Chimera (The Korsak Brothers #1)(104)

Time didn’t freeze. My life didn’t riffle before me like the pages of a badly drawn comic book. None of the clichés held true. My heart didn’t even have time to pound at a faster, more agonizingly painful rate. By the time you hear the gunshot, it’s too late for that. The bullet has already found its mark. If you’re the one hit, a beating heart may be a moot point. If you’re not the one cradling lead, a living heart isn’t what you want anyway—not anymore.

I looked down at the armful of deadweight, almost puzzled. So, it was God after all, not fate. It was God, and his sparrow had fallen from the sky to rest broken in my lap. Strands of bleached hair were cool against my arm, as cool as the liquid flowing against my chest was warm. The bullet had entered his back and exited his chest to rest in my shoulder. And the blood—the blood was everywhere. It flowed like a river out of him and onto me. I could even smell it on his breath—his shallow, fading breath.

“How could you do something so stupid?” I choked, the words ugly with anguish. “How could you do something so goddamn stupid?” His eyes were only colorless shadows in the moonlight, but I saw him in there still. Aware, he was with me, but beginning to drift away—far away. “Misha.” I rested my forehead on his. “Why?”

“For my brother,” he said simply.

The whisper brushed against my cheek and I watched as the life—the light—began to spill from his face. His skin went so transparent that dark lashes were a brutal contrast when they came to rest—and stayed at rest.

Jericho had known where he was. Charging him would’ve been futile. Instead, Michael had charged me. He’d thrown himself in front of me to take the bullet—my bullet. I pulled him close and blocked out the smell of blood with the scent of shampoo in his hair. Green and herbal, it took me from the beach to an endless field of grass and clover. It was a place without the stink of copper and the fly of fatal lead, a place without despair.

“Isn’t this annoying?”

There was the hiss and purr of sand under approaching shoes. Obviously, he’d overcome his distaste of wearing his victim’s blood, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t open my eyes as he came. I didn’t care. I’d found what I was looking for. After all these years, I’d found it. Damn if I was going to watch Jericho end it all.

“All my time wasted. All the delayed graduations, not to mention moving the entire Institute. Then there’s the money lost.” The footsteps stopped. “But nothing compares to the inconvenience. Nothing approaches the arrogance of your thinking you could interfere in my affairs.” The muzzle of his gun pressed hard against the top of my head, digging into skin and flesh. “My work.”

“Pull the trigger already, Frankenstein,” I said without emotion. “Just f*cking pull it.”

I felt the air ripple as he leaned closer. “I should take you with me. You remember that examination table in the basement? I could take you apart on one just like it, piece by piece. I could make it last days, weeks if I wanted. No constructive purpose of course.” The laugh hit my skin with an unnatural heat. “Simply for fun. No?” The metal moved to my forehead as I remained silent. “That’s all right. This is fun as well.”

This time I heard the shot. It rang gray and sharp as a titanium bell. I felt the muzzle disappear from my head and I wondered at how easy it was; so very easy. There was no pain; no degrading of consciousness. I could still hear the roar of the waves, could still smell the leafy scent of Michael’s hair. I even felt the ground shudder as a body thudded against it.

“Stefan? Son?”

I opened my eyes to see a face that was a near mirror image of mine. Lines of age, a scattering of white hairs in the black, it was me at sixty. Strange, considering I’d just died at the age of twenty-four. At least I thought I had. “Dad.” I licked dry lips. “Dad, what—what are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass apparently.” He holstered his gun and crouched down beside me. “What the hell is going on, Stoipah?”

My eyes left him to fix irrevocably on a fallen dark figure. Barely three feet away, Jericho sprawled in a boneless huddle in the sand. Lids only half closed, he stared blindly at nothing. His chest didn’t move and the white of his teeth was obscured by blood, inky black as the sky above. Anatoly’s shot had blown out the majority of his throat; he would’ve died instantly. He must have fallen on his gun, because there was no sign of it. And that was no good. I needed it—needed it badly.

“Give me your gun,” I grated.

Eyebrows pulling into a confused V, Anatoly said gruffly, “He’s dead, Stefan.”

“Give me the goddamn gun.”

With no further argument, he shrugged and slipped it into my hand. I cradled Michael with one arm and emptied the clip in Jericho’s head at point-blank range. The shape of his skull changed to something misshapen and horrific. Now the outside of the son of a bitch reflected what lurked underneath.

As my father retrieved his gun from my hand, there was the stir of moving figures around us. It was Anatoly’s men. Jericho’s were either bodies cooling in the grass or long gone. “Have them cut off his head,” I said harshly. That was what was done with vampires, although he was worse than any undead movie monster. Jericho wasn’t coming back this time, not unless he could grow a new head. “Cut it off before they dump him.”