by Rowan Larke
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It was all too much. The noise of the sirens, the rumble of the ambulance itself, Mihai's soft voice, the other man occasionally barking information to himself or someone else, who never spoke. The pain of leaving Jason. The anger—at Mihai for bringing her back, Tamiel for not warning her. For sending her in the first place. Had it been easier before she'd seen Jason again?
Somehow she didn't think so, but she didn't want to admit that, even to herself. Then she remembered something else. A little detail, but it was one that would make it all worthwhile to her.
She lifted her hand, though it took almost all her energy to do so. By the time she had it positioned above her chest, she could barely hold it up, and it flopped to her chest like a fish out of water. Yet it was exactly where she'd needed it to be. Because she felt it. The thin, taut, cottony thread she'd been unaware of before her death. Her connection to Jason. Closing her eyes, she let out a soft sigh of relief.
She just had to bide her time.
It seemed a waste of time for them to patch her up, but she'd let them. The minute she was alone, she'd take care of it. She'd take a million pills or slit her wrists, shoot herself… Hell, she'd do all of the above. But she'd die, and she'd follow that connection straight to his side. They'd be together. Forever this time.
A peaceful smile curved her lips, and she let herself surrender to unconsciousness for a while. To dream, hopefully, of Jason.
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Chapter Fourteen
Tamiel moved to embrace Jason, preparing for another life-walk. How many would this make? He was so tired. Jason had been dead for a few years; how much harder was that going to make this? Not that it mattered. He had a job to do. He'd do it. Determination stiffened his spine. Thunder clapped in the air around them, and Tamiel was thrown back three steps. “What?”
he asked peevishly. It occurred to him he was being pissy at the Almighty, and that he'd been doing a lot of that lately. He didn't much care. This job was brutal. Sometimes, being a smart-ass helped him through it.
The thunder grumbled again, and this time he could hear the words. “There's no need for that, Tamiel.” Tears pricked Tamiel's eyes, but he didn't let them fall. Couldn't. The tears of an angel were sacred.
“I don't understand,” he said, and his voice was mostly free of anger.
“He's learned his lessons. You heard him. I know you heard him, because I heard him. What more could he learn from a life-walk?” Tamiel let the voice roll through his mind the way he let flavors roll over his tongue. It had been a very long time since God had spoken to him directly, and not through the rain or the thunder or quivering lights. He'd thought God couldn't talk to him anymore, that Tamiel had sullied himself so much with his work that God had to step away. Instead, his mistake had cost him God's voice as well. The tears he couldn't let fall stabbed at his lids. Tamiel had missed Him.
“Then what do I do with him?”
Laughter at that, and Tamiel relished the sound like it was a drug. “Out of your waters, little fisherman?” Tamiel fought the rise of emotions at God's teasing. The nickname wasn't one Tamiel had ever worn with pride. Not like the apostles, who were fishers of men. Tamiel was a fisher of souls. The joke wasn't any funnier now than it had been centuries ago. Yet the sound of
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God's laughter—a sound Tamiel hadn't heard in years—made it impossible to hold on to his pique.
“Yes,” he admitted instead. “I have no idea what to do here.”
“Fix your mistake.”
“I tried that.” Tamiel's anger had almost as much rumble to it as God's voice had had initially.
“Make him understand what needs to be done. Without a life-walk.” He officially sounded frustrated now, so Tamiel bit off his instinctive reply. “A little test, if you will.”
Which confirmed what Tamiel already knew—Jason hadn't heard a word of their byplay. He'd been frozen in time while Tamiel and God had their sidebar, and Jason would be released when God was ready, and not a moment before. “He needs a test? After all this?” He wasn't arguing, though. For the first time in…longer than he could remember, further back even than the last time he'd heard God laugh…Tamiel wasn't arguing.
Jason looked up at him, blinking as if he was dislodging sleep from his eyes.
“We need to sever the connection,” Tamiel said. No preamble. No warning. It was better that way.
“What?” Jason's hands flew protectively to where the band spun out of his chest like a red spiderweb. “I can't do that.” His voice and his eyes were anguished, and Tamiel resisted the pull of them on his heartstrings.
“Look at how she's been, Jason. Why do you think that is?” Tamiel kept his voice soft. So gentle. Not accusing, not angry. Just calm, decisive reason. “Because she's still connected to you. So connected, in fact, she's repelling other ordinary connections with other ordinary humans.”
Jason crumpled. There was no other word for it. His face seemed to fall in on itself; his knees shook. “I did that?”
Tamiel shook his head. Gentle. Always gentle. That was the key here; he knew it. “No. We all did that. Your connection with her was a true one.” Tamiel felt the smile splitting his face.
“Your love was a true love.” Tamiel gestured at the connecting thread with one finger. “You both earned that. But you died, Jason, and Clarissa didn't. Imagine being tied to a dead body for three years of your life. The flesh rotting, bugs starting to infest it—you wouldn't wish that for her, would you?”
