Chapter 50
“A SHER!”
He drops to the ground, writhing in pain as the white snake slithers into the brush and disappears.
On the ground, Asher’s hyperventilating, his face twisted with pain and fear. He’s reaching into his pocket, trying to get out his phone. Dez takes it from him with shaking hands. No service.
“No,” she whispers. “No. No.” How could she have let this happen? Now he’s going to die on this trail. “Help!” she screams. “Somebody!”
Asher’s breath comes in short, hard gasps. His grimace tells her his pain must be immense. She drops to her knees, surveys the bite. Two tiny dots, two rivulets of Asher’s blood. Poison speeding toward his soul.
She lowers her mouth to his ankle and sucks, drawing what’s hurting him into her mouth. She spits—and the taste stops her cold.
Petrichor. Tingling on her lips … just as it had the night she took an angel in her mouth.
This bite has Rafe written all over it, making it more poisonous than any substance in the natural world. And it’s taking hold in Asher’s blood.
Maybe in Dez’s now, too. She spits again, drags her hand across her mouth.
They’re no match for this. Not Dez, and certainly not Asher. He never asked for this. It’s all her fault.
Asher’s gone from contorting his body to slackening, growing still. His skin is turning pale, and his breath rattles so weakly, Dez fears the next one won’t come.
“Help!” she screams at the top of her lungs.
She falls on her knees beside him and puts her fingers to his throat. His pulse is heartbreakingly faint. She’s running out of time.
Emotion builds in her. For months she’s longed to see Asher. But not like this. Not ever like this.
Tears stream down her cheeks as she struggles to lift Asher.
She’ll carry him down the path to his Jeep.
But he cries out in such pain when she tries to raise him that she immediately lowers him back to the ground and just cradles him in her arms. The parking lot feels so far away, a hospital even farther.
And what mortal remedy could save Asher from the venom of an angel?
She realizes so little truly matters. So little to save in a fire. Everything that matters is right here. She presses her face to his.
“Please hold on,” she begs. “If you can hear me, if there’s anything you can do, don’t let him take you. Stay with me.”
A single tear falls on Asher’s chest. She puts her hand over it, over his heart.
A gust of wind whips Dez’s hair into her face. A sound carries on the gale. A sound like laughter. Laughter she recognizes.
Rafe.
She looks up into the sky as what feels like a cloud passes over the sun. But it’s not a cloud.
Rafe’s enormous golden wings fill the sky as he descends through a swath of fog and lands on the path in front of her. Around him, in the brush, bushes combust into spontaneous fire, forming a circle of flames around Rafe, Asher, and Dez.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Rafe says. “I was finishing up a project back at school.”
Dez could scream at him, could charge and try to fight, but it’s clear that she has only seconds left before Asher is taken from her forever.
“He seems like he’s in bad shape,” Rafe says, and even through his sarcasm, Dez hears his jealousy.
“Heal him,” Dez says, meeting her mentor’s eyes as the fire blazes around them. “I know you have an antidote.”
“It’s too late for that. Check his pulse.”
“No.” Dez puts her fingers to Asher’s throat, lays her head on Asher’s breast. She listens. But even as she waits, holding out hope, she knows. His body feels different, cooler and stiffer than it did only a moment before.
A sob freezes in Dez’s chest. If she lets it out, this will be real.
When a human body dies, Moriah told them the night of the gala, the process mimics sleep: the muscles of the mind slacken, the blood cools.
The mind becomes more focused than it’s been since the moment of birth. This makes the dying an ideal audience, open and receptive …
No. Not yet. This can’t be happening.
“I do happen to have Asher’s film with me,” Rafe says, holding open his trench coat, revealing rows of smoke-filled syringes.
“You corrupted his film,” Dez says with hatred. “I felt you doing it even before the rattlesnake.”
“Nevertheless,” Rafe says, “it will bring him the peace he needs to enter the White Light. You want peace for him, don’t you, Dez?”
Dez bites her lip until it bleeds, and when it does, the deep, searing sting she feels reminds her of the poison she brought into her mouth when she tried to suck it out of Asher. Fear takes hold of her. For herself, but mostly for Asher.
“What happens if he doesn’t get a Life Review?” she asks.
“He becomes a frag.”
Dez squeezes her eyes shut. Unimaginable. “Give him his film.”
“On one condition.”
Dez lifts her head off Asher’s chest to look into Rafe’s azure eyes.
“Kiss me first,” he says.
Her hands tighten around Asher. “No way in hell.”
Rafe lifts a shoulder, smirking. “Your choice. You know, if you ever want to see Asher, you can always come visit him in the river behind Villains. I’ll give him very special treatment.”
