Damien sat slumped against the rusted warehouse wall, his shattered leg folded grotesquely beneath him. A dark, wet pool of his own blood crept silently across the cracked concrete, claiming more ground with every beat of his failing heart. He just stared at the empty space in the alley where Stan Harrison had been standing a second ago, easily slipping back to a warm, brightly lit life that Damien would never touch.
He didn't blink.
The raw, buzzing sensitivity he had nurtured like a newborn child over the past couple of hours reached inward, one last time, toward the space beneath his navel.
It was empty..
As if hoping this was a dream he reached once again.
But he still got that feeling of emptiness..
He reached again, and again, and again, with the frantic, mechanical terror of a man whose brain flatly refused to accept his body's resignation letter. But each time, the spiritual pathways he had painstakingly carved out in the dark came back bone-dry.
