My Soul to Keep

by Sharie Kohler

  Someone screamed. Shrill and piercing. The sound endless. The pain consuming.

  She could see nothing beyond fire and rolling black clouds of smoke. Every nerve screamed in agony. She tried to move, into what she didn’t know. The world seemed turned inside out, upside down. She couldn’t move, couldn’t budge. Intense pressure held her down, pinned her like a bug.

  And then she realized that the screaming—the shrill incessant screech in her ears—was her own.

  JONAH DRAGGED HIMSELF ALONG the ground, hauling his body over burning debris that scorched through his clothes and devoured his flesh. Bodies and human remains spotted the arena—or what used to be the arena.

  He squinted through the billowing black, the gnawing wound in his back nothing compared to the pain in his heart, the squeezing fist inside his chest.

  He followed the sound of Sorcha’s scream. The smoke cleared and he spotted her at last, her body buried beneath a slab of ceiling. Her face peeked out from twisted steel and concrete, streaked in blood and soot.

  Pandemonium shrieked around them. Chunks of ceiling continued to fall, caving in, shaking the air and vibrating the earth.

  The moans of dying hunters filled the air. Shadowy figures staggered around, trying to find a way out of the nightmare—hell’s tomb. At least Ivo was buried somewhere in the mounting inferno.

  Jonah dropped next to Sorcha and curled his hands around the wedge of slab. His body screamed in agony as he tried to lift the chunk of ceiling off her. He grunted, blood vessels popping from the effort.

  His grunt strangled in his throat, twisting into a scream of agony as he realized he couldn’t. He couldn’t move it. Couldn’t save her. It weighed too much. Even considering what he was, what she was, he was too weak, his body still battling the poison coursing through him.

  Damn, damn, damn. Hot tears that had nothing to do with the burning smoke or hungry flames licking toward them pricked his eyes.

  Sorcha whispered his name beneath the mangled concrete and metal, her eyes glassy with pain.

  He laced his fingers with hers. “I’m here, baby. I’m here.” The smoke thickened. The smell of burning flesh stung his nostrils, and he wasn’t sure it wasn’t his own. The heat encroached, gaining on them like an advancing beast, edging closer and devouring all in its path. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  For several moments, he lay there, an odd contentment sweeping him. If he had to die here, now, at least he would be with her. Dying together, with someone, with her, he realized, beat what he’d had before. A nonlife where he’d turned his back on all, on everything.

  He laughed hoarsely. It had taken him long enough to reach that conclusion, but now that he had, he felt as if he’d come home at last. If ever, by some miracle, he survived this, he knew his life would be with Sorcha. It would be hunting demons, protecting witches … living out the fate God had somehow chosen for him.

  “Jonah.” Her voice sounded stronger, driven and more aware of her surroundings. Her eyes glinted up at him—the Sorcha he knew and craved. “You have to go.”

  He shook his head, refusing to hear the words, to absorb them. He would stay. He would stay if this—mere moments—was all that was left for them.

  His gaze crawled over her face, memorizing her every feature, soot-covered, blood-smeared, bruised and torn … taking peace from the sight of her. “I have to stay,” he said simply, quietly, as if chaos and madness didn’t rage around them.

  “Damn you, no,” she choked out, tears running down her smoking cheeks. Smoke rose off both their bodies now. He didn’t feel any of it. Not anymore. He didn’t feel the heat. He felt only this moment with her. “You have to save yourself,” she hissed.

  “I’m already saved. You saved me.”

  Her face crumpled then. She sobbed, tears trailing shiny tracks on her face. He inched as close as he could, holding her arm, his fingers tightening around her fingers, wishing he could feel all of her pressed against him.

  “Hey!” The voice jarred him, so close. He looked up at the other dovenatu who had been in the arena with Sorcha. “Move it!” the guy shouted, leaning down and grasping a jagged edge of concrete in his hands. The female was there, too, the blonde whose throat he had tried to cut. The mark at the nape of his neck throbbed in recognition. A witch.

  As the dovenatu worked to lift the slab off Sorcha, the witch stood close, holding up her arms, working whatever skill she possessed, her face screwed up tightly, as if she were in pain from the effort.

  As he squinted through the curling black, it seemed that the tips of her fingers glowed.

  Finally it rose, tiny inch by slow, unbearable inch.

  With a grunt, Jonah grasped Sorcha’s arm and dragged her clear of the wreckage, ignoring her cries.

  “You’re free!” he cried, feeling as if he’d saved himself. Because if she lived, he knew a part of him always would.

  The dovenatu didn’t hesitate. He bent and scooped her up. Jonah suppressed his rage, the hot flash of possession, at seeing Sorcha clasped in another’s arms. But he would bear it. He didn’t care how she got out of here, as long as she did. As long as she lived.

  She looked back for him, twisting her head desperately, her dark hair whipping into her face as the dovenatu bore her away from him. He tried to rise, tried to move after her, follow, but his body didn’t feel a part of him anymore. He couldn’t command it, couldn’t force the dead weight to action. He felt as if he were being pulled, squeezed through a too small hole, wrung out and twisted dry, empty.

