You Are Here (31 page)

I was going to finish this.

Lucie

GO

The drive wasn’t all that long, but the anxiety made it feel like it was forever. I tried to sleep, but with a stomach in knots and a head full of horrible images, it wasn’t happening. When we finally arrived, the sun had completely disappeared behind storm clouds.

“Jesus, it’s a ghost town,” Nash remarked. “I mean, it’s never been Times Square, but I
literally
see no sign of life. Are you sure about this, Red?”

“If this is where the Battery is, then yes, I’m sure,” I mumbled. I felt faces turn to look at me with concern, but I did my best to ignore them. “There! There’s a car parked outside that saloon. The blue Audi.”

“Did you seriously say ‘saloon’?” Vivi asked, snorting. “I love you so much.”

Scowling darkly, I took in our surroundings as we pulled up next to it. The saloon was a run-down pub that looked like it closed in the early eighties. Or should have.

Drew got out and checked the license plate. “Yeah, it’s a rental. That’s no help.”

It has to be Grey’s.

I threw myself against the door, taking no care to exit gently, kicking and scrambling until I was out of the vehicle, slamming the door shut. The car was within inches of my fingertips when I stopped cold as though touching it would mean something bad. I stared, waiting for it to tell me all the answers. A vague rumbling of voices gathered behind me, some of them asking
what I was staring at.

Taking off like a shot, I rounded the corner and burst through the front door of the bar. It was empty, but there were several chairs overturned and broken, some shattered glasses, whiskey-stained linoleum, and blood. I walked to one side of the room near the end of the bar and saw someone on the ground. Panicking, I ran over to recognize Nina’s body, her head at an unnatural angle.

“I knew it,” I said, whispering to myself. “I knew she was bad.”

I turned away, too impatient to try to process this discovery, forcing bile back down my throat. After a solid breath or two, I returned my focus to finding Grey before it was too late. I zeroed in on a wet, crimson trail as though I could extract and identify the DNA with my eyes.

GO.

With a slight wobble, I stumbled along the trail through the dark kitchen and out the back door, which was barely hanging off a busted hinge. My lungs burned as I ran. All I could hear was

GO.

I pushed my legs to go faster. My arms swung. There was one goal, one task at hand, and whether I was alone or not, it didn’t matter.

GO.

It was my voice, the voice inside my head, rushing me along, dragging me to him. A magnetic force with a pull stronger than gravity. My knees pumped so fast it hurt, my body hurtled forward as I ran without any certainty. I wanted so badly to stop and just
feel
him here, to know that I wasn’t too late.

The storm was really close. Hard winds rushed past my ears, leaving no room for any sound but my nerves and maybe a distant hint of thunder. My heart may have stopped beating, or maybe it was a constant, quietly speeding whirr.

Then I saw it. The rounded concrete bunker.
Battery Harris East.
It looked like an open tomb. It loomed larger and wider before me, strangely ominous as I sped toward it.

I made it to the tunnel underneath the neglected structure and darted down the middle. Each thud of my foot against the ground, every swish of my arms past my ribs, and every single molecule of oxygen sandpapering my throat stole time as I ran. It was never fast enough.

I was so close.

Suddenly the world upended as I tripped on a rock and was roughly thrown to my hands and knees. My palms stung, punctured with dirt and gravel while my knees felt crushed. I looked up and I saw him.

“Grey!”

Once his name escaped my lips, it was all clear. I was already here. My preview was happening. And I couldn’t stop it. I was never going to stop it.

Grey

Sound

As I was closing in, an unexpected sound stopped me dead. I could have sworn I heard my name. I turned toward it and my body followed.
Lucie
? I had to be delirious. I stared into her eyes, lost.

When I heard the gun shots, I knew I had failed her.

Lucie

Don’t Go

I was still, screaming silently as my hands covered my mouth as if to take back my mistake.

My legs pushed me toward him, every awkward step a threat to my equilibrium. The world around me was silent, white noise accompanying the visual horror before me. I dropped to my knees once I reached his side, not feeling the rocks cutting my skin.

