This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, she thought.This isn’t fair.For a split second she had been happy. For a split second she had been free, ready to soar and escape.
“Delores! Listen to me, for God’s sake, listen!”
“Stop it,” she cried out, softly. Her lips trembled on each word.
Elijah’s arms were aching, his shoulders burning with fatigue. She was a dead weight. A dead weight that was hanging limply, waiting for him to let go. His shoulders burned in pain as he held tight to her, his muscles aching with the strain.
“They’re alive, Delores! Believe me!” he cried out, tears mixing with sweat. He would kill him, he decided, he would kill Michael if she died. He would leave her children with no parent if he had to. It didn’t matter to him. “I can show you.”
“They’re not. I killed them,” she cried back. “I killed them, Elijah, let me go. I have to.”
“You don’t. He lied to you. It’s all lies. You don’t have to do this!”
“I do, he said I had to! I promised him!” she screamed out, anger and pain mixing into one. “I deserve it, he told me. And he’s right.”
The humming in her head was so loud that she couldn’t stand to listen anymore. She kicked her legs, attempting to wriggle free from Elijah’s grasp.
“Get off me!” she screamed, kicking out, wriggling. “I can’t let him down again!”
“He did this, Michael did this. Please, Delores, please,” Elijah was frantic. He tried to pull her up, but his burning muscles protested, all he could do was cling on to her, but for how long, his subconscious roared at him.How long?
Delores let out a howl of pain, a long moaning guttural sound as she wished for death and blackness and the end of all of this. Her life was a nightmare and she was the main participant. She didn’t deserve death. It was too good for her. Yet she didn’t deserve life. He’d told her so. “It’s too much,” she cried, “it’s too much. I just want it all to stop.”
Footsteps crunched across gravel behind Elijah, but he didn’t look away from Delores. He didn’t dare to look away from the shadow of grief that blanketed her. A body slammed down next to his, and another hand thrust out and reached for Delores, gripping her, pulling her upwards, away from the void. Away from death.
She fought and cried, her body wracked with spasms of pain. Her hair whipped wild around her face and shoulders, drenched in sweat and grief.
“Make it stop, Elijah, make it stop,” she screamed and continued to fight him, fight the security guard that held her steady and had hoisted her up and over the side. The guard helped drag her fragile body away from the ledge and into Elijah’s lap.
She slapped at that hands which gripped her, no longer caring or knowing whose was whose anymore. It didn’t matter, not anymore. Nothing mattered but making it all stop.
Elijah looked up as a doctor came out of the open stairwell and ran over. He crashed down beside the three of them, and Elijah briefly noticed it was the doctor from earlier today, the one that had put the butterfly stitch across his eye and bandaged Michael’s hand. They shared a brief look as the doctor put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a syringe. He gave Elijah a sympathetic look before removing the lid and injecting Delores quickly.
Her head lay in Elijah’s lap, her hands and legs bloody and raw from fighting him, from kicking out and thrashing on the ground. She stared up at Elijah as he pushed the hair back from her face, hushing her, soothing her.
“It’s okay now. It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, still not seeing a way out of this, a way to put her demons to bed. “I’m going to help you.”
He forced the panic he felt down and away. He needed to be calm, needed to soothe her and to reassure her. There was no way out of this now, he realised. This was the tipping point, the edge that she had slipped over into. He had no idea how to bring someone back from that dark place. There was no reasoning with her, no helping her escape the demon when the demon had lain beside her the entire time.
He needed to cut off the demon’s head, to burn its body and wake Delores up. But she was gone, and he had no way of ridding her of Michael.
“I’m here, I’ll keep you safe,” he whispered, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her bloody forehead. Elijah ran his fingers through her hair, the gentle motion calming her more. “You’re safe with me, I promise,” he murmured.
He looked down into her face, the panic and fear still evident. Elijah ignored the doctor and security guard, ignored the world while Delores lay in his arms. She nodded and let out a shuddering breath. And then she closed her eyes against the world as the drugs pumped through her system, flooding her senses and making her drift away.
She stared at the blackness behind her closed eyes and she wished for peace.
Chapter Forty-Seven.
Delores.
Delores woke to a throbbing in her head.
Her eyes blinked open, letting in a soft beam of sunlight. She welcomed it with open arms. The heat covered her face like the warm cloth her mother used to wash her face with when she was a child. The soft sound of beeping echoed from somewhere in the distance.
Beep beep beep.
The sun shone through the window slats, striping her face with both dark and light. She lifted a hand, slowly, to feel her face. It stung in places. Small cuts and bruises.
