Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (24 page)

It was one thing to go my entire life not knowing anything about why I had the gifts
I had. It was another altogether to get so many answers—answers I’d been begging for
my whole life—all in one huge gulp. And for Reyes to talk about it so casually, so
nonchalantly, like it didn’t mean the world to me to know about my heritage. I tried
to remain calm. I could handle this with grace and dignity. Not as I wanted to, like
those women on
The Price Is Right.

Then his meaning sank in. “Wait, are you saying I was chosen because of you?”

His lids were closed behind his arm. “If I had to guess, I’d say they felt I was here
to start the war. My father created me to help him bring about the end of humanity.
So they sent you.” He turned to me, the green and gold flecks in his eyes sparkling
brightly against their rich brown background. “We are enemies, Dutch. A princess and
a pawn, each from opposing sides.” One corner of his sensual mouth lifted. “They would
be quite disappointed knowing how we’ve gotten along.”

I leaned up and looked down at him. “So, what? I’m supposed to kill you or something?”

He ran a fingertip over my mouth. “Yes. It is why you were sent.”

“Well, that sucks.” So, there’s a guy hotter than a Rolex from Sal’s Pawnshop living
on Earth, and they send
me
to kill him?
Me?
Clearly I came from a race of crazy people.

“You could do it,” he said, his mouth thinning in regret. “You could kill me. Destroy
the opposing portal and cut off my father’s doorway to this plane. The last reaper
tried.” He averted his gaze. “He failed, so they sent you.”

“Reyes, that’s ridiculous. I couldn’t just kill you. You’re way stronger than I am,
and … and you know how to fight and crap.”

Offering me an unconvinced grin, he said, “When the time comes, and it will come,
do it quick. Don’t hesitate, Dutch. Not even for a split second.”

I had no idea how much of his story to believe. He was from a race of liars. How reliable
could his intel be?

I frowned in suspicion. “Don’t think that you can win me over by being all noble and
charming and insisting I’m powerful enough to kill you. You pushed me,” I said, reminding
him of the fight the other night. “And you dragged me and shoved me, so don’t think
that just because you’re all sweet now and self-sacrificing, I’ll forget that shit.”
I plopped back onto my pillow and crossed my arms. “That’s just not shit you forget.”

His eyes shimmered with mischief in the low light. “I never claimed to be a Boy Scout.”

I could feel the heat of his gaze, and all I could think was,
My god, he’s beautiful.
I took the chance to assess just how badly he was injured. Raising my hands to his
waist, I felt the ridges of duct tape along his rib cage and pressed gently. He sucked
air in through his teeth and grabbed hold of my wrist. But blood gushed from under
the tape and soaked the tips of my fingers through his shirt.

“Reyes, what the hell? What happened?”

He captured my gaze with a determined expression. “If anything happens to me, you
need to know they hunt in twos. If you see one, if one comes after you, Dutch, I promise
you, there is another one nearby. If you see three, there will be one more waiting
in the wings. Never, ever trust them.”

“Can’t I just do what I did last time when I flashed my nuclear light on them?”

“No.” He pulled me toward him until my forehead was on his. “While they’re inside
a human, they’re protected from light. Even from yours.”

I hated feeling so vulnerable, so paper thin. “I can’t fight them, Reyes. They’re
too strong.”

“You could if you knew how, but you aren’t there yet, so don’t even try. Just call
your guardian and run.”

I lay beside him and kept my hand on his ribs. “I’m pretty good at running. I mean,
I’m not fast or anything, and I wind easily … never mind.”

He could’ve been the poster boy for seriousness when he said, “There’s something really
motivating about having a bunch of demons on your ass.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“Just run and don’t stop. Promise me.”

“I promise I’ll try to run without stopping, but I really do wind easily.”

I’d managed to wrench a soft laugh out of him. He leaned in to nibble on my ear. Sharp
ripples of desire shot through me at lightning-quick speed and pooled low in my abdomen.
I couldn’t believe it. I finally had Reyes Farrow in the flesh, alone in a hotel room,
and he was bleeding profusely. I was the one who would’ve taken advantage of him given
the chance, but now was hardly the time. And it killed me to admit that.

