Immortal

by J. R. Ward

  Such a hero, she thought as she teared up.

  And yes, opposite him, Colin the archangel was a shadow of his powerful self, his face drawn in horror, his body straining as if he were in physical conflict--except there was no one coming at him. There had been, though--his face was bruising up and there was silver blood on his hands. The room was also trashed, lamps knocked over, tables overturned, sofas out of place.

  Jim had been in the process of fighting with the archangel. Maybe over her honor? That was so like her Jim . . . but it shouldn't have ended like it had.

  And she wasn't the only one who felt that way. That dumb whore Sissy Barten was screaming at the top of her lungs as she went over and took Jim's head into her lap, and across the way, Adrian the angel was looking like he'd seen a ghost. Or maybe the Grim Reaper.

  The only bright spot was the obvious agony of that girl, and Devina took a moment to absorb the incandescent pain. It was the only balm she was going to have for a long, long while. The shit was going to be useful, too.

  But not now. Now, it was all she could do to keep from breaking down.

  Splaying her fingers out, Devina leaned in until her forehead touched the cool glass. "My love . . ."

  Some animal was loose and going crazy in the parlor.

  Oh, wait--it was her, Sissy thought.

  With her mouth wide-open and her lungs working with a seemingly endless supply of air, she was making a noise that was part lioness, part atomic bomb detonation. Staring at Jim's lifeless body, cradling him against her, getting stained by his silver blood, she unhinged--

  And lunged at his attacker.

  Without conscious thought, she scrambled over the floor like a crab, launching herself at Colin, who remained stunned stupid either by her having smashed him on the head or because of what Jim had just done to himself.

  She went for the eyes.

  She didn't get close. He grabbed her wrists and flipped her onto her back on the floor, straddling her and pinning her arms over her head.

  "Fuck you!" she spat at him, fighting against the hold, kicking with her legs, thrashing around. When she tried to bite him, he somehow kept her down while freeing one of his hands--which he clapped on her jaw to hold her head in place.

  He didn't hurt her. Just let her wear herself out.

  It felt like a year until all she could do was heave for breath underneath him, and still he sat over her calmly, as if he'd put no effort into any of it at all.

  As water hit her face, she couldn't figure out where it was coming from--

  The man was . . . crying. From out of the strangest-colored eyes she had ever seen, tears were falling drop by drop and landing on her cheeks. And before she knew it, her own were mixing with his, a great wellspring of emotion bursting out and taking over where the anger had been raw as the wound Jim had given himself.

  "I have lost, too," he said in a proper English accent. "I am without as well."

  "Why did you kill him," she moaned, even though that was not what happened. "Why--"

  "I am sorry for your loss." His voice cracked. "I am so sorry. . . ."

  She turned her head and looked at Jim's body through waves of tears. His face happened to be tilted in her direction, and for a moment, it was as if the two of them were staring at each other--except there was no life behind his eyes.

  Colin loosened his hold. Backed off a little. Backed off a lot.

  As the man, angel, whatever he was moved away from her, his legs flopped around like he meant to stand up, but didn't have the strength or coordination. Then he rubbed his face . . . as if maybe that would change what was across the floor from him.

  "You wanted to kill him," Sissy said grimly. "I don't know why you're so fucking surprised at this."

  "Whate'er has he done to himself," the angel whispered.

  From over on the sofa that had been thrown against the wall, Adrian cursed. "He went there to get Nigel back."

  Colin's head shot around. "I beg your pardon?"

  "He killed himself to go get your boy."

  Colin frowned, his black brows locking together. "That is not possible."

  "Which was what I tried to tell him, but you know Jim. He makes his own mind up."

  Sissy was conscious of Ad glancing her way, but she didn't pay any attention to him. She was too busy searching for that other outcome, wondering why, considering all the levels of magic in this new world she was stuck in, she couldn't hit some metaphysical rewind and make this mess go away.

  "No one has come back from there without the Creator's permission," the Englishman said. "You should know that."

