Had he been there the whole time? I had been so busy staring at Jo and the medical staff that I couldn’t tell.
“Cas.” His name slipped from my lips as I was still trying to comprehend that there was a messenger of hell leaning on the edge of my dead friend’s bed. A Shadowbringer, ready to bargain for her soul.
Cas’s head snapped up, a glacial expression replacing the smile on his face as he took in my appearance. All voices and noises faded from the room as my attention focused solely on him.
“What are you doing here?” I spat at him, and his eyes widened at either my tone or the cast he found on my leg sticking out from under the hospital nightgown. Or the brace around my neck, or the bruises I surely had on my face. I couldn’t tell; he was looking everywhere at once, eyes swiping up and down my body, and the cold inside them faltered just a little.
“Got a job to do,” he shrugged himself upright, getting out of the way as one of the nurses pulled a cloth over Jo’s head, hiding her mangled face from the world.
My heart broke all over again. He wouldn’t get Jo. I wouldn’t allow it.
My eyes were squinted as I bore into Cas’s, a new fire flaring within me.
It couldn’t be long before her soul split from her body and I could carry her to where she belonged.
Cas studied me, probably reading from my face that I was mentally preparing to skip all the bargaining this time and simply inhale the soul of my friend so I could take her to safety.
“You can go now,” I dismissed him, my lips pressing into a thin line the moment I had finished speaking.
Where was she? Why wasn’t she rising from her body?
“You’re not getting her,” I told him acidly, hopping another step closer now that the last nurse was leaving, but not before she marked a cross over Jo’s chest and said, “May God have mercy on your soul and take you into his realm.”
It was the same nurse who had handed me the water cup. Only now, her kind features were torn in an expression of grief.
I shuddered at her words, for it didn’t matter if God had mercy on her; Jo was going to heaven. I was going to take her, and no Shadowbringer could stop me.
Cas watched the nurse walk out and close the door behind her. “It’s too late for that,” he said, his eyes finally settling on mine, a thunderstorm brewing in the gray depths of them.
There was absolute silence in the room now that the monitor was switched off, that there was no IV dripping, no slouching footsteps defeatedly dragging from the room. Only Cas and me and the silence that came with expectantly waiting for a soul.
Only, Cas wasn’t waiting for Jo’s soul, I realized, as I noticed the flicker of silver behind his irises.
“No,” I whispered, tone more deadly than any scream would have been.
Every muscle in Cas’s body seemed to tighten.
“You didn’t.” I flung my hands in the air, helpless. It couldn’t be true. He couldn’t simply have grabbed Jo’s soul without waiting for one of us. Jo wasn’t evil. She didn’t belong in hell. She didn’t—
“Neither your precious Lightbringer boyfriend nor you came to claim her,” he said with little compassion, or surprise, or anything humane at all.
I once more searched for the tug and the pain that came with it, but all I found was the hollow place that ached to accommodate Jo’s immortal soul.
“You’re lying,” I claimed and took another step so that I could lean my thigh against the bed, gaining better balance.
Cas’s eyes flickered, the silver so prominent now that I could swear it was calling out for me in there. The Shadowbringer, however, remained motionless like a statue, his gaze burning and aching all at once. Only when I leaned over the bed to stare into his eyes, to see Jo, did he unfreeze and brace his hands on the mattress the same way I had found him.
“Give her back.” My words were so cold I could feel my blood freeze. Or maybe it was the knowledge that Cas had stolen Jo’s soul.
I leaned even closer, head cocked as far as the brace on my neck would allow, until his breath warmed my face, tingling like a taunting breeze. I was so painfully aware of Jo’s broken body sprawled between us that all I could think of was to release my right hook on the Shadowbringer once more. But something in his eyes, something more than the burning, Jo’s desperate flicker behind his irises, caught my attention. It was the way his eyelids shuttered as if he was blinking away a tear. But there was nothing. No crystal clear droplet that would give away that he had—or had once had—a soul.
“I can’t.” The finality of his words clanged through me like distant thunder, making my bones and flesh go cold.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” There was aggression in my own voice, accusation, desperation, and he straightened as if he was just now realizing that his shoulders had hunched, his neck bent—
I stared into those gray eyes as they hovered above me now, pupils wide, absorbing the plea in my gaze.
“Cas—” What could I say to him? What could I do to make him release Jo? How could I plead with an immortal whose job it was to take souls to hell? How could I reason with someone so … wicked; so thoroughly evil that he would claim a good soul, given the chance, and damn it to an eternity in the underworld?
I didn’t allow myself to even glimpse at the empty shell of my friend, who was resting in the soft hospital bed; didn’t dare glimpse at the monitor where a couple of minutes ago, a flat line accompanied by a long, never interrupted beep, separating the screen of the machine into two halves, had informed the room that my friend’s mortal life was over. I didn’t want to look down at her cloth-covered, dead face—dead. Her body had stopped functioning. Her organs were now useless, heart had stopped pumping; her blood had stopped flowing in her veins, and her smart mind, her humor, her caring, loving self—
Cas blinked, his eyelids shielding that solid gray gaze of his for a moment that felt like an eternity before he sighed through his nose as if not allowing himself the full relief of a real sigh. When he reopened them, I saw it, flickering behind those wide, black pupils: the weak, silver pulsing of a soul. Jo’s soul.
