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Loren’s heart picked up to a sprint. The beats blended together, all of them so quick, the spaces between them so small, it sounded like a hummingbird’s heart.
“Malakai,” Darien mouthed. He didn’t know what he was asking for, but he knew he needed help.
The beating of Loren’s heart grew faint.
Darien held his breath. Listened.
The night was dead silent. He listened hard, but there was no sound, and the girl in his arms had gone limp as a ragdoll.
Loren’s heart had stopped.
—
Loren wasn’t breathing. Her chest was too still, her features too slack.
“Malakai,” Darien panted. He laid Loren down on her back on the sidewalk. Erasmus rushed over, Mortifer clinging to the back of his neck. “Malakai, she’s not breathing. Loren—she’s not breathing! She’s not breathing!"
The Reaper dropped to his knees on the other side of Loren’s limp body. “Darien, I’m going to need you to do something for me. I’m going to need you to help me.”
Darien was vaguely aware of Malakai speaking to him, but he stopped hearing words. Something was crushing his lungs flat. His vision darkened with unwelcome shadows, the colors of auras and energies bright and intrusive as a Surge swept in, grabbing every part of him and yanking him about like a puppet on strings.
“Malakai, help her—please,” Darien begged, his words running together. “Malakai, she’s not breathing. I can’t fucking see anything! I can’t see—”
“Darien.” Malakai’s voice cut into Darien’s choking panic. The Reaper’s eyes bored into his, intense and determined. “I’m going to need you to do something for me, okay?”
“Anything.” His tone was as desperate as he felt. For Loren, he would beg. Would give every part of himself up, would trade anything, so she could live. “Tell me what to do.”
“I’m going to begin chest compressions. And you—you’re going to pinch her nose and breathe into her mouth when I tell you to. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
He followed Malakai’s instructions, carefully pinching Loren’s nose and breathing into her mouth every time the Reaper told him to, hating himself that he was so blind and rendered so useless because of it. If he didn’t do this properly, if his Sight caused him to miss a beat, if Loren died because of him—
It was sheer power of will that forced his vision to clear, the black in his eyes fading to the edges of his vision like spilled ink.
He didn’t know a lot about CPR, but the look on Malakai’s face told him his worst fear was coming true.
“It’s not working,” Darien gritted out. “It’s not working!”
The fact that the Reaper said nothing, only continuing to do chest compressions, his full attention on Loren, told him everything.
Darien wasn’t sure what made him do it, what gave him the idea, but he was suddenly reaching into the pockets of his bodysuit. He patted and searched until he felt the bulge of the syringe. The one and only syringe he’d found in that tunnel.
Malakai didn’t miss a beat in trying to revive Loren, though his eyes locked on the iridescent liquid in the syringe.
“Hold on a sec.” Malakai’s words were a panted warning.
“Move.”
Malakai did.
Darien pulled down the zipper in the front of Loren’s bodysuit and ripped her shirt open from the collar down.
“Darien,” Malakai tried. “We don’t know what that’ll do.”
