The door yawned opened beneath them, and Nick rolled over into it, his good hand hooked into the bones of Drake’s face. Jackie’s body clung to his back, and Shelby wrapped herself about his legs as the pull of the other side stretched him. The pathway was hardly big enough to let them through, but the tug of life grabbed a hold of the part of him that still lived, conforming his body to it, bending and twisting bones and stretching him to the point of breaking as they were drawn through.
Laurel’s voice yelled in his head, full of a panicked urgency. Push, Nick! You’ve got to push us through.
I’m trying. The door was meant for one, not five.
She’s almost dead. Get us through. Now, damn you.
Like he did this every day, just dragging people around between the lands of the living and the dead. It didn’t help that one of them had a very strong desire not to go through. Push as he might, however, the doorway was not big enough. All the focus in the world could not direct enough energy to widen the opening. They were not going to make it.
You’re trying too hard, Nick. Let us go.
The voice was not Laurel’s this time. It might have been Gwen’s, or some conglomeration of all the spirits that swam through his veins. Laurel had spoken of it before when they had traveled through. But to just let it go now, when using spirits’ energy was all that was giving them the chance to get out, made Nick hesitate. Everything had been put into his hands. Jackie was on the verge of death, and vindication for all that had happened, all that he had done, surged within him. He was finally able to do something to right these wrongs, and he had to just let it all go? If this was wrong, there would be no strength left to do anything, and they would all be dead.
The time to ponder was gone. Fate, he supposed, would have to decide. He could only hope the dead were right. Nick relinquished control, effectively letting go of his grip on the door. For a moment, they were all pulled back, swayed toward Deadworld by Drake’s force of will.
The dead within Nick dispersed from his body in a blinding flash of white light, pulling at every cell from the inside out. It was the intense, painful relief of pulling a knife from a wound, at once agonizing and then a flood of relief.
Awareness of his body and everyone around him began to dissipate. Fog and darkness seeped into his pores, filling every opening, saturating him down to the marrow with a cold that felt like it must have come from the dead void of space itself. Nick wanted to scream, tried to, but he could not tell if he actually did. Was this it? Had death finally come to embrace him, mocking him in the end with this final failure? The moment lasted a second or eternity. There was no point of reference. He could only hope and pray.
Nick fell through, tumbling into the nothingness between the worlds, the desperate grips of those around him clinging for dear life. At the last, he focused his awareness on the one good hand he had left. If there was any justice left in the world, its grip would not fail.
Chapter 59
Bright light. Bright fucking light. Shit, I died. The grogginess of sleep distorted Jackie’s perception for a moment as consciousness finally took a hold of her body. The sticky crust around her eyes gave way at last, however, and she blinked at the streaming rays of sunshine coming in through a hospital window. A chrome pipe rose above her next to the bed, dangling a clear bag of fluid. Okay, it sure as hell was not heaven.
Looking down at the sterile baby-blue blanket covering her body, Jackie noticed a sleeping figure in a green overstuffed chair. Nick’s head leaned back against the top, lolling to one side, snoring softly. A glance to the other side of the room revealed that she was in a single room. What the hell had happened? Did it matter? She was actually warm. How long had he been sitting there?
“Nick…” Her voice cracked, mouth dry and parched as bone.
His head snapped up, wide awake in an instant. His eyes were puffy and dark. A single Band-Aid bridged the gap between them. “Jackie! You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” she said. God, it hurt to talk. “Water?”
He leaped to his feet. “No problem. Be right back.”
Nick bolted out the door, which Jackie found amusing until she heard him shout, “Nurse! She’s awake. She’s goddamned awake.”
Before she had time to really ponder the ramifications of his excitement over her just waking up, a pair of nurses and a doctor came hustling into the room. The next two hours went downhill from there. God, she hated the fucking hospital. At least they had brought water. By then, half the crew from headquarters had come by to see her, hardly able to move as she was and with tubes running into her arm. A parade of doctors and nurses had stormed in and out, poking and prodding, and the whole time, Nick had sat there in his chair, elbows on his knees and chin resting on his hands, watching her intently. Occasionally, a bemused smirk would cross his face when she would finally get frustrated at the hospital staff and tell them to leave her the fuck alone. The sun no longer beamed through the window when quiet made its blessed descent on the room.
“Thanks for the water, Nick,” she said, trying in vain to find a comfortable position in which to lie. She settled on her right side, the left arm laying down her side. The pink, welted line of the wound at her elbow smiled back at her, remarkably healed.
She should have died, they said, flatlined for three minutes before being brought back. Nobody had provided any worthwhile information, least of all Nick, who had remained more or less silent the entire time other than greeting those who came to visit. Belgerman had said nothing, other than stating that he was thankful she was alive and would be fired if he saw her in the office within a month. “Don’t come back until you are ready,” he had said. Ready. Was one ever ready to go back to work after something like this? She just wanted some answers.
“Sorry,” Nick replied. “I was just… very pleased to see you awake again.”
“Has it really been five days?”
He nodded. “Seven, counting our time on the other side.”
“But… how?”
“I don’t know.” Nick gave her a nonchalant little shrug. “Time doesn’t work the same over there, I guess.”
Yeah, whatever. Nothing would be the same after that place. “Drake’s dead though, right? I mean, really and truly dead?”
“Yes. When we came back, he was so full of holes even his power couldn’t save him.” Nick absently flexed his right hand. “Don’t worry, we made sure.”
Jackie thought better of getting any clarification on that one. “Good. That fucker needed to die.”
Nick smiled. “Yes, he did indeed.”
“I guess I owe you one now.”
“No. No, Jackie you don’t. I’m just glad we got you back. It was more Laurel than me anyway.”
Laur. Jackie had hardly thought about her since waking up. Fresh tears stung her eyes. More than anything, she wished her friend was with her now. “I’m going to miss her.”
Nick got to his feet and picked up the tissue box sitting on the side table next to the chair. He set it down on the serving table next to her bed. “I don’t think she’s gone, not yet anyway.”
Jackie pulled out a tissue and wiped at the tears running down onto the pillow. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” he agreed. “And I’m truly sorry.”
Jackie knew he did not speak of her death. She wadded up the tissue and threw it at him. “You couldn’t have stopped us, Nick. You really think you could have done anything to keep us away?”