by Julie Hall
A stupid means to an end. That’s what I was. That’s what I’d always been to Logan.
Oh, it burned.
I turned to walk away, not able to take him at the moment. How many times could one person hurt me? Inside, I hated that I’d taken Logan’s pain and turned it into something about me, but this was just too much.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Logan advance on me. The look in his eyes was nothing short of feral.
A spike of fear surged through my body. Perhaps I’d pushed him too far.
Not trusting my back to him anymore, I spun around. His advance forced my retreat until I bumped into the wall. Without speaking, he lifted both arms and placed his fists on the flat surface on either side of my head, effectively caging me in.
A shock of alarm zinged through my body.
He was over the edge of tired, and who knew what else was at work in him from his exposed time on Earth? I trusted Logan, sort of, but I wasn’t sure what to expect from him right now.
His expression was unexpectedly carnal. My throat constricted, but no words emerged. His eyes skated across my face, looking at nothing and everything at once.
What was he searching for?
Deliberately, and ever so slowly, he used one hand to gently grasp my chin and tilt my head to the side. My eyes widened, and my body locked.
Satisfied, he returned his hand to the wall and lowered his head. Breathing in and out, warm air caressed my neck, his nearness paired with his scent—uniquely his—made me lightheaded.
What’s happening?
“You. Are. Not. Morgan,” he repeated gutturally.
And then it happened. His soft lips pressed a gentle kiss, so at odds with the rest of him, against my neck, then another behind my ear as he nuzzled in closer.
I tipped my head back, my eyes sliding shut as he placed a third lingering kiss. I made a noise in the back of my throat and Logan froze. My lids were too heavy to open.
His breath bathed my neck again. “Audrey, you need to tell me to stop.”
What was he saying? Stop?
Things had changed so quickly I wasn’t thinking straight. I was floating on a cloud. Why would I want to come down?
“I . . .” My dry throat made it hard to speak. I opened my lids a fraction to stare down at Logan’s head, still bent only a breath away from my neck. “I . . . I don’t want you to stop,” I whispered.
Logan sucked in a quick breath of air. The arms on either side of me tensed suddenly, bulging, then contracting only to bulge again.
And then without warning, he moved my head to sample the other side of my neck. With his body held away from my own, he buried his face in the thick mass of my hair. He drew in a long breath and let it out excruciatingly slowly. The hot air fanning across my neck caused a full-body shiver. His lips just barely made contact with the sensitive skin below my ear. It was not a true kiss, but more of a tasting.
My knees weakened.
Using the wall behind me to stay upright wasn’t going to be enough, so I reached up to grab his biceps.
When his lips closed on the bottom of my earlobe, I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped.
Just as suddenly as he’d begun, he tore himself away, ripping my hands from his arms as well as his lips from my skin.
I stumbled. Off balance and with unstable legs, I landed in a heap on the hardened ground, too stunned to form a coherent thought.
What just happened?
Logan’s shoulders heaved up and down with the force of his breath. He stared at the opposite wall. I stared at his back. With three violent inhalations, he fisted a hand and ran the other roughly over his face. My butt remained firmly planted on the ground.
Logan half-turned his body and watched me out of the corner of his eye. “That shouldn’t have happened.” His accusatory tone said it was my fault.
“Huh?”
His eyes reached my face and softened a bit before turning away again. He took another steadying lungful of air. “Has anyone explained to you why exactly it isn’t good for us to be on Earth for too long?”
I shook my head “No,” still staring. All I knew were the bits and pieces Logan had told me, which I realized now was precious little.
“We are spiritual beings now. We’re meant to stay close to the Creator. The longer we’re on Earth, the more susceptible we are to sin.”
Logan spoke as if giving a lecture he’d given a thousand times before. “Our inhibitions are slowly stripped away. Our ability to sort right from wrong becomes clouded. If we are here for too long, our base desires become almost impossible to resist.” He turned slightly, far enough to catch my eye out of the corner of his. “Do you understand what I’m saying here?”
Another shake of my head. Apparently the only thing I was capable of doing at the moment was that small physical gesture.
“Audrey, I was not a great guy when I was here, not even a good guy . . . except maybe a little at the end.” He pinched his nose and lightly shook his head. “Man, you taste sweet, like strawberries.”
He said it quietly to himself. Heat accompanied an involuntary full-body flush. I tasted like strawberries? What does he taste like? The last thought skidded through my mind, causing a second blush. I squashed it before it took root.
“You shouldn’t have let me do that,” he said.
And all at once I was angry again. “This was somehow my fault?” I asked incredulously. “Like I even knew what you were going to do when you stomped toward me like He-Man on a mission to conquer Castle Grayskull.”
He blinked at me. “You know who He-Man is? He doesn’t conquer Castle Grayskull. He defends it.”
“Is that really the point here?”
“No, not the point.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair, fisting a chunk of it before letting go. “It obviously wasn’t your fault, but you shouldn’t let me do it next time.”
“Next time?” I practically squeaked. “There’s going to be a next time?”
