“Just remember, I was the grim reaper and I was fucking good at it.”
I looked over at Fate again, trying to not roll my eyes. Really? How long am I supposed to do this?
I interpreted Fate’s shrug and bounce of his head to mean, I think he’s almost done.
“Lars, I promise, I will not touch your pretty princess.” I withheld now get the hell out of my way but with major strain.
“Are you giving me your word?”
“Yes. Now step aside. I feel like you’re a dark cloud hovering over me.”
Finally he stepped aside.
I couldn’t breathe deep enough as I got close. I felt like I was getting almost high off just the remnants of her aura. Holy shit, when she’d still been human, she must have been glorious. And her face was perfection. Between her karma and her angelic looks, she was downright ethereal.
She looked nervous as I approached her and I could understand. Being introduced to this world by Malokin when you weren’t of his ilk must have been jarring to say the least. I held out my hand, trying to reassure her I wasn’t looking to kill her. “I’m Karma.”
“Faith,” she said, as she tentatively took my offering. Her eyes darted to the men behind us, watching. “Can they hear us?”
“Probably. But I think the office is sound proofed,” I offered, seeing how she clearly didn’t want to be overheard.
There was a tiny single nod to her head as her eyes darted to Lars and back to me. She headed toward the back but before we could enter the office, Lars was blocking our way.
“Where are you going?”
I looked to Faith, expecting her to take the lead but she didn’t. So I stepped up.
“We want a minute to talk without all of you guys hovering.”
When he didn’t budge, it hit me like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. He’s totally into this girl. This wasn’t just a crush. This was a killing blow. Wow, how the mighty have fallen.
“We’re fine. Get out of the way,” I said, waving my hands and demonstrating I wanted a clear path with him out of it.
His overprotective ways might have pissed me off if I didn’t understand. I could see it in his eyes, if I harmed this girl even an iota, he’d rip me apart. Why? Because Lars was utterly in love with her to the point of absurdity. Or maybe there was nothing absurd about it. Maybe it was beautiful.
Why couldn’t Fate be a little more like that? I knew he had my back, but this was I’ll tear you piece by piece because the sun rises with this girl in the morning and my life would be perpetual darkness without her.
“We’re fine,” I repeated, giving him some slack since he was new to the whole caring-about-someone-other-than-himself phenomenon.
Finally, he nodded back and stepped out of our way.
Faith stepped into the office and I followed, closing the door behind us.
“How are you doing?” I asked, even though I could see the answer clearly in the drawn look about her eyes.
“Getting by. I’d heard you were human first.”
I nodded but remained silent, hoping to encourage her to speak what was bothering her.
“Does it get better? I mean, it’s not bad, I just feel…”
“Lost?”
“Kind of.”
It was obvious she wasn’t a natural complainer. I liked her already. I knew from personal experience how lousy the last few weeks must have been but she wasn’t going to cry the blues. It was a good thing too. In our situation, you needed to be able to suck it up or you’d crumble under the pressure. All she was looking for was answers.
“It gets a lot easier.” I nodded a head towards the door that closed us off from the rest of them. “I’m not sure if they start seeming less crazy or we get more so, but you’ll adjust.” And then I couldn’t stop myself from digging for some dirt. Maybe I was getting more like my coworkers. “You two involved?” I asked when it was so clear something was going on with them.
“I don’t know what you’d call it,” she answered, somewhat evasively.
“He’s very protective of you. I’ve never seen him act like that.”
“He also thinks I might have been the scum of the Earth in my mortal life so I’m not exactly sure why.” She said it somewhat jokingly but there was an edge to her voice that made it very obvious how much it hurt her, at least to someone who was listening.
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “There’s an easy fix to that.”
She sank into his office chair, defeat written all over her as her shoulders slumped. I came around and perched my hip on it.
“I know what you do. And I know if you told him I wasn’t a bad person, he’d believe you. But do you know how that feels? That he needs to hear it from someone else?”
“Why make this difficult? I can tell you care about him and that he cares about you. A handful of words from me and you two can get a—maybe not a fresh start but something better than the place you’re in now.”
“And be with a man that can’t take my word? Can’t believe I’m a decent person unless someone else tells him so?” She shook her head.
There was a knock on the door before Fate yelled, “You almost done?”
Faith stood. “I’d appreciate it if you refrained from telling him anything.”
I nodded, even though I had my doubts. It would be so much easier to set this right but I respected what she said. And to hell with it, I had my own issues. If she didn’t want me butting into hers, I should be happy to leave it alone.
I opened the door to Lars looming close by and Fate looking inpatient. Faith followed me out, walking right past Lars without a word, his eyes following her as she moved across the room. Yep, that relationship was seriously hitting the skids.
Lars moved in closer to me. “Well?” The one word asking for information he desperately wanted and only I could give.
A huge part of me felt for the big stupid jerk but my eyes met Faith’s. I got it. If Fate had to go around asking people if I was a good person, I’d be pretty teed off too.
“I couldn’t get a read on her,” I lied.
