Once Dead, Twice Shy (Madison Avery Trilogy #1)(40)
Author: Kim Harrison

Her face twisted in a frown, but she caught the amulet when I tossed it to her, shoving it into her belt. "Kairos gives me my amulet, not you," she said. "And I need your pity less than I need your apology. The seraphs say I am perfectly fine. I am perfect!" she screamed to the sky, then turned to me, panting and eyes wild. "But they lie."

Barnabas pulled me back a step. "We need to leave. She’s broken. This isn’t going to accomplish anything."

"I’m broken, too," I said, thinking of my interrupted life, and I jerked out of his grip. "Nakita, will you take a message to Kairos for me? He has my body. I want it back. I’ll give him his amulet for it if he promises to leave me alone. I just want to be the way I was. Please. I’m tired of being afraid."

At the word afraid, she trembled, and a shimmer of air behind her shifted to show her wings arching over her, larger than seemed possible, the tips of the longest feathers shaking. They may have gotten the black wings out of her, but they left within her something a reaper was never created to understand. Fear. And it had come from me. My memories.

"I’m not your messenger angel," she said bitterly. "But we are going to Kairos. You’re a thief. A liar. With your body and soul and my scythe, he can make me as I was. As everything was. He promised!"

Kairos still has my body. Thank you, God.

"You aren’t taking her," Barnabas said, clueless that Nakita was now a hundred times more dangerous. She had the power of angels cleaved to the will of humanity. Fear and a knowledge of death had made her so. I had made her so.

"She’s mine as she stands there." Dropping into a hunched position, Nakita dragged her new sword forward, the tip cutting into the ground to make the moss split like a wound.

I shook my head, backing up. "Nakita, listen to me. I just want my body back, alive and unharmed. He doesn’t have to destroy my soul for the amulet. I can dissociate from it."

She straightened as a laugh, cruel and horrible to hear, burst from her. Barnabas shifted closer to me in support. "Kairos needs you dead to make me whole again," she said. "Barnabas, get out of my way, or you’ll go down first."

"You wouldn’t." Barnabas pushed me behind him as Nakita pulled her sword from the earth and casually wiped the dirt from it upon her leg. "A seraph will come. You won’t risk it."

"Why not?!" Nakita shouted, then fell back a step, wide-eyed. "I have nothing, Barnabas!" she screamed. "Do you know what it is like to fear? I will laugh if a seraph should slay me for violating one of their places on earth. It would at least be over and I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore!"

Barnabas didn’t understand, and his brow furrowed. "Afraid?"

An ugly noise came from Nakita, low, almost a growl. It sifted through my brain and paralyzed me. And then she moved.

I stifled a shriek as she lunged at Barnabas, white wings unfurling behind her. Barnabas dropped to a knee, his own gray wings wide as he darted back, airborne. I retreated, scrambling for cover. A great wind churned the leaves from the forest floor. A clang of steel hurt my ears. They were locked, arms straining, Barnabas standing, his wings beating to find the force to push Nakita back.

"I will have her!" Nakita screamed as her wings beat wildly, and she tried to press Barnabas into the ground with her will alone. "I will not be this way! I cannot!"

Barnabas kicked out to shove her off. Gray and white wings struck the trees. Silver flashed in the gloom as Barnabas dove forward, his disadvantage clear. He didn’t want to spill blood. Nakita didn’t care, and she struck wildly at Barnabas, the light reaper countering each blow more slowly than the last. The dark reaper was fighting with a savage desperation that only humans possess, and it was starting to tell upon Barnabas.

A heavy feeling about my neck shocked me, and I grasped my amulet, feeling as if the earth had vanished under my feet. Someone…someone was trying to use it! And when Nakita screamed, I knew it was her attempting to duplicate what I’d done to go invisible. She was too far away for my amulet to hold her solid, but Barnabas’s wasn’t.

With a wild scream, Nakita smashed her sword into Barnabas’s blade, knocking it from him. The amulet about his neck flared and went still. He was helpless. Mouth open in a howl, Nakita jumped right at him. Barnabas braced for an impact that never came as Nakita broke her connection to her amulet and went invisible, diving through him as if he were water.

"Barnabas, look out!" I shouted, but it was too late. Nakita appeared behind the light reaper, spinning to put her sword against his neck. Her arms braced to pull.

"Nakita, no!" I shrieked, scrambling to stand before them. The dark reaper hesitated, her lips pulled back in a savage, victorious smile. They were posed, two angels of death locked together, one wild and crazed, the other beaten and shocked.

"W-where did you learn that?" Barnabas stammered, frozen at the feel of another reaper’s blade against his throat.

Nakita’s eyes never left mine as she leaned forward, whispering in Barnabas’s ear, "It’s amazing what you can do once you know nothing lasts forever unless you make it so."

My mouth was dry. "Don’t kill him," I pleaded. "Please, Nakita."

"Silly girl," Nakita said, her lips twisted into an ugly expression. "Why do you care? No one else does. He failed to protect you, brought you to me. And now, you’re going to die."

"I’ll go with you! Just don’t kill him. Take me to Kairos," I demanded, shaking. "Let me talk to him."

"That’s exactly what I intend to do," Nakita said, and then she moved, drawing back.

"Nakita, don’t!" I screamed as she brought the butt of her sword against Barnabas’s skull. Silently the light reaper’s gray wings drooped and he fell forward, slumped against the mossy earth. His wings covered him, and he looked asleep, an angel resting on a forest floor.

My heart was beating again, and I started to back up. Nakita shook her wings and smiled. One soft feather slipped from her, the pure white drifting to land on the green, green moss.

I ran.

There was a whoosh of air, and she had me. That fast, and it was over. "Let me go!" I cried. I knew going invisible wouldn’t help if she could, too. "Why can’t you leave me alone?!"

"I want myself back," Nakita snarled as she held me tight against her. "I don’t want to be afraid anymore. The black wings," she said, her words clipped as her voice rose in pitch. "I’ve never known fear. I’ve seen it, thought you were all weak for it, but you aren’t. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to be the way I was. Kairos can make me the way I was. But he needs his amulet to do it."