Before I Wake

by Rachel Vincent

  Stab Avari and capture the soul he’d stolen in the dagger he’d forged, or abandon that soul and let an innocent child die.

  There was really no choice at all.

  I sucked in a deep breath and swallowed a sob, tightening my grip on the dagger. I tore my gaze from the toddler and stared into Heidi’s eyes, trying to see Avari staring back at me. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I shoved the double blades deep into Heidi’s stomach. Warm blood leaked sluggishly onto my hand, slower than what had flowed from Beck’s chest, but just as warm, and red, and gruesome.

  Her eyes widened and she made a strangled sound of pain. “That truly hurts,” the hellion whispered, with a rare note of surprise. A silver bracelet slid down her arm as she grasped my shoulder for balance, hunched over my knife. “How extraordinary.”

  I couldn’t hold her up, so we both fell, and distantly I noticed that no one rushed to help her. As solid and real as she was, they couldn’t see her, just like they couldn’t see me.

  Heidi sprawled on the floor beneath me, her jaw clenched in pain, her gaze glued to mine as the hellion swallowed my agony, along with his own.

  I didn’t want to spill blood. I didn’t want to fight hellions. I didn’t want to watch people die.

  As I blinked through my own horrified tears, a colorless, shapeless haze leaked from Heidi and curled around the dagger, soaking into the hellion-forged steel like water pulled up into a sponge dropped into a puddle.

  Her soul. Or maybe the soul of the woman Avari killed.

  “Until we meet again,” the demon whispered with a dead girl’s voice. “And, Ms. Cavanaugh, next time it won’t be a stranger.”

  His words sent fresh terror through me as I watched, paralyzed by the true pain racking the hellion’s borrowed features. The last of the soul soaked into the dagger and Heidi began to fade from existence, like a shadow dying slowly with the rising of the sun. When she was gone, I still held the double-bladed knife, on my knees on the second floor of the mall.

  All that remained of Heidi Anderson was the blood on my knife and a dark bit of smoke where she’d lain, like the Nether-fog that constantly churned between worlds. And as I watched, breathing slowly through my own horror, that dark smudge of…something…began to fade into nothing, just like Heidi’s body had.

  On the floor, where she’d been, lay the bracelet she’d been wearing moments earlier. And on the night she’d died.

  11

  “KAYLEE?” TOD RACED across the E.R. waiting room toward me, dodging chairs but running right through patients. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  The dagger slipped from my grip and clattered to the floor as he reached me, and several people turned to stare at the strange, bloody knife that had appeared out of nowhere, from their perspective.

  Tod bent to snatch it, and the onlookers’ eyes widened as the dagger disappeared from their sight. Several blinked and shuffled slowly toward the drops of blood still on the floor, the only evidence that they hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Several looked scared. Several more looked confused.

  Tod led me toward an empty hall without even a glance at them.

  “Kaylee. Are you hurt?” He took a step back to look me over, but I couldn’t see anything except my own right hand, still trembling and covered in blood. And Heidi’s bracelet, clenched in my left fist.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered, only vaguely frightened by the pitiful sound of my own voice, like a mere echo of my thoughts. “It’s not my blood. I killed her.”

  “Who? Who did you kill, Kaylee?”

  “Heidi,” I said as he led me down the hall toward an empty grouping of chairs near the radiology department. “Only she was already dead, so it wasn’t really her. It was Avari. But he didn’t really die. I don’t think he can, but I killed him, and now she’s gone but he’s not, and her blood is literally on my hands.” I held my hand out to show him, and that’s when I noticed that my shirt was soaked in it, too. “And there was this bracelet on the floor.”

  “Okay, you’re not making any sense, but you are covered in blood. Let’s get you home.”

  Before I could pull together enough focus to blink myself out of the hospital, Tod did the work for us both. We appeared in my living room, and he tugged me toward the hall and into the bathroom. He lowered the toilet lid and turned on the sink faucet. “Sit down, and let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said as he set the bloody dagger on the countertop and rummaged beneath the sink for a clean rag. “I didn’t mean to go to the hospital. I was just standing in the mall, holding a bloody knife, wishing you were there, and the next thing I knew, I was in the E.R.”

