First Grave on the Right

CHAPTER 20

No, that was a lie. I did know the precise moment I began my long and illustrious career as an utter and complete fuckup who should never have been allowed to walk and chew gum at the same time, much less be set loose on the streets of Albuquerque. I’d been in the habit of leaving death and destruction in my wake since the day I was born. Even my own mother wasn’t immune to my poison. I was the very reason she died. Every life I touched, I tainted in some irreversible way.

My stepmother knew. She tried to warn me. I just didn’t listen.

We were at the park — my stepmom, Denise, Gemma, and I. Mrs. Johnson was there, like she’d been every day for two months, staring into the tree line, hoping for a glimpse of her missing daughter. She wore her signature gray sweater, kept it wrapped tightly about her shoulders, as though afraid if it opened, her soul would fly out and she’d never be able to catch it. Her dingy brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun with strays flying out of her head in every direction. Denise, in one of her more unselfish moments, sat beside her, tried to strike up a conversation, to little accord.

Denise had warned me not to talk about the departed in public. She said my imagination upset people, and on several occasions, she’d tried to talk Dad into putting me in therapy. But by that time, Dad was beginning to believe in my abilities.

So, it wasn’t like I didn’t know not to talk about it. But Mrs. Johnson was so sad. Her eyes were glazed over with it, and she was turning almost as gray as her sweater. I just thought she’d want to know, was all.

I ran up to her with a wide smile on my face. After all, I was about to give her the best news she’d had in a long time. After a quick tug on her sweater, I pointed to the field where her daughter was playing, and said, “There she is, Mrs. Johnson. Bianca’s right there. She’s waving at you. Hey, Bianca!”

As I waved back, Mrs. Johnson gasped and jumped to her feet. Her hands shot to her throat as she searched frantically for her daughter.

“Bianca!” she screamed, running forward and stumbling through the park. I was going to lead her to where Bianca was playing, but Denise grabbed me, her face frozen in mortification as she watched Mrs. Johnson run through the field, howling her daughter’s name. She screamed to a little boy to call the police and rushed into the forest.

Denise was in a state of shock when the police arrived. My dad had answered the call as well. They found Mrs. Johnson and brought her back to see what was going on. But my dad already knew. His head was bowed in something disturbingly similar to shame. And then everyone was yelling at me. All I could see were legs and fingers and teeth screaming my name. How could I? What was I thinking? Didn’t I understand what Mrs. Johnson was going through?

And Denise stood on the front line, crying and shaking and cursing the day she became my stepmother. Her fingernails dug into my arms as she shook me to attention, the disappointment on her face palpable.

I was so confused, so hurt and betrayed, that I withdrew into myself. “But, Mom,” I whispered through my pathetic tears that meant nothing to anyone there, least of all my stepmother, “she’s right there.”

She slapped me before my eyes even registered movement. There was no sting at first, just a baffling force and then a moment of blackness when my mind processed the sharp crack as my stepmother’s hand clapping against my face. Then I was back, nose to nose with Denise, her mouth moving in an exaggerated, angry fashion. I could barely focus on her through the flood of tears distorting my vision. I glanced through the blur at the faces of fury, the outraged expressions on each and every person surrounding me.

Then Bad was there, Reyes, his anger even more distinct than those around me. But he wasn’t angry at me. If I had let him, he would have sliced my stepmother in two. I knew this like I knew the sun would continue to rise. I begged him underneath my breath not to hurt her. I tried to make him understand that what was happening was my fault. That I deserved the wrath of the people around me. Denise had warned me not to talk about the others. But I hadn’t listened. He hesitated. Then, with an earth-shattering roar, he disappeared, leaving in his wake his essence, his earthy smell and rich, exotic taste.

My dad stepped forward then and took Denise by the shoulders. She shook with sobs as he led her away to his squad car. The cops questioned me for what seemed like hours, but I refused to speak about it any longer. Not really understanding what I’d done wrong, I closed my mouth and said no more. And I never called Denise Mom again.

