Chapter 13
Cole
I opened my mouth to tell Preston I was going to head home—I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get in trouble for leaving, since I’d probably done a bad job convincing him he hadn’t just seen me dead.
I couldn’t be here for the conversation I needed to have with Sephtis…
not when it was obvious from the way Preston hadn’t mentioned the other man in the room that he couldn’t see him.
I needed to yell.
I needed to tell him he had no right to bring me back to life again.
I needed him to explain what the fuck had just happened. I didn’t understand why I’d died.
And I didn’t understand the feelings that had poured over me when I came back to myself with the coolness of his frame pressed against mine—I didn’t understand the emotions that were weighing on me, heavier than he had been, from the words he’d said.
All I can do is whatever it takes to keep you by my side.
Why did he have to sound so fucking sincere when he said it? Why did his golden eyes have to flash like the fucking sun?
Why did he have to look so perfect?
The thoughts just made the anger roiling like an undercurrent beneath my skin rage on, and I was already thinking of exactly what I was going to tell him when the sound of a howl tore through the air.
Preston didn’t react.
Sephtis’s eyes went wide and he turned to me. “We need to move, now.”
The same urgency from the alley was written across his face… and there was a moment where I thought about telling him no, telling him he could move but I was staying right here. He’d explained what the hounds were, but I honestly wasn’t sure I cared.
Maybe he could see it in my eyes, because he was already stepping forward.
The last thing I needed was Preston witnessing my body being dragged out of the garage by an invisible force, so I threw my hands up. “I think I’m actually going to call in for the day. Maybe I came back a little too soon after the wreck, after all.”
“You should wait until someone gets here. I had them call an ambulance.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. Call it off. Can’t really afford that twice in a week. It’s fine, Preston. I promise.” I was already backing away, and the only thing he could really do was watch me with wide, concerned eyes. “Can you make sure you clock out for me?”
“Yeah… sure… listen. Call me when you get home, okay? And call to check in.” I could hear the concern clear in his voice, and some small part of me felt guilty that I was leaving like this without a good explanation.
I would have humored him with a hospital visit if I could have…
but that howling noise was getting closer, and the way Sephtis had his hands clenched into fists at his sides told me he wasn’t going to afford me the patience necessary to placate my coworker.
As soon as I was out of the garage and around the corner, he was at my side.
I didn’t want to go back to my apartment, or maybe it was just that I wasn’t willing to have him follow me there.
I didn’t want to be stuck behind walls with him, behind a closed door.
I didn’t want to deal with all these emotions attempting to drown me, trapped in a closed space with no way to escape.
So I led him further into town—maybe it wasn’t the safest area, but I didn’t care. There was a six-foot-too-fucking-tall monster with me who apparently refused to let me die. I was fine.
Speaking of that monster… When he tried to reach for me, I jerked away.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? What was that back there?” The question had so many meanings. The way he was acting, the way I’d reacted. The fact that I’d died at all.
And of course, he wasn’t going to be helpful. “There’s no time to explain.”
I crossed my arms, coming to a halt in the middle of the alley we’d cut down to get back to the main street. “You better make time, because as far as I see it, I could just throw myself to those damn hounds. At least it would get all this over with. At least it would let me see Caiden, I could—”
“You don’t get it. That’s not how it would happen.
” He stepped forward, shoving me against the dingy brick wall of one of the abandoned buildings surrounding us.
It was almost like the physicality of earlier had broken down some barrier, and he was suddenly comfortable showing me his strength, showing me he could be forceful if necessary.
It made my heart race again, made something inside me that made no sense clench almost unbearably tight. He was doing something to me, something that was eventually going to cause all the strings holding me together in the mockery of a man who could function to snap.
I didn’t know what I’d do then.
I didn’t want to know.
I just wanted him to tell me what was happening.
“Then why don’t you explain it to me?”
“There’s no time.”
I shoved against him and felt how useless it was—how the strength of his arms could keep me in place while his expression stayed the same.
“Then make time.”
“Cole…”
The impatience that flared across his expression was interrupted as someone stepped around the corner, and I saw the flash of metal a second before there was a knife at my throat.
Of course someone would try to mug me. I was in a shitty area, and apparently I was a magnet for danger. For all my would-be attacker knew, I was here alone, having a fit and talking to myself. My clothes were still nice, and the bulge of my wallet was obvious in my pocket.
I was the perfect victim.
Sephtis’s eyes flared from golden to a swirling sky of black, flicking from the knife at my throat and back up to me. It was frightening. Not the man who was quietly demanding I empty my pockets, or the feel of a blade against my throat—his expression was terrifying.
“Fine. Do you want to see? Do you need to understand?” When his hand came forward and wrapped around my attacker’s throat, the black veins that spilled beneath his skin were pulsing. I could see the moment the man knew what was happening. It was obvious when he noticed Sephtis behind him.
“Wait… wait, I didn’t—” He didn’t give him a chance to make excuses. Whatever humanity, whatever warmth and compassion Sephtis had when he looked at me, dissolved as he whispered one word.
Soft and deadly.
“Watch.”
I’d never seen someone die up close, but I was inches away when the life drained from the man’s eyes.
Behind him, Sephtis shivered, a violent motion that was almost enough to make him drop the body.
When he tossed him away after a second and spilled forward, my instincts warred viciously in my chest.
