“Jesus,” Milo said in a horrified voice. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means he’s a monster,” Moira said coldly, and I wanted to scream.
No! No, he was a man; he was a stupid, stubborn, irritating man, but he was a man. He was still able to love; he was able to care, and he did both! God, don’t punish him for being human, for not being able to do the right thing when he’d lost the chance to do the right thing for years. He still has to learn, he still has to?—
“I am,” Levi said in that same, icy, disconnected voice he’d been using the whole time. “But I am the monster that is going to keep you all safe and make sure you stay safe. So until that time, do the one thing I ask.”
“And when you’re done...doing this promise, you’re leaving?” Mason asked. “Right?”
Levi looked at him. “Yes.’
No!
No no no no no!
You can’t take him from me, you can’t force him away from me! I just got him back, and he was still choosing me; he chose me so many times, and I don’t care that he wasn’t perfect. I didn’t care that he wasn’t always a good person and that sometimes he could be cold and dangerous. I didn’t care that maybe it was because of him that I was here in this bed, unableto stop any of them, to help Levi as he stood in the face of my siblings and their rage toward him.
No, he was alone again, and I couldn’t help!
“Don’t worry,” Levi said, turning toward the door. “I won’t be back here again. I have a long list of things to do, and I can’t keep drawing attention. I needed to see him again before I...got started. So, if you’ll excuse me.”
Eli pulled Milo out of the way, letting Levi pass without saying a word. Moira let out a harsh noise and walked to the door, slamming it closed so the guards were cut off from them.
“I didn’t like that look on his face,” Eli said into the quiet.
“It was fucking creepy,” Milo said, frowning. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, but?—”
“That’s the look of a man who has been pushed past the edge,” Arlo said softly. “I don’t know about any promise he made, but I think we’re about to see whether or not he’s going to live up to that monster accusation.”
“Don’t you dare start to take his side,” Moira snarled, turning on him.
“Guys, Dom’s awake,” Eli said, but it was too late; I was falling back into the darkness again.
It was hard to stay above the surface from that point...mostly. Sometimes I felt like I was awake because I would be in the hospital room. There were always different people there, and I think I talked to them, but it was kind of hard to remember what we talked about. Sometimes it was Matty and Marcus, her eyes wet as she held my hand while he stroked my head, speaking softly. Sometimes it was Micah, who looked so goddamn lost when he looked at me, and I wished someone would get him out of the room so he didn’t have to see me like...whatever I was. Sometimes it was Milo, showing me the stupid shit he found on the internet, probably not even sure if I knew what he was showing me, and other times it was Arlo telling meabout something Muffin and Rags had done, or reading from the trashy romance book I’d been reading the last time I’d crashed in his guest room.
“He wasn’t wrong,” I heard Kayden say at one point. “The cops...wecan’t do much of anything. Not when Los Muertos may be the ones targeting all of you...all of us.”
“You can’t be serious,” I heard Moira protest but Jace’s voice, thick and heavy with regret, interrupted.
“He’s right. I hate to admit it, and I fuckinghatethat we’re forced to deal with goddamn gangsters to keep us safe, but when it comes to shit like this, we’re out of luck. We have to accept his protection, and it’s going to be a lot better than anything the cops could give.”
“They can do shit like Witness Protection.”
“That’s the feds, and that would take time. Time we probably don’t have,” Jace said, and I could see him a little through the haze in my head. He was frowning at the floor. “Levi might be the reason we’re in this fucking mess...but he’s also the only one who’s going to keep us safe while the city goes to hell.”
“Christ,” Moira hissed, turning to glare out the window. It was dark out. “What is he doing?”
“Keeping a promise,” Jace said, turning to look at me. “Must have been one hell of a promise.”
Then I was back at the hotel bar. It was quiet there, and no one was working, but there was a drink in front of me that I didn’t remember being made. I took a sip and...could I actually taste it, or was that just my brain tricking itself?
“Does it matter?” a soft voice asked next to me. I flinched when I saw my mother and father sitting at the bar. They were dressed like the last time I’d seen them, my mother in a sundress and a wide-brimmed hat, my father in khaki shorts and a tropical-print short-sleeve shirt, with huge sunglasses that took over his face. Except they weren’t exactly like I had seen them.Their clothes were ripped, their skin cut and covered in mud and drying blood. My mother’s face was half gone, or at least the skin was, leaving only bloody muscle stretched over a cracked skull. My father’s entire left side was a horror of raw meat and seeping blood.
These were the parents who had shown up in my dreams for months after their deaths.
“You weren’t supposed to see us, remember?” my mother said, her smile gentle yet horrifying, as I could see the muscles stretching across her bones. “It was supposed to be a closed casket.”
“But you always had to do things your own way,” my father said with a chuckle, taking a drink from a glass I didn’t remember being there.