“It’s too late, Laney.” He took a step back and walked around the bed then stopped, eying me for a long second with a torn gaze as he prepared for his departure—while I was bound in shock.
Jo was in there, trapped. I had come too late. He had beaten me here, been here to breathe in my friend’s soul, to tie her within his hollow heart until he could set her free in the burning fires of hell.
Hot tears shot into my eyes and I took a step, closing the distance between us, my hands shaking as I restrained them from shooting to his jaw, to push him back and tackle him, push him to the floor, and—
And what would I do? Tear her soul from him? I didn’t even know how those small, silver lights managed to settle within one of us at all, so how could I force one out of someone. With my bare hands? With a suck of breath from his lips?
What options did I have?
My fingers curled, imagining throttling the angel of death before me.
All the while, Cas didn’t move. He remained immobile, the preternatural stillness that distinguished him from everyone else in this world.
It didn’t matter what he was, who he was, how long he had been playing this game for souls. How often he had succeeded in taking the innocent into his realm. This was Jo, crying for help behind his eyes, and I was going to do whatever it took to bring her to the side of the afterlife she belonged.
“Release her,” I demanded, my lips curling back over my teeth in what I believed was an intimidating grimace. But my voice was weak. Defeated.
Cas didn’t respond … didn’t as much as flinch at the promise of violence in my gaze.
“Do you hear me?” I gave one of my hands permission to grab him by the collar. And when my fingers dug into his black shirt, fingernails scraping over his neck as I closed my fist, he unfroze, and a smirk spread on his face. “Let her go,” I growled the words, trying to keep my voic
e down. I wasn’t even sure if I could hurt him in my ethereal form when I myself didn’t seem to feel the pain of my corporeal body. But it didn’t matter. I had to do … something.
“You are too late. I took her soul the moment she left her body.” There was no apology on his pale features, no plea for forgiveness. No. He was the same cold Cas I had met that first day in the nursing home, when he had wanted to take Gran away. The same errand boy of the devil, who had delivered countless beings into the underworld, earned or unearned. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t,” he continued, not even attempting to free himself from my grasp but glaring down at me, taunting me with that dark amusement that reminded me that if I didn’t manage to save Jo now, she would be lost forever—damned was the better word.
“You can and you will,” I dared him, unable to take no for an answer. Whatever it takes.
Cas studied me, Jo’s silver light flickering in his eyes like a cry for help directly from hell.
“There must be a way … there always is another way, Cas. Please.” My words didn’t come out fierce and determined but like the plea they truly were.
He just stared.
“Please, Cas.” I felt my legs go wobbly, and instead of holding his shirt in my grasp, threatening him, I was now holding on to him as if somehow, by clinging onto him, I could keep Jo from slipping away. “I … I’d do anything…”
He blinked once more, his features changing, the smirk vanishing as his features smoothed over to reveal the full extent of his beauty. His features were still, even, like a blueprint a Greek god had been modeled after. But it was an icy kind of beauty. One that came with the knowledge that it was there to hide the evil beneath.
“Having taken in the soul means that there is a soul on my tally that one day, sooner or later, needs to end up in my resort.” He paused, pursing his lips as he glanced at the ceiling, tilting his head up so I could no longer read his face. Beneath my hand, his chest heaved a breath before he turned back to me. “A soul,” he clarified, “not Jo’s soul, not any one specific soul. Just a soul.”
He waited for me to comprehend what he was trying to tell me.
A soul. Any soul—
“Take mine,” I spluttered out before I could think it through. “Release her, and take mine.”
Cas’s eyes turned darker, the light gray almost slate in the shadows that clouded his gaze. “You would do that for her?” There was something in his voice that I couldn’t identify. Some emotion that reminded me of those few moments when I had believed him to be better than he actually was.
I nodded, the last of my tears falling away. I would. For Jo, I would do anything.
Cas held my gaze. “If you do it, there is no way back. You’re trading your soul for hers. You understand what that means, right?”
I wasn’t sure if I nodded or shook my head. Cas explained anyway, “You are taking her place in hell one day … when your mortal life ends.”
So it wasn’t today. Or tomorrow. I had some more years. Many, if I was lucky. Enough to figure out a way to reverse the promise if I made it. Leon would find a way. He always did—didn’t he? Maybe. Did it matter?
Hell one day. But I could save Jo now.
“Do it,” I croaked, my voice no longer holding up.
Cas stared, disbelieving of my willingness to take Jo’s place, to trade my soul.
“We are talking about eternity in hell, Laney,” he clarified. “Not about a vacation in the desert.”
Something in his words made me believe he didn’t want me to take the deal. Something, a shy glimmer of stars in the almost exclusive dark velvet of his voice.
I ignored it. Ignored the fear that was flaring in my heart, the anxiety for Jo, the prospect of what would be waiting for me once my own life ended.
