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1
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to hazard a not-too-wild a guess that the kind of shit him and Jonesy had been through would affect them long after it was all said and done and their new friends with the military intelligence had packed them off and delivered them back home. Henry supposed no sane person would be sleeping well after everything that’s happened, not that he had any grounds to consider himself all that sane to begin with, not before the start of said shit and certainly not now.
The six weeks in Wyoming hadn’t been bad, exactly, but they had felt like he was just waiting for something; not quite the darkness from before, that old friend of his, but something markedly familiar.
SSDD: same shit, different darkness.
All the same, out of the PsyOps people’s immediate grasp and back to trying to make sense of his old life, Henry was discovering that being a psychiatrist didn’t, in fact, make it any easier to handle the nightmares well.
If anything, it seemed to be making it harder. Jonesy’s memories of what Henry’s taken to calling the Events in his head had quickly faded into a dream-like film of vague recollection, like trying to look out through the subway window and seeing indistinct reflections of the people inside on the glass. Outside of those couple of chilling sessions of hypnosis, forcing that foreign presence back to the front of his mind, for all intents and purposes Jonesy wasn’t haunted by the past at all.
Henry’s memories meanwhile seemed to have taken it upon themselves to keep an exhaustive and exhausting record of everything that’s happened, putting in the work for the both of them.
And the nightmares were relentless.
He kept dreaming of Pete and the Beav dying, over and over again, in gruesome, impossible detail that he had no right to know and yet knew that it was right, it must have been right; it matched everything Jonesy’s told him during those long hours, days, weeks in that underground compound in Wyoming and everything Jonesy couldn’t say, everything Henry’s mind picked up between the lines whether he wanted it to or not.
Bloodied pieces of Beaver’s nose sticking out of the byrum’s hungry mouth, its teeth like needles as it launched itself at Jonesy. And Beaver’s screams, Christ, those fucking screams— And then Pete; cold and broken and bleeding as the byrus devoured him, its roots buried deep inside him and forcing themselves deeper still, splitting his veins from within and writhing through his muscles and feeding on his nerve endings, twitching and jerking as Mr Gray watched him and waited, once, twice, three times, the pain unbearable and the wretched fear even worse.
Henry woke up with a shout, eyes wet, heart pounding, and a familiar voice in his ear murmuring—
2
—easy, beautiful. Easy. It was just a bad dream.
And it was, it must have been; with consciousness slowly returning to him in drowsy waves he knew at once that it was all over, that it had been over for a long while, that he was safe. In the dark, but out of reach of the real darkness; in his apartment, in his own bed, held in a lover’s embrace with his back pressed against a warm chest, feeling it rise and fall with a soothing regularity. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, slow breaths tickling the back of his neck.
You okay?
Henry nodded, still dazed, struggling to focus through the lingering unease. He was awake, that much he was sure of, but it was just about the extent of his certainty. Something didn’t quite feel right.
Henry.
Less than a whisper now, that familiar, worried voice again; though welcome, it made cold dread crawl down his spine. Gave him the fuckin willies and all. It didn’t belong here, in the quiet stillness of his bedroom, it didn’t fit. Henry remembered it from another place, another time, what felt like a lifetime ago; from somewhere else, from a distant nightmare.
Yes, Henry knew that voice then; it had belonged to a man desperate to do the right thing—to be eased through it, pushed into it, though he hardly needed the push in the first place. A grounded presence not at all unpleasant to meet mind to mind, disillusioned but clever and focused and calm despite the utterly deranged circumstances they’d both found themselves in; there had been a flush of warmth to him, of simple decency, awakened from the frozen lull of what his orders had been.
The one speck of hope in an utterly hopeless situation none of them should have survived.
Some of them didn’t.
Owen. God, Owen.
You’re dead, Henry thought, bile rising in his throat.
No two ways about it, the voice of Owen in his head agreed, almost cheerful, and then he was gone; the voice and that impossibly tangible presence in Henry’s bed both.
3
Forgetting was, of course, not an option.
It wouldn’t have been an option even if Henry were in any measurable capacity normal, but that hadn’t been the case for so long that he almost couldn’t remember what it had been like before; back when it had been just him in his own head, back when there had been no click, no line.
