by Tara Fuller
“Standing by and watching him needlessly hurt isn’t healthy,” I said. “Taking the chance he might slip back into that hole I pulled him out of, that’s not healthy.”
“Gwen…”
“Help me see this through and I promise things will change.”
She narrowed her gaze, looking skeptical. “How?”
“I’ll stop getting attached,” I said, already regretting my words. I had never told a lie. I couldn’t. I wasn’t wired that way. If I told Sky I would change, I’d have to follow through, and she knew it. “I’ll learn to leave the jobs behind.”
Sky tilted her head back to the lavender-tinged heavens and groaned. “Fine!”
I clapped and threw my arms around her neck for a quick hug. Then I turned away and summoned a portal, stumbling back when light erupted from the floor beneath us.
Sky stepped up beside me, shaking her head. “You’re going to get us both in trouble. Tell me you realize that.”
“For what?” I asked, innocently. “Doing our job? We’re just lending a helping hand for the greater cause.”
Sky squinted at me. “What kind of helping hand?”
“We can’t let him leave the coffee shop. We have to keep him calm.” I grabbed Sky’s hand to reassure her. “That’s all. It won’t take long. And just think of how happy they’ll be once he finally tells her how he feels. And we’ll get to be a part of it!”
“It’s interfering with fate.”
“It’s not interfering. It’s just a little adjusting.”
Sky groaned and linked her arm with mine. “For the record, I still think this is a bad idea.”
I grinned and stepped into the light. “You always think it’s a bad idea.”
“She’s coming!” Sky shouted. Her face was plastered to the small coffeehouse window, and sunlight twined around the strands of her long golden hair. I took my place behind Tyler, and joy bubbled up inside me like a living thing. He raked his fingers through his dark curls and checked his phone again. I laid a hand on his shoulder and the tension melted off him. He took a deep breath when April breezed through the door looking windblown and flustered.
“I’m so sorry I’m late!” She rushed over to the table. “Professor Wilson kept me after class and I had the worst time catching a cab. Oh, and you’ll love this. I dropped my cell phone in the toilet this morning—don’t ask me how—so I couldn’t call.”
He laughed and watched her ramble. “Now I definitely want to know how.”
“How what?” She stopped and blew a curl out of her eyes.
“How you dropped the phone in the toilet.”
He grinned up at her and she rolled her eyes, dropping into the seat beside him. “What, and give you ammunition? No way.”
He reached between them to grab her chair and scooted it close enough for her knees to touch his.
“You curled your hair today,” he said, grinning.
“So?” Her cheeks flushed, and Sky giggled beside me. I elbowed her and gave an I told you so look. She could deny it all she wanted, but I knew this was Sky’s favorite part of the job. Playing cupid. Their affection…their love for each other, it was infectious. It defied what evil had worked so hard to create. They weren’t just alive. They were happy. And that on its own made every part of me spark and buzz with undiluted joy. It was a high. A rush. And for a few moments it made me forget that something in me was missing.
The boy I’d pulled from the depths of despair reached out with shaky fingers and traced the edge of her jaw, turning her face toward him. “April…”
“Tyler…just don’t—”
“I love you,” he blurted out. “I…I’m in love with you.”
Her eyes flooded with tears and she clutched her sweater in her fist. “W-why?”
“You saved my life,” he said, simply. “You save my life every day.”
Joy didn’t just spark, but exploded inside April, and a dazzling display of color radiated from them both before wrapping around me like a warm blanket. I stumbled back from the force of it, grabbing my chest, which was filling to the point of cracking with warmth. Sky skipped around the table, clapping and grinning, colors clinging to her so bright, they wisped around her like ribbon as she moved. It was beautiful. It was more than beautiful. It was why we existed.
“It worked!”
“I know.” I smiled, watching April throw her arms around Tyler’s neck, crying tears of joy. “Look at them. What did I tell you?”
“You want me to say it.” Sky cast me an irritated look. “Don’t you?”
