by May Dawson
“And this is Levi, the socially inappropriate,” Dr. Parrish said. To him, she said, “You know this is a co-ed floor now.”
“I know.” Levi flashed a devilish smile at us; he had faint dimples in his cheeks. “Why do you think I’m wearing the towel?”
He held his hand out to me to shake, and this close, I breathed in the fresh scent of his soap and aftershave. And as sexy as he was, the delicious way he smelled reminded me I was streaked with dirt and disheveled. Not remotely in the same league.
He started to introduce himself, but I accidentally cut him off. “You took a shower? Was there a ghost in there?”
“No,” he said. His eyes met mine, a tiny smirk playing at the edges of his lips. “Roger wouldn’t be nearly as interested in seeing me shower.”
I groaned. “I really want…”
“We’ll clear Roger out for you,” Levi promised.
“Levi.” Ryker said. He cut his eyes towards Dr. Parrish meaningfully.
“Not giving away any trade secrets here,” Levi said.
“I have so many questions,” I said.
Dr. Parrish rested her hand on my shoulder. “And you’ll get all the answers you need, Ellis, I promise. Even if it takes time.”
I could practically hear Ryker’s eyes roll.
At the end of the hall, there was the rattle, like the sound of locks tumbling open, and a heavy door swung into the hall.
“Dinner time.” It was a new voice, a man’s voice, and he pushed in a gray plastic, wheeled cart.
The doors behind him closed. As if there were a guard out there.
He pushed the cart to the door of the lounge, and then crossed his arms over his chest. He was a slender guy, dark-eyed and quick, wearing scrubs.
“This is Nurse Tom,” Dr. Parrish said. “He helps out around here. Nurse Tom, Ellis.”
He nodded at me in greeting. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Why don’t you all have dinner?” Dr. Parrish gestured towards the lounge. “It’s almost time for lights-out.”
Levi leaned against the wall, looking pretty damn comfortable with himself for a guy with a towel that could fall off at any moment.
“Maybe Levi could put some clothes on first?” I suggested.
“Great idea,” Dr. Parrish said. “I want you to get some rest, Ellis. We’ll talk more tomorrow. And start your lessons. It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah,” Ryker said. “And what she’s not mentioning is that the nights are long here too.”
“Ryker,” she said. “Maybe tonight, you shouldn’t try to escape.”
“Where would the fun be in that?”
I looked between them, thinking about how Ryker had promised me I would be safe even if I let them those men kidnap me. We’ll escape together. But maybe Ryker hadn’t told me the truth.
I couldn’t trust any of them.
Ryker gestured me ahead of him towards the lounge, and when he brushed his palm against the small of my back, as if he were guiding me into a five-star restaurant, I felt a shiver of heat from his touch.
I glanced at him over my shoulder, surprised by the jolt of electricity I felt between us. I wondered if he felt the same way.
He just winked at me again. “It’s going to be okay,” he mouthed.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by hope.
Chapter 4
I sat down at one of the four oak chairs around a battered table. It looked like someone’s kitchen table, like one small spot of home in this miserable institution.
Ryker was clattering around on the plastic cart still parked outside the lounge. Then he strode in carrying a plate, which he slid in front of me with a flourish. “Your steak, madam. This is how you can tell they’re trying to ease you into the place.”
I crinkled my nose at the seared piece of meat oozing bloody juice across my plate; the oily red pool had even touched the mashed potatoes and run into the pile of peas. “I don’t usually eat red meat.”
Ryker, who was about to sit down across from me with his own plate, froze and then started to reach for my steak with his fork. “More for me, then. We have to keep up our energy.”
“Nope,” I said, hastily grabbing my fork to bat his fork away. I was starving, even if this wasn’t the meal I would have ordered. “It’s mine.”
“Children, if you fight, you won’t get any dessert,” Levi said from the doorway. He looked away down the hall, and then said. “There goes Dr. Parrish. Leaving for the night.”