It was a hard lesson, but one I’d never forgotten.

Two weeks later, I’d sneaked off to the park alone. I sat on the bench, watching Bianca play. She motioned for me to join her, but I was still too sad.

“Please, tell me,” Mrs. Johnson said from behind me, “is Bianca still there?”

She’d scared me, and I jumped off the bench, watching her with wary concern. She looked over to where Bianca was playing in her homemade sandbox near the tree line.

“No, Mrs. Johnson,” I said, edging back. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Please,” she begged. “Please tell me.” Tears streamed down her face.

“I can’t.” My voice was nothing more than a frightened whisper. “I’ll get in trouble.”

“Charlotte, sweetheart, I just want to know if she’s happy.” She stepped forward and knelt beside me, her breath catching in her throat.

I whirled and ran away, hiding behind a trash bin as Mrs. Johnson crawled onto the park bench and cried. Bianca appeared beside her and ran a tiny hand over her hair.

I knew better. I knew not to say anything, knew the consequences, but I did it anyway. I sneaked up and hid in the bushes behind the bench. “She’s happy, Mrs. Johnson.”

The woman turned to me, bobbed and weaved her head, trying to see me through the leaves. “Charley?”

“Um, no. My name is Captain Kirk.” I wasn’t the most imaginative being on the worldly plane. “Bianca asked me to tell you not to forget to feed Rodney and that she is sorry for breaking your grandmother’s china cup. She had assumed Rodney would have had better table manners.”

Mrs. Johnson’s hands flew to her mouth. She stood and circled the bench, but I was not about to be slapped again. I tore out of there and headed for home, swearing never again to talk about the departed. But she chased me! She ran me down and jerked me off the ground like an eagle snatching his dinner from a lake.

I’d thought about screaming, but Mrs. Johnson hugged me to her. For, like, a really long time. Uncontrollable sobs racked her body as we sank to the ground. Bianca stood beside us, smiling and petting her mother’s hair again before she drifted into me. I figured she’d told her mom what she needed her to know — apparently it had been a really important cup — and she felt she could leave. She smelled like grape Kool-Aid and corn chips as she passed.

Mrs. Johnson continued to rock me for some time before my father came in his patrol car. She stopped and looked at me. “Where is she, darling? Did she tell you?”

I lowered my head. I didn’t want to say, but she seemed to need to know. “She’s by the windmill past the trees. The search party was looking in the wrong place.”

She cried some more, then discussed what’d happened with my dad as I watched Bad in the distance, his black robe undulating like a sail in the wind, spanning the width of three massive trees. He was magnificent, and he was the only thing I’d ever truly been afraid of my whole life. He dissipated before my eyes when Mrs. Johnson came to give me another hug, and Bianca’s body was found that afternoon. The next day, I received a huge bouquet of balloons and a new bike, which Denise wouldn’t let me keep. But every year on Bianca’s birthday, I got a bright bouquet of balloons with a card that simply read, Thank you.

I learned two things from that experience: that most people would never believe in my abilities, even those closest to me. And that most people would never understand the devastating need of those left behind, the need to know the truth.

Regardless of how things had turned out, I’d caused a lot of pain that day. And a lot since. I should have made sure Rosie Herschel boarded that plane. I should have escorted her to the security checkpoint and then slipped one of the personnel a twenty to make sure she stayed put. Zeke couldn’t have found her before the plane boarded. He was with me. Had she changed her mind? Surely not. She was like a kid in a candy shop, ridiculously excited about the new life awaiting her. The enormous burden of living under the constant threat of violence had already been lifted from her shoulders. No, she hadn’t changed her mind. And instead of protecting my client, I was playing dodge-the-right-hook with her scum-of-the-underworld husband.

But therein lay the rub: She’d trusted me. With her life. And once again, I had let someone down in the most severe way possible.

I felt Angel standing across the room and glanced up through my lashes. His head was down, his eyes darting occasionally to my right, where Reyes sat. In the dark, I realized he was there as well, sitting patiently beside me. Not touching or demanding. Heat drifted off him like sand off a dune.

