Lost Angeles (54 page)

“Do you know what this is?” he asks.

“Yeah, your trick coin.”

“It’s not a trick, Lore.” Jax shakes his head. “It’s also not a guitar pick, which is what Xaine’s been using it as for the last couple of days, the heathen.”

Poor Jax looks more beleaguered than anything, like someone stole his fork and called it a dinglehopper.

“Did it work?”

He shakes his head. “Assholes, the both of you.”

“Alright, so… not a guitar pick,” I say. “Then what?”

He goes all serious on me, all traces of humor gone. “It’s a scale. You hold it, see, like this.” He turns it over in his palm to illustrate. “And when a picture turns up, then we know.”

“Know what?”

“Know how much a soul weighs.”

Skepticism hits first, my eyes flickering from his earnest face to the object he holds in his hand. “So, you hold it in your hand and it
judges
you?”

“Well, yes,” he says, then turns the coin over. “Each side is a different facet of the human condition. There are two sides to every story. To everything, really. There are two coins, too, but the other one is… somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand.” He gets my confused face then, because I don’t know what else to give him.

“It’s okay,” Jax says, palming the coin and tucking his arm out of sight. “So, what can you tell me about the man who attacked you?”

The topic shift throws me, but only for a moment. “His name is Tiberius. He said it was my destiny to be his little raven, carrying messages from beyond the grave. After that, things got… fuzzy.”

“Fuzzy how?”

I hitch a shoulder, because I’m not sure how to explain it. “Like he was pulling on me, except… on the inside? And everything narrowed down to a little tunnel with black edges. He said that I wouldn’t feel any pain because I’d be gone before then. Except that I didn’t go. And I definitely felt the pain.”

“Reaper.” Jax says it without emotion or inflection, like it’s just a word.

“Is that like a sin-eater?” Because I want to know. I need to understand something, anything, everything that I possibly can.

“No,” Jax says, shaking his head. “Sin-eaters are demons, but reapers were angels. Except, in the war, they didn’t choose a side.”

“The war?”

Jax hesitates, pressing his lips together like he’s not sure how much to tell me.
Red Pill or Blue Pill, Neo?
I can practically see the question spelled out in the turquoise of his eyes. “The war for heaven.”

When all I offer up is a scoffing snort, he frowns harder. I laugh until I realize he’s not joking, or at least until I realize that he doesn’t think of it as a joke. The man might be off his rocker, but he believes every word he’s saying. That wipes the humor away, leaving behind a cold-blooded chill in its wake.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes,” Jax says. “I’m serious. Reapers were the angels who didn’t choose a side. For whatever reason, good, bad, altruistic, selfish, or just indifferent, they chose to willfully ignore their part in the war, and for their indifference, they were sentenced to a sort of indentured servitude.”

“To what purpose?” The words tumble out, despite the face that I’m enabling a crazy person. “To go around killing people?”

Jax shakes his head. “No, they’re couriers. Soul-shufflers.”

“Soul-shufflers…” I feel a bit like a mentally handicapped parrot, repeating random phrases.

Jax waves a dismissive hand, brushing it all off like it’s nothing. “Long story short, reapers are reapers until they
aren’t
anymore. Whatever their offenses, they’re soul-shufflers until they’ve worked off their debt. Servants of a sort, but they shouldn’t be taking a soul unless it’s time.”

“Time?”

“For the soul to go.”

“Go where?”

“Go
on,
Lore,” Jax says, like he’s talking to a very small child.

Or a mentally handicapped parrot.

It’s too much to wrap my head around, but I struggle to understand it all, to
believe
it all. “Scales, war for heaven, reapers… What does any of this have to do with me?”

“Well, nothing as far as Benicio is concerned,” Jax says. “Dark things are attracted to Light things, so it’s possible that Benicio just happened to brush up against you one night. I
do
know that the reaper’s agenda is far larger. There’s nothing accidental about Tiberius’s reappearance.” He gives a sly smile and adds, “We call him ‘Tibs’ behind his back.”

“That’s nice,” I mutter. “Because my own personal reaper wouldn’t be named something like Bob or John. Nope, I get ‘Tibs.’” Then, because Jax has stopped explaining things, I ask, “So, what next? Will they leave me alone now that they think I’m dead… again?”

His eyes fix on my face. “Nah, they know you’re alive. The press has been on high-alert ever since you hit that walkway. It makes sense that they’d try to tie up loose ends.”

“If I choose to believe you,” I hold up one staying finger to add, “and I’m not saying that I do…” I slide my fingers toward his hand, tapping his knuckles because I know the golden coin is still enfolded within his grasp. “Then what is this?”

