I stifled a cringe at the thought when he asked, “How long do you think you’ve been gone?” His voice was all deep and rich and smooth. Like caramel. Or butterscotch. Or Darth Vader.
I leaned back to look at him. “Think? There’s no thinking about it. I know exactly how long I’ve been gone. Right down to the second. Give or take.”
“Yeah?” He flashed a smile that blinded me almost as much as the sun had. “And how long is that?”
“One hundred seven years, two months, fourteen days, twelve hours, and thirty-three minutes.” I was totally lying. I might not have known the exact time served down to the minute, but I knew it was within shouting distance of my quote. “I was floating in darkness for over one hundred years.”
He nodded, gave my answer some thought, then asked, “If you were floating in darkness, how do you know you were gone for a hundred and seven years?”
I looked past him, almost embarrassed. “I felt every second. I counted them.”
He pulled me closer. “Aren’t you really bad at math?”
“Speaking of which, I thought I was going to be exiled for all eternity.”
Anger suddenly sparked inside him. I felt it like electricity spider-webbing from molecule to molecule inside me. “Did it not feel like an eternity?”
I lowered myself back onto his chest. “It felt like three eternities.”
He turned away, his brows sliding together in thought. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
Ah. That would explain the anger. Rising all the way to a sitting position, I looked down at him, trying to decipher his thoughts. “You would rather have lost Amber?”
Amber, my best friend’s lovely daughter, was the reason I had been kicked off the third rock from the sun in the first place. But it’d hardly been her fault. She’d been killed by an insane priest who was trying to anchor himself to Earth—using Amber as the anchor—and skip out on the trip to hell that he’d booked centuries earlier.
I could heal people. That wasn’t breaking the rules. I could even bring them back from death if, and only if, their soul had yet to leave their body. But Amber had been dead for two hours when we’d found her. Her soul long gone. I couldn’t do that to Cookie, my BFF. I couldn’t just let her daughter die when I could do something about it.
Was Reyes really suggesting that?
“Of course not,” he said, offended. “You should’ve let me do it.”
“Yes, because being cast into a hell dimension worked out so well the last time.”
The last time he’d stage dived into a hell dimension, I didn’t think he was going to get out. And when he did, he came back more Rey’azikeen and less Reyes. Gods were not known for their sparkling personalities or caring natures. It took a few days to get him back, days in which I worried I’d be forced to destroy him before he destroyed the planet and everything on it.
He lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “That was a different. That was a true hell dimension.”
I gaped at him. For, like, a really long time. “I’m sorry,” I said, not the least bit apologetic. “Are you suggesting that my hell dimension was less hellish than yours?”
“My Brother would never have cast you into a real hell dimension.”
“It was horrible,” I argued.
“Most other realms are.”
“It was cold and dark and endless.”
“And if it had been a paradise?”
“Even the wraiths didn’t— What?”
“If it’d had white beaches and blue waters and sun every day?”
He had a point. My shoulders deflated. “Without you in it, or Beep, it still would have been horrible. Look, I know time works differently in other dimensions.” I drew in a deep breath, set my jaw, and girded my loins. Metaphorically. “So, give it to me straight. I can take it. How long was I gone?”
Maybe I hadn’t been gone the entire century in this dimension. Maybe, just maybe, Beep was still alive. Hope fought agony for real estate inside my heart.
Reyes ducked his head, fighting off another one of those roguish grins, then said quietly, “Ten days.”
I whirled onto my feet to face him. Then stood there stunned for what seemed like an hour, the truth of what he said sinking in ever so slowly as I frowned, then blinked, then frowned some more. I’d been gone for over a hundred years. Even the wraiths helped me keep track of time. But here in this dimension I had only been gone … “Ten days?” I snapped my jaw shut, then asked again in a rather grating shriek, “Ten lousy days?”
The wind had picked up. Sand swirled around us, creating a dust devil in the center of which we sat, but I was too astounded to pay much attention. Even as my hair whipped about my head and the sand scraped across my skin, I could only stand in indignant astonishment that I’d spent an eternity in agony.
Then reality sank in. The sand fell to the ground around us in one powdery whoosh as I realized Beep, our beautiful daughter, was still alive. And only ten days older than when I’d left her.
I pressed both hands to my mouth, relief flooding every cell in my body and causing pools of wetness to slip past my lashes. I would get to see her again. I would get to see everyone again. My family. My friends. They were all I’d thought about for a hundred years, and I would get to see them again.
Reyes had told me a similar story when he’d been trapped in a hell dimension. He’d said he was in there for what felt like an eternity while only an hour had passed on Earth. A freaking hour. And he’d come out a completely different being. At least I was still me.
I patted my face, my shoulders, the girls, a.k.a. Danger and Will Robinson. Yep, I felt very me-ish.
“They were definitely lousy,” Reyes agreed, watching me feel myself up.
The smile that spread across my face felt heavenly, and a sob wrenched from my throat. “She’s still alive.”
“She’s still alive,” he said softly, seeming to know every thought I had. Every doubt and heartache and elation.
