"Why are you here?"
He gave me a sad smile. "Because you're dying."
CHAPTER 18
Dying. Then this place must be limbo. I felt my heart lurch in my chest and my pulse beat like bat wings in my throat. So. I'd failed and now he'd come to claim me, just like all the other things he stored away.
I tried to gasp out a cry for help, and felt as though I was being split in two. I couldn't manage a single articulate sound. I fell to the ground, curled on the cold earth.
Through the haze of pain, I felt Azrael beside me. I was aware I was lying down and that he was snuggled around me like a lover. My dream all over again. I could smell that candy floss again and my mouth watered. Whether from pain or desire, I couldn't know.
When I heard the first sound, it was his voice in my ear and for a second I felt safe. Rescued. I wanted to curl into him for solace. Then I remembered I hated him. I hated what he'd made of me and I whimpered instead.
"You don't have to die, Ayla. Not if you do the right thing. I can help you."
I grit my teeth against the spasms of pain. My mind flashed images onto the backs of my closed eyelids as though they were being screened for me in living color. Me in the back yard at Gramp's house, digging holes. I suffered an acute sense of loss as I stared down into the earth and in the next instant, I was there, feeling the earth beneath my feet and smelling the fragrant air. My shoulders ached from digging. I rammed the shovel into a pile of dirt and stared down into the last of four broad holes.
Gramp was gone, I knew that and I mourned him as I recalled the lushness of his garden. Each herb so lovingly tended had dried and gone to seed. I tried not to look at them as one by one, I laid vessels into the ground and covered the soil over the top. I walked around the edges of each of them, tamping the earth down with my bare feet.
Then the image disappeared as another wave of pain cascaded over me. I lost contact with Gramp's yard. Instead, I felt smothered. Hot. Sweating. I felt torn apart. My back was on fire. Wherever I was, it was agonizing. A fleeting descent with air rushing on my face even as I felt torn apart from the inside out. I gasped. My fall. Oh dear heavens. I felt so bereft as I careened downward that there weren't words for it. Such pain could only be held in images and not language. No one would know the sense of loss.
Azrael's breath fingered down my spine and burned a place between my rib cage.
"How much do you remember?" he whispered against my neck.
"Enough," I said. Enough that I didn't want to remember more.
He ran his thumb along my bare arm and I realized I was nude. Even so, his touch was chaste, almost determinedly so. The backs of his fingers stroked my jawline and the pain disappeared. I rolled over to face him and searched his kaleidoscope gaze for an explanation. I couldn't be angry. I wasn't afraid or happy. I felt as though some part of me was being held back behind a gauzy veil and with one movement, I could tear it free.
Trouble was, I couldn't lift a finger to do so.
"Where is this place?" I said. "Where is everyone?" I tried to stretch out but my limbs felt like dead weight. A strange sort of drowsiness drenched every tissue.
"You're weak," he said. "Let me help you."
He pushed himself onto his knees and I felt his arms dig beneath my legs. As though I was weightless, he scooped me up and stood, holding me in his arms against his chest. I expected to feel his heart thudding against my chin, but instead it was as though his entire body throbbed. At first, it was rapid, and then it slowed. It pulsed once every three seconds, and it surprised me to realize it wasn't his heart I was feeling but my own. It wanted to keep time with his, I realized, and that made me strangely uncomfortable, as though I was forgetting something important.
I squirmed, worming my way this way and that until my feet found the ground again. There was some sort of debris digging into the soles of my feet and working its way between my toes. The amulet, I realized as I looked down, broken into pieces of crumbled jade.
The baby. The goddess. Callum.
"I remember," I said, as another flash entered my mind. I turned my gaze on him. "I'm not supposed to be here."
Azrael wasn't wearing the usual suit. Instead, he wore a white T-shirt like Callum the day we had been training in the garden. There wasn't a blood red tie hanging around his neck; in its place a heavy--linked gold chain disappeared beneath a V in the shirt. His hair was still black but it was slicked flat against his head. Those icy green eyes of his so usually expressive were shifting to each color of the rainbow again until he seemed to decide on gold.
