J.R. Ward: Rapture

You also didn’t have to pat your pockets for a lighter.

Ripping the flip top open, he took out a coffin nail, put it between his lips, and brought up his hand. As his forefinger glowed on command, he thought of Eddie again—and felt like murdering Devina, as usual.

At least overall, the good guys were still ahead two to one in the war. If he could just squeak out two more wins, he’d have done it: snatched the Earth out of the jaws of damnation, kept his mother safe in the Manse of Souls…and gotten his Sissy out of Hell.

Not that she was his.

Exhaling, he wasn’t one hundred on that last one, but that had to be the way it worked, right? If the angels won, and Devina didn’t exist anymore, he had to be able to go down and get that poor, innocent girl free of that prison. Hell would be his to do with what he chose.

Right?

On that note, he wondered who the next soul in play was.

Thinking about his new boss, he heard the Englishman’s voice in his head, Nigel’s smooth, haughty tones echoing around, getting on his nerves: You will recognize him as an old friend and an old foe who you have seen of late. The path could not be more obvious if it were spotlit.

“Thanks,” he muttered, the smoke leaving his lips along with his breath. “Big help there, pal.”

How the hell was it fair that his enemy knew the target and he did not?

Fucked. Up.

Last round, he’d tricked Devina into giving him the intel, and she wasn’t going to fall for anything like that again—say what you would about that demon, she was not a dumb blonde on so many levels. And that meant that here he was again, stuck in neutral, as the opposition no doubt got a head start.

Which was precisely the problem he’d had in the battle over his former boss’s soul. The whole time, he’d assumed the one on deck was someone else’s, but it had turned out to be Matthias’s all the way.

Too little, too late, and the SOB had made the wrong choice.

Win: Devina.

At this rate, the game was set up to be unfair—as long as Devina continued to interact directly with the souls. According to the rules, Jim was the only one who should be doing that, but in practice, she was as much a part of the ground action as he was. Naturally, Nigel, chief Boy Scout in charge, was convinced she was going to get shanked for this kind of coloring outside the lines—and maybe she would. But who knew the when of that?

In the meantime, Jim had no choice but to stay sharp and hope he didn’t fuck up again.

He had to win. For his mother…and for Sissy.

As he took another drag and let it out, he watched the milky white smoke curl up into the cold air and rise until it disappeared. Between one blink and the next, he saw Sissy Barten, that beautiful young girl, hanging upside down in a white porcelain tub, her bright red blood staining her light blond hair, her skin marked with symbols he’d never seen before, but that Eddie had understood all too well—

A subtle scratching interrupted his train of thought, and he reached behind and opened the studio’s door. Dog limped out, his shaggy hair all discombobulated—although that was the stuff’s SOP, not because he’d fallen asleep in a weird position.

“Hey, big man,” Jim said softly as he reclosed things. “You need to go out?”

The poor old thing had a hard time with the stairs, so Jim usually carried him down to the ground. As he bent down to oblige, though, Dog just lowered his butt onto the landing—which was his way of saying he wanted to be picked up and held.

“Roger that.”

The animal, who Jim knew damn well was so much more than just a random stray, weighed next to nothing in his arm, and was warm as a Bunsen burner.

“I told her to think of you,” Jim said as he held his cigarette downwind of the dog—just in case he was wrong about the something-else. “I told Sissy to picture you chewing on my socks. I want her to imagine you playing in the bright green grass when things get…”

He couldn’t finish the thought aloud.

In his lifetime, he’d done ugly things, hideous things, to ugly, hideous people—which meant he had been long hardened to his emotions—

Well, actually, that had happened when he was still a teenager, hadn’t it. On that day when everything had changed forever.

On the day his mother had been murdered.

Whatever. Water under the bridge.

The fact of the matter was, the idea of Sissy in the demon’s Well of Souls was enough to make even a battle-hardened soldier like him lose his mind.

“I told her…to think of you, when she felt like she couldn’t hold on any longer.”

Dog’s stumpy tail wagged back and forth, like Jim had done the right thing.

Yeah, hopefully she was using Dog down there to sustain her.

Shit knew there was nothing else.

“I gotta find the next soul,” Jim muttered before taking another hit of the cigarette. “Gotta find out who’s on deck next. We gotta win this, Dog.”

As that cold, wet nose gave him a nuzzle, he was careful to exhale over his shoulder.

The fact that Nigel maintained he knew the soul at bat told him absolutely nothing. He’d known a shitload of people during his life.

He could only pray it was someone he could bring around.

Matthias knew the moment he was no longer alone: The light around him intensified, which meant a door had been opened, and that didn’t happen for no reason.

His right hand curled in on a reflex, as if there should have been a gun against his palm. But that was all he could do. His body was immobile from pain, sure as if he were chained to whatever he was lying on—a bed. He was in a bed…and the ambient beeping told him what kind. A hospital. He was still in the hospital.

Was he never going to get over—

His thought processes ground to a halt at that point.

Nothing but a black hole.

No idea what had gotten him here. No clue why his body hurt so much. No…Jesus, he knew his first name was Matthias and that was it.

Panic opened his eyes fully—

There was a horrified woman standing at his bedside, her hands up to her face, her expression one of shock. One of her eyes was bruised and there was a bandage on her forehead. Darkish hair was pulled back. Pretty eyes. Tall…she was tall—

Beautiful eyes, actually.

“I’m so sorry,” she said hoarsely.

Huh? “About…” His voice was rough, his throat raw. And one of his eyes wasn’t working right—

No, the thing wasn’t working at all. He had lost half of his vision a while ago. That was right, back when he was…

He frowned as his thoughts fell off that cliff again.

“I hit you with my car. I’m so sorry—I didn’t see you coming. It was so dark out, and you came into the road before I could stop.”

He tried to reach out a hand, a compulsion to calm her overriding his pain and confusion. “Not your fault. No…no tears. Come…”

On some level, he couldn’t believe anyone would cry over him, now or ever. He was not the type of man who inspired that kind of reaction.

Not him, no. Why that was true, though, he didn’t know….

The woman came a little closer, and he watched with his one eye as she extended her soft, warm hand…and slid it against his palm.

The contact made him feel warm all over, like he’d been submerged in a bath.

Funny, he hadn’t been aware of being cold until she touched him.

“I’m squeezing,” he said in his broken voice. “In case you can’t tell.”

She was tactful and didn’t comment on the fact that she clearly hadn’t had a clue he was putting any effort into the contact. But he was. And as their eyes held, for some reason he wanted to point out that he hadn’t always been broken. Once, not long ago, he had been able to stand proud, run far, lift much. Now he was a mattress with a heartbeat.