Rachel Vincent - If I Die

“No…” I croaked, desperate for a breath—just enough to wail my way into the Netherworld. Beck would follow me, but at least then I’d be running, and I could lure him away from Emma and Sophie. At least then, I’d have a chance. But Beck only tightened his grip.

“You stupid little bitch, ” he spat, swinging me away from the wall by my throat. “You couldn’t just play nice, could you? I was going to make it fast—both blades straight through your heart. But now I think I’ll let you suffer.”

My vision darkened. My throat burned. My terror knew no limits.

Beck pushed me backward, his fingers flexing around my neck until my ears rang. The backs of my legs hit the mattress, and he kept pushing until I had to sit, clawing at his fingers with both hands.

He shoved again, and I fell onto my back with him straddling me. But finally his grip on my throat loosened, just enough for me to suck in a shallow, unsatisfying breath—not enough to scream, just enough to live. The fresh air burned all the way down, and Beck clucked his tongue. “Can’t let you suffocate,” he said, raising the double-bladed knife for me to see, twisting it so that the light overhead glinted off every shiny surface. “You have to die by hellion-forged steel, or you’re no good to me.” The knife disappeared from sight, and an instant later I felt both tips press into my skin, in the center of my stomach. “Any last words?”

He relaxed his grip on my throat a little more, just enough that I could croak out a couple of words. And a couple was all I had for him.

“Fuck—” I gasped, ignoring the pain “—you.”

“Well said.” His right arm flexed. My pulse roared in my ears. And the blades sank slowly, steadily into my stomach, bringing with them a fiery pain like nothing I’d never felt.

I gasped, and his hand fell away from my throat. My world shrank to encompass nothing but the agony spreading out from my center, spilling from my flesh in warm rivers of blood.

Beck crawled onto the bed next to me, on his knees, watching in fascination as I blinked up at him. My hands shook as they reached for my stomach, hovering over both the devastating damage and the hated instrument.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, eyes shining with eagerness.

I pulled in an agonizing breath and licked my lips with a tongue that was suddenly dry. “You tell me.” Then I grabbed the hilt and pulled, screaming as the blades slid free of my flesh. And with the last of my strength, I shoved the dual dagger up beneath his rib cage, straight into his heart.

Beck’s eyes went wide. He gasped, and that sudden intake seemed to last forever. Blood poured from his chest, sluicing over the hilt of the knife to soak my comforter.

“Hellion-forged steel, huh?” I whispered, with all the volume I could manage. Guess I found something that will kill an incubus . The question was, would it capture his soul?

Beck blinked one more time, his eyes already losing focus. I forced myself up on one elbow, my other hand clutching at my own wounds, blood pouring through my fingers. He fell backward on the bed, his head hanging off the edge. And while I watched, paralyzed by the burning pain spreading out from the core of my body, a dark aura developed around him, darkening by the second.

He was dying. I’d killed him. But Beck’s death wouldn’t prevent my own.

I lay back on the bed, terrified by the feel of my own blood pouring through my fingers, racked by pain I could never have imagined. There was so much blood between us, I could practically taste it in the air, and the thick, coppery scent made me gag with each breath.

Desperate now, I dug in my pocket with my free hand, horrified by the darkness growing on the edges of my vision. That wasn’t Beck’s death aura—that was me losing consciousness. I was dying. Was my reaper already here? Tod had said I wouldn’t see him….

I flipped the phone open and held it up long enough to press and hold the number four. Then my hand fell back on the mattress, useless.

While the phone rang, I turned my head, my left cheek pressed into the mattress. Beck lay inches away, and as I watched, the phone still ringing faintly from my open palm, I saw his soul struggle up from his body, like it wanted to rise. And almost as fast as it appeared, it began to trail toward his chest, like smoke pulled up a chimney by an unseen draft.

His soul was cloudy and streaked with dark ribbons of smut, and as Tod answered his phone with a greeting I didn’t have the strength to answer, Beck’s soul seemed to soak into the hilt of the dagger until a second later there wasn’t a trace of it left.

“Hello?” Tod said again. “Kaylee? Are you all right?”

I opened my mouth but what came out wasn’t a real word. I could only manage a hint of sound riding a pain-laden sigh. Then my eyes closed, and I was alone with the sound of my own irregular breathing.

“Kaylee?” Tod sounded closer now, and when his hand brushed hair back from my face, I would have jumped, if I’d had the strength. “No…! Kaylee, wake up. Please wake up.”

Tod was crying. I’d never heard him cry before.

I forced one eye open, and there he was on his knees by the bed, still clutching his own phone. “So sorry,” I mouthed, but the words carried no sound. I was so sorry for what I’d done to Nash, but I couldn’t tell him. And that meant he couldn’t tell Nash.

“You’re gonna be okay.” Tod dropped his phone and slid one arm beneath my shoulders, the other beneath my knees. “Can you put pressure on the wound?”

But I couldn’t even shake my head in answer. I couldn’t move.

“I’m taking you to the hospital, but I can’t go that far in one shot carrying you, so we’ll have to stop a couple of times on the way. Okay?”

I couldn’t answer, but that didn’t matter. I closed my eyes, then opened them almost immediately when something cold and wet fell on my face. It was raining softly, and I was outside, in a parking lot I didn’t recognize. The lot faded, and the next instant Tod stood in a park, still clutching me to his chest, still crying.

My eyes fell shut again, and a second later, a familiar, antiseptic scent burned my nose, while bright lights rendered the world red and veiny through my closed eyelids.

I blinked, and the hospital came into view. A hallway, full of beeps, and voices, and the steady metallic clink of carts wheeled on linoleum. Tod laid me on a stretcher and pressed something to my stomach. It didn’t hurt anymore, and that should have scared me, but nothing scared me more than seeing him cry.

Reapers don’t cry. They don’t . But I’d made Tod cry. And he didn’t even know what I’d done yet.

“They’re going to fix you, Kaylee,” he said, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “I promise.”

I shook my head, but Tod stepped back anyway, pulling his hand out of mine. He glanced down the hall, toward the source of most of the noise. “Hey, somebody help! This girl’s bleeding!”

“My dad…” I mouthed, when I couldn’t force any more sound, and Tod nodded. Then he disappeared.

A second later, footsteps pounded toward me, and the first nurse appeared from around the corner, clad in Looney Tunes–print scrubs. “Holy—” She yelled something else I couldn’t focus on, and more people came running. They wheeled me past a long desk and into a room full of equipment, and someone started cutting my remaining clothes off.

Minutes later—or seconds; I’d lost all sense of time—Tod reappeared with my father in tow.

“Kaylee!” my dad shouted, and a man in scrubs held him back. “That’s my daughter!”

“Sir, how did you get in here?”