No bounce, no play.
“Do you ever miss it?” he asked Jonesy. “You know, before…?”
The attempt at nonchalance came out so obviously forced that it almost made him laugh; and then it made him think of that trip back from Gosselin’s with Pete (all up in his head daydreaming about the Hemingway Solution, dear Christ, how full of himself he’d been), and then he no longer felt like laughing.
Which was just as well, because he was driving them back from visiting Duddits at the cemetery—they’d sat there a while, talking, even left flowers (Carla’s idea, Jonesy had said, although he was the one who’d picked marigolds, bright yellow like the Scooby-Doo lunchbox had been)—and Roberta at her new place; frequent visitors now, as if trying to make up for lost time, for all those years that they hadn’t been there for their friend. Avoiding Duddits because it had been the easy way out, because away from him, they could keep up the semblance of normalcy; skirting him like a hard responsibility, afraid what the line would have shown them if they’d looked directly at it.
The connection, the line, all of it—what little of it had been good, but oh, how good it had been, their precious few moments of brilliance—was mostly gone now, but in scattered, odd moments like these Henry felt a weight in his bones anyway, a pressure in his head, viscous and oppressive; not quite hearing voices anymore (not right now, at least), but turning his mind into a satellite dish for the past, his own memories honing in on him with a vengeance that would become a splitting headache a couple of hours down the line.
(That was Henry’s line now, alright. All but drowning in those weird, intrusive recollections by day, dreaming even weirder nightmares by night, waking up into a weirdest yet middle-state to be comforted by a dead man’s voice.)
Still, it was easy to ask Jonesy the question because Jonesy knew him better than Henry knew himself; telepathy or no, Jonesy didn’t need him to finish the sentence, nor to put the full thought into words.
Do you miss being normal, was the question. No telepathy, no click, no line, no nothing.
Out the corner of his eye he saw Jonesy fix him with a long, clever stare, seeing into him and through him the way only Jonesy always had. Henry hoped it was the kind of seeing through him that would tell Jonesy he was haunted by the memories and nightmares of the Events—that much wasn’t exactly a secret—and not the kind where Jonesy could somehow make out the details of Henry’s newly acquired exciting hallucinations of one Owen Underhill, decidedly deceased.
“Nah,” Jonesy said, and smiled, and there it was; another thing about the line, those residual bouts of telepathy that were still there, even with the byrus gone, even with Duddits dead.
There it was: Henry knew, immediately, that Jonesy was lying.
It was a relief. He didn’t care to examine why.
“Yeah, me neither,” he just said with a firm nod; that was a lie too.
4
Still, there was something appealing about this new aspect of losing his mind; appealing and almost comforting, in the same backwards way that thoughts of suicide used to be.
Was imagining a dead man for companionship less or more self-destructive than turning preferred methods of killing himself this way and that in his head? It was sure to be one or the other; but Henry was discovering that he just really, really didn’t care.
The nightmares were getting old fast; but waking up genuinely convinced that the man who had died on the shores of Quabbin Reservoir (Henry had walked past his body, for Christ’s sake) was in the room with him was new. A shiny, hot-off-the-press brand new strange thing to ponder and observe and experience—and hadn’t he wanted for the world to be full of strange things? Hadn’t it been the perceived shortage of them that had almost pushed him over the edge?
It was certainly an odd comfort, a dead man’s presence, but Henry was uniquely disposed to take exactly that sort of thing in his stride now. He’s seen far stranger, hell, far stranger things had tried to kill him and nearly succeeded; in those unreal hours of the night, whatever was happening at least didn’t want him dead.
Confused, certainly, but not dead.
He supposed that one of them being dead was probably enough.
The presence was preferable to the nightmares, even as it refused to shake the pesky habit of manifesting itself far too close. Henry had chalked up that first time—the steady breaths against the back of his neck, the proximity, the warmth—to confusion and surprise. The excuse became flimsy by the third time. Frankly laughable by the tenth.
Once or twice the hallucination did show up sitting at the foot of his bed or leaned against the doorway at least, but most of the time it just wouldn’t keep the distance; coming into being under the covers with him, holding him close, solid and impossibly real.
