Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (40 page)

BOOK: Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2)

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“I’m coming back for you, mom.” A smile finds me too. “This is not your end. And this is not mine. It is the dead of winter, and we will never hurt again.”

I bring John into my arms for our final journey.

T H E F I N A L C H A P T E R

F I R S T H A N D

The Whispers are grey and white today. I’m kneeling before a hole in the ground and my fingernails carry the mud and earth. I lay John to rest. The snow isn’t yet falling here, but the world feels cold nonetheless. Gently, I place the stone on his chest, the one that protected him. I kiss his lips one last time, then put my love to bed with a blanket of earth. I still hold my own stone, pressed close to my unbeating heart.

If I close my eyes and listen, I can still hear the gentle drum of his heart from the first day we met.

I see the surprise in his face when he encountered me in the tavern. The wetness of his eyes. The red in his cheeks. His parted lips.

“Wait.” I remember it so well. “Do you hear that?”

“No.” His deep voice, the fear in his warm, brown eyes, the panic.

From my pocket, I remove John’s ring. It’s been there ever since the day it burned me. I slip his ring on, and my skin reacts with a soothing whisper and a mist that starts to rise from it. I don’t ignore the pain; I embrace it with a smile and I look down at his grave and wait for the Whispers to answer me.

“I hear nothing,” he’d said.

I wait for the Whispers to answer me.

Time to an Undead is a very strange thing, isn’t it? I can wait here for several hours and have it feel like the ticking of seconds. I can wait here for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t even know. We simply can choose to disregard time entirely. Maybe I can do just that.

Maybe I can wait here forever.

Days may pass. Days may be passing right now. Days that lift the remaining Humans from the ruins of Garden and give them strength to move on. Days that reconcile the newborn Undead with the Living there who know better. Days that watch the rebuilding of Trenton. Days that include the reuniting of old friends, Living and not.

Don’t worry, you’re just dying
—I rehearse the line in my head, just like Helena taught me, just like I taught little Megan.

Undying, of course. Undying is what I meant.

The passage of time is a numb and unknowing one. Weeks may pass as I wait here with John, never leaving him, not for a moment. His steel ring burns my finger, and I take it as a sweet reminder that he’s still with me.

“Wait,” I told him, still straining to hear the sound, the sound of a gentle drum. What was it that I was hearing? “Just listen … Listen.”

Months may pass. Megan may grow up. The baby Laura may have her first step—the sisters and the twins applauding little Laura. She turns one year old and Marigold makes her a cake, surely; a cake no one can eat.

“Listen,” I urged him.

The Chief may have a Dream and remember his name. With no more green fire in the world, they may rebuild Garden again. Nature’s green takes root, bringing life to the barren wastelands, quenching the thirst of a dry and dying planet, feeding the groaning bellies of plains and rolling hills and mountainsides. I can even feel it all around me, the green of nature’s roots sprouting in all directions, everywhere, for miles and miles, a big world bursting back to life. I can feel it like a distant dream.

Years. I still wait for the Whispers to answer me. I never leave John’s side. I never take off the ring.

Years more.

I stay with him like I promised.

The mist that hugs me goes almost unnoticed until I lift my chin to pay it mind.
Are you listening?
The winds stir, picking up dust and letting it dance around me in whirls of chaos and fun.
It’s like
…
a gentle drum.
I can almost hear laughter in the wind, laughter in the furious whispers. Funny, I’ve never heard anything pleasant from the whispers before, not until now. The wind howls so loud, for a second I can’t even remember my own name.

Do you hear it?

And his hand bursts forth from the earth.

E P I L O G U E

After the Dreaming Death has found you, it won’t matter at all what’s transpired in your Second Life. Quite suddenly, the only thing that exists is your First.

His name is not Grimsky.

He is neither the Green Fire nor the red, nor the Fury With The Eye nor the ghost’s rainbow.

He remembers a pretty girl from his First Life. A girl he loved and lost. It was his fault. He remembers her and the fire.

He remembers taking his own life too. He remembers the letter he wrote and how one of the last things he regretted was lying to the girl about what he did for a living. But he confessed it all in that letter. Surely someone would forgive him someday. Surely he would be absolved for all his wrongs.

He remembers one of his last thoughts being:
I’m so happy I’ll get to see her again.

The fire may be out, but something still burns within him. He drops to his knees. He clenches shut his Eye, then releases all the fury in one blistering cry that’s certain to shatter the heavens, sunder the earth before him, cast lightning from the sky and emit a thunderous boom that rolls halfway around the world. When he opens his Eye, none of those things have happened, and he’s still alone.

Maybe he’s finally realized that fire can burn many things, but it can never burn away a Waking Dream, when it at long last finds you.

He reaches into his face and removes the green, glowing culprit. He lets it slip from his fingers and doesn’t listen to where it ends up. He looks blindly to the left, sees his beginning and the girl and the fire. He twists his neck blindly to the right, sees an endlessness and a hundred regrets. He’s created a world for his love and finds there’s nothing left to set fire to.

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