Napoleon grinned. “I think you have a crush on the girl.”
“I do not! The Godfather usurped one of my most important clients, giving an ecstatic death to someone who was supposed to suffer egregiously. It took me years to repair the damage to my reputation. I will not let that bastard destroy the one woman on this planet who has an inner fire deserving of deification!”
“You want to kiiisss her,” Napoleon chanted. “You want to huuuggg her. You want to loooove her.”
“Natalie’s an angel child, not a love whore! She’s a beacon of glimmering light. She cannot have her death soiled by that bastard orgasming his dirty soot all over her.” It felt fantastic to want to destroy the Godfather! He hadn’t cared about anything in so long. There was a spark of life inside him after all. Revenge killing was a beautiful thing! He leapt to his feet and whistled for his horses to bring the carriage around.
But his lips flew off and landed in a puddle of engine oil.
“So, shall we go wife hunting then? I hear the Godfather works fast. You don’t have much time.” Napoleon brought out a dagger with a white blade that looked like it might be handy for reversing a body-falling-apart spell. “What’s it gonna be, old man? You going to pass up on exacting revenge on a bastard by saving a girl you idolize, or are you going to let yourself die some pathetic, wimpy loser?”
“I am on fire!” It was time for orgasms to be vilified! Augustus tossed an orange star at Napoleon. “Angelica’s in the null-zone in my mansion. You need—”
“Your mansion?” Napoleon frowned. “I already checked that.”
“The null zone, you dimwit! Am I really going to put her somewhere where magic will work? You can’t sense her because you’re magic! Take the star with you, use it to open the liquor cabinet, and then follow the directions.” He ripped his shirt open and bared his chest. “Save me now! I don’t have time to waste.”
“Stab yourself with this.” Napoleon tossed him the weapon. “You screw with me, and I’ll finish the job. Your penis will be the next appendage to fall off.”
Augustus slammed the blade into his heart and nearly screamed at the pain (“nearly” being the operative word—all he really did was give a manly sneer of disdain). Then his left foot dropped off and he fell to his knees. “You lied!”
“Relax, hot stuff. It takes time to reverse. You’ll still be on your knees by the time I find out if you’re telling the truth about Angelica. It’ll be easy to finish you off if you’re lying.” Napoleon saluted him, wove some archaic and unintelligible figure in the air, and then vanished.
Augustus yanked the blade out and tried to whistle again. No lips rendered him useless. His horses continued to graze on the sparse grass peeking up between the cobblestones. “Hey! Snowball! Carmen! Come on, girls!”
They didn’t move.
“Shit.”
He began to crawl.
***
Yeah, call Jarvis cynical, but the fact he could barely feel Reina tucked up against him because his skin was burning so badly could not be a good sign.
“These things are annoying as hell.” The Reap batted another flying specter out of his way. “But they’re fantastic for image building. Who did them for you?”
“They’re mine.” And he wasn’t all that happy to find they’d followed him into the limo and were caking the windows with their smut.
“Can I borrow them?” The Reap closed his eyes as Reina affixed the second set of falsies on him.
“Be my guest, if you can pry them away from me.” Because it could really be that easy to ditch his destiny.
The Reap held up his scythe. “Anyone want to come with me? Hop on.”
They circled closer to Jarvis. He shrugged. “Can’t help it. I’m a ghoul magnet.”
“Well, then, you must stay by my side. No one will know they’re for you.” The Reap eyed him with a calculating expression. “I’ll double the money. Come work for me, Hate. I think we’d get along so well.”
“I’ll think about it.” A man did need a career, after all. You know, if he wasn’t going to blow up. Odds of that? Not looking so good. Not even with Reina snuggled up against him and stroking his chest. What would he be like if she wasn’t touching him? He didn’t even need to ask. He knew.
He’d be dead.
“Finished.” Reina sat back. “I can’t believe you want to cover up your gorgeous lashes with false ones that are sparse and mutated. Don’t you think that would be a great tactic to have these luscious eyelashes such a contrast to the darkest hell you offer?”
