A Love Neverending

by Rowan Larke

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  Jason shuddered.

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Tamiel's voice was threaded with laughter, although his face was deadly serious. “Still, you suffered a shitload, so avoiding the life-walk was…good, but…apparently you earned another shot. Which is why you were offered the chance to sever things yourself. If I'd done it”—Tamiel shuddered—“there'd have been a lot more pain. Some blood. Some essential part of yourself—the very essence of who you are—would have leached out of that connection, and you would have been born into your next life…incomplete, for lack of a better word.”

  The sudden pause made Jason wonder if he'd missed something, but he realized Tamiel was just waiting for him to acknowledge that, so far, he hadn't lost Jason altogether. So he nodded, and Tamiel started up again as if he had never stopped.

  “So He threw that last test at you, and you passed. You chose love, first and foremost. And you chose to protect the living above yourself.” Tamiel paused, and Jason had the idea whatever he was going to say next required a little more tact. “That choice has given you a new option, so He says. You can go on to your next life—the one you earned when you killed yourself—and fight through it, with no memories of this life whatsoever. You can move on.”

  “Or?” Jason couldn't help it. He wanted to know what carrot they were dangling before him. What was the catch that left Tamiel's eyes so wary, so carefully not jubilant?

  “You can be elevated.”

  “Elevated?” Apparently that was supposed to mean something, but he had no idea what.

  “You can be taken from your status as a mere human and transformed into an angel.”

  Skepticism took hold, based on one of the few Sunday-school classes Jason had ever attended. “I thought angels were a whole other species, unrelated to humans.”

  Tamiel glowered at him. His voice was flat. “If God can make men from some dirt and water, I think He might be able to make an angel out of whatever he wants. Even a human.”

  Jason laughed. He couldn't help it. But shit, he was a ghost talking with an angel about creation. Even Tamiel's lips twitched a little. “So…what does being an angel mean?” Because Jason still couldn't quite shake the fact that although Tamiel was saying this was an opportunity, he seemed to have some reservations.

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  “It's not at all what you'd expect,” he said quietly. “And frankly, being reborn might be the better option. The elevation isn't your reward for the choice you made—it's a job offer. The reward part is that you'd keep your memories. You'd be able to remember Clarissa. What you had together. The life you led. For…well, as long as you're an angel, which is pretty much forever, unless God lets you out of your contract. That's never happened, in all my time with Him.”

  Jason nodded, but his skin all but tingled with anticipation. He could keep her. For at least a little while, he could keep Clarissa. Remember her. Think of her. Hold the memory of her lips and body against his and not forget.

  He met Tamiel's gaze. “I know what I want,” he whispered.

  But Tamiel shook his head. “Know what you're getting into, Jason. He wants you to apprentice with me. To become an angel of death.”

  Jason hissed in a deep breath. Apprenticing with Tamiel. The self-proclaimed expert in suicide. Helping reap the souls of people, like Jason himself, who thought they only had one option left. Understanding came then, swift as lightning. “It's part of my punishment, too, right?

  If I moved on, I'd have to live through some shitty life and try to atone for killing myself this time around…and I still have to atone, even if I get to be elevated?” It was a question, but he knew the answer, so he wasn't surprised when Tamiel nodded.

  “I'll do it,” he whispered, although he was no longer certain he was making the right choice. He met Tamiel's gaze and held Clarissa's image in his mind. He'd be able to remember.

  “I'll do it,” he said again.

  Tamiel nodded abruptly and snapped his fingers.

  Pain racked Jason's body. Agony shot fire through his shoulder blades, and his skin split with a sound like tearing paper. He writhed in agony as something hot, something sharp, like an overheated scalpel, worked its way through the flesh of his back. He screamed as bones cracked and reshaped, sinew tore and ruptured, and muscles tensed and released. After an eternity encapsulated in a second, it stopped.

  Jason dragged in a deep breath, steadying himself on his hands and his knees. When he felt steady enough, he clenched his hands, curled his toes, trying to understand his new body. For the

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  most part, it felt the same. His legs felt a little longer. He felt stronger. More powerful, in an indefinable way. He felt alive, and it felt pretty good. When Jason stood, an unfamiliar weight dragged at him, and he turned to look over his shoulder at the mass of feathers behind him. He inhaled, and the feathers shook. Light played over them, translucent and edged in silver. “Holy shit,” he whispered. Tamiel laughed. “Yeah. Exactly. The color will settle in a few days.” Then he sobered, and Jason heard him say, “Already?” It was clear Tamiel wasn't speaking to Jason, though, so he stayed quiet. “You okay, newly born angel type?”

  Jason shrugged, feeling the alien weight shift with his movements. “Good as can be expected, I suppose.”

  Tamiel nodded. “Good. Because it looks like we start work tonight.”

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  Chapter Seventeen

  Clarissa swigged straight from the bottle. The rye went down smooth, burning a little trail down her throat, past the knot of connections in her chest. The pill bottle lay on its side, a trail of blue pills spilling from its open mouth. As many of them as there had been ten minutes ago. And twenty minutes before that.

  She couldn't do it.

