“I’m dead. I died and now she is left at the hands of the demon.”
“Yes. That is what happened.” Foy sighed. “But you don’t have to remain this way. If you don’t want to.”
“What do you mean?” Foy’s words didn’t make sense. Dead was dead. On that note, how was Foy with him? Had he imagined this whole thing?
“Your oath. Do you remember it? The one the five of you took the day you joined me?”
He remembered it well. Would never forget it. They’d had years of training and then he’d deemed them worthy to fight evil. Each of them had sliced open their hands with a knife. A blood oath. To protect the innocent, to give their lives for one another.
Suddenly, the figures writhing on the ground were visible to him. He knew all of them as well as he knew himself. Braxton Stewart. Ivan Jones. Roland Robinson. Levi Park. Jonah Zahan.
They suffered. He could see that much. Jonah had fallen to his knees. He rocked back and forth while several nurses rushed to him. He’d been at the hospital with Mindy. Braxton clutched his stomach, his normally stoic features wrenched in pain. Ivan. Roland. Levi. All of them in agony. Because of him?
“What is happening to them, Master?”
“To all of us.” Master Foy held up his hands and Christian could see blood drip from his palms onto the floor. How had he missed that earlier? As if Master could read his mind, which sometimes it seemed he could, he answered him. “You couldn’t see until you were ready.”
“Why are you all suffering?”
“We’re giving you back life, Christian. Your second chance at it by taking a part of all of ours.”
“No.” Christian held out his hand as if he could stop the words. “That’s too much and I don’t want it.”
“This is not your choice. You made an oath. You would do the same for all of them. Would you not?”
“Without a doubt.” He didn’t even have to think before he answered.
“Then it only takes me to say the word and you will be returned.”
“I need to get back to Dodie, Master. I won’t fail again. I misjudged. I got complacent.”
Master shook his head. “We thought him a type two. He is actually a type one. You could not have beaten him alone. It was not for you. But as for Dodie, it is too late.”
Christian swallowed. His throat hurt and he let the tears he fought earlier slip from his eyes. “She’s dead?”
“You would be too late to save her. I must ask you then.” The accent Master sometimes had, the slight European inclinations of his words that came when he was tired snuck out. Christian noted the slip as he did everything else. “Do you wish to come back and fight for us still?”
He couldn’t bear the thought of not being with Dodie. Raw fury made his hands shake. “I want to kill that clown. Slowly.”
“She is not yet dead.” Master seemed to be staring at something in the distance Christian could not see. He hoped it was his girl. “But whether or not she lives, it will be too late for you to make a difference.”
“Are you seeing slipping futures?” Sometimes destinies changed, sometimes they didn’t. Some things were set in stone—others could slip away as if they’d never existed at all.
“Yes. Promise me something, son.”
Christian nodded. “If it is mine to give you.”
“You won’t cause her any more pain. If she lives you won’t cause that woman one more second of anguish. She is an innocent. You swore to protect her.”
He didn’t have to read minds to know what Foy spoke. If he went back, he couldn’t be with her. In his life she would only suffer.
Christian nodded, his heart hardening into a thick ball of ice that even the sunlight wouldn’t melt.
Chapter Twelve
“No. No. No.” Dodie crawled over to Christian. He couldn’t be dead. His neck shouldn’t be bent in that direction, the weird strained unnatural tilt that it had taken when he hit the ground. Blood should not be gushing out of the wound on his stomach.
None of this should be happening. None of it.
The clown laughed hysterically, creating and popping balloons as if he’d found a new favorite game. “You’re next, Dodie. You’re next to play with me. And don’t worry. You’ll see your boyfriend again in hell.”
She placed a shaking hand on Christian’s side. He didn’t move, not even a budge of his eyes. Dodie stroked the side of his face. He still felt warm. That had to mean something. Or maybe it didn’t. Perhaps all it indicated was that Christian would always be gorgeous, even in death.
“Please wake up, my love.” She whispered her words and hearing them aloud told her just how futile the whole thing was. Even if he wasn’t dead, Christian needed medical attention. He wouldn’t be opening his eyes to save her like some kind of movie hero.
He’d told her to run. She raised her head to look at the clown, a tear slipping from her eye.
“Oh.” The clown mock-cried, imitating her. “Are you sad that the Chaser died? I’m so sorry for you.”
His words fueled her actions. She wasn’t going to run, despite that being Christian’s request. If she ran, BoBo the demented would follow her. She wrote video games for a living. The ending always required a choice. Who did the hero or heroine want to be?
Well, she wanted, more than anything else, to be the heroine who saved the day. It might be too late for that but at least she could be brave. Christian had been struck down to keep her from being attacked by bats that had disappeared as soon as he’d been hurt. He hadn’t flinched from danger.
Neither would she.
Dodie darted to her feet. She backed up as if she intended to make for the door.
The clown clapped. “Oh yes. Run, Dodie. Run. Let’s see how long you think you can stay away from a demon.”