Sometimes, Henry even managed to work up enough concern to protest.
It felt about as honest as lying to Jonesy about not missing being normal; still, he felt that he had to try.
Owen, buddy. Personal space.
I’m dead. Instantaneous. Perfectly deadpan.
Henry almost laughed.
Yeah, I don’t want a dead guy in my bed. I don’t want any guys in my bed, if I’m being honest.
Sure, him and his friends had messed around a little back when they were teenagers, and later, once or twice at Hole in the Wall, drunk on that old, nostalgic joy of being together and being made right by it, but it wasn’t like that, that was just fun and alcohol, and what happened at Hole in the Wall stayed at Hole in the Wall anyway—
Owen chuckled. You’re not listening. I’m not in your bed. Your head is where I’m at. Take it up with your own wild imagination, handsome.
Henry huffed and rolled his eyes, feeling like a petulant child. Sure. I’ll do that. Some other time. Or never. Now, if you’re not going to go and fuck off, then at least be quiet. I need to wake up early.
A brief impression of a smug grin flashed through his mind; he ignored it, same as he ignored the chill that ran down his spine as the hallucination settled closer with a weary little sigh. Whatever you say, beautiful. Sweet dreams.
Beneath Henry’s closed eyelids, the final remains of the latest nightmare dissipated and gave way to something else.
5
Some times, he would dream of himself and his friends as kids, but these dream-memories tended to sour fast, too. One moment he was back in in DJHS, Jonesy and Beaver and Pete laughing at a joke he’s told; the next, everything turned all wrong and he had to watch himself and his friends walk past the deserted Tracker Brothers depot almost in slow motion, just a bunch of boys busy talking about their upcoming hunting trip. In the dream, nobody mentioned Tina Jean Schlossinger, let alone her pussy. All four of them just kept walking. None of them heard Duddits crying.
No, Henry thought. No, that’s not right. That’s not how it happened. We went in. We saved him.
Duddits was in there. Richie Grenadeau was trying to feed Duddits a piece of shit behind the far side of the building, and Duddits was crying, and Henry and his friends walked past, and went home.
No, Henry thought with rising desperation. No, please—
“Henry?”
In the dream, someone shoved him in the side, hard, though still friendly, and when he blinked, he was back at the Cavells’ house, all six of them playing the Duddits Game.
Wait, six?
Henry turned to the boy sitting between him and Jonesy. Mischievous blue eyes met his. Their owner was grinning. “You playing or not?”
Henry’s only ever seen that boy once, in the middle of a memory that didn’t belong to him, lifting a plate high over his head and shattering it on the floor.
Owen.
Again. Like an echo that couldn’t stop.
Henry sighed, watching his kid self punch Owen in the arm and get back to playing. Not a care in the world. It would’ve been fun to know you. Back then, I mean. Maybe you never would have broken the Rapeloews’ plate.
Yeah, Owen’s disembodied voice murmured. Maybe.
6
Other times, the nightmares gave way to insomnia; just for the sake of variety, Henry supposed. He didn’t mind, not really. He’d learned to keep a certain distance from the darkest of his thoughts. Learned to let them pass. It was a matter of waiting them out, and Henry’s become very good at waiting.
Most of those sleepless nights up until now he’d spent reading or letting his mind idle, sitting up in bed, waiting; this was becoming markedly difficult as he found that even when he truly were alone, no hallucinations in sight, his thoughts kept drifting towards Owen anyway. Like going in circles, except in his own head.
It took him far too long to realize what it really was.
“This again,” he muttered under his breath, tossing the paperback he’s been trying to read aside and rolling his eyes, then taking off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.
He almost saw it then, out the corner of his eye; a thread of gold, just the barest trace of it.
That was just how it was with the line. Sometimes you saw the past. Sometimes the future.
Sometimes, it was gone for months or even years at a time, long enough that you’d swear it had never even been there in the first place—and then it would appear again, bright and golden and relentless. Not the future or the past, but a possibility. A demand, really; once you saw the line, you couldn’t unsee it.
Fine. I’ll bite.
He put a pillow between the headboard and his back, settled more comfortably, and let his memory carry him.
