Fallen by Susan Kaye Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

Every part of me shakes. My hand loses contact with Nico’s head. I grab his wrist instead, to keep hold of him. To keep pumping his life into her.
    I feel the energy leaving my hand. I feel it sink into her body. But there is nothing beyond that. No vast ocean of stored life. No pressure of years pushing or pulling against me.
    The life energy disappears into nothingness.
    Her eyes stare at the ceiling, the surprise fixed on her face.
    Words sob out of me, but I don’t know what they are.
    My hand on Nico’s wrist goes cold. I lift it and stare at the red burn— an inch wide slash across my palm—like it belongs to someone else. I inch forward to bend over Ophelia’s face, brushing the hair back from it. I caress her cheeks with both my hands, but I only manage to smear her blood on her face.
    Oh God no.
    My trembling fingers, the clean ones, the ones not stained with her blood, gently, ever so softly, close her eyes. I clench mine shut, unable to bear it, and wrench myself away, falling back on my hands and slipping in the pool that’s seeping across the floor.
    Larry and Valac are motionless. I crawl over to them. A bloody smear marks my path across the floor. Larry’s face is frozen in horror, staring unseeing at the ceiling. Valac slumps on top of him, a baseball sized hole in his back, and his eyes are closed. His face is unlined, peaceful, like he’s simply fallen asleep. There’s the hint of a smile at the corners of his lips.
    Somehow, some way, Valac managed to drain Larry, even after being shot. I put a hand on each of them. There’s nothing left in Larry, but the tiniest brush of life energy laps my other hand.
    “Valac!” I pulse a hit into him, quickly, then temper it. I don’t know how he can still be alive with that hole in him, but I pray—
    His eyelids tug and open half way, but he doesn’t lift his head. In fact, he doesn’t move at all. I can’t even tell if he’s breathing.
    “Little bird.” It leaks out of him on a thin breath of air. “Can’t see you.”
    “I’m here.” The words gasp from me, and I step up the transfer to him, but his eyelids drift closed instead of opening more. “Valac!”
    “Too bright.” His lips move, but he barely makes a sound. “Can’t see you.”
    His body falls still, and the energy I’m pumping into him suddenly escapes into nothingness. I keep pumping it anyway, pushing my hand harder against his cheek. I want to turn him over, start CPR, something, but I can feel it, just beyond my hand… there’s nothing there anymore.
    I pull my hand back, and it shakes. A hollow is carved inside me, and I curl over, on my knees, bent so far that my head nearly touches the floor.
    Something scuffles behind me, and my heart nearly leaps out of my chest. I turn, but it’s only Pete, the manager, pointing a gun at me that shakes visibly in his outstretched hand.
    “Don’t… don’t move!” he says. Anna cowers behind him, all traces of the high I pumped into her gone.
    I want to tell him to go ahead and pull the trigger. I want to lie down next to Ophelia and be done with this life.
    Instead, I say, “Go on. Get out of here. Before the police come.”
    Pete hesitates, then edges past the bodies, keeping Anna behind him and the gun in front, like I might leap up from the floor and attack him. As if I’m responsible for all the death that lies around me.
    Although he’s probably right about that.
    Pete and Anna slip out the door. My eyes unfocus, and I have to blink several times to get my vision back. I twist around and bend over Ophelia to kiss her lightly on the cheek. Her skin is soft and still warm. It invites me to stay. Tempts me to lie down and find a way to die. So Kolek can’t capture me. So he can’t hunt down my mother and make her pay for all my sins. But as the sound from the dance floor beats into the room, Valac’s words pound in my head.
    Go live a life worth living.
    Valac made a choice; he chose me . And I can’t waste that by