Blood Like Poison (36 page)

She laughed, albeit a bit nervously, and said, “You can’t kill him, Bo.  If you do, you’ll never know who was behind your father’s death.”

I saw Bo stiffen as his stalking motion stilled.  He neither moved nor made a single sound.

“Now, it’s time to join him,” Lars said.

His words poured through me like gasoline, turning the low-burning embers of anger into a raging wild fire of fury.

Breathing heavily and moving numbly, I opened the car door and stepped out.  In that same instant, Lars put his foot on the rear bumper. 

“Here, darling,” he called to Trinity. 

With a quick flick of his leg, the car was ripped away from me as Lars sent Devon and Savannah careening down the road toward Trinity. 

I looked to my right and watched it happen in slow motion.  The smoke of burning tires curled into the air.  The acrid stench of it stung my nostrils.  I was frantically trying to think of how I could help my friends and help Bo at the same time.  When Lars moved, my attention shifted completely back to him and a choice was made.  I couldn’t leave Bo.

He took one step toward me and Bo sprang into action.  With a crazed bellow that pierced the night like a sword, Bo launched himself at Lars.

They tumbled into the grass along the side of the road, grappling and struggling for the upper hand.  I watched, breathless and terrified, as they bit and tore at each other.  I heard the snap and crunch of bones breaking, the coarse crackle of clothes tearing.  But it wasn’t until I heard Bo cry out in pain that I felt the agony begin inside my own body.

The knives sliced through my skin, tearing across my face and chest.  They made their way down my arms, freeing the fury inside me, letting it pour out to consume the object of my wrath.

The next tortured moan that I heard was not Bo’s; it came from Lars.  Satisfaction washed through me, but it did nothing to dampen the flames of my rage.  It simply propelled me forward, leading me to the two bodies that wrestled in the darkness. 

I concentrated on the form of Lars and I let the burn and the pain of my fear for Bo take hold.  I used it, directed it, focused it.  On Lars.  It flowed through me, out of me, around me until every nerve, every inch of skin, every fiber of muscle was saturated with it. 

I couldn’t contain the cry.  It tore through me and burst out of my throat with a life of its own.  I closed my eyes to it, gave my soul to it, until I heard an answering cry from Lars.

I felt the shift in power.  I felt the surge as Bo overtook him.  When I opened my eyes, Bo had pinned Lars to the ground and, with a howl of victory, he bore his teeth and drilled them into the soft tissue of Lars’s neck.

Triumph—Bo’s, mine, ours—flooded me, eclipsing everything else.  It was heady, intoxicating, all-encompassing.  It washed over me, wave after delicious wave, until it hit me with a blast of weakness that sent me staggering to the ground.

It was then that I realized what was happening.  Bo was draining Lars.  And it was killing him.

“Bo, stop!”  My breath was not enough to make much sound. 

Bo continued.

I felt the poison, the death of it, creeping through my chest as if I’d taken it in as well.  I struggled to my knees, desperate to make my way to Bo. 

“Bo, please!”

On all fours, I put one shaky limb in front of the other, never taking my eyes off Bo.  I couldn’t move fast enough to get to him, the frailty was so debilitating.  I felt it sinking further and further into my body and I knew Bo didn’t have long. 

“Bo,” I panted, desperate to reach him.

My heart raced frantically until I saw Bo slump onto Lars’s chest and then roll lifelessly onto his side.  Terror ripped a gaping hole in my heart.

“Bo,” I cried, dragging my knees through the gravel.

I felt the cool air dry the tears that were streaming down my face, but they were too fast, too many.  They dripped from my chin, hitting the ground in a delicate patter, as I pushed myself toward Bo.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear someone calling Bo’s name over and over and over.  It was my own voice, but it was hard to hear over the frenzied pounding of my heart as it drummed in my ears.

When I reached Bo, I gently pushed him onto his back.  Every inch of visible skin was that unhealthy greenish black and it was all cracked like the Nevada desert.  His mouth and his shirt were stained with blood the color of tar.  I didn’t need to be told that it was the poisonous, memory-rich blood that Bo had sought for so long.  I didn’t need to be told the power of it.  And the devastation.  I’d felt it.

As he looked up at me, I could see that the blackness of it even invaded the whites of his eyes.  But still, when he looked at me with those liquid brown orbs, my heart melted. 

Bo coughed and drops of inky blood spewed from his mouth, dotting his face like paint spatter.

I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat.  Even if I could’ve, my chest was so tight, I doubted air could flow in and out.

Bo was dying and my heart was breaking over and over again.  As I watched him, each jagged piece splintered into tinier pieces until I felt like there was nothing left in my chest but sand.

“I know who did it,” he breathed feebly.

Tears fell from my cheeks in a steady stream, washing Bo’s face clean, one drop at a time.  With trembling fingers, I lifted my hand to wipe at his mouth and chin, tenderly ridding it of all evidence of the price he’d paid for knowledge, for revenge, for justice.

“Tell Lucius ‘Heather’,” he wheezed, gasping for enough air to fill his deteriorating lungs.

