Better off Dead Book Three

by Odette C. Bell

  I was distracting myself, wasn’t I? Yes, I was. Because I would clutch at anything right now to distract from the look in his eyes. It was entreating and leading, and it... appeared to offer me something.

  But the thing is, I had no clue what it was that it was offering. I would have to find out. And the only way to do that would be to move first.

  “Just tell me the truth, Sonos – why couldn’t I take this ring off before?”

  He sighed. It was a long, laborious affair. It gave the impression that he was very disappointed in me. He closed his eyes. He kept them shut. “You run from everything, don’t you, Eve – including the writing on the wall? Including your own feelings,” he added as he finally opened his eyes. He locked me in the kind of gaze no one would be able to get away from. It was so damn sharp, it could’ve cut through any prison, any wall, any damn thing to get to me. In other words, there was nowhere to hide from it and nowhere to go.

  I straightened. It meant something considering barely a few minutes ago, I’d been too weak to move. “Sorry?” I spluttered, tension climbing through me. “Feelings? Just what are you playing at?”

  He laughed. There was a disappointed, frustrated edge to it. “Tell me when you’re done running.” He turned to leave.

  At first I was too flabbergasted to do anything. He’d come all the way here to discuss the so-called truth with me. He wouldn’t turn around and leave just after arriving, would he?

  He got several steps out into the main room. I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw myself up off the bed. I landed, and I was proud of the fact that I didn’t immediately face-plant. I reached him and wrapped a hand around his arm.

  We had witnesses. This clinic was filling up with all the people who’d been unfortunate enough to be caught in the attack.

  Sonos didn’t shrug me off. But nor did he say anything. He just stood there. Once more I felt as if everything was down to me. It was by now clear that he would not make any first moves. The question was, exactly what did he want me to do?

  I swallowed, the move uncomfortable. It wasn’t the fact that a mad priest had snapped my neck too many times to count. That damage had been repaired. Hell – I fancied I’d found it easier to swallow with Hilliker’s fingers around my throat than to push past the pain and awkwardness of this interaction. “Come back inside,” I said in a low voice that was designed not to carry and garner too much more attention. “We’re not done talking.”

  “I think you’ll find discussions run both ways. As do relationships,” he added.

  I could’ve gone as pink as a cherry blossom at that statement.

  Relationships? Just what exactly was he getting at? Yeah, technically we were engaged – but all the emphasis was on the technically.

  I might’ve tried not to draw a crowd, but I had anyway. Anyone who wasn’t in the throes of pain was staring our way. Heck, even some of the people who’d been screaming in agony when we walked in here had stopped, too distracted by what was going on to remember that they were at death’s door.

  Still as pink as I could possibly be, I tried to tug him back, but Sonos chose that particular moment to dig his feet in. If I’d had magic, I might have possibly maybe had a chance of shifting him – slightly. Without it, it was like attempting to drag a mountain with a pushbike.

  I tried one last time for good measure then gave up, a deep sigh rattling through my throat. “Please, Sonos,” I said in a truly pathetic voice. It was designed to tug at his heartstrings, but clearly he didn’t have any.

  He continued to stand there resolutely, not staring my way.

  I rolled my eyes. The petulant side of my personality was starting to get the better of me. Fine. If he didn’t want to have anything to do with me – if he didn’t want to do as he’d promised and tell me the truth – that was just fine.

  I went to drop his sleeve, but that’s when my gaze traveled down to his hand. It had been the same one he’d been trying to hide from me earlier. And now I saw why. There was a chunk missing out of it. And that wasn’t to say that he was bleeding everywhere. It was to literally say that it was gone. It looked as if some kind of spatial anomaly had swallowed up the side of his palm. It had removed a good bite-sized section of flesh. The edges crackled ever so slightly. But other than that, it looked as if it would be gone forever.

  Demons weren’t technically my specialty. I didn’t – or hadn’t, at least, had the strength to take them on. Especially Generals of the Damned. They were simply too strong for the likes of me. And apart from Sonos, I hadn’t had anything to do with them. But I still understood how a demon’s body worked. They weren’t like ordinary flesh and blood – because beyond simple appearances, they were their own unique creatures. A demon might technically look as if he could bleed. If you ran him through with a sword, he would certainly leak fluid. But it was more of an attempt to look like other creatures and less of a reality. Demons ran on energy – these concentrated groupings of power. They were more like planets, in a way. Their inherent energy kept their bodies together through a force like gravity.

  But if the power was lost, their bodies would be lost, too. When a demon was truly injured, he didn’t writhe around on the floor bleeding. He literally lost parts of himself. And if he was fatally injured, they would never return.

  “If you have nothing to say to me—” Sonos said, obviously not appreciating that I’d become silent because I’d seen his injury, “then I have better things to do.”

  This is where I had to stop him. I had to grab his hand. But I couldn’t. Reality struck me – and it was particularly unkind. Sonos had received that injury on my behalf.

  The Seventh General of the Damned had lost a part of himself, all to protect me. Why? Because I was his mission.

