Page 62 of Her Wicked Knights
Our bodies have somehow fallen into a circle of sorts... a lumpy circle, sure. But now that we're up here, I see what we couldn't from the ground. The fourth body.
There's no mistake who it is. I didn't see her kill herself, but she's certainly as dead as the rest of us, and as beautiful as ever. Laid out between us with her body draped in cloth, she looks like a queen from ancient times... the sort of beauty that launched wars and tempted the Gods. We're not gods. Just men, desperate to be part of her court. Her pawns. Her knights.
I expect us to settle back in the church, but instead, we land somewhere different, and there we are again. Tripp, Rev, andI... but we're different again. The hair changes, the clothing is different, but it's still clearly us. And her.
She's soaked, clothes clinging to her body, droplets of water beading on her skin, which practically glows beneath the moon. Tripp's got her in his arms, and he's wet too, though only from the waist down.
When I tear my eyes from them to study where we are, I see we're at the bottom of the bridge. Headlights loom overhead, lighting up the fog when I look up at the steel bridge overhead. Did she crash?
There's only that one car as far as I can tell.
"What's going on?" Tripp asks, his voice piercing through the fog that's been pressing inside of my skull since I woke up on the ground of the church. It lifts all at once, and the relief is immediate, like coming back into my own body. Unfortunately, I'm still watching someone else wear my body just feet before me.
"These are your past lives." Whit explains. "I don't have control over what it shows us or when, so the order is all botched. But the last one was the first one... the original murder."
"And this one?" Rev asks.
No one answers. We just watch as Rev paces and Tripp clutches Marley, and I... pull out a gun.
Rev notices, but he doesn't bristle. He doesn't question it. He nods.
"Do it."
There's no need to ask what. I don't hesitate... I also look away as I point the gun at the back of Tripp's head. He's not focused on anything other than her. I'm not sure he ever feels anything as the bullet tears through his skull, and it must get lodged somewhere in there because I don't see it come out. He just collapses, and then I point the gun at rev.
"It's okay." He assures me, and I must believe him because I pull the trigger. We're at close enough range that it's impossible to miss. It also doesn't prolong the suffering; Rev falls instantly.
It all happens so fast I can barely process that I just watched me kill my own friends, and then the barrel's against my own temple. I don't even get a chance to brace myself before I hear myself pull the trigger, and it feels like a part of my soul is leaving my body again as I collapse onto the ground alongside my friends.
The swirling starts again, and I'm going to be sick. But I shove it down, and just before I close my eyes, I see it... the image of our bodies, arranged in the same formation as before.
"I can't." I hear Tripp's words just a moment before I feel his hand drop mine.
Whit yells, but his voice is swallowed in a storm of staggered sounds. Sounds like screams and cries and car alarms and sirens and car horns and music and laughter and...
It builds into a cacophony that feels like it will crush us from the outside in, until I can no longer take it. I break free of Whit's grip and slam my hands over my ears, but it doesn't lessen the chaos because everything around us is swirling now. It's like how I'd imagine being stuck inside a tornado, colors and figures and shapes flying fast through the orbit, images and memories and whole lives colliding in the vortex, until suddenly I'm slammed against the ground.
All the breath leaves my body as I make impact with the stone steps of the church, but I don't feel it for long, because Rev's foot kicks me in the back of the skull as he falls to the ground. Lucky for him, I cushion his landing.
I grip my head, trying to stop the spinning. I don't see Whit or Tripp as they land, but I hear the distinctive thud of bodies on the floor, and then the whirling sound finally ceases. When I finally manage to look up to find them, the tornado is gone,Tripp is before me rubbing his shoulder, which seems to have taken the brunt of his fall, and Whit looks pissed.
"What part ofdon't break the connectiondid you not understand? We could have ended up lost in the void of the past, and then what would have happened?"
That seems like a rhetorical question since this is all his dog and pony show. Or at least, itwas.
He called it the past.
I thought maybe we were witnessing alternate realities— universes like our own, which feel distinct in their own ways. The idea of a multi-verse seems somehow more convincing than witchcraft, or time travel, or whatever the fuck we just did. It seems infinitely more likely than the idea of reincarnation, of our souls coming back together in multiple lives, particularly since we were the same in each life.
But one thing stands out about everything we just witnessed.
Whit wasn't present for either of the events.
"Where were you?" I demand, struggling to my feet and rounding on him. "Each time she died, where were you?"
Whit's eyes sharpen on me, like he's surprised I'm bothering to ask.
"You claimed our souls are bound. And maybe I can see the four of us... Tripp, Rev, and I. And Marley... what did you call her? The anchor? If we're bound to one another, where were you?"