The disappointment in his face made me want to smack him upside the head.
“Nothing?”
“Yes.” I was short with him and walked away abruptly. I couldn’t help it. If he was going to be this stupid, maybe he deserved to lose her.
Fate was back at my side, his hand wrapping around mine.
I looked to the table that had been set up in the middle of the room. A line of instruments sat next to it, a scalpel among them. Oh goodie.
I let go of Fate’s hand to lie down on the spot so clearly meant for me and unzipped the jeans I wore. I glanced over to make sure the shades were drawn before I tugged them down and took off the wrapping I kept over it.
Fate pulled a chair up close and grabbed my hand again but my eyes were only on the tray and Cutty.
“Karma, I’m going to give you a shot of something to numb up the area,” Cutty said as he moved into place.
I nodded. “Good idea.”
“Don’t look at them,” Fate said by my side, drawing my attention back to him. “Look at me.”
I did. He was sitting there, a smile I know he didn’t feel on his face. Both hands now wrapped around the one of mine and my breathing grew ragged.
“Don’t be scared.” One hand reached forward to brush the hair from my eyes and then cupped my cheek. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
Suddenly I was scared to death, and it had nothing to do with Cutty or the fact that they were going to slice into me at any moment.
I looked at his dark hair waving back from his face, the light green flecks in his eyes, which, when he stared at me like he was right now, seemed to glow. The way his hand grasped mine with such confidence, like he wouldn’t ever let go, and there was no denying it anymore.
I loved him. And it didn’t seem to matter how he felt or what I wanted to feel. It just was.
“If you don’t s
top looking at me like you’re completely freaking out, I’m going to make them stop,” he said. If he hadn’t been smiling, I might have believed him, but he was clearly teasing me.
“I’m okay.” More accurately, I was okay with what Cutty was about to do. It was the love that scared me to pieces. How had this snuck up on me? I’d thought I’d been doing such a good job keeping my emotional distance.
“Close your eyes and I’ll tell you a secret,” he said as I felt the needle entering an area near my tattoo.
Listening to him speak softly to me, it was as if we were the only ones in the room. I closed my eyes, my face still turned toward him and took the excuse to break eye contact and retreat, at least visually, into my own head, to try and come to terms with the overwhelming feelings hitting me.
“The first time I met you was approximately seven hundred years ago. The Black Plague struck a little town in France you were living in. You were fourteen at the time. Your father was dead and your mother was recently struck down by the disease. You had five younger siblings you were caring for when you got sick. But you were supposed to make it. I came to your bedside, ready to intervene if necessary. As soon as I saw you, I knew I wouldn’t have to. Even then, ravaged with sickness, you were the most beautiful mortal I’d ever seen.
“I still remember you turning to one of your younger sisters who was petrified to leave your side, fearing her last caretaker would die if she so much as stepped a foot away, and telling her you weren’t leaving her. And I knew you weren’t going to need me. You’d make it all on your own.
“Three hundred years ago, you were a girl of twenty on a ship sailing off the Massachusetts coast during a storm. The boat smashed into the rocks. Every passenger, even the hardest sailors, all died except for you. Waves pounding your body, over and over again, taking you under until I thought you couldn’t possibly make it. Just when I thought I’d need to intervene, I saw you break the surface. You never quit. As others tired and lost their strength to go on, you kept fighting. You fought for hours, longer than I thought a person could even will their body to swim in such frigid waters, but you did it.
“The fight in you, the pure essence, was like nothing I’d encountered. Not in a human, ever. Not before and not since. I was captivated.”
“It’s not going to work,” Cutty said, interrupting the moment and I felt Fate’s hand tighten on mine.
“You didn’t even try yet.” I hadn’t felt the scalpel on my skin.
I opened my eyes and sat up partially to get a view of the area myself. I was as unmarred as I’d expected.
Cutty tossed down the scalpel onto the tray as if annoyed with the item. “I can’t get through the skin.”
“Try farther away from it,” I said, wanting this to be over if it was what needed to be done.
I looked about the room at the other people gathered who’d been watching, and I could see the answer on their faces before Cutty said anything.
“I tried all the way up to your ribs. Whatever is going on, it isn’t something I can get at.”
Fate grabbed my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Sure.” I nodded.
His hand wrapped around my nape, as if trying to impart his own conviction in a belief that was looking hazier and hazier. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said, more for his benefit.
I got up and started to right my clothes as Fate and his guys seemed to have been answering some silent invitation I hadn’t received to gather, one by one, into the office. Faith was minding her own business on the other side of the room, looking over something by the register, clearly trying to give me my space.
I sat on the bench and Paddy sat down beside me.
“You know I care for you,” Paddy said.
“I do.” As much as someone like him could but there wasn’t any need to get insulting. I’d already stolen a chunk out of him, might as well leave the feelings intact if possible.
So wrapped up in my own thoughts, it took me a moment for the way he’d said the words to hit home. This wasn’t a let’s chat about our feelings because it’s looking a little ugly right now type thing but something altogether different. It was an apology. The prospect of what he was apologizing for put a golf ball sized lump in my throat.