  The realization sent a sob surging from her chest, her throat, and she choked on the last swallow of rye. Not that it mattered; the alcohol wasn't helping in the least.

  “Jason,” she whispered. “I'm such a coward, but I just can't do it.”

  She swept the pills into one of the drawers, listening to each of them rattle against the metal bottom as they dripped off the papers and pens inside, and leaned back heavily in the chair. She didn't have the energy to lean forward and drop in the gun and pill bottle. She felt as if she had no energy left at all. She'd been tethered to her life. All these people at the club—the waitresses, bartenders, bouncers, her regulars—every single one of them had a place in her life. The connections had assaulted her and cemented themselves into place so she couldn't quite imagine her life without them. God, how she resented them for it, and yet…she was grateful.

  She slapped her hand against the desktop hard enough to make the pill bottle rattle and roll off the desk to the floor. She didn't want to care about anyone but herself. Herself and Jason, she amended. But he felt so far away. Farther than he'd felt before she'd seen him, before she'd known he was somewhere, and not just dead.

  “What's wrong with me?” she whispered.

  “You're alive,” Mihai answered, and she started, her heart pounding triple time in her chest.

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  “Oh, shit, you scared me!” Petulant and pouty, like some sort of vixen trying to get his interest.

  “Sorry,” he said, though the grin on his face suggested he wasn't. Not entirely.

  “I want to be with him,” she whispered. “I want it so much. But I can't do it.” She stared at him, trying to bore a hole into his brain and get the answers she needed. “Why can't I do it, Mihai?”

  He stepped around the desk and fell into a crouch at her side, holding her gaze. “Because you're not broken anymore, Clarissa.” His hands found hers, and she was startled by the warmth in them. The connection with him was more insidious, she realized. It didn't surge out to smack her in the chest, it was snaking through their fingers, inching its way into her, tra
veling as much of her flesh as it could along the way. It was in his voice, as though little curls of smoke left his mouth when he spoke, and they turned to those velvety ropes, binding her to him. A little frisson of pleasure throbbed through her with that thought, and she squeezed her thighs together.

  “When Jason died, his soul didn't go where it was supposed to. It remained tethered to you by the love you shared.” Mihai's eyes were so wide. Had they always been that shade of bluebrown? Had they always looked at her with such tenderness? How had she missed it before?

  “That connection was so strong. So deep into the most important parts of you that you started repelling all other connections. Until all you had left was him.” He sounded so urgent. Like he needed her to understand all this, like her life might depend on it. She gave the gun a startled glance and realized it might not just be a figure of speech. She tried to listen.

  “You were so closed off that no one could get through. No new connections could form. You were as dead as Jason.” His voice was so soft. Even softer over Jason's name, as if the sound of it might send her into tears. Funny enough, it did, and she wiped the tears off her cheeks as if they were a weakness. “That connection between you—” Mihai paused, and she steeled herself. Whatever was coming, he didn't want to say it. “That connection was severed, Clarissa.”

  She shook her head. No. No way. She'd been connected to Jason for years—through life, and even beyond into his death. There was no way. “Love neverending,” she whispered. Jason wouldn't leave her. Not now, not ever.

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  Mihai's eyes changed expression, sadness flooding them like water, obliterating the brown highlights inside them. “Love, yes. Oh that man adored you, Clarissa. And it was as true a love as ever existed, for that connection to go so deep and last so long. But tonight Tamiel had to finish his job. He had to send Jason's soul on to his next life.”

  Clarissa kept shaking her head. “No.”

  “You've noticed it tonight, Clarissa. People are making connections with you. Friendships, partnerships, those little connections that make life worthwhile. Those little seeds of relationships that could become something more if they were nurtured.” His gaze dipped to the space between them, and she knew he could see those threads that had attached themselves to her. “You can only form those connections because Jason severed his connection to you.”

  So soft, his voice. So harsh, his words. “He would never stop loving me.” She sounded panicked. She was panicked. Jason wouldn't, though. He'd never stop loving her. Would never give up on her. Anguished, she bit back another sob. If she'd just swallowed those pills, she'd be with him now. Her fingers twitched to grab them, but Mihai held her hands firm in his.

  “He never stopped loving you. But he has to move on. It's his time, Clarissa, and it's selfish of you to want to keep him here just for you.”

  The angry bite in Mihai's tone stung as much as his words did. A dam broke inside her, and she let the tears go, leaving trails down her cheeks as they flowed. “What will I do without him?”

  “You'll live, Clarissa. The other connections you form, they'll slide into place around the hole in your life that Jason left. Just like vines can grow over the stump left behind when a tree is cut down, those connections will cover the rougher edges of where Jason once was. It won't erase him, not ever, but it will make something hard and empty into something pretty again. It'll ease the pain of it.” Mihai paused, his eyes shining with fervor. “You'll live.”

  She shook her head, but she wasn't sure she meant it anymore. Those connections had been unexpected, but they'd taken root, and she couldn't shake them off now. She wasn't even certain she wanted to. She'd opened her mouth to speak when she noticed the tendrils of curling lines coming off his body toward her. Lines the soft pink of cotton candy at the end closest to her, deepening to the color of blood at the other. The only other connection she'd seen that color was the one she'd shared with Jason, and she'd assumed it represented their love.