  “No better place to be, when you’re covered in blood,” he said, running tap water over his fingers in the sink, to check the temperature.

  “This is better.” I glanced around the bathroom, but my gaze was drawn to him as my hands turned the bracelet in aimless circles.

  When the water was warm enough, he held the rag beneath it, then turned the faucet off and wrung the rag out. It steamed from the hot water.

  Tod sat on the edge of the tub and turned me by my knees to face him. I closed my eyes, and more tears fell. Behind my eyelids, I saw Heidi as she’d been in the club seven months ago. Right before she’d died. She’d danced and people had watched her. She’d glowed with youth and beauty—the very vitality that had nominated her for death by the rogue reaper who’d killed her and stolen her soul.

  “What happened?” Tod asked, and I gasped when I felt the warm rag on my cheek.

  I opened my eyes as he wiped away my tears, and his blue-eyed gaze chased away thoughts of blood, and death, and the horrible, visceral resistance Heidi’s very solid flesh had presented against my dagger. The images were still there, but they were memories now instead of moments extracted from time, playing over and over in my head and behind my eyelids.

  “The soul thief killed again.” I set the bracelet on the edge of the tub, then cradled my bloody hand in my clean one, resting on my leg. “Madeline said I had to go get the soul. It had to be me, because there’s no one else left. I’m the last one.” I could hear the uplift of panic in my voice on the last word.

  Tod picked up my bloodied right hand and began to wipe my palm clean, slowly. And the panic eased again. The chaos raging inside my head and my heart couldn’t survive the calm, rhythmic strokes of the warm rag as it cleaned away all evidence of what I’d done. What I’d had to do.

  “What happened to the other extractors?” he asked, and his voice was like his hands. Steady. Too strong and measured to give in to confusion.

  “Avari killed them. He’s the soul thief, but I don’t know what he’s doing. Or how he’s doing it. Or why he didn’t kill me.”

  “How could he steal souls from the Netherworld? How would he have killed you from across the barrier? Please tell me you didn’t cross over…?” he said, rotating my hand to wipe my knuckles clean.

  “No. I was at the mall—the version in our world. But he was there, wearing a dead girl’s skin like he wore Scott’s. It’s not possession, Tod. He was really there, in the flesh. Just, not his own flesh.”

  Tod set my hand back in my lap and frowned at me, and the twists of color in his irises deepened in hue as his concern grew. “Could people see him?”

  “Not when I was there, but he killed a woman in the bathroom. Like, physically killed her. And I touched him. He was solid. Flesh and blood.” I held my hand up for emphasis, though most of the evidence was now on the rag, which he was rinsing in the sink again. “He said that if I didn’t kill him—he called it sacrificing the pawn—he’d kill this little girl who was there with her mother. And it would be my fault. So I had to stab him. I had to kill Heidi… .”

  The tears were back, and I couldn’t stop them.

  “Who’s Heidi?”

  “The dead girl. She’s been dead for months, but he looked just like her. Clothes and all, just like the night she died. But when I stabbed her and she disap
peared, that didn’t.” I glanced at the bracelet on the counter.

  Tod studied it, then laid it on the edge of the sink again. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “And you’re sure she’s not just undead?” He sat on the tub again and started wiping the remaining blood from my hand.

  “I’m sure. He said she was rotting in her grave, and hellions can’t lie. They can’t possess the dead, either, right?” Which was the only real bright side to my new state of being.

  “Right.” Tod frowned and draped the rag over the edge of the tub to his left. “So, he took a corporeal form that looked and felt like a girl who’s been dead for months. And the other day he took a corporeal form that looked like Scott, at least twelve hours after he died.”

  “Yeah. It makes no sense. It’s like he’s cloning dead people and possessing them, but that’s not possible, is it?”