There was a lot of blood, some of it underneath him, but I was afraid to turn him over.

“Please,” I said. “Please don’t go.”

Grey

Stop

The physical pain was intense, but fleeting. A point came where it felt as if my body no longer existed. Still, whatever I could see was acutely defined. The most beautiful, bright colors were even more extraordinary. The cacophony of dreamlike, disjointed memories was nonsensical as they sped by and stretched long like a melting filmstrip, clouded with age and dust.

Without warning, it would right itself every few seconds and drop me into the frame. I had an irrational sense of awareness as I occupied different versions of my fingers and toes and skin.

I was five. I was twelve. I was eighteen. Every time it pulled me away again, I didn’t want to leave. The jumble of incarnations were so different, but all me. Always me.

A wave of fire engulfed me, rolling me in its tide. Anger bubbled around me as the urge to fight made whatever I could see cloudy. I had the illusion I was screaming, shaking, but no reason to believe it to be true until everything went black and still.

Starting as just a hint of sound, barely restrained sobs pulled at me, but they weren’t mine. There was feeling in my limbs again, heavy and sore. A hard kick in the ribs slammed me back into my body.

The cry became a whine as the person’s throat tightened, trying to hide it as he spoke to someone.
Jesus, Nash is crying.

My lungs seared with breath as I gasped, choking on blood. I must have hit my head when I fell. I could feel my pulse in my eyes and a crushing pain in my shoulder. An oppressive ache radiated all over me.

“Lucie?” It came out garbled and wet as if I’d drowned. I coughed a bit more, razorblades figure skating inside my chest. Breathing was incredibly painful, and I realized Reese might have nicked a lung with those shots.

Lucie appeared over me, her blinking gray eyes wet and puffy. And her hair was wild.

I couldn’t help it, I smiled.

“Sweet lips?” Her hands caressed my face, touching me so carefully. Her voice shook with an uneven mix of relief and anxiety. She scattered glances about my body with the speed of a terrified rabbit.

I could hear Drew and tilted my head slightly to the other side. His hands were covered in blood and pressed firmly to my chest. When he looked at me, it was guarded but not guarded enough. I was in bad shape.

My dirty, rough palms clasped Lucie’s delicately soft fingers and held them together like the physical embodiment of prayer. First kissing her fingertips, I laid our collective hands above my heart, trying to tell her it was hers even after it stopped beating.

“Sor—I’m—” Each attempted word was contested by my injuries and swallowed by coughs, which required me to suck in a knifelike breath between each, so neither were very unintelligible.

Drew pushed her back as he hovered over me. He looked like a little boy, my brother more than twenty years ago. I tried to grab his wrist, but I could no longer lift my arm.

“Quit trying to talk, asshole,” Drew barked at me. “Just breathe, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sorry,” I continued, ignoring him. Before I could force out anything else, Lucie’s lips were on mine, blessing me with undeserved forgiveness.

Nash and Drew began shouting at each other—I heard the word “ambulance.” I gingerly pushed Lucie away to see her face. My fingers curled into a weak fist around her arm as I fought to get a real breath. Every intake was shorter than the last and even more quick and jagged. Lucie’s face twisted with panic.

When the world began to pinch and blur, all the things I wanted to say, to thank her for, rushed to the tip of my tongue. But I couldn’t breathe.

And then I stopped.

Lucie

Payback

No.

It was the only word I could utter or think. Someone pulled me off Grey’s body. I knew why, though I fought them anyway. Drew dropped next to him and began to work on him again, trying to get him breathing. Someone else wrapped arms around me—I think it was Nash, who started wheezing, then shouting again. Something about where we were meeting the ambulance.

Without serious thought, I broke away and ran. I didn’t know where I was going, but my body seemed to.

It wasn’t the voice in my head, it was me. Just me. And I didn’t catch up until the click of a gun behind me became the only sound in the world. When I turned, I saw Reese looking pretty worse for wear. Scars from the fire decorated his neck and his ear looked disgusting, but there was a tremendous amount of blood covering his shirt.

