“I never get to see him anymore,” she mock-complained, her footsteps disappearing down the stairs. “I’m getting the car,” she announced, and the door squeaked.
I donned my sweater and grabbed my jacket on the way out, ready for another mother-daughter-breakfast with raspberry Danish—not ready for the questions about Leon that would surely come.
Mom was waiting in the car, singing along with the happy tune on the radio.
“Ready?” she interrupted her performance to measure my tight face with her observant eyes.
I nodded at her and pulled my scarf up more tightly around my neck as if it could protect me from Mom’s nosiness or Cas’s potential attack.
Mom drove slowly, the first signs of frost on the street making people edgy.
“Your grandmother would have loved this weather,” Mom said absently as she pulled the car into Santoni’s parking lot. “You know, sitting at the hearth fire of her old house, doing sudokus and puzzles and telling scary stories over a cup of herbal tea.”
There was obvious nostalgia in her voice as she remembered the grandmother I had only seen during the summers of my childhood.
“What stories did she tell?” I remembered little from those years.
Mom was quiet for a moment as she waited for another car to free a parking spot. “About the lure of hell,” she said with a sideways glance, “and its messengers.” She giggled like a child. “Stories her grandmother had told her when she was little.”
My heart stopped for a moment there; at least, that was what it felt like.
“Messengers of hell?” I asked innocently, forcing a grin to cover my pending panic. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” Mom shook her head from side to side, frustrated with the narrow parking spot, luckily, paying little attention to my curiosity. “Like angels of death and stuff.”
Alarm bells were ringing in my head. Gran had known. She had told Mom but not me. Why hadn’t she told me? She could have prepared me for this—I didn’t have words for the mess she’d left me with. “Angels of death,” I prompted and Mom shrugged.
“What do they do?” I asked, trying to control the urge to plead with her to tell me everything, every tiny little detail she could remember.
“I don’t know, Laney. Raise hell on earth,” she suggested with a laugh.
She was obviously not taking this seriously. If only she knew…
“Did they have names?” I asked, pretending to be curious for research purposes. “Like the archangels? Michael and Gabriel and—”
“Now that you mention it, she did say there was one named Lucas.” She leaned forward, checking whether she was close enough to the curb before she cut the engine and turned to face me, her face that of a mother with not enough caffeine in her blood. “Let’s get something to eat first, all right? I’ll try to remember more, once I’ve got my sugar rush.”
I forced an unconvincing smile and squeezed out of the car, careful not to hit the vehicle next to us with the door.
Angels of death. Lucas. Cas’s face flickered before my eyes, and I could see it, that he was someone capable of doing just that—raise hell on earth. He sure had made my life hell.
I followed Mom into the store, ready to put on a cheerful face, and greeted the smell of freshly baked pastries as a welcome distraction from the questions that were circling in my mind.
Gran had known. How much exactly had she known? Why had she never told me if she knew the gift skipped one generation? Why Mom and not me?
We ordered our usual, sipping our coffee while we were waiting for the bag with our Danishes when a familiar voice called my name in a very unfamiliar tone.
I jerked around, at first not believing that Lucas Ferham could even sound like that—friendly, harmless, kind, excited, as if he was happy to see me.
“Hi, Mrs. Dawson,” he said to my mother and held out his hand, making me want to smack it aside with all the mortified anger that wallowed within me.
Mom took it and shook it, her face full of questions. “And you are—“
“Cas,” Cas flashed a grin that would have made any Hollywood actor jealous. “I go to school with Laney,” he explained, looking like a normal boy as he chattered along.
Mom raised an eyebrow at me as I didn’t change my expression but kept staring at him as if he were a giant whale, stranded in the small store.
“Laney likes to keep me a secret,” Cas told my mother with a wink. Had he just winked at my mother?
“A secret?” Mom turned to me as if she found it mortally offensive that I had not told her about the handsome young man who had joined Glyndon High.
“Not true,” I bit at Cas. “Believe me, Mom, he is no one worth knowing.”
Mom squinted her eyes as if asking if I was serious, but I just grabbed Cas by his muscled arm and pulled him aside, telling Mom over my shoulder that he had a question about homework as we walked away.
I tugged him along, my fingers clawing into his biceps through his light leather jacket. Cas didn’t complain. He didn’t fight me off or tear away from me but let me lead him out of the store, around the building, and out of sight of the street.
There, I dropped his arm as if it were toxic and turned to face him, hands balled into fists and ready to give him a black eye if he did as much as set a toe in the wrong direction.
“What do you want?” I asked, not in the mood to dance around the topic.
Cas gave me a bored look. “I think I made that pretty clear the other day.” He shoved one hand into the pocket of his jeans and leaned against the wall, folding his arms over his chest.
“Unfortunately, my soul is not for the taking, Shadowbringer,” I hissed at him. “You missed your chance, and now … live with it.”
I wondered if he actually was alive, since he was immortal, or if he was undead. Did he have a heartbeat? Could he bleed and hurt and die if someone injured him? Or was he the type of immortal that included indestructibility?
“What if I don’t want to live without it, Laney?” His words made me cough in surprise.