Angel wouldn’t come closer. Not with Reyes so near. He was afraid of him. I was beginning to understand that Reyes wasn’t the average everyday entity. He even freaked out the dead people.

I curled back into my blanket, buried my face. “You could have told me,” I said to Angel, my voice muffled through the thick material.

“I knew it would upset you.”

“That’s why you took off for two days.”

I could almost feel him shrug. “I just figured you’d keep thinking she got away. You know, that nobody would ever find her.”

“On the bedroom floor in a pool of her own blood?”

“Yeah, I hadn’t figured that part out yet.”

“I wanted her to be happy,” I said by way of explanation. “I had it all planned. She was going to open a hotel, get to know her aunt all over again, and be happier than she’s ever been in her whole life.”

“She is happier than she’s ever been in her whole life. Just not in the way you wanted. If you could know what it’s like here, really like, you wouldn’t be so sad.”

I sighed. For some reason, that knowledge didn’t really help. “What happened?”

“She did everything right, just like you told her,” he said. “She left dinner simmering on the stove. She left her purse with her wallet in it on her nightstand. She left her shoes and coat in the entryway. He would never have suspected she’d just run away. He would have thought something had happened to her.”

“Then what? What went wrong?”

“Her baby’s blanket.”

My head whipped up. Angel was peeling paint off the side of the snack bar, doing his best not to look in Reyes’s direction.

“She went back for her baby’s blanket,” he explained.

“She didn’t have a baby,” I said, confused.

“She would have, if he hadn’t sucker punched her in the gut.”

I buried my head again, fought the sting of tears.

“She’d knitted it. Yellow because she didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl yet. She lost the baby the night she mustered the courage to tell him she was pregnant.”

My lids squeezed shut, forcing the most useless tears I’d ever cried past my lashes. The blanket absorbed them, and I wished with all my heart it would absorb me as well. Just swallow me whole then spit out the bitter bones. Why was I even on Earth? To make a fool of myself and my family? To hurt people I’d never met?

“But Zeke Herschel was in jail,” I said, unable to fully accept what had happened.

“He made bail almost the minute they booked him; his cousin is a bail bondsman.”

I knew that, but I never expected her to go back.

“Herschel caught her as she was leaving the house a second time. And he knew from the look in her eyes what she was doing.” Angel chewed on his bottom lip a moment before continuing. “After he … did what he did, he found your card in her pocket and put two and two together.”

A long silence ensued as I tried desperately to figure out my role on this Earth. Clearly, I was going about the whole grim reaper thing wrong. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe there was no going about it. Maybe I was just supposed to live my life without trying to help people, without trying to fix their problems, living or otherwise.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Angel said after a while.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice spent as fatigue and depression set in, “right. It was probably Rosie’s fault. We can blame her.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just know how you are. You take everything onto your shoulders like that guy who holds up the world, and you shouldn’t. You’re not nearly as muscular.”

“Why do you suppose I’m here?” I asked him. Angel. A thirteen-year-old departed gangbanger.

“Just ’cause you’re supposed to be, I guess.”

“Oh, right, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Why do you think you’re here?”

“To wreak havoc and misery upon the masses,” I answered. “Duh.”

“Well, if you knew…” A glimmer of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

Reyes stirred beside me, and Angel’s gaze darted to him.

“Why do you suppose he’s here?” I asked Angel, indicating Reyes with a nod of my head.

Angel thought about it, then said, “To wreak havoc and misery upon the masses.” He left out the duh, and I realized he was serious.

I glanced at Reyes. His gaze was locked on to Angel, as if in warning.

“I’m outta here,” Angel said. “My mom has a hair appointment in the morning. I like to watch her get her hair done.”

It wasn’t the lamest excuse he’d ever used, but it was pretty darned close.

“Will you just tell me next time?” I asked.

He winked at me, the flirt. “We’ll see.” Then he was gone.

