Life After: The Complete Series

by Julie Hall

  Logan must have regained control over his powers because I wasn’t getting electrocuted. The longer we stood, the more our emotions aligned. Comfort and love flowed in currents back and forth to each other.

  I relaxed in his embrace, unsure of anything but this perfect moment we were experiencing in the middle of our mutual storm.

  “Audrey.” A whispered prayer into my hair. Logan shuddered.

  I adjusted my grip on him, wrapping both my arms securely around his neck, as if I could hold him together by sheer force of will.

  Then he was pulling back, and a sound of protest left my throat. My lips only began to form the word no—the actual word was smothered by Logan’s kiss. The action was as desperate as he’d been a moment before, but I welcomed the wildness of it. That wildness was truth. There were no more hidden secrets or half-truths between us. And what this kiss might lack in finesse, it made up for in raw emotion.

  I felt Logan compose himself through the kiss and empathy link. He was a star that had exploded but was now reversing time and tucking every burning ember and ray of light back into the places they belonged. Our kiss ended softly when he pulled his head back and used both hands to keep mine in place.

  Smart man. He knew me well. Without restraint, I would have sought out those delicious lips for another taste.

  I had to blink a few times to clear my kiss-fogged mind. Logan’s smug smirk told me he knew exactly why I needed those few extra moments to compose myself. I rolled my eyes. Truth was he had a right to be smug, and I wasn’t sure my voice wouldn’t come out breathy if I tried to talk. An eye roll was the best I could do.

  His smile faded, and his features ironed back out to warrior mode. His mouth and brow straight slashes. His eyes focused and intent.

  I stared into the familiar face of my old mentor. The mask he had presented to me. The face I’d trained with for those first several months of our relationship.

  Logan had slipped into his get-stuff-done mode. I struggled not to smile at his seriousness.

  With hands on my shoulders, he guided me to a seated position on the couch. My gaze bounced around the room before focusing on him. Glass lay like splattered blood on the ground. Stuffing from exploded furniture littered the floor, and the skeletal remains of the unfortunate pieces of furniture bent at unnatural angles.

  Logan had made a mess.

  A giggle slipped out of me. I slapped a hand over my mouth and snapped my widened eyes back to him. Shoot. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Logan glanced over the carnage and shrugged. That simple gesture told me all I needed to know. He would destroy the world for me if he had to. What was one living room? Especially one that could be cleaned with a few concentrated minutes of materializing and dematerializing items.

  “Audrey, I’ll find a loophole.”

  I was shaking my head without even realizing it.

  “I will,” he said forcefully. “This isn’t the end. There is no conceivable way that this is the end of us. This is the beginning.”

  My eyes filled with wetness at his words. At the fierceness with which he spoke them. I might have gone to Hell and back to rescue him, but this was a man who was telling me he would spend eternity searching for a way to destroy Hell itself for me.

  But that wasn’t the existence I wanted for him.

  “No, Logan. What possible loopholes could there be? Satan was very specific about what would happen to me. The price of his freedom would be paid by the one who released him. The Creator himself set those terms. Nothing in any of our realms can change that. I stabbed Joe. I’m responsible for Satan’s newfound freedom. I’m the reason our realm is in jeopardy. That’s a stain too big to be removed from my soul. The time we have now is a gift I don’t want to waste. But I won’t shackle you to me. That would be the same as condemning you to an eternity of loneliness. Someday there will be someone else—”

  “No.” He nearly shouted the word, halting my speech. “No,” he said again. “I will fight with every bit of my existence to keep you by my side. There will never be someone else. You are it for me. Forever.”

  I took a deep breath. My heart melted and broke at the same time. My next words would hurt both of us.

  “For your sake, I hope you’re wrong.”

  After Logan settled down, he riled himself right back up again when I told him I didn’t want to go to Joe, Hugo, or the Creator. We’d had a fairly lengthy disagreement about that. Logan didn’t let up until he saw the pure fear in my eyes. When that happened he agreed, for my sake, not to seek Their help. And so as a result, he was on a hunt to find a loophole to my damnation another way.

  Logan was a man on a mission. I was pretty sure he wasn’t even stopping to sleep. Rather than an idyllic last few days together, I hardly saw him.

  I hardly saw anyone.

  All my friends were running from one thing to another, or else they were missing in action on some secret defense plan for our realm. And me? I’d just been left adrift.

  The original plan had been to train with Romona and Logan, but then he’d been kidnapped, and now everyone knew Satan was on the loose—no doubt with his gaze fixed on our realm—so all normal activity had been suspended. So that meant no training, and no active assignments for me since I was technically still in training. If anyone should be out there making sure the heavenly realm was protected, it was me. But even as the training center was a flurry of activity, I might as well have been invisible. Satan could literally come for me at any moment, and I was being robbed of my goodbyes. That made me . . . furious.

  I didn’t regret telling Logan the truth. He deserved to know. But his stubborn refusal to believe I’d doomed myself to an eternity in Hell took him away from me as he . . . Well, I actually wasn’t even sure what he was doing every day. He was a mystery.

