Page 164 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“I don’tthinkyou did anything,” the woman yelled, spit flying from her lips. “I was fucking there last year. I watched you kill my sister.” Her nostrils flared. “And didn’t see a damn ounce of remorse or regret on your face when you did it either.”

“Agony, please run,” Kieran demanded. “Now. You need to get out of here—please.”

But I didn’t. And I couldn’t.

I knew with a rigid certainty that the woman was going to pull the trigger only a half of a second before she did, but it was enough time for me to shove Sora to the side.

“No!” Kieran yelled, his voice piercing through the crashing cry of the gunshot.

When Sora fell to the ground, she looked up, then echoed his scream.

I pressed my hand to my chest and pulled away a palm covered in blood. And as my knees collapsed to the pavement, the only thing that went through my head was how silly it was.

That tonight alone, I’d survived reapers, a demon club, a vampire bar, and two compounds.

That this was a world filled with monsters and magic, but it was a human-made bullet and a woman’s festering grief that finally delivered Death’s invitation.

32

KIERAN

Present

Idropped Thorne at my feet and sank down to my knees next to her. My hands were numb but trembling as they pushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes were wide, searching, but unseeing.

She coughed and a dark spray of blood colored her lips before dribbling down her chin.

A wet, slightly darker circle formed in her black shirt, the design spreading wider with every second as blood poured out of her.

I lifted her head, trying to cushion it, but my grip on this world was so tenuous that I had to settle for simply the illusion of comfort.

“No, come on,” I whispered, “hang on Agony. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

But this wasn’t the world of the Before. The kind of infrastructure that humans used to have—hospitals, doctors, well-stocked emergency rooms. Those were the things of the past. Even if I could find someone to help her, the chances thatthey’d be able to fix something this catastrophic were close to zero.

Her friend, Sora, was kneeling next to me, her body trembling as tears rained down on her roommate. She pressed her hands to the chest wound as if trying to stem the blood flow, but of course to no effect.

I could taste her death on the wind.

This—this was not how this was supposed to go. We rescued the girl; we got out for feck’s sake.

For this to happen now—it was just too cruel.

I tried to swallow, but it was like a brick was lodged in my throat.

Not for the first time with this girl, I found myself at an unfamiliar impasse. Never had I found myself so desperate to save someone, when every molecule in my body was designed to do just the opposite. I didn’t know what to do with that incompetence. How to combat it. How to fix her—to keep her here. If not with me, at least with this world.

“Mars,” Sora cried, her hands wrapped around her friend’s shoulders, face tucked into her neck as she rocked back and forth. Her sobs echoed through the street, giving voice to the mirrored trenches in my chest.

No.

The pain in my gut carved sharper when my eyes sought hers again. Why did they suddenly look empty?

I tried to pull her to me, to press my face to her hair, to see that look of disdain she was so fond of tossing at me at every turn. But when I attempted to hold her, my hands fell through.

I was cut off from her.

My body tensed as a familiar surge of power sank into my fingers, burrowing deep into my veins, as my hand fell into her.

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