Three Trials

by Kristy Cunning

  His eyes widen as I stalk toward him, and I grin as he starts convulsing.

  A sick feeling lands in the pit of my stomach, and I blink back, staring at the man who is nothing more than a pile of ash now.

  What the actual hell just happened?

  Cursing, I turn and start walking again. For whatever reason, I just enjoyed killing him way too much, and I didn’t even particularly mean to kill him. I’m not even sure how it happened so fast. One second he was there, and the next he was ash.

  Sure, he needed to die. He’s not exactly going to be missed from humanity, but killing has always been an indifference of sorts—in the short time I’ve had the ability. I neither like nor dislike it.

  I’m going to choke those bastards for burying me if the distance has made me someone who enjoys killing.

  I’m not sure how the two are linked, but all my instincts point to those four assholes.

  Sighing, I turn around. Then brighten.

  Harold.

  I know where that damn pawn shop is.

  Hobbling, I ignore the indignant gasps and the four fender-benders I cause as I cross the street and hurriedly move toward the pawn shop.

  Any time I stop for too long, the concrete starts burning again. This is new.

  Even the casket was burned all the way through in the back where I was touching it. I assumed that meant I was in hell.

  Is this a side effect of dying? Or has this been something I never experimented with?

  When I pull Harold’s door open, I hold on too long, and the handle burns off and turns to ash in my hands.

  He’s immediately in front of me, the tip of a sword pressed to my neck.

  “Who the hell are you?” he growls, even as my feet start burning through his store’s floor.

  That tip draws closer, pressing into my neck. My last experience with a blade has me freezing in fear for a second.

  “If I don’t run in place or something, I’ll keep burning a hole through your floor.”

  He looks so puzzled about the words I choose to use when a sword is pressed to my neck. I’m a little confused by my own thought process.

  “I realize we’ve never been properly introduced, and I’m afraid to shake your hand at the moment, but if my quad doesn’t come to me soon, I’m afraid I might die again. And I just got myself out of a very depressing grave.”

  He pulls the sword back, still looking terribly confused, and I hiss out a breath while jogging in place, stopping the burning.

  His eyes dip to my breasts, given the fact the running-in-place has given them some bounce, but they come back up quickly.

  “Sorry,” I tell him, not sorry at all, “but you’re quite literally the only person I know outside of them. And Lake. But Lake is dead now, because—”

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asks on a rasp.

  “I still haven’t quite figured that part out yet,” I tell him, only adding to his confusion. “But I do need your help, Harold.”

  The sound of my voice is a little off, and it comes out with quite the enchanting echo. He sneezes then glares at me.

  “No need in trying to force me. This is neutral ground. No one from hell or anywhere else is allowed to force anything on neutral ground.”

  “The only thing I’m trying to force is my other form, so that I can quit running and trying not to burn the ground. No such luck. I need my guys. I think. I’m not sure, but I think. Please. The Kincaids.”

  The name has his entire demeanor changing. I’m going to ask them what’s up with this weird name and why they’re pretending to be brothers. After I bitch about my simplistic gravestone.

  “You’re picking the wrong fight right now,” he tells me, his eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, I’ll be picking a fight about that damn pathetic excuse for a headstone and the fact it took me dying to get roses. But first I need to hug them or something, so call them.”

  He looks wary. Understandably. He doesn’t know me, and strangers are hard to trust.

  “Call them and tell them one sentence, and I swear they’ll want to see me,” I assure him.

  He points that sword at me. “If this is a trap for them, it’ll do you no good. This place has been sanctioned. No deaths can happen here.”

  I still haven’t figured out why a pawn shop is an ideal location for sanctuary. Nor do I particularly care.

  “If I don’t find them soon, I can assure you my death will happen right here,” I go on. “Just do it. I’m going to walk around so I can quit all this bobbing up and down.”

  He huffs like he’s not sure what exactly to make of me.