“And I’m still me, right?” I asked between hiccups. “I mean, do I look the same? How’s my hair?”
Reyes tackled me, flipped me over him, and rolled on top of me.
I laughed when he buried his face in that same mess of hair again and caught my earlobe between his teeth. But it was his hands that were doing the real damage. He slid them over my stomach, up my breasts, testing the weight of both Danger and Will before going south and crossing the border into no-man’s-other-than-Reyes’s-land.
“What are you doing?” I said with a weepy giggle.
“Making sure you’re still you. It didn’t even occur to me that you could be an imposter.”
“Imposter?”
He leaned away from me. “Or possessed.”
“Possessed?”
“You were in a hell dimension.” He said that bit with a smirk, dissing my hell once again. “Do you feel possessed?”
“Not particularly.”
“The possessed never do. I’m just going to have to put you through a battery of tests.”
“Tests?” I squeaked. When he dipped his head and brushed his tongue over Will’s peak, I grabbed handfuls of his unkempt hair. “I didn’t study. Will there be a written?”
2
Safety first!
Just kidding. Coffee first.
Safety’s, like, third or fourth.
—MEME
The tests were brutal. I wasn’t sure I’d passed all subjects until my very dedicated test administrator lay on top of me, panting, his warm breath fanning across my skin. I took that as a good sign. About every third pant, he’d find something else to nibble on. Some new and unexplored territory he’d claim as his own.
And then I realized something. He was stalling. All the questions I had, all the events I’d missed, and he was stalling. I’d been gone a long time. I had things to do and people to see and—
“Where’s my phone?” I patted my naked body again. “I need my phone. Do I still have a phone? Wait, do they s
till use phones?”
“Ten days,” he reminded me.
“Right. So, yes.”
He pulled on the trousers and tied them at his waist. They dipped low over his hips, and I took a moment, an exquisite moment, to appreciate the work of art in front of me.
Tearing my gaze off him at last, I looked around for my clothes and noticed something I hadn’t paid attention to before. We were actually lying on a huge pool of glass. Beautiful and blue and sparkling. But I could’ve sworn …
Realization dawned, and I bit my lower lip. “Um, Reyes, did we do this?”
He looked around, and his brows shot up in surprise.
“We heated the sand so much we created a pool of glass?” I asked, my voice an octave above grating. “In the middle of the Sahara? How are we going to explain this to Parks and Recreation?”
“Who are the wraiths?” he asked, completely unconcerned.
“We gotta get out of here before someone sees this.” I rose and tugged on the sheer gown I’d materialized in.
“The wraiths?”
“They were my company. The only company I had. And they knew things.” I tapped my temple for emphasis.
“Like calculus?”
“Like the fact that something is going on.” I stopped to point an accusing index finger at him. “Something you aren’t telling me. That and the fact that I have to figure out what happened when my mother died to be able to stop … whatever it is that’s happening.”
He stopped and faced me. “Your mother? What does she have to do with it?”
“With what?” I challenged.
“What did the wraiths say?”
“They said that hell is coming, and in order to stop it, I have to find out the truth about my mother’s death.”
He frowned in thought. “What would your mother’s death have to do with anything?”
“Reyes.” I walked up to him and put a hand on his chest. Mostly because I could. “What is going on?”
He covered my hand with his and lowered his head as though ashamed. “The hell dimension. The one I accidently opened? It’s taking over the world.”
* * *
Note to self: Do not open a hell dimension within another existing dimension and expect them to get along.
Reyes wrapped me in his arms, a place I dearly loved to be, and before I could say who’s your uncle, we materialized into … a warehouse. A dark, dust-covered concrete warehouse with fluorescent lighting, metal cabinets, and lumpy cots.
“Sweetheart,” I said, stepping away from him and doing a 360, “what did you do to our apartment?”
“Nothing. Our apartment, as you well know, is ground zero.” He went to a wall of metal lockers and opened one up.
I grinned and wiggled my fingers at a little boy behind the lockers, but he ducked back. I must’ve looked worse than I’d thought.
“Beep?” I asked Reyes.
“She’s safe.”
“But I can’t see her,” I said matter-of-factly, trying to tamp down my disappointment.
“I had to evacuate her and the Loehrs to a safe house.”
“They’ve been at a safe house since she was born.” And they had been. My light, the same light that any supernatural being on this plane or the next could see, saw to that.
“A different safe house.”
I understood. I really did, but it had been so long. “So, when?”
“When this is over.” Attempting to dissuade me from asking more questions, he turned and tossed a bag to me. “Clothes. Shampoo. Toothbrush. Everything a growing girl needs.”
I gaped at him, then tore open the bag. It was my stuff. My actual stuff.
“My … my toothbrush.” I took it out and cradled it. “Fitzwilliam, is it really you?”
I grinned and glanced from beneath my lashes to see if I’d won the boy over yet. He’d peeked around the corner again but didn’t crack a smile. Which only made me more determined.
Reyes glanced at the boy. “Did he follow you here from…?”
“Marmalade? Nope. No little boys in Marmalade that I knew of.”
“Marmalade?”
