Heart's Blood (MxM)

Chapter 4

I set my kit bag down on the grass and sit beside it.

I can read 'cold,' but I've found that my impressions are clearer, and my recovery easier, when I 'warm up' a bit first.

Before I begin, I look up at Hunter where he watches me, leaning casually against a slender tree and looking unimpressed.

"Depending on how this goes, you might have to help me," I say. "Sometimes I get pretty disoriented afterward, and I might say or do stuff that doesn't make sense. I might also seem coherent, but if my eyes aren't back to normal, do not let me wander off alone. Understand?"

The last body I'd examined was one where the cause of death was in question: homicide, or suicide?

Turns out it was the latter, and something of the dead man's despair had set its claws in me—deep. Erickson had given the all-clear and let me go, and if Coleridge hadn't shown up looking for me, they'd probably still be finding pieces of me along the busy interstate I had almost wandered onto.

"Normal... as in?" Hunter asks, knocking me out of my unpleasant reverie.

"Normal—as in not like I'm on drugs. If my pupils react to light, I'm okay."

"Sure," he shrugs nonchalantly. "No problem. I've got a police flashlight somewhere."

I pinch the bridge of my nose. I haven't even started and I'm getting a headache.

Closing my eyes, I cross my legs and straighten my back. There's nothing mystical about getting into a trance state, really. It's just the conscious regulation of brainwaves, but the meditative pose looks impressive.

After a few minutes, I feel myself slip into what I call my 'working state.' It's somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. I'm conscious and aware of what I'm doing, but it's also like I'm in a dream. The line between conscious and subconscious blurs, and it lets me process information that would elude my normal senses.

When I open my eyes, it's kind of like when Dorothy steps into Oz for the first time. Everything is extra bright, extra colorful, and a little bizarre.

I climb carefully to my feet and focus on not falling down. I always feel a little unsteady at first. Deliberately, I make my way towards the crime scene with slow steps. I reach out and trail my hands over the leafy twigs of the bushes, and sense their quiet, green energy: roots buried deep in dark mud, topmost leaves angling for the warmth of the sun.

It's calming and refreshing, and I feel like I could stand here for the next fifty years, just letting the seasons pass over me like the breath of God.

Instead, I force myself to focus on the misshapen square of black plastic at the river's edge and kneel beside it.

One worn Nike sneaker sticks out from beneath its lower edge.

I crouch down, take a deep breath, reach out, and touch it.

***

I'm fifty-seven years old. I have a college degree. I gave eight years of my life to my country. I had a wife, once.

And now, through a combination of bad luck, bad choices, and bad policy, my existence is reduced to this:

Day by day.

Moment by moment.

Breath by breath.

Where am I safe? Where can I rest? Will I live to see the sunrise, or will the frost take me tonight, while the cold, indifferent stars look down from a careless heaven?

Just like the cold, indifferent people who pass me on the street, failing to see in me any spark of humanity—of brotherhood; or else too afraid to consider the possibility that, other than a few cruel twists of fate, nothing divides us but the number of dollars in our pockets at this single, razor-thin illusion of time.

Daylight fades, and with it, another sliver of my life slips away.

I make my way down to the water's edge. The river's dark song calls me, as it does, and I sit in the shelter of my imaginary home: a living tangle of walls made of thin, woody arms, enclosing me in a cage as inescapable and as ephemeral as my own mind.

I've almost drifted off into the bright oblivion of sleep when I hear it.

Something like a wet sack of bones dragged over sharp rocks: a growl that freezes my blood.

My breath catches at the back of my throat. There's someone watching me, I'm sure.

Not someone—some thing.

And it's close. I can hear its breath. I can hear its footsteps at my back. I can see its eyes shine like yellow candles through the trees.

And all at once, in the beat of my heart, in the tang at the back of my throat, I know:

It's too late.

Before I'm even fully on my feet it's on me, and my terror tastes like pure iron on my tongue. I feel a pain like the heat of the sun, like the death of a star.

And I scream...and scream...and scream.

And just like every other time, no one hears me.

*** 

I'm fighting for my life, but it makes no difference. The strength that holds me is far greater than my own; and like a rabbit in a snare, eventually, I tire and lie still.

Gradually, I'm aware that the voice in my ear is soothing; that the arms that hold me are comforting, not killing me.

"Shh, shh. Hey, now. Julian—you're fine. You're okay. Breathe. That's it..."

A steady stream of soothing words flows over me. Slowly—finally—I allow myself to relax, and to trust, and I open my eyes.

Dane Hunter is staring down at me. He's kneeling in the damp mud and cradling me against his massive chest.

"Julian?" his amber eyes flick between mine, angled brows creased with concern.

"I..."

I could die in this moment, honestly.

Then he pulls something from a pocket of his cargo pants and blinds me with the ridiculous brightness of his tactical flashlight.

"Shit! Motherfuck!" I swear as my corneas suffer irreparable damage.

"Yep. You're fine."

He drops me in the mud and all I can do is press my palms against my eyes and lie still while the pain echoes around my skull with the obnoxious perpetuity of a dubstep beat.

"Fuck." My vocabulary is momentarily limited to a single word.

"So, what did you get?" he asks.

I take my hands from my eyes long enough to glare up at him from where he kneels over me.

Before this is over, one of us is going to want to kill the other.

"I—"

Before I can say more, I roll to the side and puke.

I feel a massive, warm hand rub slow circles on my back, and I want to cry. I have no idea if it's the aftermath of the reading, or some deep need within myself feeding it, but I curl into a ball and sob.

"Hey, hey, that's enough."

I feel the heavy warmth of my blanket fall over me, and then I'm lifted in arms that feel strong enough to carry every weight I'm dragging around in my soul.

"Shit. Goddamn bitch. She could have warned me."

Hunter's muttered profanities add an unexpected ingredient to the aftermath of my second-hand misery, and even I'm not sure if I'm laughing or crying against his chest as he carries me to his car.