How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (24 page)

Don’t!
Tiffani’s yell stopped me.
Leave her alone.

Her
heart—

It’s
a side effect of the bite sedative,
Tiffani said. I tried to shut
her out.
Stop it, Tough, I opened this connection, it’ll close when I tell
it to.

I
don’t want to hurt her,
I said.
I just want to see her.

You
have to burn Colt’s body so he doesn’t come back as a zombie. He deserves to be
able to move on.

That
was true at least. I tried not to be a pussy, but turning around took a whole
lot more willpower than I thought I had. I swallowed—another reflex, I
guess—and looked down.

The
vamp venom was drying on Colt’s face, even on his eyelashes. Around his mouth
and nose, the bubbles had made little circle patterns. Between Harper’s blanket
and Colt’s Lucky shirt, most of the blood from his arm had soaked up off the
floor.

You
always hear that people look peaceful when they’re dead, but Colt looked like
someone had ripped out the vein in his arm and drowned him in poison. And like
some bitch had been keeping him as her dog before that. He didn’t look
peaceful. He looked exhausted.

I
didn’t want to touch him, but I wanted that fucking collar off. The vamp speed
kicked on. I went into the kitchen, came back with a knife, and started
cutting.

Shit.
The
knife was dull. Why the hell didn’t we have any of those serrated blades? Did
they really cost that much?

“You
could just undo the—”

I
knocked Jax’s hands out of the way and kept sawing.

“Tough,”
Harper said, but she knew better than to touch me.

I
tore through the last eighth-inch of the band and threw the collar across the
room. Where it had been rubbing against his neck, Colt’s skin was darker, hard,
and cracking. I wondered whether I could scrape that off somehow, if that would
even matter.

No,
it wouldn’t, because the next step was shoving a stake through his heart and
setting him on fire so he didn’t come back rotting and soulless and a fucking
zombie like that shit-stinking Tracker.

One
of the TV stand legs was on the floor next to Colt’s shoulder. Splintered, vamp
venom on the bottom, burnt near the middle.

Pick
it up,
I told myself.

I
didn’t move.

Pick
it up!

My
throat closed. I hit him. Then it was like I couldn’t stop, I just kept swinging
and screaming inside my head,
You fucking asshole, why the fuck didn’t you
just get a protector? What’d you have to pull this shit for?

Somebody
had ahold of me. Two somebodies. They dragged me off him. I ducked my head and
tried to make it sound like I was coughing, not bawling like a little bitch,
but crying never sounds like anything else.

“You
got him away from her, Tough,” Harper said. She picked up the TV stand leg.
“You did the hard part. Jax and I can do the rest.”

No
fucking way in hell.
I grabbed the stake away from her. Leaned over
Colt.
He’s my brother.

That’s
when it happened. A concussion wave exploded off his body. Harper screeched. I
slammed back-first into the bottom step. I heard Jax hit the wall.

Colt’s
body rose up like someone was scooping him up off the floor. His head fell
back, mouth open, and his arms and legs hung down. Light shined out of his
skin. And there was this sound. Music—like the very first kind of music that
ever existed, back when there was nothing else to fill up all the empty space
where there wasn’t a universe yet, no instruments and no voices and no light.
It was warm and so clear and perfect and holy. Until I heard it, I didn’t
realize that I’d been listening for it my whole life.

And
that it was so far away I would never, ever get to touch it.

Being
cut off like that hurt so bad that it knocked me back down to my knees. I wiped
my eyes on my forearm, but I ended up having to put my face down on the floor
and cry. I don’t know what about. Yeah, I felt empty and cold and dead, but I
don’t think it was just being lost that got me. Some of it was knowing for sure
that I would never see Sissy or Mom and Dad again. Even Ryder, some. And
realizing that if I had made Colt or Desty, I would’ve dragged them down to
Hell with me.

The
house went quiet. I heard Colt’s body hit the floor.

I
looked up. Harper and Jax were shivering, blinking, trying to adjust to that
music and light being gone.

Colt’s
dark, blue-green Whitney eyes opened wide and he sucked in a breath that
sounded like it scraped his lungs.

Son
of a bitch.
I crawled across the floor threw my arms
around him.

His
heart was beating. His brain was firing. He was alive. And he was shaking like
a guy freezing to death.

“Mikal—”
Then, I think Colt saw me for real, because he said, “Tough?”

Then
he passed out.