Ryker made air-quotes with his fingers. I cocked my head at him, curious. But Ryker lowered his head, shoveling mashed potatoes into his handsome maw, and didn’t notice me.
“They watch us.” Levi picked up a plate from the cart and hooked two bottles of root beers with his other hand; he set one in front of me as he took his seat. “When Tommy leaves, once they’re all in the outbuilding, the doors all open. Except the ones that lead out.”
“Why?”
“Because they want to figure us out. They want our knowledge and our power for themselves.”
“Then why the hell am I here?” I asked. “I don’t know anything and I don’t have any power.”
“You can drop the act. It’s us.” Ryker shoved a piece of steak into his mouth and then covered his mouth with his hand as he said, “We know you.”
“No, we don’t,” Levi said, smacking his brother’s shoulder. “And for god’s sake, swallow before you talk.”
The funny thing was that even with his high-boned cheek stuffed full of food and his shoulders hunched slightly over his plate, Ryker was damned good looking.
“So you know, when you say our knowledge and our power, that doesn’t actually tell me anything about what the hell is going on.”
Levi and Ryker glanced at each other.
“Sorry,” Levi said. “Okay, here’s the deal. Ryker and I were arrested a few months ago.”
I eased back slightly in my seat, putting the tiniest bit of distance between us. Ryker was too busy shoveling mashed potatoes into his face to notice. But Levi’s eyes widened just slightly, and I knew he’d noticed my reaction.
“We weren’t hurting anyone who wasn’t already dead,” Levi told me. “We were conducting an exorcism. But undead things sometimes keep each other company. We had to kill a vamp, and we were found with the body…it was bad.”
I nodded. A vamp. Well, I would let the man talk even if all sounded ridiculous. I wanted answers, after all. Even crazy ones.
“So we found ourselves transferred from police custody to here. I don’t even know who they work for, but it’s a company.”
“I’m dying to know what they sell,” Ryker said. “Toilet paper, toothpaste and your eternal soul? Orange-juice-from-concentrate and the secrets-of-the-dead? It’s a mystery.”
“Since when can companies just hold people hostage?” I demanded.
“Oh, you sweet young thing,” Ryker said.
“Anyway,” Levi said. “You are stuck here because your mother placed you in their care. We are stuck here because once we were in, all records of us entering the criminal justice system were erased. But I don’t mind.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t intend on staying long now that you’re here.”
“I can’t believe my mother did this,” I said. There were other things to worry about, and yet, I couldn’t help stumbling again and again over how I’d ended up here. This thought—my mother doesn’t love me anymore—was so agonizing I felt like I’d explode, and I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it. “She must really hate me.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Ryker said, unconvincingly.
Levi didn’t say anything. I had a feeling that Levi didn’t like to lie, and so there was nothing for him to say.
It was an awkward moment all around, so I tossed my hair back over my shoulder—as much as I could toss that tangled mop—and said, “How did Ryker come to my house if you’re trapped here?”
“Astral projection,” Levi said. “It’s his gift.”
“What’s your ‘gift’?” I couldn’t stop myself from making air quotes.
“He’s a sex god.” Ryker said.
Levi cut his eyes at Ryker, as if he were irritated. Ryker said, “What? It’s true, technically.” He glanced across the table. “Me, too.”
I could believe that, I guess.
“My gift is that I’m really fast,” Levi said. “Which doesn’t sound as fancy as astral projection.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it that.” For once, though, Ryker seemed to sober as his clear green eyes met mine. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you when you were taken, Ellis. I would have stopped them if I could.”
Levi drummed his fingers on the table impatiently.
“It’s okay,” I said. “So they want to figure out what makes us…” Even though I was unconvinced about the us, “Special? They want to commercialize superpowers or something?”
“Don’t give them any ideas,” Levi said. “No, they just want to tap into the power of the afterlife. Which is really more of a parallel dimension.”
“Let’s not talk about dimensionality right after she’s discovered ghosts and vampires and the evils of capitalism,” Ryker said.
