Darkness, my old Friend
Rez
There’s nothing. No sound. No light. Just complete darkness. I can’t even feel my body. I’m not even sure I have a body. I don’t know who or what I am. Where am I? Trying to think of what happened before this moment, and all that comes up is emptiness. Is this my life? My purpose. To just be? Okay. I will only be.
* * *
I don’t know how long I wait, but I hear a whooshing noise, and an image pops up in my mind. Water. That’s what I hear, like the ocean. It rushes around me, but it’s so loud. I wish I could cover something to make the sounds go away. As if I willed it to happen, it becomes muffled like I’m engulfed by it instead of having it rush past me. I still can’t feel anything, but at least I can hear the water’s burble like it’s lapping at my head.
Chapter Thirty-One
Death’s Kiss
Rez
There’s a light! At least that’s what my mind is telling me. I don’t know how far away it is, though. I was never good with numbers. Wait. Is that a real thought? Is that who I am?
The light slowly gets bigger and brighter. I wish I could blink or shield my eyes, but I can’t. It’s like staring into the sun, but at least it doesn’t hurt. The light is about the size of a pin-prick, and it’s racing towards me, or is it?
* * *
It starts off small, but it’s enough that I can tell I have limbs. My toes and fingertips begin to tingle, and then it stops.Was that just in my head?Suddenly my entire body erupts in fire. The small ball from before is now the size of a house and it’s slowly morphing to blood red. I can feel every fiber of my body. It feels as if salt was thrown over me and landed on my exposed nerves. I scream in silence. I know how crazy that sounds, but I scream as the waves consume my pain.
The ocean water cadence from before changes, and it sounds like cymbals crashing in an orchestra during the chorus. I can no longer tell if I’m screaming or not as the sounds flood out everything and my lungs burn. Red tints my vision, and I realize it’s my eyes that have opened up like a storm cloud, allowing blood to drip down my face. A firestorm burns along my body, causing it to jerk awkwardly as I hang in the middle of nothing, like I’m having a seizure.
Four figures appear, stepping in front of the blinding light, and I suddenly know who they are, like I’ve always known them somehow. The color of their robes helps confirm it though. The men standing here are Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Pestilence steps forward in his red cloak and places a hand on my eyes. I feel like he’s saying something, but I can’t hear him. My body stops convulsing though, and I hang there, suspended in a sea of black emptiness, still burning from the inside out.
I can’t blink the blood from my eyes, but once he removes his hands, I can see more clearly and move them. He moves aside as War steps up in front of me next, wearing his shadowy cloak. His hood is pulled low, so I can only see the black stubble over his jaw. He takes my hands and brings them to his lips. I feel his breath along my knuckles as if he’s speaking, but it’s muted.Damn this water.He kisses my fingertips and the fire increases sharply, but then decreases to a tolerable level. Instead of the pain sweeping my body, now I can feel when his lips tilt up in a smile under my fingers. He releases them and walks away to join Pestilence off to the side.
Famine, cloaked in red flames, reaches me and encases me in a hug. The flames don’t burn or give off heat that I feel as he squeezes me. I feel my body light up with emotions that cycle through before it lands on hope. His lips touch my forehead, moving—I can only assume he’s talking like the others did—and then kisses the top of my head and walks away. The overwhelming sound of water suddenly vanishes, and I almost cry out in relief, except my lungs won’t work.
Death’s dark hood isn’t as low as the others, so I can see the smirk and the blood-red scruff along his jaw clearly. He walks up to me and grabs my face, tilting it up, so I’m looking up into his hood.
Scarlet eyes stare down at me and I watch in fascination as yellow slowly swirls into their depths. I’m looking into the face of Death, and it’s absolutely breathtaking. He runs his hands over my eyebrows, through my hair, and back to my jaw, cradling me. When he moves close enough, I can inhale his peppermint and earthy scent and feel his breath against my lips.
“You will see me. You will see us always. You will be our redemption.”
He leans in and presses his lips against mine, andfireburns so fiercely that all I see is white. Screams rip from me like I’m shattering, then everything fades to black.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lions and Tigers and Lynx—Oh my!
Zeke
My phone rings for the twelfth time just in the past ten minutes of the three hours I’ve been sitting here. Pulling it out of my pocket, I switch it off. I’m in no mood to hear from my father or Knox. I don’t care about missing classes earlier either. Fuck them. As soon as I got Ryker’s text that Rez was admitted, I ran out of my pathology class early on the other side of the medical building. Thankfully, Ryker was talking to his dad, Dr. Steinbeck, when he received the stat call around 4 p.m. Who knows when I might have found out about her being here. I shudder at the thought. I may not have known until later tonight, or hell, even tomorrow. Glancing up and across the room, I notice the moonlight through the skylight. Hell, it is evening already?
Rubbing the back of her hand, my fingers brush over her racing pulse, worrying me even more. Looking up at the monitor, it’s too fast to even read. How is that possible?
“How is she?” Ryker asks, joining me in her room and sitting down on the other side of the bed. It’s been a few hours since he’s seen her last. He got pulled shortly after he helped carry her in from outside the entry.
He hesitates, but finally reaches and grabs her other hand that’s next to Lynx.
It takes a few tries to swallow the lump in my throat until I finally find my voice. “She… She’s alive,” I croak out. “They don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s her temp that’s been worrying them. They’ve been dousing her with a coolant every thirty minutes.” Just thinking about it renews my worry, and I move closer to her head to start running my fingers through her hair. As far as I know, she was dropped off at the entrance, and someone anonymously reported a girl unconscious. That can’t be right, though. I thought she was with Lilith. No one even saw who dropped her off.What happened? Why wasn’t she with Lilith?
Come back to me, Rez. I need you.
