“I brought you some pie, Captain G.” Another grunt, a pleased one. I placed it on his table with a plastic fork. “See you next week.”
I turned to continue down the hall when a sudden chill crawled up my spine. Even before I turned to look, I knew Dev’s soul was nearby. The chill accompanying him was different from Echo’s or a regular soul’s. It was sharper.
I turned and saw Dev’s dark soul hover a few feet away. Somehow I thought I’d see through him during the day. He was still dark, his edges blurry. This end of the hallway tended to be busy because it was close to the entrance. Everyone was either rubbing their arms or tugging the lapels of their robes, jackets, and sweaters as they walked past us.
Two nurses walked right through him and visibly shuddered. “Why is it so cold in here?” one asked me.
Would they think I was crazy if I told them a ghost was in the building? Probably. Most people didn’t believe in ghosts—humans’ name for souls.
“I’ll see if someone adjusted the thermostat,” the second nurse said and hurried away. The other one smiled vaguely in my direction and disappeared inside a room.
I signaled Dev and nodded toward the staff bathroom a few yards away. I hurried forward and disappeared inside. Just in case he was planning possession, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Raine. She answered in two rings.
“If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, find me,” I said.
“Cora, what’s going on?”
I heard the concern in her voice, and Dev chose that moment to drift through the wall and join me. “I’m dealing with an unusual soul. Make it two minutes.”
I hung up and gripped my cell phone. My other hand slipped inside the pocket of my vest and closed around my artavus. Despite what I’d told the two soul reapers earlier, I wasn’t sure I wanted to help this soul.
“What do you want, Dev?”
5. A MELTDOWN
He angled his head, and a chuckle shot from him. He pointed at me then at his chest. I knew that gesture only too well. It meant he wanted my help. There was no way was I letting him inside me.
“I know you want my help, but I don’t think I can give it.”
A sound rumbled from his chest, and I took a step back, my grip tightening on my runic blade. Had a minute passed since I’d spoken with Raine? I readied my phone for a redial. As though he sensed my fear, he took a step back and pointed tentatively at my hand.
“What? My cell phone?”
He nodded.
“What about it?”
He pointed at his chest then my phone. I scowled. “You want to use my phone.”
Another nod.
“Uh, you are an energy with no physical form, Dev.” He made a gesture, and I realized what he meant. “Ahh, you want to enter it like you did my laptop.”
He tapped his head and nodded.
“Yeah, I’m a genius. Okay, I’ll let you haunt my cell, but first, I have to make a quick call.” I redialed Raine’s number. “It’s about you, so try not to take offense.” Raine picked up after one ring.
“You okay?” she asked, not sounding too worried. She was a Seeress, so maybe she’d seen my future and knew I’d be okay.
“For now. The soul needs my help, so he won’t do anything stupid.”
Dev spread his arms as though to say, “What could I possibly do to you?”
“He knows Echo would haul his ass to Corpse Strand if he hurts me,” I added.
“Echo’s not there?” she asked.
“I can handle souls without his help, you know.”
“But just in case, I’m coming—”
“No! Don’t, Raine.” She was such a worrywart, but this was my business, and I wanted to do it without her help or Echo’s. “You’ll only scare him away. Besides, I’m sure Echo is waiting for me outside in the car and will charge in here if I’m not out soon.” Got that Dev? I glanced at the soul to make sure he did. He grunted.
“Be careful, Cora,” Raine said. “After you called, I touched the bracelet you left here last week and saw something I don’t like.”
My stomach dropped. There were perks to having a Seeress for a best friend, and then there were the non-perks. If such a word existed. I didn’t want to know about my future unless… “Am I going to go crazy from a possession, or just get decapitated and die?”
Raine laughed. “Ew. Nothing that dire, but be careful. There are a couple of not-so-happy Grimnirs who might be paying you a visit soon.”
“Met them already. They’re friends of Echo’s, and I’m using the term friends loosely here.” I gave the faceless Dev a toothy grin. “Okay, gotta go. Talk to you in a bit.” I cut the connection and placed the cell by the sink. Dev slithered into my phone through the headphone opening.
My eyes didn’t leave the LCD screen. I wasn’t sure whether to open the notepad to see what he’d written when the speakers buzzed and a voice said, “Can you hear me, Cora?”
I jumped. He’d hijacked my cell phone’s personal assistant and navigator. His voice was deep with a strong accent. I wondered if Echo had spoken with the same accent. Maybe once upon a time.
“Cora?” he asked again. “Am I saying your name correctly?”
I was actually talking to a soul. Ha, how cool was that! “Yeah. I mean, yes you are.”
“Good. How did you know my name is Dev? You found a decoder for my language?”
I liked his accent. It was close to Irish, my father’s people. “No. Echo told me.”
Dev let out a string of words that didn’t need translation.
I tried not to cringe. He was loud, and I wasn’t sure whether I should tell him to chill. Most phone assistants spoke in a monotone. “I hope you’re not cursing me out there, pal.”
“Of course not,” he said sarcastically. “You just had to tell him after I told you not to.”
