Chapter 118

“Holy fucking shit!” Elliott kept repeating over and over again. “Where the hell is Jamie!”
“He’s too far away,” Jo mumbled as she got down on her knees next to her dad on the opposite side of where Elliott was sitting. His hands were stained red from where he was pressing them to Aaron’s chest, trying to slow a flow of blood that wouldn’t be stopped.
“Dad,” Jo said, trying to keep her voice calm. “How do you feel? Does it hurt?”
“No.” Aaron’s voice was so weak, it was clear it was just a matter of seconds. A glance at Cassidy let her know that her aunt was doing everything she could to try and convince Scott to leave his mother be and get here. She didn’t need to be in on the conversation to know. Meanwhile, in her IAC, she saw Scott getting up, his mom leaning against a wall with Dax keeping an eye on her.
It wouldn’t matter. Scott was too far away, too. Where the hell was Cadon?
“Dad!”
There he was. Her twin came sprinting into the room, disoriented, and stopped abruptly before turning and meeting her eyes. Then, he saw their father and burst into tears.
Jo couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her brother cry. “Oh, God!”
“It’s okay, Cadon,” Aaron was saying, even though Jo was pretty sure he couldn’t see his son from where he was lying. It wasn’t as if he could lift his head. “It’s okay.”
“We can fix this,” Elliott said, looking around like maybe there might be a Healer hiding somewhere. “Goddamn it, we can fix this.”
“Elliott,” Aaron said, moving his hand over a few inches so it was on top of his best friend’s, “calm down. It’s all right.”
“How the hell can you say that? You’re dying, Aaron! And I’m not ready for that.”
In response, her dad coughed a few times, blood coating his lips. He tried to lift his hand to wipe it away, but couldn’t. Jo did it for him. “Dad, listen, Holland told me that you and Christian are right about that tunnel. We’re going to find Mom. She is alive.”
Whether or not he could actually see her at this point, Jo wasn’t sure, but his eyes were on her face. “Good. Good. yeah, Jo. Find your mom. That’s good. Cadon… you’re in charge while your sister is gone. Okay?”
“Dad… please… don’t,” Cadon said, his face showing the anguish Jo felt inside.
“You can handle this,” Aaron said, his voice growing weaker still as he began to cough.
Scott was about halfway down the hallway. He wasn’t going to make it. He wasn’t strong enough for this even if he did.
“Jo….” She’d been looking at the door, praying for a miracle. “Find Mom. No… f-fu-funeral. No fu-fuc-king cowbell. No… portal.”
“No portal?” Jo repeated.
“Come on, Aaron. Don’t say that,” Elliott begged. “You know we can’t do this without you.”
“No!” Aaron said, shaking his head. “No.”
Jo realized then what it was that her dad was saying. He wasn’t talking about the Blood Moon portal, where her mother was trapped. He was talking about the Blue Moon portal.
The one that could bring him back.
“I love you. All of you.”
“I love you, too, Dad. I’m sor--”
“No.” Aaron cut her off. At this rate, no was going to be his last word. “Don’t… pologize. It’s okay.”
Aaron’s blue eyes closed, and Jo knew it was the last time. His IAC was beginning to go fuzzy, an indication that his brain waves were losing their ability to function.
The last word he said wasn’t no. It was, “Jo.”
Everything from that point on was a blur. Scott came flying into the room as Jo scooted away on her ass to get out of his way. He sat down in her spot and zapped her dad with as much blue healing light as he could summon. But you can’t save someone once they’re dead. Everyone knows that. Elliott’s wailing was mitigated slightly when Brandon came in and dragged him back out of the way because Jamie was coming. The other Healer got there a few minutes later and dropped to his knees in the same pool of blood that had stained Jo’s knees red and Elliott’s entire black leather pants from his shins to his thighs in crimson.
“We can do this,” Jamie kept telling Scott over and over again. “We can. This is why I’m here. This is why I was finally able to get out of that shithole. Because I have to save him.”
Cassidy wasn’t across the room with her husband and father-in-law. She was standing at Aaron’s feet where she’d been since Holland had died and the rest of the room had been cleared of the enemy. She had tears streaking her cheeks, but other than that, she was just staring at her sister’s husband’s body.
“I can do this,” Jamie said again, doing CPR the old-fashioned way with chest compressions to a heart that didn’t have enough blood in it to beat, puffs of air delivered to lungs that didn’t know what to do with it. “I saved Cadence. I can do this.”
“Jamie,” Cassidy said, her voice quiet at first. The Healer continued to mumble the same thing over and over again between chest compressions and breaths. “Jamie.” The second time was a little louder. “Jamie!”
The Healer turned his head to look at her. Cassidy was shaking her head. “This is different. I don’t want to say it, and you don’t want to hear it, but with my sister, there was something there the whole time. You’d hit her with your light as she was falling. She was never completely dead, no matter how it appeared. Aaron’s gone. He’s not here anymore, and it doesn’t matter how many times you bang on his chest or blow into his mouth, he’s already gone. He’s already in that place that Cadence described.”
Jamie stared at her for a moment longer before he turned back to what he’d been doing, unaffected by her speech.
The Hybrid felt compelled to stop the madness. “Jamie!” she said again, this time stepping over to him, crouching down and putting her hand on his shoulder. Scott, who had been helping, moved back in defeat. “Jamie, I know you want him back. We all do, but listen. He’s with his other family now. Aislyn is there. So is Aarolyn. We know that. My sister told us that she met them. That’s where he is. Finally--with that other little girl that he lost so long ago. We will never be the same without him, but he just told us not to open the portal. He doesn’t want to come back.”
The reality of what her aunt was saying was brutal, but Jo knew she was right. In her mind, Jo could see her dad’s smiling face as he stood in the green meadows her mother had described from her time in the beyond. Jo imagined a woman with long red hair running over to him, a baby girl in her arms. The three of them would embrace and cry happy tears.
After three hundred years, he was finally with his other family again.
He was with his other daughter again.
Who were they to try to bring him back?