“No, no, there can be no sign of humanity.” The Reap peered into the mirror. His face was steel gray, he appeared to be missing half his teeth, and his face was pinched and drawn with sunken cheeks and eyes. “I look great! I’d scare a vampire right out of his grave. You’re fantastic, my dear. Just in time, too,” he said as the car began to slow down. “We’re almost here.” He gave Reina a pair of cheek kisses that made something not so soft and fuzzy shift inside Jarvis.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he muttered. “I get testy when another man touches her.” He pulled her onto his lap, so they were chest to chest.
She draped herself over him, and pressed her lips to his neck. “You’re sweating.”
“Hot.” He closed his eyes, focusing on the coolness of her skin. “We gotta find Cameron.”
She rested her cheek against his. “I don’t want you to die,” she whispered. “I want you to stay with me.”
I do, too. As soon as the words jumped into his mind, an unfamiliar emotion flared inside Jarvis. Something that had nothing to do with darkness and hate and destruction. It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. He was stunned by the magnificence of the sensation. By the faintest hint of soul-deep peace, the utter stillness of his spirit. Then it filled him with warmth… not the burning fire of hate… something richer, purer, like the feel of the sunlight on his face in the morning when he was a kid, when he used to sneak out at dawn to watch Cameron play with the fawns. He reached for the light with his mind, tried to catch it—
The window beside Reina exploded in a shatter of glass. She was ripped out of his lap. Jerked out the window.
And then she was gone.
***
Reina shielded her head as she was hurled through the air. She smashed into a street vendor, sending his T-shirts flying off his cart.
“Hey! Watch out! Those are specially ordered for tonight’s award ceremony!” the man yelled at her.
“Sorry!” Yanking a Green Monster for the Testosterone Award T-shirt off her face, she rolled to her feet as a teenager in overalls, a straw hat, and freckles leapt across the road. He landed in front of her, crouching like a frog. His tongue flipped out, like a lizard or a teenage boy going in for his first French kiss.
Or a deedub trying to scent chocolate.
He smiled, revealing two pigeon-toed canines and a chipped incisor.
Her blood went cold. She’d never forget the tooth imprint she’d found on her sisters. It was him. The one who had killed their family. He was back, just as Natalie had said. “Tell me what you want,” she pleaded. “Anything, I swear it. I’ll give it you, just save my sister.”
“Save her?” He gave a low laugh that made her skin prickle. “Baby, I’m here to make sure she dies. One more kill and I’ll be able to graduate. And you’re not going to screw it up. Five hundred years in high school is two hundred years too long.”
“Screw it up?” Reina stared at him, realization dawning. “So it’ll work! That’s what you’re saying?”
“It might, and that’s why you’re going to have to stop messing with her.” The deedub approached with the cocky swagger of a teenager who could get anything he wanted. “I hate to do this, because you’re not a sweet, but hey, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta to do.” His teeth flashed and his gaze fixed on her throat. “My dad’s going to cut off my inheritance if I don’t graduate this spring. Can’t have that, now can I?”
/> “I don’t have time for this, you ingrate.” She waggled her fingers and dust shot out of her hands—
He slapped a gas mask over his face a split second before it hit him in the face. “You really think I’m dumb enough not to research who I’m going to kill? Come on, woman, don’t underestimate me just because I’m gorgeous.”
And to think her scythe was just sitting in the car. It so would have come in handy right now—
She forearmed him as he dove for her throat. His teeth slammed into her arm, and she had a split second to rejoice in the sensation of her forearm cracking underneath the force of his bite when pain ripped through her abdomen.
Oh, yeah, forgot about the raptor claws—
She grabbed for her stomach, and he grinned. “You just forgot to protect the throat.” And then he came at her with an openmouthed, full teeth assault—
A tower of raging black flames slammed into the deedub, sending him spinning sideways. Reina scrambled to her feet as Jarvis, utterly consumed by the purple and black fire, thrust his sword into the deedub’s heart. The creature screamed, his skin turned black and wrinkled, like he was having a party in raisin-ville, and then he vanished.