“You grunted something, Dev. I’m not a grunt expert. Besides, I don’t keep secrets from Echo. Why didn’t you just enter my laptop or phone and talk to me before, instead of skulking around and writing mysterious notes I can’t read? It’s obvious you can speak English.”
“Doesn’t mean I can write it.”
“Why didn’t you want him to know you’re around anyway?”
“Because he’d come after me before we got a chance to talk, and he did. I was specific. I wrote that I need your help. Yours, not his. And not tell him. But what do you do? You tell him.”
I made a face. “Well, you are here. He’s not.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not searching and plotting my demise,” he retorted.
Humility was obviously not sewn into his DNA. I leaned against the counter so I was closer to the phone. “News flash, pal. You’ve already met your demise.”
“News flash, Immortal. There are far worse things than death. Did he tell you how I died?”
I really loved his accent. “Yes.”
Silence followed.
“Dev?”
“You still want to help me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just because he’s angry with you doesn’t mean I have to be, too. I don’t follow him blindly. As for helping you, I haven’t decided yet.” Echo had to be on board, and it was going to take some serious kissing and begging to convince him.
A chuckle floated from the phone. “I think my friend finally found a worthy mate.”
“Happy to know I passed the test. What do you really want, Dev?”
“Help me talk to Echo. I need, um, what’s the word? Closure.”
So did Echo, but his reaction to Dev’s name said he’d never seek it. “Uh, I don’t think I can.”
“Why not? It’s your job to find closure for souls, right?”
“No, it’s not. I choose to help souls from the goodness of my heart.”
“Echo is one lucky man. He didn’t just land a pretty face; you’re kindhearted too.”
“Kissing up won’t win you brownie points.” I cocked my eyebrows. He had no face. “How do you know I’m pretty?”
He chuckled. “Most Mortals and objects are blurry, but you glow. Unlike Valkyries and Grimnirs, the runes on your skin act like a beacon whether you engage them or not. I’d have to be blind not to notice you. Also, only a pretty woman can talk to Rhys the way you did. One look into his violet eyes and most women tend to turn into blabbering idiots. By the way, I like the dress. Suits you. Loved last night’s lingerie better, though.”
Heat crawled up my face. “If, and that’s a big if, I decide to help you, we will start with a few ground rules. At the top of the list is you never ever come into my bedroom. Second, the rest of the house is off limits, too. My parents don’t know what I do, so I can’t talk to you while they’re around. You’re also ice cold. Dad has an active imagination without you fueling it. You don’t pay me a visit at night period. Doesn’t matter whether I’m at Echo’s or at a friend’s, movies, or whatever. You want to talk, we do it during the day. I like that you can crawl inside electronics.”
“Commandeer electronics, sweetheart,” he corrected. “Not the same thing. It took a lot of work to master that move.”
Vain, just like Echo. “So what do you want to tell Echo? Ask for his forgiveness? Explain why you betrayed him? He’s still pretty pissed.”
Dev groaned. “A couple of millennia and he’s still holding a grudge. He’s so petty and hot-headed.”
“And right to be angry,” I finished, the need to defend my man making me lean toward my phone. “You were his best friend and you betrayed him. People died. Your people. Echo sacrificed his position as a Valkyrie for them, and you pulled a shitty move on him. How did you expect him to react?”
Silence followed. I was sure Dev was going to slither out of my cell phone and do something I wouldn’t like, but all he asked was, “Are you done?”
His voice dripped with ice. Good thing I wasn’t easily intimidated. “No. If you are here to hurt Echo, I will disperse you.”
He sighed and backed down. “You know there are two sides to a story.”
“Are you saying the version Echo told me is wrong?”
“No, but there’s more, and he needs to hear it.”
“Why can’t you just appear to him and tell him?”
“He doesn’t use electronics and he carries a stick, a very large stick with a sharp iron tip and deadly runes that do strange things to souls.”
“It’s called a scythe,” I said.
Dev chuckled.
Smart-ass. He knew what it was. “Get to the point, Dev. Remember you’re trying to show me you’re worth helping.”
“Ouch. I need a mediator. I try to talk to him once every few centuries, and each time, he threatens to take me to some torture island in Hel’s realm before he can listen to anything I have to say. And if you know him as well as you claim, you know he’d do it and not lose sleep over it.”
“Sleep over it,” I said at the same time.
Dev laughed. “I tried using Nara, but he got pissed when he found out and broke things off with her.”
My stomach shifted. I’d gone into selective listening at “he broke things off with her.” “Nara was Echo’s girlfriend?”
I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Dev said, “Oh. You didn’t know?”
No, I didn’t. But then again, we rarely talked about his past conquests. I never wanted to know. Nara was a Druidess. Older than me. I’d bragged to Mrs. J that Echo wasn’t into older women. Obviously, I was wrong.
A commotion in the hallway drew my eyes to the closed door. I expected a nurse to burst in on me and Dev.
“I have to go. Can you get out of my phone now?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” I asked absentmindedly, my attention on whatever was happening out there. Someone shouted something, and running feet followed.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned Nara,” Dev continued. “I thought you knew her and Rhys when I heard you talking to them earlier. On the other hand, I only caught the tail end of your conversation, so—”
Thuds and shouting came from the front entrance, and a bad feeling washed over me. Chaos usually meant Valkyries and Grimnirs.
