We were back in Billy’s room now, whatever metaphysical bullshit that had made that possible the furthest from my mind. The silence was what killed me. I could only hear my frantically beating heart before they burst in. The door slammed open, feet slapping down on the ground, then they dropped down around me.
“What happened?” Johnno asked, his hands hovering over Billy, unsure of what to touch. “Kira?”
“I can feel him slipping away,” Luc growled.
“No, no, no, no….” Jake mumbled, his hands going to his hair, wrenching at it.
“What happened?” Liam snapped. He reached across Billy’s prone form, grabbing my jaw in his hand and forcing my eyes to meet his. They blazed pure steel, bluish grey, spearing into me past my confusion, pain, and shock to where they needed to go. He took a deep breath in, gathering his power, and then said the words, laced tight with a coercive push. “Tell me what we need to do to save our brother. Now, Kira. You can have a fucking breakdown in your own time.”
I’d heard the snap of command in Liam’s voice before, but had I ever heard the vulnerability before? I didn’t get a chance to think about that, his order settling inside my mind with a snap. My spine straightened, I took a deep breath, and my mind became crystal clear as I parted my lips.
“Skin to skin.”
They looked at me like I was completely insane, but as I wriggled out of my stupid fucking clothes and tossed them to one side, I felt the room grow darker. The shadows clustered near, here to keep vigil for their master, making the room feel smaller and smaller as I laid my body next to Billy’s.
He was cold, too cold, but he was death and I was the maiden, and I’d take his chilly embrace over anyone else’s right now. I needed him, but that was a hard thought to hold in my mind. It felt too big, too sharp, too intense for me to process, so there it remained, unwilling to go anywhere. I wrapped my arm around his neck, buried my face into the sweet incense scented fall of his hair, and breathed him in.
I felt the moment Jake laid down on the other side of him. Billy, for all of his resolute inertness, was a conduit—for us, for our power. My heart lightened for a moment as I felt something stir within Billy, but when I glanced over, I realised it was just Jake’s power rushing in just like he did, pushing past people’s boundaries and trying with everything he had to fill them up. I blinked back the first few tears and then wrapped myself tighter around Billy.
Johnno was next, a solid, grounding force. He was a constant flow of love and reassurance, even if I could feel the fear seeping in at the edges. He pushed the good into Billy, cradling him in that endless warmth, keeping the pain locked away for himself.
Liam lifted Billy’s head, resting it in his bare lap, pulling his black hair back from his face.
“C’mon, mate,” he said, his dry Australian drawl completely at odds with the desperate command in his voice. “You’re scaring the fuck out of us. There’s beers to drink, and Kira’s finally deigned to get naked with the lot of us. We talked long and hard about an orgy. You can go first if you just wake up.”
“He needs more,” I whispered, able to feel the energy swirling inside Billy. I saw the moment Dave sent a gout of lightning stabbing into my love, over and over. Electricity was the great disrupter, creating fire and transferring energy where there was none. My head jerked back, seeing a chastened Luc step out of his jeans, looking at the lot of us like we were insane but resigning himself to it anyway. I watched him pack his feelings up behind a stoic mask, a familiar surly expression reinstating itself.
“No, Luc. He needs more.”
“More what, Kira? More medical assistance? More light wielders to actually fucking heal him? Something more than a motherfucking group hug, that’s for sure. Jesus fucking Christ! What the fuck happened?”
My hand snapped out, grabbing his and dragging him down, literally and figuratively. He dropped to his knees, the crackle across his eyes showing he saw exactly what I’d seen. They were wide and staring first as he saw Billy go down, then they narrowed on me.
“This is on you,” he said, his lips thinning down.
“So help me fix it.”
His power bit into my skin when I took his hand, I could feel the rise inside him of something he did not want to be there—anger, fear, frustration, desperation…need. That was the thing he hated the most, that he’d only just started letting in and I’d—
I let the wild electrical energy force my muscles to twitch and spasm, holding onto his before I brought it down.
This wasn’t Billy, this was just his shell. All he was dropped down, deeper and deeper into the darkness. Into entropy, into endings, into death. He was thrust into this netherworld by Sky Daddy’s power, and that he might be brought back with it felt right to me.
“You’re right. It’s my fault. Everything’s my fault. There’s a room full of screaming kids and wounded adults because of me. Rutherglen is causing shit all over the globe and tearing into people because he can’t get me. He’s coming for all of you. I’ve painted great big targets on your back, and Billy got hit, trying to keep me safe.”
“We need to do something,” Liam grated out. “He goes, we go.”
I held onto Lucas, feeding his ire and his lightning down our link, stirring him up, forcing him to hurt me over and over, uncaring of what it was doing to me until my whole arm locked up, unable to hold him back, and our hands collided with Billy’s sternum.
Lightning took the life from my love, and lightning gave it back.
The shadows fled as mine and Lucas’ hands exploded with light, slamming down on Billy’s bare skin. He jerked under the terrible weight of Lucas’ power, his spine bowing just as it had before, his muscles spasming just as they had before, but then, in a coughing, ragged sound, Billy sucked in a great whoop of a breath. I just stared into his unblinking eyes, listening to the whistle of his lungs as he fought to drag air in like it was his greatest tune, until that gaze turned to me.
He needed space. This was my fault, and I should be giving him space, letting others help him, heal him, but even as I saw Aen, Marlow, and Mark come running through the door, my arms went around Billy, yanking him against me.
His hands were cold, his grip weak, but he returned the gesture, burying his face in my shoulder.
“I wanted—”
“Don’t. Not yet.” I raked my hands through his hair, just focussing on the slip of it through my fingers, the beat of his heart under my hand. “Just…this.”
Chapter 16
“Like this.” Jake beat out a steady heartbeat against his chest. “Not that.” I watched his hands make a much less steady beat, the erratic pace robbing me of any peace I might have clawed back.
“We need a cardiologist, surely,” Mark said, looking from one to the next of us. “I get you’re all magical and shit but—”
“That may be required.” We all looked up to see Ashanti had entered the room. She took the scene in with one glance, which was kind of embarrassing as most of us were still naked, but it didn’t seem to faze her. “Please, share with me what happened, and then let’s find a way through this.”