I felt the sob bubble up in my throat before it erupted, spilling out in one syllable.  “Bo,” I cried.

Though he was obviously fighting for his breath, he inhaled as deeply as he could and spoke.

“I’ve never loved anyone more.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that this was all a dream, that when I opened them again, I’d be in my bedroom and Bo would be beside me.  Alive.

“Bo, please,” I wept.

“Thank you,” he panted. 

My eyes opened at the touch of his cool fingers to my lips and then his arm fell back to his chest with a hollow thud.

“Bo!”  I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t move.  “Bo!”  I tapped my fingers against his cheek, but still got no response. 

I looked into his face, the face that had haunted my dreams, the face that was etched onto my heart.  I searched his dark eyes, but they were empty.  They stared blankly past me, looking into a world that I couldn’t see.

“Bo, don’t go,” I cried.  “Please don’t leave me.”

As I watched, his form began to fade.  As his body’s last efforts to fight metabolized the remainder of the blood, I lost sight of him.  Though I could still feel the ever-cooling shape beneath my hands, I could no longer see Bo.  He disappeared right before my eyes.

“Bo!”  I wailed, the last bits of my heart exploding in a spray of emotional shrapnel that left me dead and lifeless inside.    

The crunch of metal drew my attention away from Bo and I remembered that my friends were stranded down the road, at the mercy of Trinity.  But I didn’t want to leave Bo.  Not yet.  I couldn’t bear to let him go.

More noises reached my ears, the sounds of struggling, scuffling.  What if there was still time to help them?  How could I not at least try? 

Guilt, sharp and poignant, seared my soul.  I was so torn.  I wanted nothing more to stay with Bo, but deep down, I knew that the only right thing to do was to help the living.  They still had a chance for happiness, even if I did not.

I leapt to my feet and ran as fast as my stiff muscles would carry me.  As I reached the car, I saw that the doors had been ripped off, the windshield was broken and the hood was up, the radiator steaming and hissing in the dying glow of the headlights.

I heard a faint rustling and I saw a flash of red in the forest.  I raced forward to Savannah.  She was jerking spasmodically where she lay at the base of a tree.  There was a dark stain on the bark, blood that ran down to where she was crumpled on the ground.  The right side of her face was covered in it and her hair was wet with it.

“Savannah?” 

There was no response; she just continued to twitch.  She was making a gurgling sound in the back of her throat that made me nauseous.  Whatever Trinity had done to her, I knew Savannah was in trouble.

Pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I dialed 911.  When I’d reported the accident to the operator and hung up, I cradled Savannah’s head in my lap and listened for sounds of Trinity or Devon.  After a few minutes, when still I had not heard the sounds of other people, I realized that I was alone in the night.  It was absolutely silent but for the suffering of Savannah and the tick of the car’s engine where it was slowly dying on the road behind me.

********

 Three numb days later, I lay in my bed, reliving the nightmare of the previous seventy-some hours. 

After the ambulances had come and one of them had taken Savannah away, one of the responding policemen attempted to question me as an EMT checked me out.  To his questions, I said nothing.  There was nothing to say. 

Another officer tried to get through to me, but the pain I was feeling was too consuming to allow my brain enough function to manufacture a believable story, so still I said nothing. 

I heard the word “catatonic” bandied about in hushed whispers, probably because all I could manage during the entire ordeal were bouts of staring off into the distance alternating with crying jags where I sobbed so violently my ribs ached. 

On the ride home, that’s what I did the most of—cry.  After that, for hours and hours each day and all through every sleepless night, I cried.  I mourned a loss so great, I wasn’t sure I could survive it, didn’t think I wanted to.  I prayed many times for death, not wanting to see another sunrise and face another day without Bo in it.  But each day, despite my pleas for relief, dawn came and I got up and went about pretending it was business as usual, that I was whole and human.  Only I wasn’t.  Even now, I’m not sure what I am.  Half dead.  Half human.  Nothing complete, and I never would be again.

Late the night Bo died, I ventured to see Lucius, to carry out Bo’s last wishes and deliver the message “Heather.”  When Lucius answered the door, I knew by the look on his face that he knew, that I need not explain that Bo was gone.  Whether it was the gaping hole in my heart that gave it away, or something less subtle like my puffy red eyes and absolute silence, I don’t know.  But he knew.

After I gave him the message, I turned and left.  I could tell he wanted to talk, to help me, to comfort me, but I had no interest in anything but the grief that was tearing me apart.  There would be no solace, no relief for me.  Though my physical life continued, my inner life had been extinguished.  It had disappeared with Bo. 

Besides, I had to conserve what little spark I had left in me.  There was one more stop I had to make before I could collapse in the blessed peace and solitude of my bedroom—Bo’s house. 

Barely able to get the words out, I told Denise what had happened as best I could.  Her grief seemed nearly a match of my own, but where I had the regret of not having had enough time with Bo, she seemed to have an ocean of regrets of another sort.  Though I was curious about them, I was glad that she didn’t want to talk about it. I doubted I could’ve listened.  It was all I could do to be in the house, where I smelled Bo as if he still lived there, as if he still lived anywhere.  As if he still lived at all.