Dying Light (17 page)

“
It’s how you’ll absorb
his power.” Caldwell kneels down and points at the split skullcap.
“You have to be the one to finish him. Go on.”

I take a step toward
Jason’s body. It’s completely busted. It’s not murder if he can’t
heal, right? And I’m not the one who threw him off the building.
Mega healing powers
would
be pretty great.

“
Hurry,” Caldwell urges me
as I step closer.

“
Jesse, what are you
doing?”

“
Isn’t this what you
wanted? You said you want me to be invincible.”

“
Not here.” She looks
around the crowded street. “Not like this. Everyone can see you.
This is going to be all over the news.”

“
Oh, right.” Caldwell
snaps his fingers.

I suck in a breath, waiting for his
power to disable us. Ally should be okay. She’s in the shield, but
Gloria and I are completely exposed.

He cocks his head and snaps his
fingers again. “As in, I have an idea? Eureka?”

I’m not comforted.

“
To be clear, I will take
care of the crowd.” Caldwell turns toward the mass of people.
Several step back, except for one woman who actually looks a little
closer at Caldwell’s face.

Her face alights with recognition.
“Are you Timothy Caldwell? You are, aren’t you? I’ve been to one of
your shows.”

“
No.” Caldwell meets her
eyes. “In fact, you’ve never seen me before. Go home and feed your
cat, Dorothy.”

The woman blinks, shakes her head.
Without another glance, Dorothy shuffles past us toward the subway,
on her way home to feed her cat, presumably.

I meet Caldwell’s gaze. “You can’t
mind wipe everyone.”

He bristles at this, tugging the end
of his suit jacket. “Ye of little faith.”

Concentration overtakes his face. He
turns toward the crowd and the emergency crews on the outer edge of
the cluster.

A strange feeling washes over me. A
sort of buzz that presses on the inside of my skull, like my head
might pop off. I stick a finger in my ear and it doesn’t help. I
feel like my ears need to pop, but holding my nose doesn’t
help.

Something happens to the
crowd. Everyone has stopped moving. A general shuffling or
bewilderment has prevailed amidst the chaos. Now, people are
standing around zombiefied. The atmosphere changes again. People
begin to blink and shuffle away. Several people step around Jason’s
body as if it isn’t there—and not in an
oh-my-god-a-busted-body
kind of way.
It’s more like a
hobo-sleeping-in-the-street
kind of
way.

“
Wait, what?” I watch the
crowd disperse. “What’s happening?”

“
Nikki,” Ally yells.
“Nikki, stop.”

I turn to see Nikki walking away from
us. She has her shoulder bag lifted high, and she’s walking away
from us like she can’t hear Ally.

Ally turns wide fearful eyes on me.
“Stop her.”

I try not to smile, but I can’t help
it. Sending Nikki away is a fantastic trick. Why shouldn’t she walk
to the end of the Earth and never come back?

I giggle and catch Caldwell smiling at
me. That sobers me up.

“
Jesse. Help me.” Ally
screams again. She’s pushing both her hands against Nikki’s chest,
but she won’t stop trying to walk to the subway
entrance.

“
Can you stop her?” I ask
Caldwell.

He arches an eyebrow. “Are you sure
you want me to?”

I consider this, but another yelp from
Ally and I concede. “God, yes. Okay.”

Nikki stops trying to push through
Ally and descend the subway stairs. She blinks at all of us for
several heartbeats and her eyes focus on Ally. “What
happened?”

“
He’s healing.” Caldwell
nudges me, bringing my attention back to the mess at my feet. “You
don’t have much time.”

Gloria steps out of her dim corner in
the Starbucks alcove. ““Don’t do it, Jesse. It will change
you.”

I arch an eyebrow. “In a good way?
Like teeth whitening or a dye job?”

“
No,” Gloria
says.

“
Don’t frighten her,
Jackson.” The malice returns to Caldwell’s voice. The fun is over.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
Don’t I? I was with you
when you took Henry Chaplain’s gift.”

Caldwell’s eyes narrow on
mine. “This is your last chance. You can’t expect me to throw a man
off a building for you
every
day.”

“
Really? You seem to like
this sort of thing.”

Caldwell grabs my arm and wrenches me
forward. “Just scoop out his brains with your hands, and it’ll all
be over. No more worrying about him hunting your friends. You’ll be
indestructible, and you can use your shield to protect Alice. It’s
perfect.”

It sounds perfect.

Ally’s face is a mixture of fear and
worry. “It’s too good to be true. There must be a
catch.”

Caldwell shoves me down onto Jason’s
body.

My hands shoot out to
protect myself from the fall and I connect with something warm and
mushy. My hands are
in
Jason’s skull.
Ugh
. My gag reflex is activated and
I’m about to puke. I stand up and come away with a fistful of
Jason’s brains.

Oh shit
—

It’s all I manage to comprehend before
white fire erupts in my eyes. I’m convinced I’m being boiled alive
by my own firebomb somehow, but this seems like a strong reaction
to touching some brains. Super gross, but not spontaneous
combustion worthy.

I can’t stop screaming. I fall, a
moment of weightlessness overtakes me before I connect with,
presumably, the concrete. At least it feels like rough concrete as
I grope for anything to grab on to. But I can’t open my eyes. I
can’t see anything or feel anything but the white hot pain ripping
me in two.

Ally

J
esse pulls herself away from Jason’s body and they erupt in
blue fire. Jason’s corpse disintegrates immediately, but Jesse just
burns.

In color and intensity, the flames are
similar to Jesse’s firebombs, yet this blue is more pure, white
almost, and not tinged with the red of her initial start-up.
Blisters spring up along the side of her hands and face, running up
her body as she screams. She tries to stand and collapses. She
howls in pain, clutching her head and wailing.

