The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(33)

In an inexorable advance, exhaustion curled like a boa constrictor around his body, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing his breath and energy from him. “This is a nightmare, the ending of which is the only thing worse than its middle.”

“I wish I could have done more,” the healer said. “Just don’t feel rushed, okay? You and Sola and Evale take your time. We’re keeping him as comfortable as we can.”

Ehric looked over at the door. “I will not allow this to continue forever.”





FIFTEEN


Marisol…Marisol!

As Assail screamed the name of his female in his head, he floated above his body, sure as if his consciousness were a separate entity from its corporeal confines, a kite of self aloft in existential winds, tethered unto the flesh by an invisible string—that was held in his Marisol’s hand.

Her presence was what had pulled him back down here, to this hospital room in which he had watched over his body for how long? Her arrival here, unexpected, joyous, a miracle, had been a calling siren he had followed back from the foggy netherworld he had been transitioning into.

Marisol! he said again.

He was directly above her, hovering like a thought yet to be spoken. Why could she not hear him?

As he tried again, she lowered a hip upon the high mattress and brushed a tear from her own eye.

Do not give up on me, he told her. For you, I will come back…do not let them kill me.

When she started to cry in earnest, he smelled the tears and shifted around such that he could watch her. He wanted to have arms to hold her, a chest to pull her in against, a body to protect her and serve her with.

Instead, he was nothing but spirit.

“Oh, God, Assail…” She sniffed and took one of his tethered hands in her own. “I wish I had known. I would have come sooner. Is that why you were calling me? Why didn’t you talk to me when I answered? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Reaching out, he brushed her cheek—

Marisol jerked her head up and looked directly at his ethereal self. But then she shook her head as if to clear it and refocused on those parts of him that were in the hospital bed.

“I would have come right away.”

How did he get back in there, he thought. His body was like a house he was locked out of, and no matter how much he wanted in, he couldn’t get through the door.

“I have missed you so much.” She leaned forward and snapped a tissue free from a box, pressing it against her own cheeks. “I have been down there in Miami, staring at the bay at night…wishing you were with me. I didn’t expect you in my life. I never expected…you.”

Marisol, he moaned.

“I should have told you before now, I should have said something…but I was afraid to. I’ve never…” She cleared her throat. “I never thought I would feel like I do…it just wasn’t supposed to be this way for me.”

As her thumb rubbed slowly back and forth on his hand, the stroking resonated through him and he tried to feel every nuance, and use the sensations as an entry point.

“People like you and me, we don’t have happy endings with picket fences and dogs and kids.” She breathed in deep. “That is never the future for us. Still, if it had been just me, I maybe could have stayed after Benloise was killed. I might have been able to—but my grandmother must come first. I can’t risk myself because without me, she has nothing—and I have to take care of her.”

I understand, he said to her. But she was always welcome to be with us. I would never have asked you to choose, and I would have taken care of you both.

“You took off before I could say goodbye to you. That night she and I left, I looked for you in the house, but you…you’d left.”

Untrue. He had hidden in the shadows behind his house and witnessed her departure in private. He had not trusted himself not to beg, and even though it had been agony, he respected that she had her own course to choose and steer.

But it had destroyed a part of him to see her go.

As she continued to murmur to him, and tell him about her condo down in Miami, and her grandmother, and the Catholic church they attended, he kept trying to will himself back into that body of his…to animate that flesh…to gain access once again. Pushing, pushing, pushing, he sought to regain entrance into that form that had clothed his soul.

He had never understood that there were two parts to the living.

And only one part to the dead.

He did the now.

Yet the harder he tried, the angrier he became, and that seemed to work against his efforts. With his temper rising, he could feel less of Marisol’s touch, smell less of her scent, hear less of her voice.

“…prayed for us.” Marisol smiled sadly. “Can you believe that? My grandmother, she prayed to God that we would be reunited, and then your cousins came to me.”

Bracing himself, Assail marshaled every resource he had, his vantage point shifting until he was face-to-face with himself, his closed eyes and shaved scalp and pale complexion horrible reminders that any physical attractiveness he might have had was now gone.

Now! he ordered himself. I must return now!

But there was too much resistance. It was as if a force field surrounded his flesh, and the harder he pushed against it, the stronger it became. There was pain, too, as he threw himself metaphysically at the barrier over and over again, an electrical shock as if the effort were causing static friction.