“They believe that you can walk into the land of the dead,” Levi said. “The only one who can. The Lightwalker.”
“Why me?”
“Because you died and came back,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not so much. I don’t remember anything of what happened. But it looked like I was thrown from the car. I didn’t die.”
“You died. I’m not quite sure how it works—if you were born the reincarnated Lilith and you all die and come back, just like she did, or if once you get to the afterlife, some angel picks you out of the line-up.”
Lilith. Angels. Reincarnation. It was all a big leap for someone who stopped believing in Santa before kindergarten. I shook my head. “Can you start at the beginning?”
“Have you ever heard of Lilith?” Levi asked.
“Vaguely. Jewish folk-lore, right? The first woman?”
“Sometimes folk tales get it right,” Levi said. “Or half-right, anyway.”
“He’s the bookish brother,” Ryker told me. “Don’t get him started.”
“I’m the smart brother,” Levi said.
“Bookish and smart are two different things.”
“That’s a matter of debate.”
I snapped my fingers at them, pulling their attention back from their sniping at each other. “What about Lilith?”
“Oh,” Ryker said. “You’re her reincarnation.”
“Sure,” I said. Why not. Maybe I would doubt them on Wednesday, but after the day I’d had, I could entertain anything.
In the hallway, the lights went out, the hallway suddenly dark. Emergency lights came up along the baseboards, casting a pale glow that illuminated just the floor itself. There was a clicking sound down the hall. The locks opening.
“And what you do have to do with this?” I asked.
“Lilith had a harem of angels. Four angels.” Levi said. “Reincarnated now in four brothers, each with one of an angel’s four powers.”
“Harem?” That was a funny word.
“Her warriors, her protectors.” Ryker filled in. He glanced at Levi quickly.
There was something they weren’t telling me.I felt weary of trying to piece together the fragments. Dr. Parrish clearly had her own plans for me, although maybe they would happen to align with my own goals: get the hell out of here, go to college, and find a new normal that didn’t waking up on fire.
“There’s lots of mythos to catch you up on.” Ryker said. “Lots of stories about the reincarnated Liliths through the centuries, the Lightwalkers who went into the land of the dead to right wrongs and bring peace.”
Levi stood to his feet. His head was cocked to one side, as if he were listening, and he stood with his muscular arms held loosely in a way that made me think of a fighter preparing for a match.
“But there’s not a lot of time to catch you up,” Levi said. “The doors are warded. During the day, the ghosts are contained.”
It took me a second. “But now the doors are open.”
“Now the doors are open,” Levi said. “Now things get interesting.”
I knew I should feel dread, but instead I just felt exhausted by this day. “Am I ever going to get a shower?”
Chapter 5
The men’s bathroom looked like the mirror-image of the haunted lady’s room, except for two urinals along the wall I avoided looking at. Levi took a seat by the door, his back against the wall. He held a paperback with his finger marking his place. “I’m not looking.”
“I’m not making any promises,” Ryker said. “I saw you ogling Levi earlier. Turn about’s fair play.”
“I didn’t ask Levi to walk around half-naked,” I said.
Levi looked uncomfortable, his eyes still fixed on his book. “I didn’t have a choice. I was talking to Jake—our contact outside—and I needed the cover.”
“If you’re scared to shower alone after meeting Roger,” Ryker said, pulling a towel and a bar of soap out of a green metal cabinet by the showers, “I can hop in there with you.”
“Pass,” I said, even though part of me couldn’t help but imagine Ryker naked, those broad shoulders and chiseled abs, the way he would slide against me when we were wet and soapy.
“Hey,” Levi said. “She’s not eighteen yet.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Ryker said. “Just talking about it.”
“What happens when I’m eighteen?” I asked. “Do I come into my powers or something?”
“Do you watch a lot of TV?” Ryker said. “No. It’s just I’m twenty. Levi’s twenty-two. When you’re eighteen, you’re legal.”