“You think this is about what you want?” I asked, really pissed off at him now. “You think you can just roam the realms of the living and decide whose soul you’d like to take?”
Cas studied me with a look that didn’t match the Shadowbringer I’d met. There was something like … was that hurt in his eyes?
“You know I don’t do that, Laney,” he said, voice low, night weaving through his words even though the sun was peeking through the clouds above. He recovered in an instant, smoothing over his face, and winked at me. “You know I could try,” he offered. “I could just roam the realms of the living and take whatever soul I want.” He lifted one hand to his chin and rubbed his thumb and index finger along his jaw. “It’s not so bad an idea, actually.”
I considered if it would hurt him or me more if I threw my coffee at him.
“You can’t break the truce,” I reminded him.
“Can’t?” he asked, challenge apparent in his eyes. “Or won’t?”
“Both,” I hoped.
He pushed away from the wall, taking a step toward me, all humor gone from his features.
“You got away, Laney.” He spoke my name as if it was a curse, an evil spell. “I have been trying to get a trophy-soul for I don’t know how many decades,” he said, the wind, the birds, the sound of cars rushing by in the distance all drowned out by the shadows that coiled around him like tendrils of smoke.
“And why?” I wanted to know, exasperation flooding me as he stepped even closer, the shadows in his eyes darkening them to a solid black. “What would my soul have changed?” I held my ground—barely, but I held it.
“Because I am little more than a lesser demon without it,” he hissed, those eyes turning deadly as he took another step and then another. “Little more than hell’s errand boy.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said and hoped he would leave it at that.
&
nbsp; Of course, he didn’t. Cas huffed into the icy space between us, a laugh of unbroken darkness escaping him as he looked up at the sky as if pondering something, the pale sun making the bluish tint in his hair sparkle. Then, his gaze snapped back to mine, making a shiver run through my body, and he gripped my chin with his hand, forcing me to look up at him as he took a deep breath and brought his face directly above mine.
“I was going to trap you,” he said, his tone dead. “I was going to let you fall for my allure, let you like me, desire me.” His words hit me as if he’d slap me in the face. “And then, I was going to harvest your soul and take it back to hell.”
The cold, calculated fury in his eyes was even worse than the steel of his grasp. I didn’t dare move for fear he would crush me if I as much as flinched.
“Do you remember what your lovely grandmother said?” His breath was warming my face as he hissed the words at me. “Do you remember?”
I nodded once—as much as I could with his fingers locking me in place.
“What did she say, Laney?” he demanded. “What did she warn you about?”
I heard her words in my mind as if it had been yesterday.
“Speak them for me, will you?” a sugared deadliness rang from his tone that made me want to bolt rather than even squeak.
“Say it, Laney.” His fingers tightened.
“Be careful who you give your heart to,” I repeated Gran’s words. The words that had been meant for me and me only.
“Exactly.” Cas huffed a mocking chuckle. “Be careful, Laney.”
As he spoke, it hit me… “She was speaking about you,” I concluded.
Cas gave me a bitter smile. “Was she, now?” He let go of my face, leaving two painful points behind where I hoped it wouldn’t show bruises. But his hands didn’t remain gone for long. His fingers traced my cheekbone, the anger, the threat, the … demon … in his eyes suddenly gone.
I froze. I was safe, I told myself. I had manifested, and he could no longer take my soul as a trophy … but he could kill me; break the truce and kill me.
“Even if falling in love with me would have been your worst mistake,” he murmured as if he was sharing a secret with a lover, “I wasn’t the only one she warned you about.” For a moment, he was so still he could have turned into stone. Then he placed his palm on my cheek, making warmth spread where he touched me. “I won’t kill you, Laney,” he finally said, his eyes losing the darkness, the edge. “At least, not for a while.” With those words, he let go of me and walked away, but not without a glance over his shoulder and a last word that was meant to destroy me. “I don’t need to kill you, Laney. You might have already chosen your worst punishment.”
Chapter Forty
I didn’t dare move until he was out of sight and the echo of his voice had ebbed from my mind, leaving the pale November morning colder than I had ever experienced.
Worst punishment. The words returned as I made it around the corner, back to the store, stumbling over the curb and dropping my coffee on the concrete as I caught myself with my hands.
I cursed under my breath and picked up the cup to throw it into the trash when Mom rushed to my side, bag of pastries in one hand, coffee in the other.
“Did you get hurt?” she asked and set down her coffee on the roof of a car to help me.
My pride or my body? I wanted to say and didn’t mean, almost hitting the sidewalk with my nose.
“I’m fine,” I said instead and dropped the cup into the trashcan before I rubbed my chin where Cas had squeezed it like a lemon.
Mom opened the car, and we made our way home at the same speed we’d arrived.
“Cas seems like a nice boy,” she said with an expression that was impossible to read. “Is he new in school?”
I frowned. “He is … new, I mean.” I grabbed the paper bag and opened it, filled with the anticipation of the scent of warm raspberry, and wasn’t disappointed.
“Nice, too?” Mom asked, that expression on her face turning sheepish.