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Jason shook his head. Tamiel wasn't sure if it was an automatic response, if Jason had heard a word he'd said. But he kept pressing. “You wouldn't do that to her, but you're willing to tie her to your soul. Not cool, man. Not cool at all.” No disapproval in his tone, though. He understood what Jason was doing. Shit, if Tamiel himself had that sort of connection to someone, a genuine love like that, returned by the object of his affections? He'd want to hold it tight too. Jason looked around as if he might find the truth in the room around him. And maybe he did, because as his gaze lighted on item after item with no connection to him, his eyes started to light with understanding. “It's why she was more at peace here, isn't it? Because I never came here. It stretched our connection somehow.”
Tamiel shrugged, but it was as good a reason as any. He didn't say a word, afraid anything he said might change what was going on inside Jason right now. Ripples in a pond—
unpredictable and unchangeable.
Jason's back straightened, and he met Tamiel's gaze. “If that's what we have to do for Clarissa, that's what we have to do.”
Tamiel nodded, but in his mind, he was still imagining how it would feel to have someone truly love him. Someone he could love back. And as he lifted a letter opener from the desk and held it toward Jason, he wondered if he could make the same decision, if he'd been in Jason's place.
Then he shut down thought altogether as Jason held the edge of the letter opener to the connection binding him to his one true love. With a quick breath, Jason slashed upward with the sharper edge, severing the bond. The other end whiplashed away like a released spring, and Jason fell to his knees.
Tamiel hurried to his side but stopped short of touching him. The last thing Jason would want was his help. Right? He felt his hand fist, almost of their own accord, at his sides. He had no idea how to deal with this. No idea how to help at all. The fact that it was all his fault sucker punched him once again, and he fought back waves of guilt. His fault. His fucked-up reap. He was the reason that poor soul had been tethered to some living girl for three years, and the reason she'd been connected to him. Shit, she might have died, and no one would have understood the fucked-up way it went down.
Maybe it was time Tamiel started looking for new work.
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Then Jason turned to look up at
him, the stunted end of ribbon between his fingers, and Tamiel crashed to his knees beside him. “Will it always hurt this bad?” Jason asked, and Tamiel could only shake his head. Because any moment now, God would order Tamiel to release Jason's soul, and he wouldn't feel anything anymore. Not until the moment of his next birth. Until then, though…it was going to hurt like hell.
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Chapter Fifteen
Clarissa took the painkillers, and the doctor's well-intended advice, and stuffed them both away to be immediately forgotten. The doctor had asked her a bunch of pointed questions, and it had been easy for her to fake the right answers. He wanted to refer her to a psychiatrist, but she'd refused. Mihai wasn't happy when she'd asked him to tell the doctors the injuries had not been self-inflicted, but he did. That got her out of the suicide watch. When they wanted her to stay overnight—connected to tubes and machines to make sure her heart rate and breathing remained even—she'd refused, signed a waiver absolving the hospital of responsibility, and walked out the doors.
Mihai had told them he'd be with her and he'd keep her safe, and she'd let him believe that—right up to the moment they went to climb into the cab. Then she'd told him she needed space. She'd meet him at the club, she assured him. She just needed those few minutes to herself. She slipped her cabbie a twenty to tell dispatch someone had already picked up Mihai. He'd have to go in and get another one sent, and that would buy her just a few extra minutes. Then she slipped him another twenty to imagine speed limits were merely guidelines. “Important date, lady?” he asked with a grin, and she nodded.
“The love of my life is waiting,” she whispered. She pressed a small fist into her chest. An ache had lodged there, just below and between her breasts, and she couldn't seem to ease it. She stepped out at the curb, surprised to see that people were still filing in and out of the club. Her watch confirmed what the lineup was telling her—it was the busiest part of the evening, just before last call. Things had started happening right at opening, at nine, and now it was almost three. Six hours, and her entire life had changed. Hell, she'd died once tonight. The paramedics insisted that was impossible, that she'd only lost consciousness for a few minutes before they arrived, but they were wrong.
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The bouncers skeptically watched her approach until she stood under the light. Ken, the kid who was working there on weekends to save up for a bike he wanted, smiled at her. Chris, who worked most of the same shifts as Ken, waved as he unhooked the velvet rope keeping people out of the club. She smiled briefly at them both, but when she met their eyes, she felt… something. Inside the doors, she rubbed absently at her chest and kept walking. Regular customers stopped and said hello; waitresses offered her drinks. She smiled and waved them all away, but even as she did, she felt a strange tightening sensation throughout her body.
Approaching the bartender, she blinked. The dry-ice fog had started up again, and it seemed to be clinging to weblike strands floating all around the club. Following them, she saw they weren't in the rafters, as she'd first assumed, but tied to each person in the club, connecting one to another and another and…to her.
“Shit,” she whispered, and then the bartender—Andy—turned to face her with a smile. She watched as a blue ribbon wound out from his chest and slammed into hers, and she flinched a little at the impact. “I'm going upstairs for a few,” she told him. “I'd rather be left alone.” She cast a quick glance toward the entrance, hoping the bouncers wouldn't let Mihai through right away. She'd forgotten to tell them, and she didn't want to step back outside now in case he waylaid her.