He gave me a long, soulful stare. I knew there was no way my hair wasn’t completely pink with all the blushing I was doing. There was a hunger in his eyes he either couldn’t or wasn’t trying to hide. “If we don’t get back to our realm soon, there will most definitely be a next time.”
My knees went weak again. Oh my.
“I can’t promise I won’t take it to the next level and get both of us stuck in a serious bind. I know that’s something neither of us wants to happen.”
Dumping a bucket of ice water all over me couldn’t have done more to change my demeanor. I finally got what he was saying. He was attracted to me only because he’d been on Earth too long and I was the only girl around. He was scared he would kiss me and bind us together, and that had always been the last thing he’d wanted.
I stood as gracefully as I could, straightening and pulling my shoulders back before coolly assessing Logan. The wild and reckless incident that had left me breathless a moment before, now made me feel tainted and used.
“Don’t worry,” I said with a glare. “That’s not something I’ll ever let happen again. If you need help with self-control, you can remind yourself I’ve been training with Kaitlin too, and she’s taught me some very interesting self-defense techniques that would be particularly painful for a male attacker.”
Logan grimaced. A look of sadness quickly shrouded his face.
For me it was all bravado, but the lie was eerily easy to tell. I turned my back on him and walked out of the room and into the adjoining one. I needed some space. I thought I was over Logan, but hearing him reject me again pierced a spot in my heart I hadn’t eradicated, only buried.
And those kisses. I forced myself not to shiver. No, I couldn’t think about that. Just the thought caused my neck to burn with remembrance.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a strand of pink hair darken to red, and I welcomed the change.
10
Coming Home
Night had begun to fall when we started the short
trek to my family’s home, less than a mile from the church. The evening air was chilly. Goose bumps appeared despite the protection of my body armor.
Logan hadn’t said more than a few words to me since I’d left him alone in the room, only enough to indicate what the plan was before leaving the church.
Tension was thick between us, palpable in an itchy and uncomfortable way. My anger toward Logan for his misguided sense of guilt about Morgan had long since burned itself out, and I wondered why I’d been so hard on him. There had been no compassion in my words, only self-righteous anger.
The other incident—as I had come to call it in my head—between us wasn’t something I had the extra brain or willpower to tackle further than to admit it had happened. I was eventually going to have to dissect all that had gone down between the two of us in the basement of the church, but the time wasn’t now.
I balled up all the passion and hurt from Logan’s actions and shoved them to the far corners of my mind. I focused on what I could, our fight over Morgan.
I worried a fingernail as we continued on in silence. A nervous habit I still hadn’t broken. Logan had been incredibly vulnerable with me, and I’d been cruel. There was a way to speak the truth in love, but that wasn’t what I’d done. My pride struggled with my desire to apologize and make things right. I actually felt the ball of self-righteousness lodged beneath my sternum that kept my lips closed.
And then there was a whisper in my mind. A memory of one of the many conversations I’d had with Hugo.
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
“Huh?” I lay on my back, catching my breath from my latest literal fall.
Hugo smiled a knowing smile at me and tilted his head. “It’s that pride of yours that most often gets in the way. You need to watch out for that.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I complained. “I know I’m struggling here. Getting beat down on a regular basis is actually pretty humiliating.”
“Yet your prideful attitude stands in the way of you truly learning. You’re motivated by your pride. You want to do better because you won’t humble yourself. You’d pick up these lessons even faster if you yielded to humility.”
I sat up quickly. How did he know this stuff? Did I push myself because I didn’t like not being good at something rather than because it was important for me to learn? “How do I learn to do that then?”
His smile grew. “Being open to surrendering your pride is the first step, my dear. Congratulations. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them His ways.”
Logan’s hand on my shoulder snapped me from my thoughts. I hadn’t even realized we reached our destination. His eyes were riveted on my house.
I was about to tell him not to touch me when his tense voice stopped me.
“It’s too quiet.”
A scan of the surroundings proved his words to be true. Had it really been earlier in this same day and spot that I’d fought a horde of demons? But now there wasn’t a single one in sight. My internal demon-radar wasn’t being tripped either. Where had they all gone? And stranger still, where were the good guys?
“I thought you said there were hunters protecting my family.”
“There were.”
“Where are they, then?”
“I don’t know.”
A chill brushed up my spine. The evening wasn’t fully dark yet, but the lights from the house in front of me—as familiar as anything could be but no longer truly my home—chased away many of the shadows that stalked the area. Movement across one of the front windows caught my eye.
I gasped.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think that was my mother.” I moved forward without thought. Logan caught me around the waist and turned me from the house, his eyes broadcasting his thoughts.
“Audrey, there’s a reason we aren’t meant to return to our former lives. You’ll be able to observe but not interact with your family members. It’s painful. Have you truly thought this through?”
“Yes.” No. All I wanted was to see my mother. I’d ached with the loss of my family. Until now, I hadn’t realized how much.