His wasn’t quite as orderly as Jonesy’s, no box to take off a shelf and browse, but maybe that was for the better. These weren’t normal memories he was after, anyway. It was the ones he didn’t remember, the ones caught somewhere at the very edges of his consciousness, tangled into the dreamcatcher.
He couldn’t look into Owen’s mind any more—there was no mind to look into, Owen was dead, Owen was dead and Henry was going insane—but Henry pushed reason aside, pushed comfort aside, until he was back in the Humvee, back in the Sno-Cat, back in the corral, throwing his desperate best across the electrified compound fence at a stranger called Underhill.
He closed his eyes and dived in.
7
And just like that, he’s back there, right in the middle of the Events again. There and not there at the same time, that dreamlike recollection, like he’s outside his own body and watching himself; and like this, his perception is absolute. He sees things he doesn’t remember remembering but knows at once that they’re real—things his mind deemed unimportant, kept locked up, saved for a later that never really came. He sees into Owen’s mind as easily as he does into his own and the clarity of it nearly flattens him at first.
He’s so strong, Owen is thinking. How is he so strong?
Dreamy, entranced—is that what it was like for him?
Why didn’t you say, Owen? Henry thinks, fascinated, up to his neck in the depths of memory that at once is and isn’t his; he’s watching himself, it seems, through Owen’s eyes now. Through his mind.
The thoughts all blur into one; this isn’t any specific memory but rather Owen’s idea of him, all of it at once, flickering through different moments and impressions, piling into his head almost oppressive until he figures out just what it is that he’s seeing; himself, bright like a flare burning the red-gold of the byrus, a light in the darkness, a beacon of hope. A lunatic, frankly, but if some definitive spectrum of lunacy exists out there, Owen is thinking that Henry’s is on the exact opposite end of Kurtz’s, and therefore irresistible. All of him is.
Mind sharper than a razor when turned against others but enveloping Owen like a fresh layer of snow, pleasantly cool against the fresh, raw feeling of betrayal, bright and stubborn and not cruel in the slightest; a random civilian with more backbone than every other person in the Jefferson Tract combined, pulling Owen into his mind and asking for help—though he could already demand it, god, how is he so strong—
Of course, Henry murmurs, in his own head. We needed each other. We were allies.
An impression of a word floats to the front of the memory. Partners. Henry almost laughs. Sounds about right. Two exhausted strangers forging a wary alliance, building it on spite first, and then on an unexpected depth of trust when mind to mind they realized that they were both in it to the end.
But watching himself the way Owen saw him in those brief, striking moments when the byrus threaded through them was at its most powerful, when it made everything so brilliant and vivid and easy, talking and arguing and sharing memories and ideas mind to mind—
Henry shudders in surprised, guilty pleasure. There’s a depth of feeling there; a depth of connection, of understanding, of trust, that makes him dizzy. Owen, Owen, you should have told me.
What for? They didn’t have time. They wouldn’t have had the time. All the same—
Tall, dark, and handsome. Owen’s laugh in his ear sounds less like a memory and more like a hallucination again. Aren’t I lucky.
Then, without a warning, Henry’s swept into it fully; Owen’s mind swallows him whole.
8
A breath of fresh air, that’s what he is. Owen calls the man buck—just once, Kurtz’s word, an afterthought and a bitter taste in his mouth, and then it hits for the first time; how desperately curious the clever dark eyes peering at him from behind the horn-rim glasses are. This man, this twig of a stranger who looks like Owen could snap him in half over his knee without even breaking a sweat, he’s different than the others in the barn, yes, that much is obvious—but it’s the warmth of those eyes, of that mind, that draw Owen in.
He thinks of Kurtz’s pale, uncaring gaze, not a shred of curiosity in it, and shudders. The sheer fucking contrast is enough to push him into motion with a vehemence he was sure the long years of working for his old OIC have flushed out of him.
He’s glad to be wrong. Giddy, almost.
He keeps repeating that idiotic fucking phrase, the one Henry’s just taught him to shield his thoughts. Riding a cock horse to Banbury Cross, over and over and over again. Owen doesn’t know what a cock horse is—Henry doesn’t either, after all—but he’s liking it much more than Kurtz’s scorched-earth phooka.
