Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (15 page)

“Not just the fire,” I confess, facing him again. “I … I had a little situation with Benjamin. So I … I brought him along. He needed to get out of Trenton. Desperately. Megan saw us, followed part of the way, but she’s gone back home.” I feel sick that I can’t actually
confirm
that. For all I know, she’s lost in the wilderness between here and Trenton, hugging her knees and crying.

“And?” He’s sensing there’s more, clearly.

“Well, I guess I was worried about … you. I have trust issues. I don’t know these After’s Hold people. I don’t—I don’t trust Gunner.” I press my lips together. “Megan told me some things about him. To be fair, the first time I met him he tried to kill me.”

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t like the kid either. I think he’s cocky, I think he’s immature, I think he’s got problems, but so do I. I’d trust that kid with my life. He’ll put an arrow through anything that tries to harm me, or
you. He’s changed since he’s been in Trenton. We need a chance to kill our demons, Winter.” His eyes detach from mine, his last words hitting him. “We need a chance.”

I think suddenly of Claire. “You’re right.”

Unexpectedly, he grabs my hand again and pulls me up close to him. I’m surprised (and thankful) that my left hand hasn’t come off yet, with all the yanking. He brings me closer, even though I’m close enough, and suddenly I’m on his lap and the bedsprings are moaning in protest.

“Everyone deserves another chance,” he whispers into my face. His Living breath tickles my nose, dusts my cheek like a gentle spread of fingertips. His eyes pour with longing, smoldering me. “Everyone.”

Is this his way of saying I’m forgiven for trying to sorta-eat his sexy lips?

“Agreed,” I murmur back.

His face crashes into mine, the world somersaults, and for the next long while, I can’t remember where we are or who I am. I’m just a girl in his arms, and he’s just the boy I’m kissing.

He pulls away from my lips only long enough to toss his shirt aside. I kick off my stupid shoes and we’re lost in each other’s faces again. Would Claire have been so bold? I guess the best and very worst part about remembering your First Life is realizing how
reckless
dying has made you. I can do anything I want now. I can
be
anything. I can have anything. Even him.

Maybe this is better than living. I don’t care anymore. Whether it’s Claire or Winter who kisses John with such passion, I don’t care at all.

In this moment, I’m alive no matter what I am.

Later, when John sleeps, I find myself once again trapped in his arms. It’s the only place I ever want to be trapped for the rest of my Second Life. I grin stupidly and I close my eyes and pretend to dream. Yes, yes,
Pretender no more
, but I’ll pretend tonight. I dream about another life … a Third Life. John and I are together. We have a backyard and a swing set. We have children, and they grow up in a world without worries. They laugh and they breathe the air and they never want for food. They have a cute pet puppy and they don’t mind that it isn’t the one from the magazine. They grow up happy.

When I open my eyes again, a haze of angry colors fills the window.

I bolt up.

“What is it?” John asks, awakened instantly.

I race to the window, but no one and nothing’s in the street. Only a vague, multi-colored wash, like a fog or a sheen of mist. “I don’t know,” I say, confused. “Stay here. I’m heading out to see what it is.”

I quickly make for the door, but … “John, it’s locked.”

“That’s good,” he grunts, rubbing his eyes with a fist. “I didn’t think they even locked.”

“Locked from
the
outside,
” I stress, panicked.

Suddenly, there’s a lot of noise outside the door. I step back, alarmed. It sounds like many feet. Heavy feet.

Armored feet. I spin around and urgently whisper: “
John, go! Go!! Hide!! Run!!”

It’s too late. The door swings opens and I’m blinded by fire. I try to defend myself, but suddenly I’m pinned to the wall by a man engulfed in flames. “Get off me!” I throw a knee into him. I fight his grip, but nothing frees me. This is a dead man in flames, and many more are pouring into the room. I can’t even see where John is. I start screaming out for him, horrified, imagining that he’s being burned alive. “Stop!!” I scream, even though I have no idea what they’re doing because I can’t see beyond this man-on-fire in front of me. “Let him go!!”

Suddenly the colorful flame-men begin to move like a strange, bright liquid structure, and I’m swept out of the room. I catch one brief, horrible glance at Jasmine, who is being similarly abducted by fiery men. I yell something at her, but only seconds later I find myself helplessly forced down the stairwell and through the hotel lobby.

The yellow-lipped desk clerk makes no effort to help, only watching calmly as I’m dragged away.

The city streets are a blur of color and madness. I’m thrashing my feet, stabbing anything I can with my expert heels and screaming so loudly, I’m certain I’ve broken my throat in half by now. No one comes to my aid. The men have me by the feet and arms and neck, half-dragging me, half-carrying me down the streets of After’s Hold.

I beseech the sky, only to find I’ve become dead again.

“John!” I scream out at the ever-grey nothing above, begging for his life. “Jasmine! Helena! Benjamin!”

The men carry me through a set of doors, and I listen to their heavy feet marching up another flight of stairs, their every step like a hammer of sound through my bones. I have not made this easy for them, still fighting against their grip to no avail. I think my clothes have caught fire. I don’t care about my condition, what I look like, if they’re carrying a naked woman up a staircase, it doesn’t matter. I feel nothing but terror and I have no thoughts except John.

After ascending what feels like six thousand steps, suddenly I’m dropped to the floor. Without missing a second, I jump to my feet and race for the wall of the room where I find a picture hanging of a bowl full of kittens. I throw a fist into the glass, grab one of the shards it creates, and brandish it for my weapon. “Get away from me!” I’m terrified to the point of hysteria. My eyes don’t know where to look—so much color, so much fire.