"You look ridiculous," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to hurt him and I wanted to. Right then I wanted to hurt him a lot.
If I struck a chord, he didn't show it.
"Do you like me better like this?" he said. In the next heartbeat, he was wearing that long leather duster jacket he had worn in the basement.
"No fair," I said, realizing that he'd plucked a very intimate image from my mind, one I wouldn't want him to see, one all tied up in desire for something I didn't understand but felt nonetheless. "You read my mind."
He shrugged. "It's not usually a very open read," he admitted. "But here, it seems it is."
"Then what am I thinking now?" I glared at him.
"That you hate me," he said and there was a terrible longing in his voice as well as realization. He hadn't known it until that moment. He had assumed up until that point I cared about him. I got the feeling he didn't enjoy the epiphany.
"You're to blame," I said as though it was the reason for everything and maybe it was. My new life, Callum's condition, the incubus's death at my hands. That one bothered me more than I'd let on. I stood my ground right then, squared my shoulders and lifted my chin in fury.
"It's all your fault."
"Then you don't remember enough after all," he said. "Until you do, I'm afraid you're at risk. You're dying even now."
He still had that silver -tipped cane, I noticed, clutched in his fist. He used it to nudge my belly.
"Don't touch me with that," I said cowering away. "I don't want it anywhere near me."
Somewhere beyond, that goddess was doing heaven only knew what to the people I loved.
"I don't have time for this."
He sounded resigned and sad when he spoke again.
"Time is fluid, Ayla. You should know that. Just as you know Nehkbet will take your soul because she needs it and because there's no one there to stop her. She wants to live more than she wants to save that infant from me."
"So you know what we're trying to do?" I said. I hoped not. Thwarting him was our last hope at saving the poor thing.
Again, he shrugged. "You just accused me of reading your mind. And I told you that it was easy here."
"So you know I won't give you the baby. That I'd rather die first."
He shrugged. "I know. But the real question is why would you risk yourself?"
"You can't understand," I said. "It has to do with love."
He quirked his black brow and I realized what I'd said. Strange. I hadn't understood it myself until I'd said it.
"What do you want with that baby anyway?" I said because exploring that emotion made me even more uncomfortable than thinking about ending up in his cane for all eternity.
"Why do you want to save it?" he said, but even as he spoke, I knew he thought he had the answer--he just wanted me to admit it. "It's nothing to you. A very nearly mummified infant with ties to the supernatural world. It's not supposed to be here." His icy green eyes fell to the tip of his cane. "It was never supposed to be here."
Was that regret in his voice? I simply couldn't tell. All I knew was the only way he was going to help me was if I agreed to relinquish that tiny body.
"You want to collect it. Shove it into your cane."
Even I was astounded by the bitterness in my voice.
"I have to." He started to pace in front of me, letting his cane tap the floor as he circled me. "I don't have
a choice. It can't stay here."
"Why can't it?" I said, twisting around to face him. "It was buried in the earth for god knows how long. Why do you need it now? Why not just let it go?"
He whirled on me, and his face crumpled in fury. Some sort of mournful expression knit his brow and, partnered with the anger, he looked truly fierce.
"Because she's your last fare, Ayla," he bit out. His lips pressed into a thin urgent line as though he was struggling to control his emotions. "Reap her and come home. End this experiment of yours."
Last fare? That didn't make sense. I was nowhere near the end. The maniac in the cathedral had been covered top to bottom with tattoos. I had only three.
"How can she be my last fare?" I looked down at my hands. They were the same hands I had just moments earlier. The skin was fresh and young. I was wearing the same clothes. "I haven't had nearly enough yet to reach my quota."
He hung his head, putting both hands on top of the grieving angel's back that sat on the top of his cane. Then he gave me a long look. "I told you, time is fluid. You buried those vessels yourself. Years from now."
