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“If you’re going to kill us, then do it,” Sebastian ordered her, his voice harsh as he turned back to Alyssa.
Sitting next to her, his back to the weapon Belle wielded, Sebastian stretched out beside Alyssa slowly and tried to wrap himself around her. She was too fucking cold. Too unresponsive.
“Damn, you have a good friend there, siren,” he whispered at her ear as he tried to surround her with his warmth. “She’s going to put a bullet in our asses. You going to let her do that? I thought only you were going to shoot us if you got that pissed. Come on, open your eyes and I’ll hand you a loaded gun myself. Please, baby, come back to us.”
The monitor at her left gave a strong beat, the heart rate indication spiking marginally and remaining stronger.
“There you are, siren,” he whispered at her ear again, allowing his lips to brush against the shell gently. “You’re with me now, aren’t you, Alyssa. This friend of yours is a little bitch, you know. Has that gun leveled at our balls and she’s really wanting to pull the trigger. Don’t you want to pull that trigger yourself? You going to let her do your job for you?”
The heart rate stayed strong and Sebastian swore, he swore he felt the fingers of her left hand tighten just a bit beneath his hold.
Summer moved tentatively to the bottom of the bed, her eyes on that monitor, the weapon held ready at the side of her leg, though.
“They deserve to die, darlin’,” she told her friend softly. “You know they do. Just as we both know there’s no way you’d kill them. Ain’t you just too soft for somethin’ like that? You’d just let them get away with walkin’ away from you. I won’t.”
“I need you, ’Lyssa,” Sebastian told her, allowing all the pain, all the grief, of the past six years into his voice. “I swear to you on all I hold dear we didn’t leave you willingly. We didn’t let you go without dying inside. At least come back to us long enough to punish us yourself if you don’t believe me.” He laid his head against hers, the shards of his heart gouging straight to his spirit as he held her, tried to warm her. “Don’t leave us, siren. We won’t survive without you.”
“Come on back, girlfriend,” Summer drawled. “I’ll draw and quarter them and tell ya all about it.”
*
She had been so cold for so long.
As Alyssa felt the tendrils of warmth moving around her, pushing back the black, bleak cold that held her in its grip, she focused on what the warmth could be. Where could it be coming from? She hadn’t felt it in so long she wasn’t certain what it was.
It seemed like she had been in this place forever. A place where even dreams of Barcelona and the dizzying heat she’d found there couldn’t reach her. No dreams. No memories. Nothing but the inability to move from the darkness or to sink deeper into it.
If she let the darkness have her then she knew something terrible would happen. Something she couldn’t allow. But she couldn’t face leaving it, either. At least here there was no pain, there was no loss. And she couldn’t bear losing more. She’d lost so much.…
That warmth wrapping around her, barely there, yet encasing her, was lifting her from the darkness. Despite the struggle to remain where she was, to have the warmth as well as the dark, she knew she couldn’t have both.
One or the other.
And it had been so long … she cried out, silence meeting the wounded thought. It had been so long since this warmth had been a part of her.…
It was them. It was their warmth wrapping around her and pulling her to them.
How long had it been since she’d felt them? Since she’d been able to close her eyes and just feel them?
Don’t let it be a dream.
Desperation gouged at the darkness, the warmth easing h
er closer to the light as the pervading nothingness began to fill with shadows rather than the overwhelming starless midnight. The closer she came to the light, the warmer those tendrils surrounding her became. The closer the whispers trapped in the shadows seemed. Their whispers. Their insistence that she come to them, that she let them in.
That she allow them to remind her of all she had lost.
But she wanted to go to them, to let the warmth touch her just one more time.
Just one more time.
She wanted to stop the light as it began to overtake the darkened landscape she was held within. Just for a moment. Just to be certain if it was a dream or if it was real.
She couldn’t face another dream. Couldn’t face waking to learn that reality was an ugly, cold place, without laughter or joy.
Without dreams.
The warmth tightened around her, urging her closer to the surface where only pain existed.