If he has to ride something tonight anyway…
Setting the charges, muttering the words under his breath almost like a prayer, he imagines his options. Kurtz’s beloved phooka, bringer of death and bad fortune; a sleek, pale horse, pale like Kurtz’s burning eyes, approaching Owen to—he knows now—bring him to ruin. There’s something almost beautiful about it. Owen’s still almost fond of it.
Then it bares its teeth at him, and those are decidedly human; but there are deer antlers on its head, and with each passing second, even despite the awful smiling mouth, it looks more and more like a buck.
The other one is clearly a horse, though, even if the unicorn horn on its head is a bit of a stretch, his wild imagination at work, or maybe Henry’s. It’s white, too, but white like fresh snow, white like clean bedsheets, tabula rasa, his chance at getting things right, just this once.
And astride it sits a white rider, his victor’s crown a red and gold tangle of byrus, carrying a rifle—Jonesy’s Garand, his mind supplies, except it must be Henry’s mind again, because all Owen knows of one Gary Jones, codename Typhoid Jonesy, is that he’ll have to kill the man—and over the barrel of the gun and beyond the glasses Owen sees Henry’s eyes, dark and clever and curious.
Henry winks at him, and lines up a shot, and fires; and Kurtz’s beloved phooka, now really no more than a deer, keels over dead.
How’s that for a buck, Henry says, and Owen grins to himself as he disappears between the rigged gennies.
The dream flickers and changes.
9
They made it, they’re free; that Kurtz is shooting at them is frankly irrelevant. Henry’s terrified, but Owen’s laughing—doesn’t he know we’re going to be heroes? Doesn’t he remember? His mind is alight with sudden, delirious joy—he imagines this is what it must be like for a dog escaping its leash for the first time in its life—and for a fraction of a second, he almost sees it; a web, thin and golden, threaded between him and Henry and leading away. A line. The line. Through Henry’s eyes, through his mind, he glimpses it, and he will forget as soon as Gosselin’s lights disappear behind them in the distance, but in that moment he knows—Kurtz, the crazy good shot that he is, will not reach him here. Not yet.
Words ring out in his head, not his and not Henry’s this time. We’ve got some work to do now. The voice is familiar, even though Owen’s never heard it in his life before.
What the fuck was that about?
But he hasn’t the time to wonder, to care; beside him, Henry looks like the next shot will kill him whether it lands in his body or not.
Owen laughs again. Light ‘em up, beautiful, he murmurs mind to mind, pouring images into Henry’s head, making him understand.
Feels fitting to have Henry do it. There’s a depth of fire in that man; briefly, Owen sees him backlit by flames, a burning cabin behind his back—Hole in the Wall, that bright voice at the back of his mind says, thick with grief so all-encompassing that Owen feels tears well up in his own eyes for a second—sees him pushing fear of death by fire into three hundred and seventeen complacent minds in the barn, sees him now, pushing the buttons and wincing as the twin explosions send a cascade of light over his features and send Kurtz and his Imperial Valleys into the darkness where they belong.
The dream—the memory—flickers and changes again.
10
At the turnpike entrance ramp Henry tells him to link up, and—holy shit. Owen laughs, quiet, almost delirious. Henry Devlin must be a walking byrus colony, there can’t be anything of the man left, because it shouldn’t be possible otherwise; except, of course, the concept of impossible has ceased to exist a solid couple of hours ago, and in this brave new world full of aliens and telepathy the old rules just no longer apply.
Owen gets a flash of what happened back at the barn again, a vision of Henry commanding every living thing inside it, impossible to look away from, impossible to ignore, his voice booming and sure. Strong enough to force three hundred apathetic hunters to throw caution to the wind, to run for their lives—
And now all that concentrated strength pulls Owen in with a click that’s almost audible, two minds linking into perfect harmony, and Owen steps—stumbles—back, letting Henry take the lead; he has to, because he’s swimming, drowning, in Henry. It’s Henry moving his limbs now, it must be, because it sure isn’t Owen; all Owen can do is ride it out, really let himself feel it. Henry holds on to him while grasping for the four minds in their way, binding them to his will. The brilliant satisfaction of it actually working, clear in Henry’s head, trickles down Owen’s spine like liquid lightning.
