I crawled faster, aware I wasn’t making very much progress, but not about to stop. When a hand fisted in my hair, jerking me up onto my feet, I gasped as pain bolted through me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a low male voice hissed. “We aren’t done with you, Gwendolyn Goode.”
Several other sets of hands grabbed at my limbs. Before I knew it, I’d been carried back to the crypt and deposited upon it — this time, they held me down so there was no chance of escape, one Heretic stationed at each appendage, a steely grip around an arm or an ankle. The others moved into position, recreating their circle, chanting their strange Latin spells in an eerie, haunting refrain.
I kept my eyes on the moon, watching the eclipse slowly engulf its glowing surface, shades of deep reddish brown bleeding inward. It was rather beautiful. (In fairness to the moon, it probably would’ve been more so if it wasn’t shepherding in the moment of my death.)
The chanting picked up speed. I didn’t try to fight against my captors. Their grips were like steel and my body was so worn out from my previous escape attempt, I knew I couldn’t roll off the crypt again even if the opportunity arose. There was a certain sort of acceptance in that knowledge.
I was about to die.
Hetti reappeared, one hand pressing a wad of white cloth to her cheek, which appeared to be bleeding profusely — a sight that gave me no small amount of pleasure — and the other gripping the ornate athamé blade — a sight that instilled within me no small amount of fear. Backlit by the moon, which was now almost fully stained a deep red as the eclipse progressed to totality, she appeared even more deluded than before.
“Brothers and sisters,” she called, her formerly smug voice strained by pain. “The moment we have waited for is finally upon us!”
The chanting increased.
The eclipse hit totality, fully encompassing the moon.
It was time.
Hetti looked down at me. Her eyes were brimming with both pain and triumph. “I hope you enjoyed that little show of defiance, Gwendolyn.” She lifted the dagger high overhead. “It will be your last.”
My eyes fixed on the blade as it sliced down toward my heart. Time seemed to slow down as I watched my death coming at me. They say, when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That wasn’t my experience. I didn’t see everything I’d ever been through. I didn’t relive the pivotal moments, or replay the highest highs. I didn’t see much of anything, really. But I heard something. A deep, rasping voice I’d know anywhere.
Any place.
Any lifetime.
Be it this one or the next. (And, based on current circumstances, it would have to be the next, seeing as I was about to be shuffled off this mortal coil.) I could only hope, as the knife came closer, that reincarnation was real. Because if I got another shot at living, I wasn’t going to use it pushing a man like Graham Graves away. I wasn’t going to die without telling a man like that — one who pulled out urchin spines and set to rights upended chip displays and wrapped you tight in his arms and rested his forehead on yours and pulled you in close for the best kiss of your life and cooked delicious meals and collected fine art and wanted to fix up your house until it finally felt like a home because he knew you’d never had one — that I loved him beyond measure, beyond limit, beyond reason.
I heard him so clearly, it was like he was there with me in that final moment. And, hearing him, I closed my eyes to block out the horror of Hetti’s deathblow, but also to savor the sound.
One last instant of Graham.
One last instant of life.
Not alone, at the end.
Never alone, when I was with him.
“Gwendolyn!”
All things considered, it wasn’t a bad way to go.
Chapter Twenty-Six
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. If at second you don’t succeed… take, take a nap.
- Gwen Goode, in need of sleep
First came the shot, then came the scream.
My eyes sprang open in time to see Hetti lurch sideways, thrown off balance as the bullet tore through her shoulder. The knife, which had been headed straight for my heart, fell out of her hand, clattering to the stone by my hipbone.
I blinked, sure I was dead and hallucinating. At least, until I heard Graham’s voice shouting my name again, followed by the sound of running footsteps.
He was here.