  On the rare occasion I did get to spend some time with him, he’d kiss my forehead and tell me he was going to fix this. Like my unwilling bargain was a broken toy he could glue back together. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t how these things worked. I’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.

  I wanted this time with him, with my friends, and I was being denied it. Perhaps that’s what I deserved. Really, this was just borrowed time anyway.

  “Hey, wait up.”

  I glanced behind me to catch sight of Kaitlin jogging toward me, blonde ponytail bouncing. I slowed my stride so she could easily catch up. With nothing to do, I spent a great deal of time walking aimlessly around the perimeter of our city.

  She reached me and wasn’t even out of breath. “So, it’s off then?”

  “Huh?”

  “The bonding ceremony . . . You called it off after all?”

  Truth was, Logan and I hadn’t spoken of the ceremony after I laid the ‘my soul is going to spend eternity in Hell for my sins’ bomb on him. Yeah, I’d say there would be no soul fusing in the future, but I hadn’t told anyone anything one way or another.

  “Um, why do you ask? Did someone say something to you?”

  Kaitlin cocked her head. The blonde silk of her ponytail disappeared behind her right shoulder. “No. It’s just that you said it was happening in a few days, and I haven’t heard anything about it. It’s been a few days . . . so I figured . . .”

  She let the statement hang in the air between us.

  “I suppose it’s on hold for an indeterminate amount of time.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked point-blank.

  What wasn’t wrong? The ‘groom’ was MIA most of the time on what was most likely some random fool’s errand, I expected to get sucked back to Hell at any moment, and the time I wanted to spend with my loved ones was slipping through my fingers like sand because of an impending siege on our realm that I’d unintentionally helped orchestrate when I let Satan free.

  “Nothing.”

  “You know, you and Logan have been acting really strange ever since—”

  “Oh, come now, luv—you have so
much free time you can speculate over your friends’ romantic entanglements? I was under the assumption that dear Audrey and I were the only two hunters in the realm not being run ragged right now.”

  Saved by the sarcastic bite of Morgan’s British humor. I was grateful for that, especially since I knew Kaitlin wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, back down from his taunts.

  “Seriously, Morgan, we were having a private conversation here. Is this really any of your concern?” She moved to flip her ponytail over her shoulder only to find the hair was already there. Morgan ruffled Kaitlin’s feathers like no one I’d ever met. I’d be willing to bet they had a history of some sort that my fair-haired friend wanted concealed.

  Morgan shrugged. “I’m bored out of my mind these days. So why not make this my concern? Not much else to do.”

  “Are you seriously going to stand here and annoy us simply because you’re bored?”

  “Annoying you? Who knew?” He grinned. “That gives me extra incentive. Cheers.”

  Kaitlin’s face turned a shade of purple-red I hadn’t seen before.

  I took a concerned step back and checked her ears for steam.

  “You . . .” was all she could get out.

  “Are incredibly handsome? Why yes, I already knew that. Thank you for the compliment.”

  Kaitlin’s nose scrunched up as if she smelled something extremely unpleasing.

  Morgan pulled his lips back from his teeth as if he’d just witnessed a hideous accident. “Oh, luv, you should never do that thing you’re doing right now.” He twirled a finger in her face. “It might get stuck that way, and that would be a supreme disappointment to men everywhere.”

  The look dropped from Kaitlin’s face, and she stared at him with a slack jaw. “Do you even think before words come spewing from your mouth?”

  “I try very hard not to. Thank you for noticing.”

  “Ah, I can’t. I just can not.” Kaitlin turned toward me with pinched features. “I’m headed back to the training center. This whole ‘Satan on the loose’ thing has us all working double time. Let’s talk soon though. I want to make sure you’re all right.”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “I’d like that.” A half-truth wasn’t truly a lie . . . right?

  She waved goodbye and disappeared in the direction she’d come from.

  “I accept gratitude in the form of verbal or physical affirmation. Whatever you’re most comfortable with.” Reclined against the back of the park bench, his arms and ankles crossed, he was the picture of male arrogance. I understood why Kaitlin was annoyed.

  He opened his arms to me. “So it’ll be a hug then?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  He inclined his head apologetically. “I’m saving these lips for someone else. Nasty business this, no kissing issue. But I suppose we both know there are ways to get around it.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows at me suggestively. Ew.

  “Of course,” he went on, “I also wouldn’t fancy having my handsome mug marred by your beloved.” Morgan indicated his face with his hand. He was undeniably handsome—yet he still bore many of the scars from his torture in Hell. He might no longer look like Frankenstein’s monster, but several lines still crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead.

  If I thought for a moment he was seriously trying to flirt with me, I would have walked away. But as strange as the development was, I was morbidly drawn to Morgan now. I felt a sense of kinship with him, which disturbed me.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What exactly am I supposed to be thanking you for?”

  “Why, getting rid of Blondie of course, so that you didn’t have to continue lying to her.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I have a knack for running that particular bird off. It’s usually quite vexing, but it came in handy today. It’s rather odd that she reacts so strongly to me, don’t you think?”

  “Probably because she hates your guts.”

  “Oh, Audrey, you above all should know there’s a thin line between love and hate.”