  So I give him the one line that always seems to help an older guy along with decision-making with a younger girl. “What would you want someone to do if it was your daughter standing before them as I’m standing before you now?” I ask with as much emotion in my tone as possible to sell it.

  I’m jogging and not standing, but pointing that out just sounds weird, and it’s not the way they say it in the movies.

  Movies, please don’t fail me this time.

  He sighs as he grabs his phone.

  He’s already dialing someone when he says, “I’ll kill you if you make me regret this.”

  I give him the winning words, and start perusing his store as he dials three different people, cursing them for not answering. I strain to listen, making sure he’s not calling someone else to come take away the crazy naked girl burning holes in his shop floor.

  “Yeah?” a hoarse voice asks, sounding very unhappy to be answering the phone. The word is so gravelly, I’m not sure whose voice it is.

  “Got a pretty little naked girl here looking for you,” Harold tells him.

  Hmm…that might work too.

  “Don’t give a fuck,” the familiar voice of Gage says with a little more definition in his tone.

  Harold glances over at me, and I give him the get-on-with-it look.

  “Comoara trădătoare, is what she says—”

  His words are cut off, when Gage is suddenly in the room and throwing him up against the wall with his hand clutching Harold’s throat. Harold’s eyes widen in horror, as the phone slips from his hand and he struggles to pull Gage’s hand away.

  “Where’d you hear that phrase?” he growls, putting his face right in front of Harold.

  “From the treacherous treasure herself, of course,” I drawl, wiggling my fingers at him.

  Harold collapses in a heap as he heaves for air, while Gage turns a black-eyed murderous glare on me, his lip snarling as he moves toward me in a less-than-ideal manner.

  He looks pissed instead of apologetic for having buried me.

  In a blink, his hand is suddenly on my throat as he tosses me against the wall and starts strangling me. “Who the fuck are you?” he snaps.

  I shove his chest so hard he’s launched across the room, hitting the wall with so much force that he bounces to the ground beside Harold.

  Harold grabs his abandoned sword, racing toward me, but a renewed sense of energy is swirling through me after having felt Gage’s touch. I sling him across the room without even touching him.

  That sword clatters across the ground, and Gage grabs it, his eyes on me as he slowly stands, weapon in hand.

  “Have you lost your damn mind?” I shout. “How long did I have to be dead before you assholes forgot me?!”

  I see just a spark of hesitation.

  “You have a handful of seconds to drop that sword before I sling you like sleeping Harold,” I warn him, gesturing at Harold, who is unconscious. “I would rather be hanging on the side of a mountain or plummeting from a fiery lake than be so near a sword. Neither of the first two ever actually killed me. And I hate waking up trapped in boxes now too, by the way. Quit piling on.”

  The sword clatters to the ground, and he staggers back like he’s seeing a ghost. Speaking of…

  I change to phantom form easier, but it’s still a strain to hold it. Sensing them still proves difficult as well.
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  “Where’d she go?” Harold groans from the floor, looking around.

  Gage continues to stare at me with a stupefied expression. “Keyla?” he asks as though he’s scared to say the fake name aloud.

  “I already told Jude I desperately need a new, more badass name. Now I’m certain. Not even Keyla could have just climbed out of a grave without freaking out.”

  The second I go whole, Gage is suddenly blurring to me again, and just as I’m about to defend myself, I stop. Because his lips land on mine, and he pulls me to him in a crushing embrace as he kisses me stupid.

  “I’ve been alive too long,” Harold grumbles from somewhere nearby.

  Gage’s hold is a little painful against my still bruised and battered body, and I break the kiss. But he immediately starts kissing me harder, even as the wall behind us starts to catch fire.

  A loud whooshing mixed with something high pitched forces us to break apart as Harold goes to using a fire extinguisher on us and the wall. An alarm wails over our heads as though we can’t see the fire and need to be squealed at by the infernal contraption.

  Still crabby.