I tapped my finger to my lips, pretending to consider that. “Yes.”
“Fine.” She folded her arms across her chest and sighed. “You were right. I was wrong. They were worth the extra effort.”
“Thank you.” I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tiny pulses of happiness that rippled out from April each time Tyler’s hand would brush her fingers across the table. Slowly but surely, the black chains of loneliness were loosening, freeing her from their bonds.
April laughed at something Tyler said and he leaned across her knees to kiss her, trapping her happiness between his lips. A sudden burst of blinding hope spun around him as his mouth moved effortlessly against hers. Watching them was a happy kind of torture. It made me feel…half empty. The innocent touches, the lingering stares, dual heartbeats fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. I shouldn’t have wondered what that would feel like. Should never have wanted it. But sometimes… I sighed, and Sky cleared her throat.
I turned to give her my full attention. Her arms were folded over her white robe, lips pursed with disapproval, clear blue gaze suspicious. She reminded me so much of my father when she did that. Always watching naive little Gwendolyn, waiting for her to fall. I bristled under her stare and looked back at April and Tyler.
“It’s time to go,” she said in her no-nonsense tone. “There are others who need us. Can’t you feel it?”
In a world as full of misery as this one, of course I felt it. The need to extinguish the darkness and light the world with joy was why I existed. Angels had never lived. We simply were. Beings created out of pure love at the hands of the Almighty to serve. We were not built to want, to long for, to ache, to desire. We were built to give. Sometimes I wondered if I’d been built wrong.
“Just a little longer?” I asked.
I could sense Sky watching me, and felt her worry. “Just because you were right doesn’t mean anything has changed. You promised. Remember?”
I sighed. “How could I not with you reminding me every five minutes?”
“If you keep allowing yourself to get this close…you know what could happen.”
“I’m not going to fall, Sky,” I said with a calm certainty she seemed to doubt. “But don’t you ever wonder what it’s like?”
To be longed for. To be desired. To be touched.
Tyler brushed a stray lock of hair back from April’s cheek and a wistful sigh escaped my lips before I could stop it. Sky pinned me with a stern look.
“No.” Sky’s clear blue eyes simmered. “I’m being serious, Gwen. If Balthazar knew how much you invested, how attached you let yourself get, he would—”
“He’s my father,” I said, knowing it was a foreign concept to her. The only parent most angels knew was the Almighty. I’d been given to Balthazar as a gift at my creation. He’d once been a warrior among men. Too fierce for a mere mortal existence, the Almighty had plucked him from life to lead another kind of army. He’d never had the joy of a child in his human life, so I’d been sent to help ease the void he carried inside. To help him keep a scrap of humanity in the face of so much death. He’d been the first soul I’d ever infected with joy. The first smile to grace my eyes. The first laughter to bless my ears. Most may have seen him as the cold iron fist that commanded an army of death, but to me, he was Father. It didn’t matter that we were two different beings, that once he’d been made of flesh, and I’d only ever been made of stars. We were family. I met S
ky’s concerned gaze. “He would never cast me out.”
“I love you, Gwen.” She held my hands in hers. “I just want you to be careful.”
I squeezed her fingers and smiled. “You worry too much. I’m not going anywhere. I just like a challenge. You know that.”
Sky looked skeptical. “A challenge. That’s it. You’re not…tempted?”
“What’s here to tempt me, Sky?” I asked, wistfully stealing a glance at Tyler’s handsome, smitten face. “No one has ever looked at me that way. They never will.”
“You shouldn’t—” The earth rumbled, cutting off Sky’s words. The chatter filling the coffee shop quieted. Black tendrils of fear curled through the room like smoke. Sky turned to me, eyes wide, and just like that the world around us lit up in an explosion of glass and flames.
