Chapter 50
JUDE
One second I was marinating in goo, the next I was flash-banged by the universe. When the spots cleared, Nat was standing there, holding out a hand.
My first thought—because my brain is a traitor—was oh, thank god, someone who won’t immediately try to wear my soul as a hat.
My second thought was well, shit, so much for the great dirt nap.
I’d always considered myself an atheist. The end was supposed to be a quiet, permanent off-switch.
A moron’s logic, considering I’d spent the last few weeks elbow deep across the Veil, chasing a god.
Guess I’d clung to the self-delusion that gods and monsters could exist without the bureaucratic afterlife package.
No heaven, no hell, just chaos with a side of existential dread.
The ultimate irony being I’d unraveled my soul down to the barest threads to keep the people I loved safe, and now that shredded remnant was the only baggage I’d carried into the afterlife.
Had I helped at all? Was there a way to know if my team was safe? Would Angel survive without me now that our bond had been rewoven?
I looked at Nat, his face etched with sorrow. He met my gaze, and Angel’s words echoed back to me with brutal clarity. Only those on the verge of dying see a Reaper’s true form in this world.
I’d thought my fancy new weaver sight let me peek behind the curtain. Turns out, the only qualification was being a member of the soon-to-be-dearly-departed club.
Nat squeezed my hand and tugged me forward, through a tunnel of soft light. Cliché, but I followed. He was a Reaper, after all. Wasn’t it his job to get the dead from one place to another?
A desperate question burned in my chest. Angel?
I couldn’t give it voice, terrified of the answer a Reaper might give.
In silence, he led me down an endless corridor. The halls were obsessively neat, labeled with clean, glowing sigils. Not a person in sight other than us. Just the faint, electric hum of whatever kept the lights on, which, for all I knew, was the dying screams of forgotten prayers.
I didn’t feel tired in my body—mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I had one anymore.
It was more like jet lag mixed with the sensation of my soul shredding like cheap cloth that ached deep within, like a runaway train of what-ifs just waiting for me to glance back so it could plow me into a spiraling wreck. Was that normal? What was normal?
“Breathe, Jude,” Nat said, his voice cutting through the silence as he stopped before a featureless door. “Overthinking gets you nowhere.”
“Sorry,” I muttered automatically. A part of me had quietly dared to hope that death might come without the constant background hum of anxiety and the darker trenches of depression.
No such luck. Turns out when your soul is the luggage, you get to keep all the emotional crap you packed. The ultimate carry-on.
I looked down the vacant, glowing hallway. “Where is everyone?” The question came out smaller than I meant it to. “It’s really quiet.”
Nat regarded me thoughtfully. A parade of unspoken things passed behind his gaze—pity, caution, maybe a flicker of guilt.
“Think of this as a sort of purgatory,” he said finally. “A place of… processing. An in-between.”
“In-between what?” I gestured down the empty corridor. “Where corporate dreams go to die and the void where my screams have vanished for the last thirty years?”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, there and gone like a shadow. “Between states of being. Life and death are not binary switches, Jude. They are adjacent rooms. Do any of the doors stand out to you?”
I studied him. Nat’s aesthetic of polished academic with fitted trousers, a corset like vest, and a sweep of curly hair that brushed the top of his round glasses made him look like the model of a professor from any anime.
My gaze swept the endless row. None did.
They were all just doors. The only thing that stood out was the raw, screaming need inside me.
“And if I’d like to find my way home?” Because if I had the chance, I’d find a crack in reality and claw my way back through, dive headfirst into the smoking wreckage I’d left behind, and straight into Angel’s arms.
Into the solid, furious beat of his heart against mine. Into Ivan’s fierce, worried grip and the way he’d pretend he hadn’t been crying. Back to the scent of cat fur and coffee brewing at five a.m., and the frustrating beat of speaking for those whose voices had been stolen from them.
In a heartbeat, I’d return to him, to them, to all of it. No matter the consequences.
Maybe I could haunt Angel. I’d read romance books about a guy falling in love with a ghost. We could make it work, couldn’t we?
Nat sighed. “Not an option.” He studied me for a long minute. “None of the doors stand out?”
“Was there supposed to be one bathed in light or some mythical shit? Because no. They all have the same creepy-shit-inside vibe.”
A cold, unsettling thought crystallized. Victor once said that the truly dead rarely crossed the Veil. Was I not truly dead? Is that why I was stuck in this antiseptic hallway?
“But I’m dead,” I said, the word tasting strange and flat. “Aren’t I? I unraveled myself to protect Angel. No refunds, no returns.”
“Yes. And no.”
“Wow. Clear as mud. Is that an aftereffect of being dead? Riddles?”
He shot me a look that was pure ‘Reaper tired of your mortal sass.’ “Usually, a freed soul will choose a door.” He waved at the hall. “Be drawn to one, if you will. I suspect you aren’t because your body,” the words sounding pained, “remains viable. Usable, but in the shadow-demon’s grasp.”
Usable.
“Does that mean I can get it back?”
“Mortal flesh decays without its animating soul. And the shadow puppeteering it will corrode the vessel from within, accelerating the ruin.” He assessed the dark hall. “I think it will only be a few days before one of these doors will open to you.”