As his mouth moved down my neck, I wrapped my arm around his head and whispered, “Tell
me a story about my ancestors. About another grim reaper.”

He was quiet for so long, I thought he wouldn’t oblige. Then he lay back in thought.
“There was a boy named Cynric whose father took him to his village elders. The man
claimed the boy was possessed. That he saw spirits and knew things no one could know.
After an inquisition that lasted for days, the boy still wouldn’t talk. He was stoned
to death.”

I cringed. “So this isn’t a happy story?”

“Not many of them are. Afterwards, the village suffered a rash of sicknesses and deaths.
They thought the boy had cursed them before he died.”

“Did he?”

“No, another did. He’d only been repeating what his little sister had told him. She
was the reaper, not the boy. But she had suffered an illness as a baby and couldn’t
talk. Only he could understand her.” He pointed to his head. “They spoke with their
minds and their hearts. In her grief, she became crazed and unleashed her powers without
realizing what she was doing. A reaper does not always know what he or she is capable
of until great emotional trauma.”

“Did the girl live very long?”

He nodded. “Compared to most reapers, yes. Into her seventies, if I remember right.
But she had to live with what she’d done. She became a recluse, and eventually insanity
took hold.”

“That’s awful. If she was a celestial being, how could she kill so many? How could
she get away with that?”

“Reapers are given agency at birth. They are the seekers of souls, but they may—”
He thought a moment. “—they may, on occasion, hunt them down, for lack of a better
phrase. It is their right.”

“Well, that’s a right I’m certainly never taking advantage of.”

To lead us no longer into temptation, I tossed my pillow at his ankles, plopped my
head at his booted feet, and lay perpendicular to him across the bed. He had given
me so much information, I wanted some time to absorb it all, but I didn’t want to
leave him. Not like this. Not ever, as long as I lived. Or until I had to get back
on the case. Whichever came first.

I had another family. An otherworldly family. How cool was that? And I could kill
people with my mind. Okay, that part I wasn’t actually buying, but I had an otherworldly
family. I wondered what their names were. Maybe I had an aunt Myrtle. Or an uncle
named Boaz. I’d tried to convince Uncle Bob to change his name to Boaz once, but he
refused. Not sure why.

As I lay there, contemplating all the advantages of having an otherworldly family,
I felt my lids grow heavy. Reyes’s heat was making me sleepy. Having him close by
was comforting, and I’d almost fallen asleep when he said, “You could move farther
up. You’d be more comfortable if you were farther up.”

I chuckled. “No,
you’d
be more comfortable if I were farther up. Perv.”

And before I knew it, I was dreaming of Reyes and beaches and Cookie-a-ritas with
little umbrellas brushing across my palm. That’s when I felt Reyes’s fingers brush
across my palm. I wondered if he’d done it on purpose. When he rolled on top of me
with a growl, pinning me down with his immense weight, I was pretty sure he had. But
before I could protest, his mouth was at my ear.

“Shhh,” he said, his breath warm. At first I thought he was just frisky, but he seemed
rigid, tense, ready to strike. Or beat the crap out of me. What the hell?

I started to struggle, but then felt his fingers at my palm again. Only this time
the heat of his touch was instantly replaced by the cool metal of a gun. I stiffened
as he unholstered Margaret and tucked her into my hand.

“What—?”

I didn’t get far before his mouth was on mine. But while his mouth performed a magic
spell, his tongue pushing past my lips, rendering me useless, his hands were doing
something else. Then I felt the long cool metal of a knife as he pulled it out of
the back of his waistband. He returned his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Call the
dog.”

My pulse skyrocketed. “Why?” I asked, my voice nothing but a breathless whisper.

He lifted just enough to look into my eyes, his own full of an unspoken apology. “Because
this isn’t my room.”

He kissed me again, his mouth hot on mine, and yet every muscle in his body was stretched
taut with eagerness. His heart raced on top of mine, his pulse roaring in my ears.
I put my hand over the side of the bed and snapped my fingers.