“Why do you suppose I’m here?” I asked Reyes as he sat beside me. He didn’t answer. Naturally. “You saved my life. Again. Are you planning on waking up anytime soon? I don’t know how long I can hold the state off.”

My pulse had quickened the moment I realized he was beside me. Now that we were alone, it charged headlong into warp drive, heedless of any stars lurking nearby. Reyes’s energy was like a tangible thing, electric and arousing as it encapsulated my body. He hadn’t moved, but I could feel him everywhere.

Trying to keep my wits about me, or at least nearby, I asked him, “What are you, Reyes Farrow?”

Without saying a word, he reached over and took hold of the blanket, tugged it off me, exposing my skin to his heat. I leaned toward him, ran my fingertips along the silky lines and curves that made up his tattoo. It was futuristic and primitive at once, a combination of intertwining lattice that ended in sharp tips like those on his sword and smooth curves that wound around his biceps to disappear under his shirtsleeve. The tattoo was one solid work of art that spanned his shoulder blades and spiraled over both shoulders and down both arms. And it meant something. Something big. Something … important.

Then suddenly I was lost. I fell in like Alice in Wonderland, stumbled along the curves, feared I would never escape. It was a map of an entrance. I had seen it before in another life, and I didn’t associate it with fond memories. It felt like a warning of some kind. An omen.

And then it hit me. It was the tumbling, mazelike mechanisms of a lock that opened a realm of devastating darkness.

It was the key to the entrance of hell.

A jolt of shock snapped me back to the present. As if I’d been drowning, I broke through the surface with a gasp, filling my lungs with air. I turned to Reyes, looked at him in horror, and slowly, very slowly, started edging out of his reach.

But he knew. I’d figured out what he was, and he knew. Comprehension dawned in his eyes and he grabbed for me, the movement like a cobra strike. I tried to scramble out of his grasp, but he’d caught my ankle, pulled, and was on top of me at once, pinning me to the floor, holding me there as I thrashed about, fought for my freedom with nails scraping and teeth gnashing. He was simply too strong and too fast. He moved like the wind and thwarted my every attempt at escape.

After a moment, I forced myself to calm down, to slow my racing heart. He’d locked my hands above my head, his body, lean and hard, acting as a blockade if I should change my mind. I lay there winded, eyeing him warily, my mind racing in a hundred different directions as I panted beneath his weight. And a strange, unsettling emotion skimmed across his face. Was it … shame?

“I’m not him,” he said through gritted teeth, unable to meet my eyes.

He was lying. There was no other explanation. “Who else bears that mark?” I asked, trying with all my being to sound disgusted instead of hurt and betrayed and more than a little dumbfounded. I lifted my head until our faces were inches apart. He smelled like a lightning storm with the promise of rain. And he was hot, as usual, almost scorching against my skin. He was also out of breath. That should have given me some consolation, but it didn’t. “Who else in this world or the next?”

When he didn’t answer, I tried to squirm out from under him again. “Stop,” he said, his voice raw, husky, as if filled with pain. He gripped my wrists tighter. “I’m not him.”

Laying my head back, I closed my eyes. He shifted on top of me, angled for a better hold.

“Who else in this world or the next bears that mark?” I asked again. I looked at him, accused him with my glare. “The mark of the beast. Who else has the key to hell branded on his body? If not him, then who?”

He rested his head against his shoulder, as if trying to hide his face. A deep sigh whispered across my cheek. When he spoke, his voice was filled with such shame, such indignation, I had to steel myself to keep from flinching. But what he said left me breathless.

“His son.” He looked at me then, scrutinized my expression, tried to decide if I believed him. “I am his son.”

A shock wave jolted through me. What he was saying was impossible.

“I’ve been in hiding from him for centuries,” he said, “waiting for you to be sent, to be born upon the Earth. The God of Heaven does not send a reaper often, and each time before you, I’d felt such disappointment, such utter loss.”

My lashes fluttered in confusion. How could he know such things? But perhaps the more important question was, “Why were you disappointed?”