Years from now. I choked on the words. That didn't make sense. It couldn't be.
"You buried them and you marked each one of them with stamps you would recognize." He pointed to my calf. "Virtue," he said and then pointed to my ribcage. "Doppelgänger," he said and then he pointed to my hip. "Incubus."
Then he spread his arms wide, the cane hanging from his right hand and the amulet Callum had stolen from the goddess in his left all whole again and shining with golden light. "Nehkbet, Vulture Goddess of Protection. Mother of mothers."
I felt like I had to reach out for something as I heard that last. I was dizzy and everything was going black. I felt his hands steadying me and I pulled away. I almost lost my footing as I yanked away from him. I rocked back and forth on my heels, trying to focus as I sought his face. Whatever else he wanted me to know, I understood one thing.
"If I buried them then I must have wanted to protect the infant from you, not reap it."
He took a long time to answer, but finally, he looked at me with more compassion than I could have imagined him capable of.
"Maybe you just wanted to give yourself another chance while you still could," he said.
Another chance. I stared at him as he clenched the top of his cane. The knuckles of his hands had gone white. He wanted me to understand something. Something crucial.
"I failed my last reap, didn't I?" I said, but he didn't need to answer. I knew the truth as soon as I said it.
"And now I'm dead."
CHAPTER 19
I staggered as my knees went to water. Strangely enough, when I fell it was onto a soft chair that hadn't been there before. It felt like Gramp's recliner enough that I ran my hand over the familiar arm, taking comfort in the sensation of it on my fingers. Azrael, no doubt. Knowing my mind again.
I hung my head. I knew at some point the shock would take over, but for now it was very much like feeling the floor through a foot that had gone to sleep. Very much like poking a frozen tooth with my tongue. Then the freezing started to recede and the pins and needles of disaster prickled over my mind.
"Oh my god," I said as I realized what the worse was, and it was bad enough that I clutched his arm in desperation. He let me hold onto it, even though I knew my fingers were digging in hard and that it had to hurt.
"I'm worse than dead, aren't I? I'm in limbo. In the top of your cane." I heard my voice catch on that last.
He gave me another sad smile and eased my fingers from his arm. When he placed my hand onto my lap, he patted the back of it gently.
"Not yet," he said. "You still have time. Let me have the child. Let me collect her. Let her be your reap. You've already decided she's nothing to you."
I lifted my gaze to his. "She?" I said. "The baby is a she?"
He clamped his lips together. As though he'd said too much.
I heard myself denying him even as I felt my head shaking in refusal. I couldn't do that. Not knowing that little thing had a gender, that it was old enough to be a she. Not knowing I had wanted to protect her.
"No," I said. "If I put those markings on the jars, then I did so to send myself a message. I must have wanted to protect her." I craned my neck to look up at him. He was chewing his lip and I knew something was bothering him.
"I didn't want you to have her," I guessed, but he didn't answer. Instead, he swung the cane so it tucked beneath his arm almost out of sight.
I stood up, finding the strength in my legs, and backed away from him.
"I won't let you have her."
"It's too late," he said. "Like I told you, you're already dying. Unless you can find a way to neutralize Nehkbet and still keep the child safe, it's over. Over. All but your decision. Reap her, Ayla. Either way, I collect. Make it the infant I collect and not you."
I couldn't miss the pleading note in his voice, and I knew what he was saying made sense. The infant was already gone. Perhaps she was in her own sort of limbo anyway. Surely, I wouldn't care about such a thing so deeply that I would sacrifice my eternity for her. Except I had buried those vessels on my grandfather's property for a reason, marked them so I would know them. If I let him have the baby, then I was betraying some part of me I didn't even know existed yet.
Azrael cocked his head at me, licked his lips as though he wanted to say something. "I can take care of the goddess for you. If that's the only thing holding you back."
The goddess. If he was willing to neutralize her for me, then he wanted the baby badly.
"And if I don't?"
"Then I can't intervene. You'll have made your choice."
