That was something to look forward to, I supposed.
For some reason, my enthusiasm remained minimal.
Leon gave me an exasperated look that seemed to say, “Now? Really?!”
I all but laughed at his expression, because for once, it mirrored exactly how I felt.
I didn’t want this to end. Didn’t want to lose the warmth of Leon’s hands on my waist, his fingers clinging to my clothes, his body moving against mine in rhythmical waves, swaying me along with him—
But the pain in my chest was hard to ignore. The tug was strong enough to know it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes before the soul was ready, and we had to follow it.
So I did the only sensible thing and detached myself from Leon’s arms, growling at myself, God, the universe, over this moment being ruined, and let Leon know that I needed a bathroom before we left. Not that I really needed one. I just needed a moment to sort my thoughts.
He promised to be waiting at the bottom of the stairs for my return and brushed a kiss on my cheek before he gave me a wide smile. “After tonight, you’ll be free,” he reminded both of us with sparkling eyes.
I didn’t respond for lack of words and headed up the wide staircase, diving around a snogging couple, and searched the upstairs area for the right door. Was I relieved that I would be free? That I would no longer need to fear the Shadowbringer? Was I glad to finally be the one to bring the soul to heaven? If it was the Lightbringer side that would be able to claim the soul—
Would Cas disappear from school? Would he disappear from the corridors and the corners and the wrong moments? Would that make me happy?
It would certainly make me safe. So I should be grateful for the opportunity, that finally Leon felt I was ready … that I felt I was ready to face my true nature.
The first two doors I tried were locked. The third one led into what seemed to be a small office with bookshelves lining each wall beside a heavy wooden desk. Behind it, the outline of a man moved in a carved chair, shuffling papers in the half-light.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, feeling caught, “I was looking for the bathroom.”
I was going to shut the door when the person in the chair stopped me by merely speaking my name.
“Miss Laney,” he said, his voice darker than the night, loaded with specks of silver and woven with liquid diamond. It almost hurt to hear him say it.
As I stilled on the threshold, Cas got to his feet, and I noticed the fairy wings on his silhouette.
“Why don’t you come join me?” He pushed his hands into his pockets and turned his back to me to lean against the desk. “The stars seem to be alive tonight.”
I couldn’t move for what felt like an infinite number of heartbeats, but then … then my hand pulled on the door handle, shutting out the noise in the hallway, separating the colorful world of the living from this room where the creature holding my fate in his hands seemed to be commanding the shadows.
I took a step, then another, while Cas remained still like a statue. Had I not seen him there before me, his fairy wings the only thing holding some color, the room could have been empty. That’s how silent he was, how frozen in time.
With horror, I realized that I shouldn’t be following that voice that had called to me. That I shouldn’t be here at all where I was unprotected, separated from Leon, where Leon would probably not even hear me if I screamed his name. What was I doing?
“I have been staring at those same stars for so many decades that I no longer know if I love them or hate them,” he mused into the swirls of darkness that seemed to billow around him.
Shadowbringer, I reminded myself. Messenger of hell. And yet, I took another step … until I stood on the other side of the desk, within arms’ reach should he decide to turn and grab me.
“They have become the only fixed element in my existence. Unchangeable stars. The architecture, the people, fashion … even languages change … but the stars…” He sighed and then fell silent again.
I stood there like an idiot, unsure why I was even there, watching him as he surveilled the stars and wondering if his silence would break again.
“I have waited”—he turned his head to the side so I could study his profile against the moonlight—“I don’t know how many years for something to happen … something to change … and—” He paused, closing his eyes, his lashes a thick, black half-moon on his cheek, his straight nose a sharp line against the curve of the hair that fell into his face. “And it never does … it never did,” he corrected, his eyes snapping open as he turned all of a sudden, facing me, hands braced on the desk. “Then you came along.”
My heart kicked into a gallop as his eyes found mine, full of cruel delight, full of eagerness. Shadows flexed from him like wings of their own, wrapping him up until all I could see was his face and his neck, pale against the darkness that seemed to originate within him.
“Now you are here, and I can finally bring home the soul of a Lightbringer.”
I wanted to scream—tried—but no sound came out, not even a croak. It was as if I had frozen into place, hypnotized by the voice, by the shadows of the creature before me.
He took a step toward me around the desk, letting one finger slide over the edge of the wood.
“I thought I would be able to do this smarter … that I would have more time to get you to trust me.” His grin was nothing short of wicked. “That you would eventually realize that you are drawn to me.” He paused right before me, his shadows furling about both of us, drowning out everything but him. His voice. His eyes, two orbs that seemed to be made of solid smoke. “You are drawn to me, Laney, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.
While he kept my gaze locked to his, in my mind, I was struggling to break free, to find power over my legs again so I could run. Or over my own voice, so I could cry for help.
But every time I thought his spell loosened a bit, it latched onto me more tightly.