“So glad you came to find me, little
Mila
,” he replied, condescendingly. He shuffled forward with a slight limp, and his skin looked almost gray. He must’ve lost a lot of blood. Good. “I hate leaving loose ends, you know.”

“You’re not going to give me a speech to anesthetize me first, are you? Maybe you could spare me the grandstanding this time.” My voice sounded bored and that seemed to confuse him. Honestly, it threw me, too. I felt like someone else had taken over.

Reese’s entire arm shook as he raised the gun and aimed at me, his finger stuck on the trigger. He was trying to fire, but the gun must have jammed. Something kicked in and I leapt at him. An elbow to the windpipe and a knee to the groin put him on the ground and knocked the gun free. I wouldn’t have been surprised if shock put him there more than the physical attack, though he did seem weak. Another layer of memory peeled away to reveal a vague recollection of beginning a sort of defense training with Roman and Jude when I was quite young.

A leather-bound handle stuck out of his belt, so I grabbed it and kneeled into his chest. Holding the blade against a very specific rib, I leaned in close. When the sharp tip tore his shirt, it nicked the skin, and he jumped ever so slightly.

I almost smiled as I repeated his last words to my guardians. “After all you’ve done, it comes to this?” It took a moment, but his eyes dilated in recollection. I took a deep, cleansing breath. “And still, you lose.”

The knife drove deep into his chest under my hand, releasing his damned soul to hell and my rage with a primal scream. For all my losses. For having to keep losing over and over again. The marrow in my bones rattled as though I were the one dying. I stepped away from the body, turned away, and fell to my hands and knees.

Within the hollow bubble of my distress, I registered footsteps running through the gravel. Then arms scooped me up and lifted me. I didn’t actually care who it was at that point.

“
Milishka,
I’ve got you.”

Despite two decades between us, I knew him immediately. I opened my eyes and drank in my father’s face. My confusion waxed and waned as I followed the lines and wrinkles, the curve of his cheekbones, the wide shoots of steel gray in his hair, and combined all of these features with his eyes.
My eyes.

“I’m sorry I am so, so late, my girl,” he said, his voice tight with urgency. “We must go now. Your Grey needs hospital.”

“He’s alive?”

He set me down and looked hatefully at Reese’s body behind me. “Go. Quickly. I am right behind you. I promise.”

~

When I got back to Grey, Nash and Vivi were gone and a shirtless Drew was hovered over him, tying makeshift bandages that Charlotte handed him around his shoulder.

“What happened?”

Drew’s EMT training seriously came in handy right now. “His lung collapsed. I can’t inflate it here, so I just have to keep air out of the wound, or the pressure will build up and completely block his trachea.”

The car appeared with Nash driving as if it were an obstacle course, complete with spraying dirt and rocks when he stopped—thankfully, away from us.

“Get him in here!” Nash yelled. “The ambulance will meet us just outside fort grounds! Three minutes!”

“I can’t carry him and keep pressure, so Lucie, you need to hold this down,” Drew said. “Hold it down hard—he’s out, he can’t feel it.”

I focused on my task, but I was conflicted. My father was here. Grey could still die. My
father
was alive. How my brain didn’t simply physically implode at that moment, I’d never understand.

Nash had already pushed down the seats so the back was flat. Drew sat with Grey. Vivi tried to remove Nash from the driver’s seat because he still seemed a wreck, but he wouldn’t budge. Charlotte squeezed next to Vivi in the front. I stayed by Grey’s other side, holding his hand and whispering faith and hope in his ear.

“Almost there, baby. Hang on. I love you so much.” I kissed him then, lingering as I rested my forehead on his and closed my eyes. I could still taste his blood on my lips.

Curling my body to his side, I laid my cheek on his shoulder. He rested his head against me, and whether involuntary or not, I clung to the tiny comfort it gave me.

The ambulance pulled up at the edge of the road at the same time we did. Before I could comprehend, Drew practically kicked open the back and ran to help bring back the gurney. The EMTs and Drew swiftly transferred Grey to the back of the truck and closed the doors before I could even try to get in. Drew held me back as I cried. The truck pulled away, kicking up dust as it sped.