Chapter 3
Easton
“You have got to be kidding me.” I slipped my scythe from its holster and sneered at the messy scene in front of me. A bicycle, twisted beyond recognition, lay in the middle of the once-busy street, now blocked off by first responder vehicles. Broken glass and debris lined the sidewalk in front of a section of blown-out wall. And then there were the bodies. A handful of twisted humans, once full of potential, now lay limp and lifeless on crumbled concrete.
And none of them had a ticket to Hell. Lucky me.
Scout, my new partner and pain in my ass, leaned down to inspect the young man paramedics were furiously working to revive. Scout wasn’t exactly new to the reaper scene, but he was a recent transfer to my territory. It had taken me seventy years to learn to play nice with the last guy. I looked Scout over, with his mop top of messy blond curls, torn jeans, and surf T-shirt. Yeah, this one was going to take longer.
The living scurried around us in a panic, talking about a gas line going up. The wounded were dragged out of the debris while the dead were passed up for those who still had hope at survival. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the word. Survival was just a pit stop on your way to your real forever. Death. Humans worked so hard to hang on to life, when in the grand scheme, the thing they valued so much was nothing more than a grain of sand in the sea of eternity. My grain had lasted only eighteen years, but it had been enough for me. Life was overrated.
“So much for staying in shape to live longer, huh?” Scout said. “No man should ever have to die in spandex.”
I looked over the biker’s skintight yellow-and-black outfit. “He shouldn’t have to die looking like a bumblebee either, but here we are. Enough of the fashion drivel. We have a job to do.”
Scout knelt down and touched the man’s shoulder, which was bent at an odd angle.
“He’s mine,” he said, tossing his blond curls out of his eyes. “That means you get the pretty one. Bastard.”
I dragged my gaze across the road to where a girl lay across the sidewalk in front of what had once been a café. If it hadn’t been for the halo of blood around her, I could have been fooled into thinking she was simply asleep. Her face was a mask of stillness and peace, her purple dress smeared with blood and ash. She was innocent. I could smell the purity on her from across the street. Damn it. She was Heaven-bound.
A dull scream echoed in the back of my skull. I searched the debris for the source. And there he was. He was half hidden by brick and ash, and his chest worked frantically as he gasped for breath. He wouldn’t last long. His eyes were wide and wild. His fingers, stretched toward the girl on the sidewalk, looked like broken branches. Strange…even with death at his doorstep, he was concerned for her. Scout grumbled as he set to work and I tore my gaze from the temporarily living human.
“Pretty one? You think I care?” I raised a brow. “Take them both. You’re the one hell-bent on getting in an angel’s panties. Maybe you can try your luck while you’re up there. Besides…looks like I’m going to have a straggler.”
Scout stood and brushed off his hands on his jeans. “Nah. I’ve given up. It’s an impossible mission. Those girls may as well have chastity belts under those pretty white robes. They’re immune to my charms.”
“You say that as if you’ve ever actually had any.”
The paramedic backed away, head hung low, and the last breath of life puffed out of the bumblebee biker who had met a tragic end. I slipped through the crowd of onlookers and moved into position, anger washing over me as I prepared to log another soul that wasn’t going to my territory. I was getting sick of playing errand boy for Balthazar. For picking up the slack for Anaya. The former Heaven’s reaper might have been like a sister to me, but it didn’t mean I had to like the fact that she’d left her post to trail after her boyfriend for the next thousand years.
Souls like me, the only ones deemed already tormented enough to endure the daily visits to Hell, the ones haunted by the sins of our former lives, didn’t belong upstairs. Surrounded by that kind of purity and light, I was considered nothing more than a stain.
And yet here I was, staring down at a soul who had probably never had a dark thought in her short life. She would probably be expecting someone full of light and comfort waiting to guide her home. Too bad for her, she was getting me.
Taking out my frustration on the body in front of me, I lifted my scythe, ready to slice into the heap of flesh below me, and—
“Stop!” A soft voice that rang of truth and harmony stopped me cold. “Don’t do it! Give her a chance. Please.”