For the moment, Owen’s mind belongs to Henry entirely, and still he knows he’s safe. What’s left of his fear of telepathy melts away—what’s there to be afraid of?—and he yields to Henry with giddy pleasure, excited, he realizes, to see what the man will do next.
It’s an odd, fizzling feeling, a little like the itch from the byrus, like something tightening its grasp on him, but it’s not malevolent, and for fucking once it’s not unpleasant. Warmth spills through him, emanating from where the byrus is growing on him, shooting up his fingers and down his spine; the pills he stole from the infirmary are nothing compared to this.
And the heat keeps spreading, fluttering across his back, radiating from the base of his spine, making him dizzy on some other, parallel plane of existence. Here, he’s still in his body, driving the Sno-Cat, listening to Henry’s words, following his lead, his vision razor-sharp and clear and his head full. But out there, mind to mind, the sensation that carries him is unlike anything he’s ever experienced before; like he’s high and drunk and dizzy from exhaustion all at once, like he’s in Henry’s head and watching himself, like he’s in his own and feeling Henry’s mind engulf him.
Christ, but you’re strong.
Henry’s too focused to take the fervently impressed compliment—Henry’s like a machine now, tricking the men in their way with a message that sends them stumbling away from their post without a second thought. Henry’s thoughts direct them like leaves in a stream. Owen almost wanders into that stream himself until another focused touch of Henry’s mind on his fixes him.
Up this close, he feels Henry’s exhaustion as they step out of the Sno-Cat. Owen reaches for him without thinking—wants to reach for him, would want to even if Henry wasn’t dead on his feet, if he didn’t need to be held up—and as soon as he has an arm around Henry it’s like the pressure equalizes; he knows what to do by instinct and does it instantly, pushing what little strength he has into Henry, sharing it through their still-joined minds.
Henry’s long, heavy exhale, just this side of a moan, echoes directly into his head and shoots straight down, followed by a feeling of gratitude so electrifying that it nearly takes him out at the knees. He tells Henry to keep moving like he’s fishing the words out of a thick fog, busy riding the high of Henry’s relief.
It is making him think of sex, mostly because his mind is desperate for a frame of reference, for a way to categorize the overwhelming, overpowering, all-consuming feeling of being inside someone and having someone inside him like this. His mind is laid bare; he has never felt this open, nor this full. Each of this thoughts is saturated with Henry, two minds joined into one.
In the real world, he’s getting into the Humvee and crawling onto the turnpike with the headlights off and driving away, his focus crystalline.
In this other, strange, new place that he wasn’t aware existed, he’s surrounded by something he doesn’t have the words to describe, gripping and grasping at him from all sides, like a heavy blanket wrapping around him, pushing him down—
Hands, Owen realizes with a start. Like phantom hands clutching at every inch of his body.
The sensation only lets up when Henry falls asleep.
11
Henry came to like he was coming up for air; with a gasp, greedily filling his lungs with air like he’d been stuck deep underwater.
He knew with perfect certainty that what he’d just experienced was more than a figment of his imagination. He’d been too focused, too tired, too terrified back then—but what he was reaching into now was without a doubt memory. His, Owen’s, it didn’t matter.
The PsyOps people had warned him to watch for lingering effects of the byrus.
Lingering effect numero uno: your mind kept a backup copy of your dead friend’s memories, just in case.
Was that what it was?
The alternative was, arguably, even worse. Henry groaned, dragging both hands down his face, half expecting to feel the fuzz of the byrus beneath his fingers.
This is nuts.
There was no answer, no disembodied voice of Owen, no echo of familiar laughter in his mind, but Henry no longer needed the push. There was more to see; whether there were answers to be had he couldn’t tell, but the memories pulled at him, warm and alluring, demanding to be seen.
He inhaled and exhaled several times, quick like he was getting ready to dive—and dived he did, right back into those murky waters of memory again.
12
Having been in Henry’s head, having seen his memories, watching over him now as he sleeps and dreams his restless dreams, all Owen can think about is that Kurtz doesn’t dream.
