Page 158 of Let It Snow
I turn my head, forcing it against the weight of the brain fog, and I see it. Behind his back, the door is covered in something strange, something pale-blue, like a shimmering haze spilling across the surface.
For a second, I don’t understand. My mouth hangs open, and my drugged brain lags, responding with a sick delay to everything.
The door is turning white now, nearly glowing. Something’s about to happen, I know it. It has to.
Rocco finally reacts to the strange crackle too, turning his head just as the door bursts apart, shattering into tiny fragments that scatter across the floor like shards of ice.
Ice. Wait. Wait.
Wake up, brain!
The next second, the room explodes in gunfire. All six of the soldiers along the walls have already opened fire while I was staring, too slow, too dulled, too fucking useless. They unload their clips at whoever is coming through that door.
"No!" I scream as loud as my lungs can take, blasting at them with a wave of air like a battering ram. But it’s too late. Too late.
And then I see him.
Snow.
He’s not fully transformed into his radiant, intangible form. He looks half-finished, like something went wrong. He’s semi-transparent, his body shimmering but not fully beyond reach, and the bullets that slam into him sink into his flesh.
"No!!!"
It looks horrifying. Instead of blood, bursts of luminous spray from the wounds, scattering around him, splashing across the floor. It’s like his blood is made of liquid light.
"No!!!"
And still, even with that, Snow throws himself at Rocco.
And that’s when it happens. The worst possible moment. The moment I could have stopped. The moment I should have predicted. But I was sluggish, dulled by drugs, an utter fool too dazed to act.
Just as Snow grips Rocco by the shoulders, flooding his body with a freezing wave, the capo makes a movement so fast it doesn’t seem human. He rips his gun up, fires, the barrel tilted high, and the bullet tears through Snow’s chin. At the same instant, Rocco’s body turns to ice.
"No!!!"
Both of them go down. Snow collapses to the floor, and from under his jaw pours a long stream of radiant liquid.
It all happens in fragments of a second. It’s not a drawn-out scene. Not some slow-motion horror. Barely a second and a half.
"No!!!"
I failed. I failed. I failed!!!
A monstrous roar tears out of my throat. The soldiers, stunned by my wave of air, scramble back to their feet, turning all at once toward me. A storm of bullets rains down, but they can’t kill me.
I rip through the plastic ties on my wrists, sit up in a violent surge, and every bullet disintegrates before it can touch me, falling as dust at my feet. Then the soldiers themselves crumble, their bodies turning to ash.
Another scream rips from my chest.
"No!!!"
I leap from the table, my eyes fixed on Snow, and I see what’s happening. There’s less and less of his body with every second. The light pouring out of him is devouring his physical form, stripping him away.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but instinct takes over. I throw all my energy toward him, grab for that light, and drag it into myself.
Energy was never my thing, but strangely, it seems to be a tiny bit more ‘my’ thing now, though I have no idea how to explain it.
I’m not able to think clearly; it’s madness, it’s impossible, it’s something no one could ever do.
