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If Doc and I could raise birds that had been dead for an entire night, is it possible we could do the same for Rev?
I call out to Doc again, and this time, he replies.
“No can do, brother,” he says in my earpiece, sounding breathless. “We found Jud. We’re getting him to the chopper. He needs me.”
“I need you, too,” I insist. “Rev is—” My voice cracks. “Rev is gone. Lazarus shot him in the neck. He bled out. I need your help to bring him back.”
There’s a pause.
When Doc comes back, there’s pain in his voice. “Oh, my God. Okay.” I hear him grunt.
“Almost there.” That was Stealth’s voice.
“Shit.” Around a groan, Doc says, “All right. Soon as I get Jud to the park, I’ll leave him with Stealth and Cora. I’ll be there soon as I can.” More groaning tells me he and Stealth are struggling to help Jud to a place where the helicopter can land. Which means Jud is in bad shape.
“Maybe you don’t have to leave him,” I say. “Remember the birds?”
I hear a pounding sound on Doc’s end, like someone’s trying to break down a door. Then Stealth says, “Got it. Okay, give him to me.”
Doc sounds breathless when he says, “Yeah. I remember.”
“Can you concentrate on Rev while you help Jud?”
“Maybe.”
Over my head, the chopper swoops in the direction of the hospital. It’s X-Ray and Target going to get Jud. He’s the reason we came here. He’s the reason Rev died.
Is it wrong to meddle with death? What death takes, who am I to try and reclaim?
“Give me a visual,” Doc shouts. I can barely hear him over the chopper noise and the wind that hits me in the chopper’s wake.
I reclaimed those birds with Doc’s help. They were innocent. They were victims of a Gift used for darkness.
Rev is a victim of Lazarus, who my gut tells me is as dark as they come.
Who am I to reclaim a good man lost to death? Iamdeath. I am the GrimfuckingReaper, and I say this good man deserves to live.
“We’re on the rooftop of the hotel,” I say to Doc. “We’re by the stairwell. Rev is on his back in a pool of blood. There’s so much blood! Lazarus is dead on the ground beside us. That enough?”
“Hold on!” Doc shouts as the chopper gets louder on his end. After the longest minute of my life, he’s back. “Okay,” he says, breathless. “We’re on our way to Baton Rouge. I can focus now. Let’s do this, brother.”
“Let’s do this, brother.”
Like when we helped those birds, I imagine my Gift not as the curse I believed it to be, but as a tool that can be used for good or evil. I imagine it as an instrument in my hand, useful to me when and how I desire.
And, because I have nothing to lose—Rev is already dead—I cup his gray face with my bare hands.
And I pray.
Doc must be doing the same, because in the very next second, Rev blinks and gasps for breath.
Immediately, I take my hands off him. It takes only seconds for me to replace my gloves. Slipping into them is second nature for me.
“Rev? Rev, do you hear me?”
He blinks and focuses on my face.
With gloved hands, I wipe away the blood on his neck. It smears a grisly red, but beneath the stains his skin is smooth except for a round scar where the bullet entered. Doc did it! We did it!
