I had to do this right. I would only get one chance.
The gunmen had their weapons at the ready. Their masks modeled after roadkill stared back at me with glassy eyes. I needed Chase to be confident. That way he wouldn’t think he needed the guns. I knew him. Wherever possible, if he could, he’d do things himself.
My shoulder felt heavy with the tangle of leaves hidden under my clothes. Ideally, he would step closer.
Chiara was the only one in motion, pacing behind the line of gunmen, arms crossed, unable to sit still. I know what that felt like.
“Chiara, look at me,” I said.
She did. Pain was the only thing I saw in her expression.
“Help me.”
She stepped in front of the gunmen, but off to one side, not fully crossing to my side. “Nick, I… I just want to stop feeling sad. It never ends. I know this isn’t right. I’d hoped you would find a way out of this. But I just need to stop feeling. It hurts too much. And I warned you, I’m selfish.”
Her eyes glistened with tears. “It’s all I can think to do.”
My heart hurt. But fine, I needed to remind myself the reason I was here in the first place. And this pain is a good sign. It means the drug is wearing off.
So I turned to Chase. “Am I just a link in the chain of your long line of your victims? What makes me different from you offing any other person?”
Chase tilted his head. At this point it felt wrong to see him without a knife in his hand.
“Nick, it wounds me that we’ve known each other for so long and I still can’t get this through your thick skull. I don’t take pleasure from killing per se. I take pleasure in the struggle, the game of it all and I want to play with the highest stakes. So you see, I have to kill. If I didn’t, the stakes would be fake. Every game must have an end. A winner and a loser. I accept these terms every time I play and each time…” he rolled his head towards the ceiling and I leaned forward, almost taking the chance, but I held myself back. Not yet.
“Each time I come out alive and the loser dead is a thrill like no other. But you don’t care how I feel, do you?”
He watched me, throat still bared.
“You want the truth that undoes all the others. So here it is. I am at constant war inside myself. I want to see the new world take shape. It intrigues me to no end. More than that, in a deep selfish part of my mind, I want it all to myself. I wish to sit alone on an entirely new earth, with no one else left but me. But that would be the end. The end of all the games. No one left to play. So I must constantly restrain myself. The new world must come and I want more games, more stakes, perhaps even stakes I couldn’t currently imagine.”
He laughed like a delighted child. “There’s so much that is wonderfully unknown!”
I had no words.
Nothing left to say.
Chase glanced at Maria.
“How are we doing on time?”
“His dose of the drug should wear off soon. There are a few other mice left scurrying about my house but it’s clear this was a failure so far. Their Witches didn’t trigger upon their deaths. Their bonds weren’t strong enough.”
“Nick will be different. I can just feel it.”
Julie made a loud utterance, baring her teeth at me. Maria petted her hand.
“Julie asks if she can be the one to do it.”
Chase turned to her. “Oh?”
I could feel cold fingers creep along my neck. It was as if the curse knew it was time. Now.
Time slowed to a crawl. The bundle of leaves unfurled as I turned my head to speak to it. Briefly, I met Chiara’s gaze. My lips parted.
And Chase somehow knew.
His head snapped around and apathy washed over me.
Chiara’s eyes fluttered.
The door to my emotions was closing fast. I poured everything into my next words, wringing every last ounce of feeling onto them.
“Chase, The Grinning Reaper.”
The Heart Seeker shot out of my clothes, flying in a straight line.
I started after it.
Ever since the Sillwood incident, where I had acquired the strange flying dagger from the Beacon, Zola had been holding on to it. I’d visited him on the way to the Masked Dinner and he had explained to me how the Heart Seeker worked. “It acknowledges your recognition of your target. You must know them, and through that knowledge, you give them a name that fits.”
The Heart Seeker flew at Chase and he twisted, trying to get out of the way. It flew true regardless. My steps felt slow, like I was running in a dream. But I was breaking through the apathy.
The curse moved my limbs. It wanted me to hold to my promise. A new victim. A fresh mind to besiege. They were perfect for each other. And all it took was for me to Shape a promise onto my heart. Anything for Nell.
The pounding thought pulsed through my head, driving my body forward like I was possessed. I prayed to every fiber of my being, asking that any potential be used. I didn’t care. Burn my blood as fuel. Just get to him.
The Heart Seeker sank into Chase’s chest. His expression of surprise froze. And then he crumpled to the ground, motionless.
I didn’t stop running. My vision darkened into a tunnel that only had one focus. The onlookers did nothing, simply turning their masked faces to follow my approach. Chase’s apathy was a double-edged sword. They had no desire to assist either side.
I leaped on top of Chase’s body and immediately a knife went through my side.
His eyes flashed and he laughed at me even as my hands struggled to close around his neck.
“How’d you know I was playing dead? Did we both anticipate this? I wrapped my heart in the cardiac muscles of other people. A perfect defense from that thing.”