She swung the door forward, hitting him with it. He staggered backward. “What was that Christian was saying earlier about you taking a body? You have to live with it? Well, too bad you picked the one you did. It has to be hard to get around.”
Anger, not fear, propelled her forward. She stormed right by his claws to the other side of the room. Let him try to scratch at her. She’d cut them off one at a time.
“Do you know what I realized, BoBo? You’re really kind of a sad fear. You took something that was made for children. A clown. They come to birthday parties and entertain. They create balloon creatures and make people laugh. And you turned it into something we all have to find creepy now.” She shook her head. “Well, you know what? I’m not afraid.”
She turned her back on BoBo and strode for the sword. It lay right where she had dropped it. Bending over, she picked it up and held it tightly in both hands as Christian had showed her.
Dodie might have gone over some kind of deep end but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could do what would be required of her. Mindy had explained it yet she hadn’t understood. There came a point when you chose. Would you be a victim? Would you spend the rest of your life afraid? Or could you simply say no more? “I’m done with you.”
“You think you can take me, little girl? I have lived eons. I have always been. I…”
Whatever he would have said she cut off with one swift stroke of Christian’s sword. She barely felt it when the blade touched the bone of the demon’s neck. In fact, everything seemed to slow down. She knew the expression to be cliché but that didn’t make it any less true.
Even though she was the one who wielded the sword, who took the creature’s head, who watched as the evil left the demon’s eyes, it wasn’t until she stood staring down at the chopped-off head with its eyes still open, staring unseeing up at her, that she even realized she’d killed it.
Her hands shook and she dropped the sword. She’d done what she had to do and she could not throw up about it until she saw to Christian.
“We are going to have a happy ending, damn it.” She rushed to the phone and dialed 9-1-1. “I need an ambulance,” she told the operator. “I need one right now.”
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* * * * *
The minutes, which both felt like hours and flew by too fast, passed and she paced in front of a surgical room in Seton South West. “This is where it started, really.”
It didn’t bother her in the least that she spoke to herself. She couldn’t find Mindy and she’d never asked which hospital her friend had been brought to. As she didn’t appear to be registered here it must have been somewhere else.
Holding Christian’s phone in her hand, she tried Jonah again. It rang and rang. No voice mail picking up. Dodie bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted blood. Why wouldn’t someone come out and talk to her? She’d lied to the doctors and claimed to be his fiancé, thus avoiding the problem with her not being family.
Christian didn’t have any family and if Jonah couldn’t be reached she didn’t know anyone else to talk to about this.
“Ma’am.” A gray-haired doctor with worry lines on his face wearing green scrubs beneath his white lab coat spoke to her. His nametag said his name was Evan Bobster. He might have told her that before he went in to work on Christian but she had no idea. Her brain didn’t want to hold any information. Not until she heard the words that Christian was going to make it.
“We’re so sorry. There was just too much damage. Between the spinal cord injury and the internal bleeding, by the time he got here…it was beyond us.”
Her eyes shed the tears they’d held back and she doubled over in pain. Grief hurt. She’d forgotten from so many years ago but the sensation came rushing back to her. No one discussed it, no brought it up but grief didn’t cause just emotional upheaval. At least in her, it had a physical side as well.
“Is there someone we can call for you?”
“No.” She answered truthfully, trying to force herself to stand up. There was literally no one they could call for her. Her best friend was hospitalized and her boyfriend dead. Never in her life had she imagined the feeling of loneliness that wanted to take out her knees.
How could the world continue spinning without Christian in it?
She still had something to do before she could fall apart. “I’ll get myself home. Can I see him first? Please.”
One last glance at his beloved face before she would never set eyes on him again. The doctor led her forward into the room where Christian’s body lay stiff and rigid. He nodded to her and left. A light blanket covered him from the abdomen down. They must be trying to hide his knife wound. They really need not have bothered. She’d seen it up close and personal.
The image would be lodged in her brain forever.
She walked to him slowly. The words she said now would stay with her too, and it seemed weird to know that before she’d even uttered them. But then every single second of this gave the impression of being surreal. The reality of it would come later.
Never hearing his voice, never telling him a story, never even bumping into him in the hall when she hadn’t expected to see him. Never knowing what Christian would have been like as a karate school owner instead of a dancer at Brass. Never knowing what it would have been like to have been bored watching television with him at eight o’clock at night. Never making up from an argument…
“I didn’t run away and I’m not sorry. I killed him. He won’t come after anyone else.” She knew he’d want to know that. Maybe he did already wherever he was. She continued her conversation as if he could hear her inner thoughts. “I mean who deserves heaven more than you? But what do I know? I don’t even have the slightest idea how this works. You said some things just are. That’s going to have to be enough somehow.”
She wiped away her tears, which flowed freely down her cheeks. “Only it’s not, Christian. You were not supposed to die. I can’t believe this is how our story ended. But listen, sweetheart. Don’t worry now. Whatever you’re doing, you earned it and I don’t want you to be thinking about stuff here. Okay? I love you. And I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to be glad I got this little amount of time with you.”