“You guys were arrested with a body—”
“It was already a body. The vamp was long dead.” Levi cut in.
“It was decapitated,” Ryker added, because I needed that extra detail.
“But you’re worried about the law and my birthday?” Not that I was going to have sex with either of them, eighteen or not.
“We’re Hunters,” Ryker said. “We’re not assholes.”
“Hunters?”
“Hunters take care of the monsters that go bump in the night,” Levi said. His eyes were still on the page as I stepped behind the partial stall that blocked the shower from their view; his voice was comforting when I couldn’t see them anymore. “A rather thankless job for which one can end up incarcerated.”
I pulled my shirt over my head and slung it on top of the ugly green metal partition between us. “Keep talking. It makes me feel less haunted.”
Once I’d said the words, jokingly, it gave me a jolt; I’d had nightmares every night since Ash died. I was haunted. And not just by Roger, the creeper-ghost.
Quickly, I shucked off the rest of my clothes and turned the water on, trying to get the weak spray that splattered across the dingy tile hot enough. I kept testing it with my hand as Levi, obligingly, went on talking; he told me the story of Lilith as I showered. His voice was warm and rich. His voice was different than Ryker’s low, husky sexiness, but I could’ve listened to Levi all day.
Levi told me that Adam and Eve had been God’s second try. First, there had been Lilith and her husband, Samael. Unlike the version I’d learned in Sunday School, death had always been a part of God’s plan for man, but the gates of Heaven were supposed to be open; there was never supposed to be grief and loss like we had on Earth. The dead were supposed to walk among us.
Lilith bore the power of life, and Samael grew jealous and angry. In a fit of rage, he murdered her. For man’s sin and cruelty, the gates of Heaven were barred, making death into cruelty too.
God sent his angel Ariel to bring back to life the woman he had made, the creation he loved dearly. But Samael and Lilith had both been corrupted. Samael became the first demon, the one who inspired Lucifer. And Lilith became something stranger, more hum
an and complicated: a rebel against God, but one who still loved him in her heart. She caused all kinds of trouble on the new Earth, where Adam and Eve were populating the Garden of Eden before they, too, sinned.
Lilith couldn’t bear being banned from Heaven, and she killed herself at the gate to Eden, determined to force herself back into God’s presence. Four angels had tried to save her. For her rebellion, God sent her spirit back to be reincarnated in a new body each generation, until Lilith matured and took her rightful place as a woman, life-creator and servant to God, at the end of this earth’s time.
Welp. That was a lot to take in.
“So you really believe,” I shut the water off and reached for the towel, “That I’m the reincarnation of Lilith, and there have been hundreds of Liliths through the generations?”
“Yep.”
“And the four angels?”
“There were four angels who arrived at the gate just as Lilith made her act of desperation. They tried to stop her—tried to save her—and bound themselves to her when they were trying to save their life. There’s a shard of each of them in the four brothers God chooses to walk with her in this world. Just like there’s a shard of heaven in you, a shard that came to life when you went to Heaven yourself and returned.”
“God does love symmetry,” Ryker said drily.
“So what I’m saying is that I’m stuck with you guys?” I said it like a joke, but as I wrapped the towel around my cold self, shivering slightly, I was struck with complicated feelings. Something drew me to them both, as bizarre as that was. As much as they didn’t fit into my plan for Life 2.0, life after Ash.
One of them slung a plaid shirt, boxers and jeans over the partition. I poked at the grimy, vaguely stinky clothes I’d shed before my shower. My own clothes carried a faint stale scent. Not really what you should wear for your harem. I stepped into the boxers. It felt weird wearing them, and when I pulled on the plaid shirt, it hung loosely over my much narrower frame. I pushed up the sleeves, stepped into the jeans and tightened the belt as much as I could to keep them on my hips. I stepped out into the dim light; Ryker leaned against the sink, hands in his pockets, and Levi’s paperback was tented on his knee.