  “What the fuck?” Gage roars.

  “She’s going to burn the whole place down. Get her the hell out of here.”

  Gage snatches me at the waist, and we’re gone in a dizzying instant.

  His lips are back on mine in the next, and we’re backing up against a familiar feeling kitchen island. That also starts burning against my skin.

  He rips me away from it, staring at it like he’s confused, and I leap onto him, since his clothes are already falling into ashy heaps. The rest of him is clearly fireproof, which is the important part.

  Then again, I never questioned if I could hurt him. It’s like I knew I couldn’t.

  “What’s going on?” he asks on a rasp whisper, even as I cling to him like a spider monkey. “Am I mad?”

  “Mad like crazy or mad like angry? Because I was thinking a little of both, since you threw me against a wall. What the actual hell?”

  My legs tighten around his waist, and my arms tighten around his neck, as he reaches up and cups both sides of my face.

  “You’re fucking dead,” he finally says, as though he’s trying to convince both of us of this. “And never recycled.”

  I push away from his hands and start rubbing my cheek against his like a cat starving for affection, because the pain seems to lessen the longer he’s touching me, or maybe he’s just that distracting.

  “I gathered as much when I woke up in a damn coffin,” I tell him, still rather unhappy about that. “You could have at least buried me in the backyard so I could find my way home. Or just let me keep the west wing of the house.”

  He laughs a little too wildly, and I pull back as he starts running a hand through his hair. I’m clinging to him without any help, because his hands are no longer touching me.

  “I’ve gone crazy. I’ve reached a state of imbalance, and I’ve officially gone as mad as we all worried we’d become.”

  “I’m very confused, at the moment,” I tell him, looking around to see the house is a little trashed.

  Furniture is flipped over. Windows are broken. It looks like they’ve stopped giving a damn about how pretty their home is. It’s always been kept so clean and almost regal.

  Now it looks like they’ve been fighting so hard to stay alive in my absence. How many people have tried to kill them?

  “Where are the others?” I ask, worrying about him being alone when I’m possibly too weak to defend him.

  “What the fucking hell?” Ezekiel’s voice has me snapping my gaze over, and I grin broadly at the man gaping at me.

  “You see her too?” Gage asks, his hysterical laughter tapering off as his hands slide around me at last, helping me hold myself up.

  “What is she?” Ezekiel asks, glaring at Gage. “What the hell have you done?”

  Gage’s grin slowly spreads. “It’s really her,” he finally says, then looks at me again like he’s finally convinced.

  “Yes, it’s me. And just because you’re finally acting happy to see me, that doesn’t mean any of you are off the hook for that terribly simple headstone. Where were my damn quotes? I’ve said some very memorable and insightful things that should be shared with the world.”

  Something crashes to the ground, and I look over as a grin starts to spread over Ezekiel’s face, even as he slumps against a table. But it’s seeing Kai gripping the edge of the same table that has me doing a double-take. How long has he been there? And why do they all seem that surprised to see me?

  I mean, we met while I was a spirit who’d somehow clawed her way back into existence. It shouldn’t be that hard to believe I’m back again.

  A vase lays broken on the ground before them, one that used to don that table, and dead flowers are spilling from it without a drop of water.

  “Exactly how long have I been dead?” I decide to ask.

  “Just over a month,” Gage says reverently, his eyes raking over my face as I turn to look at a mirror.

  My hair is messy for the first time ever, since I never fixed it in phantom form. As a person who hates a messy appearance, it’s rather irksome, but there are far more important things to deal with at the moment.

  Besides, I don’t look like a rotting corpse, so I’ll consider it a win.

  “I look damn good for a dead girl no matter what form I’m in,” I say aloud, trying to lighten this terribly stuffy air.

  “It’s really her,” Kai says, a hesitant grin starting to form.