His hand jerked and she gasped. “Christian?”
Had she imagined it? No. He had moved. She jumped from her seat and rushed out into the hall. Her breath game in short gasps. “Someone help me. He’s moving.”
Two of the nurses looked at each other for a second before one of them walked slowly to her. “The doctor declared him dead. He’s not moving. Maybe a residual twitch but…”
She grabbed the woman’s arm, yanking hard. After the night she’d had, there was no was no way on heaven and earth this woman wouldn’t come with her and at least look at Christian.
“Come with me. Please. If I’m wrong then I’m wrong. Okay? But I’m telling you, he moved.”
She tugged the woman into the room and gasped. For a second she couldn’t believe what she saw. Christian’s body was gone.
The nurse cried out. “Where did he go?”
That was exactly what Dodie wanted to know.
* * * * *
Christian came to slowly. His head pounded as if he’d had a bender the night before he hoped never to repeat. “Dodie.” He called for his girl. Surely she would help him.
“No, tiger. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.” Jonah’s voice filled whatever space Christian resided in.
He managed to unglue his eyelids and look around. Jonah drove a two-seater car and they were speeding down some highway.
“Where are we?” His throat felt dry and he reached out to grab an unopened can of a generic soda that looked as if it might be some kind of cola. Not the healthiest option, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Somewhere in Oklahoma heading north. At some point I’ll stop and buy us a map. For now the key seemed to be get away. Stealing you out of the hospital unseen wasn’t the easiest thing on the planet to do.”
“You stole me from a hospital?” He sat up straighter and groaned from the effort. “Why did you do that? Where is Dodie?” Was she okay? His head felt…foggy, unclear, as if he didn’t have total mastery over it at that moment.
“How much do you remember?” Jonah looked at him sideways.
“Nothing, I guess. How about you fill me in?”
Jonah drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Well, you went and got yourself killed, hot-shot. You took god knows how much time off my life and the rest of the guys—not that I resent that, mind you, I just want you to have the full picture. Then I had to leave the woman I’m probably in love with, even though it’s dumb to be so, in the hospital because Foy said you wanted to be gotten away before Dodie knew you were back.”
The whole debacle came rushing back. Christian’s stomach turned with the onslaught of the memories and he set down the cola before he threw it up. Yes, he’d died because he’d been stupid and not as prepared as he should have been, despite the Master telling him that it had turned out to be a type one demon. He’d caused Dodie anguish and he’d sworn not to do that anymore.
So he’d left.
He closed his eyes. “Jonah, we have to send someone down there. BoBo can’t be left to run amok in the city. He can’t be left to come after Dodie unchecked. I love her. I can’t be with her but I need her safe.”
“She’s safe. Well, as safe as anyone is ever.” Jonah sighed. “She took out the clown herself. Did you teach her to use a sword? One cut and everything.”
“Briefly.” He smiled. His girl was amazing and it didn’t shock him one bit that she’d done it. Dodie could do anything.
And he could never see her again. She needed a better life than the one she would have if she stayed anywhere near him. He only brought death wherever he went.
* * * * *
He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked….well, like a man who had been dead twenty-four hours earlier. Jonah snored down the hall from him. He could hear his familiar sounds and it brought him back to their childhood living in Foy’s house. How had he ended up back here again?
For a brief moment, he’d had it all. The karate school was going to happen and Dodie had been his. The
job he wanted, the girl he’d dreamt about. Then BoBo. But he couldn’t blame the demon. There would always be evil. He’d proven himself incapable of handling what he should have been able to do in his sleep.
This left him only one choice. He had to retrain, had to figure out how to be better than he’d been so no one who had the misfortune to meet him would have to be endangered.
Christian pulled out an electric razor. The first thing he had to do was start over. From the roots out.
His hair had to go.
* * * * *
“That’s good,” Foy called out to the class filled with black belts. “Again.”
He kicked the bag. Hard. His ankle hurt and he ignored the pain. If he wanted to get better he had to work through the discomfort.
Foy raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word. That had been his standard with Christian for over a month. Watch and not comment. Foy only spoke when it was necessary and evidently he didn’t see Christian’s current status as warranting vocalization. That was fine. He kicked the bag again. There were worse things in life than days in silence.
Jonah spoke to him at night. They’d even gotten into a slight argument the night before about a baseball game. He pushed the thought away. Christian couldn’t care less about baseball. It had been something to get worked up about.
“I’d like to see Master Foy.” The voice rang out into the studio and Christian missed his kick, face-planting down onto the mat. He knew that voice; he’d know it anywhere. Dodie Chase. What was she doing here?
He turned toward the wall. The black belt room stayed away from view. No one could see them in here. Yet even though it was down the hall, he could hear her as if she stood in the room with them.
Foy walked over to him and stared down. “Should I go and speak with her?”
“I suppose that’s up to you.” It hurt to utter the words. “I’ve done what I promised to do. I’m not causing her any more pain.”