  "Yup. Brought that up."

  "Why ever did you let him--"

  "Let him? What the fuck, Colin."

  As Sissy pushed herself upright, the back of her neck started to tingle. Reaching up, she rubbed her nape--

  Creeeeeeeeeeak.

  The sound of the front door opening got everyone's attention. And it was followed by a strange set of footfalls, a repeating shuffle and a punch that sounded like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Then the temperature dropped forty degrees, making the walls crackle and her breath condense in puffs in front of her face.

  Sissy screamed at what appeared in the doorway: It was a corpse, an upright, rotting corpse with gray flesh hanging off its bones and stringy hair vining down its pitted shoulders.

  Colin and Adrian both jumped up as the corpse held out its hand, the sinew connecting the white bone offering little in the way of a palm. "Jim," it said in a hollow rasp. "You will let me see him."

  "The fuck I will," Adrian growled.

  "Now is not the time for this."

  "Fuck you, Devina."

  "Fine, we'll do it the hard way."

  The light drained not just out of the room they were in, but the sky itself, blackness arriving like a stain upon the earth. And then an eerie buzzing, like bees were coalescing and beginning to swarm, filled the air.

  Someone grabbed her around the waist--not Adrian, the other one. "Adrian!" the Englishman yelled.

  "Take Sissy!" Ad barked.

  "Have her! Get over here, mate!"

  A split second later, Sissy was thrown against the far corner of the room, and the big bodies of the two men walled in front of her. A flash of lightning from outside gave her a quick visual of the corpse crumpling to her knees in front of Jim's body . . . and then all hell broke loose. With the next lightning strike, black, oily forms pulled themselves free of jagged shadows around the room, becoming three-dimensional instead of two, coming alive.

  And then all went pitch-black again.

  Until the next lightning strike.

  This time those black nightmares were closing in on the three of them, prepared for attack.

  There was no way the Englishman and Adrian were going to hold them off.

  No way.

  Chapter

  Eight

  "I love you. . . . I love you. . . . I love you. . . ."

  Jim was still saying his last words over and over again as he opened his eyes. Gray. That was his first impression. Gray sky, gray ground. His second was that the suffocation and sense of being smothered from the outside in was gone. So too was the firebrand across the front of his throat and the coppery taste in his mouth.

  But his Sissy was also gone. Along with Adrian and the parlor. And Colin.

  A vast gray landscape had replaced it all, the flat plane stretching farther than he could see in all directions. The only breaks in the endless horizon were boulders that rose up from the powdery ground, rock formations that were spaced intermittently and at random.

  From out of the north--or was it the west? the south? the east?--a coiling wind traveled to him, hitting him in the face, making his eyes sting and his throat go dry from the dust it carried.

  Sitting up, he did a full three-sixty with the checkouts. No buildings. Nothing moving. And there was no sunlight, no moonlight, no shadows, just a strange glow that had no source and yet was like the ground
cover: endless.

  "Shit," he breathed.

  Hard to know what he thought he'd find--then again, as of just a couple of weeks ago, he hadn't believed in angels, demons, or that Purgatory existed. So it wasn't like he'd come over here with a layout in mind, or a game plan. But, man, he hadn't pictured this.

  Talk about your needle-in-a-haystack routine. So much distance to cover in search of Nigel--and he wasn't sure how much time he had. Devina was back on earth working the war while he was over here, and the best he could hope for was that, as with Hell, time didn't work the same way in this wasteland as it did up where the sun was in charge.

  Was this place below the earth? Off to the side in the Milky Way? In the depths of a worm hole? As his mind went into an unsustainable bend, he dropped that line of thinking and went to stand up.

  Tried to stand up was more like it.

  Getting to his feet required a crapload of effort, as if gravity on this side of the divide were so much more powerful. And when he finally was on the vertical, the ground sank down under his weight, his footprints going deep into the packed dust.