Paddy started speaking again. “The others, they would’ve done something immediately at any hint.”
I nodded, listening and letting him do the talking. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions but the more he talked, the worse the feeling became.
“If it were just I…” Paddy shrugged. “I’m tired. I’ve been around long enough to have lost the thrills of being alive in the typical sense. I could let it all go tomorrow. But there’s certain things that can’t happen.”
“But it’s not so just say it.”
“If this continues, it’s going to be too dangerous for you to…remain.”
We sat, staring at each other. I got it. I understood on a larger level why he felt this was necessary. But it didn’t stop sharp claws of hurt from shredding through me. I’d known for a while that I could only trust Paddy to a point, but having now reached that limit still felt like a betrayal.
“I didn’t ask for this. And whatever it is that’s happening, I can’t even use it,” I said, pleading my case and trying to buy time until I figured something out.
“I’m sorry, but if we can’t stop this,” he motioned to the chunk in his arm, concealed by clothing, “even if I didn’t, they would.”
“Do they know what is happening?”
“Yes. I felt I had to tell them. I know this was my idea in the first place and I’m trying to fix it.”
“I understand.” But I wouldn’t go down meekly. I’d let him think I was fine with playing the sacrificial lamb. I wasn’t but he didn’t need to know that.
We fell into silence again but not the calm companionship of friends. No, this was a silence born of regrets and fear. The fear was mostly me. He’d kill me. I had no doubts about that. I’d like to think he was the one with regrets but that might’ve been wishful thinking.
Fate walked over and stopped in front of where we sat in silence. His eyes flitted between the two of us and I knew he was picking up on the tension. You would’ve had to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to, and Fate was none of those things.
“You ready?” he asked, probably sensing my desire to leave.
I nodded.
I didn’t say another word until we were several miles from the tattoo shop and I knew Paddy was gone. Even then I hesitated. What if in some small way Fate felt the same? That maybe it would be better to get rid of me than jeopardize the long time establishment?
No. I wouldn’t think like that. For all the faults I could lay at Fate’s feet, he’d been loyal, more loyal than perhaps I’d deserved.
Finally, when I knew we’d be at his house soon, I managed to get the words out. “If we can’t stop what’s happening to me, they’re going to kill me. I got the sense that Paddy will do it himself if needed.”
His knuckles turned white where he gripped the wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me back there?”
“I thought it would be better if I didn’t. We aren’t at that point yet.”
“The point where I kill him?”
“Or he kills you.”
“I wouldn’t have been the one that died.”
God, how I hoped that was true. “He’s strong, even with me draining him.”
“I don’t make idle promises. I wouldn’t have died.” He slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “Fuck. You know he won’t show his face again now. If I see him I will kill him.”
We pulled up to the house, three thirteen year old looking boys walking on the roof with rifles in hand.
Fate slammed the gears into park in the garage and I thought the car door was going to fly off the hinges from the force of him closing it. I watched him walk into the house, too mad to speak.
I got the anger part. It had been grow
ing in me since we’d left Lars’s shop, and I was starting to wish I’d had it out with Paddy there.
I looked upward. I didn’t know who I was talking to anymore, whether it was God, the four, or some other universal power. I wasn’t sure it mattered.
“You think you’ve got me beat? That I’ll walk softly into death? Throw my body on the top of some heap reserved for martyrs and saints?” I let out a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “Shows what you people know. You’ve got me pegged wrong then. Go ahead. Try and take me.” I held out my hands as I stood alone in the garage. “Go ahead. I know you hear me."
One of the stockpiled guns fell off the shelf and landed pointing directly at my chest.
“What? Can’t do it?” I said, not budging a hair as I stared down the barrel. “Come on. Give it your best shot!”
“What the hell you doing?” Bobby stood in the doorway.
I watched as he walked in and wondered how much he’d seen.
“And what crawled up Fate’s ass? He’s shooting arrows at anyone that even goes near him.”
He crossed the room and walked over to the gun that was aimed right at me. He picked it up and looked at the clip. “It’s fully loaded. Strange for stock not being used. Also looks like it’s jammed.” His sweet innocent eyes looked right at me and I saw a glimpse of the real age before his chin went up a hair. “Looks like I’m betting on the right horse.” He winked as he tossed the gun back on the bench.
“I wouldn’t bet too big. Not sure there’s going to be a winner in the bunch.”
“Not much left to hold onto then for a rainy day.”
The kid had a point.
Chapter Thirty-One
We’d been home for hours. Fate was silent the majority of the time. As tired as I was, rest didn’t want to come. I’d finally decided to give up and watch another day turn to night.
The sand was moist under my feet as I walked to the water’s edge, letting the breaking waves lap at my ankles. The telltale signs of the universe at work swirled in dark shadows on the horizon and I wondered at its plan—or lack thereof.
Fated: Karma Series, Book Three Page 21