"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
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Chapter Forty-One: Nightmares, Make-Outs And Frantic Mornings
(The Hellfire Club)
***
Blood.
That was all Alistair could feel, soaking his shirt, dripping down in red waterfalls. Its metallic taste filled his mouth, copper coating his tongue as more trickled down. There was so much blood, draining out of him, flooding his lungs, choking his throat.
Alistair doubled over, gripping his chest, tears pouring from his eyes as he breathed shakily, breaths steadily growing more sparse. His fingers turned crimson as instead of his shirt, instead of his chest, there was a hole and he could feel the leftover flesh and muscle and bone and when he vomited it was just blood and more was draining out of him, there was so much blood, and—
He couldn't hear his heartbeat.
Panic flooded Alistair, he needed to hear his heartbeat, he had to hear it, to feel it, he had to know he was alive and not d—
And then Alistair saw himself.
His body was lying on the floor, a punched-through hole in his chest, eyes staring glassily upward, blood caking his mouth and drenching his shirt, a scarlet pool underneath him. Starcourt burned in a hazy afterimage around the corpse as Alistair stared at his body, rigid, before he began shaking his head, this wasn't real, he wasn't that body, not anymore, he'd come back, he was alive alive alive.
Are you, though?
His double's head turned to Alistair.
Alistair jumped back as his corpse got up , glassy eyes fixed on him as he moved jerkily, blood pouring from his open, distorted mouth as he raised a hand and croaked out a single, blood-choked word.
Dead.
Alistair shook his head again. No, I'm not dead, I came back, I'm alive.
You're dead. We're dead, his corpse accused. You are not alive. You're just dead. Just some undead freak. A living dead boy. A corpse walking around pretending he's still alive. An abomination. You are not alive. You are dead dead DEAD!
Alistair clutched his head, more tears falling from his eyes, gripping his chest, fingers clutching blood and the ragged edges of his chest and shirt as he tried to scream no, he was alive, but it was drowned out by the screams of DEAD! from his corpse and the shrill of the ghosts, among the whispers of One of us, one of us, dead boy, ghost boy, zombie boy, not alive just dead one of us, and some faint noise in the background, but it was drowned out by the screams Alistair couldn't deny as the cold in his bones spread out, turned icy with death and he couldn't feel his heartbeat, and he was—
