Through the phone, I hear a grunt. A sound punched out of a body by force. Then a thud, wet and heavy.
A body hitting asphalt.
"EDDIE."
The word tears out of me with a force that scrapes my throat raw, and I don't care. The walls I built are burning with worry. Every single one.
Through the phone, I hear breathing. Ragged and wet, too fast, then too slow. The sound of lungs working around something that's in the way.
Blood.
"Talk to me. Eddie,talk to me. Are you near your apartment? Tell me where you're hit. Tell me you're—"
I can't say the word. I can't sayalivebecause saying it means acknowledging the alternative, and the alternative is a door I will not open, not now, not ever.
His breathing changes. The wet rattle spaces out, each breath arriving later than the last, like a clock winding down.
I look to the shadows at the same time I reach for my keys. Daddy’s already sweeping toward my just-fixed front door and wrenching it open.
But neither Daddy nor I know where Eddie is. He’s not tethered to Daddy. And if we can’t find him in time, there will be no soul for Daddy to take.
No. No, no, no.
My hands are shaking as I fly out the front door. I've held a blade to a man's face and carved a line from his eye to his jaw without a single tremor, but now my fingers won't close properly around the doorknob, and the world is tilting sideways because the sound coming through the phone is the sound of someone leaving.
"Don't you dare," I hiss into the phone. "Don't you dare leave me. I didn't survive everything I survived just to lose you. You hear me? Eddie!"
Footsteps sound through his phone.
Then the footsteps stop.
A voice sounds through the phone, muffled but clear enough. Clear enough to carve into my brain.
"You should have left it alone, Eddie. You should have just let it be Red Hands, but I can tell by the look in your eyes that you can’t."
The world stops.
My breath. My heartbeat. The cold fire in my veins. The shadows crawling at the edges of my vision. Time itself grinds toa halt while the voice of the man who destroyed me speaks to my Mind.
The footsteps retreat slowly.
The speed of a man who walks through the world like he owns it, like every surface was laid specifically for his boots, like the ground itself wouldn't dare trip him.
I know that walk.
I've heard it in courtrooms, in hallways, in the echoing corridors of my worst memories, approaching a door I couldn't lock, entering a room I couldn't leave.
Walking away from me while I lay bleeding and near death in an alleyway like I was nothing more than a bag of trash.
I hang up and call 911, barely able to hear over the sound of my own blood screaming in my ears.
I give the address to his apartment even though I don’t know if he’s there. Will they make it to him in time? The distance is an eternity, which is the distance between everything and nothing.
I hang up and call James.
"Eddie has been shot,” I say when he answers. “Vincent. It was him. I heard his voice on the phone."
The sound James makes is not human. It's a snarl that starts in his chest and tears through the phone like something with claws. Shadows lurk inside it, the borrowed dark that lives in James's blood now, responding to rage the way fire responds to oxygen.
