Page 187 of Because I Killed Him
“Come on, Dickie.” Edmund’s voice grinds out of him desperately. “Come on.” He pumps again, faster and more frantically.
Around us, the deck crowds with bodies. Charlotte collapses to her knees beside me, sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Lore. I tried to get you with a hoverboat, but Rosamundheld me back.”
Irene and Rosamund stand shoulder to shoulder, frozen, their faces bleached with terror. The sergeant barks into his radio for a helicopter while two Pinkies rush in and smear ointment over my wounds, which hiss and bubble on contact. A sterile, cloying smell thickens the air as the bleeding slows. The gashes cinch shut under the clotting agents, and the pain suddenly vanishes, as if cut away.
I glance over at Edmund, who’s still performing chest compressions. “Dickie.” His hands pump rhythmically against Dickie’s sternum. “Dickie.Please.”
He seals his mouth over Dickie’s again and breathes deeply. Dickie’s chest rises once, twice, and then… a cough.
Dickie spasms, vomiting lake water in a violent gush. He gasps, and his body convulses against the deck as if fighting to stay tethered to the world. The first breath he takes is a gulp, dragging in air as if it’s the first time he’s ever tasted it.
The deck goes still. Even Rosamund, who’d begun edging toward the hoverboats, stops in her tracks.
Dickie props himself up on an elbow, still wheezing. He scrubs water and bile from his lips, blinking until his gaze settles on Edmund’s shell-shocked face. Edmund’s sandals leak lakewater, and his shirt is torn and plastered to his skin. His chest heaves, and his eyes, glassy and bloodshot, fix on Dickie in a blank, unseeing stare.
“It’s all right, Ed,” Dickie rasps, reaching to pat his arm.
Edmund flinches at the touch, his jaw tight, as if he’s still underwater, trapped in a different moment when Dickie died.
Dickie waits, then tries again, forcing a crooked grin.
“I’m all right,” he says. “Though I kinda hoped the first time I got puckered up, it’d be by a pretty broad.”
His gaze jumps past Edmund, his eyebrow lifting toward Charlotte.
She lets out a short, breathless laugh that shatters into a sob. Her shoulders fold inward as more tears come.
Edmund shakes himself, snapping out of it slowly, then all at once. He springs forward and pulls Dickie close, his shoulders trembling as his body arcs protectively around him.
Dickie flinches and cries out loud enough to make Edmund twitch back.Edmund’s eyes drop to Dickie’s shirt, clinging wetly to his ribs and stained with a sickly rust-colored mark. Edmund peels the fabric away and finds a plug of flesh missing, a clean piranha bite gouged from under Dickie’s ribcage.
Dickie groans as if he’s only now aware of the pain. His body slumps back against the deck, his head lolling sideways until he sees me and what remains of my leg.
“Loredana?” His voice, tinged with horror, is barely a whisper.
I don’t know if he remembers what happened or how close we came to being eaten alive.
Beside me, Charlotte’s grip tightens around my hand. Her face is a frantic mess of smeared makeup and tears as she shouts at the sergeant, demanding to know where the helicopter is. She keeps asking if I’m still in pain, but I can’t answer. I can only stare at Edmund, who’s crouched over me, his eyes dead, as if seeing me broken has broken him too.
Jack kneels beside Dickie and smears ointment over the wound to stanch the bleeding. “What happened, Dickie?” he gasps. “How the fuck did you guys fall in?”
Dickie shakes his head, too dazed to answer.
“Miss Hussey initiated an unlawful death duel challenge against Miss Waldsten,” the sergeant cuts in. “I intervened and disarmed her. Miss Hussey was being taken into custody when she broke free, struck Miss Waldsten, and kicked her overboard. Mr. Langley was ascending in a hoverboat at the time. Miss Waldsten collided with the vessel mid-rise, causing it to capsize, and both parties entered the water.”
Edmund rises slowly as the sergeant speaks, the kind of slow that makes everyone else go still. Irene retreats to the railing, her eyes tracking the way his head tilts down and his shoulders drop as he shifts his weight. With a frantic curse, she springs at one of the Coppers, yanks the plasma pistol from his holster, and trains it on Edmund.
But he still advances, exploding forward in a feral burst that rattles the deck. Irene tugs back the pistol’s charging handle and locks her arm in preparation to fire. Yet when her finger closes on the trigger, it stiffens as if gone numb.
Edmund is already halfway to her before anyone reacts. Jack clears ahot tub in one leap and slams into him from behind, arms locking around his waist. “Not like this, Ed!” he shouts.
The Coppers move to de-escalate the situation, forming a wall in front of Irene, whose finger is still frozen on the pistol’s trigger. Rosamund sobs and ducks behind the bar, nearly tripping over her screeching monkey.
Edmund keeps pushing forward, dragging Jack along until his sandals slip and squeal on the slick deck. His breath tears ragged from his throat, hands clenched into bloodless fists, eyes locked on his target with fierce, blinding rage. He’s yelling, but he’s not thinking. He’s hunting.
Jack clings tighter, straining with everything he has, but Edmund propels forward until he slams against the wall of Coppers. He shoulders past the sergeant, then arcs up with a savage roar and drives his forehead into the muzzle of Irene’s pistol.
I lurch sideways, so stunned I barely register the roar of the helicopter overhead. Light floods the sky as the helicopter touches down on the yacht’s helipad. The rotor wash lashes the deck, whipping my hair into my eyes and knocking plates off the bar. Then the cabin door bursts open, and four Pinkie medics leap out, boots pounding the planks.
