by Julie Hall
“Yeah, man, whatever. Let’s go.” At this point I just wanted to be off this beach. Kaitlin and I led the way to Reeve’s car.
“Do you think he’s been drinking?” she whispered in my ear.
I glanced over my shoulder. His steps were straight. Now and then he veered off the path, but it seemed to be from Rachel tugging on his arm. She was the only one of us who appeared to be tipsy, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If I had to, I could call someone else to come and get us.
“Hey, man, you been drinking at all tonight?” I asked when we reached his car.
Reeve scoffed at me and opened his door. “You guys get the back.”
I eyed the small backseat. Could I even fit in there? “Are you being serious, right now? There’s no way my legs are gonna fit back there.”
“Get in or don’t, I don’t care. But my girl gets the front seat.” Rachel smiled widely at his words. Too bad she didn’t know they were less for her benefit and more to express his irritation with me.
I grabbed the handle and jerked open the door, then moved the seat so Kaitlin and I could crawl in the back.
“I’ll go in first,” Kaitlin said, “Rachel can at least pull her seat up a bit to give you some more leg room,” she added with a pointed glance at Rachel, who was looking everywhere but at us.
I nodded my thanks. Kaitlin crawled across the first seat and then wiggled her way into the tiny back seat, just barely squeezing her legs in between the driver’s chair and her own. She winced once with the effort. It was obvious her shins and calves were being pinched.
“Reeve, come on, at least give her a few extra inches.”
Without looking my way, he grunted and moved his seat up a fraction. Well, at least that was something. Kaitlin’s legs were trapped for sure, but at least her circulation wasn’t going to be cut off. I climbed in next and settled into the remaining tight spot. My shoulder was smashed against Kaitlin and I had to tilt my body at a weird angle to make my lower body fit. Maybe I should have called for a ride instead.
At least it was a short drive.
After adjusting the seat back and giving me a few extra inches—thank you, Rachel—she jumped into the passenger seat and bounced with excitement.
“I love your new car. I can’t wait to see what it can really do,” she purred suggestively in Reeve’s ear. I pressed my fingers to my eyes and pushed down until I saw spots.
Real classy, Rachel.
I gritted my teeth as I waited for Reeve to start his stupid car.
That turned out to only be the start of the ‘Reeve and Rachel’ show. For the next ten minutes Kaitlin and I sat in uncomfortable silence as Rachel did everything except unbuckle and climb into Reeve’s lap to get his attention.
Rubbing the heels of my hands down my face, I tried my best to ignore the noises from upfront. At one point, I looked over at Kaitlin, who was red in the face, but not from embarrassment. She was trying really hard not to laugh. With every added mile we drove, Rachel’s antics kicked up a notch.
Seeing Kaitlin’s tightly-pressed lips and bugged eyes almost made me lose it. Especially when I caught Rachel lick the side of Reeve’s face. He made a move to jerk his head away, but remembering he had an audience in the backseat he caught himself and stayed still, making some bogus comment about how sexy that was.
Big mistake, bro.
She did it again and the car veered into the oncoming lane for a moment before he forced it back.
“Okay guys, why don’t you cool it while we’re driving,” I spoke up. “We get the point.”
Wrong thing to say.
Reeve white-knuckled the steering wheel. “You got a problem with my driving, man?”
I heaved an annoyed sigh. “At the moment, yeah, I do. So, if you could just keep your focus on the road for a couple more miles, you can drive this thing however you want once you drop Kaitlin and me off.”
What was his problem tonight?
It dawned on me slowly. When I would look back at this moment, I would ask myself time and time again how I couldn’t have seen it sooner. Reeve only ever turned into a real jerk like this when he’d had too much to drink. I should have done more than just check his steps and take his word for it.
“I can drive this car however I want. Who are you to tell me how to drive anyway? You spend more time in the water than you do on the roads.” Reeve yelled at me, and even Rachel—in her impaired state—looked a bit shocked.
Kaitlin’s nails bit into the flesh on my forearm as Reeve sped the car up, swerving around corners at unsafe speeds. This portion of the road wasn’t lit, so only his headlights guided him around each new bend.
Time for a new tactic.
“Yeah man, you’re right. This is a pretty sweet ride. I’m sure you can really open her up on the straightaways. Why don’t you slow it down, though?”
Once we got to my house I would somehow get the keys to make sure he couldn’t endanger himself or Rachel further.
“You want to see her really open up?”
“No!” Kaitlin yelled.
But it was too late.
Reeve had turned his head slightly to glance at me in the backseat just as the hairpin turn appeared. Even Kaitlin’s warning cry didn’t give him enough time to make the proper steering corrections to keep us on the road.
Rachel screamed.
We hit the guardrail at an angle on the passenger’s side of the car. My head whiplashed and smashed into the side window.
The next few moments—the last of my life— blurred into a maelstrom of noise and sensation. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but bits of glass and steel did as the vehicle tumbled on its descent.
There was a small part of my brain that knew this was very bad; people didn’t just walk away from an accident like this.
