Page 35 of Killer of the Bells
“No puppy killing, I’m afraid. Paris would never allow it.”
“What about kids?”
“Is that your hard line?”
“I think it should be everyone’s, don’t you?”
“We don’t kill children. Your standards are quite low, Echo. Is that all it takes to satisfy you? Not killing animals and children?”
“Low standards come with being older than fifteen.”
Vale’s smile faded. “Your standards should be impossibly high, Echo. Someone like you-”
I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say, so I covered his mouth. “Spare me. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You don’t like this world. It’s complete bullshit. You and I both know it, so don’t fuck around. Just answer me. Are you going to kill me or not?”
Something complicated passed across Vale’s features, and he studied me for a long time before saying, “What will you do if I refuse?”
“I’ll…” Something told me not to tell him I’d find some other way to do it. I wasn’t even certain I would try that route. After tasting Vale, after seeing what being with him was like, I couldn’t imagine dying by anything other than his hands.
Vale seemed to get the answer he was looking for and said, “I’ll consider it. But for now, shower.”
“And then crime?” I asked. My mood had lifted at his non-refusal. Maybe I could still get what I wanted from him if I played my cards right.
Vale laughed. “And then crime.”
Chapter
Ten
VALE
So… that happened.
I hadn’t been expecting to have my entire universe and the foundation on which my remaining pillars of sanity rested, to be thoroughly upended and left resting on the fragile shoulders of a man a fraction of my own age, and yet there I was.
I wasn’t certain if it was the intoxicating taste of his blood, the glimpses into his past—so painful, and yet more real than anything I’d experienced in my own life—or the way Echo had reinvented himself from the ashes of two scorched lives.
Echo was beauty in motion. A work of art as a performance piece, and yet he seemed wholly unaware of it. He was equal parts sane and unhinged, and it resonated far deeper in me than I was comfortable with.
Unlike me, however, Echo made it work. He had a life and a personality unique among the thousands of people I’d met in mine, whereas I was nothing more than a combination of programmed reactions, all stemming from one colossal mistake I’d made more than a century ago.
Why had it taken seeing the devastation of Echo’s broken lives being rebuilt from the ground up to wake me from my endless wallowing in self-pity? It couldn’t be compassion.I’d witnessed more sob stories than I could count and been unmoved by all of them.
Maybe it was something about Echo himself. His smell, his voice, the way he tasted, or perhaps the sardonic, yet amusing way he expressed himself without using words.
And if none of that was enough reason to fall helplessly into Echo’s gravity, I’d had the best sleep of my life wrapped around his warm body.
I hadn’t been expecting to have any respite from the bells until I’d destroyed them, but somehow, being so close to Echo had grounded me in such a way that the dissonance had no effect on me.
Originally, I’d been planning on taking out the bells the moment night fell.
When I participate, I win every year… with the exception of last year. I don’t want to talk about what happened last December, so don’t ask. All I can say is that Wraith won’t shut up about it if the topic comes up, and it’s all I can do not to remove his head from his neck and relieve us both of the burdens of life.
After yesterday’s events, I wouldn’t touch the bells if my very soul was at stake. Even without Echo’s miraculous, if unknowing, intervention, I would protect them with my life and Wraith’s.
Echo was interested in the game. He showed true enthusiasm for something other than his own death, and I wanted to foster that interest in any way I could. I could see deep down that Echo lacked something to live for more than he desired to die. Otherwise, he would have taken care of it on his own long ago.
The subconscious choice to rebirth himself as Echo, no matter how unusually he’d gone about it, told me that Echo wanted to live more than he wanted to die. He enjoyed courtingdeath more than he truly wanted it, and I would see what I could do to give him a productive, safer way to do so.