  Staggering, he dropped, unable to keep up. A warped steel beam fell beside him, shuddering the ground. He heard Sorcha scream his name as she vanished into the black smoke.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Stop! Put me down!” Sorcha writhed, cursing, feeling as helpless as a child in Sheppard’s arms. She tried not to worry about the fact that she couldn’t feel her legs, or that her ribs ached as if a herd of horses had stomped all over her body.

  Her broken body would heal and repair itself in time. Time she didn’t have. Time she needed to see to Jonah, to purge the silver nitrate from his body in the hope that he would survive.

  She blinked tear-filled eyes. Now wasn’t the time to break down. Jonah was still back there. He needed her.

  She struggled harder. “Put me down!” She would crawl back to him with her bare hands if necessary.

  “Would you stop?” Sheppard shouted, navigating his way though the burning, smoking wreckage. “The elevators are up ahead.” He glanced back over his shoulder. A foul expletive fell from his lips. “Where the hell’s Mila?”

  “You left her, too,” Sorcha accused.

  “Honey, in case you didn’t realize it, this is war—be grateful I grabbed you!”

  “We have to go back for Jonah!” She beat a knotted fist against his shoulder, hating that she was too weak to stop him from carrying her away.

  Sheppard shook his head fiercely, lips pressed into a grim line. “I can’t carry both of you. Sorry.” Except he didn’t sound sorry.

  “Then go back for him,” she choked out. “Leave me.”

  He laughed, then coughed against the suffocating smoke. “Love really does render people stupid.” She caught the motion of his shaking head. “Trust me, if I’m not going back for Mila, I’m not going back for him.”

  He reached the elevator and kicked the up button with his booted foot, muttering, “Let’s hope it works.”

  And Sorcha hoped it didn’t. Because she couldn’t imagine going on without Jonah. Not now. Not ever again.

  Over the roar of fire, the din of crumbling earth and debris, the elevator binged open in front of them. Sheppard dove inside.

  Only they weren’t alone for long. Two others jumped in beside them before the doors had a chance to slide shut. The rogue hunter and his blond friend, the guy in the crowd he’d signaled to the split second before the explosion. Somehow he’d done this. They both had. They had destroyed her father’s little kingdom, killed hundreds. A
nd why not? she asked herself dully. She couldn’t blame them. Her father had only ordered them to kill one another. At least with the explosion there was a hope for survival … escape. It was that hope the two men had seized.

  She stared hard at them, resenting that it worked out so well for them. They were getting out alive. Jonah, Mila … they weren’t.

  As the elevator began its glide upward the two hunters sagged against the back of it, shoulders touching. In the flickering, dying light of the elevator, she watched them. The fair-haired hunter’s hand brushed over the other hunter’s hand, closed around the fingers in a tight grip. Intimate. As if he was afraid his friend would be ripped from him again at any moment.

  Not friends, she realized flatly, her heart a squeezing fist in her chest, each pounding beat for Jonah, lost in burning chaos even as it dawned on her that these two men were much more than friends. They were lovers.

  The sight of the two hunters only made her want to weep for Jonah, at what she was losing … what she would never have again.

  “Please,” she whispered, but she wasn’t sure who she was asking for help. Sheppard? Or God himself. And why should he help her, a creature not of his making, an abomination. Why would he hear her call?

  Her last sight before she closed her eyes and buried her face in Sheppard’s chest was the elevator doors rolling open, delivering them from the fire and smoke and returning them to civilization.

  SHEPPARD CARRIED HER a safe distance into the gathered crowd of onlookers. Behind them the building was gone. In its place, a pile of smoldering rubble and broken, fiery walls cast a deep red glow on the evening. A great serpent of black smoke, several shades darker than the pulsing night, rose into the Paris sky.

  A song of sirens wailed, growing closer. She caught a glimpse of the two hunters before they disappeared into the crowd, swallowed up in the press of crawling bodies.

  “Clear the fuck out of the way!” Sheppard shouted. Aside from a few glares, no one even seemed aware of them, too fixated on the mesmerizing fire.

  “Move!” he snapped, clearly desperate to get away before the authorities arrived. Not an easy feat when the crowd surged and pushed back at them, more people arriving every second to gawk at the burning hole in the earth. She stared bleakly at the disaster, certain no one was alive in there anymore. She turned away, hiding her face in Sheppard’s chest, unable to bear the sight of it … the thought that Jonah was forever buried in the burning ruins.

  Then something pulled at her, urging her to lift her head. Heat built at her core and her scalp tightened, tingling. Her heart fluttered wildly beneath her breastbone. She craned her neck for another look at the building she had just decided never to look upon again.

  And she saw him.

  Materializing out of the billowing black, he staggered beside Mila, one arm draped over her shoulder for support.

  “Jonah,” she breathed.

