by Diane Saxon
The screen filled with a photograph of herself. Glasses on, hair swept back into a neat bun, her smart gray librarian uniform neatly pressed with not a single crease. Her wide eyes goggled out at herself from behind her thick lenses.
Ginny’s heart trembled, filled with fear and anticipation and a pitiful hopelessness. Mewling whimpers commiserated, while a ball of nausea heated in her stomach, expanding to tighten her throat.
The image of Matt flashed onto screen in time to catch his light, careless shrug as he leaned back to make himself more comfortable and crossed his arms over his broad chest.
Ginny’s trembling heart shriveled.
He sniffed, glanced down at his hands and then straight back at the camera as though he spoke directly to her.
“Yes. It means nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
What could she expect? They came from two completely different worlds. How was he to know once she committed herself, it was for all eternity? He wouldn’t realize that if he rejected her, then she would be expelled from that realm to return to her origins.
The furor in the press conference filled her head to overflowing, but not enough to block out the sympathetic lament of banshee voices.
The journalist removed his glasses to wipe them on a white tissue. As he raised his head, a glimmer of red triumph flickered through his eyes. Her soul quavered in response.
He replaced the glasses on his face and turned his attention back to Matt. “In that case, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn your fiancée, Emma Charles, has returned from her sabbatical and is here tonight as a special surprise.”
The fixed smile on Matt’s face widened as he came to his feet at the same time as a tall, elegant woman strode with purpose into the press room. The crowd parted. Her hair glistened blue-black in the bright lights; her amber eyes glowed as she held out her hands in greeting to Matt.
Click!
It wasn’t something Ginny needed to see. The dull ache in her breast expanded; her eyes blurred while she stared at the blank TV screen, the remote still clutched in her numb fingers.
Her decision had been made.
A teardrop trembled on her eyelashes before it fell at precisely the moment Ginny’s body erupted into a volcano of self-combustion and shot her soul straight into the fires of eternity from where she had originated.
•●•
Matt came slowly to his feet, narrowed his eyes at the witch in front of him, and gave her a sharp, feral grin. “Not in this lifetime—or any other.”
He pushed his way to the exit and slammed the door on the stunned silence behind him.
He needed to get to Ginny and explain.
“Matt.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, Matt—wait.”
He whirled on his best friend, ready to rip his head off and eat it if he had to. He grabbed the front of his shirt to growl in his face. “Fuck off, Daniel, or so help me, I’ll…”
“You can try,” The slighter man stared hard into his face, unmoved by his fury. “But it won’t get you there any quicker. I have a car.”
“I don’t need you.”
“Yep, you do.”
“I’ll fly.”
“That’s precisely what the little demon wants you to do. He’s provoked you so you’ll shift, and he’ll get the photographs he’s been after all the time.”
Frustrated, Matt scrubbed his hands through his hair and sighed. “I didn’t want him to tell the world about her.” He blew out double flames from his nostrils and ignored Daniel’s quick, furtive look around. He didn’t care. “She’s too goddamned shy—she wouldn’t want the attention.” He strode off down the hallway. “But if she saw that piece of shit, she’s going to think I don’t care. I need to get to her before she jumps to any conclusions.” He slammed through the fire exit. Daniel, close on his tail, shoved him into the waiting limo with its blacked-out windows.
“Well, she has all the attention now. She’s going to have to lie low for a while. So are you. Lucky bastard. At least it’s the end of the season.”
The black limo glided smoothly through the traffic, far too slow for Matt’s liking.
“You do know you’re going to have to grovel, don’t you?”
“I’d crawl through the fires of hell on my belly to get to her.”
“Don’t wish that upon yourself, my friend. You have no idea what it entails.”
Matt shot Daniel a confused look. Sometimes the guy said the strangest things.
He heaved a sigh as the limo stopped at yet another set of traffic lights. Tempted to leap out of the vehicle, he tapped his fingers impatiently on the armrest, as Daniel settled back in his seat and stared out of the window in deep contemplation. “This is providing she even lets you into her apartment, of course.”
