Page 124 of The Reveal
Samuel is hurtling down that hill toward us, so fast it’s hard to tell if he is falling or if he’s running—
Until he stops, sudden and hard. I stare without comprehension at the bloom of red on the front of his chest.
Then I look behind me and see the gun in my grandmother’s hand.
I hear Augie’s voice. I hear all kinds of noises, loud and probably terrifying, but Ariel is in the sunshine, completely exposed in midair, no shade, no help.
I swear I hear him begin to sizzle, and then he disappears.
Just like that, he’s gone.
He’s gone.
It is only then that everything seems to speed up again. Too fast. Too bright. Too loud. Savi shouts something into the air and everything is plunged into darkness, thunderclouds rolling in at high speed.
Everyone is lunging toward Samuel, but he is howling out in pain and rage. He’s also closer, and he throws himself toward Gran.
They both hit the ground, hard. Too hard.
For a long beat of my broken, disbelieving heart, neither one of them moves.
So I do instead.
I throw myself toward them—and the wall that’s the only thing keeping them from sliding off the cliff and down the slick sides of the crater to their deaths.
28.
Augie clotheslines me.
One moment I’m lunging for Samuel with every intention of landing on him or in him or whatever works to get himoffGran—
“Stop,” Augie orders me when I slam to a halt and start coughing because he threw that arm across my chest so hard.
I’m lucky it wasn’t my throat.
“You can’t die,” my twin grits out at me. “Youcan’t fuckingdie, Winter.”
I recognize that look on his face. I know exactly how he feels. I can see, in this shitty little moment, that he finally gets it. What these years have been like. How many times I’ve had to say goodbye to him, always certain that the next time I saw him it would be on a funeral pyre or in a box.
He gets it, and I wish he didn’t, but I can’t deny that there’s a part of me, deep inside, that’s glad.
But there’s no time for our stuff. Not now.
We both throw ourselves on our knees next to the pile of Samuel and Gran, then pull Samuel off her roughly.
Samuel is dead. His eyes are wide open and vacant. The little bloom of red on his shirt has spread.
It turns out Gran hit the bull’s-eye.
“I always was a straight shooter,” she says, weakly, and even laughs, and it feels for a moment like Savi brought the sun out again.
Good riddance,I think, still looking at Samuel. Fucking Samuel, who I thought was so special and then stopped thinking about at all, then felt sorry for, and who turned out to be another human monster. Might as well have joined up with Franklin Hendry’s team of thugs.
For all I know, he did.
I feel Ariel’s mark begin to ...shimmer, and I have to gulp back the sob that wants to escape me. It’s a full-body sob, and I know, somehow, that if I indulge it I won’t stop until it tears me in two, and there is still a whole death goddess to handle.
I feel the mark throb a little, all along my back, and I think,Is this how I know he’s dead?
