Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

I was breathing too fast, and I wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but I couldn’t make it stop. Luca had only sensed one corpse, and if there was a dead woman in the bathroom, she had to be what he’d felt. Which meant Heidi wasn’t dead.

How could she not be dead?

“You can’t hyperventilate anymore, but I appreciate the drama. Very angsty. But even if you could pass out, this would all be here waiting for you when you wake up. Me. The woman in the bathroom—a random, innocent soul, plucked in its prime. And she’s only the start. Every life I take will be on your shoulders. You couldn’t stop it then, and you can’t stop it now. All you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and scream for their souls. Isn’t that right, little bean sidhe? ”

I don’t know if it was the way she called me a “little bean sidhe ” or the way her gaze narrowed on me, her mouth open slightly, like she could taste my fear on the air. Either way, in that moment, I realized I wasn’t talking to Heidi Anderson.

I never had been.

“Avari,” I whispered. “You’re the soul thief?”

Heidi threw her head back and laughed. She sounded like a girl, but that look in her eyes, that brutal mirth in response to my pain—that was all hellion. “That shall be my new epithet,” he said, abandoning the borrowed teen-speech pattern altogether. “Avari, thief of souls. I like it. Although, ‘devourer’ has more of a menacing undertone. But we can work on the details later.”

I blinked, resisting the urge to shake my head in denial. This made no sense. But then, neither did my existence.

“What is this? First Scott and now Heidi? How are you possessing dead bodies?” I demanded, trying to find even one connection between the jumble of mismatched puzzle pieces in my head.

Had he taken Scott’s corpse, then returned it to the morgue? Why didn’t Luca sense Heidi as a walking corpse? And how could Heidi possibly look exactly as I remembered her, seven months after she’d died? How was she still dressed the same?

“You haven’t figured it out yet,” the Heidi-thing taunted. She put one hand on my shoulder and circled me slowly, trailing her hand across my back, then down my arm, and I could only shudder in revulsion. “The dead can’t be possessed, and even if they could, the real Heidi Anderson would not be fit for public viewing. She has long since started to decompose.”

“Then what is this? How are you here?” Was this some kind of illusion? Was I dreaming? Sabine could design one hell of a nightmare, but she couldn’t manipulate the fears of the dead, so this couldn’t be her work.

“I’ve learned a new trick. And I have a new toy.” Avari spread his borrowed arms and turned Heidi slowly, for my appraisal. “Isn’t she pretty?”

“She’s not a toy.”

“You’re right. She’s more like a pawn, and pawns exist to be sacrificed. Fortunately, your world is full of pawns.” Avari waved one arm at the shoppers ambling from store to store, but the gesture had greater meaning. Greater horror. His chessboard wasn’t the mall; it was the world. My world. “And I will use as many of them as it takes.”

“They’re not pawns, they’re people,” I said through gritted teeth.

“And you want to save them?” he asked. I didn’t bother to answer. “You can’t save them all, Ms. Cavanaugh. Even in your new state of being, you don’t have that kind of power. But you can save one. I will gladly accept your soul in exchange for the one I now carry—the woman in the restroom.”

The dead woman was bait, chosen at random, to bring me to Avari. But why? “You want to trade my soul for hers?”

“Precisely.” The Heidi-thing leaned forward until her cheek brushed mine, and my heart stuttered to a stop. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered into my ear, and I wondered what the shoppers would see, if one glanced at her then. Could they see her, and her malicious invasion of my personal space? Because they couldn’t see me. “I don’t think your noble streak runs that deep. I don’t think you’re willing to save a stranger’s soul at the expense of your own. Am I wrong?” She stepped back to look into my eyes, and hers were alight with vicious pleasure at my pain. “Will you suffer eternal torment in exchange for her peace?”

My chest tightened painfully. “You say that like it’s the only option, but we both know there’s another way.” My hand curled around the amphora hanging from my neck and I clutched it, wondering how my predecessors had met their true end. Had their souls been stolen? Were they now suffering in the Netherworld?

“Ah, the inevitable plan B.” Avari glanced at my fist, closed around the gold heart, and shook Heidi’s head slowly. “Like those who came before you, you are ill-equipped for the job. This isn’t as simple as taking a soul from a reaper. You’re going to need something more like this.”

The Heidi-thing held her hand between us. Lying across her palm was a very familiar double-bladed dagger. I gasped, so shocked it didn’t occur to me to run, and I only survived the next few seconds because Avari made no move to kill me.

I’d never carried a weapon before, and I’d only used one once. The night I killed my math teacher in self-defense. I knew that dagger by heart—after I was resurrected, it sat on my dresser for more than a month. Had he taken it from my room? When had he been in my room?

Chills ran the length of my spine and settled into my bones. “This is mine,” I whispered in shock.

The hellion in Heidi’s body looked distinctly amused. “That depends on how you define the concept of ownership.”

“I killed the incubus who killed me with this,” I insisted. “That makes it mine.”

The hellion’s manicured eyebrows rose. “I wrenched the metal from the ground and shaped it with my own hands, several of your human centuries ago, and it has been wielded by many other hands for many purposes since. But it always finds its way back to me eventually. Had I known yours was the soul that incubus intended to capture, I would never have sold him the blade.”

Because Avari wanted my soul for himself.

“Take it,” the hellion said with Heidi’s voice.

I picked up the dagger in a horrified mental fog, vaguely aware that Avari could kill me anytime he wanted, dagger or no dagger. Was I supposed to use it against him? If so, why would he give it to me?

The blood—both mine and Mr. Beck’s—had been scrubbed clean, but the hilt hummed in my palm with a familiar resonance, like a whispered echo of my own bean sidhe wail. Beck’s soul was still trapped inside, and it called to me every time I touched the hellion-forged steel.

“I don’t understand…” I said, and my voice sounded hollow.

“Yes, you do. You now hold the instrument that could have saved your predecessors’ lives. Surely you must have known this little confrontation could only end in violence.” Avari spread Heidi’s arms, offering her up for sacrifice. “Have it done, then. Slaughter the girl you failed to save.”

He wanted me to stab her. Him. Them—or whatever. He wanted me to shove my knife through flesh he’d proven to be solid and warm.

The dagger shook in my hand.

Heidi was already dead. I wouldn’t be killing her. Intellectually, I knew that. But this wasn’t self-defense. This wasn’t even a fair fight, because for no reason I could understand, Avari wasn’t trying to kill me.

“Ticktock, little bean sidhe. Kill me now, or the next blood I spill is on your hands. It might be her blood.” The Heidi-hellion glanced to the left, where a woman in a mall cop’s uniform walked past us in blissful ignorance. “Or his.” She nodded toward a boy not much older than me, in a fast-food restaurant uniform.