Although she continued to sob loudly, Caitlin followed his thoughts and his idea. “No, you can’t ask that of me. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can. You must. Do you want them to experiment on me forever? They will, you know. Only you can stop them.”
As she realized what she had to do, John felt closer to her than ever. How could he have ever let her go the first time? It wasn’t fair. They deserved to be together.
Caitlin’s fingers no longer stroked John’s cheek. They moved down to rest against the pulse that beat weakly through his carotids.
She clutched him tightly to her buxom as her fingers pressed into his neck.
John felt her love filling him. It swirled around him and cradled him in warmth that spread through his mind like the spring sun driving the frost from a meadow.
“What was it that Dewatre said?” John transmitted.
She knew the quote he was referring before he even thought the question. From her mind, he heard Dewatre speaking in memory. “We die but once, and it is for such a long time.”
John almost didn’t notice when his heart stopped beating.
CHAPTER 28
Caitlin felt John’s pulse die beneath the pressure from her fingers. She choked on the wave of grief that washed over her. It wasn’t right. He had done nothing to deserve his fate. He had only tried to save her and now he was dead. Caitlin still sensed his mind wrapped around hers and knew he felt no fear at death. She continued to press on his carotids, giving time for his body to go beyond aid. So these bastards couldn’t revive him.
His love assuaged the grief in her heart, but still she sobbed. Whatever fate life held for her it would be without the one man who had loved her without limits. It was too much to bear.
***
John felt the blackness overwhelm him and he gave into it. He drifted in limbo, directionless and weightless. His pain had gone; even the little pain that had remained after Holdren had partially paralyzed him with a single thrust between his sixth and seventh cervical vertebra. But Holdren hadn’t been as good as he thought. His thrust had been off-center and had only cut the nerves along one side of the spine rather than completely severing them. Strange how John knew that now. His trainers had said to severe the spinal cord between the skull and the first vertebra. That insured a quick and silent death. It seemed odd that someone would want to know how to paralyze an opponent.
It also seemed odd that he could still think about it at all.
Was this death? Stuck in blackness with no sensations. It seemed more like hell than mere death. Strange, he’d never given hell much thought. It had always seemed rather medieval to John. Or perhaps something borrowed from the Greek and Roman myths of an underworld ruled by some pagan god. It hardly seemed like the creation of a loving God.
Well, it looked like he would find out sooner rather than later.
Something moved him.
At first, it was as if he was a compass, being turned toward one of Earth’s poles. Suspended in nothingness, John saw a tiny light in the distance.
Was that the light referred to so often by people experiencing near-death? It hardly seemed important. But then it was the only thing he could sense.
Or was it?
If the light was like a magnetic pole, lining him up with it, drawing him closer, then where was its analog?
John tried to rotate, to see behind him. Although he didn’t sense any movement, the light left the center of his vision and moved off to the side.
The dark split away from him.
In the distance, a great light appeared and swelled toward him.
In an instance, John knew that this was the light described by so many. It pulled at him with a force that seemed both irresistible and compelling.
But if that was where he should be going, then what was this little light? He forced his awareness to rotate again.
It was still there, a little pinpoint of light. The pull it had on him was small and he could resist it without conscious will, but it begged for investigation, for his attention. Curiosity held him.
Concentrating, he found he could move toward it.
He reached his disembodied hand toward it.
His fingers cupped around the light and John was amazed by its warmth. By its love.
***
Caitlin could hear the siren of an ambulance.
They would be too late.
There was nothing they could do to save John now.
She didn’t want to let these people take her either. John’s knife lay a few feet away, its blade shone in the light of the vehicles surrounding her. Perhaps she should end it here. If she could reach it before they could stop her she could plunge it into her heart and free herself.
Like she had freed John.
Did she have the courage to end her own life when there was no hope left?
John had wanted her to live. He thought that eventually she would be freed, possibly with the help of his friend. Had he been just trying to give her some hope to keep her from total surrender?
What was left when all hope fled?
She reached toward the knife.
Warmth flowed through her.
It was like liquid love.
What? What was this? It was like the first time she and