  I felt cold all over. This marching, prickling energy shifted over my cheeks, around the side of my neck, then down my back. It coiled around my body until it found my chest. It sunk in, deeper and deeper.

  It made me so damn frozen, I thought I would never move again.

  Sonos let out a deep sigh and shoved forward. He’d obviously reached his limit. He was done waiting for me to do whatever it was he thought I needed to do.

  I was not one for public displays of emotion. I hated it, in fact. I wasn’t talking about professing my love for someone – though that would be hideously awkward. The one thing I hated most was crying. In my life, I’d had to show strength and strength alone. I had no time to let people know what hurt me. Because the more I did that, the more they would simply hurt me. When you couldn’t really be killed, people looked for novel ways to get to you.

  I tried to stop the tears – I really did – but there was nothing I could do.

  We were being watched. We were also being filmed. Some of the patients in the room who weren’t at death’s door had their phones out. They would’ve caught every single tear.

  “For someone who is willing to take on even the strongest of foes, you were never content to take on your primary enemy, Eve. And before you ask what the hell I’m talking about,” he grabbed his shirt, obviously ready to pull it down in an angry move but thought better as he ripped it slightly, “it’s you. You’ve always been your own worst enemy—”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I understood that Sonos was only doing this as a mission. I realized there was nothing between us. But he... he’d literally lost a chunk of himself that he would never get back – all for me.

  The emotions became way too much. They pounded through me, rising higher. They vibrated in every limb. They twisted around every cell until there was no damn way I could stop. I threw myself at Sonos. I embraced him from behind.

  He froze. He didn’t need to breathe to begin with, but his chest clenched.

  Now even a few of the medical staff brought out their phones.

  Here I was, embracing Sonos from behind, tears streaking down my cheeks, my face red from emotion. But again, he didn’t do a damn thing. He was just as frozen as when I’d embraced him after
coming out of the tunnel system.

  I waited for him to say or do anything. Heck, all he had to do was let out a sigh – but he couldn’t even do that.

  Though I could’ve just stayed there, battling him until he made the first move, I chose to unlock one of my arms from around his middle. I did not push back. Instead I let my hand drop down to his side. I grabbed his hand. I didn’t push my fingers into the bit that was missing. I surrounded it with my palm as if I was making up for the chunk that had disappeared.

  He stiffened even more. He even shivered. I didn’t know if it was because he was in pain or something else.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I could only just push that word out. It wasn’t my pride that was making it hard to shove the syllables from my trembling lips. It was because I’d never meant something with all my heart before.

  I got it. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’d found out that Sonos was nothing like the man I’d once feared. He was the exact opposite of the brutal monster I’d always thought had destroyed the orphanage. He was the only one who’d unwaveringly been on my side. And... yeah, I got it. He wasn’t doing that because he had any enduring connection to me. But that didn’t matter.

  I finally dropped both my hands. I took a step away from him. “I’m sorry I got you into this. If I could remove myself from this equation, I would.” With that, I turned and went back to my room. Or at least I tried to.

  Sonos finally reacted. He finally showed emotion. He let out this deep, shaking, irritated sigh that was more like a grunt. Then he moved. He caught my wrist before I could walk past. He locked his determined though still gentle grip around it. Then he turned me around. It was a quick, perfectly timed move. My hair flared around me. If I’d been wearing a dress, it would’ve twisted around my legs and banged up into his. In fact, this move was reminiscent of the way we danced in the snow globe – so much so that I almost thought I saw a flicker of that broken ballroom around us.

  Sonos spun me until he locked my hand behind my back. He leaned in close.

  I think the entire room had taken a collective gasp. As for me, I didn’t know if I was breathing. It was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the look in his eyes.

  “Stubborn until the last, Eve. Ask me a question.”

  “What?” My lips wobbled badly. I was losing the coordination to speak – because the only frigging thing that mattered was watching his face. Sorry, his mouth. It was close enough to... well, you get it.

  “Ask your question, Eve?”

  “What will Hilliker—”

  “That’s not the question I want you to ask me.”

  “How do you know that minotaur?”

  Frustration flared in his deep gaze. “Ask me if I’d ever let you do that.”

  I really was confused now. “If you’d ever let me do what?”

  “Take yourself out of the equation.” As he said every word, he dropped them as if they were unwanted trash. “Ask me if I would ever let you do something like that?” he repeated, his voice so low, I swore only I could pick it up.

  I was starting to fill with tingles – racing energy, pounding nerves. Some of them were legitimately confusion about this situation. The rest... the rest didn’t need to be labeled at all. They just needed to be felt as they ran through me like the first pleasant flickers of fire, warming up sections of my soul that had laid cold for eternity.

  “Ask me, Eve.”

  “Would you ever let me... take myself out of the equation?”

  “No.”

  He left the next part of the question hanging. He looked at me until I caved. “Why?”

