“I don’t need anyone’s help. I need you.” He sucked in a breath, the pulse in his forehead pounding. “Everything went to shit when you left me!” Anguish twisted his features. “I need you back. Please take me back.”
I shook my head, holding both hands out—the way you would when confronting a wild animal you’re trying to placate. Or an abusive ex-boyfriend in the middle of a drug-induced psychotic break.
His eyes narrowed, and a chilling smile slid across his lips. “Yes or no, Eli. I told you before: if I can’t have you, no one can.”
“Eric, please, listen to me. I’m a doctor now. I can help you. I can—”
The gunshot was deafening.
For a split second, there was no pain. Just an awful pressure, like I’d been hit impossibly hard in the stomach. Then stunned disbelief.
Eric’s eyes widened for an instant, like he couldn’t believe what he’d done.
“That was the wrong answer,” he whispered, gaze locked on me.
The pain came a moment later. Searing. Wrenching. Dizziness followed fast, dragging me down.
I collapsed to the floor, landing on my back.
When I reached for my stomach, my hands came back smeared with red. And even though it was summertime in Los Angeles, I was suddenly so cold. My body began to tremble.
Eric stepped close, and his face—completely devoid of emotion—filled my field of vision.
“I need a doctor,” I managed, my voice sounding far away. “Call 911. Please, hurry.”
I reached down to put pressure on the wound, but my muscles felt like Jell-O.
Shock was setting in. And I was bleeding to death.
“I was hoping to do you both together,” Eric said coldly, staring down at me. “But don’t worry, Eli. He’s my next stop. You’ll see him soon.”
“No,” I said. My vision went gray at the edges. My voice sounded distant, strange—like it no longer belonged to me. I couldn’t feel my body. I couldn’t even feel the floor.
Eric peered down at me with cold, empty eyes, a slow, triumphant smile twisting his lips. He watched me for several long moments as my body trembled and my vision dimmed.
Then, without warning, pale hands wrapped around his neck.
Eric’s eyes widened.
And I heard the crack of bone.
Then everything went dark.
I sank down into it—slowly at first, then faster, as if the floor had dropped out beneath me. It was endless, fast-moving darkness. I fell backward through it.
It was a long, endless tunnel.
Suddenly, reality shifted and I was no longer falling backward. Instead, I was racing forward—faster and faster—and the tunnel around me began to fill with a soft, golden-white light.
Around me, I heard dozens of voices speaking. Hundreds, perhaps. And they were all my voice, even though none of them really sounded like me at all. I couldn’t make any of it out at first, but I felt certain that some of the voices were speaking in languages I didn’t know.
Surprise filled me as I realized, a moment later, that Ididknow these other languages, after all. I had spoken them all before, hadn’t I? They were each my tongue, just as much as English was.
Spanish. French. Mandarin. Latin. At least a dozen others. Vague memories filled me, dreamlike, of being in another time and place. Dozens of them, in fact. Hundreds. Countless friends and acquaintances I had spoken those languages with.
Then images resolved into being around me.
It was my face—but a hundred different iterations of it. Most of them resembled me, but some looked nothing like me at all. But they were all still my face. They all belonged to me. They were all me.
