Cocooned by the window, I leaned my forehead on the cold glass, needing something, anything, to make me feel.
Outside, the others let me know I should be scared.
A hundred, probably more, Soulless had gathered around the hospital, toes just touching the line of blood, shouting to me their promises of tearing me apart. Once word had been caught of where Delphine De Astor was, every inmate came to find me and wait.
They even stopped killing themselves.
For once, there was unity, and that reason was a common enemy: me.
They set up a council and discussed which part of me they would get and who would do what.
I sunk into my myself, watching the rain fall in its parachutes and hit the window.
Before, I had clung to hope that Magnus was coming.
This was evidently not true.
I stroked my heart, urging it to beat faster. I would never be able to find my Soulmate even if I wasn’t Soulless… but I wished I could feel it. I wished I could know what it felt like to have proper, true, undiluted, unconditional love.
My parents were chopped from my life, friends were never within my reach, I attempted false love, I never met my Soulmate, and now my brother, the only real person in my life, had faked his adoration for me.
Hollow sadness slunk inside of me like some new and terrible organ.
I slapped my cheeks. “Cry!”
The guard let himself be known at my side. “Time’s up.”
I was pushed outside the hospital and left to walk alone.
Just on the other side of the bloody line over a hundred faces, briming with cruel grins, pinned their sights on me. They licked their lips like hungry dogs. They called me names that were not my own. My death had been planned by them all. A slow death, it seemed most had decided.
I had never done drugs before, but I had a sudden urge to try cocaine.
The heaviest steps I had ever taken were to the bloody line.
Wind played with my hair. I clasped the wound on my side as I looked upon my gravestone. Their faces buttered with ire held lifespans of pain and resentment. I could not blame them. My own life had been snipped short in an unjustified manner. All of theirs had as well. Was it their fault that they were Soulless? That I was? No. It was a cruel joke played on us by mother nature and the construct of our society at the expense of our very lives.
The people in front of me would be the ones to kill me, but they were not my enemy.
“Hello, good day.” I waved to them, forcing my smile not to crack. “I would like to thank you all. It is a true privilege that all of you would gather here on my account, to bring about my death in such a celebratory fashion. Many people die alone in this world, at least I will be surrounded and have company as my eyes close. Because, once you kill me, there’s going to be a bloodbath. When I am lying on this very ground, you will all then turn on each other. So really…” I flung out my middle finger to them all. “You’reallfucking fucked.”
I didn’t step across the line.
I ran.
I ran as warriors did into battle, adrenaline rushing through my veins, I tasted ice on my tongue. Hitting into my first opponent, I fuelled myself with fury, kicking a man who attempted to punch my throat. I dodged, he missed. I bit his neck, tearing out flesh and growling like a wild animal. He screamed, I laughed.
Yes, I said I was going to die, it didn’t mean I was doing it without a fight.
Someone whacked me from behind and I fell into the dirt, black spots consumed my vision. I looked up at the swarm of Soulless darting toward me with hands leering to rip me into shreds.
And then… a sound.
An engine roar came from behind the crowd, so loud it forced everyone to stop. People gasped and dove out of the way as a motorbike sped through the crowd and skidded in the dirt in front of me.
Donning full black motorcycle gear, the rider flipped up the visor on their helmet.
I looked up at him and his heart-shaped sunglasses.
