Page 50 of A Dance With Devils

“HELP!” shouts out of me, as I skirt around the balcony and head for the stairs. They're nothing but empty and desolate again. No people. No maids. No help at all. Where’s that man gone? The one Malachi thanked? “GRAY?” screams out of me. I call it again, and again, as I duck into rooms and eventually get to the room that Malachi said was his.

My hand reaches for the doorknob, fingers turning it before I care to think about what I might find inside. The sight that greets me is all half naked male and fierce eyes. He looks me over, not even a sense of surprise on his face.

“HELP ME!” shouts out again, as my body turns from the room for him to follow. I’m half way along the hall before I realise he isn’t doing. I swing back until I’m back in his room and this time physically grab his arm. “Malachi. Please, Gray.”

“The hell are you talking about?” he snaps, pulling his arm away.

“He’s … I don’t know. Come with me. Please. I think … He’s not moving.”

His face suddenly goes as grey as his name suggests, and he moves quickly to one of the closets and pulls out a bag.

“Go!” he shouts. “Show me.”

Within seconds we’re back in the shower room and he’s heaving Malachi’s body fully out of the cubicle. He pulls up his eyelids, checks for a pulse, opens his mouth and looks inside it, and then starts looking in his bag for something.

“Is he …” I stutter around the words, body folding backwards to the wall and all those fucking memories coming back to claw they’re way through me. Oh god. Not again.

I can’t see this again.

“Alice?” Was that meant for me? I glance at him, watching as he holds a hand out for me and tries to get me to do something, and then look back at the wall of black clothed, lifeless muscle. “What did he take? How many, the colours?"

"I don't know. They're on the bed and he just … he just said not to take the red ones and then I came in here for a shower and-"

"Kneel down under his head, hold it in your hands.” I can’t. I’m frozen to this spot, unable to see anything past this dark hair and dead eyes. It’s so sad. So wretched and mournful. I can feel it inside me, as all the memories come racing back. Blood and tears, childhood dreams shattered.

"ALICE!” My gaze snaps back to him, mouth shuddering and shivering around my choked sobs and panic. “I need your help. Move.”

My knees fold downwards at the tone of his stern voice, hands crawling me to where he said so I can lift another lifeless thing into my grip. He’s so heavy. So fucking heavy and so fucking dead. Tears flood from my eyes, clogging my throat up at the same time. They shouldn’t. He’s no one to me. Just a man. But I can feel it all. Even hear his voice still. And lightning bolts. I remember them now – remember the way they echoed off his body as we ran.

“He’s going to thrash about,” Gray says, climbing on top of him until he’s sitting astride the solid body. “Protect his head. Alice?” I look up, away from Malachi’s lax face.

“He’s not dead?”

“Not yet. Have you got this? You need to hold tightly. He’s strong when he comes round. If it fucking works this time.” I sniff and run my fingers into his hair, gripping it severely to keep it still on my naked knees. “Goddamn, you’re a selfish son of a bitch, Malachi,” he says, drawing out a syringe. “A pain in my ass.”

Selfish.

But not dead. Not yet anyway. I can do that, understand it.

And I can still help.