He turned his face away before he answered, as if ashamed. “Why does the Earth seek the warmth of the sun?”

My brows slid together, trying to understand.

“Or the forest seek the embrace of the rain?”

I shook my head, but he continued.

“When I knew he was going to send you, I chose a family and was born upon the Earth as well. To wait. To watch.”

After a moment, I asked, more than a little appalled, “And you chose Earl Walker?”

A corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile as his gaze traveled over my face. He released one hand, slid his fingertips over my arm to rest on my neck. “No,” he said, staring at me with a feverish intensity, as if mesmerized. “A man took me from my birth family, kept me a while, then traded me to Earl Walker. Knowing I would have no memory of my past while I was human, I gave up everything to be with you. I didn’t find out who I was … what I was, until I’d been in prison for years. My origins came to me in pieces, in fractured dreams and broken memories, like a puzzle that took decades to assemble.”

“You didn’t remember who you were when you were born?”

His grip on my wrists eased, but just barely. “No. But I’d done my research well. I should have grown up happy, gone to the same schools as you, the same college. I knew I would have no control over my own destiny once I became human, but it was a chance I was willing to take.”

“But, you’re his son,” I said, trying really hard to hate him. “You’re the son of Satan. Literally.”

“And you are the stepdaughter of Denise Davidson.”

Wow. That was a bit harsh, but, “Okay, point taken.”

“Are we not all products of the world we were born into just as much as, if not more than, the parents we were given to?”

I’d heard the nature-versus-nurture argument all through college, but this was a little hard to justify. “Satan is just so … I don’t know, evil.”

“And you think I am evil as well.”

“Like father, like son?” I said by way of explanation.

He shifted his body weight to the side. The movement stirred the swirling pool still growing inside me, and I fought the desire to padlock my legs around his waist and throw away the key.

“Do I seem evil to you?” he asked, his deep voice like a caress of velvet. He was busy eyeing the pulse at my neck, testing it with his fingertips, as if human life fascinated him.

“You do have a tendency to sever spinal cords.”

“Only for you.”

Disturbing but oddly romantic. “And you’re in prison for killing Earl Walker.”

His hand sank lower, skimmed over Will Robinson until it found the bottom of my sweater. Then it worked its way back up, palm skimming over bare skin, sending ripples of pleasure shooting to the most delicate nether regions of my anatomy. “That is a problem,” he said.

“Did you do it?”

“You can ask Earl Walker when I find him.”

No doubt he went straight to hell. “Can you go back? Can you go into hell and find him? I mean, aren’t you in hiding?”

His hand eased farther up, cupped Will, teased her hardened center with his fingertips. I bit back a gasp of pleasure.

“He’s not in hell.”

Surprised, I said, “Surely he didn’t go the other direction.”

“No,” he said before his head dipped and his mouth found that same racing pulse, christened it with tiny, hot kisses.

“So, is he still on Earth?” I was trying really hard to concentrate, but Reyes seemed dead set against it.

I felt him smile against my skin. “Yes.”

“Oh. So, why are you hiding from your father?” I asked, breathless.

“Earl Walker?”

“No, the other one.” I had so many questions. I wanted to know everything about him. About his life. About his … pre-life.

“Was,” he said, nipping at my earlobe. The action sent shivers scampering down my spine.

“Was?” I whispered, trying to think of a distraction, something other than the waves of delight washing over my body.

“Yes. Was.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“If you’d like me to. But I’d rather do this.”

“Oh … my … g—”

His hand had tunneled down my pajama bottoms, slipped into my panties, and found a delicious spot to play with. I quaked visibly when his fingers brushed over the silken folds below. When he sank them deeper, I shuddered, the sensation so exquisitely intense.

Son of Satan. Son of Satan.

While his fingers continued to stroke the sensitive flesh between my thighs, his mouth — his glorious, perfect mouth — traveled south and was now nibbling on Danger. In the deepest recesses of my mind, I realized I was suddenly half naked and exposed to one of the most powerful beings on Earth. I just couldn’t remember him disrobing any part of me. Did he have super-stripper powers as well as the spinal cord thing?