Matt gave a wide, superior grin; his nail extended out of his forefinger, and he pointed it at Daniel. “I have a secret weapon. It was pretty successful last time.”
“Uh-huh.” Daniel stared at his finger, unimpressed. “You may need a little more than that this time.”
Matt flung himself back in the leather seat and stared at the sun as it lowered beneath the horizon. Thick black clouds rolled in to obscure the light and douse the promise of another sunrise as darkness came in heavy and quick.
Chapter Twelve
Pitch black greeted him as he slipped, silent and naked, through the balcony door. He’d had no alternative but to fly up to her balcony. She certainly hadn’t answered her intercom. If she was really pissed at him, and he suspected she was, he was going to suffer with not even clothes to protect him from the fire of her fury. He was pretty sure he could get around her, but she was, after all, half banshee, so there could be plenty of screaming.
He couldn’t stop the quick grin. She screamed real nice.
The smile dropped from his face the moment he opened her balcony door.
Thick, wallowing darkness surrounded him as he stepped into her living room, not even a ray from the moon to light his way. Normally sweet and homely, the density of the night and total silence hung uncomfortable and eerie. Shit, he was in trouble. Even his dragon struggled to see with not a single light refraction from any source. Nothing.
One more step and his knee connected with the settee. His feet crunched through masses of tiny sharp splinters, nicking his flesh and piercing his skin.
He breathed in and tasted the scent of her on the back of his tongue as a deep sadness filled his lungs. He’d hurt her more than he imagined he could. He knew it, felt it in his soul as it cried out for him to make it better. He took another cautious step forward. Pain pricked hard through the soles of his feet, but there was something he needed to know. One tiny glint sparkled on the tabletop as though it had its own light source. Matt reached out to press his finger into it. Wet coated his fingertip. His heart seared with hollow pain as he raised his hand to his lips and tasted Ginny’s solitary tear. He dabbled it against the roof of his mouth. His knees almost buckled as her pain radiated through him.
What had he done? He was her soul mate, and he’d just sampled the taste of her utter devastation. Sick to his stomach, he endured the pain in his feet while he tried to muster his brain into some semblance of thought. He padded through the room, each step a fiery torture, but the burn in his heart blazed higher.
The distinct aroma of brimstone layered the jet-black denseness. Confusion had him pausing at the door to her bedroom. Brimstone. Hell, it must be bad. She’d told him she couldn’t incinerate in that building. He peered into the blackness. Even the bright, cheerful yellow, green, and pink duvet cover couldn’t be distinguished in the dark.
His heart gave a painful jerk as his sensitive hearing picked up the subtle sound of her movement, sliding against the bed linen.
Thank God. He sighed with relief. She was there. He still had a chance. He wiped his feet on the carpet, reluctant to search for the light switch and disturb her. If only he could hold her in his arms, he knew he could make it better.
He slid between the cool cotton sheets, stretched his hand out, and encountered…more cotton. Yep, she was pissed off. He smoothed his hand over the thick pajamas.
“Hey, honey.” He wriggled closer, stroked his hand over the curve of her hip, and realized she had her back to him. Yep, it was going to be a long haul. “You awake?”
“Hmmm.”
To his utter relief, she rolled toward him and filled him with a desperate hope that it wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought. Perhaps she’d gotten over her snit already. A banshee snit had to be a dangerous thing.
Her hot body shuffled closer, and a waft of mothball scent caught him unaware. Jeez, she’d had those pajamas in the cupboard way too long. The best favor he could do her was to strip them off her as soon as possible.
With a bold move, he pushed his hand under the top and slipped it up to find her breast. He encountered it far quicker than expected, and absolute horror shot through his system as he wrapped his palm around an empty, flaccid sack of loose, wrinkled flesh, near where her waistline should be.
“Waaaaggghhhh!”
