Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

“No. I was at the mall—the version in our world. But he was there, wearing a dead girl’s skin like he wore Scott’s. It’s not possession, Tod. He was really there, in the flesh. Just, not his own flesh.”

Tod set my hand back in my lap and frowned at me, and the twists of color in his irises deepened in hue as his concern grew. “Could people see him?”

“Not when I was there, but he killed a woman in the bathroom. Like, physically killed her. And I touched him. He was solid. Flesh and blood.” I held my hand up for emphasis, though most of the evidence was now on the rag, which he was rinsing in the sink again. “He said that if I didn’t kill him—he called it sacrificing the pawn—he’d kill this little girl who was there with her mother. And it would be my fault. So I had to stab him. I had to kill Heidi… .”

The tears were back, and I couldn’t stop them.

“Who’s Heidi?”

“The dead girl. She’s been dead for months, but he looked just like her. Clothes and all, just like the night she died. But when I stabbed her and she disappeared, that didn’t.” I glanced at the bracelet on the counter.

Tod studied it, then laid it on the edge of the sink again. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Me, neither.”

“And you’re sure she’s not just undead?” He sat on the tub again and started wiping the remaining blood from my hand.

“I’m sure. He said she was rotting in her grave, and hellions can’t lie. They can’t possess the dead, either, right?” Which was the only real bright side to my new state of being.

“Right.” Tod frowned and draped the rag over the edge of the tub to his left. “So, he took a corporeal form that looked and felt like a girl who’s been dead for months. And the other day he took a corporeal form that looked like Scott, at least twelve hours after he died.”

“Yeah. It makes no sense. It’s like he’s cloning dead people and possessing them, but that’s not possible, is it?”

The reaper shrugged. “I’m not ready to call anything truly impossible at this point, but that doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”

“No. He’s killing people, Tod. He says people are his pawns, and the world is full of them, and he’ll kill as many as it takes.”

“As many as it takes for what?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that he acted like Avari, but he looked and sounded like a girl I saw once, and I had to kill her. He made me kill her, and he wouldn’t do that unless he knew he could come back. He’s found a way into the human world and the only way to get rid of him—even temporarily—is to kill his physical form. Even if it looks like someone you know.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to have to do it again, Tod. I’m going to have to kill him over and over, and every time, it’s going to feel like murder.”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep killing people, even if they weren’t really people, because killing not-Heidi had felt like murder. And Avari knew that.

Tod took my hands and looked straight into my eyes. “It’s not murder, Kaylee. You didn’t kill a person, you killed a demon. And you saved a little girl’s life in the process.”

“I know.” But it didn’t feel like I’d saved anything. The woman in the bathroom was still dead, and she’d suffer the postmortem indignity of being found propped up on a public toilet. It was hard to feel like I’d done anything right at all, knowing that.

“Let’s get your shirt off,” he said. “I think we’re going to have to call this one a total loss.”

I glanced down in surprise. I’d forgotten about the blood drying stiff on my clothes. That was two ruined shirts in two days.

“How can there be blood?” I demanded, staring down at the evidence of what I’d done. “Do hellions bleed?” Their breath was toxic and addictive. There’s no telling what random evil properties their blood had.

“I don’t think this is hellion blood,” Tod said, staring at my top button. “A hellion can’t physically cross the world barrier, so whatever flesh he was wearing wasn’t his own. It wasn’t Netherworld in origin. Which means the blood isn’t, either.”

“Then what did I kill?” My words lacked volume because I hadn’t taken in enough air to give them voice. Because I could hardly comprehend the question I’d just asked. That was the root of the problem. How could it not be murder, if there was blood? And if it was murder, what did I kill?

“I don’t know what you killed,” Tod admitted, and that cold horror began to unfurl within me again. “But I know it was evil. You did what had to be done, Kaylee, and you saved lives.”

I nodded, but I felt like there was still blood on my hands, and no matter how hard I scrubbed, they’d never come clean.

Tod’s gaze met mine again, and his irises swirled with a single tight burst of color, then went still as he got control over them. “Do you want me to…?” His focus shifted to my shirt again, and I realized that it would have to come off. “I can step outside if you want.”

“Stay,” I said, and his irises swirled again. “Stay with me, please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Tod’s gaze met mine. “You’ll never be alone again, Kaylee.”

My hands shook as I pushed the first button through the hole, and that burst of color was back in his eyes. The second button slid free and Tod’s gaze never left mine, but he was breathing harder. It took me a moment to realize I was breathing again, too. And that my inhalations had matched the rhythm of his.

His gaze burned into mine, like he could see past my eyes into parts of me no one had ever seen, and I knew I was seeing the same in him. No one else had ever seen him so vulnerable before, like if I pushed him away, he might crumble into pieces that could never be put together again. Yet there was strength, too. He was strong beneath that fragile need, and I knew that I could never fall with him next to me. If I tripped, he would catch me. If I lost my balance, he would find it.

I wanted to be those things for him, too. His strength. His balance.

I found the third button and flinched. It was sticky and cold with drying blood. I didn’t want to touch it.

“Do you want me to get it?” Tod asked, and that complicated mix of strength and vulnerability echoed in his voice, deeper than it should have been, like his question meant more than what his words actually asked.

I nodded. “Take it off. Get rid of it. Please.”

He reached for me, and his gaze held mine until the last possible moment before his focus shifted to his fingers on my shirt. To the button, as he slid it through the hole, then moved on to the next. His fingers brushed my skin as he worked his way lower, and I sucked in a deep breath. My eyes closed again, and I let my head fall back against the shelf above the tank.

I didn’t realize he was finished until he whispered, “Lean forward.” So I did, and his hands slid over my shoulders, pushing the material down slowly until I could pull my arms from the short sleeves.

Then my shirt was gone, and so were his hands. I opened my eyes just as he turned the hot water on again and rinsed the rag beneath it. He wrung the cloth out, then took my hand in his warm, damp one. “Stand up.”

I stood, and he knelt in front of me. The cloth was scratchy on my skin, and each stroke was torturously short and deliciously hot as he worked his way across my stomach. When he was finished, he laid the rag across the tub again and his hands found my hips. He kissed the dimple above my navel, and his hair brushed my stomach, so soft I had to touch it.

His grip on my hips tightened and he exhaled against my stomach. “Every time I see you, I want to touch you, and I’m still a little stunned every time you let me.”