Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(33)

And some people might say I had the dream because I was feverish. How will I ever know? Finding gold—a lot of gold—later on exactly where the angel had told me I would, to some people that didn’t prove a thing. To Dingo it didn’t. He thought I had projected myself into the future, talked to my future self who had already discovered the gold, then catapulted back into the present time.

Yeah. As if that made more sense.

Then I drifted for another day or so. Mahalia later told me I was muttering shit like “revelations,” “happiness,” and, frighteningly enough, “atonement.” I’d never been a church-going kid, not even growing up in Bullhead City. My father was a belligerent alcoholic, my mother someone who—well, let’s say when she needed spare change, she’d go find it from other men. I didn’t grow up in the holiest, most well-to-do neighborhood, so I knew nothing about the things Allred Lee Chiles spouted. He said that some sins required blood atonement. Brigham Young even said that for particular sins, you could shed your own blood and obtain forgiveness. How the hell did that work? I wanted to spill the blood of others for their f*cking sins, and so I had.

I had killed my own brother. In self-defense, to be sure. But once the club found out, I’d have to stand a sort of trial at the chapel table. Mahalia and maybe even Allred and Parley, wherever he’d been, might have to stand witness. Allred himself encouraged his people to spill the blood of others who had committed serious crimes against him or Cornucopia. In that, our organizations shared similar credos. But that was about where the comparison ended.

I must’ve still been talking with my angel about Dingo’s beloved quantum physics while muttering the shit that Mahalia heard. The first thing I definitively heard Mahalia say to me as she sat at my bedside was,

“Lots of revelations come through dreams.”

What? Had I said something aloud? I looked around, grabbing a hand full of the sheet in my claw. It was a blindingly sunny day, although the drapes were closed. I was in some large bedroom with very little furniture, and Mahalia sat in a chair, wearing that red dress, her hair all done up like a crown on top of her head.

I tested it out. Aloud I said, “Why do you never cut your hair?”

She clapped her hands to her mouth. Her beautiful face was a blur, and I later realized I’d been crying with joy to see her again. “Gideon! You talked!”

I struggled to sit upright, and she helped me by eagerly fluffing pillows behind my head. I had a bandage wrapped clear around my middle, snug and tight and covering my pecs, soaked through with blood. “Tell me. Why don’t you Morbots cut your hair?”

“Oh! Because we need our long hair to wash Christ’s feet during the second coming.”

That made sense to my addled mind. All I wanted to do was hold her cool hand, smooth as a cup of milk. “I want to take it down.”

I could see her blush. Her free hand went to feel her hair. “Oh, I don’t…Gideon! We thought you had passed to the other side for a while there.”

Not letting go of her hand, I looked around. An IV was dripping something clear into my arm. I tried wiggling my toes, lifting my legs off the mattress. Everything worked. “I had a dream. Many dreams.”

“Oh! Do tell. I’m so fascinated with life on the other side. I used to think the happiness I sought lay there, and I just wanted to die again. How can I remember happiness and seek to return, unless I’ve experienced it before?”

“Don’t say that.” I squeezed her hand harder. “Don’t ever say that, Mahalia. I don’t want you to return to any happiness other than my own. Have you been here the whole time?”

“Well, the only happy moments I can figure were before my birth…Yes, I’ve been here the whole time. You were shot Thursday. It’s now Monday.”

She told me everything. I had passed out in the truck on the way to the urgent care place. Blood was f*cking everywhere—only she didn’t say “f*cking,” of course. The people were ill-prepared to handle me, but they knew I was an associate of Allred’s, so they had no choice. The doctor, who was really a family practice guy, had to take the bullet out of my liver while his panic-stricken nurse, Mahalia, and a Morbot named Drakelle stood by. I was gushing so much blood Drakelle, who had been an RN on the outside, stepped in and finished the job, sewing me up in record time.

Drakelle had to remove some lacerated tissue and, and that was the reason I’d slipped into a coma. Some arteries and bile ducts were apparently involved. It was just too big of a trauma to my body, so my body had gone into shutdown mode.

“It was like a MASH unit,” said Mahalia. “There was blood everywhere. You would’ve been impressed, Gideon.”

“Why did you stay? You’re not a nurse. Doesn’t that much blood bother you?”

“It was you, Gideon. That’s why I stayed. Believe you me, Kimball was out in the waiting room practically puking from the trauma. But I stayed and held your hand, even though you looked like a patient in those medical shows we’re not supposed to watch.”

I felt self-conscious. “How did I get naked? Where’s my cut?”

She placed her milky hand on my forehead. “It was most expedient for us to cut your clothes off. It wasn’t easy getting you out of those skin-tight jeans. And don’t worry about your cut. It’s hanging in the closet right here. We cleaned off as much blood as possible, but the bullet put a hole right through it.”