Not a word left my mouth, closed in a grim line.
Thumbs found the bulge of his windpipe and I pressed down with all the weight of his victims. I imagined the pile of bodies beneath us. This would be the last.
Chase fought, the knife going in and out of my side. The pain felt far away. Even after he sliced at my neck, I felt nothing but the pulse beneath my fingertips.
My skin melted into his. The curse bled into him. I could feel my shoulders getting lighter. Soon I would be free.
His pulse was growing weaker. Chase choked, skin going pale. His knife arm was getting sluggish. The sweat on his neck almost made me slip. Even the strangled sounds he made sounded distant.
Then his knife slipped from his fingers.
His eyes rolled back into his head. I stopped feeling his pulse, but I didn’t let go.
Perhaps a minute passed. Perhaps ten. I didn’t have a proper grasp on the time, I just kept squeezing.
Finally, I was certain. I pried my stiff fingers away from his neck.
Chase’s dead eye whites stared back at me. Froth dripped from his mouth. The plan had worked. I’d buried the curse with him. My final trump card. It was over.
I could finally…
Rest.
Chase’s eyes rolled back into place. “Are you done? It’s about time you woke up.”
Another reality superimposed itself onto the first. One where Chase was alive and well, barely holding back his mirth.
I swayed, staggering to keep my balance and the two images drifted apart and then together, like a projection trying to align with another copy. When they fully aligned, one reality vanished and I was left in the one where Chase was still standing.
He hadn’t been hit. And I hadn’t moved an inch from where I started.
The only thing that had changed was that Chiara was on the ground, twitching, skin pale, limbs moving in starts to clutch at her chest.
This can’t be real. I must have passed out. I must be having a nightmare. I just need to wake up.
“You almost had me, Nick,” Chase laughed. “It was up to Lady Luck in the end. My dream almost didn’t reach you before you said my name. I’m lucky that Chiara’s name is similar. I think you subconsciously found her name instead of mine as you drifted off to sleep. Still though, that flying knife got confused. I think it just nicked her. Still looks fatal though, just slower.”
A dream? I couldn’t believe it. So none of it was real?
I stared into Chiara’s eyes. To my eyes, she looked like a dying prey animal, twitching at the side of the road, on the precipice of death. Was I next?
Pain exploded in both my knees. My legs gave out and I collapsed, knees crashing into the ground, causing even more pain to jolt up my body.
“Ah. Ahhhhhh,” I couldn’t even breathe, let alone speak.
Did I just get shot?
A primal fear flooded my brain, driving out the confused thoughts. Survive.
Little pricks of white bone began to poke out of my skin. Too little. Too late.
I heard Chase snap his fingers. “Nick, work with me buddy. Fight through the pain. Focus. If anyone can do it, you can.”
I looked up at him.
“You were probably thinking, ‘I’m the hero, I can’t die!’ But you never truly realized the truth. You’ve been moments away from death so many times before this. You’ve gotten desensitized to it. But don’t delude yourself: each and every one of those times, it wasn’t your strength or your convictions or your goodness that let you live. Not divine intervention or karma. No, death spared its hand because I knew the conditions weren’t right. Your death had to be just right. Not too cold, not too hot. So don’t go thinking you had an indefinite extension.”
“N-no,” I breathed.
“It’s time for you to come to terms with it, because it’s going to happen now. A bullet is going to penetrate your skull and you will find out what is waiting beyond the veil.”
Tears spilled down my face. My fingers scratched against the cold floor. I was out of plans. I couldn’t even stand on my own two legs.
“He’s a monster!” I screamed at the masked people who just watched stoically. “Why can’t any of you see it!?
My throat hurt as I begged, “Someone. Anyone. It isn’t right.”
I couldn’t see through my tears. Chase wasn’t even laughing anymore.
“Please, I don’t want to die.”
I felt raw. So intensely vulnerable. Like I had no skin.
Minutes passed with only my cries to fill the silence.
My tears dried. I sat motionless.
There’s nothing left. Might as well say it. That thorn nestled at the core. It’s ached for so long, you thought it was just a fact of life. Here goes-
“I wanted to be a girl,” I whispered, just to myself. The thorn broke free. It hurt even more than the bullet wounds. But it was a relief, a cleansing of my soul. A final bit of solace.
I knew why they were waiting.
The drug needed to wear off. The process had already started. My Shaping was returning. But there was no way out.
Chase’s hand went up.
“Ready,” he said quietly.
Every one of the masked people raised their guns in unison.
The clock ticked forward.
And then I felt Nell’s embrace settle over me, like God descending from heaven. Panicked, furious, frightened, and so, so happy to feel me again. All these wonderful emotions bundled into one and my heart ached as I found more tears to cry.
“I’m sorry, Nell. I guess I won’t be keeping our promise after all,” I said with an apologetic smile.
Milliseconds later a bullet passed through my skull.