Vial Things (Resurrectionist #1) - Leah Clifford Page 0,98

gone blue, the edges a darkened grey-green where it’s started healing. Allie swipes her hand over her swollen cheek bone. Her wrists are wrapped with gauze.

“What happened?” I ask but she shakes her head.

“Escape attempt gone wrong,” she says and then her voice changes, softens. “I really thought you were dead. He said he gutted you.”

I glance over at Jamison’s body. Part of me wonders if he couldn’t do it. I picture him standing over what was supposed to be my grave, knife in hand. Then again, he could have thought he’d come to bury me sooner, if he even figured out Allie had brought me back.

My fingers start to tingle. The feeling spreads to my arms.

“Can you get us out of here?” Talia says but her voice fades in and out. “There are bolt cutters. Over there.”

As I stand, my head tips toward the shelf. The motion throws me off balance and I stumble.

“Allie?” Talia sounds worried. “Is he okay?”

The room shifts violently. Allie calls my name as I fall. When I open my eyes, I’m on the floor, staring up at the beams of the ceiling, my fingers clenched against the packed earth of the floor.

“Stay with me,” she says. The words drift and ooze, rain down around me. She sounds weak, afraid, but I want to tell her she’s not. I want to tell her she’s the strongest person I know. Her hand finds mine. I try to squeeze, but I can’t get my arm to move.

“I can’t,” I whisper as the cellar around us, and then Allie fades to black.

Allie

“If he dies, we’re leaving him,” I hear Talia say. “He’s got your blood in him. He'll revive on his own. We can be long gone by then. It might be better that way, Allie,” she adds.

“We’re not leaving him,” I snap. Ploy’s head is in my lap. He’s been like this for an hour. Unresponsive. But his breathing is slow and even, his eyelids twitching. When he’d first passed out, I’d checked him over for wounds and found the healed bullet hole in his chest. Hearts are temperamental things. They take a long time to heal.

I run my fingers over his dirt smeared cheek, thinking back to the cabin, the woods after. “I’m not leaving him,” I say again. “He didn’t leave me.”

Talia sighs hard. “He’s lucky I can’t reach the bolt cutters myself,” she says. I shoot her a look and she raises her hands innocently. “I’m ready to get out of here. All I’m saying.”

I can’t really argue. I’m exhausted and my face hurts. I just want to go home and forget any of this ever happened. But Sarah will still be dead. The house gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do. In my lap, Ploy winces. His hand twitches and I grab for it. “Ploy?” I turn to Talia. “I think he’s waking up.”

She rolls her eyes. “You thought that fifteen minutes ago,” she says and then a sarcastic smile breaks across her face. “Well, well! Looks like she was right this time! Welcome back to the land of the living!”

I look down and find Ploy blinking in confusion. I can see in his eyes the moment everything comes rushing back to him. Just as he tenses, I lay a hand on his chest. “Shhh,” I tell him. “It’s okay. He’s dead.”

“Dead?” he echoes.

“Jamison. He shot you. You came to help Talia and me but we were already escaping.”

“Badly,” Talia grumbles.

“Yeah,” I say. “But still. We were holding our own.”

Talia snorts. “Those kicks you took to the face would suggest otherwise.”

Ploy sits up. “Are you okay?” he asks me.

I can’t help the sad smile on my lips. “Yeah, you?” I ask, and he nods. Jamison’s body lies beside us. An hour ago, I closed his eyelids. The poison in the vial means he won’t be able to come back, we won’t have to cut him open. Ploy follows my line of sight slowly, like he’s not sure he wants to look. “He was dead the second he killed my family,” I say. “The second he killed Brandon.” The second he killed you, I think.

When he takes me into his arms he moves carefully as if waiting for me to pull away. I don’t.

“Cute.” Talia’s voice is deadpan. “When you’re done with your little reunion, we need you to get the bolt cutters,” she says, shaking her wrists to emphasize the point.

Ploy stares at me for a second. His lips part. I’m