Bring Me to Life (19 page)

If her freakish power hadn’t killed Vincent, and her death now caused him to be sent back to save her…No, she couldn’t quite get there yet. “What did you say?”

“I can’t kill it,” Wraith repeated.

Her brow furrowed at the way he was looking her as if she had some power he didn't possess. “But…I can?”

Vincent’s eyes went huge for a moment before he let out a whoop and lifted her up by the waist and spun her around in a quick circle. “That’s it! In every other instance, you killed Draven before the demon, or didn’t know about the demon and Oblivion! That’s what has to stop the apocalypse and why you can’t die, because you’re meant to kill it.”

“Yeah, I don’t do the whole apocalyptical battles well. If you want someone to help, then we need to go talk to Andy. He’s way better at this stuff than I am.”

His head cocked and his jaw started to tic. “Andy? Isn’t he your demon hunter friend?”

Then she was confused. “Yes. You’re dead. Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”

He snorted at her. “You always thought that I did, but I still don’t. If I knew how to keep you alive, we wouldn’t be standing here now talking about it.”

Whoa, that one came back around to knock her upside the back of her head. “Wait. How many times have I died?”

He winced. “One hundred ninety-one times.”

She blinked a few times. So, she had been heading for death, but like with everything in life, it took her longer than average to figure out how to do it. She shook it off, and then her face blanched. “You’ve watched me die that many times?”

He wrapped his arms around her and growled low in his chest. It was a tingly, rumbly feeling that would have been nice, if it wasn’t making the walls rattle. “No. This is only the second time Felix has sent me back to help you.”

“Second? Felix? Back?” She pulled back a little from him. Then she decided it was good she’d learned not to react during a crisis. She only reacted afterward. Once she had time to process this, she was going to be a quivering mess on the floor. “You need to explain things better here. I don’t like being confused.”

He captured her face and kissed her before he looked at her with his too stern expression. “I’ve been dead for two hundred years. I can time walk. Anywhere, anytime I am needed to stop something really fucked-up from happening to the world, I can go there. It’s kind of my job.”

That would explain why the boy she’d known didn’t present in the man in front of her. Still, this was messing with her. “But you’re dead. You look like you’re in your mid-thirties. You can still age while dead?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I really haven’t paid attention to that kind of thing, but I’m guessing it has more to do with experience points than anything else.”

Her brow winged up. “This isn’t a video game.”

He grinned at her, and all of that bad-boyish charm she’d fallen in love with flashed across his face. The scar ran deep, but it still suited him. “Sure it is.” His face took on a greenish hue. “But I do not want you experiencing the game over again.”

“Yeah. I’ve been working hard toward that end. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to pull out of it.” The truth hurt. She didn’t want to be dead. She wanted to be with Vincent, and now he was here. He seemed to have so much life in him, but she’d buried a body.

She’d seen too much of the world not to believe most of what he said, and the other parts she had to believe because he was Vincent. It didn’t take away the soul-deep need she had to be with him in some meaningful way for the rest of forever, but what if he failed to keep her alive? She didn’t know how death worked. Could he get into trouble and be sent to Hell if she died too many more times?

Her stomach twisted. She needed to figure this out.

His hand stroked down her hair as he used the tips of two fingers on his other hand to tilt her chin up. “Death comes for everyone, Bryna, sooner or later your time will come, but it can’t be right now.”

She searched his face. “I want to be with you.”

“I know,” he murmured softly. “But you need to live. I can survive forever without you if I know there is still a you, but I can’t if there isn’t anything left of you, sunshine.”

This wasn’t fair. She couldn’t survive without him. Hadn’t she already proved how much she messed everything up without him? The thought of Vincent never existing again was enough to promptly send her into the pending meltdown.

He decided he was the bastard he felt like. He held her while she cried. No matter how much her tears shredded him. He was going to hold her for as long as she needed him to. No matter what he did or how he tried to spin it in his head, every tear she cried was his fault since the day they’d met.