  He walked forward because . . . what else was he going to do--

  More with the wind, pushing up against his chest as he ambulated, creating a drag he had to fight against. And the dust. Christ, it was like being back in the Middle East--every breath irritated the inside of his nose, and his eyes started to feel like he'd been on an all-night bender, each blink scratching over his pupils and itching his tear ducts.

  Abruptly, he thought of Sissy's expression . . . and then none of the physical shit mattered. The horror on her face as he'd sliced his own throat wide-open had been the stuff of nightmares, and the knowledge that he'd put that panic and pain in her eyes was unbearable.

  Guessed he'd proven he could put the war ahead of his concern for her, but, man, what a shitty decision. In a shitty situation.

  Forcing himself to keep moving, he put one foot in front of the other and thought how much it would help if he knew whether Nigel was here. Was this just his own version of the place? Ad and Eddie had met, but maybe their rules were different? Although, hell, even if the archangel had ended up on this precise plane of existence, Jim had to wonder how to find him. At this rate? He could spend eternity wandering around between the boulders--

  Okay, they were not, in fact, rocks.

  Statues.

  As he came up to one of the mounds, subtle contours that were not visible from afar revealed the figure of a man sitting cross-legged, his arms wrapped around a scrawny chest, his head lowered as if in prayer . . . or sorrow. The clothing was from an older time period, like maybe the Revolutionary War--but with all the disintegration, it was hard to tell. The relentless wind had worn down the edges of the knees, the collar of the heavy coat, the features of the face. The sculpture was degrading into that perennial dust--

  "Fuck!"

  Jim jumped back and went into a defensive crouch. The "statue" was moving: The arm on the left shifted upward as if there were someone trapped in there or . . . that actually was someone.

  Gray particles filigreed off the elbow as that limb rose up, as if the person were trying to reach him for help.

  It wasn't Nigel, but come on, like he wasn't going to do something here?

  Jim crouched down and put his own hand out.

  The instant contact was made the entity dissolved into a loose pile of that powdery ground cover, the wind rushing in and blowing it away as if that were the task of the gust.

  Within moments, there was no sign that anything had been there at all, the slate wiped clean.

  Warning bells went off in his head, and he took a gander at his fingers, his palms, his forearms, his body. He had on what he'd been wearing when he'd crossed over, just a white Hanes T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Things had changed--or were changing--though. The white was not as bright as it had been, like the shirt was in a Tide detergent ad showing what not to do with your laundry. And the blue was fading, too.

  He stared down at where the man had been.

  Then he resumed his stride, cupping his hands and yelling into the wind, "Nigel! Niiiiiigel, yo, buddy!"

  His voice didn't carry far, as if the dust in the air were consuming the volume, eating it alive.

  "This was a great plan, asshole," he muttered as he came up to another "boulder."

  This one was too worn-down to see any identifying anything. The head was nothing but a bump on top of the mound, the body beneath it arranged in the same fashion as the one before. Or at least that was what it seemed.

  He was about to turn away when the structure collapsed, the head falling inward into the triangulation of the body, the wind whipping up and claiming the ash, sweeping it away once more.

  Jim coughed to relieve his dry throat, and wondered if the laws of food and water applied in this landscape.

  Trudging along, he began to feel a chill in the air. "Nigel! Nigel . . . !"

  Think, Jim. Fucking think. What could he leverage to keep himself "alive." And where the fuck was that Englishman?

  Serious concerns about the timing of everything dogged him. Chronologically speaking, Nigel had killed himself two and a half days ago, max. But that was in earth hours. So how long did the guy have before he turned into one of those mounds? Before Jim himself did? The style of clothing of that first man suggested two hundred years or more had passed, and that was good news on one level, because it meant they had some time. Unless everyone's experience here was different?

  Man, he could have used some stereo instructions on this place--and of course, that thought brought up all kinds of images of Sissy bent over that beat-up old book, her straight blond hair falling forward, her frown of concentration suggesting she was milking every nuance of meaning out of the words.