Against his better judgment his thoughts keep looping back to his old boss; to the man’s ruthless indifference, to his white lashes and empty eyes, to his phooka and his Imperial Valleys and his Kurtz Line. Owen’s mind paints the picture with striking clarity; Kurtz’s mouth downturned in gentle, paternal disappointment at first, then slowly pulling into a tired but almost charming smile; tender, if final. Crossed the line, laddie-buck, he says, his eyes like frozen steel, as he presses a nine-millimeter to Owen’s forehead.
Owen shakes his head. No, boss. I’m following the line, not crossing it.
The vision of Kurtz dissipates, leaving him alone on the turnpike with his thoughts.
Well, he’s not really alone, not even in his own head. Henry’s still asleep in the passenger seat, right next to him.
Owen feels, senses, hears him dreaming, even as he doesn’t dare look at those dreams directly—but he could, he could, that mind is so welcoming to him. All but inviting him in.
He doesn’t go in, but he settles close; if this was a physical thing and not impossible, unspeakably powerful telepathy, it would be like fighting back to back, feeling Henry’s warmth right behind him, knowing he’s got someone he can trust on his side. Like sitting side by side, after, sharing a cigarette, maybe. Does Henry smoke? Owen supposes it doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters out here, not with Kurtz on their tail; unless his beloved God Himself smites the man, Kurtz will catch up with them eventually. Will catch up with Owen, at the very least.
But until then, Owen keeps driving; Owen glances over at Henry’s worried brow, furrowed deeply even in his sleep; Owen reaches out, mind to mind, and sits just outside Henry’s dreams, leans the back of his head against that hot murmur of power and exhales slowly.
Warmth spreads through him slowly, coursing through his mind and through his veins untroublesome and pleasant.
He may be a dead man walking, but he’s not dead just yet.
A thought slips through, something he’s been keeping from Henry fully—until now. I wonder what it would feel like if we weren’t both dead. If there was time.
13
Owen had known he was going to die. Damn him, he’d known. Same as Henry had thought he’d known back then, he supposed, except that he was still here, and Owen was six feet under.
Henry never even asked where they buried him.
What for? Would he have gone to the funeral? Explained to the man’s wife and daughter who he was? Hi, Henry Devlin. I’m the reason your husband and father is dead. I asked him to die for me and my best friend, and he did.
Don’t flatter yourself, beautiful, Owen’s voice rang out in his head, clear like the man was sitting right next to him, like they were both alive and covered in the byrus head to toe, minds locked together. In his mind, Henry saw Owen’s sideways glance, saw his mischievous smile. You know why I did it. What you promised me.
Yeah, Henry knew.
He knows.
Say it. Out loud. Let me hear it one more time. What are we going to be?
Henry smiles.
“Heroes,” he says, quietly, and then louder, sure: “We were heroes, Owen.”
Damn right.
A warm, calloused hand closes over his two missing fingers and squeezes them, like a phantom sensation in an amputated limb. Along his spine and on his tongue he feels the prickle of byrus, needlepoints of feeling and intent digging into him, curious and itching and strong, letting him back, briefly, into what it used to be; into being able to reach so deep into others’ minds that it left a mark.
On them, but on him, too.
A memory, little more than that; but strong enough to linger. A foothold to somewhere else.
Henry takes a deep breath and sinks into it even deeper.
Beneath his closed eyelids, colors bloom and flash through the glimmering darkness like snowflakes in the dark; the strangely beautiful, almost regal red-gold of the byrus lining Owen’s eyelids is striking beneath the deep blue of his eyes. Owen’s no longer looking at the road, the road is far behind them now, they’re heroes, they’ve saved the world, and they’re alive, or maybe they’re not, and either way it doesn’t matter; Owen’s looking at him, in the Humvee, through the fence of the corral, and here, in the familiar, humming darkness of his apartment.
The bed dips beneath the weight of someone Henry can only see with his eyes closed.
The hand holding on to his missing fingers moves to grasp his wrist, pinning it against the pillow next to his head. Another hand wraps around his back, gathering him close.
Phantom lips brush against his, smiling, and with a smile of his own, Henry lets it happen.