He wasn’t stupid enough not to learn his lesson the first time around. Trying to prevent himself from ever meeting her had turned out catastrophic. There was something huge in this he was missing. Which brought him back to Caleb and his mysterious need for Bryna to bake him cookies. There was no way she’d learn to bake in this time line, but it was possible she learned to do it in another, possibly one where Vincent lived. But saving himself still went against Felix’s number one rule. He tried to shake off the hope. Just as soon as she was done falling apart yet one more time because of him, he’d summon Caleb, and go have a talk with this Andy guy.

He really didn’t like the surge of jealousy that she’d found a guy friend she depended on when a supernatural crisis hit. This was his specialty, and she should have been able to call on him.

“You’re shaking the room,” she murmured between hiccups. She sniffled a few times and then looked up at him. “So this is it? We really weren’t supposed to be together?”

If she could have asked any other question, he might not have felt like his chest was about to cave in. Love did a lot of things. It had saved the world hundreds of times. It was the closest thing two people living could get to Heaven. When it was real, it was destined. Their love had been real. It was still real. He swallowed hard and stooped down so they were closer to eye level. “That’s the worst part, babe. We were—are—in love. That doesn’t get any more destined than that, but death is what it is.”

Her face crumpled as she looked down and picked at her pinky finger. “Then don’t be dead.”

He ground his teeth together. “If I thought it might actually get you what you want, I would, but I can’t go back and save myself. It kind of defeats the point of death.”

She let out a huge sigh. “Fine.” She turned away from him. “I need to go get a shower and then get dressed. If something big is coming at me I should warn Andy. He gets pissy when evil things get past him.”

There she was talking about this Andy guy again. He wasn’t going to think about it. He’d assess the bastard, and if he could pass the inspection, maybe he’d think about doing something with it later. Much later. Like after he’d saved her life and she was ready to move on. Yeah. That would work. Just as soon as he could convince himself to let some other man love her.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he snapped. “Get dressed. Don’t we have an ex-boyfriend to scare the living hell out of?”

Her brow arched up in that way it did when he was being an ass, but he didn’t care. She was going to get to move on and find someone else to go into forever with. It pissed him off. He arched a brow right back at her. “Shower. I only have so much time I can devote to these things.”

*

Bryna huffed off. She still wasn’t sure how well she was processing any of this. She’d had sex with a perfect stranger, only he was her dead soul mate, and he wasn’t going to be staying, because he was dead. She got into the bathroom and stripped down to nothing, kicked his shirt into the hall, and slammed the door before she turned on the water.

Maybe there was a chance she hadn’t killed him. Okay. So there was a large probability. This was good. This was very good. Tears stung her eyes as she stepped under the spray of lukewarm water. This was very bad. If she hadn’t killed him, then she’d turned herself into a cheap piece of garbage for nothing.

She decided instead of being angry with herself, she was going to be angry with Vincent. That would fit. He should have told her before she aged ten years that it wasn’t her fault! Maybe it wasn’t his fault. There was this Felix guy he talked about that she still had no clue about. She hated being confused, and that she was going to blame on Vincent. What the hell had he been thinking? Letting them have sex like that?

Her brain was about to threaten a meltdown, so she shoved it all out of her head and decided to focus on what needed to be done.

Her talk with Shawn was important. No matter what Vincent said, she couldn’t let everyone go around thinking of him as a vampire. It was more wrong now because apparently they were the ones who’d killed him.

See? She was doing it again. Things were spinning in her head when she needed to be figuring things out. She shut off the water and squeegeed as much water off as possible and then squeezed it out of her hair. She grabbed the towel on the bar and glared at the door.

He was prowling out there. She didn’t have to see him to know what he was doing.

After wrapping the towel around herself she squared her shoulders and pulled the door open.

The man took her breath away as he paced the length of the hall. He’d abandoned the damn cloak. He had on what looked like fatigues with some kind of form-fitting shirt that just made him yummier than he’d been when they were kids.

She glared at him in reaction to her budding arousal. “You should put your cloak back on.”

