It’s also how I saw the diamond begin to burn his flesh.
He evidently didn’t notice the pain or the smoke. But plenty of other people did.
“Woohoo,” I heard Cody hoot. “Rector, you dog. You two are smoking!”
Seth was too busy trying to ram his tongue into my mouth to pay attention … an attempt I thwarted by moving my face away from his and kissing him on the cheek instead.
Unfortunately, he kept moving his head so that my lips met his open mouth. This was very unwelcome, but didn’t last long, since the smell of his charring skin — and the sensation of it — soon caught his attention.
He ripped his mouth from mine, then looked down at his arm. “What the —?”
It was too late. The blue smoke from the wound in his arm was circling in a slow arc towards the ceiling.
“Uh, Seth, Coach said no smoking until end of season, remember?” Bryce did not understand what was happening.
Seth released me, shaking his arm until the diamond rolled harmlessly away, onto his shirtfront. Then, as the stone began to seer through the cotton jersey, he thrust me roughly away from him, towards the far end of the chaise.
“Stop it,” he said in a voice that sounded nothing like Seth’s. It was deep and wild, and as angry as the ocean outside the glass doors. “Stop it now.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said. I glanced towards Seth’s friends, my eyes wide and innocent. “You guys, you saw it. Seth and I were kissing, and now he’s having some kind of fit or something. Maybe you should call his dad.”
“Seth?” Bryce looked down at us, his expression troubled. “Hey, bro, what’s going on?”
Seth gritted his teeth as he clutched at his arm. The wisps of smoke that escaped from between his fingers turned thicker … and blacker. Black as my diamond. Black as his pupils, which seemed to fill the entirety of his eyes.
“I’ll kill you,” he snarled, saliva bubbling out of the sides of his mouth. “I’ll kill you for this.”
“Dude,” Cody said, slapping a hand to Seth’s back. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t touch me.” Seth whipped his head around to rage at him. Cody instantly pulled his hand away.
“Um,” I said. “I don’t think he’s okay.”
Outside, there was a flash of such brilliance, I thought at first it was a nuclear explosion. It lit up the sky, the sea, and the entire room … which was immediately after plunged into total darkness when the generator ground to a halt. Girls screamed — a particularly shrill sound, since the speakers had also failed — and I heard glass breaking. Then thunder crashed with such violence, the entire house shook.
When the lights flickered back on a second later, causing us all to blink, I saw that there was a tall figure standing behind Seth who hadn’t been there before.
“Hey,” Cody said, noticing the figure as well. “Who are —?”
Who are you? That’s what he was probably going to ask. But before Cody could finish his sentence, the figure grabbed a handful of Seth’s shirt, then dragged him from the chaise lounge to his feet.
“It’s one thing to kill me,” John said to him. “But kiss my girlfriend? I don’t think so.”
Then he pulled back one of his powerful fists and planted it squarely into the center of Seth’s face.
18
“That forehead there which has the hair so black … ”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XII
John put a pretty solid end to the coffin party when he broke the host’s nose.
At that exact moment, the sea broke through the glass wall around the spec home’s deck and came gushing through the backyard, around the side of the house, and towards the driveway full of cars.
The party guests who weren’t screaming about all the blood coursing down Seth’s face suddenly began screaming about their vehicles, and they streamed from the house in a futile effort to save them … everyone except those helping Seth, who was cradling his own head and moaning, and Bryce, who immediately came to his QB’s defense.
Dropping his head, Bryce came at John like a bull, his face red with rage. John sidestepped him, then slammed a fist into the younger boy’s stomach. As a ball player, it couldn’t have been the first time Bryce had ever been struck in the gut, but it might have been the first time he’d ever been struck with such force, judging by the look of injured surprise that spread across his face. While Bryce was still doubled over in pain, trying to catch his breath, John plunged another fist into his kidneys. Bryce grunted, then sank to his knees, all the fight clearly knocked out of him.
“John,” I said urgently, since he was still breathing hard and pacing back and forth in front of Bryce, looking not unlike the “wild thing” I used to accuse him of being. He seemed ready to hit Bryce again — or anyone else in the room — at the least provocation.
None of the few remaining males looked as if they cared to engage, however. The DJ, Anton, was pointedly minding his own business as he swiftly packed up his equipment, and a few stoners were watching the fight with wide, astonished gazes from a nearby couch.
“John,” I said again, reaching for him as he swung by me with no sign of recognition. Wherever Thanatos had been keeping him, the conditions had evidently not been pleasant. “It’s me, Pierce. It’s all right.”
He threw me a skeptical look from beneath a lock of dark hair that had fallen over one eye. “Is it?” he asked as he paced, opening and closing the hand he’d used to punch Seth and then Bryce. “Funny, because it doesn’t feel all right. How could you have let him kiss you like that?”
Oddly, it was that irritable snarl, more than any loving greeting, that made me realize John was fine. He had really and truly come back, just as he’d assured me he would on that dock back in the Underworld, and he was entirely himself.
“John,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. Tears of joy.
“How could you even have let him touch you?” he asked. “Didn’t you know who he was?”
“Of course I knew who he was,” I said. Waves of love and relief were washing over me with as much force as the waves of seawater that were washing over — and destroying — Reef Key. “Thanatos, the Greek personification of death. He was holding you captive —”
“Yes,” John said. “Exactly. And you kissed him!”
“Well, all of Seth’s friends were standing around. How else was I supposed to get my necklace close enough to him long enough to burn him without making it look suspicious?”
John’s scowl deepened. “You could have had Frank hold him down,” he said.
I couldn’t help grinning up at him. I was so happy he was back and arguing with me. “Next time,” I said, “I will definitely have Frank hold him down.”
“It isn’t funny,” John said. “You kissed him on purpose just to annoy me. So do you know what I get to do now?” He stopped pacing and pointed at himself. “I get to kiss someone — whoever I want — just to annoy you.”
I reached out and took hold of the hand he’d used to point at himself, which also happened to be his punching hand. He’d skinned his knuckles on something sharp — possibly Seth’s teeth — and they looked tender. I raised the bruised, battered hand to my lips.
I was standing close enough to him that I could see how quickly his pulse was leaping in his neck, and how, at my gentle touch, his pulse began to slow. His expression softened. Somehow he’d managed to acquire a shirt — a white one, loose around the collar, but close-fitting everywhere else, like his jeans — and a pair of boots not unlike the ones he’d left on the dock back in the Underworld. I wondered where he’d found them. Although his long dark hair was a tangled mess, and he needed a shave, he looked good. Death suited him.