I wrested my hands from his grip and dug my fingers into his hair. Pulling him back to me, I kissed him with all the longing and desire I’d harbored for years. This was his kiss, the special one I’d saved for just such an occasion. I savored the smooth taste of him on my tongue as he tilted his head and delved deeper inside me, drawing on my essence, my life force.

This was the first time I’d really felt him without swimming in a sea of lust so strong, I could barely stay conscious. Not that I wasn’t having a difficult time of it — I just felt a bit more in control, a bit more lucid. He was so real, so solid. This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t an out-of-body experience. This was Reyes Farrow, as close to in-the-flesh as it got, considering he was in a coma an hour away.

The air undulated around us like heat radiating off a furnace. He grumbled and I helped him remove my bottoms, kicking and manipulating them down my legs. After a few moments, he broke the kiss, jerked them past my feet, and threw them at Mr. Wong.

Then he was on top of me again, like a blanket of fire, flames licking over all my girl parts, stoking and stirring my body into a frenzy of heat and desire. My hands fought off his clothes and he rose over me, his eyes drunken with sin. His wide shoulders, a wall of solid muscle, were covered in smooth, razor-sharp tattoos. Fluid and alive, they marked the boundaries between heaven and hell, so at one with his form, so natural and ethereal, they seemed to breathe when he did. I ran my palms over his chest, rigid and tempered like ancient steel, then down to his rock-hard stomach that contracted with the brush of my palms.

Finally, my hand sank farther, wrapped around his erection, my fingers barely able to encircle him. He hissed in a breath and clutched my wrist, holding it still as he fought for control. Shaking with need, he leaned back onto his knees. “I wanted this to last.”

I wanted him inside me. With sore ankle forgotten, I rolled onto the balls of my feet, climbed onto him, and impaled myself, inhaling sharply, clenching my jaw with the desire that burst in my abdomen. He tensed to the density of fine marble when I slid him inside, his arms locking around me, immobilizing me when I tried to move. I gave him a minute, relishing the feel of him, the hardness that filled me to exquisite capacity. Even completely still, I hovered on the verge of orgasm, the distant sensation drawing nearer with each breath. I struggled against his hold, wanting to move, to come. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I anchored myself and pushed up with my legs, to no avail. He growled, secured me against him with his unshakable embrace.

Then, with a throaty groan, he laid me back and buried himself deeper inside me in one long thrust. I sucked in a lungful of air, held it as he eased out then back in again, his movements agonizingly slow, insanely meticulous. He tortured me for several long minutes, stopping when I came too close to the edge, pulling back when I clawed at his steely buttocks, wanting more. Slowly, he increased the rhythm, quickened the pace, lured me closer and closer to the inferno blazing in my abdomen until an orgasm exploded inside me. In one continuous rush of adrenaline, the sweet sting of orgasm washed over me, pulsing and coursing through every molecule in my body. I threw my head back, bit down, and steeled myself to ride out the wave, shuddering beneath him with the power of it.

He came moments after I did, sending a second climax bursting and spilling through my veins. But this one was different. This one was even more intense. More … important.

Stars exploded into white-hot supernovas in my head. Galaxies formed in my mind as I saw the universe being born. Planets were forged from raw material as gravity reached out and took what it could, manipulating and bending the elements to its will. Gases and sheets of ice became orbiting spheres, bright and incandescent against the black of eternity, while others shot through the sky at impossible speeds.

Then I saw the Earth form and its magnetosphere take shape, giving the brilliant blue orb the ability to sustain life like a shield from heaven. I saw one mass of land part and become many, and I saw the rise of the angels then the fall of the few. Led by a beautiful being, the fallen hid in stones and crevasses scattered throughout the universe, where the hottest molten rock flowed and ebbed like the seas of the Earth.