He snapped around and stared at her for a full ten seconds before his head dropped back and he let out a roar of laugher. “Right, sunshine, that’s just going to make the mad need go away.”

His eyes moved over her like a hungry wolf. She pulled her towel tighter around her even as her body shivered under the heated stare. “Probably not, but at least then I don’t have to look at your gorgeous physique.” She snorted at herself for letting the comment slip out. “I need to get dressed. I have a lot to do today. I’ve got to stop at Shawn’s, and then we need to see Andy, and after that I have to—” She stopped talking and brushed past him. She was not going to tell him she spent his birthdays at his grave. “Next time have the decency not to show up on your birthday. It screws with my plans.”

*

Vincent cocked his head as he watched her walk away from him. But damn had he messed up by dying. If only he could get past the whole pissing off Felix part, he might consider going back to save his own life. It would be beneficial for Bryna, after all. He shook his head and followed her into the bedroom. His hands fisted at his side, and he forced himself to lean casually against the door as he watched her get dressed. “What plans am I ruining?”

She scrunched up the material of a tiny tee that would highlight every upper curve she had. He wasn’t about to look away while she stretched the shirt collar to pull it over her head.

Her eyes rolled. “You tell me, since you’ve already done this before.”

His brow shot up. Oh damn. Yeah, there was that whole visiting his grave thing. “I’m right here for you to say whatever you think you need to say.”

“Don’t.” She yanked her shirt down over her body and rounded on him. “You’ve been gone for ten years! How the hell am I supposed to tell you everything when you’re going to leave again?” Her face went stricken. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before she met his gaze again. “I love you. I’ll always love you. I don’t know how to do any of this without you.”

Her face crumpled, and Vincent had his arms around her a heartbeat later. He used the pad of his thumb to brush away the tear. “One thing at a time, sunshine. We’ll get you through this.”

Only, he was beginning to understand neither of them would ever be okay without the other.

* * * *

Bryna hadn’t expected to find Shawn at home. Nope, he’d be at the coffee shop where he ate breakfast and wrote his rough drafts. The sequel of that travesty of a book he already had out was due within the next year. She wasn’t sure she could do much about it, but she had to do something to let the idiot know how much he disgusted her. She drew in a deep breath and looked up at Vincent. “I think I’m just going to tell him off, and then we can go give Andy the heads-up.”

Vincent gave her that arched-brow look. His sienna eyes moved over her before he snorted. “What the hell fun is it to come back from the dead if I can’t use it to scare a little common sense into your ex-boyfriend?”

She winced and then moved toward the door. “Because there is a very real possibility if I tell him you are Vincent, he’ll have me locked up in a mental hospital.”

He sighed dramatically. “Let’s just go talk to him.”

Bryna was sure Vincent meeting Shawn was going have catastrophic consequences, but she’d started this. Hell, when Vincent had been alive he’d never been able to let something go if it upset her. She squared her shoulders as they got inside the café. “Just don’t try to hit him or anything, okay? If a demon really is after me, I kind of need you here with me.”

He winked at her. “No worries, sunshine. I exist solely to keep you safe.”

Her eyes rolled, and then she spotted Shawn in his favorite booth. A pretty brunette who kept obnoxiously giggling sat across from him.

“Him?” Vincent said over her shoulder. His tone was incredulous. “That’s the guy you thought was going to make everything all better?”

See? She knew this was going to be bad. Sure, Shawn didn’t have that dark, brooding, demon slayer thing going for him, but not many men alive could pull that off well. There was Andy, but she’d never thought of Andy in those terms. Besides, Shawn was a book geek and had the physique to match. Sandy, unkempt hair, black-rimmed glasses, a slight build, and below average height. In short, he was Vincent’s exact opposite.

She ignored the bimbo sitting across from Shawn when she got to the booth and dropped the book she’d purchased the night before on the table in front of him. “I want my money back for this garbage.”

The woman jumped. Shawn startled. He let out a decidedly feminine squeak, and then gave her his annoyed look. “I figured you’d show up sooner or later. Look, this story has nothing to do with you and your dead boyfriend.”