A small, purple rock remained behind, stuck to the tip of Jarvis’s sword. It was glowing and misshapen, like volcanic rock that had escaped a bad science experiment.
“Oh, God,” she whispered in horror. “Look at you.”
Jarvis was encased in flames. He was a blackened ghoul, a haunted demon. He was covered in the shadows that had been stalking him, glommed on to him like paper-mache. He held up his hand to her, palm up, an entreaty, silent begging for help. She didn’t hesitate. She ran for him, was almost to him, and then he exploded.
Chapter 23
Reina watched in horror as purple rocks began to rain from the sky. Thousands of fragments like the one that had been at the end of Jarvis’s sword. Littering the earth. Lodged in awnings. Busted through car windows.
One rolled to a stop right in front of Reina and she laid her hand over it. Searing hot. She picked it up, closed her eyes, and sent all the love in her soul into it. “I know you’re in there,” she whispered. “Please come back. Come back for me. I love you.”
The minute the words were out, she knew it was true. Knew that she’d fallen. Of course she had. How could she not? He was a man of such courage, who had held himself together against all odds for so long, a man who had stood by her even at cost to himself.
Rescuing her had been stupid of him to do. Of course it would have sent him over the edge. He’d known that, hadn’t he? And he’d done it anyway, so she could live.
This was a man who claimed not to be able to feel anything but hate? Hello? Could he be more wrong? She held the rock to her chest, and she felt her skin sizzling. “I’m not giving up on you,” she said. “Come back to me. Now!”
“For hell’s sake, woman, drop it!” The Reap ripped the stone out of her grasp and flung it across the street. It clunked to a stop against the curb. “Look at your hands.”
She saw she’d burned nearly all her skin off. She hadn’t made that rock cool off. It had been utterly resistant to her love. Jarvis was truly gone. “Oh, dear God.” She gripped her chest, assaulted with a sudden emptiness, a numbness, and a raw, eviscerating horror.
“Mourn him, my dear.” The Reap dropped her scythe on the sidewalk in front of her. “Death is a horrible, awful fate, and he’s writhing in agony right now—”
“Shut up!” She grabbed the scythe and swung it at his head. “Don’t play that crap on me! I know it’s not true. He’s in a happy place—”
“He’s Hate, my dear. It’s different for him.” The Reap blocked her blow with ease. “He really is suffering. If you listen closely, he may still be close enough to the physical world for you to hear his screams. And by the way, you do look like hell when you’re reaping. Very tortured. See you inside, death girl!”
He turned and loped across the street and into Fenway Park, his cape billowing behind him. “I imagine his skin is being ripped from his body right now,” he called out as he disappeared inside. “Pain, pain, pain—”
“Go away!” The scythe slipped from her fingers and Reina sank to the street, pressing her face in her hands, unable to stop the flood of loneliness. Of agony. The hollowness of her chest. She knew the grief and shock was coming. Been here before. Again and again, and again. And now, again.
But this was worse. The world was spinning away from her, grief hammering at her from all sides. She could see the anguish on her mom’s face when she’d taken her daughter’s hand and told her good-bye, because she wouldn’t be sane enough to say it when she actually died. She could smell the acridness of the blood oozing onto the wooden floor as her sisters lay bleeding from that initial attack. The wail of the sirens as the ambulances cut through the night, too late, too late. The utter silence of the house after her family had been taken away, leaving her behind, all alone. The oppressiveness of those walls, the furniture, so full of love, now empty.
It was alive again, closing in on her. Suffocating her.
It hurt too much. She couldn’t go through it again. Couldn’t survive it. Sobs racked her body, and she hunched over, holding her stomach.
A loud horn screeched, and someone yelled. She covered her ears, trying to shut it out, but then more wails ripped through the night. People shouting. Fists thwacking flesh. “Everyone shut up!” But the intrusions continued assaulting her. People were arguing up and down the street. Cabs honking at one another. A woman in an evening gown was in a fistfight with a homeless man. So much anger. So much fury.
