“Now pay attention, doc.”
A sting nipped the shell of Reese’s ear and he jerked.
“You may think what you feel right now is death. But it’s not. It’s just fear: good ole’ fashioned fear.”
Weight pressed against Reese’s shoulder. Dekker’s sigh heated the skin close to his neck.
“Most people never get past the fear. It’s a human thing. I never realized that until after….” He chuckled. “Well, at least until I opened my eyes to the darkness.” A brush of warm lips replaced the weight. “Death is also human, but it’s a precipice of change. That moment when the very energy that forms you becomes something different. Death can come and go like a tide. One day after the other. You can experience it countless times before you actually succumb to it.”
Dekker slid his hand higher up Reese’s chest. The tickle of fur joined the prick of sharp points.
“Death changes you, Dr. Dante. It alters who you are, and that’s what the ichor needs to bind. New World didn’t understand that. And Echols was too caught up in his black and white world like you. The only one to come close was Dr. Markus.” Dekker’s sigh turned into a growl. “He was like you in a lot of ways. He thought he understood what that wall in Egypt meant like you think you understand the ichor. And he did understand some of it. But he could only read what was written there in the stone, not what created it. Only those who have been embraced can do that.”
Reese knew the Anubis could see on spectrums the human eye couldn’t, but he still wasn’t sure what Dekker meant. Was there something written in The Book of Anubis that could only be read by one? And if that’s what the man meant, then what language was it in? Or was it a language at all? Even struggling for air with blood running down his stomach, Reese couldn’t stop his curiosity from rising like his fear.
“If he’d been more cooperative, I wouldn’t have killed him.” Dekker’s voice dropped several octaves and acquired an odd lisp. “Hopefully, you prove to be a better student.” Velvet fur brushed Reese’s cheek. Saliva dripped down his chest. The creak of stretching tendons played next to his ear.
Lightning struck Reese in the shoulder and pain rained down, filling up his lungs.
Then he expelled it all in a scream.
Dekker crushed Reese against his body, popping his ribs. A snarl vibrated his bones, drowning out distant voices. He kicked, twisted, clawed at the arms holding him. Blood pooled around Reese’s feet, and he smeared it with each desperate flail.
Then the cage of muscle restraining him let go, and Reese collapsed. His left arm folded under him and impact with the concrete ripped free another baleful cry.
Nausea joined grinding agony, and Reese’s world blurred. A hard slap on his cheek kept him from sliding under the fog.
“Don’t pass out, Dr. Dante, lesson’s not over yet.” Red stained Dekker’s teeth and chin. He crouched over Reese. The seams of Dekker’s tactical uniform strained not to tear from his thickened limbs. “Now, you may think this is death too. But it isn’t. You’ve just added a little discomfort to the fear.”
Discomfort. Reese couldn’t bring himself to look and see if his arm was even attached anymore.
“Death is there, though. You just have to submit to it.”
Reese trembled.
Dekker ran his fingers down Reese’s cheek, his neck, to the throbbing blades of torture still chewing away at his shoulder. “Relax, Dr. Dante.”
Reese exhaled spit from behind gritted teeth.
“Just relax and let that feeling come over you. Kind of numb, kind of cold. I know it’s probably difficult considering….” Dekker slid his gaze to Reese’s shoulder.
He fucking knew better, but he couldn’t stop himself from doing the same.
Fragments of white jutted up from wads of red muscles bulging from the curve of puncture wounds running over Reese’s collarbone where blood overflowed.
He was going to die. Unless someone stopped the bleeding. Unless someone stopped this maniac. He was going to fucking die.
Here Reese had worried about a goddamned heart attack.
Luca’s yells and the banging against sheets of smoked glass couldn’t pull Reese’s attention from his ruined shoulder.
Even if by some miracle he lived through this, he’d never use his arm again. And he was not going to live through this. The knowledge choked him with sobs.
Another stinging slap bit his cheek, and he jerked.
Inches were all that separated Dekker’s face from Reese’s now.
“You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you? That moment you know what’s coming. What’s inevitable. Now concentrate, Dr. Dante. I know this is your first time so it won’t be easy. But pay attention to what’s happening inside you right now. Every piece of you is embracing death, and as death is embraced, you change.”