“Okay,” he said to the other people, his voice oddly calm. “Okay, I did a bad thing. I won’t do any more, I promise.” He walked toward the door and they jumped out of his way, not wanting to brush up against him. He moved into the hallway and then stiffened. “Wait, I forgot…” he said, turning back.
The people who had jumped out of the way before now did the same again, except they retreated into the room to get away from him. It looked familiar to me, and I remembered seeing a similar thing on television, of a clever dog herding frightened sheep. The clever dog had herded them right to the edge of a cliff, and the sheep had all jumped off, only to fall to their death on the rocks below. Danny closed the door as he re-entered the room, and the remaining upright bodies all crowded around me in the corner, realising that they had been tricked.
I couldn’t do anything to stop him, and with the water dripping from the walls and slicking over the floor, I couldn’t even use my valcrick to disable him without electrocuting everyone in the room.
He was too far gone; too lost to the dark power that called for death inside his veins.
“Danny.” I called over the noise of the others, all now pleading the same things as I had been pleading before. “Danny… I’ll do what you want. I’ll help you.”
“I know you will,” he replied, touching the legs of the people that tried to run past him, not even blinking an eye as they fell to the wet ground around him. He brushed their fallen faces, their chests, the backs of their heads, and they twitched and writhed before falling still. Eventually, it was only me and him, and I knew that he would force me to kill him, or he would kill me, because that was all that was left inside him.
I pulled Eva into my lap, trying to keep her limbs away from the wet floor as I raised a hand and called on the valcrick, feeling the need to vomit as it exploded into the room. Danny convulsed, flapping around on the ground and making wet sounds as his limbs slapped against the wet skin of other fallen people. In truth, I had no idea what the valcrick was doing. I wanted him to both live and die in equal measure. I wanted him to stop, but I wanted him to heal. I was desperate for both.
When he grew still, I laid Eva down and hurried over to him, staring down into his unblinking grey eyes. I held my breath, still hesitant to touch him, and jerked back a step when he heaved in a choking breath and surged upright, clutching at his chest.
“It worked,” he gasped, a laugh gurgling from his straining chest.
“It worked?” I repeated, my limbs numb as I stumbled back a step. I didn’t recognise the look in his eye, and it frightened me more than anything else that I had witnessed.
“Yes.” He laughed again. “I can’t die, because I am death.”
The door burst open behind us, and suddenly Danny was on his knees. “Help!” he cried out, as two more Klovoda agents rushed into the room.
“Danny?” One of them helped him up, casting horrified eyes over the room. “Are you okay? What happened?” Danny must have turned his ability off, because the agent wasn’t falling. Danny started sobbing, pointing a shaking finger toward Eva’s inert form.
“S-she…” he began to sob so hard that words seemed to become impossible, and my confusion became so great that I couldn’t do more than stand there and tremble.
One of the agents scraped his fingers against the wall and took a trembling step back, shaking the water off as he stared at Eva. “She drowned them all.” He sounded terrified. “We need to sedate her. Get a team in here!” he shouted to someone still out in the hallway.
He grabbed me and pulled me out into the hallway. Danny was suddenly beside me, his hand threading into mine, holding too tightly.
“Say anything and I kill them all,” he whispered to me. “Me and you, Lela… we have to stick together. It’s just me and you now.”
My lips were too numb to speak, and I tried to pull away from him. He shook his head, his nails digging into my skin.
“You were dead,” I finally stuttered, as a team of armed guards spilled into the room.
“There was a boy inside me. I suppose he’s dead now. Thank you for helping me, Lela. You’re the only one who will ever help me. I know why, it’s because you love me, and I love you. It’s just us. I won’t forget. Even when they take you away… I won’t forget.”
He squeezed my hand even harder and my chest grew cold as blood welled from the indents he had made with his nails, dripping down over our joined fingers.