Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(59)
Author: J.R. Ward

Slowly, the covered head turned to him, the neck straining against the wrapping.

“Really,” Ad muttered. “If this is the best you can do, you need to go back to the Nightmare Academy or wherever it is you got your chops. Frankly, you’re a total disappointment.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the steamer trunk and looked around, waiting for it all to go away.

One of the mummified hands reached up and began scratching at the wraps around the face, clawing at them as if the layers were preventing the thing from breathing. Ad had to look down at his feet as the first patch of skin began to show at the chin. It was just too fucking painful.

Okay, maybe he hadn’t given this bad dream enough credit.

A deep, ragged inhale rattled through the attic, and all he could do was shake his head. This was just too fucking cruel.

Abruptly, the lightning stopped, the storm, or whatever it was, done.

From out of the darkness, he heard, “Ad…”

The voice was rough, but as with a person’s fingerprints, it was both instantly recognizable and a one-and-only.

Eddie’s.

“Ad, where … are … you…”

Ad covered his face with his hands. He was so wrong about his subconscious not going for the jugular: The idea that any kind of Eddie, even a hypothetical one made up by his own brain, could be searching for him made him feel his inadequacies and his why-hadn’t-hes all the way to the marrow. He had done so many reckless, stupid things while Eddie had been alive—and capped them off by not being on the ball enough when that harpy came after his buddy.

He should have done something that night. Heard something. Seen something out of the corner of his eye.

So that he could have saved—

“Where are the lights?”

Ad frowned. Then dropped his hands. Leave it to him to ruin an emotional moment even in his sleep—although he couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful. He’d been on the verge of fourteen-year-old-girling it over here.

“Ad, I can’t … see … lights off or…?”

Right. Now he was back to being bored with the whole goddamned thing. “There’s a long string right next to you,” he muttered to the mummy.

Unbelievable—

Click!

The mummy thing was still upright, but had managed to get half the wrapping off its face, the perfectly preserved skin possessing that ruddy color that Eddie had always sported. And as the nightmare spoke, that chin moved up and down, the lips moving fluidly.

“Ad, where are you? I … can’t see…”

“That’s because your eyes are covered, dumb-ass.”

Time to wakey-wakey, he told himself. Come on, do myself a solid and wake the fuck up, wouldja.

The mummy thing raised its wrapped hand and then, on a oner, peeled off the entire top of the masking. Ad’s heart skipped a beat—because the face was so familiar, everything from those red eyes to that dark hair pulled back into that braid exactly right.

“Eddie’s” expression turned from confusion to shock. “Dear God … what happened to you?”

Ad frowned. Great—clearly, this nightmare thing was taking another turn for the weird. Because come on, like his brain didn’t know what he’d done to himself?

Before he could tell the dream to cut the shit, or maybe roll over and hit himself on the head so he’d wake up, the Eddie thing reached out to him with its mittened hands.

“Adrian, what did you do while I was gone?”

Ad blinked once. Twice. And then an ill feeling washed over him. “This is a dream.”

“No, it’s not. Nigel went to the Creator and begged for my life. Something about Jim calling in a favor for getting the archangel out of Purgatory? What’s been happening—and, oh, God, you’re hurt. Your eye—”

Adrian opened his mouth and screamed his guts out.

As Jim drove back to the house from downtown, he had to crank the heater on account of all the nakey he had going on. Next to him, Sissy was silent and staring out the windshield like maybe she was in replay mode. He was likewise distracted—although he was doing a brain cramp on what was still ahead of them, as opposed to what had just happened.

Oh, God, he didn’t know how he was going to get through it. And he wasn’t talking about the next and final round.

Hell, he couldn’t even feel the hah-gotcha that should have come with making Devina lose this one. Didn’t dwell on the thank-fucking-God that he’d not lost everything to the demon. Wasn’t able to even consider strategy for the final/final he was about to go into.

All he could focus on was Sissy and getting her clean: There was no winning this war if she couldn’t go to Heaven.

Turning into the old mansion’s driveway, he went all the way to the back and parked in front of the detached garage. And when he got out, he did the whole cup-his-manhood thing as he went around and opened Sissy’s door for her.

“Sorry about this,” he muttered as they walked toward the house together.

“About what?”

He opened the way into the kitchen and held the door for her, standing there like a piker with his bare ass propping the cold wood wide and his hands over his cock and balls.

Someday, he vowed. Someday he was going to give her a piece of normal.

“Everything at this point,” he replied. “I’m sorry for fucking everything.”

The light fixture over the four-top had been left on and that gave her an awful lot of him to see, unfortunately. Not that she was checking him out or anything—he just felt like it would have been so much better for him to have pants on. A loincloth. A frickin’ napkin over his privates.

Head to bed. That was the only thing he was thinking of—

Sissy stopped in the doorway that led into the hall, blocking the way. “What else,” she demanded.

“I’m sorry?”

“There’s something else here.” She motioned back and forth in the air between them. “And whatever it is, you need to be honest with me. ’Cause what’s doing me in is the fact that I can feel there’s something wrong, and in the absence of knowing what it is, my head is coughing up all kinds of bad things.”

Jim cursed and let his head fall back. Ironically, that pointed his eyes toward an old light fixture that had been built in the shape of a three-dimensional star.

“You’re scaring me,” she said roughly.

“Do you mind if I put some clothes on?”

“Yes, because no offense, I’m enjoying the view even with all this crap going on.”