Between the head injury, the chaos of the accident, and the constant tornado of bodies and debris, I could only discern the crunching of the metal around us, the screams of the people in the car, and the pain that wracked my body.
This shouldn’t be the end. I didn’t have enough time.
The thoughts whispered through my mind just as the motion of the car came to a jarring stop. My head once again slammed into something hard, my vision winked in and out until it was no more.
Author Commentary: Chapter 4
JulieHallAuthor.com/logan-4
Chapter 5
I was dead.
What other reason could there be for waking up in a field of multicolored flowers? I lay on my back with my arms stretched out on either side of me, blinking against the brightness of the sky and the rainbow sprinkled greenery around me. I closed my eyes, squeezing them tight to push through the memory block I seemed to be having, and snippets of a car accident filtered through.
“Well sh—”
“Hi, there.”
I jackknifed to a sitting position and turned to my left. A man—probably somewhere in his thirties with tanned skin and facial hair—sat beside me.
“Whoa, where did you come from?”
He smiled and faint laugh lines appeared around his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me right now if I told you.”
“Try me,” I challenged.
He shrugged. “Okay, I’ve always been here.”
“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”
“Told ya.”
“So, I’m dead, huh?”
He just shrugged again. Not a full answer, but I guess my question had been rhetorical anyway.
“All right then, what’s next?” Why prolong the inevitable?
The man beside me chuckled. “You’re going to fit in here just fine, Logan.”
Logan, right, that was my name. How the heck did I forget my own name? In fact, there was lots of other stuff I couldn’t remember.
“Why are my memories all jumbled, right now?”
“To better adjust, everyone’s memories come back at their own pace, but don’t worry, you’ll get them back pretty quickly.”
&nbs
p; My gut told me to trust this dude, and at the moment, I was inclined to listen to it. Not that I had much choice.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. A gesture that felt familiar to me.
“Come on, Logan,” the man stood and offered me a hand up, “let’s get you to orientation.”
I grasped his hand and was yanked to my feet. “You have to go to orientation after you die?” That was weird.
“You’re in for a lot of surprises.”
“I don’t care how long I have to stand here, I’m not moving until you tell me what happened to my friend. Do you need me to spell her name out for you again?”
The blonde angel behind the intricately-carved mahogany desk looked around nervously, obviously flustered by my behavior. I’d just been assigned the job of something called a ‘hunter’ and was supposed to head to their training facility to meet my mentor.
But I couldn’t have cared less about that right now. I wanted to know what had happened to my friend and would wait as long as it took to get answers.
That’s right, I remembered Kaitlin. In fact, I’m pretty sure I remembered everything about my life on Earth. But there was no way for me to really be sure because the irony was you never would know if there was something you’d forgotten.
“Sir—”
“Logan.”
“Right, Logan. You attended orientation, so you understand how things work here,” she drawled out in a sweet, southern accent. Sure, put a southern belle at the front desk so we can’t get frustrated without feeling bad.
I’d been hooked up to their Matrix-like machine—the information-download minus the large insertion of needles—and received the biggest brain dump ever. Apparently, I now knew all there was to know about this realm.
I had knowledge about materializing and dematerializing objects, knew where all the main buildings were in this city, learned there were different parts of the realm, that we could feel each other’s emotions through a simple brushing of skin—creepy—and even that I needed to keep my lips to myself unless I wanted a soul mate for the rest of eternity.
No, thank you.
I can do without that for a few hundred years or so, because now I had all the time in the world. I was going to live . . . er . . . um, well, be like this for the rest of eternity. No need to worry about settling down anytime soon.
So yes, I got where this lady was coming from, and even knew from the faint glow she let off that she was some type of angel, but Kaitlin had been in that car with me and I needed to know if she’d made it or not. And by ‘made-it’ I meant made it out alive, not made it to where I was now.
There was a soft click that came from behind the blonde angel, and then a panel opened up from what I previously had assumed to be a flat wall.
Out walked another faintly glowing angel. This one had her jet-black hair pulled into a bun and wore a severe expression to match her businesslike attire.
I’ll bet she was a barrel of laughs.
I refused to be intimidated.
“I’ve got this, Celeste,” she said as she laid a hand on the blonde’s shoulder.
“Oh, phew, thanks Shannon. I’ll just pop out for a minute so you guys can get this sorted.”
Shannon, the new angel, nodded and waited for Celeste to leave before turning her attention to me.
“What can I help you with?” she asked calmly.
I gritted my teeth. As if she didn’t already know.
“I want to know what happened to my friend, Kaitlin, who was in the same car accident as me.”
“She’s in this realm as well.”
My heart both sank and lifted with the news. It meant that she had died, but it also meant I wasn’t here alone. “I want to see her.”
“You cannot.”
“What?” I stiffened, stepping back sharply. Blood rushed to my head and I ground my teeth together harder than before. My jaw started to ache. “Why not?”