Colt

Something
wasn’t right. I couldn’t open my eyes. I used to have nightmares like that,
where I would hear gunfire all around me and Sissy yelling for me to get Tough,
but it was like my eyes were glued shut.

Except
this time everything was quiet, and instead of feeling as if my eyes were glued
shut, it felt like something wasn’t working right in my brain, like the first
time I tried alcohol. That was the night Sissy died, two weeks after my
fifteenth birthday. Ryder had said, “Who came through for you, Sunshine? This
motherfucker right here,” and tossed me the bottle. Between us we drank the
whole thing. The last I remembered, I’d tried to stand up, but no part of me
would move.

That
memory wasn’t right. Ryder and I had gotten shitfaced on Southern Comfort the night
Sissy died and we buried what was left of her by the cabin, but the first time
I ever drank was after that fallen angel—Kevin or something—cut Dad’s head off.

Dammit,
that wasn’t right either.

“Why
don’t you get your lazy ass out of bed,” Ryder griped.

“Shit,
you scared me,” I said.

“Open
your eyes. Kind of makes it harder for people to sneak up on you.”

I
blinked, but it was too bright. Closed my eyes and tried again. When they
adjusted I could see Ryder leaning against the wall, wearing his faded black
Skynyrd t-shirt and carpenter jeans, with a soda bottle for spit in one hand
and the other hand hooked in his back pocket.

“Where’s
Mikal?” I asked.

Ryder
rolled his eyes. “Don’t play dumbass, Colt. That’s Tough’s job.”

Screaming.
Mikal holding a hunting knife. She started at Ryder’s feet and made sure he
stayed alive as long as possible.

“Shit.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I rubbed my face with both hands.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to blow up the foot soldiers’ barracks?
I would’ve helped. I could’ve figured out the way to do it so it counted.”

Ryder
laughed.

“Man,
you’re one cocky son of a bitch,” he said. He spat some tobacco juice into the
soda bottle, scraped what was left off of his lip with the rim, then pointed it
at me. “I paved the way for you, Sunshine. Where’s my thank you?”

That
sounded right. I figured something out because of Ryder, but I couldn’t
remember what it was.

“Come
on, let’s go see if you can piss without Mikal telling you to,” he said,
nodding at the door.

“I
don’t have to.” I looked around. A girl's vanity in the corner. A mirror on the
back of the door. I couldn’t remember what the bedroom at the cabin looked
like, but I knew this couldn’t be it. I nodded at a poster on the wall of a guy
in a trench coat. “Blood City III? Is that a movie?”

Ryder
shrugged.

“I
wouldn't pay to see it,” he said.

Then
the memory of Ryder getting cut to pieces snapped into place. I’d had to gather
up what was left of him by myself because Tough had disappeared as soon as he heard.
I buried Ryder by Sissy. That was when I drank SoCo Hundred Proof until I
couldn’t move, so I stayed the night out by Ryder and Sissy and prayed God
would get Tough lost or killed somewhere far away from Halo. It had been right
after that that I started having trouble sleeping in the cabin’s bedroom. Every
time I’d tried to lay down, the bed felt like a grave.

“You’re
supposed to be dead,” I told Ryder.

“Yeah,”
he said. “Awful lot of that going around.”

The
bedroom door opened. Tough. It took a second before I realized he was at least
five years older than that last memory. And he had a set of fangs.

—the
hell is he talking to?
Tough’s voice. Hearing it echo in my head
locked down walls and slammed cell doors.

No,
no, no, no, no…
I hugged my arms around my stomach, trying not
to feel the straightjacket. The lunatic’s cell. The electroshock was bad
enough, but it was just for obedience training. The lunatic’s cell—I was being
punished.
I’m sorry, Mikal. I’ll be good, I swear. Tell me what I did wrong.
I’ll never do it again. I swear to God I’ll be good, just please let me out.

She
didn’t answer.

“Mikal?”
Nothing. Not even the whisper and burn of her tar-covered wings or that wrecked
laughing. Maybe I’d already been in here too long. Maybe there wasn’t enough of
me left inside my head to punish. “Mikal, please!”

What
the hell?
Tough’s voice again. I tried to shake it out of my brain.

“Don’t
engage. Not real. He’s not talking to me. He’s not real.”

Colt,
did you just hear me? Can you hear me right now?

I
dug my fingers into my sides and pulled my knees up. It wasn’t real. None of
this was real, but the sounds kept battering their way into my head—a radio, a
dog barking, a fan, a car driving by—and I couldn’t try to cover my ears or the
straightjacket would jerk tight on my arms and I’d start panicking and not be
able to stop.

