Page 96 of Resurrection
I punch the wall.
A sickening crunch tells me my knuckles are getting pulverized as much as the wall, but desperation keeps me going. My arm is a blur, punching over and over until a hole the size of a head forms around the chain. Pieces of broken wall and debris rain over Andrei’s bent head and shoulders, spraying me in the face as a cloud of dust billows around me as if trying to choke me.
I keep going.
Finally, the chain wobbles, and with a cracking sound, it detaches from the wall and drops to the ground, yanking Andrei sideways with it. I take only a second to make sure I didn’t hurt him more than he already was, crouching down to do the same at his feet. My arms are numb. I couldn’t even feel pain when I slammed the wall because the skin on my knuckles was shredded so bad it curled over my bone like strips of an orange peels left on the fruit to reveal its center.
It didn’t take long to remove the bottom links stretching his legs on each side, but when I’m done, Andrei is left hanginglimply just by his one wrist. His muscles are pulled so tight by his weight that I’m scared the chain will rip his arm off, so I stupidly tuck my shoulder under his free arm and hold him up while punching the last connection that holds him prisoner. Every time I move, I jostle him, and his barely audible groans and gasps tear my heart apart. Instead of focusing on what I can’t change, I turn all my fear for him into anger, imagining what I’ll do to the ones who did this to my friend.
Out of everyone, they had to pick Andrei to do this to. The only person who can soothe my fears and make me feel like everything is going to be okay, even when I was dying before waking up as one of the monsters I was running from. His easygoing personality kept me sane, and they opened him up like a bug, dissecting him in the middle of a stench-filled tunnel. All while I thought he was dead. While I wrapped my head around the fact that I’d never see him again.
White noise filled my ears.
With a final loud groan, the wall in front of me opens, a large chunk of it falling at my feet and almost taking my toes out. At the last moment, I jump back, taking Andrei with me, and the chain drops with finality. The clamoring of the metal against the ground broke the last thread keeping me attached to my humanity. All the fear, the guilt, and the anger because of Andre’s death disappears in the cloud of dust that puffs in front of my face and coats me in white powder.
Hollowness takes residence inside me.
Andrei sags with all his weight on me, finally losing the battle with his consciousness, but I barely feel it. With one hard lurch, I throw him over my shoulder, his arms reaching the back of my knees and his feet bumping my shins when I turn to leave. My body coils to attack when two men fill the entrance, running to get inside. They stop as soon as they are one foot inside the openspace, and after I blink away the dust coating my eyeballs, I lock my gaze with Sebastian’s.
A muscle jumps on one side of his clenched jaw, and his nostrils flare. His hands keep clenching at his sides, no doubt imagining holding my neck in them. Behind his left shoulder, Marcus glowers at me, his red eyes pinging around the space and taking everything in before they settle on the man over my shoulder. The slight widening of his eyes is the only reaction before Sebastian speaks.
“What were you thinking.” I wish he would scream at me. It would hurt less than the low, disappointed tone he is using.
I swallow.
“I found Andrei.”
Never in a million years did I expect to see the shocked expression on both of their faces.
Chapter Eighty-Six
SEBASTIAN
I thought I lived it all.
That I’ve seen it all in my long life.
Looking at April now, like some tribal goddess holding a half-naked and bloody male over her shoulder, her face, hair, and shoulders covered in white plaster as if it is war paint, I can’t help the astonishment I feel as I suck in a gulp of air that lodges in my throat like a lump, preventing me from breathing. Her eyes glow like two miniature suns from under the white coating on her skin, and the tips of her fangs poke out from under her upper lip when it curls into a snarl.
I expected her to brush me off when I found and confronted her, or to tell me to fuck off, as is her way of dealing with my overbearing tendencies. Instead, calm, soul-crushing determination meets my gaze unapologetically. An icy chill slithers up my spine at the lack of humanity in those otherworldly eyes. All my anger and fear for her life gets washed off, and I mutely stare back at her, unable to move.
“I found Andrei.” Her voice is not her own, and a million different tones come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
My jaw unhinges and drops open, my eyes bulging as I look from her to the man thrown over her shoulder. No words come to mind, and another tremor rakes me inside. Marcus, on the other hand, snaps out of his shock sooner, and shouldering past me, he darts to her, taking our friend in his arms. Andrei’s head lolls to the side and there’s no mistake that she, indeed, found the one we thought we lost.
Shame.
It starts slowly like a spitting, flickering ember in the pit of my gut, but in no time at all it consumes everything I am. I gave up too fast. Instead of looking to make sure he was gone, I chose to write him off and focus on April. On keeping her alive.
I failed.
I failed them all when they placed all their trust and their lives in my hands.
“Did Eshe find you?” April asks, glancing down at her ripped knuckles with detachment.
“No.” I can’t feel the words passing my lips. “I thought she was with you.”
April only shrugs one shoulder as if uninterested.
