She looked down. Blood…there was so much blood she almost believed she’d been baptized in it. This much blood usually meant death.
She looked to her left and Armand was there, pressing his T-shirt into Lynx’s chest. It had been Lynx’s body covering hers, making it hard to breathe. He’d launched himself into her as Delilah fired. Now he was on his back, bleeding from his chest and his thigh. Stormy bled from her side, that was where the pain flared the most intensely, but now that she was conscious, she also felt a sharp sting in her left shoulder.
All the blood wasn’t from one person. That made her hopeful, but Lynx wasn’t moving, wasn’t responding to any of Armand’s administrations.
“I’m okay, Lucas, I’m okay,” Stormy said, trying to sit up. He kissed her hard, and she tasted his terror, breathed in his relief.
“Do itnow,Lucas!” Mama shouted from the cell phone beside Stormy’s knee and Lucas got up and ran out of the room. The call she’d made to Mama before Delilah’s arrival hadn’t disconnected. She must have heard everything.
Stormy shifted closer to Lynx. His face looked dazed and she wondered if he’d also hit his head. She smoothed the damp hair from his brow and prayed, attempting to ignore the wound in his chest oozing blood as if forced up from an overflowing well. Lynx’s skin was sallow, his breathing barely discernible. She reached out and gripped his hand to anchor him to this life even as his eyes closed.
“Please don’t go. Please, Lynx…” She sobbed and held tighter, then nodded. “I know it hurts, I know you want to drift away, but hold on to the pain, embrace it, because that’s life. Open yourself to all the pain,” she begged, held him tighter, gritting her teeth to stem the desire to scream, to find the right words that would hold back death.
“Naw now chi—” Armand said with soft rebuke.
She knew her words bordered on cruel and selfish—sadistic, even—but life lived in Lynx’s pain and she had to believe he wanted to live, goddamn it. “Don’t let go of the pain, Lynx, let it fill you.”
Lucas rushed back into the room, and she scuttled out of the way as he knelt across from Armand. He nodded, and Armand removed the soaked T-shirt from the wound. Lucas packed the wound, then turned Lynx over, stuffing more gauze inside the hole there.
Lucas wrapped some kind of tape around Lynx’s torso over each wound site and when Lynx began to seize she stood up and stumbled over to a chair where she watched Lucas and Armand secure Lynx’s body. She heard Mama say something about Merlee and EMTs but she continued to retreat.
“Turn him away,” she muttered as she watched them. Everything seemed surreal, but she spoke the words again, knowing that she was addressing a force far more powerful than the struggle for life she saw playing out before her.
“Help me…”
Stormy moved toward the plea, no longer feeling her own body, and fell to her hands and knees beside Delilah. So much blood, yet the younger woman was alive, tears running from the corners of her eyes. Her fingers twitched spastically.
“Take me…home.” Delilah forced the words out, then sobbed, a cry reminiscent of a child’s pain, innocence lost, desperation. The rawness of it reached beyond the shroud of shock surrounding Stormy, shook her to her core.
“Where’s home, Delilah?”
“Not…” Delilah shook her head, swallowed repetitively, holding Stormy’s gaze. “Abi…gail… Lorne.”
Stormy nodded, closing her eyes. “Go home, Abigail. Be at peace.”
The other woman didn’t respond.
Her silence spoke of death and endings.
A cool breeze brushed against Stormy’s cheek and she briefly opened her eyes.
“Let her go home,” she prayed. “But please turn Lynx away.”
He sacrificed himself to save me, Goddess, please bless him with love and abundant life. Please allow his light to shine for years to come. You brought me back, you didn’t abandon me when I’d abandoned myself, so I know it’s within your power to turn him away.She breathed deeply as the breeze wrapped itself around her.Take her home, but turn him away, turn him away.
EMTs attempted to engage her, shouts erupted as Lynx coded.
Strong arms lifted her, settling her someplace softer than the floor, but she didn’t stop praying, not even when Lynx was carried out of the house, escaping with the siren’s wail. Stormy focused on sending strengthening energy to Lynx’s spirt, not deviating from her now-singular request that he be turned away from the gates of death.
Life moved around her, people pulled at her, but she refused to open her eyes, refused to face a reality where Lynx was no longer a part of it.
It was all just a matter of cold hard reality now.
No emotion, no questions, no more wondering if Stormy, sitting over there not responding to a word anyone said, was going to leave him because he intended to make sure she did.
After what went down, he couldn’t ask her to stay with him, not when it meant she’d face loss, death, violence on a regular basis. Stormy hadn’t signed up for this life, and just because they shared feelings—intense, soul-adjusting feelings—it didn’t mean he wouldn’t let the feelings go.
I’m a pro at shutting all that shit down, he thought, pacing back and forth on the front porch and turning to look through the open door each time he passed it.
