I was dying. Fast. Despite the stroke of luck I’d had with a human man stumbling across my failing body after fighting William Blackstone, I didn’t have much longer to live anyway. But fate brought me more luck. This human unknowingly drove me closer to my destination after I’d convinced him off of hospitals and cops…

But I knew I’d never make it there on my own even if I tried.

The bandages, stitches, and creams covering most of me couldn’t save me despite prolonging my inevitable death. Life was just trickling out of me.

I looked at the human finishing rewrapping another bandage on my arm for nearly the sixtieth time. Useless. There were more important things than wasting these months away, clinging to life on this worn out bed. A few months had passed. I didn’t know how he’d managed to keep me alive for this long. I was grateful…

But that only went so far.

I was loudly thankful and smiled as pleasantly as I could in order to get this man to do what I could not any longer.

He was just another pawn.

“Grab my coat…”

The man looked up from his work, upon hearing my words.

“Hm? Okay.”

He stood after taking his sweet time finishing up the bandage. My coat, which he’d draped over a chair, was brought ever closer to me. I reached for it, straining, needing to know it was still there.

I snagged it from his grip and rummaged in all of the pockets, after all this time, forgetting which one I’d placed it in. My hand grazed the cool glass and I sighed, closing my eyes, relief pouring over me.

“What is that?”

He sounded startled. Worried. His eyes wavered as I stared at him. I sighed and focused in on the pain of a deep breath in order to call tears to my eyes.

“It’s the dying wish of my darling wife…”

A wife that didn’t exist. There was no wife. The woman who bore me children was useless at everything else.

“What do you mean?” he asked gently.

“I was meant to dump the contents onto a bunch of specific rocks near Lake Tarva,” was my reply. That was also a lie.

He tilted his head curiously.

“Really? Why?”

“It was… it was where we met.” I had thought up the story I’d tell him for the past month. I knew it like it could be truth. It wasn’t. But it was necessary. It was all necessary to finish my goal, to complete my path. “She knew her mother would take her ashes so she wanted a part of her left there…”

“Ah. I see.”

“I’ll feel so incomplete… if I can’t do this…” I closed my eyes and turned my head to the side, feigning an emotional pain.

“I’m sure she’d forgive–”

“She wouldn’t.” I wouldn’t, if I couldn’t get this done. “And… I couldn’t even fulfill this wish? I’m so pathetic…”

There was a moment of silence. A quiet in which I dared not open my eyes or look at his face. I sighed and let my body sink into the mattress.

And then the silence ended.

“Do you have to be the one to dump it there?”

I opened my eyes and whipped my head his direction. Surprise. I was supposed to be surprised by his words. It took all my effort not to smile, knowing I’d hooked him, knowing that there was no way he’d back down now.

“What?”

“I know that area a bit. If you tell me which rocks, then I’m sure I could find them. I could dump that vial there for you,” he suggested it, all on his own.

I widened my eyes.

“You – you would do that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it.”

He smiled at me, pityingly. Instead of glaring, I sighed, making a point to untense my shoulders visibly and switched my tone to a much gentler one.

“Thank you.” I placed the vial in his palm, covering his hand with both of my own and doing my best to plead. “Please do it, before I’m gone… I don’t want her shouting at me in heaven.”

He laughed and nodded, patting my hands.

“Sure. I’ll go this afternoon.”

“Good.”

I waited until he was gone before I narrowed my eyes, looking toward the door.

“Not that I’d even see anyone in heaven. Surely, I was born to go to hell… if it even exists.”

Wincing, I pulled myself out of the bed, nearly stumbling to the floor upon my weak and worn legs, and threw myself toward the doorway. Just getting those short feet across the room and then to the front door, I was dripping with sweat from exertion.

“There’s no way I’m dying in this place. I’m not giving my body to the humans,” I growled.

I left.

As fast as I could, I made my way west.

It was far too long before I came across the scent of wolves, of a pack border. With no regards left for my life, I ignored the border, and just kept moving forward until I was stopped just thirty yards later.

“Who are you?!”

They demanded an answer. I wasn’t going to give it. Someone would come. Someone important. Someone would recognize me.

And then I could give my final message.

I could reach all of those who were searching for me, finding the dead-end trails I left behind all these years.

I stumbled closer to the gathered group of a patrol, falling to my knees with body-shaking coughs that only served to make me feel as if my lungs and ribs were burning. I supposed it was best I couldn’t feel my legs at all anymore.

“Where are the Alpha and Beta?!” someone shouted. “Get them here, now!”

There was the sound of footsteps quickly retreating. When more treading shoes on gravel grew closer, I managed to open my eyes again. I wiped at my mouth, the coughing subsiding.

I saw a few figures jogging over. One stopped before the other, near the outskirts of the group. My eyes caught on the light blue and white tennis shoes they were wearing. I blinked, trying to see clearer in the blinding light of midday sunshine. The shoes took a tiny and shaky step backwards.

“You. What are you doing here?”

There was venom in that voice.

That familiar voice…

I recognized it.

My mouth twitched.

Ah. In life and in death…

I lifted my head higher to see that despicable face before gravity took me down to the dirt once more.

I felt wetness dribble from my lips.

Had the coughs finally done it for my lungs? The feeling in my throat and mouth was gone. It was just the burning in the rest of my body, the one I’d torn apart myself to get here.

I wanted to find someone I knew.

To see that fear in their eyes.

I’d found someone.

It was perfect.

He was perfect for my final message.

“You…”

I couldn’t help but laugh, even as the pain became unbearable. Blood spewed from my mouth as I did.

Smiling, dribbling, pain lacing through my every nerve, I opened my mouth to speak.

“Paylor.”

Danny.

Danny Paylor.

Brother to Jacob.

Uncle to Lee.

Close friend of Animiya Blakeley.

And my own half…

“Brother.”

I spit the word out.

He wasn’t worthy of being our father’s son. Too weak. Too soft.

“Hell is coming… for you…for all…of you.”

In that final moment, those final seconds that ticked by so slow, I saw it. It was in the widening of his eyes, the furrowing of his brows, the blood dropping from his face, the paleness of it reminding me of how it used to be down in that basement, and the thin trembling press of his lips in a line.

It was satisfying.

It was good.

And as the world fell away, I didn’t even feel the ground.