“I was going to wait until you were ready,” he told me, his face now so close that his features swam before me. “Until you came to me. But that would require more time. And we don’t have more time. I don’t have more time.” His tome turned pensive, and I felt my breath rush into my lungs more freely. “Even if technically I have all the time in the world … isn’t that sad?” His hand shot out of the shadows and curled around my neck, too fast for me to see. But when his fingers touched me, they were gentle, thumb brushing down my throat in a caress. With light pressure, he pulled my face up to his and hovered there for a moment. “Goodbye, Miss Laney. You were such a delight. It’s a shame to see you disappear, but”—he brought his lips so close to mine that I could feel his breath—“I need your soul more than I need your company.”
With those words, he closed the gap between us, and a searing pain rushed from where his mouth enclosed mine and reached down into the depth of my chest.
The scream that had been stuck inside my lungs finally broke free, and as I released it into Cas’s mouth, he sprung back in shock, shadows gone and eyes wide as he beheld me, panting by the desk, my fists raised before my chest. “I thought I told you to stay away from me,” I hissed and let the knuckles of my right hand connect with his jaw. I didn’t know if it would do anything or if he was invincible, too, but, God, I had to try.
“Leon!” I screamed while I was shaking out my hand, almost certain that if I looked more closely, I would find blood on my fingers. But I didn’t dare turn away from the Shadowbringer who was staring at me as if one of his beloved stars had just dropped onto his head.
“You are not getting my soul,” I hissed at him, feeling that tug in my chest more and more strongly. “There is somewhere I have to be, so do us both a favor and don’t follow. I don’t know what Leon will do if I tell him what you just tried to do.”
The truth was I didn’t know what he had exactly been trying to do. Had he tried to kiss me? Or had that been part of his little plan—to kiss my soul out of me? It had most certainly felt as if th
e touch of his lips had burned something within my chest.
Or was I already … soulless?
When Leon burst through the door a second later, my thoughts got drowned out by his shout of fury as he launched himself at the Shadowbringer. The noise of struggling bodies smashing into something followed by the sound of cracking wood filled the room, chasing all the stillness of the Shadowbringer’s musing away.
I couldn’t tell if they were still fighting, for the tug in my chest had become so overwhelming that I could no longer ignore it, and I hissed Leon’s name into the half-light.
He was instantly at my side, his teeth bared as if he wasn’t more of an animal, running on instincts.
“It’s time,” I told him, and he nodded.
“This isn’t over,” he told Cas as he straightened out his clothes—and his wings—and together, we shifted into our ethereal forms and took off to save the calling soul.
Chapter Thirty-One
I soared through time and space, drawn by the tug in my chest, by the calling of the soul. Leon was right behind me, his voice carrying to me as he was still cursing about the Shadowbringer.
As I set down my feet at our final destination, having zoomed through clouds, trees, and walls alike, my body—even the ethereal one—was still shaking.
“Thanks,” I murmured at Leon as he landed beside me. “I don’t know if I would have made it out without you.”
Leon scrutinized my face for a brief moment but said nothing. His attention followed the direction of the soul. There was only a door separating us from our target here, in what seemed to be a hospital.
Leon eyed the door then gazed back at me, conflict running through his features.
“What did he do to you?” he asked.
I took a steadying breath before I allowed myself to dive back into the moment when Cas had touched his lips to mine … the sensation … the pain that had surged through me. “I don’t know exactly why he did what he did … but … he kissed me … I think.”
Leon’s eyes widened, the coffee brown of his irises appearing to gleam with ire. “He did what?”
By the look on his face, repeating what I had said would only make things worse, so I added, keeping my voice even, “It hurt—a lot. Like someone was ripping something from my chest.” I paused at the memory and the echo of pain that came with it. “And then, I hit him in the face.”
For a moment, I thought Leon was going to laugh, but his face smoothed over, ire and amusement both disappearing behind a wall of concern.
“You still look like you,” he said, scanning my face. “At least, from what I can tell with all that makeup on.”
“I still feel like me,” I responded to the unspoken question; the question that was obvious in his eyes—if Cas had managed to take my soul. “Is that how they do it? They kiss the Lightbringer to suck out their soul?”
Leon grimaced at my words and pointed at the door that was separating us from our job—me, from my job, to be precise. This time, Leon would be the one to stand by.
“Let’s talk about it when we’re done here.” He started walking. “Somehow, I have the feeling the Shadowbringer won’t disturb us this time.”
Whatever he meant with his statement, I didn’t ask. Instead, I followed him through the door, gliding through the layers of metal, wood, and paint as if I were a ghost—not a ghost. A Lightbringer, filled with angel essence. I blinked my eyes to focus as I hatched from the barrier before I stopped beside Leon and took in the scene.
The hospital room was smaller than expected. A single bed—in it, a woman in a white-and-green nightgown, tucked under the blankets—against a pale yellow wall, the curtains at the windows were drawn to shut out the lights from the parking lot before the window. As I took in my surroundings, my first thought was of the nursing home and … Gran.
Since my grandmother’s death, those late hours of my days had become the time when Leon allowed me to ask questions about what he was. What I was becoming. Except that there were things he had no answers to, like how to get to heaven, or what the Shadowbringer would do with my soul once he had torn it from me. I ground my teeth and focused on the matters at hand.