Something
touched my shoulder and I lost it. Fought and kicked and hit a solid body.
Freezing hands clamped down on my wrists.

Stop
it, man, stop! It’s me. It’s Tough. Ouch—shit! If you can hear me, stop fucking
kicking me.

“Tough—he’s
not—Mikal, don’t—”

She’s
gone, Colt. I got you away from her.

The
laugh came up slow and sick like vomit. Tough had taken me away from Mikal.
Sure, why the hell not? And Ryder was back from the dead. Tough put all Ryder’s
pieces back together again, like that egg guy. Maybe later we could go
rehydrate Sissy’s charbroiled skeleton.

“So
that’s what a mental breakdown looks like,” Ryder said. I heard him spit into
his soda bottle. “Quit being such a pussy and get your shit together, Colt.”

“Fuck
you,” I told him.

Fuck
yourself,
Tough said.

“Nice
comeback, Baby Boy,” Ryder said.

Don’t
call me that!

I
rubbed my temples, trying to get the pain in my head to ease up, but they kept
bitching at each other.

“—see
you try to stop me, Baby Boy—”

—ain’t
changed shit. You’re still a dickhole—

“Are
you guys fucking serious right now?” I said.

Fighting
while I was losing it—big surprise. Except Ryder and Tough shouldn’t be able to
fight with each other anymore. I knew there was a reason they shouldn’t…

“Dammit,
it’s gone,” I said.

What
is?
Tough
asked.

I
opened my eyes. I was on the floor in a bedroom I didn’t recognize. Tough was
in front of me, sitting back on his heels.

“You
have fangs,” I said. “Did Mitzi make you?”

Nah,
Mitzi’s long gone,
he said.
Her and Jason took off for
Nashville with my voice.

I
knew that. I think. They stole his voice because Jason was a greedy asshole and
Mitzi was a bitch queen. Tough had probably said something about her hair that
pissed her off.

“How’re
you talking to me?” I asked him.

What’s
the last thing you remember?

Now
there was a question. I just shook my head.

Well,
I killed you,
Tough said.
I wanted to get you away from
Mikal.
Aching holes screamed in my brain where she used to be, but I guess
Tough couldn’t hear them. He kept on talking.
I tried to make you, but I
didn’t have enough time.

“You
killed me?” I asked.

I
did what I had to,
Tough said.
I’m not sorry.

Ryder
laughed. “You wouldn’t be.”

Tough
smiled, flashing those teardrop-shaped fangs again. Other than those, him and
Ryder could’ve almost been twins, down to the splits across their left eyebrows
and the three-day growth of stubble. I touched my jaw. Clean-shaven, just like
Mikal liked it.

Except
Tough had taken me away from her. That hollow shrieking inside my head got
louder. Mikal was gone. My burning angel was gone.

Anyway,
I guess some of the venom must’ve worked,
Tough said.
Since
you can hear me.

Just
barely.

“Hold
on,” I said. “Didn’t you say you killed me? Shouldn’t I be—”

Miracle.
Tough
tried to hold the smile, but it turned into more of a snarl, especially with
the fangs.
You got brought back from the dead.

“You’d
think a man would remember something like that,” Ryder drawled.

“No
shit,” I said.

Tough
laughed. Or he made the facial expression of a person laughing, but there
wasn’t any sound besides the air in his lungs.

Oh,
right—Jason and Mitzi.

That
dumbass sorry excuse for a receiver. How fucking low could you get—stealing
from somebody you were supposed to be protecting? Mom used to say Tough’s voice
sounded like Hank Sr. had had a baby with a fallen angel.

No,
that couldn’t have been right. Tough’s voice hadn’t even changed before Mom
died. And Sissy hated country music. I knew a woman said it, but Mom and Sissy
were the only women I’d ever really talked to besides Mikal.

But
I was sure a woman said it to me. While we were having coffee.

That
was definitely wrong. No one from Halo would have coffee with me—especially not
date coffee—not even girls from my class. People tend to shy away from
religious terrorists who live alone in the woods.

Could
I have made it up?

What’s
the matter?
Tough asked.

“Nothing,”
I said. Just that Mikal was gone and it felt like she’d poured battery acid on
my brain on the way out.

Ryder
looked at me like he knew, but he just spit into his soda bottle.

Fuck
him. Wasn’t he dead, anyway?