Death Springs Eternal: The Rift Book III (50 page)

“You’re not real,” she whispered.

Josh shook his head as he approached. He knelt before her and took her hands in his. The knife she’d planned on using to kill her tormentor tumbled out of her grasp and clanked on the floor. Leaning forward, Josh kissed the back of her hand. He was soaked and smelled as if he hadn’t showered for a week, but she didn’t care. In that instant, even his stink was pleasurable.

Josh helped her stand and held her at arm’s length, his dark, soulful eyes looking her over as if he was seeing her for the first time. He coughed quietly into his fist, then wiped the moisture from his cheeks. She couldn’t look anywhere but directly at him.

“You look thinner,” he said as a smile came over him.

She tried her best to hold in her sorrow. “It was a girl,” she replied, choking back tears.

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. I had some people take her away. Good people.”

“You know where they went?”

She shook her head, and the tears did come this time.

Josh wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body against his. His fingers caressed her hair while he spoke softly into her ear. “It’s okay. It is. You’re safe now, that’s what matters. We’ll find her. I promise. We’ll all be together, and it’ll be wonderful.”

Kyra dug her face into his neck, letting his wet skin sop up her tears. His words were comforting, even if it still felt like she was dreaming. “I was gonna kill him for what he did,” she muttered, then gave him a peck on the cheek and opened her eyes.

What she saw stole her breath away.

*
 
 
*
  
*

A millisecond after seeing the kid with the straggly hair, Tom knew he was the one. The space around the kid glowed, as if there was a candle inside him, burning through his pores. The kid gazed at the red-haired woman, his lover, and never before had Tom seen such innocence, such passion, such adoration. It was so intense it saturated the air, warming his flesh.

It is him!
the voice in his head bellowed.
It is him! He is here!

Tom pressed his palms to his temples, trying to fight the pain. The voice was so loud, so commanding.

Shut up
, he replied.

The voice raged again, telling him to move, to grab the kid before something unfortunate happened, but Tom resisted. He thought of Allison, sitting in the other room in her vegetative state; of Shelly, who hadn’t looked at him with the same loving adoration since his master entered his life; of Corky, Luis, Stan, Hector, Dennis, Larry, Horace, and Doug, the friends he’d betrayed to save his own hide. For the first time since his early days at the New York DOT, he felt righteous. It was a potent feeling.

I’ve been that way my whole life
, his mind declared.
Selling out for what’s next, for what I can gain. What is there to gain now? The world is dead. There is no power left to obtain. I won’t help you.

Is that your final decision?

Yes.

So be it. You have assisted me enough, already.

Pain was a scourge that forced Tom to stumble. His heart felt like it would explode. His consciousness dwindled as fire coursed through his veins, consuming him. He balled his fists, squeezed his eyes shut, and offered up his belligerent opposition.

FUCK YOU!

*
  
*
  
*

Bathgate ground his teeth together. Anger overcame him. He heard everything—the proclamations of love, the news the child was alive, his love’s words that she wanted to kill him. He felt suddenly dizzy and braced himself against the door frame. This woman was supposed to be his destiny…and she would betray him again? But no, it wasn’t her. It was the boy. He was poisoning her mind, filling her head with lies and rhetoric. It was the only answer he could come to, the only way he could explain her resistance to him the previous night.

He glanced at Steinberg, saw the man shaking like a jackhammer, his tongue poking out and foam vomiting from his lips. Bathgate flared his nostrils, steeled his nerves, entered the room, pulled out his gun and lifted it.

He pointed the business end at the back of the kid’s head.

He pulled the trigger.

*
  
*
  
*

As she watched the man across from her fall into a convulsive fit, followed by the shorter guy with the head of whitish hair stepping through the doorway, Marcy yanked her hand from her captor’s grasp. She shook the blood back into it and rushed ahead of him, skidding to a stop inside the room. There was something wrong here—very wrong. That strange presence, the presence of her high school boyfriend, filled her head.

And then she saw him, his back to her, standing before a beautiful older woman. She watched the short man lift his weapon. She felt Cody grab at her arms. She felt the breath of the convulsing man on her neck.

She felt everything.

The short man’s finger pressed down on the trigger in slow motion, and without thinking Marcy reached out with her mind, bellowing as loud as she could to the boy she used to know, the boy who was a man now, who’d somehow ended up in the same place as she at the end of the world. The order discharged from her, moving faster than the speed of light, crossing the distance between them in an instant. She sensed it pierce the protective membrane of his mind.

And then the shit hit the fan.

*
  
*
  
*

GETDOWNGETDOWNGETDOWNGETDOWNGETDOWN!

