Dying by the Hour (A Jesse Sullivan Novel Book 2) (37 page)

“Look,” Lane whispers.

Caldwell runs his fingers over something iridescent. Like water, it ripples and glides.

His grin widens as he presses harder, his fingers flattening as if pressed against a hard surface. He can’t penetrate it, whatever it is, and when he realizes this he laughs with pure abandon as if delighted.

“You do not disappoint,” Caldwell says to Jesse.

And if it wasn’t for the wide, maniacal smile on his face, making him look hungry and desperate, this could be mistaken for fatherly praise. “Oh what I could do with your gifts.”

Again Caldwell’s hand slides admiringly over the barrier, the force field, a
magnetic
field. The one I saw between her and the tree during Julia’s replacement. The reason for her 100% record.

Caldwell murmurs to Jesse, speaking low like a lover. “I will have what I want from you. One way or another.”

The hell you will
, I think. And I hope he can hear me.

Jesse doesn’t answer. She is only holding his gaze, but I can see in the blazing firelight of the house behind us.

He moves.

It must be a trick of the light because one minute, Caldwell is standing on the other side of Jesse’s barrier, then the next he is in front of me.
Right
in front of me. I hadn’t even seen him move. Like New York to San Diego in a single bound.

Caldwell reaches to snatch me by the throat or strike me. Brinkley and Lane both come forward to stop him. But everyone stops because the same violet shimmer ripples over me protecting me from Caldwell.

“What the hell?” Brinkley marvels. Lane looks like he wants to say something too, his mouth open but speechless.

Caldwell throws his head back and the maniacal laughter erupting from his throat is enough to make my hairs stand on end. “That is amazing!”

Caldwell tries to push his fingers through the barrier surrounding me, to grab hold of me and though his fingers are dangerously close they don’t reach me. It doesn’t give. Instead his arms quiver, flexing with his efforts.

“You’ve replaced Alice, haven’t you?” He turns his animated expression toward Jesse but she still won’t give him the satisfaction of speaking. “You’ve tainted her field by replacing her and that is how you control it,” he says, running vampire pale fingers over the barrier surrounding me, like trailing his hand through warm water. “Because it is her field I feel, not yours. You’ve just made it solid with your own power.”

“Get away from her,” Jesse says.

Her warm breath rolls like smoke from between her lips and collides with the chilly night. The house is still burning and I’m thinking of the remaining bodies, if we could still run in and save them. But even from this distance I can feel the heat of the flames and my throat burns from the thick smoke.

And then there is Jesse—I can’t leave her.

“There’s always another way,” Caldwell says. And he turns on Lane.

Shots fire.
Jesse screams, a piercing shriek of terror.

Brinkley jumps from the porch and sort of rolls but it isn’t as smooth as it would have been in the movies. Lane just falls off of the porch, shot. As Jesse runs toward Lane, I see the purple wall around me fade.

I’m not shielded from Caldwell anymore though I am dangerously close to him. The second I realize this, I turn and run.

Caldwell catches my movement and grabs the back of my coat and a bit of my hair because of how long it is. He has a death grip on me when gunfire cuts close. It isn’t Caldwell’s gunfire.

I look up to see Nikki and Jeremiah with reinforcements. My relief is immeasurable.

Caldwell takes a step back and is gone. Just gone as if he never stood there at all.

Nikki wraps her arms around me but I don’t let her hold on to me. I’m turning wildly to make sure Caldwell doesn’t reappear.

“Did you get Jesse?” Jeremiah asks. Flames dance in his glasses as he looks at the engulfed house.

“Yes and I think we found the people from your list,” I tell him. “We moved them to the field. You’ll need to order transport. And there are still about ten more inside. They don’t have NRD. But I don’t think you can go back inside for them.”

“I can,” Nikki says.

I grab ahold of her.

She grins and gives me a deep kiss. “I told you you’d like me.”

She disappears before I could say more.

“Did you see Caldwell disappear?” I ask

“New York to San Diego,” he says. He presses his earbud. Whatever he heard makes him run into the house after Nikki. Gunfire erupts in the corn all around us. Caldwell’s men and Jeremiah’s men clash but I don’t see Caldwell. Jesse is still bent over Lane crying, but he isn’t shot in the head. I am about to check on them when I hear crying, the soft, frightened whimpering of a child. And I still don’t know where Caldwell or Gloria or Brinkley is.

I run through the dark to the place where I laid Julia down.

I cut two more rights around tall stalks and I see her in the firelight filtered through the corn. Julia is awake, sitting up with her face on her knees as she rocks herself back and forth. I lift her from the dirt and whisper gently into her ears.

“It’s okay, baby. Hush, hush. You’re okay.”

“Mommy,” she whimpers.

“I’ll take you home to your mommy, okay? Don’t cry.”

She cries harder. “They’re dead!”

“No, they’re just sleeping,” I say, but everyone smells terrible. I am not surprised she would mistake them for dead.

“I want to go home. I want my Mommy.”

“Look at me,” I say. I push hair away from her eyes and see her face is grubby and snotty and little strands are stuck to her wet cheeks. “Do you recognize me?”

She sniffs. “You came to my birthday party.”

I nod and smile. “Yes, I came to your party. So that means I know where you live, right?”

“We had cake.”

“We did, yes.” Part of the house collapses and I worry about Nikki.
Please get out of there
. I hold her tighter and she wraps her little fists around my neck. “So you believe me when I say I can take you home, right?”

Caldwell steps out of the corn in front of us. I turn to run but he is behind me. It’s like a bad dream. A hallucination. I put Julia down on her feet and step in front of her. I don’t want her near him. I push Julia farther away, but she clings to the back of my legs. I’m pinned. Because I can’t move an inch further without touching Caldwell. And I can’t take a step back or I will fall on Julia and knock us both down.