So much hate.
Oh, no. Jarvis’s pebbly remains were poisoning the world, exactly as he’d predicted. His own worst nightmare. He’d fought so hard to protect others, and he’d failed. So close, he’d been so close, and he’d failed because he’d sacrificed himself and the world for her.
She was the one who’d let him down. She’d forced him to help her instead of going after his brother. She’d been so consumed by the potential loss of her own sister that she’d failed to appreciate his own struggle, his own goals, the man he was.
He’d known his fate, he’d faced it, and he’d accepted it. A man who’d had only fifty years of life, but stretched it to a hundred and fifty. He’d given it everything he had, and he’d taken the hit at the end so he could save her life. Jarvis had lived his whole life with passion instead of hiding from it, like she had.
A scream echoed through the night that Reina recognized instantly as her sister. Natalie. Reina whirled toward Fenway Park. Her own misery had kept her from being there for Jarvis, and now she was going to miss her chance with Natalie, too? Screw that.
She could fight with courage, too, just like he had. He’d faced his last moments with determination, using his last efforts to save her. Was she really going to dishonor his choice by curling up into a ball of misery, instead of taking action and making the best of whatever she could do?
What had living in fear gotten her? More loss. More fear. More failure. Yeah, not working so well to hide, was it? She could keep it up, or she could try to honor the legacy he had left behind. She could fight with all the life she had left in her.
She could be the woman Jarvis had always believed she was, and she knew that’s exactly who she wanted to be. His spirit was with her, by her side, cheering her on, and she wasn’t going to disappoint him. “This is for you, Jarvis.”
She grabbed the scythe and started to run toward the building. Natalie. I’m coming for you.
But Natalie wasn’t the only one she was coming for.
She was going after Cameron, too. For Jarvis. She was going to win everything for him. For the man she loved.
***
“I can’t believe you finally kicked the bucket.”
Jarvis groaned at Death’s familiar voice, but he was in too much agony to open his eyes. His body felt like it had been shredded and then fed to a bunch of hungry pit vipers. And he k
new what that felt like. “Go shave your legs. I’m not dead.”
“Close enough, my friend. You crossed the line.”
Yeah, right. He’d had this conversation with Death more than a hundred times. “Nothing’s changed. I’m not going.” Then he lifted his head and looked around. He wasn’t in the street outside Fenway Park. He wasn’t in the Reap’s limo. He wasn’t in the Den.
He was in a heart-shaped room decorated in more shades of white than Jarvis had thought existed, and he’d aced Color Composition 402 back at the Den. There was a plush white couch, a snowball white wood table with matching chairs, an ice sculpture of two swans necking, and several paintings of what appeared to be snowstorms. Yeah, so not thinking this was Kansas. “I don’t suppose this is the green room at the Testosterone Awards, is it?”
Jarvis!
“Reina!” At the distant sound of her voice, Jarvis shoved himself to his feet, surprised to find that his body felt lighter than it had in centuries, as if he’d ditched a thousand weights. He saw an opening in the whitewashed wall that had a large gold-gilded heart above the archway, and puffs of smoke were billowing out of the doorway. “Reina!” He sprinted for the door, hit the mist, and rebounded onto his ass. “What the hell?”
“I need to cleave your soul first.” Death was sitting on a black bench, the only item of color decorating the room. He was wearing a tux, a red boutonniere, and a gold crown emblazoned with the words Lifetime Achievement Winner: Testosterone Awards. “You can’t take the body with you.”
Had the awards started? “I have to get to Cam—”
“Sorry, my man, but the only place you’re going is the pearly gates of heaven.” Death jerked his finger at the cotton candy cloud emanating from the heart-shaped doorway. “It’s the service entrance. More efficient to carry souls in that way, so you don’t get bogged down with the red tape and bureaucracy.”
Jarvis stared at the cotton ball parade. “I can’t be dead.” Then he noticed his palm was pristine. No black stains on it. No shadows stalking the walls. This time, the lightness in his body took on new meaning. The hate was gone.
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