No Dogs Allowed

Hellish Blood Makes Scarlet Fever

(t for reading :D the little star says hello)

Sometimes, few times, I see exactly how I die.

When I walk to a class I'm falsely enrolled in, I see the heavy front doors close in someone's wake and imagine my body catching in it, crushing the bones. When I see Kane or Diego cooking something on high heat, I see my face against the stovetop, the boiling oil spilling in my eyes. When I walk the Splinter and look up to see the precarious wires, the perched apartments, the cramped condos, piled so high in the sky you can't see the end, I see one losing its footing and coming down straight for me without mercy. When I meet Mercy, and she hands me a gun, I see her forgetting the safety and my finger brushing the trigger and a bullet catching my iris. When I step on the track, helmet in hand with the bike waiting for me, I see a racer smashing their front wheel into my exposed back, my skeleton caving in and slicing into my organs, until my whole body collapses in on its sinews on the cold, hard concrete. When I shake another lycan's hand, I see their teeth sprouting and sinking into my throat to tear out the tendons. When I shake a bloodsucker's hand, I see their fangs opening to devour my heart. When I shake a fae's hand, I see their words binding me like an anaconda, until I suffocate under the weight of secrets and sly truths.

When I stand in front of a mirror, and see my mother's face staring back, I see my brother facing me instead, a knife through my gut, and a smile on his lips.

But all deaths I have ever known have been immediate, an abrupt thing, a done thing. Corpses. Ghosts. Rumors. Victims. All deaths I have seen in spans of minutes, maybe hours. All deaths I knew the beginning and end of. Death had always been a bullet train and a credit card and a butcher knife.

But there's another type of death you've got to live through to know. The slow kind. The molasses venom, the milligram poison. The gradual crumble, the eventual collapse, the slow consumption. Years. Decades. Millenia. I knew Death now like a ferry ride and a savings bond and a sewing needle.

That was the scariest one. That was the true killer.

Because it was the death that felt the most like a life.

And you would never know the difference until you dared to take a second look.

_________________________

When I woke, it was to heat.

My room was a blurry, spotted thing, fuzzy as the sensation of my skin over my muscles. My body buzzed for a bit under the onslaught of light from the windows before the buzz dissipated into a shivering ache. I opened my mouth, but my throat had been scorched to Saharan dryness. My lips were rough, and split when I dared to try and speak. I groaned. Fever flushed out the surroundings, leaving fiery fog and stinging embers in its wake.

"Echo?"

I blinked, shuddered, coughed. The cough took me out like a blow to the ribs, a sucker punch in my gut. I glanced down, looked out at my hands. Bandages wrapped around my reddened fingers and my bare torso. Whatever couldn't be covered was left for the air to feed off.

"Echo, don't move, it's all right." Hands were gentle on my shoulders, pushing me down into something soft. Brown curls and hazel eyes peered down at me before they arranged themselves into Ramos. Her smile was grim. "I know it hurts. I've got some medicine, stay still. We're going to transfer you to a hospital after this."

I stuttered, my heart stopping. I croaked out, "No. No. No, you can't." I sucked in a painful breath. "Please. No. Don't take me."

Ramos stared at me. "Echo, you have to—"