Mark Del Franco - Unfallen Dead

“Dylan didn’t hesitate. He trusted my decision and acted on it. He has an amazing command of essence control. Not a single person he tapped that day died from the spell. The entire time, he shot back at the attackers whenever he could. He was incredible.

“I kept firing. I deflected their shots, wove nets of essence out of them and threw it all back at them. They didn’t give me a chance to rest, and I did the best I could to return the favor. We reached another stalemate. I lost all sense of time. I remember wondering why no one came from shore to help. When I saw the case report later, I couldn’t believe that the entire event transpired over twenty minutes from the time the first bomb went off to when… to when it all stopped.

“When I thought it couldn’t get worse, the strangest thing happened. Human normals showed up with guns. They weren’t there to help us. They were with the fairies and the druids. They fired at the airbe druad, trying to kill passengers. But Dylan… Dylan held the hedge. The fey passengers still standing did their best to help him.

“But we were losing. I couldn’t stand much longer by myself. I had been forced all the way back to the hedge. Dylan blazed with essence, keeping the barrier up with one hand and firing at the terrorists with the other. He was burning out. The essence channeling through him was tearing him apart. But he didn’t stop.

“Another bomb went off, the last one, but we didn’t know that then. We both fell to the ground. The druids and the human attackers fell, too. The fairies were airborne and continued firing, pinning us to the floor. I managed to get to my knees.

“Something flew through the air toward me. I thought it was debris. I couldn’t do anything about it without taking my attention off the fairies. Dylan shouted and pushed me out of the way. A second later, I heard this sound, this wrenching groan, come out of him. I knew something was wrong. He was sprawled on his back. It wasn’t debris that had flown by me. It was a knife. A cheap, stupid knife. It had struck him in the chest, right in the heart.”

I stopped speaking again. My face felt warm, my heart pounding in my chest as I remembered the moment. I closed my eyes, steeling myself to finish. I had told the whole thing only once and never said a word about it again, but I needed to finish it for Meryl. And for myself.

“I don’t remember what the terrorists were doing at that moment. I just don’t remember. I wasn’t looking at them anymore. All I saw was this dark red stain pouring across Dylan’s shirt, this dark red stain against a red shirt. The look of horror on his face is etched in my mind forever. I leaned over him. He reached up for me, his hands shaking uncontrollably. I will never forget the shock and fear in his eyes.

“Everything seemed to stand still. Everything seemed to fall away from me, nothing but me and Dylan on a blank white canvas. To this day, I don’t understand how I knew to do what I did, but I must have released a huge pulse of essence into him. The next thing I knew, Dylan gave a strangled gasp. I had stopped his heart, frozen it in place, and shut his whole body down into a deep trance state. My own essence wrapped into his. I felt the pain of the knife, felt what he felt as he lost consciousness.”

I was breathing faster, avoiding looking at Meryl. Heat rushed into my face, and I knew I wasn’t going to be the stoic, emotionless man telling a story. I opened my mouth to speak, but closed it again. After another long pause, Meryl shifted in her seat. “It’s okay, Connor. Finish it.”

I met her eyes. They brimmed with tears.

“I killed them, Meryl. With a single, searing thought, I killed three fairies, three druids, and three humans. They were mind-linked to others, and I killed them, too. I killed fourteen people in an instant with my mind, burned them to empty husks. I saved over two thousand people that day, but I did something I can’t ever take back.”

Meryl didn’t hesitate. She got up from the chair and curled in my lap. Wrapping her arms around me, she buried her face into the side of my neck. I felt tears on my cheeks, felt her tears on my neck.

I held her tightly against my chest. “For a few hours with Dylan last night, I really wanted it all back. But then what happened came back in a rush, and I didn’t know what to think. I thought of you. I don’t know exactly what happened to you that night at Forest Hills, Meryl. But when I saw you standing there, blazing with essence, I knew what you had to be going through. I knew and was horrified for you. Don’t think for one moment I don’t understand something of what you gave up that night.”

Her body shuddered against mine as she sobbed. We held each other, and I rocked her, wanting to hold her against everything, keep out everything out that might hurt her. She brought her face up, vibrant red blush against her white skin, tears clinging to her eyelashes.

I closed my eyes. Our lips met and parted, and she didn’t pull away, but held me tighter. Her hands gripped my head as we kissed, my arms encircling her as our mouths met, no more words, but a sharing of what we couldn’t express. I stood, lifting her in my arms as she wrapped her legs around me. Refusing to let go, I lowered us both onto the open futon, tangling into each other, kissing and kissing until it was no longer a kiss but a hunger, an urgent need for connection.

She began to glow, essence coiling off her slick skin and surrounding us both in an aura of white light. My skin burned with electric intensity. The thing in my head shifted, a firm pressure against the back of my eyes, not pain, not pleasure. My body shields activated, but they didn’t repel Meryl. They reacted to her essence and what I was feeling, trying, but not quite merging. I heard a high whining sound and it was me and it was Meryl and it was the power of our joining. The light filled my vision, urging me on, urging both of us, deep rasping breaths as we surrendered to the rush of emotion.

We sprawled away from each other. Chests heaving, we stared at the ceiling. My jeans were twisted around my ankles, and my sodden shirt had ridden up to my chest. Meryl lay with her boots planted on the bed, her skirt flipped up onto her naked torso.

“This isn’t how I pictured it,” I said.

She laughed. “Me either.”

I laughed, too, like I hadn’t in a long time. I rolled toward her and traced a spiral in the moisture of her cleavage.

She trailed her fingers through the thick stubble on my head. Neither of us spoke for the longest time, spooned together and lost in thought.

Meryl cleared her throat. “You never said why you left New York.”

“I couldn’t bear to hurt Dylan after saving him like that.”

She rolled her head toward me. “Why would you hurt him?”

I looked into her eyes. “When I bonded my essence to him, I felt what he felt. I didn’t realize Dylan was in love with me.”

She propped herself on one elbow and leaned her face over mine, her crazy orange hair tickling my cheeks as she gave me a lopsided smile. “Gods, you’re freakin’ clueless sometimes.”

I kissed her again.

After some clothing adjustments, Meryl and I dozed off a couple of times. The final time I woke up, I was alone. No note. She didn’t return the messages I left on her cell. The lack of response was making me anxious.

I hadn’t expected what had happened with her to happen. Sure, I wanted it. Her. But when Meryl wasn’t dismissing my attempts at seduction, she was laughing at them. I was beginning to think her lack of interest was more than teasing. And yet, last night, when it was the farthest thing from my mind, when I felt so alone on the sidewalk in front of my building, she was the first person I thought of, and she responded. Never in my life had I had sex with someone out of grief. I didn’t know what to think about it. It didn’t give me pleasure or pain. Release. It felt like release, but from what I couldn’t quite figure.