It was then, after the brief war of the angels, that Reyes was born. Nearly identical to his father, he was created from the heat of a supernova and forged from Earth’s elements. He rose through the ranks quickly, becoming a great and respected leader. Second only to his father, he commanded millions of soldiers, a general among thieves, even more beautiful and powerful than his father, with the key to the gates of hell scored into his body.

But his father’s pride would not be subdued. He wanted the heavens. He wanted complete control over every living thing in the universe. He wanted God’s throne.

Reyes followed his father’s every command, waited and watched for a portal to be born upon the Earth, a direct passage to heaven, a way out of hell. A tracker of flawless stealth and skill, he forged through the gates of the underworld and found the portals in the farthest reaches of the universe.

And then he saw me. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t see myself through his eyes. All I saw was a thousand lights, identical in shape and form. But Reyes looked harder and saw one made of spun gold, a daughter of the sun, shimmering and glistening. She turned and saw him and smiled. And Reyes was lost.

Plummeting back to the present, I felt Reyes lean up on his arms, alarm evident in his expression. “I didn’t mean for you to see that,” he said, his voice spent, his breathing labored.

I was still quivering, shaking weakly from the climaxes that were just now waning. “That was me?” I whispered, astonished.

He lay beside me to catch his breath, rested his head on an arm, and watched. For the first time, I realized his eyes looked like small galaxies with a billion sparkling stars. “You’re not going to try to run away from me again, are you?”

Too shocked to smile, I asked, “Would it do me any good?”

He lifted a solid shoulder. “If you knew what you were capable of, it might.”

That was an interesting thing to say. I rolled onto my side to face him. His eyes sparkled, sated and relaxed. “And just what exactly am I capable of?”

He grinned, his handsome face — too handsome to be human — softening under my gaze. “If I told you, I would lose my advantage.”

“Ah,” I said, a piece of the puzzle falling into place. “The consummate general, with more tricks up his sleeve than a seasoned magician.”

He lowered his chin as if ashamed. “That was a long time ago.”

His body glistened beside mine, and I couldn’t help but let my eyes stray to the hills and valleys that made up his exquisitely molded form. I suddenly realized he was covered in scars, some tiny and some … not so much. I wondered if they were a product of his life with Earl Walker or his life as a general in hell. “What did you mean earlier when you said that Satan was looking for you?”

He swirled a lazy finger around my belly button, creating tiny quakes that riveted straight to my core. “I mean that he is no longer looking.”

“He gave up?” I asked hopefully.

“No. He found me.”

My jaw dropped open in alarm. “But, isn’t that bad?”

“Very.”

I sat up so I could see his face better. “Then you need to hide again. Wherever you were before, you need to go there again and hide.”

But I’d lost him. Something beyond my range of perception had stolen his attention. He was on his feet at once, covered in the black hooded robe. I scanned the area but could perceive none of what he was seeing. This disturbed me, especially after what I’d just witnessed. There was so much I couldn’t see, so much going on around me every minute of every day that I had no access to.

“Reyes,” I whispered, but almost before I’d gotten his name out, he was in front of me, covering my mouth with his hand.

His robe tingled along my skin, sparked along my nerve endings like static electricity. With eyes blazing, he shifted, liquefied, straddled two planes at once. After a moment, he let his hand drop and replaced it with his mouth in a kiss that had me shivering despite the heat that surrounded me.

“Remember,” he said before he vanished, “if they find you, they will have access to all that is holy. The portals must be kept hidden at all costs.”

I swallowed hard, because an urgent sadness had filtered into his voice. “What costs are all costs?” I asked, almost knowing the answer before he said it.

“If they find you, I will have to terminate your life force, to close the portal.”

A jolt of shock rocketed through me. “Meaning?”

He pressed his forehead against mine, closed his eyes as he spoke. “I will have to kill you.”

He dissipated around me, his essence ribboning over my skin, through my hair until only the frailest elements lingered, falling softly to the Earth. For the first time in my life, I knew what was at stake. I had answers I no longer wanted. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed, though I had no one to blame but myself.

I knew dating the son of Satan would turn out badly.