  My body washes over with tingles as the three of them so close starts to push that pain much, much deeper down, almost extinguishing it completely. It’s such a different sort of pain than I’ve ever felt, nothing like the pull of being away from them too long leaves me with.

  As the pain ebbs, the reality of the situation slowly starts to sink in.

  Gage lets me down when I start wriggling, and I test my theory. The floor doesn’t start burning under me. I knew it was linked to all of them, just like the horrible pain.

  They weren’t together, and I couldn’t sense them like usual. I think them being separated from each other was what was making me hurt and tearing my heart in four different directions.

  How long have they been apart?

  Gage jogs off, and I hear him in the kitchen as the other two just silently gawk at me. Ezekiel even startles back a step when I start toward him.

  Determined, I strut right up to him anyway, and throw my arms around him. “Either hug me back, or I swear I’ll never let you sleep peacefully again,” I threaten when he remains still in my grip.

  In the next instant, two strong arms almost squeeze me too hard, and a shuddering breath snakes out of him as he trembles just slightly.

  I pat his chest, and struggle to get free, but he finally lets me go to Kai.

  Kai, unlike Ezekiel, is on me before I can reach him, his hand roughly digging into my hair as he kisses me so hard I feel the bruising power of his relief.

  My arms slide around his neck, returning the kiss, as Ezekiel presses against my back again, his lips moving to my neck.

  “It’s definitely her,” Kai groans against my lips before tearing his away as he steps back and adjusts his very happy-to-see me erection.

  Ezekiel turns me, his lips finding mine just as hungrily. Now this is the reception I expected the first time I came into their lives as a real girl.

  Much better than my last experience.

  His hands travel down my bare body, pulling closer as the kiss heats. I almost don’t hear Gage talking on his phone in such a quiet voice.

  “Just get back. I can’t…I just can’t explain right now. Get back.”

  Breaking the kiss with Ezekiel is a little hard to do, now that we’re back to that survival and sex thing being linked. I’m so relieved to be alive that I want to feel it, but I first need to set some things straight before they start teasing me again.

  Gage comes joggin
g back in, tugging on a pair of track pants as his no-longer-black eyes rake over me like he can’t look his fill.

  “I’m assuming that was Jude?” I ask, and he nods once.

  “Good. While we’re waiting on him to come remove the last bit of pain plaguing me, I have something very important to tell you.”

  They all step in closer. I found it so sweet when I first found all those beautiful roses with no thorns. I didn’t have all the details then.

  “I died saving you assholes, and you repay me by putting me in a hole that far away from you?!” I snap, watching as their eyes widen and their grins curve up. “Seriously? That’s all you could come up with on my headstone? And for a solid month, the only thing you lazy asses brought me was roses?”

  They all dart a gaze behind me, just as I hear Jude’s familiar voice wash over me with surprise and awe.

  “It’s her.”

  Chapter 13

  I whirl around, tempted to go to him, but not emotionally capable of dealing with rejection at this very trying moment.

  “Yes,” I say with a bitter smile. “Apparently I’m too stubborn for Death to deal with properly.”

  I give him a pointed look, hoping he gets the little pun.

  I expect a snappy comeback or some hostile suspicion. What I don’t expect is for him to be across the room in a blur of motion.

  His lips crash against mine for the first time, and it’s like a storm pulses in my body. All the pain is gone at last, and warmth travels up through me, as though he finally just sealed the last piece of something into place and made me truly whole.

  I moan into his mouth as he grips me closer, his hands moving all over me like he doesn’t know what he wants to touch the most.

  I’m beyond drugged and unable to pull back, as I clutch him closer, kissing him so hard that my lips start to hurt. I knew it’d be violent with him. Just as it is with all of them.

  It makes the times they’re soft so much more special.

  When he breaks the kiss, he’s panting, his entire body shaking against me as his breaths rattle in his chest.

  “Now that is how you welcome a girl back from the dead,” I say on a shuddering breath. “Congratulations. You’re finally my favorite again.”