Vicki Pettersson - The Given

“It’ll—?” But she heard it then. The scrabbling of paws slipping over loose rock. The pant of a desert animal’s hot breath.

“They don’t usually attack humans, but these guys are hungry.” Neither of them blinked. “You know what it is to be hungry, don’t you?”

Grif returned to Kit then, who only glanced at him quizzically. Then they headed directly back down the hillside, clinging to each other to keep from falling. Even though Evie, buried up to her shoulders, was the only other person on that mountainside, Grif still felt eyes trained upon them. It was a feral night. Even the breeze felt hostile. Then a yelp punctuated the frigid wind, and Kit jolted, but it quickly became a disconnected sound. It could have even been imagined. Grif pulled her forward.

They’d just reached level ground when a scream finally did arch high on the air, spinning into the wild night. Kit stopped Grif, gripping his biceps. Her head whipped back up the hillside, where a coyote could be heard calling to others, and she gasped in understanding. “You knew.”

“She reeked of plasma” was all Grif said, and turned his back on the hillside and headed to Kit’s car.

Kit helped Grif into the passenger’s seat, and then immediately started the car, cranking the heat high and angling the vents toward Grif. His teeth were chattering even though she’d draped Evie’s fur atop him, and his fingers were stiff with cold. Maybe it was just the pale aspect of the moon, but he also seemed unnaturally white. Eyes shut, his mouth was slightly ajar as his head lolled against the headrest.

In just over twenty-four hours, he will be dead .

Kit shoved Sarge’s voice from her mind and the car into reverse. “I’m going to get you to the hospital, Grif. I think you’re . . .” She didn’t say “dying.” “Seriously injured.”

But his hand stopped her from shifting into gear, his touch weak but insistent. “What time is it?”

Tears sprung to her eyes. “Do not ask me that!”

“After four, then.” Grif nodded to himself. “Please, put the top down.”

Kit protested again, but he silenced her by pressing his index finger firmly against her lips. “I just want to see the stars.”

She couldn’t keep the strangled sound from escaping her throat, but she shifted back into park, and worked to lower the soft top on the Duetto. The cold, greedy fingers of the mountain air shifted over her, but Grif was huddled low in his seat, the heater shoving them back out again. Kit killed the headlights, and the black void above them married with the mountain to erase the entire world. It felt like being cupped in a giant onyx palm.

“There they are,” Grif said, his voice gone reedy and thin. Kit looked in the same direction that he was staring, but saw nothing.

“They?”

“Her Centurion. He’s just there . . .” Grif pointed off into the distance, but his arm fell after only a moment. Then his head swiveled and he smiled at something—some one —on the other side of Kit.

They.

“No!” Kit shouted it in the direction he was staring, then shifted so that she was on her knees in her seat and leaning over Grif. Grabbing his face, she forced him to look at her. “No,” she told him, too.

“I’m dying, Kit.”

“No,” she said, slipping his fedora off his head, and pulling him into her arms. He needed comfort right now, that was all, and she could give it. She could. “It just feels that way.”

He whispered his next words, one per breath. “You sound so certain.”

“I am,” Kit said, and fiercely kissed his forehead. She was shocked to find it ice-cold. “Sarge owes me a miracle. He told me so himself.”

It wasn’t exactly true. What the Pure had said was that he would owe her. In a perfect world.

“And you think I’m your miracle?” Grif tilted his head up and gazed into her eyes. The light from the dash glinted off the severe angles of his face, making him look like he’d just stepped from the screen of an old black-and-white movie. Like he belonged somewhere in the past.

“Of course you are.” They both ignored the way her voice cracked. “I knew it the minute I saw you. You appeared in my bedroom, fedora drawn low and fists raised high, and even while you were in the midst of saving my life I said to myself, that’s the guy for me. I want him, and no other. And it’s been that way ever since. We were fated, don’t you see, Grif? Bound together long before we knew it.”

She cut off with a shake of her head, realizing she’d begun speaking in the past tense. No.

“Maybe you’re right.” He made an effort to shrug. “Only time will tell.”

That’s when Kit began to pray. “No, Grif. No. You tell whoever is standing on the other side of this car that we’re not done!”

She choked back a sob, and glanced at her watch over his shoulder. Four-oh-eight. He turned his head into her neck, his breath warm, yet somehow cold, on her skin. “Just hold me.”

“Hold me back,” she hissed in return, and, to her surprise, he did. As her hot tears streaked over his too-cold face, he clung to her like he was rallying.

His whisper, tinged faintly with licorice, sent icy chills up her spine. “We really are a great team, aren’t we?”

“The best,” she whispered back, and, bending her head, wrapped herself around him and held on tight. The coconut of his pomade tickled her nose. The muscles beneath his suit bunched up, squeezing her back before slowly going lax.

And at precisely 4:10 in the morning, fifty-one years to the day of his first death, Griffin Shaw—Kit’s partner and lover and Centurion—died in her arms.

Kit found the note one week later.

She didn’t know what it was at first. She hadn’t checked her mailbox since before Grif’s death, but Marin had gathered all the mail in a neat pile for later. Though she didn’t feel up to dealing with the bills, throwing the supermarket advertisements and magazines in the recycling bin made her at least feel like she was accomplishing something. Yet the sight of the slanted cursive had her dropping the rest of the mail heedlessly to the floor. She knew that handwriting, and seeing it now felt like Grif had reached out and touched her, once again, from beyond the grave. It began:

Today I die.

She remembered then, Marin’s office. She thought he’d left the room so that she could reconcile privately with her aunt—and they had; Marin had been steadfast by Kit’s side ever since Grif’s death—but he’d really been off mailing this. And he’d planned it, she saw, recognizing the stationery as part of the monogrammed set she kept at home.

This morning has more weight to it than others. I can actually feel it, the heaviness of the day. I think I felt it the first time I died, too, but couldn’t recognize it then for what it was: the relentless gears of fate picking up speed while my mortal clock began to slow. That’s why I’m writing this letter at two in the morning on scented paper in a shockingly pink kitchen while you sleep off our lovemaking as if you’re the one about to be thrown into oblivion.

(I love that about you, by the way. Men are supposed to be the ones who lose themselves after sex, but by the time my head clears of your scent and I’ve finally caught my breath again, you’re usually out cold beside me or on top of me or below, limbs like lead, breathing deep. I absolutely love it. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anything more.)

I don’t want you to think that just because I’m fated to die today, or because I’m writing this good-bye, that I’ve given up. I’ve cheated death before, even from beyond the grave, and went on to live an amazing second life, and who else can say that? But the Host is on my heels now, the heavens are working against me, and someone on this blasted mudflat still wants me dead. It’s a pretty full plate, but I’ll dig on into it, because I believe that we have a shot at changing all that. More than that, whatever happens will affect your fate, too, and honey, that’s really why I continue to fight.