With my back to the wall, glass shards at my feet, the longest in my hand, the raging flames of the room dance hypnotically. They’re each a person … each flame is a man or a woman embraced with fire. An Army Of Fire.

One flame stands out from the rest … a
green
flame. He is shrouded in a heavy cloak, a hood that swallows the whole of his head. The green flame takes only two steps in my direction, then mutters a single word: “Drop.”

The flame-people drop to their knees, obeying.

And the green one lifts his burning hood. A pale and handsome face shines through the fire, and I see within it a single, shimmering green stone … his eye.

C H A P T E R – E I G H T

G R I M

“Hello, Winter.”

You know. Like he’s just visiting the neighborhood, checking up or something.

Seeing as Grimsky and I know one another quite well, I suppress all the complex, knotted feelings that just made a quick home of my belly and blurt out: “Please don’t hurt the others, Grim. You know some of them. Just let them be, please. If I mean
anything
to you at all, please …”

“Alright.”

I wrinkle my face. That easy? I glance over the room, surveying the ten or twenty men and women that simply stand there, like it’s perfectly normal to let a fire rage around you all the days and nights long. “What’s with all of the …? Who are all of these …?” I can’t even finish a sentence, for as dumbstruck as I am.

“My friends.”

Okay. “Can you make your—friends—leave?” I eye them with contempt. “I’d rather speak with you alone.”

“I can make them do whatever I want.” He sounds almost proud, except for the lazy, almost bored drawl of his voice. “Out, please.”

The flames, as if robots that have just received some kind of signal, uniformly move out of the room.

Suddenly I find myself twice as terrified as I was with them
in
the room. “Grim … if they even
touch
one of the Humans, they’ll burn them alive. Please tell me they—Have they already—?” I’ve struck myself silent, horrified.

“Oh? There are Humans among you?”

Is he playing with me? “Yes. Two.”

“Strange.” Grim bites his own lip in thought. The green flames lick his face and swim through the air around him like emerald serpents. “The only people we found were you, Jasmine, and Helena.”

I watch his eyes carefully. Or rather, his eye.

“If there were Humans among you, we did not find them.” He seems to be watching me just as carefully, though I can in no way say for certain. The green stone in his eye socket from which he “sees” has no pupil. The only means of expression he has with it is in the subtle slant of an eyebrow. “I see you care deeply for them.”

I say nothing. I realize anything I say can be a weapon he can use to hurt me.

“You’ve become even more beautiful,” he tells me. “Time’s only done you pleasant favors.”

Half my dress is singed or burnt, most likely. The flesh on my neck is probably charred and I’m pretty sure I look like I fell through a chimney. “Thank you,” I say anyway, running a hand through my white tangle of hair.

“No thanks needed. I was always fond of you. I know I betrayed you, but … if I recall … I also saved your life. Twice. I’ll never forget that cliff where we met.”

“Or the vile Warlock you stabbed in the gut. Didn’t kill him, though. Jasmine finished the job you started. Got him right through the eye, in fact.”

I know I sound hollow, I can’t help it. The last time I saw Grim, I’d clipped his binds and set him loose. The crowd of survivors in the Square booed and hissed and treated him not so kindly, throwing things, chasing him out of the city. The image is forever burned in my mind.

“Winter, there is so much I want to tell you, and—”

“This is all my fault,” I say suddenly, cutting him off.

Grim smiles at my words. Somehow, despite green flames and that creepy glowing Warlock’s Eye, he’s still strikingly handsome when he smiles. “There is no such thing as fault,” he says, as if educating me. “Otherwise, I’d hunt the world wide for someone to blame for Raising the first Undead that ever existed. Whoever he or she was, I pity them. Must’ve been quite a lonely day, don’t you think? I wonder who named them? I wonder if they named themselves? I wonder if they walked the planet nameless, lifeless,
deathless
…”

I realize I still haven’t let go of the adorable horror-movie glass shank I made. “I
gave
you that Lock’s Eye. It was mine. It saved my life, that little green thing.”

His smile quakes slightly. “I don’t hold any hatred for the people of Trenton. You saved them, Winter. You. All I did was invite fear and … and mourning. I will never be able to atone and they will never forgive me. But I can do them the ultimate kindness. I can do it now. I have the power.”

When he says the word ‘power’, his eye shimmers boldly, like a promise. Part of me feels like I should’ve ended his existence in the Trenton Square that fateful day long ago … but I didn’t. And to be honest, I’m still not sure if I could, even now.

“What’s with these ‘friends’ of yours? Why are they all on fire?” My Raise’s warning creeps into my mind.
I am not the last.
“Are you, like, the new Deathless King …?”

He chuckles lightly, as if I’d told a cute joke. “No. I have abandoned that name. They died along with … their
Queen
.” He winces. “She made a ceremony of consuming Living flesh and giving those who bled a reason to live in fear … No, no, that’s not my purpose. Not anymore.”

I glance at the window, worried sick over where John is. Did he escape the hotel somehow? Did he make it out of the bathroom window, perhaps, scaling down the side of the building? From the strangely intimate attachment Grim’s followers seem to have with him, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hear one another’s thoughts. If the flame-people found John, Grim would know, I’m sure of it.

Of course, Grim has lied to me before.

“What’s your purpose, then?”

He steps toward me, crossing the room. His boots slap against the wooden floors. Yes,
wooden
floors, and I can’t by any stretch of my dead imagination explain why the whole damn city hasn’t burned down yet.

“The end is always near,” he says. “Whether a man or a woman or a child … or a tree, or a little bug waiting for a foot to crush it, or a spider web. Death is a gift, Winter. You and I have it. Let’s share it with the world.”

“Um, okay. But some still happen to be alive, so—”