Page 45 of Deathless
TORRANCE
The warehouse and accompanying trailers turned out to be a temporary shelter for Valkyrie Network riders and refugees. I half-expected to see Rori’s cousin, Carter, but he wasn’t present among the small crew who was running things. I would have loved to get his advice, because I felt utterly lost.
I was president now, until we got Rori back. It was never supposed to be this way. I was supposed to support her, be her right hand. The fearless Aurora Wilder was never supposed to be taken out of the equation. And now that she was...
I stood from the bench, heading over to the barbell on the ground to do another set of deadlifts. My few hours of sleep had been broken and fitful since we’d arrived. My stomach was a block of cement, so I’d barely eaten any of what was rationed out.
I was not mentally, nor physically, well enough to lift such heavy weight, but it was the only thing Icoulddo. My solace and my punishment.
The last thing Rori had said to me was that I wasn’t listening. And that was so painfully goddamned true. Two people lost theirlives because we didn’t evacuate fast enough. Devin told me about the guy he had to mercy kill. Another fighter got attacked in the mad scramble for motorcycles. He’d been shot in the leg from the roof, then pulled off a bike and dragged away behind the garage. I could still hear that laughter coming from Rori’s mouth, that unsettling inhuman sound that was not her at all.
Was she present during everything that happened? Could she see and feel what her own body was doing while she wasn’t in control? I hoped for her sake that she wasn’t there for any of it, that she wouldn’t have to deal with the horrifying recollections that ‘she’ had murdered two people she had promised safety and refuge to. Controlled or not, she would never forgive herself.
I did deadlifts until my lower half was jelly, then I let my ass plant on the concrete floor of the warehouse. Sitting there in that moment of total physical exhaustion, the one thought I had been avoiding slipped to the forefront.
Would I have to kill the woman I loved?
My stomach turned on itself in protest, and my palms slapped the hard floor as I doubled over to fight the dry heaves. My skin broke out in a cold sweat, and that stubborn beating muscle in my chest squeezed with a painful ache. Every cell in my body rejected that thought, hated it.
I couldn’t do it. It didn’t matter if I had a guarantee from the gods themselves that it would eradicate the cult for good. I didn’t care. I was not sacrificing her for some greater good bullshit.
Not only that, I’d prevent anyone else from doing it too. I’d kill Santos, Slick, anyone who tried to say it was the only option. I’d let the cult enslave every man in the world before I lost Rori for good.
I was getting her back alive and whole. The only question was how.
How the hell would I expel a god from its vessel without harming the vessel?
Once my legs got stable enough to support me, I worked my chest and arms. The repetitive movements became a blur, nothing but white noise to my thoughts going around and around again.
If Rori were here, we’d bounce ideas off each other. We’d just say what was on our minds, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.
We’d be serious, devolve into stupid jokes, then get serious again. We’d offer counterpoints to the other’s ideas, things we never would have thought of on our own. She and I had completely different thought processes from each other, but together we could form a complete picture.
At some point, I stopped moving and just let my arms dangle. Staring up at the ceiling, I found it ironic and cruel that figuring out how to get Rori back alive and well was the moment I needed her feedback the most.
I needed her toughness, her compassion and level headedness. I even needed her anxiety, those racing ‘what-ifs’ and worries that she never shared with the rest of the club.
She was alone, lost, and it killed me that I couldn’t be there for her, couldn’t talk her through her fears and reassure her that it would all be okay.
It might never be okay again.
A side door opened, the hinges loud and squealing. Footsteps approached me that I recognized as belonging to Santos.
“Hey,” I said without looking at him.
“You couldn’t sleep or eat either, huh?” I felt his weight lean against one side of the rack.
“No. It all feels like a waste,” I admitted. “Like every minute I’m not thinking of how to get her back is just time being pissed down the drain.”
“She’d call you all kinds of names for saying that.” He chuckled. “Talk about how rest and fueling yourself is important and you’re an idiot for not doing that.”
“Of course that applies to everyone but her,” I replied. “You know how she keeps going until she’s about to drop dead.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
After a few minutes of silence, I asked, “So what have you been up to instead of eating and sleeping?”
“Begging Tezca for answers,” he admitted. “You’d think having a companion god would mean something now more than ever, right?”