"And Callum? Sarah?" I said. "What about my grandfather?" I thought of the way I felt in that flash forward sequence, how bereft I felt that I knew he was gone.
Azrael's silence was the only answer I needed. If I let Azrael have this baby, then it would leave the goddess free to siphon the energy from each of them in turn before he decided to step in and neutralize her. It was about the baby foremost, and he would collect the infant before he did anything to help the abominations he didn't see fit to live on a human earth. I'd be spared the limbo in his cane, maybe even gain my wings, but the futures of those I loved would be filled with void.
I couldn't do that to any of them. Just like I had in my mother's bedroom with the incubus, I made a choice based on gut reaction. I'd thought the incubus was the threat back then. And regardless of how ill it made me to make the choice, I had taken its life without a second thought because I thought it had hurt someone I loved and me. I wasn't any different now than I was three nights ago.
I studied Azrael out of the corner of my eye. Whether he knew it or not, I was beginning to recognize some of the intricacies of his body language. He tapped that cane when he was thinking or when he wanted to intimidate. He pulled a carefully stoic mask over his face when he didn't want me to read through it. And his eyes shifted color when he was feeling the most vulnerable. He was doing all of those things as I watched him. He was hiding something. If he could read my mind here, surely he understood where my train of thought was running and he wanted to keep me distracted from it.
I'd been thinking about the incubus. He knew that.
"There's something about the incubus you're not telling me," I said.
He perched on the edge of the chair, placing the cane between his knees and propping his hands on it. The gold of his eyes shifted back to their normal green, but he couldn't fool me.
"You said it was in love with my mother," I said. "And you came when you thought I was going to reap it because it wasn't the right time."
His mouth twitched. "I forget how smart you are, Ayla," he said. "But that has nothing to do with this."
"I think it does."
I knelt in front of him, putting my hands on his knees. His gaze seemed locked onto the way my fingers splayed across his legs and tucked into the crooks beneath the joints. The muscles in hi
s legs tensed and let go. In a moment of brevity, I let my hands slip up to the middle of his thighs. He sucked in a breath.
"The incubus thought I was my mother," I said, musing. "It wanted to protect me. To warn me of something."
"You didn't need an incubus to warn you about the danger," he said, swivelling his gaze to mine. His eyes held mine for a long moment. "You had me."
I shook my head slowly, trying to recall those moments. "I don't think so."
He had put his hands over my eyes to keep me from being compelled by the incubus, and he'd whispered in my ear, but he hadn't materialized. Not at first.
"You didn't want the incubus to see you," I said.
I leaned in, peering up into his face. For once, I felt as though I had the upper hand.
"It was afraid of you."
For a second, I thought he would deny it, but then he leaned back in the chair, letting my weight rest against him. His hand slipped to the back of my neck and his fingers ran up to tangle in my hair. He gave my head a gentle tug backward. I ended up with my throat arched toward him, my eyes taking in his full face and my body pinned to his. Those green eyes of his drilled into mine and for a second I imagined his lips trailing down the column of my throat. My chest ached, but not with fear, I realized. It was enough to make me swallow nervously.
"Everything fears me, Ayla, and for good reason." He leaned forward again, just a breath away. The smell of candy floss that always followed him invaded my senses, but this time it was tainted with the smell of burnt sugar. He touched my chest over my heart with two fingers and I felt pain and grief and the sense of eons stretching into emptiness all at the same instant. I felt bereft. Tears pooled in my eyes. Then he pocketed his fingers into his suit jacket as though they were a toy gun and the void in my soul filled back up again.
"Every creature on this earth is terrified of me," he murmured. "Everything. Except for you."
He'd made his point, but I pressed on despite the fear that lodged in my throat. I had to know one thing.
"Did the incubus come to warn me about you?" I said. "You said they have an exquisite sense of time. But you didn't just mean that it assumed my mother was still alive and was mistaking me for her. You meant that it knew everything that would happen. Everything to come. Everything that had been."
Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2) Page 17