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Chapter 31

Cash

The world fell out from under me.

The fall felt endless. Monumental. It felt like whatever was waiting for me on the other side was going to determine the rest of my eternity. I wasn’t ready to face it. My feet hit the ground with enough force to buckle my knees, and ash billowed up around me in a cloud of gray. The soul wriggled, trying to break my grip on his arm, but I held tight. I didn’t want to be the one holding him.

Bringing him to this place. But I didn’t know what else to do. I tried to stand, and pain exploded through my kneecap when I put weight on my leg.

“Damn it,” I gripped the soul by the back of the T-shirt and stumbled onto my other leg. He laughed, nervously. I started to think he’d finally snapped, but then I saw him looking at my T-shirt.

“The shirt’s a little bit of an understatement, don’t ya think?” I glanced down. It was the shirt Em had gotten me. It said I see dead people.

I shook my head and turned my attention to the shadow-infested cliffs. “You have no idea.”

Noah approached me, his fingers wrapped around a fistful of the girl soul’s long brown hair, and shook his head. She didn’t even yelp. She just looked lifeless. “Don’t worry. Once you get rid of that body, it’ll get better. Right now, it’s slowing you down, but you’ll be amazed at how powerful you’ll feel when it’s gone. It feels like you’re shedding a suit of armor.”

Better? Noah was full of shit. There was no “better” in this place. He’d just drunk too much of the devil’s Kool-Aid. Convinced himself that this wasn’t wrong. I looked into the kids’ eyes, wide with terror, and I felt sick. This wasn’t okay. Dead or alive, this wasn’t any kind of existence. Not one I wanted to live, anyway.

“Come on.” Noah pulled the girl behind him. She followed, limp and resigned to her fate. There wasn’t any fight left in her. Mine was another story. He ground his heels into the ash when I pulled him forward and whimpered.

“Please don’t,” he whispered. “I can tell you don’t want to. You’re not like him. You could let us go if you wanted. You could.”

I could…but where would he go? I slowed my pace behind Noah and glanced up at the black swirling hole in the sky that had deposited us here. My heart pounded against my ribs. As far as I knew, that was the only way out. And I had no idea how to get up there. Ash landed on my face, soft as snowflakes and hot as hell.

“Please!” he cried. “We didn’t do anything wrong! We just weren’t ready to go yet. But we’ll go now, wherever you want. Just not here, please…”

I jerked on his shirt and shut my eyes. “Will you shut up? Please? I’m trying to think.”

Even if I could get them away from Noah, how was I supposed to get them back? They may be dead, but they’d never last down here. An afterlife of wandering the Earth as a ghost was one thing, but this was something entirely different. Who would even want to last down here? We were close enough to the cliffs now to hear the hisses and screams. The waves crashing against the rocky cliffs in a deadly rhythm.

“So, how do we get back up there?” I asked, picking up my pace. “You know, Earth? Life? Whatever the hell it is.”

Noah shot me a suspicious glare over his shoulder and a gust of wind plastered his ash-blond hair against his forehead. “Why do you want to know?”

I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I’m supposed to be learning the ropes, right?”

He stopped and I almost stumbled into his back. He stood a few feet from the cliff edge, staring out over the sea. Rocks crumbled and spilled over the edge from the pressure of his boots. I imagined him as a painting in that moment. Wishing he was, so I could control the outcome with my fingers and brush. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” I asked. “Learn? I thought that’s why we were here.”

He shook his head and spun around. “Don’t try to play me. You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know what you’re thinking?”

I took a step back, putting pressure on my leg, and winced. “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

Noah’s steel-blue eyes narrowed on me, and his fingers released the girl, who fell into a crumpled weeping pile of soul to the ground. “Yes, I do. I’ve stood where you’re standing. I’ve faced the uncertainty. And let me tell you something. Down here…” He spread his arms wide to motion to the wasteland of death around us, and his gray coat rippled out in the wind. “There is no room for a conscience. There is no place for the things you are feeling. So turn them off.”

I balked. “Turn them off? Do you hear what you’re saying? They’re kids.”

“That doesn’t mean anything here. They are souls. It’s my life or theirs. I choose me.”

“Your life?” I laughed bitterly. “Noah…you’re dead! This isn’t a life. It’s not even an afterlife. It’s a fucking nightmare!”

A life was the feel of a charcoal pencil between my fingers. A paintbrush in my hand. Kissing.

Laughing. Cheap beer and good music every summer at the lake. Eighties action movies with Em on a

Friday night. A life was what I wanted with Anaya. Not this.

“Stop making me out to be some sort of super-villain!” He seethed. “I’m helping them. If it weren’t for me they’d spend eternity as one of these things. I’m giving them an out.”

Behind Noah, shadows were clambering up the cliff’s edge, as if drawn in by the scent of the souls we’d carried in. The girl curled into a ball and chanted something that sounded like a prayer under her voice. In that moment, I thought of Anaya. Of the girl in the dirty basement. I’d been horrified at the time, but she’d saved her. Given her peace. This girl…she deserved peace, too. And not the sick, twisted kind Noah offered. If I didn’t do everything in my power to give it to her, if I gave in to this darkness consuming me, what did that make me?