Nervousness made her jittery, and she ordered without thinking. “Vodka. Rocks,” she said. Andy lifted an eyebrow—it wasn't her usual drink—but poured without a single word. She drank it down, slammed the glass on the bar, and asked for another. The second one did the trick. As the alcohol rioted through her system, she gained a little distance from the emotions swamping her and took one long, deep breath. “No interruptions, please, Andy.”
Then she turned and walked away, ignoring the threads in the air, the bewildered look on Andy's face, and the voice screaming at the door that he had to get in right away. Up the stairs, and it was as surreal as if she were miming the actions. She stepped into the office, opened the safe, and withdrew the gun she kept there. Then the box of bullets from the lockbox inside her desk. She laid them on the desktop and stared at them for a moment before she reached for her purse and pulled out the painkillers she'd stuffed inside.
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The bottom drawer of her desk held a mickey of rye, and she pulled that out too, to line it up between the pills and the gun. With a decisive nod, she pulled out the office chair and eased herself into it.
She stared at them, her gaze moving from one object to the next. Pills first. Wash them down with the rye. Then the gun. She had a plan. She had the tools. She touched the connection in the center of her chest and rubbed at it absently. The threads weren't visible anymore, but somehow that made it easier to feel them. Tears slid down her cheeks. She didn't want to feel them. She wanted Jason.
Her hands shaking, she reached for the bottle of pills.
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Chapter Sixteen
Jason stared at the broken thread in his hands. It had just…stopped. He'd expected more physical pain. The emotional agony was more than making up for it, though. He closed his eyes and swallowed around the lump in his throat. A choked laugh escaped, and Tamiel stared at him for a long moment before Jason could bring himself to speak.
“I thought, when she went upstairs with you, it was because she'd moved on. Was ready to move on…with you.” Jason shook his head, afraid to let more laughter free, because it would be far too close to a sob. “Turns out, I'm moving on with you.”
Tamiel's grin was as weak as the statement warranted, and Jason had the sudden, irrational thought that he could get to like the Dark Angel, if things weren't…whatever they were.
“It's time we started,” Tamiel whispered. The room behind them faded, until they were standing, once again, in the gray and lifeless cell Jason had been exiled to before.
“No reason not to. Not now.” He didn't want to sound so self-pitying, but shit, it still hurt.
“Will she forget me?” he asked. Hadn't wanted to say that either, but it seemed he'd lost all his self-control. Not to mention his self-respect.
Tamiel smiled. Not like the question was stupid either, but as if he'd anticipated it.
“Never.”
Jason nodded. That was answer enough, he supposed. Because any other question would be whether or not she'd move on. Find someone new. And he didn't want to know the answer to those questions. He straightened his shoulders. “I suppose it's time?”
Tamiel seemed a little surprised by the question. “I suppose it is,” he said, though he looked around as if he was hoping someone else would answer for him. “You did the right thing,” Tamiel told him, and he stood to face Jason, so that he was staring down at him from that impossible height of his.
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Jason nodded. He knew that. He hated it, but he knew it. “Thanks.” He steeled himself for what was next… Only it wasn't what he expected.
A voice, like thunder and the ocean waves, spoke through Tamiel's mouth.
“It is not time.” The words, that tone—they were a decree, and Jason stared, shock rolling through him on that endless, rolling tide.
When Tamiel spoke again, it was his regular voice, and Jason never thought he'd be so happy to hear it. And so disappointed, all at once. “Not his time?” Tamiel's voice shook with fury, and Jason's heart raced for a moment until he realized the angel's anger wasn't directed at him.
“What's going on, Tamiel?” he whispered. Tamiel met Jason's gaze, but his eyes were wild with confusion.
“No idea.” Then he cocked his hea
d, as if he heard something Jason couldn't, and his expression darkened. “Seriously?” Jason understood that Tamiel was being pissy with whoever had used him to broadcast that voice earlier, and he wondered if the Dark Angel was also completely insane. Someone with that kind of power—and who else could it be but the Divine?—and Tamiel was treating him like a teenager treats his parents. The half conversation continued for a few minutes. Tamiel's words were more like punctuation: “I wish you'd told me.” “Still. Shit. You should've said.” “Yeah. I'll explain it.” A short pause. “I said yes. Anything to avoid the ventriloquist routine again. That sucked ass.” A long indrawn breath, then, “Poor asshole.” A rumble of thunder echoed throughout the room to that one, and Tamiel lifted his eyes skyward. “Sorry.” He didn't sound sorry. The thunder didn't happen again, though, so Jason assumed the apology was accepted. Tamiel shook his head and met Jason's eyes. “You are, quite possibly, the un luckiest son of a bitch to ever die.” He motioned for Jason to sit and actually folded himself cross-legged on the floor facing him.
“You learned your lessons, so you didn't have to do the life-walk. That's a good thing because basically it underlines every bad decision you ever made, lets you know the bright and shiny alternative you could've lived, and then locks you back into your body to die all over again.” Tamiel held his gaze, so whatever was coming next must be important. “You've been dead three years. You don't want to know what going back to that body would've been like.”