I search the ground for anything to
throw on her, a piece of cloth or heavy blanket that might put out
the fire. I tear off my coat and jolt forward to wrap Jesse in it,
but Nikki grabs hold of me.

“
Hey—” I try to wrench
free of her. “Let
go
.”

“
You’ll burn before you
ever get close to her,” Nikki says, tightening her grip. I try to
wrench myself free. “Look.
Look
.”

I crane my head around to see what
she’s talking about. A thin sheen of gas, a cloud about a foot in
diameter is burning the atmosphere around her. Caldwell’s pants
catch fire and he steps back, patting at the fabric. The sidewalk
is charred black in a radius beneath Jesse.

“
I can’t let her burn,” I
scream.

“
She’ll heal.” Nikki
insists. “You won’t.”

“
What did you do?” I yell
at Caldwell, finding a target for my anger. His smug smile and wide
expectant eyes incite me more. I move toward him, but Nikki’s hold
on me tightens.

Finally, the blue fire flickers, dies
down, and Jesse’s screams cease. She hits the ground hard and
doesn’t move again.

“
No.” Gloria jumps forward
from her place in the alcove.

Caldwell grabs hold of Jesse’s head,
exposing her long neck for the blade he’s pulled from
somewhere.

Gloria shoves her gun into his temple,
placing one hand on his shoulder. He can’t teleport unless he wants
to take Gloria with him, and he can’t move unless he wants a bullet
to the brain.

Or so I think.

Caldwell pivots on his heels and
Gloria’s gun goes off, firing two bullets into the pavement and one
into Jesse. Then he’s upright beside Gloria, and I think I’m going
to see it again—Caldwell snapping someone’s neck. But Nikki is
firing her gun into the space where Caldwell stands and he’s forced
to teleport again. He reappears over Jesse’s dead body and grabs a
hold of her. He disappears.

Jesse disappears with him.

We stand beside Jason’s ashes, in the
radius of the charred pavement.

“
Oh my god.” I’m shaking.
“Oh my god, what just happened?”

Gloria shoves her gun into the holster
hidden beneath her coat. “He’s going to kill her while she’s
dead.”

“
She was dead?” As the
flames died, so did the shield around me, just like when we jumped
from the building.

“
Taking Jason’s healing
power killed her.” Gloria kicks at the pavement. “The same thing
happened when Caldwell took Chaplain’s power. We just have to hope
she wakes up faster than he can kill her. Or wakes up enough to at
least erect her shield.”

“
It’s a reboot,” Nikki
holsters her own gun. “When you install new programming, you have
to reboot.”

God, no. Jesse wake up.
Wake up while you still can.

Jesse

T
his is the weirdest dream yet. I must be dead. Gabriel and I
stand in another one of those ethereal dreamscapes. It’s like I’m
floating in a giant red Jell-O mold.

“
What the hell happened up
there?” I’m not sure why I should think that living is
up there
, but it’s what
comes out of my mouth nonetheless.

Gabriel looks me over, circling me as
if inspecting me more closely. “You assimilated Jason’s healing
powers.”

“
Uh, okay. And that killed
me?”

“
It is a tremendous influx
of power.” His voice holds a hint of chastisement. The
insubstantial dreamscape solidifies to a jungle landscape. Small
chattering monkeys jump from limb to limb. Enormous colorful birds
take flight, pushing themselves up through the dense
canopy.

“
This is nice,” I say,
taking a turn about the place. “A little humid, but it’s
pretty.”

“
You favor
life?”

“
Uh, what kind of question
is that?” I ask.

“
You want a world full of
life.”

“
Oh god.” I throw my hands
up. “Are we back at this again? Here’s an idea. How about we don’t
destroy the planet we already have, and then we won’t have to build
a new one.”

“
Fire brings growth. Fire
brings rebirth and improvement.”

“
It also brings death,
destruction, and an end to M&Ms and French fries. What kind of
world is that?”

I instantly regret this question.
Gabriel envelops me in his wings, blocking out the light of the
jungle.

I see myself standing in a frozen
wasteland, as if through someone else’s eyes. About ten feet away,
my eyes are feral, clothes askew. Then a deep purple light begins
to glow inside me. The light shines through my eyes and mouth as I
part my lips to scream. I throw my head back as black wings erupt
from my spine, falling out onto the white snow. The violet light
explodes from my mouth and shoots up toward the sky, growing
brighter and brighter until I can’t see my other self
anymore.

I push away from Gabriel. “That’s
what’s going to happen to me? That’s me? Exploding?”

He doesn’t answer. He only watches me
with cautious eyes.

“
And what does that do?
What the hell will that change?”

“
Calm yourself.” Gabriel
extends his hands as if to take hold of me again. I jerk
away.

“
No. You’re telling me I’m
going to grow angel wings and explode. There’s nothing to be calm
about! And my only alternatives are worse. Either let myself be
murdered by a sociopath or be responsible for the whole world going
down in flames.”

Gabriel grimaces. “Your heart is
beating too fast. You must protect your body.”

“
Oh because if I just die,
then what? What happens to a partis whatever if they’re
dead
dead, but no one
absorbs the power?”

“
Then another is
called.”

For half a second that sounds great.
If I just die, then some other person can be partis and deal with
this crap. But then who would resist Caldwell?

“
You’re sad,” Gabriel
says.

“
No shit, Sherlock. Did
you think this was happy news?”

He reaches for me.

I step back. “No.”

“
You want to understand.
It will be easier, if you comprehend what you must do.”