He tried to fling himself away, but the thing launched itself at him in the dark and clutched at his chest as he flipped over the edge of the bed in his panic and blindness. He hit the floor with a resounding, “Ooooffff.”
The screeching of a thousand banshees filled his head, making his brain want to burst from its casing. The thing on top of him clutched with sharpened nails as it dug deep into his flesh and seared him with burning talons. Bright red eyes blazed at him from above, and lurid green glowing hair floated straight up in great swathes of knotted tresses.
With a strength born of terror, he flung the thing off him and clapped his hands over his ears to stop his brain bleeding out of them as the pitch went up an octave.
“Stop!” he roared. His dragon begged to be released so it could tear the head from the screaming banshee and halt the unrelenting torture. “Stop!” The beast inside him roared louder, and utter silence dropped, immediate and deadly.
Matt didn’t know whether to be more concerned at the insistent memory of a wrinkled old breast grasped firmly in his hand, sending a quick ball of nausea straight to his throat, or by the glowing white banshee in the corner of the room. “Ginny?” Surely, she could not be his love. If she was, he’d destroyed her with his carelessness.
Bright light flooded the bedroom, and he blinked rapidly to adjust his sight, wishing someone could block it all out again.
Two middle-aged women faced him. One still sat in the corner where he had flung her, wearing thick tartan pajamas, and the other stood by the door, one hand on the light switch. She grasped her orange dressing gown to her limp chest. Her hair was rolled in curlers, and a lit cigarette dangled from her creased lips. The lips he’d kissed when he’d scored his touchdown and Ginny had fireballed on him.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Lorna? Ellie?”
Unimpressed, the two women simply stared at him. Ellie’s eyes still glowed a vibrant red. Her eyebrows arched. Her lips pouted. He’d never noticed her breasts came down to her waist before. She must have been wearing a bra with the strength of Ra to hold those demons pert.
Exhausted, he sank back onto the bed and blew out a breath. “Where is she?”
“She belongs in neither Heaven nor Hell.” Their voices combined in sniveling stereo.
It really wasn’t the time for them to be mysterious. She didn’t belong anywhere but on Earth. With him. He tried to tamp down his temper, but the pathetic mewling wail the two women emitted was starting to annoy him. “Agreed. So where is she?”
“You rejected her, so she made her choice.”
“Choice? What choice?”
“Why, Heaven or Hell, young man.”
He turned to face Lorna as she leaned casually against the doorway. Her eyes smoldered with luminescence, and the raw heat of guilt rushed to his face. “Why did she need to choose?”
“She wasn’t allowed to stay, once you made your decision. She had to go.”
Sick worry constricted his chest.
“I don’t understand. Why did she have to go?”
The older woman rolled her eyes and puffed out a breath as though she thought he were utterly stupid. Perhaps he was. He certainly didn’t understand.
“She was only allowed to remain here, in the in-between world, until she found the love of her life. Her soul mate. Once she committed heart and soul, she could choose to remain here if she wished. As a banshee, you are only given one choice. Once you give your heart, it is bound for all eternity to one person…” She flicked a quick glance up and down his entire length and pursed her lips in disgust. “…being.” She shook her head, and her sorrow-filled eyes created a wave of panic in him. “Once you rejected her, it seems she could no longer tolerate living on this plane. So she needed to make a choice between the two remaining places she could go—Heaven or Hell.”
“Where?”
“I told you…”
“No, Lorna. Where did she choose?”
The woman flicked her hand across her cheek to catch the tears as they fell. “Hell.”
He knew he didn’t have the power in his legs to get up. Knew also it was essential he found the strength. “How do I get her back?”
Both women stared at each other for a long moment. He could hear the whispering moans in the background, as though they communicated between far more than just themselves.
When Lorna turned back to him, it was with glowing crimson eyes filled with tears. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged, just the baleful whine of banshee mourning.
“I knew this would happen.”
