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“You can’t save her,” he says roughly. “Okay? You can’t. I can’t either. We would condemn her to a life of hell. She’d hate you for it, if she even knew who you were. This wouldn’t be your friend you’d bring back to life, it would be someone else, just a shadow of the person she used to be. She’d be a monster.”
“Please,” I sob, my voice drowning in my tears. I stare at her lifeless body, my vision still sharp despite the tears that never stop flowing.
“Lenore,” he says fiercely, shaking me. “No. I can’t let you do this. You would regret it for the rest of your very long life.”
I try and fight him some more, but the energy is running out of me, tempered by the grief that is building and building in waves.
“I can’t lose her,” I cry out pitifully. “I can’t lose her.” I gasp for air, my lungs choking from the sobs ripping through me. “This is my fault. It’s my fault she’s dead.”
“Lenore,” Solon says, his voice dropping to a whisper.
Then he turns me around so I’m facing him and I bury my head into his chest. One arm wraps around me, fastening me to him tightly, the other palm cupping my head.
My fingers grip his shirt like I’ll never be able to let go, holding onto him as he holds onto me. I cry and I cry, for the loss of my friend, for the loss of everything. The tears never seem to stop flowing.
But Solon never stops holding onto me, cradling my head against his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady, the rock-solid feel of his body giving me the stability I lack.
He presses his lips against the top of my head. “I’ve got you, you can let go. I’ve got you.”
His words only make me cry more.
“Don’t leave me,” I whimper, my real, true fear.
“I’m never leaving you,” he says, his lips brushing against my hair.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, standing in my kitchen, holding onto each other, gripped in turmoil, and tsunamis of grief, waves of horror.
It could be an eternity for all I know.
Eventually though, we break apart.
Because Elle is dead.
And in the real world, this could be a big problem.
“What do we do?” I whisper to him, pulling back from his chest. It’s soaked in my snot and tears.
He places his hand at my cheek, peering down at me, determination on his low brow. “You leave that to me.”
He lets go of me and walks over to her body, creating a door of flames in the air with just a snap of his fingers.
“What are you doing?” I whisper harshly.
“What we normally do with the dead,” he says, reaching down and grabbing Elle under her arms.
“You can’t do that!” I walk over to him, my heart breaking at the sight of her pale and bloodied in his hands.
“It’s what’s done, Lenore,” he says, trying to be patient with me. “We put them in the Black Sunshine.”
“But that’s the way to Hell!”
“Only if you’re going there. She’s not. Don’t worry.”
“I worry!” I yell. “This is…she needs to be buried. She needs a funeral.”
“She won’t be buried,” he tells me solemnly. “There will be no funeral. Otherwise there would be questions, questions we can’t answer. Like who stabbed her. You can blame Poe, but it won’t look that way to them. Besides, this is just her body. Not her soul. Her soul is already at peace. I can tell.”
“How do you know?” I sniff.
“I know. Now please, let me do this.”
I exhale, holding my arms tightly, body still trembling. “Okay.”
I watch as he steps into the black and white world, pulling Elle along with him. Then he steps out and the flames disappear.
The hall goes back to normal.
And Elle is gone.
All that’s left is the blood.
“She’ll be reported missing soon,” Solon tells me. “We need to get into the messages you’ve sent with her and erase them. Ezra can do that. That’s why we keep him around.”
“What about the blood?” I ask numbly.
He eyes the crimson pool on the floor and then looks to me, brow raised. “We get rid of it,” he says simply.
My teeth grind against each other, a sick feeling in my stomach. “No,” I say shaking my head.
“You can do it,” he suggests.
I shake my head in quiet revulsion. “It should be me. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Then you might not want to watch this,” he says, getting down on all fours in front of the pool of blood.
“Solon,” I gasp. “You can’t possibly…”
“I’m a fucking vampire!” he roars at me, his eyes going a shade of crimson. “Turn around!”
Shaking, I do as he says, pinching my eyes shut, placing my hands over my ears so I don’t hear anything I don’t want to.
