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When Eddie and Lassiter looked over at the other angel, Ad offered left, then right, with the one-bite-off candy bar that had been dropped when things had gotten physical.
“No? Cool, more for me.”
While Ad went ham on the Snickers, Eddie closed his eyes and prayed for… shit, he didn’t even know anymore.
* * *
Out in the woods behind the human neighborhood, Shuli fought his way through the undergrowth and the branches in a panic, his shirt getting snagged, his slick-soled loafers skating over the damp ground and roots. Grabbing on to thin trunks, he pulled himself forward—
The wind changed direction and he got a nose-full of the gunpowder and the blood.
“Nate!”
Off in the distance, he heard a dog bark, and something with prickers on it slapped his face. And then he saw the body, facedown in a patch of spring grass in the middle of a clearing that permitted the moonlight way too much access.
So the exit wound that had blown out the back of the skull was glistening, black and gray, in the heaven’s wash of blue illumination.
“Oh, fuck,” Shuli choked out as he fell to his knees. “What the fuck… Nate. Oh, God, Nate—”
Patting around for his phone, he couldn’t remember which pocket he’d put it in. Then he dropped the thing. Lost it in the scruff. Couldn’t make his hands work because they were shaking so badly.
“Why did you do it… Nate… why, oh God… why—”
Except he knew the why. Rahvyn. Although maybe it was more than just that: All those years in that human lab, being experimented on. His mahmen dying in captivity. Real life being no great prize on the far side.
He tried to dial. Failed. Forgot he had voice commands.
“I can’t do this,” he blurted as tears fell. “Hold on, Nate, stay with me—”
He glanced at the back of that skull again and couldn’t catch the vomit that rose up in his throat. As he started to heave, he pitched himself onto all fours and tried not to hit the phone. The hurling seemed to go on for hours, and he told himself to cut it out.
Help. He needed to get help. Now.
Determined to get control of himself, Shuli shoved himself back so he was sitting on his ass. As he hyperventilated, he passed a dirty palm down his face and felt the calluses his father had been so determined for him to get as a sign of character. Yeah, well, all that manual labor wasn’t doing shit for him at the moment. He and Nate had never made sense on paper, an entitled elitist and a quiet survivor of the kind of thing people never got over. But they’d been best friends—
The body jerked. Flopped.
“Nate?” Shuli lunged for the guy. “Are you—”
Shuli couldn’t understand what happened next. According to what his eyes saw, it looked like the body rolled over onto its back. Which would be hard to believe, given the injuries. And then Nate sat up, his torso rising off the ground to the vertical, a little trail of blood leaving the circular entry wound at the center of his forehead.
“Nate…” Shuli said softly. “What you doing, man?”
Like something that had reanimated from the dead, Nate’s head swiveled on the top of his spine toward him. Then the guy reached up and touched the bullet wound, catching the trickle of plasma on his fingertips.
Shuli wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Where was the phone, where was his fucking phone—
“I’m going to call the Brotherhood,” he mumbled as he patted around at the grass and weeds without looking away from Nate. “Just like your father told me to. He said if there was ever a problem”—and this was a big fucking problem—“I was to call this number, and, and—”
“Don’t call anyone.”
“W-w-what the fuck are you talking about. Nate, you don’t look so good—”
“Don’t. Call anyone. Just gimme a minute.”
Nate’s eyes closed, and holy shit, fuck the give-him-a-minute. Shuli threw himself into the phone search, slapping around the ground, wondering why in the hell, with how much moonlight there was, he couldn’t find his fucking—
“Got it!” Okay, his hands were still shaking like he was in withdrawal, so this was going to… be… fun…
“Nate,” Shuli breathed. “What are you doing.”
“Standing up.”
Sure enough, the guy bent his knees under him, steadied himself with a hand on a stump, and slowly, as if he didn’t trust his balance, rose to his full height. Then he tilted his head back and looked to the heavens.
Blood streamed from the exit wound, not black now, but deep red as the moonlight penetrated the translucent flow.
With an awkward hesitation, Nate reached behind his skull and touched the gaping hole in what should have been solid bone.
“I’m calling—”
That head snapped in Shuli’s direction. “No calls.”
For a split second, a thread of fear wound its way around Shuli’s throat, tightening things up but good, making it impossible to speak or breathe.