Matt whipped his head around. “Daniel?”
“Yeah.” Daniel walked across the room. Ignoring the two women, he approached the bed. A golden key dangled from a long chain he held between his thumb and forefinger. “You have to walk over the hottest fires of Hell, risk the flaming, screaming voices of lost souls, and hazard the skin being flayed from your body by desperate, grasping fingers.”
“How did you get in here?”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “The door was open.”
He extended the key and offered it to Matt. “You have to unlock the box and dip your hand into a billion souls. Only if your love is true, and she does not reject it, will you be able to rescue her.”
The mournful weeping rose, and the women’s voices bemoaned the loss of Ginny.
“He can’t do it.”
“He doesn’t love her.”
“He rejected her.”
“He has no soul.”
“He’s a dragon.”
“He has no inner strength.”
“Poor Ginny.”
“Poor lost Ginny.”
“He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t love her.”
He covered his ears, closed his eyes, and lowered his head to rest it on his knees as the voices consumed him.
“Enough.” Daniel’s quiet tones brought an unearthly hush to the room.
An electric zap filled the air, and the sharp sting of teeth in Matt’s neck threatened to sever his carotid artery. He froze. The vampire stroked her talons through his hair and hissed as she readjusted herself on the bed behind him and allowed her powerful jaw to flex.
Daniel stepped forward, and with a swift flick of his hand, he swatted Roni off the bed so she landed with a loud thump on the floor.
“Get off already, bloodsucker. You’re too late—again!”
Roni stared up at them from her reclining position on the floor. Her black eyes filled with tears and shone like burnished jet.
“You hurt her, Matt. I tried to find her, but I can’t follow where she’s gone. Why did you hurt her?”
“I didn’t mean to.” Matt’s heart constricted, and he fell to the floor to comfort Ginny’s best friend.
She jerked back and raised a hand to halt him. “You do know you’re naked, yeah?”
“Oooh, shit. No.”
The yellow cotton sheet fluttered down to cover his modesty, and Daniel tutted, rolled his eyes once more, and gazed at the ceiling as though praying for a miracle. With a hefty sigh, he turned to stare at the two older women, who shrugged and fluttered their eyes in feigned innocence.
“We had to have some kind of diversion from our distress.”
Matt goggled at them. Unrepentant, they didn’t seem too worried regarding the whereabouts of their favorite niece—more interested in the state of his undress.
He tucked the sheet firmly around his hips and absently patted Roni on the head. “It’s okay. I’m going to save her.”
Howling banshees screeched their objection in his ears.
“I. Am. Going. To. Save. Her.”
“She is lost.”
“She’s lost.”
“We can’t bear it.”
“She’s screwed!” Roni crossed her arms over her skinny chest and stared at him with disgust. “You’re a pathetic quarterback.”
“Fullback.”
“Pathetic. See? You can’t even leave your ego behind long enough to see the issue here. You are not a warrior.” Roni stared intently at Daniel, who shrugged once more and met her eyes with an indolent stare. “He’s not a warrior, Daniel.”
“He’s a dragon; of course he’s a warrior. He’s a fullback!” Daniel huffed out a disgusted breath, but he still had a small look of doubt that curled a worm of worry in Matt’s stomach. The guy had never shown any doubt in his abilities before. “Of course he’s a warrior.”
Ellie sniffed, and Lorna picked her long, sharp teeth. Matt stared at her fingernails and couldn’t recall them being so black and gnarled when he last met her. In fact the last time they’d met—and the time before—they’d seemed like pretty normal middle-aged women. Now they resembled…well…screaming banshees.
Tired of them undermining him, he stood, gripped the sheet around his hips, and stared at Lorna.
“Where do I go, how do I get there, and have you any suggestions as to what weapons I will need?”
Silence greeted him as all four of them stared at him as though he were mad. Ellie was the first to break. “Get a cab, go to the Empire State Building. Wear chainmail, take a sword and shield.”