Before I Wake

beautiful, your screams crystalline and fragile in tone, but robust in volume. I have always wanted to hear a bean sidhe scream in pain. I’m positively glowing with anticipation.”

“Kaylee, give me the dagger,” Tod said, his voice low and dangerous, threaded throughout with a thin ribbon of fear. But I pulled the knife out of his reach.

“No.” This was my job. Alec was my friend. The least I could do was give his soul some peace.

“You shouldn’t have to do this. He was your friend, and I can’t watch you do this.”

“Then close your eyes.” I stepped away from him, and he let me go, but I could feel how badly he wanted to pull me back again. To protect me from what I was about to do.

“I warned you,” Avari said with Alec’s voice. He stood his ground as I advanced, knife gripped tightly, eyes still wet. “You could have prevented this.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Tod said at my back, and I realized he was closer. Within arm’s reach. He wouldn’t interfere with my job, but he wouldn’t let me assume the risk on my own, either.

“A stranger in the mall. Then a boy from your class. Now a personal friend. Can you see the progression at work here?” Avari lifted one of Alec’s dark brows at me in question. “It’s a crescendo of death, all building toward that powerful note at the finale that makes the audience gasp and hold its collective breath. You are that last note, Kaylee. You are my finale, and the symphony of pain we create together will echo throughout eternity before finally fading into an agonized silence. Much like the bean sidhe’s wail itself. Unless you’d like to cut this whole production short and skip to the end.” The hellion shrugged with Alec’s shoulders, still holding his injured arm. “Normally I’m fairly patient—I suppose I have eternity to thank for that—but there is something to be said for instant gratification.”

“I’m gonna be gratified the instant she shoves that knife into your gut,” Tod said at my back. “And if you even look like you’re gonna touch her, I’ll take your head off myself.”

“I have no intention of stopping her, but that has nothing to do with your useless threat.” Avari’s focus shifted to me then. “Eliminate this form, and I will see you again soon, in another, even more treasured one. Or you can come with me now and spare the life of someone you love. What will it be, little bean sidhe? ”

My teeth ground together and my fists curled around the handle of the knife in my grasp. My free hand wiped tears from my face. He’d already killed someone I loved—Alec was the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had. The closest I would ever have.

My mouth opened, and a bellow of rage burst from me, lower and more raw than any sound my bean sidhe lungs had ever produced. I lunged forward and shoved the double-bladed knife into his stomach and up beneath his sternum, going for the heart—for the quick kill—out of some instinct I hadn’t known I possessed.

Avari’s eyes widened. A sound of pain caught in his throat, like he was choking on it. He swallowed thickly, then smiled at me in spite of obvious pain. Blood poured over my hand, gruesomely warm and wet. Avari fell forward, one hand grasping weakly for my shoulder, and I stumbled beneath his weight.

Tod was there in an instant, trying to pull him off me, and cold horror unfurled deep inside my stomach. This wasn’t right. None of the others had died like this, with weight, and staggering pain, and blood gushing over my hand and onto my clothes, pooling on the floor between us.

Tod pulled, but Avari clung to me with what had to be the last of his strength, and whispered into my ear. “I didn’t kill Alec, Ms. Cavanaugh. You did that yourself. And it was magnificent…”

Then he let go, and Tod shoved him to the floor.

Avari sucked in a shocked gasp and stared up at me, blinking in confusion, dark skin waxy with pain and blood loss. “Kaylee?”

And that’s when I understood. Avari wasn’t wearing Alec’s soul. He was wearing Alec’s body. Alec had only been possessed. And I’d just killed him.

“No!” I dropped to my knees next to him, and my hands shook over the hilt of the knife. I didn’t know whether to pull it out or leave it in. Which would be worse? Did it even matter? He couldn’t survive this. No one could.

I hadn’t.

“Alec!”

“What happened?” His lips moved, but there was no sound, other than the wheezy breaths he pulled in slowly, and exhaled even more slowly.

“Avari.” I couldn’t see through my tears. “I’m so sorry. Oh, Alec, I’m so sorry!”

“Kay.” Tod tried to pull me away, but I wouldn’t go. “Kaylee, let him go.”

“No! We can save him. Just… Just don’t take his soul. Then he can’t die, right?” With no reaper there to end his life and take his soul, he’d be okay. The doctors could still work their miracles. I stood and took his hand, staring at him through my tears. “Call an ambulance. No, take him to the hospital yourself. Please, Tod!”

“Kaylee, it’s too late.” He turned my head gently so that I had to look. So that I had to see Alec’s soul, pale and clean, already wrapping around the hilt of the blade still in his stomach. “He doesn’t need a reaper—the dagger took his soul. He’s already gone.”

“No.” I closed my eyes, so I wouldn’t have to see Alec staring at the ceiling, his eyes empty. Dead. “No! This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t how it works! I don’t kill people. I rescue souls. This can’t be…”

I dropped onto my knees again, sitting on my feet. My hands fell into my lap and left dark, sticky smears of blood on my jeans. The world started to lose focus.

“Kay, look at me.” Tod tried to pull me up with one hand, but I wouldn’t stand. I couldn’t. So he lifted me by both arms. “This is not your fault. Avari did this. He fooled us both. Alec’s fate was sealed the minute Avari possessed him, and you saved his soul from eternal torture.”

“No.” I shook my head, blinking through tears. “My knife. I stabbed him.”

“Kaylee, don’t do this to yourself.”

“How can I…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t have the words. How could I live with myself, knowing what I’d done?

I couldn’t. I wasn’t living, anyway. But I wouldn’t even be unliving when Madeline found out. She’d kill me for real, which was no less than I deserved, but my father would be devastated. Em would be devastated. Tod would be…

And it was all my fault.

Tod started to let me go, but my legs buckled beneath me. “Kaylee, hold it together. I need you to stand up.”

I stood, and distantly I saw him pull the dagger from Alec’s stomach and wipe the blades on his pants, where they left dark smears. “Come on.” He wrapped one arm around my waist and slid his hand beneath my shirt so that his skin connected with mine. “I’m going to take you some place safe, so you can get yourself together. So we can deal with this. I need to think.” He squeezed me so tight my ribs ached, and as the world dissolved around us, his last words echoed in my ears. “I won’t let them take you away… .”

* * *

The world pulled itself into focus around me again and when Tod let go of me, my skin felt cold without his touch. Everything felt cold.

“I’m freezing,” I whispered, and my teeth started to chatter on the last syllable, drawing it out.

“I think you’re in shock. Here. Sit down.” Tod led me by the elbow to a chair in one corner of the room. I thought the elbow thing was kind of weird—until I realized my hands were still covered in blood.

“How can I be in shock, if I’m dead?” I sank into the chair and laid my hands in my lap, palms up. And when I remembered why my hands were messy, the chattering got worse.

“That’s actually a really good sign. It means that you’re still tapped into your humanity. If you weren’t upset right now, I’d be worried. Well, more worried.”

I should have been glad to hear that I wasn’t turning into an emotionless undead monster—like Thane—but I couldn’t think past the blood on my hands and the memory of Alec staring up at me in agony as he died. “This doesn’t feel like a good sign.” And for the first time since I’d been restored to my body, I understood that it might actually be easier to let my humanity go—to divorce myself from emotion entirely—than to watch loved one after loved one die, or to live with the guilt of what I’d done to Alec.