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  Which is when it dawned on her. That was what Mihai was offering her. His love. She just had to reach out to take it. He released one of her hands, and she raised it to touch his stubblecovered cheek. “I didn't realize,” she said, letting the words drift into the air between them. Shock continued to assault the back of her knees until they buckled. “I had no idea.”

  He held her gaze, letting her stare into his eyes and read the truth in them. She saw it all—

  friendship, admiration, and respect—emotions that could, over time, bloom into love. Those eyes were so familiar. The long sweep of his lashes, like clouds over the blue-brown oceans of his eyes. He was a good man. The bizarre thought that Jason would like him floated through her mind, and she caught back a sob. Jason was gone.

  Mihai leaned up to kiss her gently, and Clarissa closed her eyes and let him.

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  Chapter Eighteen

  Jason's stomach lurched as the room around them disappeared once more. This time, however, he clearly heard the words Tamiel spoke, and felt the world all but shift beneath his feet. “Shit,” he whispered as his stomach seemed to continue rolling while the rest of him stopped. “That'll take some getting used to.”

  “This isn't what I would have chosen for your first job, kid, but I'm not Him.”

  Idly, Jason noticed how he could hear the capital letter when Tamiel talked about Him. He said it with more deference than when he spoke to Him, that was for damn sure. Then Tamiel just seemed to fold in on himself—his arms crossed over his chest, his expression closed. His gaze was pointed at something Jason couldn't see, so he turned to look for himself. Jason's heart stalled in his chest, his throat—his entire body seemed to clench between one heartbeat and the next. Clarissa stood against her desk, Mihai's body pressed against hers. His fingers were tangled in her hair, their lips barely a breath apart. He couldn't speak. Couldn't, if he were asked, even think. All around Clarissa and Mihai swirled threads of every imaginable color, spiraling off into the distance, twirling in an unseen breeze—and worse, binding them together.

  Jason rubbed his chest, the spot where the stunted end of his connection to Clarissa still burned. It thrummed with electric tingles when he touched it, and he moved his hand away slowly. He watched as their lips touched and those bonds flared like sparks between them, tying them closer together.

  Then he couldn't watch anymore.

  With his eyes closed, the image all but searing the inside of his lids, Jason heard Tamiel's voice. It floated over him like a coarse blanket. “Lesson one—an angel's tears are sacred. We don't cry. Ever.” Then his voice softened. “Hardly ever.”

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  Jason nodded, but when he opened his eyes, he kept his gaze on the toes of his shoes. This was cruel and unusual. He'd watched her every indignity, seen her share her body with any number of men. But this was different, and he knew it. Because that connection between them was gone, and she was free to move on.

  For a moment, he considered the choice he'd made. To remember. For the rest of eternity, this moment would be branded in his brain. He would see her, locked in an embrace with another man. Holding him. Being held. The connection between them forging into something new. Could he live with this memory? Could he last century after century with this image in his mind?

  When he lifted his head, saw the myriad of colors dancing around her like fairies in a painting, he knew the truth—this was the most beautiful he'd ever seen her, and he'd cherish this memory for the rest of his days. The best of his memories were double-edged—knowing what he'd had and given away—why should this be any different?

  She would heal. She would go on and live and love and find happiness. It didn't change what they'd once had.

  He straightened, his eyes shimmering with tears he wouldn't let fall, and watched. The kiss broke off, and Clarissa rested her hand in the c
enter of Mihai's chest. The precise place those connections wound out from all of their bodies, though Jason wasn't sure if she'd remember that fact. Would she remember being with him at all? The thought made him uncomfortable. He wanted to ask Tamiel, but Jason was transfixed by the scene playing out in front of them.

  She smiled, and she was radiant. The grin faltered on her face, and she shook her head decisively. As Jason watched, the pink faded from the connection she shared with Mihai, until it was the palest rose-tinted white. “Not yet,” she said.

  Mihai didn't look surprised. That was the first thing Jason noticed, and something that would stick with him. Mihai had known this was coming, and he seemed to approve of her choice.

  Clarissa, however, didn't notice and kept talking. “You have been—” Her words choked off in a bitter-sounding laugh. “You've been my best friend. I managed to push everyone else out. Everyone but you. I'm so grateful to you, for so many things, and this…” She gestured between them, as if at a loss for words. “I'm honored you'd even want it. But I can't. Not yet. Not

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  tonight, especially. I'm not broken anymore, but I'm still grieving. I'm still tender, where Jason used to be.” Her eyes darted back and forth, like she was searching for the truth and it might only appear in one of Mihai's eyes, and she didn't want to miss it when it happened. Mihai nodded. Stepped away from her and took in a quick, shaky breath. “I'll see you soon, then.” Jason couldn't help the relief that flooded him. Couldn't help the grin that slid into place on his face. Even though he knew it was just a matter of time. Eventually she'd be strong enough to move on. But by then maybe he'd be strong enough to let her. So he let himself revel in Mihai's chagrined expression.