Slate Gray

Chapter 19.2: Ace Slate

Perrin skids in beside me, slamming against the RV's paneling to halt herself. "Is he breathing?"

Before I can reply, she shoulders me out of the way and I go sprawling, the physical pain of scraped palms preferrable to the black, emotional hole spiraling in my belly.

Taking my place in Terry's lap, she raises the busted face, dark hair flopping over closed lids and I wince at the lolling deadweight of it, at the slack, dangling jaw. "Come on, don't do this, man," she murmurs. "Come back. Come back!"

"I think he's..." I fold my arms across my middle to subdue the budding ache. "I mean, I'm pretty sure he's..."

"NO!" she roars, wild and frantic as she endeavors to pat him back to life. "Terry? Terry! Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare."

"Stop," I try, clambering to my feet. But it comes out wet and ineffectual behind my clogged sinuses.

Watching Perrin clutch at him, tears dripping from her chin, I'm suddenly resentful of him and his stupid face. His stupid laugh. The stupid way he tried to stand up for us. The stupid way we failed to save him.

Because Terry isn't going quietly into the night, he's tearing a chunk of my sister with him. And I'm gutted not only by his loss but for the way I know she'll take it: guiltily and to heart.

"Wake up, you son of a bitch," she pleads. "Wake up!" And, with a resounding crack, she slaps him across the face so hard that his entire body sags to the side.

"Hey!" I object, not aiming to add corpse mutilation to this weekend's list of crimes.

But then, a miracle occurs. The corpse speaks!

"Ooooowww..." One eye still swollen shut, the other flutters open as Terry lifts his head, my sister's handprint already joining the landscape of welts on his skin. "Real mature."

The magnitude of my relief is both unexpected and tremendous. Wracking sobs hurtle out of me at a rapid fire pace and I bite down on my knuckles to stifle the worst of them.

I must not have pressed hard enough into his jugular! Or his pulse is so faint that I completely missed it! Either way, I have never been so happy to be proven wrong.

Terry's talking! Terry's moving! Terry's alive!

"Can you stand?" Perrin sniffs, ever allergic to emotional displays. But sitting him up, she kneads his neck as if to confirm that he's really still here. That she hasn't lost him yet.

Alas, the promising sliver of hazel vanishes as the lid drifts shut and, cursing softly, she totters upright to lob a hypocritical squint at my waterworks. "Can it. He's gonna be fine. We're not losing anyone else tonight, ok?"

Fueled by little more than willful pragmatism at this point, she mounts the RV's steps to unlock and prop open the door, the familiar confines of home hitting me with a blast of nostalgia for the morning we left. What was it, two days ago? When my sister was rushing five minutes behind and my father was packing five minutes ahead and I stood there grinning from ear to ear because it was finally happening. I was finally going with them. I was about to become a slayer.

Now Perrin is covered in blood and barely holding it together as she squats next to the unconscious civilian we roped into this.

And Dad... Dad is...

Two days. Twenty-four hours. That's how long it took for the universe to irrevocably screw up my life.

"Hey, space cadet!" my sister mocks, snapping her fingers at me. "A little help here? I can't deadlift Han on my own."