Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

“That was a week ago,” he said.

“No kidding. Do you mind filling in the blanks?”

Despair crumpled his face. I bit the inside of my cheek, clenching my fists to resist the overwhelming instinct to hug him again. Something had happened to me, something very bad.

“Wyatt, what happened? How did I die?”

His eyes flickered toward my shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.” Strangely enough, the knife wound didn’t hurt anymore. It sort of itched. “How did I die?”

He limped over to one of the dryers and opened the door. Wrinkled laundry spilled onto the floor. He put the yellow jewel on top of the dryer and began sifting through the clothing. I eyed the precious gem, wondering if that was the source of his invisibility cloak, and how much he’d paid for it.

“Wyatt?”

“Nice necklace.”

I fingered the cross around my neck. “Don’t change the subject.”

He checked the waistband of a pair of jeans and, determining them appropriate, tossed them onto the room’s center table. “I should have been there when you woke,” he said, returning to his search. “But you didn’t come back where we thought you would. Even dead, you’re pretty damned contrary, you know that?”

I smiled at the familiar jab. I always preferred questioning his orders over following them, and it drove him bat shit. Drove my partners bat shit, too, when they were alive. Even if I was wrong, the fun was in the argument.

“Next time leave a better trail of bread crumbs, and I’ll try resurrecting to the appropriate body,” I said.

He threw a cotton shirt on top of the jeans and stood up. Pain bracketed his eyes and pinched his mouth. My stomach tightened. I was such a bitch. Here he was, bleeding to death in front of me, and I kept nagging him for answers.

“Take off your shirt,” I said, closing the distance between us.

Wyatt arched an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me see the wound, jackass.”

I reached for his shirt, but he caught my hand. A tremor danced up my arm, awakened by his touch. I looked up, startled. Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, there and gone in a blink. Warning bells clanged in my head.

“I did it,” he said.

“Did what?”

His shoulders drooped. Agony radiated off him. He dropped my hand, and I mourned the loss of his touch. Only for a moment, though, because he spoke three words that shattered everything.

“I killed you.”

69:47

“That’s not funny,” I said, fingers clenching into fists. A shiver wiggled down my spine.

Wyatt frowned. “It wasn’t a joke, Evy. You died because of me.”

A tiny bit of fear evaporated, replaced by annoyance. I could have belted him in the jaw. “Then why didn’t you just say that? ‘You died because of me’ and ‘I killed you’ do not imply the same thing.”

“It means the same to me.”

“You aren’t the one who died!”

He flinched as though slapped. Uncertainty flickered across his face, but the agony never wavered. Nor did the utter certainty that my death was somehow his fault—a fact that remained to be seen, since my Swiss cheese memory was missing a couple of important details.

He put his back to me and tried to take off his blood-soaked shirt. It rose halfway up, revealing a crisscross of pencil-thin bruises. They decorated his lower back like graffiti, dark blue and painful-looking. His arms caught in the tacky sleeves, trapping them above his head in a tangle that would have been comical if he hadn’t suddenly cried out.

The knife wound gaped open just below his rib cage and still oozed blood. Deep, but not jagged or life-threatening, as I’d first assumed. I turned him around and helped him pull his head and arms through the shirt, finally freeing him of the ruined cotton. More bruises, identical to the others, marked his chest and well-defined abs. He’d gone through some form of hell. And if I found out he’d gone through it solely for me, I’d give him a matching black eye.

“You might need stitches,” I said, tossing the old shirt to the floor in a soggy heap.

“It’s fine.”

“Really?” I planted my hands on my hips and fixed him with my hardest stare, hoping the stance was as effective on Chalice as it had been in my old body. “Since when do you downplay a wound of any kind, Wyatt?”

His mouth opened and closed several times in succession, until he finally gave up on a response. I rifled through the recently laundered clothing until I located a plain white cotton T-shirt. I ripped it into one long strip, and then folded the rest over into a makeshift bandage. When I returned my attention to Wyatt, he’d already stripped out of his bloody jeans and slipped into a new pair.

“Arm up,” I said.

He followed direction, folding his arm up and around his neck, giving me a clear field. I pressed the makeshift bandage against the wound. He hissed; I flinched.

“So are we going to talk about this?” I asked. “Hand.”

He pressed his palm against the bandage. “You know, I imagined this conversation a dozen times, how I’d try to explain everything to you. Now it’s just … hard.”

“Use small words.” I looped the strip around his waist and positioned it over the bandage. Twisted the ends. Pulled it into a knot.

He grunted. “Where should I start?”

“How about what day I died?” I suggested, doubling the knot. I didn’t need the bandage shifting.

“May seventeenth.”

Three days ago. Four days after the last I remembered. My mouth felt suddenly dry. “Okay, good. Let’s go further back, then, shall we? Why in the blue fuck did the Triads go in and murder the Owlkins? Because if we talked about it, I need a refresher.”

Wyatt reached for the fresh shirt, but didn’t put it on. He fingered the blue material, turning something over in his mind. I recognized his thoughtful face. One advantage to having a new body was that he didn’t know my tics and foibles anymore, the way I still knew his.

“I honestly don’t know why, Evy, but it was excessive,” he said. “The official story was that the Department brass wanted you neutralized at any cost. They think you killed your own Triad teammates. They blame you for Ash and Jesse.”

Well, they were half right.

“Apparently the Fey Council got wind that a Triad member had, as they put it, turned traitor,” he said. “When they found out about the trouble at the bridge, and that you were involved, they stepped in.”

Damn me and my infamous reputation.

He continued. “When one of the Council leaders calls up the brass and demands that their secret stash of Bounty Hunters Neutralize a threat, they listen. When the brass found out where you were staying, they planned an assault and ordered the Triads to carry it out.”

“Yeah, I remember that part.”

The sounds of my friends screaming as they died would never fade from my mind. Danika, barely sixteen by human years, had forced me to run. I never should have left the Owlkins alone to fight the Triads, who shouldn’t have attacked in the first place.

Putting aside the simple question of how they tracked me to Sunset Terrace (even I can make mistakes when caught in the clutches of grief), the attack made no sense. The Fey Council is to the Department what soft money donors are to politicians—silent partners who occasionally benefit from offering their support, but nonetheless hold sway. They also hold magic over our heads like a toy on a string. Giving us occasional swipes, but never sharing their intimate knowledge. Not even to our human Gifted, who struggle to understand and live with their unusual powers.

Considering the steady increase in Dreg-on-human violence over the last six months, a holy smack-down may have seemed inspired to the brass. The perfect excuse to nearly wipe out a species and send a very clear “Don’t fuck with us” message to the other were-Clans.