  The reaper shrugged. “I’m not ready to call anything truly impossible at this point, but that doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”

  “No. He’s killing people, Tod. He says people are his pawns, and the world is full of them, and he’ll kill as many as it takes.”

  “As many as it takes for what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he acted like Avari, but he looked and sounded like a girl I saw once, and I had to kill her. He made me kill her, and he wouldn’t do that unless he knew he could come back. He’s found a way into the human world and the only way to get rid of him—even temporarily—is to kill his physical form. Even if it looks like someone you know.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to have to do it again, Tod. I’m going to have to kill him over and over, and every time, it’s going to feel like murder.”

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep killing people, even if they weren’t really people, because killing not-Heidi had felt like murder. And Avari knew that.

  Tod took my hands and looked straight into my eyes. “It’s not murder, Kaylee. You didn’t kill a person, you killed a demon. And you saved a little girl’s life in the process.”

  “I know.” But it didn’t feel like I’d saved anything. The woman in the bathroom was still dead, and she’d suffer the postmortem indignity of being found propped up on a public toilet. It was hard to feel like I’d done anything right at all, knowing that.

  “Let’s get your shirt off,” he said. “I think we’re going to have to call this one a total loss.”

  I glanced down in surprise. I’d forgotten about the blood drying stiff on my clothes. That was two ruined shirts in two days.

  “How can there be blood?” I demanded, staring down at the evidence of what I’d done. “Do hellions bleed?” Their breath was toxic and addictive. There’s no telling what random evil properties their blood had.

  “I don’t think this is hellion blood,” Tod said, staring at my top button. “A hellion can’t physically cross the world barrier, so whatever flesh he was wearing wasn’t his own. It wasn’t Netherworld in origin. Which means the blood isn’t, either.”

  “Then what did I kill?” My words lacked volume because I hadn’t taken in enough air to give them voice. Because I could hardly comprehend the question I’d just asked. That was the root of the problem. How could it not be murder, if there was blood? And if it was murder, what did I kill?

  “I don’t know what you killed,” Tod admitted, and that cold horror began to unfurl within me again. “But I know it was evil. You did what had to be done, Kaylee, and you saved lives.”

  I nodded, but I felt like there was still blood on my hands, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, they’d never come clean.

  Tod’s gaze met mine again, and his irises swirled with a single tight burst of color, then went still as he got control over them. “Do you want me to…?” His focus shifted to my shirt again, and I realized that it would have to come off. “I can step outside if you want.”

  “Stay,” I said, and his irises swirled again. “Stay with me, please. I don’t want to be alone.”

  Tod’s gaze met mine. “You’ll never be alone again, Kaylee.”

  My hands shook as I pushed the first button through the hole, and that burst of color was back in his eyes. The second button slid free and Tod’s gaze never left mine, but he was breathing harder. It took me a moment to realize I was breathing again, too. And that my inhalations had matched the rhythm of his.

  His gaze burned into mine, like he could see past my eyes into parts of me no one had ever seen, and I knew I was seeing the same in him. No one else had ever seen him so vulnerable before, like if I pushed him away, he might crumble into pieces that could never be put together again. Yet there was strength, too. He was strong beneath that fragile need, and I knew that I could never fall with him next to me. If I tripped, he would catch me. If I lost my balance, he would find it.

  I wanted to be those things for him, too. His strength. His balance.

  I found the third button and flinched. It was sticky and cold with drying blood. I didn’t want to touch it.

  “Do you want me to get it?” Tod asked, and that complicated mix of strength and vulnerability echoed in his voice, deeper than it should have been, like his question meant more than what his words actually asked.

  I nodded. “Take it off. Get rid of it. Please.”

  He reached for me, and his gaze held mine until the last possible moment before his focus shifted to his fingers on my shirt. To the button, as he slid it through the hole, then moved on to the next. His fingers brushed my skin as he worked his way lower, and I sucked in a deep breath. My eyes closed again, and I let my head fall back against the shelf above the tank.

