The Guardian Mist by Susan Stoker

both hands over it and pressed down, hard. “Don’t die, Roman! Oh my God, please. Don’t leave me alone. I just found you. You are him. I don’t know how it happened but somehow it did. Please…”
    Roman groaned as her hands pressed into the gunshot wound and he grimaced. But his eyes stayed on hers as he spoke, his voice tortured and pained. “When I was sixteen, I wrote a poem. It’s awful, but I was compelled to write it. Now I know why.”
    The tears fell unchecked down Rin’s cheeks as she listened to the only man she’d ever love whisper the most amazing words she’d ever hear. She didn’t pay attention to the sirens in the background, nor the people who were coming out of the shadows of the night to help deal with the thug on the ground next to them. She only saw Roman. Only heard his words.
    He coughed once, more blood coming up from his lungs, then reached up and grabbed hold of one of her hands. He tugged at it, and Rin, not wanting to hurt him further, allowed him to remove it from his chest. She kept the other hand where it was, trying to keep any more of his blood from spilling out onto the unforgiving pavement. Roman placed the ring into her palm and closed her fingers around it as he recited the long ago words he’d penned in a low, wavering voice filled with pain.
    “I don’t know you, but I see your face in the clouds.
    I’ve never met you, but your smile fills my soul.
    Some hear words, I only hear you calling to me.
    Time might separate us, but it can’t deny the bond we share.
    With dreams only of you, I close my eyes.”
    Roman coughed again, more blood oozing out of his mouth, but still his eyes never left hers, and the peppermint-scented wood smoke continued to swirl around them. His voice was barely a whisper now, but it was as if he was screaming the words at her. “I love you, Varinia Velt. Twenty-four, twenty-five, or seventy-two years old. I love you.”
    Rin opened her mouth to tell him she loved him too, but his eyes closed and she felt his entire body go lax under her.
    “Nooooo!” she moaned, clutching her fist with the ring inside to her heart, even as she put more of her weight on her other hand on his chest.
    “I’ve got him now, ma’am, please move back,” a stern voice commanded from her left.
    Rin looked up, hardly able to see through the tears in her eyes, and saw a man in a blue uniform shirt kneeling next to them. She quickly glanced around. The police were handcuffing the man who’d held them up and the medics were checking him over.
    There were two other EMTs standing behind her and Roman, waiting for her to move so they could help him.
    The EMT next to her gently pushed her hand away from Roman’s chest and put his own over the hole as soon as hers cleared it. He started barking orders to the men behind her, but Rin didn’t hear any of it. She stood and backed away, clutching the ring to her chest with both hands now, not taking her eyes from Roman’s. The eerie mist continued to swirl around him, but the EMTs didn’t even seem to notice.
    The poem he’d recited to her might as well have come from the depths of her own soul.
    I don’t know you, but I see your face in the clouds.
    I’ve never met you, but your smile fills my soul.
    Some hear words, I only hear you calling to me.
    Time might separate us, but it can’t deny the bond we share.
    With dreams only of you, I close my eyes.
    It was exactly what had been happening in her dreams forever. She couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not after just finding him.
    Rin watched as the EMTs loaded Roman onto a stretcher and carried him to the back of an ambulance, the misty fog rolling right along with them. The doors shut behind them and the vehicle pulled away from the scene, taking the only man she’d ever love with it.
    “Ma’am? I’m Sergeant Wright. I understand you were the other victim here? Is any of that blood yours?”
    Rin looked down at herself. Her hands were covered in Roman’s blood and it