His description painted a nightmare picture.
My empty shell, propped up in Erlik’s trophy room.
A marionette with my face, dripping rotting flesh, and waiting for new strings.
Angel’s worst nightmare. I could only imagine how horrible it might be for him to face a zombie of me, with a demon making it dance.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“What do I do?” I asked, trying to choke back the horror. “Angel shouldn’t have to fight some nightmare demon while it drags my corpse around like a fucking Halloween prop. I can’t just let it keep my body, right?” My words came out brittle. “How do I get it back?”
“You don’t,” he said. “The threads that bound you to it are cut. That chapter is closed. Your mate severed the last tie, Jude. He freed you from that nightmare. Take his gift for what it is.”
My mind went blank. Static roared between my ears.
“Angel?” The name came out in a weighted breath. “How?” I remembered landing in the tube of goo, and then a bright light with Nat appearing in front of me, blinding everything around me.
Nat cupped his hands before me. Between his palms, a light kindled. The light stretched, and coiled, turning into an orb with a glass-like surface, glowing with movement, chaos, and horror.
The scene unfolded with the grim clarity of a nightmare.
Soldiers in tactical gear, their faces tight with terror, weapons trained on a swirling epicenter of madness.
Creatures of shadow and teeth ripped through their ranks.
And in the middle of it all, at the heart of the storm, stood Angel.
Heartbreak and pain stark on his soot-covered face as he gazed at the shadowy marionette of my body.
My face, slack and gray. My limbs being jerked around like a broken doll’s.
Angel leaned in to brush his lips to mine, tears running down his cheeks. And in that moment, he’d cut the last glittering strand of my mortal life.
“He used my power?” I wondered out loud.
“You wove your essence into his soul as a shield. Given time, your bond would have naturally shared such gifts.” Nat said.
“Your sacrifice accelerated the process. And his choice… it returned the favor. He used that borrowed strength to free you from the monster’s grip.
” Nat watched me process, his gaze holding a depth of understanding.
“Sometimes,” he said softly, “the most profound act of love is not holding on, but letting go. He gave you your freedom, Jude. Even when it meant taking the weight of that choice onto his own soul.”
A final gift, and a finishing wound, from the man who held my heart, even now, in a world where I no longer had one.
Nat opened the door behind us, revealing a space that could charitably be called a studio apartment. Its most defining features were four walls and a mountain range of books. “Rest here,” he said. “I’ll come for you when it’s time.”
“Rest? What does a ghost do, count spectral sheep?”
“You’re not technically a ghost. But in this state, meditation is… advisable. It helps with the transition.”
Transition. He made it sound like changing trains, not ceasing to exist. Was there another stop? Or was this cluttered, quiet terminus the end of the line?
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime, just stare at the wall and think about my breathing?” I asked, crossing arms I could no longer feel.
“What would you do normally when feeling overwhelmed?”
“Recently I’d let my hot boyfriend fuck the nerves right out of me.” Angel had been divine at sensing when I needed a break, even if that meant a quick trip to the bathroom to make out.
“And prior to that?”
A sigh escaped me. “The patented Jude Holt method of coping—reading a romance novel, mainlining coffee, and petting my cat until my brain shut up or my hand went numb. Peanut Butter’s a great listener, but he’s crap at giving advice.
” A faint, real smile touched my lips. “Having a six-foot-something shifter boyfriend to argue about takeout and kiss me stupid was a much better system.”
A wistful smile touched Nat’s lips. “That sounds like a good system. A real one.” He looked at the cluttered, silent room, then back at me, his poise softening at the edges.
“The mechanics here are different, Jude. But the principle might hold. Find your center. Remember what tethered you. It won’t be coffee or…
Peanut Butter.” He said the name with deliberate care, as if holding a small, fragile thing.
“But the feeling behind them. That’s your fuel now. ”
He stepped back into the sterile hallway, one hand on the doorframe. “Try to rest. Not sleep. Just be. I will return as soon as I can.”
Before I could volley back another question—How? Why? —the door clicked shut.
Silence bloomed, thick and heavy as the dust on the bookshelves. The hum of the hallway was gone, replaced by a quiet so deep it seemed to swallow sound itself.
I looked around, finding the array of stacked books, all perfectly dusted, and organized, though too many to fit any shelves of a place this small. The furniture all appeared utilitarian, and sparse. Nat’s place perhaps?
For a chilling moment, I saw a possible future.
A loneliness so profound it became a presence.
After all, who loved a Reaper? Was it possible?
Or were they only cursed to watch others move on while being stuck themselves?
Could I ever choose to trade all the messy, painful connections for the safety of eternal, quiet solitude.
No. Never.
I sat in the stiff-backed armchair, the cold leather a stark contrast to the fire building inside. The hollow fury was there, but beneath it was something harder, an absolute, immovable no.
Erlik did not get to win. The shadow god had my body, but he’d mistaken a vessel for a victory. I clung to my anchors, Angel’s face, Ivan’s steadfastness, the simple comfort of a living creature trusting my lap. They were not weaknesses to be exploited. They were the reason.
And they were the blueprint for my return.