The Shadows

EIGHTY-FOUR

Trez got his wish.

In the course of his dying from the cleansing, he learned that, in fact, there was a Fade. And yes, people of different traditions and faiths all went to the same place.

At some point, the pain became too much and his body gave out—and the abrupt lack of any sensation was a shock. Yet he welcomed the numbness.

And the sense of flight.

Soaring, he was soaring . . . until he found himself in a vast white landscape, a foggy landscape that, as he walked along, made him feel both weightless and grounded.

Soon enough, a door was presented to him. A door with a knob that he instinctively knew if he turned, would allow him to step into what was beyond and thereby never, ever go back to Earth.

And that was when he saw Selena.

Her face and form appeared to him not on the door, but in it, as if even closed, the panel contained three-dimensional space.

Instant. Joy. And it was the same for her, her smile radiating through the distance between them, their eye contact translating to a caress he felt throughout his body.

She was healthy. She was strong. She was whole.

“My queen!” he shouted, reaching for her.

But she put her palm out, stopping him. “Trez, you need to stay.”

He recoiled. “No. I need to be with you—this is the way it’s supposed to be—”

“No. You have more to do. You have things you need to do, people you have to meet. Your journey’s not done.”

“It sure as shit is.” Check him out with the cursing. Way to do the whole reunited-in-Heaven fantasy. “You’re dead and I want to be with you.”

“I’m going to be here, waiting for you.” She smiled again, and warmed him anew. “It’s wonderful where I am—I flew because of what you did, the way you freed me. I found flight and I am free and I am going to wait for you until your journey’s done.”

“No,” he moaned. “Don’t send me back.”

“I don’t have that power. But you do. Make the choice to stay down there—you have to take care of iAm. You need to pay him back for all the years he’s been there for you. It’s not fair for you to leave him alone. He will never be at peace, and he’s earned it.”

Well, hell. That was probably the only argument she could have made that had a chance of getting through to him.

Shit.

“What about us,” he moaned. Even though that was selfish. Childish. “What about me . . . I’m nothing without you.”

“I’ll come to you in the night sky. Look for me there.”

“Let me touch you—”

“Make the right choice, Trez. You have to make the right choice. You have a debt to repay to the one you have loved all your life.”

“But I love you,” he choked out, beginning to cry.

“And I love you, too—for eternity.” Her smile resonated through him. “Infinity and back, remember? I’ll be here waiting for you and for whoever else you love. That’s what the other side is. It’s just love.”

“Don’t leave. Oh, God, don’t leave me again—”

“I’m not. We’re separated, but not lost or truly apart. Do not mourn me, my love. I have not died. . . .”

“Selena!”

As iAm heard the shout, he jerked up from the base of the slab. Shit, some savior he was. He’d fallen a-fucking-sleep holding his brother’s—

“Trez?” he said, as he realized the guy had, by some miracle, almost twenty-four hours after the cleanse, come back to consciousness.

His brother was crying, tears spilling from his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.

“Trez? Are you back?” iAm jumped to his feet and leaned over the guy. “Trez?”

Those sunken black eyes shifted to his, and there was a long moment in which Trez seemed to struggle with what was or was not real.

“Trez?” iAm whispered, suddenly worried that the poison had eaten that brain up. “Are you—”

All at once those long, strong arms wrapped around him and jerked him off his feet.

And his brother was holding him.

And speaking.

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here . . . for you, I am here. . . .”

At first the words didn’t register, but then . . .

“I’m not leaving you,” Trez said in a rough, scratchy voice. “I’m here and I’m not leaving you.”

Oh . . . shit.

They were the words iAm had said to the male in so many different variations throughout their lives together . . . words that had been represented by the deeds he had done, and days he had stayed up worrying, and years he had spent just praying they were going to make it through another night.

iAm collapsed on his brother’s now-scarred chest, his knees suddenly going out from under him.

In his fantasies, he had wondered what it would be like to be free of the curse of worrying about his brother.

He’d had a variety of iterations.

None came close to the real thing.