“What was that?” Dev asked.
“I don’t know, but I have to go.”
“When will I know if you’ve decided to help me?”
“After I talk to Echo. Now get out of my phone,” I snapped.
“Okay. No need to be snippy.” He slithered out of my cell phone. I grabbed it, hurried to the door, and yanked it open.
Two security guys almost knocked me over as they rushed past. Then I heard, “How can her car be in the parking lot if she’s left the building? She’s in here somewhere.”
Echo!
I broke into a run even though I knew the rules about not running in the hallway.
“Mortal, get your hands off me,” Echo snarled.
Crap! He was going to bring the roof down.
“CORA! Where are you?”
The fear in his voice pelted my senses like a gust of hailstones. I careened around the corner, almost bumping into Joan, the head of entertainment. I burst into the foyer, which was streaming with the staff. I pushed past them, my eyes locked on the four men dragging Echo toward the entrance. That he let them grab and move him was a testament to his self-control.
“Echo,” I called out. “Here.”
His head whipped around, his usually golden eyes a stormy wildness I’d never seen before. He shook the four men holding him like they were ragdolls, sending them flying. Then he closed the gap between us. I flew into his arms, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his mid-section. He was shaking.
“I’m okay, baby,” I whispered. “I’m okay.”
“I couldn’t feel you.” He buried his face in my nape, his arms almost cracking my ribs. I engaged my runes just in case. “I couldn’t feel you,” he added again.
“That’s because I was safe.” Stroking his hair, I absorbed the tremors shooting through him. “I’m here now. Nothing bad happened.”
He turned and carried me out of the building, his strides long, tremors still shooting through him. I could feel eyes following us. I didn’t know how I’d explain him to the nursing home staff or if they’d understand, yet I had to try if I wanted to continue helping out there.
Echo propped me against the body of my car and leaned back to study my face. He looked like Hel swallowed him and spat him out.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” I whispered.
Instead of answering me, he forked his fingers through my hair, gripped my head to hold it in place, and crushed my lips with his. The unfiltered fear I’d seen in his eyes translated into something dark and stormy. I wasn’t ready for the total invasion of my senses.
He ravished my mouth like a man starved. The adrenaline coursing through his veins made him ruthless in the way he molded me to his will until I couldn’t think of anything else but his mouth, his tongue, his hard body pressing against my softness.
We strained against each other. Soon the need to reassure him and ease his fear mushroomed into something more primal. Runes blazing, senses exploding, I wanted to rip the clothes off him.
When he yanked his lips from mine, we were both panting. His gleaming golden eyes bored into mine, telling me what he still couldn’t put into words. He’d thought he’d lost me, and he needed to reconnect with me, to confirm I was really here and allay his demons.
Still cradling me, he opened the car door and sat with me on his lap, arms tight around my waist. I buried my face in the crook of his neck. We didn’t speak until our heartbeats settled to a normal rhythm. I stroked his nape and kissed anywhere I could reach on his face.
“Look at me,” I said.
He did, his eyes still haunted.
“I stopped to talk to a soul, and I thought it would only take a few minutes. I didn’t know I’d taken long.”
He kissed my nose, still not speaking. Echo was a talker, so for him to clam up said a lot.
“
Open a portal and take me home,” I whispered.
He nodded then nudged me to my feet. In the next second, he engaged his speed and invisibility runes, and pulled an artavus from inside his duster. He was gone before I could ask what he planned to do. Probably to etch forgetful runes on the people who’d witnessed his brief meltdown.
Less a minute later, he was back. He slid behind the wheel, but didn’t start the engine. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. I reached out and rubbed his back. Splayed my fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp, imagining how he would react if something bad ever happened to me. He’d probably lose his mind.
“I need you in my life, Cora-mio,” he said.
“I know.”
“If someone took you from me…” He let out a shaky breath as though the thought was too painful to voice.
I gripped the back of his head and tilted it so he could look into my eyes. “No one will ever do that, Echo. Never. Remember our vow. I’m yours and you are mine. Alive or dead.”
His eyes blazed. “Engage your invisibility runes,” he added in a voice gone husky.
He reached under his duster and removed his portal artavus. His movements fast, he created a portal like he’d done earlier. This time it led to his bedroom.
He took my hand. We stood and entered the room. He faced me, hands fisted on his sides, his eyes raw with emotions I couldn’t begin to understand, his entire posture defenseless.
“I need you,” he whispered.
“I know.”
He swallowed. “Will you love me?”
My heart squeezed in my chest. “Always.”
He went into hyper-speed, duster, shirt, pants, and shoes flying from the whirlpool that was Echo. When he finished, he stood before me.
I stared, my mouth dry. He never failed to take my breath away.
He walked to where I still stood in the middle of the room, cupped my face, and lowered his head. The kiss started sweet and soft, but shot up to sizzling hot in seconds. He took off my clothes faster than he’d taken off his. My head spun as he scooped me and lay me gently on the bed.
He paused and studied me with an unreadable expression.
Souls (Runes series) Page 7