  “I’ll be damned,” Sheppard muttered, turning to face Jonah and Mila as they approached.

  “You brought him?” Sheppard asked as they came together in the throng.

  Mila shrugged.

  Jonah broke free from her and grabbed hold of Sorcha, pulling her from Sheppard. Even though she doubted he could support her—he could hardly stand by himself—she didn’t protest. To have him again, with her, alive, his arms surrounding her even if they fell to the ground … It was heaven.

  But they didn’t fall. He staggered for a moment, balancing himself with a hiss of warm breath in her ear. Her name sounded like a prayer on his lips. “Sorcha. Sorcha … mine.”

  “Jonah.” She closed her eyes, squeezed her lids tight, as though she could trap the moment, lock and freeze it inside her. “Let’s go home.”

  Where home was failed to matter. Home was the two of them. Together.

  EPILOGUE

  The Seattle lights winked through the mist-shrouded city. Sorcha and Jonah barely moved where they lay, wrapped around each other like two contented cats.

  Jonah kissed Sorcha’s neck, urging her awake. “C’mon, time to head out.”

  She blinked unfocused eyes, pulling herself from her sex-sated doze. “How am I supposed to move now?”

  He glanced at the clock. “It’s the best time to hunt,” he reminded her.

  She dragged her pillow over her head and moaned. They’d been back in Seattle for over a month now. It had taken Jonah a while to recover from his wounds, to completely exorcize the poison from his system. Now that he was fully recovered, she could hardly keep up with him when they scoured the city hunting demons.

  “You can sleep,” he offered. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Uh-uh. Not a chance. You’re not going without me.” She tossed the pillow aside and sat up, teasing. “You’re not changing your mind on me and leaving me behind while you have all the fun.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. We’re in this together. This is what you want to do … and what I have to do.” His eyes looked far away for a moment before fixing back on her. “I’m not running from anything ever again. Not this …” He rubbed the back of his neck where he was marked, touched by God to hunt demons, to protect white witches from possession. “Not my heart—you. I was stupid to let you go.” He winced, and brushed a hand against her cheek, his thumb lingering on the soft skin. “And it nearly killed us.”

  She traced his bare chest, scraping him lightly with her nail. “Let’s not go over that again. No one made you come after me, but you did. And now we’re here, together and happy, and that’s not going to change.”

  He stared down at her, his eyes stark and fathomless, a sea of blue that she could happily drown in. “There was never any doubt. I’ll always come for you. Without you, I cease to exist.”

  Her chest heaved with a sharp breath. “Careful, I could get used to you saying things like that.”

  Jonah lowered his head, his mouth savoring hers as he spoke. “Then brace yourself, because you’re going to hear it. A lot.”

  “I thought we were heading out,” she murmured between deep, drugging kisses, curling her fingers into his muscled shoulders and giving as good as she got.

  “We will. We will. But first things first.” Jonah’s hand delved between their bodies, finding her pulsing warmth, feeling the beat of her heart, a matching rhythm to his own. “This is important, too.”

  She gave a tiny gasp as he invaded her with a touch, a penetrating stroke. “Oh, very important. Life-and-death important.”

  She smoothed her palm against the side of his face, relishing the scratchy bristle. “I could get used to this, too.”

  He arched a brow. “Yeah?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  He released a deep, exaggerated sigh. “Then I might as well marry you.”

  She stilled, the blood rushing from her face. “Don’t tease, Jonah—”

  “I’m not. Trust me. A man doesn’t joke about marriage. Especially not me. For us, ‘until death do us part’ is a really long time. Marrying me is forever, Sorcha.”

  She dropped back on the pillow, shaking her head, her hair tumbling around her, rippling against her shoulders. “Why do you want to marry me? You don’t need to. I’m not going anywhere—”

  “Sorcha.” A touch of exasperation laced his voice. He feathered her bangs back from her forehead as he leaned over her. “It’s what people do when they love each other.”

  “Love each other,” she echoed, her belly fluttering as those words wove through her.

  “Yes, of course. What else are we doing here?” He stared at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to get it, to understand … to accept.

  He was right, of course. Why else had she come back with him to Seattle? Why else had she forgotten about her life in New York—discarded even her determination to kill Tresa? For now, at least. If she ever decided to resume her hunt, she was content with the knowledge that Jonah would be with her, at her side.

  Without uttering a w
ord, they had both understood as soon as they left Paris that neither one of them would leave the other’s side again. She found more than love in his arms. She’d found her soul.

  She nodded, felt a silly, happy grin breaking out on her face. “We’re loving each other,” she breathed. Loving.

  “Exactly.” He pulled her flush against him, smiling, sighing his pleasure, clearly savoring the press of her body against his. “I’ve waited my whole life for you … and I’ll spend the rest of it with you. Never apart.”

  Never apart.

  His voice rolled through her, husky and warm. Never apart. Never alone again. No matter what happened, no matter where fate led either of them, they would be in it together.