Something Blue

Chapter 28

Gabe

Mulligan, bloodied and stumbling, wide-eyed but grinning, had scrambled away the second the first shot was fired. Gabe had released him.

The crowd that had gathered to watch and titter had fallen silent and stumbled back, as if pushed by some invisible, expanding circle. Like they could somehow feel the power of his lunacy as he pressed the heel of his hand hard into the torn flesh of her shoulder.

"You'll be okay," he promised, believing his own lies in spite of the steady ooze of blood pushing its way between his fingers and soaking the bodice of her dress. From past experience, he knew that fresh blood had an eerie warmth to it, but her blood wasn't warm. It was hot. It burned his hand where he struggled to staunch the flow, and his leg where her own was pressed against it. The wound in her leg was worse, blood spurting as if in time with the pulse of her heart. "You'll be alright, ma. Take a deep breath for me okay?"

She didn't listen. Didn't seem to hear him at all. Her eyes were glazed and faraway, and she had a dreamy smile on her face that he tried to match. He didn't want her to be afraid. If she was afraid, her heart would pump faster and more blood would seep out to burn him wherever he touched her.

"Ma, please," he said as she panted, her chest jerking and blood painting her teeth and misted the air. She coughed and he felt it splatter against his face. "Please, just breathe," he urged, but it was finally sinking in that there were no words he could say to keep her with him. He could lean all of his weight into those bullet wounds and they could continue to bleed.

"It's okay," he said, holding her closer and fighting to inject some warmth into his tone even as his whole body seemed to ice over. If he moved, he would crack apart. "Everything's going to be okay, ma. I love you. I'll take care of the girls. I'll take care of everything. I promise. Everything is going to be okay."

The loopy, lopsided smile on her face grew wider, made haunting by the blood that coated her teeth. Her back arched and she took three panting, ragged breaths and then collapsed into listlessness. Her eyes seemed to shift focus, looking beyond him to the sky, and beyond the sky to whatever secret the stars kept, well out of reach of those who walked the earth. It made so little sense that, as her spirit left her, her body grew so much heavier.

The crowd had vanished, his mother was dead, and Gabe sat alone against the front wall of the lawyer's office, with melted snow soaking into the seat of his pants and blood trickling and itching down the side of his face. The body in his arms was still and heavy. She wasn't a large woman. Whoever sired him must have been hulking, because his mother barely came to his shoulder. She was short and slight, and her deadweight was unbearably heavy. He stared down at her face, her head propped against the crook of his arm. A small trickle of blood had oozed from the corner of her open mouth, and her cheek was scraped, the abrasion bright red against the stark gray background of her skin. Her eyes were open and staring somewhere beyond the faded blue sky.

Nobody ran to fetch the sheriff, and the men who had attacked them had slunk away. Movement caught his eye, and he raised his head to see a head poke out from the cobbler's door across the street. The man's eyes widened and he disappeared, the door pulling shut with a heavy thud.

The street was deserted—empty as if it was midnight and not just past noon.

His hand shook as he lifted it from where he'd had it pressed against the bleeding hole in her shoulder. He wiped his palm on his sodden pantleg and hesitated, his hand hovering over her face, before he closed her eyes.

Good.

That was better.

Now it looked like she was sleeping.