“That’s Rocky.” I snapped.
Or at least I tried to – my voice sounded muffled and there was a ringing noise in my head. I was fairly sure my threat to kill Rocky came out as mumbled nonsense, but I meant it. He was dead for thinking about Sapphire already. Now he was extra dead for daring to break into her home and do whatever unspeakable things no doubt were happening right now.
“We gotta go.” I said. Or maybe it was more likegottahgo– one word blurring into a single sound.
Angel kept talking as Widow’s grip on me tightened and though it was hard to catch everything, one undeniable thing was clear.
Diamond was in trouble. The others at home were in danger.
And we were screwed. Again.
“Come on, Kody. You’re all good.” Widow spoke beside me, and I glanced at him, unsure of when he had pushed his wadded-up t-shirt against the rapidly bleeding hole in my chest, or why Icouldn’t feel the pain anymore. “Just stay on your feet; Raya will be here in a sec.”
Oddly enough, the only thing keeping me on my feet was the sounds of Linc’s voice running through my mind, as he cursed at me and threatened me with all manner of violence to stay alive and awake.
Don’t die on me, you bastard – if you die, I’ll kick your ass.
I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t going to die. That I was too strong and stubborn and had far too much to live for. I wanted to scream at my best friend that there was no chance in hell of me giving up my fight for him, the others, and our girl, and doing something so ridiculous as dying or being too injured to help. Except… except I was fairly sure I had no choice in the matter because the world turned fuzzy and time lost all meaning. My head was spinning, my gut turning, and I swore to God I was feeling a shift in the air as my soul tried its darndest to escape.
“Kody; you gotta stay awake, man. Stay awake!” Widow yelled at me again, but it was like he was standing at the end of a rather long tunnel, on the opposite side to me. The tunnel that seemed to blur his words as he cussed and muttered something that sounded funny.
My messed up brain made it sound like Widow was speaking Russian, but that wasn’t right. He didn’t speak Russian. It must have been someone else there. Someone else’s voice floating inside my head… someone else who was staring at me and saying things I couldn’t understand.
As a handful of cars arrived with screeches of brakes that made my head hurt, and I caught a single glimpse of Raya’s concerned face before my vision went too and everything went numb.
I was drowning for a moment. My ears rang, a high-pitched sound so violent echoed in my head as I struggled to remain onmy feet. Air wouldn’t enter my lungs and I swore nothing around me held any meaning anymore.
Vaguely a part of me registered Widow and Kellan grabbing me, holding me tight and yelling words that sounded garbled like I was underwater. But for the most part all I could feel was agony, as the worst sorts of pain radiated through me with a sudden burst of torture I hadn’t been expecting.
I wanted to scream, but no noise came out. Instead, something far scarier came.
Darkness. Darkness and doom.
I slipped into nothing but emptiness, and I had no idea if I would ever find a way to crawl back out again. It was as though I had been dropped off at the bottom of a pit with no escape, and the only thing letting me know I wasn’t dead yet was the occasional bout of light or strange noises. Noises like people swearing at me, or the beeping of a machine.
Sometimes I swore I felt a warm hand holding mine, whispering things in a language I could not understand. I wanted to laugh at the bizarreness of everything – laugh and laugh and laugh. But even breathing was hard. My lungs were wrong, my body wasn’t my own, and I had no idea how I was supposed to do anything at all.
All I knew was that when I could hear things; I heard a voice I thought I knew, and I wanted to keep listening to it for a single reason. That meant more to me than anything else in the dark.
Spanish. They were speaking Spanish. A soft hum of whispers and words that I enjoyed hearing and though my eyes were glued shut, it was that voice I clung to and used as a life raft to stop me from going over the edge. The voice that remained as the only thing I heard for heaven knew how long until suddenly it changed. It shifted and became something familiar, but just as soft and kind.
Something in Hungarian. Something in the one language that reminded me of the home I used to have.
The one with my family – my parents, and my cousin and all the others who held my surname.
The ones I was never going to see again before I died.
“Please, Koko.”A voice cried a little, their soft, feminine whispers achingly familiar.“You need to come back to me. You need to stay with me.”
The voice came more than once. Other ones joining it sometimes. And though I was suffocating in the never ending abyss, for some reason I was more than aware that I was not alone.
I had never been alone.
Hours could have passed. Or days. Or even weeks. Time ceased to mean anything at all as I remained in the darkness with nothing but pain and my companion and the oddest bout of promises being whispered into my ear.
“We’ll get her back.”
“You’ll be okay.”