  I ignored the jab and glanced in the direction where Kaitlin had disappeared. Even if there had been something between them before he sided with evil, he’d have a difficult time wooing that maiden now. She seemed determined to steer clear of him at all costs.

  I was confident that, either way, Kaitlin could take care of herself.

  “Well, good luck with that.” I saluted Morgan and turned to continue my aimless walking.

  “I figured someone who only had a few days of freedom left, at best, would be doing more than roaming around by herself.”

  I stopped so suddenly my feet crossed in front of each other, causing me to wobble. Finding my footing, I straightened and swung to face Morgan.

  “What did you say?”

  His mouth was in a straight line now, no hint of an amused smirk peeking through.

  “Logan’s spent the better part of the last two days grilling me for information. I’m sure he hasn’t told me the full story, but I’m bright enough to fill in the blanks. Especially since I got a look at you shortly after your return.”

  The bottom of my stomach dropped out. “What do you know?”

  “You see, the problem with deals with the Devil, luv,” he said, ignoring my question completely. “You can never get out of them without paying a price. It seems to me that you may have bargained away all of your chips. Very unwise.”

  “I didn’t bargain anything. I was tricked.”

  “Well, yes, they don’t refer to him as ‘the Great Deceiver’ for no reason. Perhaps it makes you understand how Eve first fell prey to his schemes? And Adam followed right along. Tell me, have you ever given their story much thought?”

  “Adam and Eve?”

  “I’ve often wondered if it was the serpent who deceived Adam as well, or if Adam purposely damned himself to stay by Eve’s side. Maybe he couldn’t stand to be parted from her.”

  I blinked at Morgan. Was he saying what I thought he was? That Logan would willingly follow me into eternal damnation?

  A sad smile touched his lips. Morgan pushed off from the bench and shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched up near his ears for a moment. His pose screamed of hidden vulnerability.

  Then his shoulders dropped, and his usual swagger returned.

  “Well, it’s been lovely talking with you, but I have a feisty blonde to nettle. Perhaps if I get good enough at it, they’ll find something for me to do.”

  He set off but stopped after a few steps, turning his head to look back at me. “For what it’s worth, Audrey, I hope you’re able to take in as much beauty and enjoyment as you can. Take it from one who knows. However bad you’re imagining your impending servitude might be, it will undoubtedly be worse. And I’m sorry for that.”

  His long strides ate up the distance quickly, and soon he, too, was out of sight. I stood there, staring at nothing. His words about Adam and Eve—and Logan—echoed in my ears. For the first time since returning from Hell, I was terrified for someone other than myself.

  21

  Desperate Times

  Morgan’s cryptic talk about Adam and Eve didn’t just disturb me, it terrified me. Only minutes after finishing the conversation with him, I abandoned my wandering and bolted for Logan’s cottage. I was prepared to camp out on his couch if I had to, until he returned and gave me answers about what he’d been up to.

  And what was I going to do next? The black mark on my back had grown to almost a foot in diameter. I couldn’t shake the feeling that when it got to a certain size, or reached a particular part of my body, that would be the end. I just didn’t know the size or its destination.

  Was my only move to protect Logan going to the Creator? I wasn’t willing to do that for myself, but to make sure Logan stayed safe—in this realm and not the one buried deep within the Earth—I would risk getting hurled to Hell. If Logan was looking to take my place in Hell, I had to talk some sense into him. If not, he’d force my hand and I’d have to go to the C
reator. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  My feet itched to pace, but I forced myself to remain rooted to the cushion beneath me. A half-hour after I’d planted myself in his living room, I felt Logan’s presence nearby. Finally the hinges on his cottage door announced his arrival.

  Evening had come, and I hadn’t turned on any of his lights. I was sitting in the shadows like a stalker, waiting to be acknowledged.

  Logan slammed the front door after he entered then punched a fist into the wall, leaving a rounded hole. He pressed both hands to the flat wood, and his shoulders and head sagged.

  Did he not know I was here? He could feel me through our bond just as well as I could him.

  I held my breath as I waited for his next move. He stood like a statue, so stuck in his thoughts that my presence must not be registering. Was he even breathing?

  The cottage remained quiet until I heard something dripping, the sound similar to a leaky faucet. But this was Heaven, and things here didn’t leak. Which meant . . .

  Logan’s hand was dripping blood onto the marble tile.

  I sprang into action.

  Logan startled and spun when my hand connected with his shoulder. He really hadn’t realized I was here. I took a step back when I saw the wild look in his eyes. His hair was a disheveled mess, and not in a stylish way. In the sticking-up-at-weird-spots-since-he’d-run-his-hands-through-it-and-grabbed-it-out-of-frustration-a-few-too-many-times way.

  “What happened? What’s going on?”

  For a few beats, the only sound coming from him was the continued dripping of blood from the cuts on his hand.

  “Can you seriously ask me that?” he snapped.

  I took another step back.

  “Are you mad at me?” My voice was small.

  “At you? No.” He ran his fingers through his hair again, leaving streaks of red in his hand’s wake. Regret crossed his expression, and he said, “What am I doing?” His arms shot forward, and before I realized his intent, I was smooshed against his chest—face first into his t-shirt, squeezed so tight I could hardly breathe.