He’d just killed someone—to protect me, yes, but he’d still killed someone. I didn’t want him to touch me.
And yet I didn’t want him to fall against the brick, even though I wasn’t sure if it would hurt him.
In the end, I caught him as he collapsed, his head dropping to my shoulder.
“He wasn’t going to let you go after he took your wallet.
” His voice was soft. “He thought you were pretty. He was going to fuck you against the wall and then slit your throat. He’s done it before.
” When he lifted his head, his eyes were still that endless night sky with the softest little glints of golden stars in their depths, but at least the emotion was spilling back into his gaze.
“How do you know that?” Was I in shock? I was pretty sure I was in shock.
“Because I can feel it all—I can see it all. Giving your brother comfort as he crossed to the Lake damned me to an eternity of feeling every soul I reap. Every sin, every hope. Every desire and wish and regret.” He pushed away from the wall and I swallowed down the instinct to tell him to stay still.
All of this was happening too fast—it was too much.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving you,” he said. And then, “Showing you. When the hounds come, they won’t leave you whole. They’ll eat you alive, Cole. You won’t see your brother. You won’t ever be you again.”
He kneeled on the ground beside the man and pressed his hand against his chest. There was a burst of something light, something that glowed with heat and warmth, spilling up Sephtis’s arm and past his lips… I could almost feel it burning down that red thread that I knew existed between us.
It was the same heat that poured into me when I woke up the first time—the same heat I’d felt pooling between us when I’d awoken in the garage.
It was… shit, was it that man’s life? Sephtis had called it Vitality.
He’d been vague this morning when he’d explained it to me—I realized that now. Had he saved me with another person’s soul?
“You have to understand, the hounds are single-minded. If they sense a broken soul, a human doing something to defy Death? They’ll take them and devour them…
They’ll give what’s left to their Master to form something completely new.
They don’t just gather up the pieces when someone tries to cheat Death, Cole.
They destroy them.” Sephtis didn’t look at me as he spoke.
He drew his hands along the man’s chest and upward…
and there was a brief, glimmering second where I thought I saw an echo of that face… older, weather worn, cruel…
And then Sephtis ripped his hands apart, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was certain I heard someone scream.
“What did you just do?”
“He didn’t deserve to be born again as he was. Besides…” He stood, backing away from me. “You need to see.”
I didn’t have it in me to fight when he pushed me to the ladder that led up into the abandoned apartments above us.
I would usually have told him it wasn’t safe, that there were people living in these dilapidated buildings who would hurt us…
but it was obvious that wasn’t something we had to worry about.
I followed him silently on the promise that I’d get some answers. Even after this morning, I still felt like I was completely lost, like there was an ocean of information he’d kept from me. Or maybe he was right… Maybe there were certain things I just had to see to understand.
He didn’t have to break a window; the glass was already gone. I wondered if the man who’d just tried to mug me—who’d apparently wanted to rape and kill me—had lived here.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. The sound of snarling spilled from around the corner, and Sephtis pushed me through the window before I had a chance to ask him if that was the hounds.
“Don’t speak. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe if you can help it.
I’m going to do my best to keep you wrapped in my aura so they don’t notice you here.
A Reaper close to a broken soul is nothing new to them…
but if they realize their initial quarry isn’t the decoy I left them in the alley, we’re in trouble. ”
The decoy…
Had he killed the man for more than one reason? To stop them from hurting me and to keep me safe?
He’d already told me this morning that killing someone or keeping them alive when it was against the natural order was enough to get him in trouble… but he’d done it for me again.
Twice.
That knowledge kept me silent as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me.
There was something soft and black, like a cloak I’d never seen him wear, that settled over me.
Was this where the story of Reapers in dark cloaks had come from?
I swallowed the question down, trying to be quiet like he’d said.
That didn’t quell the sound that nearly tore from my lips when the creatures rounded the corner. It was only Sephtis’s hand coming up to cover my mouth that stopped me from giving our position away.
When he said hounds, I was expecting dogs. Maybe big dogs, but dogs.
They weren’t dogs—they weren’t like any animal I’d ever seen. They were enormous, the size of fucking horses, and wherever they stepped, white flames licked at the ground behind them, dissolving after a moment into tendrils of smoke.
Their coats were solid black, but they weren’t made of fur…
it whipped back and forth, liquid and alive…
and I only had to stare for a second to realize why it seemed familiar.
The smoke around me was their skin, and the liquid inside them looked the same as the black I’d seen pulsing through Sephtis’s veins just a moment ago.
And their eyes…
Their eyes were hollow, black smoke pulled over a white skull… with the sharpest teeth I’d ever fucking seen.
They paused at the edge of the alley, and the sound of heavy whuffing filled the air. They were scenting, trying to make sure they were on the right track, maybe?
In a motion almost too quick for me to see, they lunged forward—they tore at my would-be killer, though there wasn’t a mark left behind.
But I could still hear those screams echoing.
The soul Sephtis had torn from his body… it was being devoured.
Becoming nothing.
Fear suddenly slid beneath my skin, terror unlike anything I’d ever felt.
All notions of giving myself over to the three beasts beneath us fled with my strength.
The only reason I stayed upright was because of Sephtis’s arms around me, his fingers sliding across my chest to press over my thundering heart as I watched.