Caldwell strikes me. He hits me hard across the face and the night erupts with stars. I am knocked off my feet and Julia topples to the dirt behind me. She is frantic and her cries reach the hysterical volume that only a child can achieve.

Caldwell turns just for a moment as if to strike her and I grab him. I grab his arms and turn his back toward me. He grabs my shirt in one hand and he punches me. The stars above whirl and slide. The fire coming from the house swirls too, and coupled with the starlight, I feel like I am on a carnival ride, one of the topsy turvy ones that sling you this way then that, reducing the crisp night sky to nothing more than an impressionistic painting, a colorful smear. I close my eyes.

When you protect her, you’re protecting Chaos and Destruction
. Caldwell’s voice slithers through my mind, slimy and cold.
You don’t know what she is, Alice. You have no idea what she will do to this world.

He hits me with a flood of images. So hard so overpowering that I’m sinking to my knees. Only to have him hold me up. Images of Jesse as a devil, feral, destroying the world. An image of a man, a beautiful winged man blowing a horn is superimposed over burning cities, dead bodies. So much death. So much destruction.

“Keep your stock images to yourself,”
I say
.
“I know you’re a liar and I know Jesse would never do those things.”

“You don’t know what she is,” he says. “Or what she’s capable of.”

“She’s not a monster,” I say
. I would never let her become a monster.

“I know.” He grabs my throat with both hands and squeezes.

Jesse

I
t takes an eternity for Lane to fall off of the porch to the ground below. Another eternity before I can force my legs to move toward him. I’m already running before I realize that horrible sound is my own scream. Lane is already on the ground when I reach him. The ground is cold and damp as I inch my hands under his neck and cradle his head.

“No, no, no,” I whine.

Lane coughs blood, spitting it all over his chin. I wipe it away with a thumb but it only smears dark red like war paint across his rough stubble.

Ally screams and I look up to see Caldwell grab her by the back of her coat.

Gabriel, do something!

But he doesn’t have to. People appear out of nowhere, guns blazing and Caldwell runs like the bastard he is.

“Jess,” Lane whispers. He is twining his hand in mine. “I’m so glad you’re okay, baby.”

“Shut up, stupid. You’ve got a
hole
in your throat,” I say. I look at the wound in his neck where the bullet tore open his carotid. So much blood. I press my hands against it but it isn’t working. He’s going to bleed out and die. He’ll die.

He’ll live.

“Shut up!” I yell at Gabriel.

Gunfire erupts around us. Momentarily bursts of light spark in the night as the good guy reinforcements chase Caldwell deeper into the corn. Gabriel shields me, standing between me and the others, wings spread wide. And by proxy he protects Lane from a few stray bullets. The purple shimmering around me, tightening in a warm glow. But there is little point in protecting Lane from bullets now.

I kiss Lane’s cheeks, his forehead. He gurgles and I don’t know if that was supposed to be a laugh or if he is simply choking on his own blood.

“Quit trying to talk,” I tell him.

Ally screams.

My head snaps up and I look through the corn toward the sound. Sparks of gunfire can be seen deep in the corn, in the rows that aren’t illuminated by the burning house. But her scream didn’t come from that direction. It came from the left.

He has her,
Gabriel warns.

Then I hear the hysterical screams of a child. I look down into Lane’s face and press a hand to his cooling forehead. His eyes are so big. So desperate.

“Don’t go,” he says.

He’ll live. She will not.

I kiss his lips and taste sweat and blood.

“Please,” he gurgles. He grabs at me as if to hold me close. “Stay with me.”

“You’ll live,” I tell him. “I promise. You’ll be okay.”
Assuming no one runs over here and cuts off your head or blows out your brains while you’re all vulnerable,
I thought. But I had the good sense not to say this.

I pull my hand from his and he is surprisingly strong considering he must have lost most of his blood at this point.

“Don’t be afraid,” I say over the sound of gunfire. “When you wake up I’ll be there.”

He doesn’t care. He reaches for me anyway, vainly trying to sit up but managing only to lift his head. The wound in his neck opens wider and bleeds more.

The child screams again and I can hear her cries in between the lulls of shouting, gunfire and chaos.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Lane and then I run to find Ally.

I can feel the pulse of her long before I see her. That distant drumming that harmonizes with my own. And I can even feel Julia’s smaller, separate beat. I cut through a row of corn, silken stalks slapping at my cheeks and realize I’m at the edge between the trees and the corn. A figure crouches beneath me. A gun raised and pointing at me before I can even react.

“Go on,” Gloria says.

“But you’ve been shot,” I say. I look at her face, damp with sweat despite the cold air. The wound in her gut bleeds and bleeds. There’s a dead body beside her, face down in the dirt but I can’t really see him in the dark of the trees.

“You’re dying.” And I could sense it.

“Go
on
,” she says. The red of her blood shines like slick oil on the back of her hand and fingers. She points me in the right direction but I stumble into a tree. “Go on or you’ll have to bury her too.”

Don’t let her die
, I command to Gabriel as if he has power over these things.
Don’t you dare let Gloria die.

He says nothing.

The air is heavy with the scent of ash and gunpowder. It’s like the scent of fireworks after all the explosions have ended—but more metallic.

I turn a corner and I see them.

He is choking Ally. Then he hits her in the face twice, her head rocking back.

Julia clings to her legs and screams. He could kill her with any one of his gifts. He could mind fuck her into oblivion but he chooses his fists. Why?
Why
?

Then it occurs to me he could be doing both.