Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(58)
Author: J.R. Ward

And she’d been about to use it on Devina.

Because, for whatever reason, the demon wanted her to. Devina had set this lie up—for God only knew what reason.

Disgusted with herself, she threw the knife at the coffee table with such force, it knocked off—

“Fucking hell! Fuck you! Fuck you both!”

And just like that, “Jim” disappeared—and “Devina” flew off that chair, the female body exploding up as if released from some kind of hold.

In mid-air, Jim emerged from the lie, everything that looked like the demon replaced by his male body and proper face. He landed like a cat and shot back over to Sissy, throwing his arms around her and holding her so hard she could barely breathe.

She wasn’t the only one who was trembling.

“You did it,” he said hoarsely. “You did it.”

“No, I didn’t—I didn’t—”

“You saved us.”

“What?”

He pulled back and kissed her. “How did you know?”

It took her a moment to hear the words and comprehend what he was asking. “N-n-noo h-h-h—damn it, I c-c-can’t talk.”

“Breathe, just breathe with me.”

“No halo.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry?”

She pointed up to the crown of his head. “N-n-n-no halo. I was about to—” She couldn’t even say the words. “I was going to … but then I noticed that there was no halo. You—you—you have a halo … because you’re an angel. And my necklace … when I looked over at her—you, I mean—I saw that ‘she’ was wearing my dove n-n-n-necklace. That’s when I knew—but why? Why would she want me to—”

“You’re one of the souls.”

“What?”

“Lemme explain at home—we’ve got to get out of here.” He looked around on the floor. “How did you get here?”

“E-E-Explorer. Out front.”

“Okay, okay, good.”

“What are you looking for?”

He bent over and picked up … a Mercedes emblem. “This.”

“From her car?” Sissy said.

“You got it. Come on.”

Jim grabbed her hand and started to hustle her out of the penthouse, but she pulled him to a stop. “You’re naked.”

“And invisible.”

“But won’t you get cold—”

“No time, come on.”

And that was how they ended up in the hotel’s elevator, her in a twenty-eight-dollar outfit from Target, him in the birthday suit the good Lord gave him.

“I’m one of the souls?” she said.

He looked down at her, his blue eyes grave. “Yeah. You are.”

“So … this round is won?”

Jim nodded. “You evened it up for us. You chose wisely—when you stopped. When you didn’t act on the rage as you came to your crossroads.”

He refocused on the numbers above the elevator doors, the ones that were lighting up sequentially as they descended to the lobby.

“So this is good news,” she mumbled.

“Yeah.” He gave her hand a squeeze and dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. “The best.”

Then why was his jaw clenched like he was still upstairs, fighting with Devina?

No, she thought. There was something he wasn’t telling her.

Chapter Thirty

In Adrian’s dream, a spring thunderstorm rolled through Caldwell and settled over the old mansion, flashes of lightning splintering through the attic’s opposing circular windows and flickering over his face, waking him up. As was typical, however, there was something wrong, something missing—which was the way you knew that it wasn’t real.

No thunder. Just the vivid bursts of sugar-white light.

Which were the kind of thing that could be cured by putting your arm over your eyes. No problem—except then shit got a little more critical. With a massive pop!, the transformer tucked under the eaves of the roof was struck, and a shower of golden sparks flowed downward—

Ad jerked up from his makeshift bed.

Wait a minute, he thought, there wasn’t a transformer under the damn roof.

So yeah, he pointed out to himself, that was how he knew this was just a dream.

And yet …

As he tried to figure out whether shit was real or Memorex, lightning continued to flash around the house, highlighting the old steamer trucks and racks of Victorian clothes and—

The back of Ad’s neck went haywire, the hairs prickling so badly he reached up and rubbed them to quiet the irritation down.

The sound of his name being whispered made him freeze.

With a feeling of utter unreality, he slowly turned his head in the direction of the carefully wrapped, sheeted figure that lay next to him like some kind of Boris Karloff movie extra. As another jagged flash ripped through the night sky, the flickering light penetrated the old-fashioned glass and washed over the body … making it seem like …

“Get a fucking hold of yourself.”

Eddie was dead and therefore did not breathe. So there was no up-and-downing of the chest happening—because the guy was dead.

Whatever he thought he had just seen was a function of those brilliant and quickly fading bursts of energy. It was not because—

Another flash licked into the attic through the window and … the chest was going up and down. Slowly, unevenly … but yes, in fact, it was—

“Fuck!” He shoved himself back, slamming into one of the steamer trunks. “What the—”

Instantly he calmed down, because he realized, Oh, right, this was a dream. One of those fucked-up fake scenarios that even the brains of immortals insisted on chucking over the fence of consciousness every once in a while.

“So now what are you going to do?” he muttered at the corpse. “Sit up—oh, yup, there ya go. Fantastic.”

The upper body of Eddie’s remains lifted off the planks, rising haltingly until it was at a right angle with the wrapped, extended legs.

More lightning flashed, as if on cue. “Annnnd now that we’re partially vertical, what’s it gonna be?” Ad would have checked his watch if he’d been wearing one. “Freddy Krueger? Or are we going more for a King Tut vibe? It’s impossible for you to scare me, FYI.”

His own mind had no terrors to offer that could compare to what he’d already lived through. He just wasn’t that inventive. And as for this little ditty? In a minute and a half, he was going to wake up in a cold sweat. Not because he’d been frightened, but because anything that had to do with his dear friend was more painful than all the aches he had assumed on Matthias’s behalf.