“Wait,” Dez says desperately, letting go of Asher. “I’ll do it.”
As she rises to her feet, her balance teeters, and her vision swims with stars. Rafe has to catch her arm to steady her.
He studies her. “You didn’t do something stupid like suck the poison out of your boyfriend’s ankle, did you?”
Dez doesn’t answer. She presses a hand to her eyes, trying to dispel the dizziness.
“Dez,” Rafe says with sudden urgency. “We need to get you back to Acheron, inside the barbelo. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She wrests her arm away from him and staggers backward. “And I’m not leaving him.”
“You’ll die, Dez.” Rafe sounds truly scared.
She shakes her head, remembering all she’s learned about Rafe’s goal of becoming the Angel of Death, the war between the angels and the lost Crimson Pinion, his mentorship of her, why he wants her to ascend. And she lifts her chin to meet his eyes, resolve steeling in her heart.
“You need me more than I need you,” she says.
He doesn’t answer.
“Give Asher his film,” she tells him.
“You’re really going to let it all go?” Rafe demands.
“Right here, over him? There’s no film for you either, Dez.
So if you die from the snake’s venom, you’ll both be frags, and I’ll still have you under my wing.
Forever. Or … you could kiss me, and as a bonus, I pull the poison out of your mouth and save your life. Everything for a kiss.”
“And Asher gets his film?” she asks weakly, her breath coming short. “You swear you’ll send Asher on in peace?”
“I swear.”
Despite everything else, Rafe cannot lie to her.
The poison pounds in Dez as she steps close to him, taking his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his like her life depends on it. She’s kissed this angel so many times, and she can’t help it that the rush of his mouth still hits her, sends shivers of physical desire to her brain.
She tells herself it’s just the heat of the fire, but it isn’t. It’s them, this thing between them that will always be there, even though she hates him. He knows it, too. Knows what his kiss does to her.
His arms close around her, the pose practiced by now, and Dez tips her head back and lets him run his tongue over the inside of her lips, softly. Then he kisses her hard, with intensity, like this is the last time, or like he’s trying to make her remember what they used to have.
She wishes she could forget.
As soon as Dez feels better, strong enough to finally push Rafe away, she does.
He gasps for air and looks at her accusingly. “Why do you have to be such a goddamned good kisser?”
“Asher’s film.” It’s all she can manage to say, still recovering from the kiss. She hates herself for doing it. Her body is healed, but her heart is broken.
The fire is burning hotter now. Both of them are sweating. They’ll have to get out of here soon. But first:
Rafe reaches into his trench coat and draws out a syringe. Tears burn Dez’s eyes at the sight of the black smoke swirling. She knows she isn’t in there, part of Asher’s film, and this is cruel and wrong. But a film without her is still better than no film at all.
She won’t let him become another of Rafe’s frags.
“Give it to me,” Dez says suddenly, holding out her hand. She can’t stomach watching Rafe handle this last grace for Asher. “Let me do it.”
Intrigued, Rafe hands Dez the syringe. She lowers herself to the ground, where Asher lies looking like he might only be asleep. She remembers what she saw Rafe do before, when they traveled through the Veil. She takes a breath.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” she tells Asher; then she lifts his head in one hand, and with the other, she shoots his film into his cerebral cortex.
A sound, almost inaudible, comes from within Asher. It’s like the softest, faintest tinkling bells. Then Dez sees a shimmering glow rise off him.
At a certain point, Moriah told them, the soul begins to shimmer right above the body …
Dez is seeing Asher’s soul.
And with one last rise of the electrical brain waves, life flashes before their mind’s eye.
Dez weeps, taking both his hands in hers.
Behind closed lids, Asher’s eyes twitch rapidly. His heart has stopped, but his mind’s still working, receiving the film. She wishes she’d been the one to make it, but she’s glad at least he’s getting closure, peace, the story of his lovely, too-brief life.
She thinks of all the familiar scenes in Asher’s Lifeline. His family, his work, the way he can fly on his skateboard, how much he loved to watch the sun sink into the sea at dusk.
“I love you, Asher,” she tells him, holding fast to his hand. “If I’d had the chance, I know I’d love you more with each day.” She brings his hand to her chest, clutching it in hers.
And then …
She feels it. Pressure in her palm that wasn’t there before.
Asher—squeezing her hand. Sending a signal.
Pulse. Pulsepulse. Pulse.
His hazel eyes shoot open. He stares at her like he’s just seen the cosmos. Like he knows the ultimate truth. Like she’s the last real thing left in the world.
“Desdemona,” he says with the conviction of a soulmate.
And then the whole world goes black.