“For several reasons actually, but the two most pertinent to your situation being that she’s been assigned to a different part of the realm—”
“Why would you do that?” My hands clenched with the desire to punch my fists through the plain white wall.
“And because she doesn’t have her memories back like you do.”
Well, that made a little more sense. Shannon and I stared each other down. Slowly a softer emotion leaked into her gaze.
“Logan, when she regains her memories, you’ll be able to visit her. But she needs a little more time than you did. Can you give that to her?”
I sighed heavily. When it was put that way, how could I say no? The fight leaked from my body and soul. I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“How will I know when she remembers everything again?”
“I’m sure she’ll reach out to you when she does.”
That would have to be okay for now.
“Alright. How about Rachel and Reeve? Are they floating around up here somewhere as well?”
Shannon’s lips pressed together, forming a harsh line before she spoke. “No.”
“You mean they’re still down on Earth walking around, living out the rest of their lives while Kaitlin and I paid for their stupidity?”
There were a few beats of silence before Shannon answered. She squinted and her upper lip curled before her features smoothed out. “I wouldn’t exactly say that was the case. Reeve is currently a quadriplegic. That means that there are lots of things he will most likely never again do independently. Some of those things include getting dressed, feeding himself, using the bathroom, getting into bed, driving a—”
“Stop!” I lifted a hand to halt her flow of words, “I get what you’re saying.” Shannon had rattled off that list in a monotone voice that might have seemed uncaring, but I got her point. Reeve was paying dearly for his mistake.
I shoved a hand in my hair and fisted it. Bile churned and boiled in my gut.
Yeah, I was mad at him for the accident, but I didn’t want him to suffer like that for the rest of his life.
I stared at the blank wall to the right of Shannon before asking my next question. “What about Rachel?”
“Rachel is physically fine. She escaped the crash with some broken bones and cuts, but nothing life threatening or permanent,” I almost breathed a sigh of relief, but it would have been too soon. Shannon continued, “Except mentally she has to live the rest of her life as the only one who walked away from that accident. Many people in her situation struggle with survivor’s guilt, which can manifest itself as severe anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, insomnia, night terrors, mood swings and posttraumatic stress disorder.”
I couldn’t see myself, but I knew the blood had drained from my face. No longer satisfied with residing in my stomach, the acidic taste of bile crawled its way up my throat.
Shannon continued, “Only time will tell how this event shapes her future. I think it’s safe to say that no one escaped that crash unscathed.” The last sentence was a censure to me.
I looked the angel in the eye and nodded, “Yeah, I believe you’re right.”
“Any more questions, or can we move on now?”
Swallowing once, I shook my head and stared at nothing. My thoughts were on the two people suffering on Earth and the one here that I wasn’t allowed to contact.
I startled when she laid a hand on my shoulder. Shannon waited until I met her gaze to speak. Her eyes weren’t harsh, but they spoke of a core of steel.
“Are you ready to start the first day of the rest of your existence?”
I arched a brow at her and a small barely-there smile touched her lips. Was anyone ever really ready for that?
I was a natural. I wasn’t being prideful, it was just the simple truth. I picked up fighting skills quickly and efficiently. I’m sure being an athlete on Earth hadn’t hurt either as my body quickly adjusted to the new routine of the afterlife. I knew I was a good surfer, but this was really what I was built for. I couldn’t wait to go up against my first demon
. The thought of protecting the living against evil didn’t leave me cowering in fear, but rather got my adrenaline flowing and heart pumping.
Through hard work and practice, every weapon I touched eventually became an extension of myself. I wielded them all fluidly, gracefully, and with deadly precision.
I spent extra time in the gym simply because I wanted to, not because I had to. When I was there everything else melted into the background. And it stopped me from thinking about what I’d left behind on Earth.
And there was a hefty list of things I sometimes found myself obsessing over. My surfing career was one of the things I’d had to come to terms with losing, but it wasn’t the most difficult by far. The hardest part was letting go of my parents and friends. I’d built surfing up as a big part of my identity while alive, but I now realized I should have spent more of my energy on the people that mattered instead.
It was a mistake I wouldn’t get the opportunity to atone for. And that was hard. Finding meaning in my new job—what I was literally created to do—made it better. Yet even now, I had to hold myself in check. If I weren’t careful I would put being a hunter at the center of my universe, exactly as I had done with surfing on Earth.
I wouldn’t let this job consume me. I’d gone down that road already and knew my identity was rooted in something much more powerful than that.
After only a matter of weeks, my mentor Stephen, a former knight during the Crusades, was already talking about sending me to the gauntlet—the trials every trainee had to pass before becoming an active hunter. After passing the gauntlet, I would not only become an active hunter, but eventually a mentor myself. I truly looked forward to the challenge.
Kaitlin had visited me for a few days the previous week before returning to her part of the realm. It had been a bittersweet reunion between the two of us. There was sadness about everything she’d left behind, but training to be a hunter—her assigned occupation as well—came almost as natural to her as it did to me. Having a true purpose revived part of her soul.