Artemis lifted into my palm, materializing out of the ground, and nuzzled my hand
for a split second before pricking her ears. A low growl rumbled from her chest as
the door eased open. She lowered onto her haunches and waited.

The door pivoted slowly, then stopped at a forty-five-degree angle. Not enough for
me to make out the intruders. All I could see past Reyes’s shoulder was a hand on
the doorknob. The intruder started forward a heartbeat before Artemis attacked. With
a bark that vibrated against the walls, she bound forward through the half-open door
and onto a possessed woman, if the feminine scream was any indication.

Reyes’s weight vanished, and in the next heartbeat, another assailant crashed into
the room after having been thrown there. The door banged against the wall, and I could
see the woman struggling with Artemis on the sidewalk, fighting something she clearly
couldn’t see in its entirety. Even I had a problem staying focused on Artemis’s huge
body as she ripped the offending soul out of her.

But before I could see exactly what happened to the demon, the one Reyes was fighting
spotted me. He let out a shriek of rage and fought Reyes’s hold to get to me. It was
the strangest sensation, to be wanted so desperately by a man who took no heed of
the fact that his spine was bent so far out of position, it started to crack under
the pressure. I could hear the sharp snaps of bones breaking, of tendons ripping and
vertebrae dislodging, yet the man couldn’t take his eyes off me. He wanted me so passionately,
his free arm stretched out, his eyes begging me to come closer.

And they were blue. The man’s eyes. I could just make out the demon behind them, the
smoky black essence wafting off him, but the host the creature had possessed had blue
eyes. So clear, they looked like a swimming pool sparkling on a hot summer day. And
they watered as the pressure Reyes was placing on his throat cut off his air supply.
But still he didn’t care. He clawed his way toward me with one arm, the other having
been broken. It lay limp on the ground beside him, useless.

As he lunged for me in one last valiant effort, his reach appeared to lengthen. Black,
razor-sharp claws appeared out of the man’s hand. The darkness of night did nothing
to deter the demon from unmasking himself, from reaching out. I could see only his
hand, but I knew at least that part of him was unprotected.

I leaned over the side of the bed, ignoring Reyes as he yelled at me to get back,
the claw so close, centimeters away. One more ounce of effort, and he’d shred my face.
I held out my hand, palm up, leaned in, and blew. As though blowing magic fairy dust,
particles of light from inside me floated toward the demon, landed on his claw, and
in one great burst of energy, he screamed and stumbled out of his human host.

Writhing in agony, the demon thrashed along the ground, his high-pitched cries like
a thousand jet engines taking off.

Artemis pounced in the next instant, sank her teeth, locked her jaw, and ripped the
life out of the beast. Killing it was almost an act of compassion at that point, it
was in so much pain. I watched as its thick gaseous blood spilled onto the floor,
then evaporated.

Before I realized he was angry, Reyes jerked me to my feet and looked me over from
head to toe. Then he focused on my face, his own picture of astonishment. “What the
fuck was that?” he asked, anger sharpening his voice.

But adrenaline rushed down my spine and through my body. I looked past him toward
Artemis. She was busy sniffing the room with the enthusiasm of a hunting dog on the
trail of a fox, certain she’d found the scent of another demon. She jumped through
the wall into the next room before I could call her back.

Afraid I was going to be sick again, as that seemed to be my MO lately, I stumbled
past him toward the miniscule bathroom near the door. He picked me up when I tripped,
but I fought his hold and hurtled myself toward the toilet. The fact that I was spelunking
in a porcelain bowl used for years by men with bad aim didn’t deter me from my mission.
I gulped stale air and swallowed back bile as my stomach heaved unsteadily.

Reyes knelt beside me, and I felt a cool cloth at the back of my neck.

“That’s what’s driving them crazy.” He leaned forward and buried his face against
my neck. “The scent of fear—your fear—is like the scent of heroin to a bona fide addict.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” I said.

“I know. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

I looked up and realized for the first time that the demon had struck him. He had
three bloody gashes across his face, the uppermost a mere centimeter from his lower
lashes. I took the washcloth from him and dabbed at the cuts.

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No. He won’t be running marathons anytime soon, but we need to get out of here.”

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