Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Wet feet appear in front of Tristan’s spread fingers.
He lifts his face, stares up the naked mountain of Brock, tiny fingers of pale pink blood and dirt dripping down his body, murky veins across his skin. Tristan slowly sits back on his heels, stares up at Brock, silent, stunned.
Tristan trembles deep inside, deeper than bones. Brock …?
Only reddened eyes meet Tristan’s, perfectly still, silent.
Until a mighty hand reaches out.
Wraps itself around Tristan’s throat.
Slowly lifts him up, to his feet, then off his feet, up in the air, dangling from Brock’s mighty grip.
Tristan chokes. Sputters. Gasps for air.
Tristan could reach out. Easily. Touch Brock’s face. His Lull. Put an end to it.
For some reason, he doesn’t.
He lets this happen.
He welcomes it.
To Tristan’s face, up high in the air, many feet off the floor, dangling by that mighty hand, Brock says, “I … think … I did … something bad …”
Tristan continues to choke.
Gagging.
Sucking in to no avail.
“Do you think …” Brock swallows. Dry and hoarse. Difficult to speak, to draw breath. “Do you think I can … be good again? Do you think … there is something I can … still live for …?”
Tristan gasps out unintelligible words.
If they’re even words at all.
Just noises of desperation.
Of defeat.
Or maybe they are pleas. Begging Brock to just finish the job.
“I … I have seen beyond. I saw the darkness. I …” Suddenly, light returns to Brock’s eyes. Something sensitive. Human. Alert. “I don’t want to go back there. I don’t ever want to … to go back. I am …” His brow creases, lips spread, eyes crushing as the first trace of emotion spills over his face. “I’m … more scared of death now than I’ve … I’ve ever been … n-now that I’ve felt it.”
Tristan feels the room spinning away.
Growing darker.
Then Brock’s face grows closer. The mighty hand retracting. Their faces, closer and closer still. Brock’s dry eyes. Nose. Lips. “I want to …” Brock’s words echo, like a dream. “I want to be good. Please keep me here. Keep me on this side. Don’t …” Closer and closer Tristan comes. Their lips touch. “Don’t let me go back.”
Tristan’s feet touch the floor again.
Brock’s lips press into Tristan’s.
All he tastes is blood.
Soured and terrible.
Brock’s lips, as dry as sand.
“Don’t let me g-go …” murmurs Brock against Tristan’s lips. “Don’t let me … go back there … ever again.”
The powerful hand never lets go of Tristan’s neck, but its grip loosens, and just as their united lips become a kiss, the grip becomes an embrace. But even while kissing, at any second, the hand around Tristan’s neck could squeeze. At any moment, Brock could lose control and bite Tristan’s face off in a fit of rage, or just by pure reflex, completely eviscerate him, end him in such a grisly way that no one even recognizes the remains.
When Brock pulls away at last, the eyes that bear down into Tristan’s are entirely human. The Brock he knew from years ago, alive, fully aware, staring back. Is this the final result of the dark magic? Has it, in fact, after all these trials and worries, worked?
I will do my best, says Tristan, with Brock’s hand still wrapped around his throat, not unlike a collar, not unlike a prison, to keep you … from ever returning to that dark, dark place again.
39.
All of the Nights, Forever.
—∙—
The bus is parked askew across four spaces in the lot of the clinic, looking like a set piece in a post-apocalyptic film, missing half its roof, windows busted, sandblasted on all sides.
Filling the waiting room are the anxious, sand-covered, dirty, blood-crusted faces of humans. They took turns cleaning up in the cramped clinic bathrooms, but no one feels clean. The elderly man sits by a potted plant, the teenagers huddled next to him as he quietly recites prayers. The freckly guy lies across four seats, eyes glued blankly to the ceiling. 4 sits in silence on the floor in the corner of the room, her sunken eyes staring ahead at nothing at all, knees hugged to her chest, boyfriend’s blood still covering the side of her face and hair. Someone had brought her something from the vending machine that she still hasn’t touched, sitting on the floor by her feet. One of the two older women who tried to console her sits collapsed in a chair nearby, leaning forward with her arms hanging off her knees, the other woman slowly pacing the room, then stopping randomly to glance at a window, as if seeing something, eyes glassy, mind traumatized by the night.
In a room around the corner from that lobby, Kaleb lies in a bed, monitors softly beeping with his signs of life. Kyle stands by his side, silent, holding his hand. This also happens to be the same room that housed Brock when he broke his hand not so long ago against Kyle’s face. Perhaps that’s why Kyle’s mind keeps drifting back to the bus, to that familiar face he saw through La-La’s long white hair, that bloodied face that so looked like Brock’s.