  I didn’t realize he was finished until he whispered, “Lean forward.” So I did, and his hands slid over my shoulders, pushing the material down slowly until I could pull my arms from the short sleeves.

  Then my shirt was gone, and so were his hands. I opened my eyes just as he turned the hot water on again and rinsed the rag beneath it. He wrung the cloth out, then took my hand in his warm, damp one. “Stand up.”

  I stood, and he knelt in front of me. The cloth was scratchy on my skin, and each stroke was torturously short and deliciously hot as he worked his way across my stomach. When he was finished, he laid the rag across the tub again and his hands found my hips. He kissed the dimple above my navel, and his hair brushed my stomach, so soft I had to touch it.

  His grip on my hips tightened and he exhaled against my stomach. “Every time I see you, I want to touch you, and I’m still a little stunned every time you let me.”

  “Why?” I whispered. If anything, I was the lucky one.

  “Because this feels too good to be true, so I keep expecting something to ruin it. When I saw you covered in blood, I thought it was happening again, the way it was supposed to last time. I thought Thane got to you.”

  “I’m fine.” Physically, anyway.

  “Not much scares me anymore, but I’m terrified of losing you, Kaylee.” His lips skimmed my stomach again, and I closed my eyes as my hands curled in his hair. “I don’t want to let you go long enough for that to happen.”

  “Then don’t. Nothing else feels right,” I confessed. I couldn’t tell anyone else what I was telling him, because no one else would understand. They were worried enough about me already. “Everything that isn’t us is pain, and blood, and death. Or nothing at all. Everything that doesn’t hurt is just…emptiness. It closes in on me when I’m alone, and I hate it, but I can’t fight it. Food doesn’t taste right. Music sounds flat and tinny. Colors look dull and faded. Why? What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing. It won’t be like this forever, Kaylee,” he promised, his lips brushing my skin with each word, his breath hot on my stomach. “Your body and your mind are still adjusting to the afterlife. You have to give your senses time to readjust.”

  “You feel good.” I lifted his chin and his gaze met mine again. “Why are you the only thing in the world that feels good right now?”


  “I don’t know.” He stood, and his hands trailed slowly up my sides. “But I’m not gonna question it.”

  “I know why,” I said as his lips met mine and he reminded me that he tasted as good as he felt. My hands slid beneath his shirt and my mouth fed from his. When he kissed his way along my jaw, I let my head fall back. “It’s because I love you,” I whispered, and I could feel his heartbeat speed up. I’d never actually told him. I’d been scared to, because it was too fast, and too crazy, and…

  “I love you, too,” he said, his lips brushing my ear. “Eternity isn’t long enough.”

  My heartbeat raced to match his, and I pushed him back just enough that I could see his eyes. “I want to feel something good. Something real. Something that isn’t bitter, or cold, or ugly.” I stood on my toes to whisper the rest in his ear. “I want to feel alive again, Tod. Make me feel alive.”

  When I dropped onto my heels, his gaze searched mine, tight spirals of cobalt twisting in and out of the darker blues in his irises. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” I took his hand and pulled him across the hall into my room, then closed the door behind us and leaned against it.

  The heat in his eyes threatened to devour me.

  I pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor. Then I had to touch him. “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, running my hands over his chest and down his stomach. My heart beat so hard I could almost hear it.

  He laughed, and the sound was deep, like it got caught in his throat. “That’s my line.”

  “You already said it.” And I could still see it in his eyes. “So why don’t you show me instead?”

  Tod groaned. “If you don’t mean that, please tell me now.”

  I stepped back and unhooked my bra. “I mean it.” I let the material fall to the floor between us, and his gaze smoldered. “Show me.”

  I closed my eyes, and waited for him, my entire body buzzing in anticipation.

  His fingers brushed mine first and the sparks started there, then followed his touch as it skimmed slowly over my knuckles and up the back of my arm. I could hardly breathe. How could such little contact—innocent, yet scorchingly intimate—bring my entire world grinding to a halt, like the planet had suddenly stopped spinning?