“Are you really asking me to destroy your siblings,” I ask slowly. “Your children?”
“Are you not ready to do this anyway?”
Enlilkian, oh yes. I am ready to take that asshole out, no questions asked. But, if Bios is telling the truth about the rest ...
“I did not bring you here to encourage you to try to save those who will, if ordered, strike at you in every way possible,” he says, like he’s digging in my thoughts. “I am selfish, Chloe. So are my siblings. We who secretly go against the grain want to use you, as well.”
I don’t even know what to say.
“I would ask this favor of you. Please consider it. And now, because your brother is ready to destroy me since I have taken five seconds longer than promised,” he says to Jonah, “we must return. There is no more time for uncensored talk.”
“Breathe, godsdammit, breathe!” comes a voice from above. Kellan’s fingers are fumbling against my neck, checking for a pulse. Air rushes into my lungs and I gasp loudly, my eyes flying open.
“Sjharn!” Zthane is shouting. “Karl! For gods’ sakes! Somebody get their ass in here and help us!”
“No need,” Jonah wheezes nearby. And then, “Get off me, Zthane. I think you just cracked a rib.”
“Thank gods,” Kellan says, leaning his forehead down against mine. “I thought ...”
“I’m fine,” I say, even though exhaustion clings to my bones. “Remember? He said we’d look lifeless?”
Kellan pulls away, rocking back on his heels. “Look. He said look. He conveniently left out how you’d actually stop breathing and your heart would stop, too.”
To this, Bios says nothing. He’s wide awake, sitting in the chair we left him in, once more wearing my father’s face.
“Nor,” Zthane adds harshly, “did he add that he would stay cognizant the entire time and chat us up while you two dropped like dead weights to the ground.”
I turn to Bios, incredulous; he merely shrugs.
“We’re fine,” Jonah says, standing up. Kellan helps me up, his eyes filled with concern.
I study Bios as Kellan and Zthane bombard Jonah with questions. His eyes are on me, not them. No—not his eyes. Noel Lilywhite’s eyes. The same orbs I grew up with only to watch the life get squeezed out of them.
Now that I know what his real eyes look like, I cannot tolerate my father’s body being used like this anymore. I may not have been close to my father, but I owe him this at least. And even though I’ve never done something like this before, it feels right. I wish oh so much that I had the power of reanimation so I could bring Noel Lilywhite back to life, but I can’t. I simply have to let him finally be at peace.
“You can’t stay in my father’s body,” I tell Bios. “You, who once ruled life and death, know that the two shouldn’t mix.”
He says nothing. So I take a deep breath, ignoring the arguing going on behind me, and shove my hand against his chest as hard as possible, punching through the softening skin straight past the ribs. Black smoke splatters out of every pore.
“What are you doing, Chloe?” Zthane shouts. He attempts to grab me, but Jonah blocks him.
As my father’s body slumps against the metal bench, I will another body to appear next to it, one that appears exactly as he showed me he looked, right down to every single strand of hair. It’s not a living body, not like mine, but it’s good enough to put his life essences into.
Zthane and Kellan don’t say a word, they’re so taken aback by what I’ve done.
Bios doesn’t need an invitation; the black smoke slams into the new body so hard it convulses. While I wait for the twitching to stop, I bend down next to my father’s body.
“You can rest now, Dad,” I whisper, and then I will it out of existence.
“Just what the hell did he tell you two?” Kellan asks Jonah. “What could he have said that would ever warrant either of you to condone such a thing?”
Bios continues to twitch, as if in pain. But when the spasms slow, I say loudly, “If you think you’re going to run around here in that see-through diaper, you can think again. You’re going to have to wear clothes just like every other person, even if I have to make those for you, too.”
I look around the cell, at the plain walls and metal bed. Within seconds, we’re standing in the room Jonah and I’d inhabited earlier, complete with a window that looks out into a valley so scenic it hurts to gaze too long at it. When the twitching subsides, Bios gets up and goes to stand by it. And I can’t be sure, but I could swear a tear falls from one of his kaleidoscope eyes.
“You want to explain to me why that killer suddenly gets a body and cush living quarters after everything it’s done to our kind? The Métis? Shit, J, for all we know, it could have been the one who killed Joey! And yet you just stood back and let its murderous ass have whatever it wants?”