  There were 100 things he could say to that. He could point out that I was a child of the Deep – one of the rarest creatures out there. He could tell me that I needed to be kept safe from Hilliker – so there was no way he was ever going to let me succumb to anything. Instead, he slowly parted his lips. I swore the entire universe – let alone the entire room – was on tenterhooks as each of his facial muscles contracted to pull his lips from his teeth. “Because you’re more than a mission to me.”

  ... It took a few seconds, but then my mind quickly caught up with me. He’d just said that. To me. In public.

  I tried to weasel out of what it could mean, but the look in his eyes would not let me. It held me to the spot – as did his embrace.

  Sonos had no feelings for me. There was no way for someone like him to feel anything toward someone like me. We were from two very different worlds. I’d also spent most of my life completely reviling him. But the look in his eyes would not be beaten down by my better reason.

  I think every single person in the room stopped what they were doing now. Even if someone had been on death’s door, they would’ve damn well pulled themselves up by their socks to watch this epic interaction.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I was meant to do next. Don’t get me wrong – my lips knew exactly what they wanted to do, but what did Sonos want? Was he still a general of Hell? So what if he hadn’t perpetrated the orphanage attack? He couldn’t completely be a good man, right? It didn’t matter if all evidence suggested my conclusion was wrong. It—

  “Stop overthinking things, Eve. You always—”

  He didn’t want me to overthink things, ha? Fine. He didn’t want me to run, either. Fine again. He wanted me to see the writing on the wall? That was okay with me.

  I was done second-guessing everything. I went with the moment – the intensely embarrassing moment where the entire room was watching and recording this.

  I went with my heart because I couldn’t damn well stop it anymore.

  I crunched forward and kissed him. At first it was nothing more than me locking my lips against his. But I started to feel the fact that he was no mere human. As my mouth tightened over his lips, I felt the energy within. Crackling, shifting, darting. Inviting in a way nothing else was.

  I thought I heard somebody cheer off through the main room. It sounded suspiciously like the minotaur.

  I couldn’t exactly say that Sonos kissed me back. He didn’t shove me away, which was a good indication that he didn’t entirely hate this interaction. But there wasn’t a lot of life behind the move. To begin with, anyway. His energy – and he himself – started to open up just as his lips parted. But that would be when an alarm split through the room.

  It came from nowhere, but it sure as hell meant business as it shook up through the floor, pounded down through the ceiling, and was accompanied by a loud, trembling bang.

  Sonos pulled away from me, his eyes widening only to narrow. He still had a hand around my back. But he pulled it away. Because the fun was over. The fight was back.

  Chapter 4

  It took too long to shift gears. I could hear the alarm shrieking through the room, and God knows I could feel it. But my mind – and heart – were still locked in an embrace with Sonos.

  He didn’t dart away from my side, thrusting through the open doors, into the corridor, and into the heart of whatever trouble we were facing now. He shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone just as it began to ring.

  I was close enough that I could hear the person on the other end of the line. It was Sato of all people. “We’re under attack. They’re pulling my emporium apart to get to it. Get here now and give me a hand.”

  “Sato?” I took a step closer to Sonos.

  “Hold on,” Sonos snapped. “I’ll send someone—”

  “Come yourself. This is serious. They’ve got an army of possessed.”

  Fear shot through me at that revelation.

  An army of possessed was exactly what it sounded like – a battalion of creatures, humans, and other objects that had been possessed by spirits. Technically only the strongest of the damned would be able to create an army out of them. I didn’t need to cast Sonos a sideways glance to know that this hadn’t been him.

  He turned the phone off and shoved it back into his pocket. “Hilliker must’ve found a way to thrust his influence beyond the
vault box.”

  Sonos went to open his hand. I knew that he was going to create a Hell gate and transport to Sato’s Emporium. I grabbed Sonos’s fingers. “What about the building? It’s clearly under attack.”

  “It is likely Hilliker’s priests who are still trapped in the tunnel system. The staff here will be able to deal with it—” he had a chance to say that earnestly before the ceiling shook.

  I instantly jolted away from him, skidded down to my knees, and opened my hands wide. I waited for magic to pulse through me. I knew I’d have to give it everything if I wanted to hold the ceiling up.

  But... but I didn’t have any magic left. That realization shot into me just as the ceiling started to fall. I was directly under the largest chunk.

  But I had someone to watch my back.

  I heard and saw Sonos’s wings unfurl. They pushed into the ceiling, ripping it up into chunks, keeping everyone in the clinic safe, including me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that they were faint. They no longer had even half the power they’d once possessed.

  “Sonos—”

  He locked a hand on my shoulder. “You need to go somewhere safe. Return home.”

  “Home? Are you out of your mind? You’ll need help.”

  He looked at me seriously. “Which you can no longer give.”

  My gut twisted. “I—” I didn’t know what I wanted to say. If my treacherous lips got the better of me, maybe I’d just point out that what I really didn’t want was to leave him.

  He just tightened his grip on my hand. He turned to the doctor who was in charge. “Forces will come soon to protect you. Hold on until they get here.”

  The chief doctor replied by pulling up his sleeves and letting magic blast out everywhere. While he was clearly a medical professional, he was also clearly not above fighting when he had to.