I jerked up my chin, and my gaze collided with eyes as clear and blue as the Gulf of Mexico. I cast a quick glance around my surroundings. She was speaking to me? I lowered my scythe and studied the girl standing about twenty feet away. A cascade of red hair fell across her shoulders like liquid flames, and a perfect pink mouth quivered before she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth to calm it. A breeze I couldn’t feel plastered her silky white robe against her thin frame and flushed her pale, flawless cheeks. She was pretty. Alluring. And every flawless inch of her screamed off-limits.
“Gwen! What are you doing?” A girl tugged on Red’s arm, casting a fearful glance my way. She wore an identical robe and now that the shock had worn off, I noticed they were both surrounded by the same gilded glow, as if they’d been bathed in sunshine.
Angels.
“Let them work on her a moment more,” Red pleaded. “I know you can.”
Feeling completely hypnotized by those innocent eyes, I dropped my blade to my side, surprising even myself. I’d never faltered before. Never thought twice about what I had to do. Why was she asking this of me? Did she not understand the girl’s fate was sealed? Even now, I could feel her impending death. Each fading beat of her heart was like a dagger to my skull. It was inevitable. And yet…I waited.
“Am I hallucinating, or are there two incredibly hot angels standing over there?” Scout asked from behind me. The soul he’d come to collect was still rotting in its flesh, waiting for him to release it.
I suppressed my irritation at his inability to focus on anything other than his next piece of ass and instead concentrated on the weakening pulse of the girl below me. A paramedic did chest compressions and urged her to stay. To live. I lifted my gaze back to Red, and an involuntary wave of calm settled over me.
“No. They’re definitely angels,” I said. “What do you think they’re doing here?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? Angels of joy maybe? They spend a lot of time on the earth plane. They definitely don’t look like guardians.”
“Any idea why one would ask me to keep a charge alive?”
A slow grin slid across Scout’s mouth. “So, that’s why you’re waiting. You like her.”
“Are you forgetting you have a job to do here? One that doesn’t include torching my last shred of patience?” I snapped. “Get to work.”
Like her? Screw that. I didn’t like anyone. On a good day I tolerated them. This… I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself, but I knew my well of compassion was about dried up for the day. He laughed, and the sound sparked a renewed rage inside my chest. I
sneered at him and jerked my blade up above my head. The girl’s pulse thudded once…twice…gone. I met Red’s gaze as she shook her head, eyes pleading.
“Time’s up, Angel,” I said.
I swung, tugged, and ripped the reluctant soul from her body. With a cry, she stumbled forward and caught herself against my chest. When her eyes connected with mine, she scrambled back, fear washing over her face. I wasn’t surprised. When you’d lived your life as squeaky-clean as this one had, I’d be the last person you’d expect to greet you on the other side.
“What are you…where are you…am I…” She looked over her shoulder at her lifeless body, and her hands slapped over her mouth to hold back a scream. I sighed and holstered my scythe, vaguely aware Red and her friend were still watching us, rapt with horror. If they were what Scout thought, it wasn’t likely they saw death every day. I would have chased them away, but maybe they needed to see it. Needed to see just how weak and fragile human life was. Besides, chasing them off would mean speaking to them. It would be a cold day in Hell before I did that voluntarily.
“Don’t worry,” I said to the human girl. “There’s only sunshine and rainbows ahead for you.”
Her gaze swept over me, assessing the danger she saw. “You don’t…I mean you just…”
I stepped forward, crowding her personal space until the essence of her soul scattered in a wave of glittery particles around us. Fear flooded her eyes and she took a step back.
“I don’t what?”
She swallowed, still hanging on to the human habits that no longer applied. “You don’t look like an angel. That’s all.”
Behind me, Scout burst into laughter as he worked at releasing his assigned soul from its body. I stepped back, ignoring him. “Trust me, sweetheart, I’m no angel.”
“That’s an understatement.” Scout laughed.
“Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?”
