“I’ll figure this out,” I said. His eyes popped open and he clutched my shirt, pulling me close with no strength.
“There is no figuring it out. Kill me. That’s your job as my partner.”
“I can’t,” I admitted. His eyes widened in confusion and shock. Then he sighed.
“Fuck, you’re useless,” he said, dropping his hand. “Get me a gun.”
“No.”
“What do you meanno?” He asked. I ignored him and began to pace. He needed to go into the earth tonight. If he didn't, the transition could go wrong.
“The graveyard near campus… they might have an open grave,” I said, pinching my bottom lip with my fingers as I thought.
“What!” Sebastian snapped. I heard a crash. He’d fallen off the bed and was face down, groaning in pain into the floor. I went over and picked him up, putting him back in bed. He was too weak to even move his arms; he just glared at me as I tucked him in.
“I’ll kill you and then they’ll come kill me. Best case scenario,” he said.
“You’re always so fucking dramatic,” I huffed as his eyelids drooped.
“You selfish bastard,” he grumbled as I shoved the blankets tightly under his body, making sure he wouldn’t toss himself from bed again.
“I know.” I knew more than he did just how selfish I was when it came to him. I grabbed his jaw and leaned in slowly, my finger brushing over his lips.
Everything in my head screamed to stop but I couldn't. This was the only time I had.
"What—" he said right before I pressed my mouth to his. I wouldn't let him die without kissing him. He tasted like iron. I took a shaky breath against his lips then pulled back. He gave me an odd expression, a cocktail of defeat and pity.
“Tate,” he whispered in disapproval. I stood above him, watching him slip away. It started to rain outside, the sound hissing over the land.
“Please don’t do this,” he said quietly.
Then he died. I dropped to my knees beside the bed and searched for a heartbeat I knew I wouldn't find. Our house was so quiet. The rain and my breathing… no one else's.
“Fuck!” I roared. That was the last I was going to see of Sebastian alive. It wouldn’t be the last of him though. Not yet. I’d never been able to let him go, doing morally wrong things to keep him close. This was bigger and so much worse.
I was doing it all the same, never questioning if I should stop. I never considered if I should press my gun between his eyes or peel a stake from my bag and hammer it into his chest.
I’d rather be damned to Hell. I’d rather betray the entire Brotherhood. I’d rather be hunted down for the wrong deeds I was doing than let him go.
I propped him in the car and drove him to the cemetery, the hazy rain blurring the streetlights. The school was everywhere in this town. Itwasthe town. It had tall, sharp towers that stuck up like dead trees from the ground, dark and lifeless and sapped of all color in the night. Gargoyles laughed and frowned from up high as lightning struck.
I dragged Sebastian from the car. His body was cold and still, starting to stiffen up. I didn’t like it at all. There was an empty grave. The wind picked up, the rain lashing the side of my face as I grunted, dragging him across the ground on a tarp, avoiding marble headstones with ineligible epitaphs. The hole was waiting for him like it had expected us.
I didn’t know how to get him in the grave gently. I tried lowering him in the tarp slowly. It worked for a while but the rain made my fingers slick and the tarp slipped. He dropped, his corpse hitting the bottom with a thud.
My hands formed fists as I looked at his unmoving body. There wasn’t a single twitch when he fell. My feet splashed into mud as I landed inside the grave with him, stepping over his body and positioning him on his back. I dragged my dirty fingers over his pale skin, leaving lines of dirt across his cheeks then crawled back up, grinding my teeth as I covered his face in dirt.
I kept forgetting to breathe as if I were the one being buried. As if he was the one shoveling dirt on my face, cutting off my air. I filled the hole while the wind began to howl, lightning striking a dramatic scar in the sky as thunder roared.
When I was finished, I dropped to the ground in exhaustion. I dug my fingers into the loose dirt beside me as if I was holding hands with the dead.
After a while, I peeled myself up, covered in rain and mud with the shovel clutched in my hand. Inside the car, I looked at the mound Sebastian was buried under. I felt numb. A light flashed inside and I looked over, seeing my phone lighting up for a call. Hackmann flashed on the screen.
I swallowed and grabbed it.
“Status update,” he said right away. I glared at the fresh grave.
“He didn’t get much information tonight. They didn’t want to show him too much.”