I could do this. I could.
There were other people in the room as we walked in. A lady in a red, long-sleeved dress was adjusting her hat as she stood up from a chair she had pulled up to the bed.
“See you tomorrow, Marge,” the lady said then turned and left after they exchanged a smile, that of the woman in the bed a lot weaker.
Of course, neither of them could see us. We had traveled in our Lightbringer essence, our corporeal bodies temporarily dissolved into energy—another thing Leon had described to me during our afternoons and evenings together.
He looked the same to me as always. Only the slight radiating of light fanning out around him allowed me to tell that he still was using his essence. As for myself … I saw the light on me too when I looked down at my body; not as strong though. I was only a pale shade of bright shadows compared to what Leon seemed to be.
“It should be soon,” he whispered, one hand on my shoulder, a comforting weight that held me in place even in this form where my body seemed to behave like a flame in the wind … especially under his touch.
“What is she dying of?” I asked, wondering if knowing would make it any less difficult to watch her end. Even if I had accompanied Leon several times by now as he had done his duty, my stomach still turned at the thought of what he was—what we both would be after tonight.
I could do this.
“Pancreatic cancer,” he responded, and when he noticed my surprise that he knew, he nodded at the metal board at the foot end of the bed where papers with indecipherable scribbles were attached. “At least that’s what the chart says.”
There was an IV hanging by the head end, releasing slow drops that dripped into the woman’s veins. I noticed the tube disappear under the blankets where she had now bundled up her arms.
“Painkillers,” Leon explained. “The type you only get in palliative care.”
My stomach tightened. The woman knew she was dying. She had been spending—a glance at the chart told me—six weeks here in the hospital, waiting for either a miracle or a peaceful death.
I studied her lined face from where I was standing by the foot end, hands resting on the metal of the bed. Her eyes were searching the ceiling for something—an answer to unspoken questions maybe, or the gentle wing of an angel of death. I could see the pain in the gaunt structure of her face, in her glazed eyes. Her breathing was shallow as if she was powering herself through her own fear, as if she was besieging heaven to open for her—
If only she knew I was here for her; that there was a good chance heaven was where she would be going tonight … if the Shadowbringer didn’t show up. And then, if she could see me now, in my zombie costume, heaven would probably not be the conclusion she would come to. For some reason, the image of Cas with his fairy wings sprang to my mind, and I swallowed hard.
A glance at Leon told me he wasn’t watching the woman as I did, but his focus was on me; on how I did with my assignment.
It was the first time I would breathe in someone’s soul and help them get to their destination. Leon would be there to assist me if things went wrong. But he had explained to me on our flight from the party that this was my soul to take, so he wouldn’t interfere unless I absolutely needed him.
I cleared my throat, hoping the phantom dryness in my mouth would disappear. This woman before me was about to die within the next few minutes, the tug in my chest told me as much. There was nothing anyone could do about it.
But I could do something for her the second she was done dying. I was her ticket into a peaceful afterlife. Her suffering would end today, and the brightness of eternity was waiting.
The rasping sound of her slowing breathing filled the room, calling for my attention.
It had begun.
The woman was hardly breathing, her chest heaving slowly a
s her body struggled to keep going. But her lungs weren’t the only organ giving out. I could tell, even if I wasn’t a doctor, that her body was shutting down. Her body, but not her soul. Her soul would be ready soon.
My sweaty fingers slipped on the metal as I watched the woman’s struggle, reminding myself over and over again that the painkillers were doing their part in making this as easy for the woman as possible.
Even though there was no monitor beeping, the door bounced open, and a nurse entered through the pine green door, a knowing look on her face. She headed right for the bed, taking the woman’s hand in hers and squeezing it gently.
“I’m here,” she said, a smile on her lips. “You are not alone.”
The woman looked like she wanted to say something, but her body was no longer cooperating. Her eyes had fixed on the nurse in an expression of plea and gratitude, the only response now possible with her failing strength.
For a moment, moisture crept into my eyes as I watched the decline of the body, her ribs cramping as her chest heaved one shallow breath after the other—
Then fear flooded all of me.
I couldn’t do this. Even if I had done it before, I was no longer sure if I could stand and watch a stranger die. I couldn’t … couldn’t bring myself to watch her death struggle. Couldn’t bear the thought of another person dying. A good person, it seemed, or Cas would have shown up, a smirk on his annoyingly handsome face, and offered a reduced sentence of only a couple decades in purgatory for the woman. I could almost see it before me as if he were there. As if he was gloating at my struggle.
My hands let go of the metal and flung to my throat as my breathing fell into rhythm with the woman’s. I didn’t even know her name, and it didn’t matter—it wouldn’t in a moment when her soul would leave her shell. So I didn’t glance down at the patient chart to learn it. I needed to get out.
I was half-turning to the door, considering bolting to avoid this moment where it would be my responsibility and mine alone to take that soul where it belonged—anything to not have to see her die, to not be a witness to her suffering; her last and final suffering. My heart beat frantically in my chest, trying to escape while I was still able to hold myself in place.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 17