  As he trudged along, calling out the archangel's name, he tried to tell himself that the reason he was lingering on the Sissy shit was because, like any road left untraveled, it was easy to build up a scenario of perfection. Without having actually been with her, his brain was free to dream up all kinds of utopia--and it was illogical to torture himself with could've-beens that were, in fact, weren'ts.

  Besides, it wasn't like he had any track record with grand romances. His sex life was built on a solid foundation of anonymous fucking. Not only had he never been in love; finding a wife or a mother for some children had been so far down his bucket list, it hadn't even made it on the page--

  Okay, clearly the war had done his nut in, and his version of crazy was this illusion of having some kind of destiny with Sissy.

  "Niiiiiiiigel," he belted out. "Where are you, you sonofabitch . . ."

  Looking out over the vast barren landscape, he was struck by the reality that having all directional options open was a unique form of being trapped. And then there was the other happy ass-slapper that Nigel was the anti-Bear Grylls. That scone-fancying, Gatsby-wearing Englishman wasn't going to have a clue how to survive in any environment that didn't include a croquet set, plenty of sherry, and a quartet playing Bach.

  Man, he should have thought this through better.

  "Niiiiiiiigel!"

  Chapter

  Nine

  As lightning flashed and showed off all kinds of minions on the attack, Adrian wished like hell he hadn't lost vision in one of his eyes. Depth perception was a bitch for him now, and he needed it more than ever as he faced off against the demon's collection of oily, formless fighters.

  The fucking things had always given him the creeps, and that was when he'd just been by his little lonesome with no one else to worry about but himself. With Sissy behind him and Colin the Crackpot as backup?

  Happy Monday--

  Feeling a tug on his waist, he twisted around--and discovered that Sissy had just unsheathed his backup dagger. "What the hell are you doing?" he yelled over the thunder.

  "I'm going to defend us, too." She palmed the hilt as if there were a possibility, however remote, that she might have a clue how to use the thing.
And not for making a salad.

  But they didn't need a hero in this situation.

  Ad rolled his eyes. "Look, just stay behind us--"

  The impact hit him in the face, the sweeping punch ringing the shit out of his bell. Which was the thing with minions: They had Rubber Man's stretch and Tyson's follow-through--and with his bad leg, he couldn't take a hit like he used to. As his weight transferred to the bad side of things, he listed and the world tilted. Throwing out a hand--

  Sissy was there to catch him, jacking her body against his like she was trying to keep a tree from falling. And Colin stepped up in front, throwing out a buffering spell that bounced the minion off in the opposite direction.

  More lightning strobe lit the room. Another two minions stepped right up where the first had been.

  "Not good," Ad muttered. "Really not good."

  With a curse, Colin braced his body and put both palms forward, sending out shock wave after shock wave, holding off the attack as still more minions pushed in.

  Within moments, they were blocked into the corner completely, an army of Devina's shadows pressing in so tightly together that they became a wall of dense, oily blackness.

  Sissy groaned against him, pushing her face into his pecs, but she didn't let go of him, and she didn't drop the dagger. Shit, she was probably remembering them from her time down below.

  Colin began to shake, his expression twisting into a grimace. "I can't . . . hold . . . them . . . much longer. . . ."

  Great time to go Scotty from Star Trek.

  And then the chaos only ramped higher. On the far side of the teeming mass of demon servants, a wailing sound rose up. It was Devina, saying Jim's name over and over again as her rotting skeleton mourned over his body.

  "Devina!" Adrian hollered. "Devina! Help us get him back!"

  More minions continued to layer the protection spell, pushing Colin back even farther. And then a limb broke through, clawing inside--

  "No!" Sissy yelled, slashing at it with the dagger. "No!"

  There was an ear-ringing squeal as the minion retreated. But almost immediately, another took its place. Sissy was on it, scooting around Ad to go up close and personal with that sharp blade. And Adrian followed suit, careful not to throw off his balance or clip Sissy with his own weapon.

  "Devina!" he barked. "You stupid bitch! Help us get Jim back!"