Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

He’d been expecting a dead weight, but the woman didn’t seem to weigh more than a few ounces, tops. She was in seriously bad shape. Marisa had replaced the soaked rag bandages with his shirt and had held it in position while they moved the woman. It was already turning crimson. Not a good sign.

“She got cut on the side of the throat,” Marisa explained. “I don’t think any of the major veins were cut.”

“When did she pass out?”

“She hit her head on the wall as she was falling down.”

Great, Davis thought. So they had a concussion to worry about as well. “Okay, let’s get her out of here,” he said. “Rolanda, you and the kid take point.”

Rolanda gave him a confused look.

“Take the lead,” Davis explained. “Scout ahead. You hear anything, you come tell us. Don’t play hero.”

This time she didn’t argue. She gave a quick nod and went to the door, waiting there for Cosette.

Cosette stared down at Isabelle’s ashen features, her own face having gone almost as pale. She reached out a hand and lightly brushed a wan cheek with the tops of her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean those things I said about you.”

“Cosette,” Rolanda called.

Cosette nodded, but didn’t look away from Isabelle. “I know you loved us,” she said, “but it just didn’t seem to be enough.”

Then she turned away and hurried out of the room after Rolanda.

There was something seriously weird about that kid, Davis thought as he watched her go. He found a grip for each hand on the sides of his end of the cot.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he told Alan as they lifted the cot between them.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want,” Alan said. “But not until we get Isabelle to a hospital.”

“Understood.”

Davis took the lead, walking carefully backward through the rubble. Marisa walked alongside the cot, keeping the makeshift bandages in place. None of them spoke again as they navigated their way down the stairs and out of the building, where the night was suddenly filled with sirens and flashing lights.

XXI

Isabelle didn’t feel any pain. She knew Rushkin had hit her with his second shot—how could he have missed at such close range? But then she’d closed the distance between them and there was no more time to think. She barreled straight into him, hands scrabbling for his gun, knocking him backward, off balance. Because of the force of her momentum, she lost her own footing and fell down on top of him.

They hit the floor with a thump that had to have knocked the breath out of him, but she didn’t let up.

This time she was determined to see things through. If she had to die, she’d be damned if she’d let him survive to torment someone else the way he’d tormented her.

He didn’t fight back as she struggled to get a grip on the gun in his hand. His fingers had gone oddly limp and she had no trouble pulling the weapon free from his loose clasp. Clutching the revolver, she scuttled sideways, trying to put some distance between them before she aimed the revolver back in his direction. But there was no need to fire. No need to see if she could actually go through with it and pull the trigger.

Rushkin lay sprawled on the floor where she’d knocked him, except she hadn’t been responsible for the blood that was splattered all over the floor and on the wall behind him. She stared at his corpse and it was only then that she understood why he hadn’t fought back. The second shot hadn’t been from his gun, but from John’s.

Her hands began to shake and she slowly laid Rushkin’s weapon on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her upper torso, but the trembling grew worse. She watched John enter her field of vision. He walked slowly up to Rushkin, his gun pointed at the monster’s chest as he toed the body. Once. Twice.

There was no response. When he was finally satisfied that Rushkin was dead, John put down his own weapon and walked back to where Isabelle knelt, shivering.

“It’s okay,” he said. He crouched beside her. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he drew her close. “It’s over now.”

Isabelle nodded. But it didn’t feel as though it was over. It felt more like it was just beginning. She felt stretched so thin that she knew something had to give. Still leaning against John, she looked back at the body.

“There’s ... blood,” she said. She regarded John in confusion. “But numena can’t bleed.”

“That we know,” he replied. “Remember what he said: all we know is what he’s told us. He might have taken over more than Rushkin’s life. He might have taken over his body as well.”

“Unless he was lying.”

John nodded. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the truth about some things, but it doesn’t matter.

Whatever he was, he’s dead now and we don’t ever have to worry about him anymore.”

Dead, Isabelle thought, and then she understood why she was feeling stretched so thin. Back there, in that tenement studio of Rushkin’s, the last of her life was finally bleeding out of her body.

“I think I’m dying, too,” she said. “I can feel the pull of my body fading away on me.”

“Hold on,” John told her, his voice suddenly urgent. “Don’t let go.”

“I don’t think I have much say in it at this point.”

And at least she wasn’t dying alone, she thought. Not like Kathy had died. Had Kathy regretted what she’d done when it was too late? Had she wanted someone to be with her as desperately as Isabelle knew she would if she didn’t have John?

“I wish I could have been there for Kathy,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t let her die alone.”

“You didn’t know.”

“But I should have figured it out. If I’d been a better friend ...”

“No,” John said. “That’s not the way it was at all.”

“But it is. You always told me to be more responsible.”

“I told you to be responsible for what you do—for your own actions. There’s a difference.”

“I still wish I’d come in time to stop her,” Isabelle said.

“Of course you do. That’s natural. But you can’t take responsibility for what she did. It’s not like she came to you and asked you for help and you turned her down.”

“But in a way I did. I wasn’t there for her anymore. Not enough. Not like I should have been. She loved me—unconditionally and right from the first. How could I have gone away and left her alone in the city?”

John could only shake his head. “You can’t live other people’s lives for them.”

“But—”

“And you can’t second-guess what they want,” John went on. “All you can do is accept the parts of themselves that they show you. We don’t live inside each other’s heads or have a script where everything we’re supposed to do is all worked out for us. If Kathy had wanted more from you, she would have told you.”

But she did, Isabelle thought. The only trouble was she’d either hidden her message away in her stories or written it in a journal that she’d only been willing to share after she’d died.

Isabelle wasn’t even leaving behind that much. She was beginning to feel thinner than ever. Almost transparent. She slid out of John’s arms and laid her head on his lap, looking up at him, too weak to do anything else.

“Hang on,” John said. “Think of yourself as having been healed, of going on from here. Don’t let go.”

Isabelle nodded, but it was so hard. “If I had another chance—not to change the past, but to go on, I’d do things differently. I wouldn’t just hide away on the island anymore. I think I’d take up Kathy’s work. I’d keep the island for any of the numena who wanted to live there, and I’d still live there some of the year, but I wouldn’t hide away from the world anymore. And I’d try to be there for my friends.”