I didn’t know anything about my past lives. About Tarik or any of the other people I might have been over the last thousand years. But I didn’t think any of them would have been the kind of guy who would’ve given in. Anaya wouldn’t have loved me if that had been the case. All I knew was who I was in this life. In this moment.

Since the fire, everything had been leading up to this. My fate. Only I got what most people didn’t-a choice. I didn’t want to be like Noah. I’d done too many screwed-up things in my life already. I refused to end it like this.

There was only one way to be that guy and protect Anaya.

I had to die.

“Take them back up,” I said.

Noah jerked the girl by her arm and she yelped. “I take them back and they are going to want a replacement. And I’m not putting myself on the menu.”

“I am.” I stepped forward and my head spun. My vision started to go black around the edges.

Everything in me hurt and I was suddenly so painfully aware of it that I couldn’t freaking breathe. “I want this to be over, Noah.”

“You’re crazy.” Noah stepped away from me like I was a virus that might infect him. With truth.

Guilt. Things he’d obviously made himself numb to long ago.

“I’m not crazy.” I released the kid I was holding and he took off so fast he was nothing but a blue blur in my peripheral vision. Noah cursed under his breath and held himself back from going after him. “I’m just…tired. I’m so fucking tired it hurts. You’re going to have to find a new replacement because I am not going to be like you. I can’t. I’d rather be dead.”

Noah’s eye widened and he slowly wrapped his arm around the girl’s neck to drag her back toward the cliff edge. I was going to have to stop him. I followed after Noah, gritting my teeth as I put weight on my leg and fought through the pain. I may not have a badass scythe like Anaya, but I had something else. I flexed my fingers, feeling the power pop like fireworks under my skin. It was all I had. That, a bum leg, and a body that was past ready to quit. I couldn’t let it quit. Not yet.

I didn’t even think about what I was doing. What I was risking. I plowed into Noah and the air whooshed out of my lungs on impact. The air around us sizzled and my skin burned where we touched.

He dropped the soul he’d been holding and she screamed, scrambling away from us. Noah grunted, pulling me down with him, and rolled me onto my stomach.

“Stupid human!” he growled. “You have no idea what you’re playing with. How long do you even think they’ll last out there?” Noah grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face over the edge of the cliff. Shadows howled and sprang out of the crashing waves in flames. They slithered up the side of the cliff, and my heart felt like it was in my throat.

This was it.

I couldn’t breathe. I pushed back, but Noah’s grip on the back of my neck forced me back down.

And let’s face it—by this point, I had the strength of a baby bunny. There wasn’t any fighting him.

Even the hum of electricity under my skin was staring to fizzle.

“You’re a real asshole,” I growled, spitting ash out of my mouth. “You know that, right?”

“Look at it, Cash,” he said. “It’s your fate. It’s your end. There won’t even be a soul left when they’re done with you. Just skin, bones, blood, and the pathetic memory of a kid who’s too stupid for his own good.”

Sharp rocks from the cliff edge dug into my hands. If I could have painted this moment, it would have been a bitter black. A painful red. I gritted my teeth and focused on staying in place. I focused on

Anaya’s light. A bright gold hope. Weak or not, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“If that’s my fate,” I said, “it’s yours, too.”

With one last burst of energy, I reached back, grabbed on to Noah’s arms, and pulled. The second my palms left the rocks, our weight sent us tumbling over the edge. My stomach dropped as the ground underneath me disappeared. I reached out on instinct, my fingers finding a sharp shard of stone jutting out over the edge. Something jerked on my ankle and Noah grunted below me.

The stone sliced open my palm and blood trickled down my forearm. A few droplets fell into the horde of shadow demons below us, sending them into a frenzy.

“You idiot!” Noah shouted. “Do you have a death wish?”

I wrapped my other hand around the stone and winced. “I’m going to die anyway, remember?”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.” Noah squirmed, obviously searching for something more reliable than me to grab hold of. But there wasn’t anything there. The cliff side was too sheer and slick. “We could be a team. You could still be with your reaper.”

I looked down at Noah, swinging beneath me. He was wrong. I could never be like him and still be with Anaya. That’s not who she loved. And she deserved better. A shadow leaped up from the darkness, nipping at Noah’s ankle, and a flame swirled up his leg, wringing a scream from his chest.

“Cash!” His fingers were slipping loose. My fingers were slipping, too. “Do something. Pull us up!”

“I can’t.” I couldn’t. I could barely hold on. There wasn’t anything left in me. And those freaking shadows were closing in. Piling up on top of one another to reach us. “I can’t…”

I shut my eyes and took a deep, painful breath, wanting Anaya’s voice to be the last memory in my mind.

Just breathe.

I thought about her heat. I remembered her smile on my lips melting into a scorching, earth-shattering kiss. I inhaled and imagined the scent of thunderstorms and dreams. I wouldn’t let these things go. They were going with me. I let one finger slip free. Another. My left hand dropped to my side.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Noah cried.

“Letting go.” My right hand opened and…

I felt weightless for an instant, falling…

Then hot fingers wrapped around my wrist, jerking me to a halt. I opened my eyes and blinked up at a guy with black hair falling into his violet eyes.

He grinned. “Need a lift?”