His arms were slow to leave my sides. He was letting me make this decision on my own, even though he didn’t agree with me. That was a big step for Logan.
I was at the window in moments. My face practically pressed against it like a child in front of a toy store at Christmas. My heart leaped. There she was! I only caught a glimpse of her before she stepped into another room. I couldn’t read much from the profile of her face before she turned her back on me.
Mom padded into the kitchen without shoes or socks, wearing some of her favorite comfort clothes—worn jeans and a snug green T-shirt I recognized as one of my old ones. The dark hair twisted into a knot high on her head with a pencil sticking out of it told me she was working. She always did that to her hair when she was busy with paperwork. The familiarity of the simple quirk was soothing. Logan stood behind me, giving me silent support.
“Is there a way in?”
“We can look for one.”
Only after climbing a tree did we find an unlatched window on the second floor. I gave an unladylike snort. No wonder my older sister, Jessica, had always managed to slip out of the house undetected.
We stealthily entered the house without incident. Logan soundlessly swung through the open window after me. Both of my parents were talking, but we were too far away to make out their words.
After gently closing the window, leaving it unlatched as before, Logan nodded in the direction of the stairs. We crept down as silently as possible. He followed in my footsteps exactly to avoid the creaky steps. Easy to understand how ghost stories sprang up when there were hunters constantly running around the globe. At least no one had caught the window opening and closing on its own.
My parents were seated at the kitchen table, papers spread out in front of them. Their shoulders sagged as if in defeat. My dad’s hair had a little more gray in it than I remembered. The fine lines around my beautiful mother’s eyes seemed more pronounced.
They had aged more than the short period of time I’d been gone. My chest ached. What had they gone through to age them like this? Oh, right—I had died. But something else was going on here too.
Mom opened an envelope and black smoke puffed out of it and ringed her head.
I gasped. “What is that?” I frantically swatted at the blackness around her. Most of it dissipated.
Logan’s eyes were sad when they met mine. “It’s demonic,” he stated. “Your family’s home is protected, so the demons can’t actually breach it, but there are still ways Satan can get in to oppress your family. That substance doesn’t last long, and it isn’t as strong as if a demon were here trying to influence them, but it does its job casting doubt and depression just the same.”
I was horrified. How could we protect them from attacks on so many levels?
“They just keep coming,” Mom said, holding one of the papers in front of her face as she read the contents silently.
Dad laid a comforting hand on hers and forced her to lower what I could now see was a bill of some sort. “We have options.”
“I know,” she sighed. “I just don’t like going into all this debt. I figured by now the bills would stop rolling in. Isn’t that what insurance is for?”
“It would be so much worse without it.”
“You’re right.” She bowed her head and closed her eyes, and a glowing halo appeared around her. Soft, silver-tinted brightness chased away the remaining blackness.
My gaze snapped to Logan for answers. “What’s happening? Is she all right?”
“She’s praying,” Logan simply stated. After a moment, Dad once again laid a hand on hers and mimicked her pose. The soft glow emanated from him as well. I’d never seen anything like it. It encased their heads as if creating a protective barrier around their minds. Within the light, specks of silver twinkled like fairy dust. It was mesmer
izing.
“The light would keep any demon off them, if it could even get in here. It burns demon flesh. The power of their prayers clears the air of any demonic influence as well.”
I looked on with eyes of wonder. After only a few more moments, they both lifted their gaze and looked on each other with love.
“We’ll be taken care of,” Dad said.
My mother nodded in agreement. I slid closer, and one of the bills caught my eye. It had my name on it. This was about me. They must be still paying off the bills from the accident. I was what put my family in debt. How was it fair that the loss of their daughter caused them to be plagued with debt?
A hand flew to my mouth and I shook my head in a feeble attempt at denial. I took a quick but shaky step back from the table. If it wasn’t for Logan’s wall of muscle behind me, I would most likely have crashed into something. He held me around the waist with one arm, supporting most of my weight as my knees lost their stability.
“No. Please, God, no. This is all my fault,” I whimpered.
A now recognizable jolt of electricity passed between Logan and me. It caused my muscles to cramp before relaxing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I lose control over it sometimes. Did I hurt you?”
I craned my neck to look at him. It was the first time he’d admitted the energy flow had actually occurred. He couldn’t avoid the question in my eyes, and with a heavy sigh he acknowledged its existence. “I’ll explain it too. Later.”
I nodded, my vision started to cloud with tears. “Logan, they’re in debt because of me. They’re still hurting because of me.”
“This is not because of you, Audrey.” Logan’s words brokered no room for argument. “These things are a part of life. And you saw Satan’s army for yourself. They are under attack. You’re not doing that. The enemy is.”
Doubts and fears flooded my mind. Didn’t you have to open a door for Satan to attack you in some sense? What if it was me doing that—opening the door? Maybe I’d done something wrong in the afterlife that negatively impacted my family. They were obviously struggling with debt because of the accident. Was it possible that breaking so many rules in heaven or being a bad hunter was causing the spiritual attacks?