As long as Jo’s afterlife was where she belonged, in a place where someone like Gran would be looking out for her—
“I said do it.” I tightened my grip on his shirt and forced all my determination into the look I gave him. All the determination of a girl in a neck brace with an unstable leg and a damaged face. And a mission to save her friend in any way she could.
Cas stopped breathing and nodded. Just one brief nod to indicate he had heard me. His eyes went vacant, and he coughed, the distortion of pain shooting into his features, veins on his neck standing out as he opened his mouth, and a translucent silver star floated from his lips.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he whispered.
And disappeared.
Leaving Jo’s soul hovering midair where he had released her, and by doing so, damned me to take her place in hell.
Chapter Forty-Four
Cas
The fact that she had given up her soul didn’t bother me as much as the fact that she had won this round—even if she’d lost everything doing so.
My chest still ached from where I had accommodated Jo’s soul and had almost spat my lungs out, reversing the settling. Those little soul-stars usually were easy to take or release, even if they didn’t want to leave my chest once I delivered them to the antechamber of hell. But this one … she had clawed at me with those spikes as if she were fighting for her life. Her afterlife.
And how lucky she was to have a Lightbringer as a friend and one so willing to make a sacrifice.
“What did you do?” Leon Milliari’s voice came from the other end of the room from where I had launched myself into a corner and pulled my knees up to my chin, surveilling the empty space. Empty, not for the absence of things but for the absence of a living, breathing soul—
Until the Lightbringer disturbed my guarding of the dead with his bright and disdainful presence.
I ignored him.
“What did you do?” he repeated, skipping the distance between us as he traveled on the angel essence that was threaded through his mortal body.
Mortal. How easy it would be to snap his neck and be done with it. But the truce forbade it. And to be honest, I no longer cared. There was only one thing that mattered now, and that was the thread that seemed to originate in my chest and disappeared somewhere in a realm I could no longer touch.
Milliari darted toward me and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, yanking me to my feet with all of the force of his anger.
I let him.
“It was her choice,” was all I cared to tell him. He knew as well as I did that he had owed me a soul. And not just any soul.
“You could have told her no,” he objected. Ire lined his features, burned in his eyes, so dark that I wondered if he himself originated directly from hell.
“Or I could have let her make her own choice—wait, I did.” I gave him a bored glance before I let my eyes wander back to the corpse of the girl who deserved heaven and was now taken there by the girl who had sacrificed her soul to make that happen.
“She is everything to me,” the Lightbringer hissed, his fist pulled back as if he was going to throw a punch, but then it trembled, and he let it sink.
“And now she’s mine.” It wasn’t difficult to say the words. He already knew they were true even before I’d spoken. “Payment was due. I wanted to take her friend. You agreed.” I stepped out of his grasp, not needing much of my actual strength to free myself, and turned to look out the window. “A friend for a grandmother, right? That was the deal.”
Leon growled behind me, bound by the truce and the truth of my words.
I could vividly remember the first time I had seen Laney Dawson in her grandmother’s room at the nursing home. You owe me, I had told Leon Milliari. I hadn’t specified back then, but he knew that giving up a soul like that of Mrs. Parker… It had been a sacrifice on my side to not even negotiate. It had been a result of shock that an emerging Lightbringer had gazed at me over her dead grandmother’s body—and seen me. Even if it had been potentially just a couple of years in purgatory for the woman, tonight, Leon had seen the opportunity to cover his debt and offered to not bargain for Jo’s soul so I would finally disappear from his and Laney
’s life. And I had bided my time and gotten something much more valuable than what I had expected.
“I didn’t kill Jo, by the way,” I informed him, just to be sure he had all the facts. “Even though I did have the pleasure of seeing their car spiral into the air and land on the roof.” I faked a chuckle, and it came out dark as the shadows that were dancing around me. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t just seen the accident but that I had dashed through steel and stone to grab Laney’s hand and will her to hold on just long enough for help to arrive. That was my secret. A secret that no one would ever know. Not even Laney. “That your Lightbringer was involved was just … let’s say … bonus.”
I swear I could feel Leon was about to burst into one million sharp-edged pieces behind me.
Still, I didn’t turn.
“You were supposed to take Jo,” he growled. “Jo was the payment for my debt.”
“And I did.” The stars were almost invisible above the city lights as I screened the sky for something I could believe in. “Nobody told you to leave once we decided.” He had shown up as expected, ready to fight for the soul of Laney’s friend like a lion when … when I had reminded him that he owed me something. And he had settled, after a moment of conflict on his features, telling me that I could have her if I promised to disappear from Glyndon.
Leon harrumphed. “I waited until you inhaled the soul,” he pointed out.
“And how could we have known Laney would even wake to feel her friend’s calling after you left? I was about to take off when Laney showed up.” I agreed. “She’s not looking good, by the way,” I didn’t fail to rub it in his face.
For a moment, the room was very quiet.
“You did everything right, Lightbringer,” I reassured him and didn’t like the sound of the words. They tasted wrong on my hell-tested tongue.
“Then why … why … is Laney on her way to heaven with Jo’s soul?” Milliari’s tone was lethal, hardly controlled.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 25