I rolled my eyes. “I honestly don’t want to talk about Cas, Mom.” I closed the bag as we stopped in front of our house. “Not in this life.”
Mom didn’t ask any further questions. She simply pulled out a coffee mug and poured half of her latte into it before she set it down on the table for me while I prepared two plates and extracted the Danishes. She didn’t ask about Leon either, reading from the look on my face that I had other things on my mind.
“So … Gran’s stories,” I reminded her as soon as she had taken her first bite. “She never told me those.” I lifted the mug and swirled the coffee around in it, trying not to look too excited about learning more. “At least, not that I can remember. What’s up with those angels of death?”
The radio was babbling in the background, making the silence that followed less awkward.
Mom sighed, suddenly looking old despite her youthful complexion. “I can’t remember much, but I did take some notes when I was younger. Your grandmother kept asking me to pass on these stories to my children if I ever had any.”
I watched her take another bite and chew. Gran had never told me, but she had asked Mom to tell me…
“Thanks, Mom.” I left it at that and changed the topic, chatting about school, her work at the office, what we would like to do for Thanksgiving this year. All harmless and easy and nothing that could accidentally lead me to let slip that I had taken on the profession of carrying souls to the gates of heaven.
I sipped my coffee with the prospect of telling Leon about my encounter with Cas, but Cas’s words were slowly digging into my mind, undermining my confidence that I was on the right path.
I wasn’t the only one she warned you about. I don’t need to kill you, Laney. You might have already chosen your worst punishment.
What if Gran had meant both of them? She had warned me about Leon the first time she had seen him. But what else had she known? Leon and I were on the same side. We were both Lightbringers, the messengers of the good, while Cas … well, Cas was, as he had mentioned himself, little more than a lesser demon.
Leon had protected me, long before I had known what I was. He had been there for me all along.
Maybe Gran just hadn’t understood what she had been seeing. Maybe she had mistaken Leon for one of the Shadowbringers.
Whatever theories I came up with, none of them made sense. None, but that Cas wanted to scare me. So that was what I chose to believe—at least, for now.
The man looked hardly older than my mother. So young. His hair still bright golden even when his skin had turned a pale shade of gray as death slowly settled within him.
Any moment now. I had watched it so many times with Leon. Had done it too many times under his supervision. Taken souls and delivered them to the doorstep of a bright afterlife, to where Gran had gone, delivered by Leon that first day I had realized he was something more than he let on.
Tonight, I had come by myself. No more Lightbringer babysitters. I had to be able to do this by myself. Even if Leon had urged me to let him come along, I knew there had to come a time when I managed the whole transition all by myself. So I hadn’t woken him when I had felt the tug in my chest, and he had kept breathing evenly beside me. I had simply pulled on my sweater over my pajamas and taken off.
As I gazed at the man before me, I wondered if Leon would show at all. Maybe he hadn’t been assigned to this soul alongside me the way he had been with all the others. Maybe the angel whose essence was directing him in these regards knew that I no longer needed his help.
I took a step closer to the bed, glancing around the tidy bedroom; the neat arrangement of papers and pens on the desk in the corner, three pictures of the man—Max, I read on one of the frames with a younger version of his face on display—and a woman with wild, blonde curls.
Max had stopped breathing a minute ago, and his heart stopped beating around the same time.
A natural death. In his sleep. I didn’t know the specific reason why he woul
dn’t wake up tomorrow morning, walk down the stairs, and head out the door, dressed in those comfortable-looking jeans and neat jacket he had laid out on the armchair by the window as if he had something to look forward to.
With a glance at Max’s face, I knew that it was time. His soul would leave his body within heartbeats—mine, not his—and I lowered my face over his, examining the peaceful features of the man who hadn’t felt pain or terror in his final moments. That was the way I wanted to go one day. Painless and easy. Maybe even picked up by Leon to escort my soul to see my Grandmother again—if heaven was where I was headed. With the job I was now doing, I couldn’t be sure.
Cas hadn’t shown up, so I assumed I would be spared of seeing his beautiful face and the wicked nature that lay behind in stark contrast. A lesser demon.
Max seemed to be one of the souls that were destined for heaven without bargaining.
The silver glimmer of Max’s soul appeared first, his shape peeling from his body in a translucent form before it collected into a small, star-like ball of light, a sight that still struck me with awe, every single time. I took a deep breath, about to let him settle within my chest, a shiver running down my spine as I thought of what I was about to do. The soul was hovering an inch from my parted lips when a voice, dark and gentle as night, asked from the corner of the room, “And you are sure your destination is where he belongs?”
I started, turning on the spot to face the boy I knew came with that voice.
He leaned against the wall by the window, one foot braced against the wooden paneling, features half-hidden in the shadows of the clouded night.
“Go away,” I told him and turned back to Max—his empty shell. His soul was still within reach. All I needed to do was take another deep breath, and he would be safe from Cas.
The angel of death, however, pushed away from the wall, shoved his hands into his pockets, and sauntered toward the closet, one dark eyebrow rising as he walked past me, glancing at the silver soul at my lips. His gait was laced with power and elegance as if he didn’t have a care in the world—other than to prove me wrong. I was determined not to let him.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 22