“Yes. That’s what I named it. My very own hell dimension.”
“It wasn’t actually a hell—”
“The wraiths didn’t have a name for it,” I said, cutting in before he dissed my hell dimension. Again. What made his hell dimension so much hellier than mine? “How can you live somewhere that doesn’t have a name?”
“So, these wraiths, they spoke to you?”
“Not at first. They just kind of watched me. For a really long time. Like twenty years. But they eventually warmed up to me. Speaking of which, how did they even get there? They were ghosts, spirits of a race long past, but there were no living beings in that entire dimension, so how did they get there?”
“Even in the barrenest realms, life thrives. Entities somehow get in. Make a home for themselves.”
“I take it you’re speaking from experience.”
He scoffed softly then tossed me a pair of jeans. Jeans! I buried my face in them. Breathed them in. A combination of denim and citrus filled my nostrils, the laundry soap stirring up a torrent of memories. Mostly of Reyes bending me over the washer.
After several reminiscent moments, I said, “Are you hinting that I need to change?”
He cast me a sideways glance. “Not at all. I love what you’re wearing.”
I smiled and looked down a microsecond before gasping in horror. The white gown I’d materialized in was like gauze and completely see-through. I slammed the jeans to my chest and hugged them, searching for the little boy, but he’d ducked back behind the lockers.
“That poor kid is going to be scarred for life. Or, well, afterlife.”
Reyes chuckled. “Yeah, I doubt that.”
“So, is there a shower in this here one-horse town?”
He showed me to a room with a wash station. The warehouse had apparently been some kind of factory that required first aid compliance. It was no George, the luxury shower Reyes had built in our apartment, but it was hot and wet and everything I’d dreamed of for decades. Well, almost everything.
I brightened when Reyes stepped into the small room, one hand behind his back. I’d dried my hair and pulled it into a ponytail for the time being, but I felt wonderful. Clean. Warm. Safe.
“It’s time,” he said as I slipped into a T-shirt and the jeans he’d provided.
“Time?”
He brought his hand around, and it was like the clouds parted and heaven shone down on us. Blessing us. Nurturing our deepest, most primal desires.
“One triple shot mocha latte with extra whipped cream.”
I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, but only for a second. There was a mocha latte out there calling my name.
After snatching the cup out of his hand, I lifted the plastic lid to my lips and drank the nectar of the gods. The sensation that ran through my body with that very first sip, that very first sensation of chocolate and caffeine splashing onto my tongue, bordered on pornographic.
A moan slipped past my lips, and even though the liquid was the perfect temperature—scalding—I downed half of it before taking a breath. Then I slowed down. To savor. To relish. To luxuriate in.
Panting, I asked, “So, how bad is it?”
He grabbed a remote and turned on a flat screen before removing his own clothes.
The news on the television gave a rundown of the effects of a hell dimension opening in the middle of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They didn’t know a hell dimension had opened up, but the signs were all there.
“Delirium is spreading faster than hospitals can keep up,” a handsome anchor in a blue suit and tie said before the show cut to a montage of people in hospital emergency rooms, waiting to be admitted, many bruised, battered, and bloody. “Dozens have been admitted with an untold number of infected roaming the streets, unable or unwilling to seek help. Earlier today, the CDC had this to say.”
&nbs
p; The screen jumped to a Dr. Nisha Dev, a tiny dark-haired woman wrapped in a white lab coat. She stood barricaded behind a podium with a bouquet of microphones sprouting from all directions and pointed at her face.
“The effects of the infection are twofold,” she said, her Middle Eastern accent soft as a hush came over the crowd. “It seems to attack the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes fear, triggers anger, and motivates us to act. It first presents with mild flulike symptoms, then quickly escalates to confusion and fear. From there, the patient may or may not slip into an agitated or volatile state. If you notice a family member acting confused or afraid, seek help immediately. Do not try to subdue your loved one yourself.”
A cacophony of questions hit her at once, and she pointed to a reporter who asked about the violent behaviors of many of the infected.
“If a person presents, he or she needs to be sedated as soon as possible to forestall any violent tendencies that may emerge. The timeline of this evolution varies from person to person, so it’s impossible to say at this point.”
I pressed Pause and turned back to Reyes. “Are you telling me that we caused this?”
He lowered his head but said nothing.
“What kind of infection? Is this viral?”
“We don’t know.”
“Reyes, did we just start the zombie apocalypse? Is the extinction of the human race going to be on our heads?”
“That’s what we intend to find out.”
“Has it spread outside of the hell dimension?”
“It’s staying within the boundaries for the most part.”
“For the most part?”
“There’ve been a handful of cases outside the city, but they were all inside the war zone prior to the infection.”
“The war zone?” I turned back to the television and studied the picture I’d placed on Pause. The doctor’s expression had slipped. Her concern shone through her mask of professionalism. The news crawl below her picture had frozen on the words “Panic in the heart of New Mexico.”
They had that right.
“Garrett came up with that. When you see what it does to people, you’ll understand. But first, you need to go see Cookie.”
Summoned to Thirteenth Grave Page 2