Get out,” I mutter. “Just get out.” It’s a poor effort, but I really don’t care.
They watch me pityingly.
My stomach bottoms out in a moment of profound terror, profound disbelief. I have had many of these moments since waking up. A part of me says no, it’s not true, and then my mind flails wildly, having to deal with the reality anew each time.
Ranya returns and shoos the three kids away, telling them I need rest. Hal pauses a moment alone with me to say, “We missed you.”
I can’t even return the compliment; I’m a voiceless shell.
“They’ve told you about the girl who brought you here?” Ranya asks casually when the kids are gone.
“Not really.”
“She saved your life.” Ranya’s acting weird. She studies me and I meet her eyes. That’s how you lie. You look into people’s eyes. They never spot it if you do that. Especially now that everyone is so uncomfortable with intimacy.
Ranya looks away, unable to hold my gaze. Interesting. “I’m sure she’ll be in to visit you – she’s been anxiously awaiting your recovery.” She packs up a few things and leaves me for the night. This is a woman who has done nothing but look after me as a mother would since the moment I got here last year. Am I going mad, thinking she’s hiding something from me?
If I was stronger, I’d get the hell out of this place. I can’t even retreat to sleep and even if I could, I’m too terrified of my dreams.
Sometime during the night a figure moves in the doorway.
“Only me, lover boy.” Shadow moves into the room and for the first time I manage a faint smile. The ghost of a smile.
“If it isn’t my torturer.”
He stops by my bed and shakes my hand. I see the faint curve of his lips, which means he must be extremely happy to see me. “Thought you’d got yourself killed, boy.”
“Nah. Not yet.”
He sits in a chair and we share a moment of silence.
“Anything to report here?” I haven’t asked anyone else because I trust them all, of course, but Shadow is the only one I trust.
“June and Grill died. Hunting.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I don’t even know who they were, really.
“And there’s the new girl.” I look at his face in the dark. Lines of it are illuminated from the window. He is expressionless, as usual. “She yours?”
I feel a rupture of grief. “No. Mine’s dead.”
Shadow sits quietly for a long time, and I try not to cry for every second that passes. I haven’t cried yet. And I don’t intend to. It would be like admitting the truth to my heart.
“I’m going back to the city,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“I need to know where they buried her. I need to say goodbye.”
His head lowers a little, then he nods. “I’ll go with you.”
The tears build in my throat. Shadow doesn’t go to the city, ever. “Thank you.”
He meets my eyes, and there’s something rawer in him than I’ve ever seen in a human. “I left my wife and child to die. I understand, son.”
“How do you do it, then?”
He knows what I mean: all of it. Everything. Anything. Shadow sighs heavily. Shakes his head with a weariness I always saw in him but never recognized for what it was: grief. “I don’t know, kid. You just do.”
*
January 10th, 2066
Josephine
I am hiding in my room, lying on my bed, reliving the absolute mortification of my relationship with Luke. Now that he is alive, I no longer fear for his safety and am instead filled with a bewildering, overwhelming rage. I relive with perfect clarity all the moments we spent together, all the words he said to me, and as I do I see it all so differently. I see the lies. The deception, the falseness of it. How fucking imbecilic I was. How cruel his secrets were. I lie here and my skin burns with embarrassment as I think of the kisses and touches, of the incredible intimacies we shared and the way he used to make love to me. I am humiliated by my own blind, limitless love, and by my inability to see the truth.
Ranya comes a-knocking and Pace brings the doctor to my bedroom. I stare at her blankly. “Yes?”
“Luke’s awake,” she says with a breath of such joy.
“And?” What is wrong with you? I ask myself. You are the coldest monster on this planet.
She falters, confused. “Don’t you want to come and see him?”
“No. Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you’ve been asking after him for the last four months.”
“Well, now he’s awake, it’s all good. I don’t actually know him.”
Ranya and Pace both stare at me.
“Just fuck off, alright?” I snap. I can feel a dark shadow taking root in my heart. I want to scream. Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me.
But they keep looking at me.
“What are you so angry about?” Ranya asks me suddenly.
I sit up. Is she serious?
“Life’s beautiful,” she declares.
My mouth falls open. I feel a deep, resounding incredulity fill me. “Oh my god. You unbelievably naïve idiot,” I tell her, looking into her chocolate eyes. “Go and live in the city and then tell me life’s beautiful. Life is struggle.”
“You’re not in the city. You’re here, and you’re free.”
“I’m not free,” I utter. “Not from anything that matters. Get out of my room.”
They leave, and I realize it is the first time I have ever been cruel of my own volition. I thought the blood moon had rid herself of me, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps she left a little something in my heart, a fragment of her ugliness.
Or perhaps I was a monster all along, even before the moon.
*
January 11th,2066
Luke
For two days I’ve drifted in and out of sleep, torn to shreds by nightmares. I don’t know how to make it stop, but I know enough’s enough. Pulling the drip out
of my arm, I search through the infirmary for some clothes and pull them on. Then I walk out into the street.
In my blood there is something different. Something darker. It’s the virus, I know. But I am barely rational enough to be aware of that. Instead I am full of fury. It feels unnatural, but it also feels completely welcome, like an old lover I’ve had to ignore for years. It fills me up, seductive and sinister.
Will appears in the dark. “Luke! What are you – ?”
I walk past him. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. I just want to destroy something.
I find myself at the Den. Shadow sees me first, as he is perched near the door. He looks me up and down. It seems like I should be in bed. Seems like I should be weak, but the truth is I’m not. I feel strong. I don’t know where I’m trying to get to but I know I’ll inflict a world of pain on anyone who stands in my way.
Shadow recognizes this in me, for he says, “Take a breath. Go home.”
“Home?” I let out a choked laugh. “Home.”
“It’s alright, son,” he tells me, reaching for my arm, but I shove him away and stride into the hall.
I can smell things. And they’re causing colors and shapes and textures to burst to life in my head. Every smell and every sound makes a color in my mind and it’s blindly disorienting.
A man approaches but I can barely see his face. I slam him in the chest and he falls backwards, out of my path. Chaos is unfolding around me; I can feel it. The unrest and the fear. The fear. I can smell the fear.
I swallow, moving forward until –
Everything stops. Everything inside me, everything around me, everything in the entire universe. My heart is pounding shuddering uncertain wild. It is made of Anthony’s feathered wings it is aching and impossible and desperately yearning because –
“Luke,” a voice says.
*
Raven
I am watching as it happens, and it’s as if the whole thing is in slow motion. Quinn’s hand is on my knee, the smell of rich wine is in my nose, the sound of strumming guitars in my ears. I am aware of all of this as Luke strides into the hall. A thrill finds me to see him awake and on his feet. But it’s clear all too quickly that he is taken by some kind of fever, for he sends Blue flying from his feet with a single blow.