The words pummeled Josh’s brain, sending him into a wild spasm. Kyra’s eyes widened, then her image shimmered before him. He couldn’t control his body any longer. Just as a loud detonation went off behind him, he crumpled into a ball, hands over his head, and hit the floor.

*
  
*
  
*

Kyra’s hands held nothing but air.

She watched Josh fall at her feet, holding his head and screaming. Her ears echoed as if someone set off a firecracker, and she glanced up to see the general standing in the doorway, a look of shocked disbelief on his hardened mug. A puff of black smoke drifted from the barrel of his pistol.

Everything moved as if time had stopped.

The bullet traveled slowly through space, a pinprick of metal spinning its way toward her.

She imagined her life, again that scene of her and Josh and their daughter on the beach. He was by her side, sitting in the surf while water rushed over their toes. They were watching a sunset, and her belly was filled with another gift for the world. She felt happiness, contentment, and love.

The illusion dissolved. When realization hit her, she opened her mouth to protest the unfairness of it all. There would be no happy endings for her, no joyous existence in some far-away island paradise, no more children, no husband, no life. She remembered the image Madame Rhodan had shown her, the vision of her in chains at the feet of the man who now stood before her with a smoking gun.
It’s not fair!
she cried.
This isn’t what’s happens! This isn’t how it all en—

*
  
*
  
*

Josh glanced up in time to see Kyra’s head snap back and a geyser of red erupt from the back of her skull. Her body swayed for a moment then plunged over backward. She hit the ground with a thud, bounced twice, and fell still.

His mind went blank. It all felt like a dream. He crawled over to his lover, the mother of his child, his ears still ringing, and nudged her. “Kye,” he whispered. “Kye, wake up.”

But she didn’t wake up. Her unblinking green eyes stared at the ceiling, their light now gone, as an ever-growing pool of blood expanded beneath her. Josh’s head felt like it would explode. A millennia worth of pain, sorrow, and torment permeated his soul, doubling him over, forcing a howl from his throat.

The world seemed to shake as he roared.

*
  
*
  
*

Tom watched the redhead get the back of her head blown off, and then he slid down the wall. His master laughed at him, but despite that a smile crept over his face.

“I win,” he muttered.

His vision wilted, his mind became mush. The last coherent thoughts to go through his head were of his family, of Allison and Shelly, and how they would be much better off without him…

*
  
*
  
*

Fury grew inside the general, rising through his gullet and into his brain like magma in a volcano. He stared at his fallen lover, at the blood-smeared wall behind her. He looked to his right and saw Steinberg, slumped against the wall, tongue hanging out, not breathing. He looked to his left and saw Sergeant Jackson and a strange, tall woman dressed like she should be working at some cheap strip club. Questions rambled through his mind—what had gone wrong, why the kid had ducked, why did Steinberg suddenly have a heart attack, why in the world did Jackson bring a hooker with him—but he didn’t bother searching for the answers.

None of them mattered.

The woman of his dreams was dead.

In a fit of rage, he flipped the pistol in his hand until he held the barrel—it was still hot—and charged. The kid never looked up from the dead woman, even when Bathgate screamed and pistol-whipped him in the back of his head. The young man collapsed, sprawling out over his lover’s corpse. Bathgate raised his hand, prepared to strike him again, but paused mid-stroke.

He stood there, frozen, and stared at the kid. He didn’t just want him dead. He wanted him to
suffer.

“Sergeant,” he growled. “Get the fuck over here.”

Jackson
appeared at his side, still dragging the girl behind him. Tears streamed from under the black mask she wore.

“Yes, sir?” said Cody.

Bathgate nodded to the prone kid and dead woman. “Where is the rest of their troupe?” he asked.

“Um, I’m not sure. Pitts was the one who checked them in. He kno—”

“Fuck Pitts. I killed him this morning. And I asked
you
the goddamn question, so answer it.”

Jackson
cleared his throat and tugged on his collar. “Well, I know for sure the chicks he was with were in the auction, and I think the kids were sent to Morales’s girls for care.”

“Good. Get some men, gather them all up, then meet me at the hole.”

“The hole?”

“Yes, the fucking hole.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Also, put an end to the stupid bullshit you have going on out there. This isn’t a goddamn kegger. It’s serious.” He pointed at Steinberg’s skeletal frame, and his tone rose. “This guy supposedly worked for a force that rivals ours. What happens if they don’t hear from him and get itchy trigger fingers? What if we’re invaded? Are we ready? No! Especially not with you
acting like a goddamn sadistic teenager!
So get out there, tell everyone to return to their posts, give everyone back whatever they spent, put the girls up in the museum, and
contact the fucking border guards
. Now get the fuck out, and send in Biggs and Constantine
.
”