Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kit knew what was happening. She knew despite being out of control of her body and her words and the thoughts that roiled over her own like crashing waves. Humans were dunked in baptism and could be reborn in life through water. Submersion should equal death for Scratch. Yet all she could think as she stared through the shallows at Grif was that four months ago this man couldn’t bear to let her die. Now he couldn’t let her live. Not, at least, with Scratch inside.
Scratch knew it, too. The fallen angel’s thoughts became her own.
The Eternal Forest awaits you, Katherine. I will wrap you in the roots of the fallen Tree of Life. I’ll tie knots around your soul. You’ll reside among the black, brittle arteries of rotted boughs, which will hold you firm while I savage you again and again.
Kit tried to hold her breath, to be strong and control what little she could—but Scratch was holding its breath, too. It thrashed to free itself from Grif’s hold, while the pressure of its rotted thoughts stewed inside her skull like a second brain.
When you’re dead, I’m going to make that Centurion watch as I carry you away. You’ll be Lost to him forever.
Fighting the instinct to thrash against Grif as well, Kit forced her limbs to still. No, the water is weakening you. And I’m still in control.
And she focused on Grif’s face, clearer now that the water was calming, studying her and willing her back. This was her body and life. That was her man. And she would prevail.
We’ll see about that.
And Scratch played a slipstream of her memories back to her, her life flashing like previews at the cinema. She watched her mother die again. She saw her father laid to rest. She felt the fogginess of her brain while seeking treatment for mental heath. She remembered a man racing from the shadows to save her life; the first time she’d ever seen Grif.
Bring it, you bastard, she thought, holding her breath. Because all of that made me who I am . . . and I’m strong.
Scratch’s growl scraped the inner walls of her skull, and she felt her eyes pulse with its anger. Above her, the water obscured Grif’s frown as he noted the change. His jaw clenched and she felt his hands tighten on her shoulders, and Kit’s vision dimmed again.
This time she saw memories that weren’t her own.
She saw Jeap, jumpy but excited as he cooked his first batch of krok. The surge of drugs whipping through his veins shot her forward in time and she saw Trey Brunk laughing with Jeannie Holmes as Tim Kovacs shot up and immediately fell flat on his face. Then Jeannie joined him, blood vessels burning.
They were the memories of everyone Scratch had possessed, Kit realized. It’d been in them, so it knew their thoughts and secrets, too.
Did you say secrets?
And suddenly Marin snapped into view. She was secreting away a file from Kit’s father’s study. Kit recognized the room, and then she recognized herself as the scene flashed forward. She was sleeping in her father’s nightshirt, as she had those six months after he’d died. Marin stroked her head and spoke aloud. “It’s for your own good.”
Scratch’s cutting laugh sliced the memory in two.
Secrets, it repeated . . . and then Kit saw Grif.
Here’s the memory he gave me in his tears. The exact emotion used to banish me from Brunk’s body. Isn’t it beautiful?
Scratch’s question was rhetorical, but Kit had to agree. There was absolute beauty in seeing pure joy in the face of the man you loved, especially as he made love to you. Kit had seen this look before, brief flashes where he forgot himself and his duty entirely. Pushing to his palms, the Grif of memory arched his head and neck backward, completely open to his lover, giving everything he could. Kit almost smiled . . . and then he said, “Evie.”
As she gasped, water filled Kit’s lungs in an instant. She shook her head and tried to push and cough it out, but all she could think was: Grif still makes love to Evie in his dreams.
Inside of her, still holding its breath, Scratch smiled.
In this world, Grif began to cry.
Kit was losing. The weakening of her limbs, the numbness that’d sunk into her chest, and now the slowing of her mind. She stared up at Grif and tried to get the image of him straining toward another woman out of her head, but to do that she’d have to simply release it. And to do that, she’d have to let go.
“Fight, Kit!” She heard his words just above the water, the scream ripping the insides of his throat.
But maybe letting go was another way of fighting. Maybe knowing when to release something was what life was really about.
Lifting one arm, Kit felt for the stubble of Grif’s jaw, then let her hand drop. Grif’s tears fell with it, hitting the water like liquid mercury. More fell, and there they congealed. Kit knew it was the emotion in them that made them visible. Emotion he felt for her. So she watched the quicksilver tears spread like oil over the water, thinning into a film over the surface. The last thing she would ever see in this world would be Grif, tinted in silver and shining. The last thing she would know was that he cried for her, too.
She liked that. And hated it. And so Kit cried as well, and her tears were cobalt-blue.
They rose to mingle with Grif’s, tangling like magnetic alloys, then fusing. They formed a new element in a color Kit didn’t have a name for, and she thought, That’s a beautiful way to go. Knowing your love has created something new.
Suddenly she realized Scratch had gone still inside of her. That was important, she thought. It meant something, somehow. But it was too late to figure out what. So Kit just inhaled, sucking in pool water and sorrow-tinted tears of silver and blue. And when the color she couldn’t name touched her lips?
Scratch screamed and took flight.
Grif didn’t know what had happened, not at first. One moment he was watching Kit die, Scratch’s victorious gaze burning like luminous coals, and the next she’d been launched from the pool as if from a catapult. Now she was on her knees, coughing and sputtering, hacking up the drink and the bile that came from being possessed by a member of the Third.
“I’m sorry, baby . . . be okay . . . I’m so sorry . . .” Grif was babbling, arms wrapped tightly around her, crying as her body convulsed and shuddered. Minutes dragged on, punctuated by sirens and yelling and the neighborhood coming back to life, but the attention was on the other side of the street. Nobody even turned their way.
Exhausted, Kit finally slumped and Grif pulled her onto his lap, stroking her hair from her face, and rocking her like a child. She stayed that way for a while, then finally tilted her head his way. “Our tears taste like a spring wind in flight. Our love is the flavor of a sunbeam biting cloud.”
“Wait. You— you saw that?” He hadn’t known she could.
“Scratch saw it,” she replied, dropping her head back to his shoulder. “And I saw what it saw. Everything.”
Grif didn’t know what “everything” entailed, and didn’t care just now. She was back, safe in his arms, and Scratch was finally—and truly—gone.
“The building . . .” she said.
He looked back. Little Havana was an inferno. “The krokodil is burning.”
Then she stiffened in his arms, and Grif glanced down in time to catch the exact moment her eyes settled on Dennis. Reaching for him, she slid from Grif’s embrace. “The whole damned world is burning.”