The disk reappears, flashing brightly as he tosses it on the bed where I can see it. It comes to rest against the pale white of the hospital blanket. “I told you what it is, and what it does.”

“And you?” I prompt. “What are you?”

Jax hesitates, drawing in a slow breath and releasing it, turning toward the door as if weighing his options. Stay or leave. Speak or remain silent. Eventually he seems to decide on some sort of compromise. “I told you that before, too.”

Consider me your guardian angel, kid
.

“And me?” My voice trembles a little, along with the rest of me. I’m so close,
too close
, to all the answers I never wanted. “What am I? I’m not an angel, am I?”

He snorts at that. “Hardly.”

“Well, you don’t have to be an asshole about it,” I grumble. “You coulda just said no, douchebag.”

Jax shakes his head but answers the question anyway. “You’re a puzzle piece, Lore. One of seven. It’s like Benicio said. You’re a little slice of heaven. When Pandora’s box flew open and all the evil spilled out, you were a tiny piece of the
hope
that was left at the bottom.”

“Mythology or theology, Jax,” I snap. “Pick one brand of crazy or the other, you can’t own both.”

“It’s all the same. Just depends on who’s telling the story. Nobody ever gets it totally right, you know. It’s like playing the world’s biggest game of Telephone from the clouds down, across seven continents, seven billion people, and seven thousand languages.” Jax gestures a little wildly. “Impossible to keep the message one hundred percent straight.” He seems to mull it over before adding, “You're left hoping for the basics: no stealing, no killing, no raping… that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing,” I echo, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back against the pillow. All this is taking more energy than I have right now, and I can feel the last vestiges of denial slowly burn away.

When I open my eyes again, it’s to the blinding lights on the ceiling. I stare at them for a long time, mulling things over. Jax lets me; I guess he understands that it’s not every day that someone gets pulled out of the Matrix, so to speak.

“One of seven.” The words come at last. “Like one of the deadly sins?”

“You may not be an angel, but you’re not quite the devil, either.”

“So…
not
a sin?”

“The embodiment of what remains of righteousness. A Virtue.”

My head rolls to the side to meet his gaze. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Jax leans back in the chair with the creak of plastic and metal. “Exist,” he says, a little too flippant for my liking. “Truth is, I don’t have all the answers. It’s like God shook the ant farm one last time and walked the hell away. I don’t know where He went, or why, but He’s just… gone. Left us here to slowly rot, as far as I can tell. Hell, until a coupla decades ago I was just
some guy
. One day, I was building an empire, and the next day, well…” He hefts those broad shoulders up, then lets them sag on the downslide.

It’s a lot to take in, and it puts the fear of
no-god
into me, knowing that my guardian angel is just as lost as the rest of us. After a moment, I nod, turning my head so that I can spend my time looking at someone who’s a little more
sure of things
than Jackson Trace.

“And him?” I nod my head in the direction of the slouched form in the armchair. “What about Xaine?”

“Him? Well, kid, he’s the goddamn Darkness. Said it yourself… Dark Prince Apocalypse.” Jax shakes his head, letting his hands fall against his thighs with the dull slap of skin on fabric. “I suspect, anyway. The one time we had occasion to shake hands, I was busy trying to pry him off your cold, dead body, so X and I haven’t exactly had occasion to get to know one another.”

My mind flashes back to that first day, when Jackson Trace picked me up at that shitty no-tell motel out in the Valley. I get the vivid mental picture of me holding out my hand and him staring at it like he was bracing himself for the impact of an emergency landing.

“…have we, Xaine?” Jax tacks on.

The words sling me back into the present just as Xaine’s hand slowly clamps down on mine. I turn my head to find him wide awake and glaring at Jax, who stares impassively back. Judging by his furious expression, Xaine’s been awake long enough to hear the important bits.

“Nope,” he says, curling his fingers around mine, mindful of the IV taped to the back of my hand. He’s got an unfamiliar leather cuff on his wrist, the one that was bandaged up in Vegas. “Not sure we’ll ever have occasion.”

“No worries,” Jax counters smoothly, not giving up an inch of space to the predator snarling at him over the bed. “I don’t generally go around groping people.”

“Neither does Asher,” I say. “You should go hang out with him and the dudes in the Warehouse of Misfit Boys.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Jax says, but thinks it over way longer than what’s it worth before adding, “He really doesn’t, does he? Grope people, I mean.”

“Not unless you’re touching his
nock
,” I say, offering up a half-hearted grin. “Then you gotta keep a good
handle riser
on his
grip,
or you’re likely to find yourself face-to-face with his
lower limb
. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to be in his
sight window
.”

The look Jax gives me is priceless before he deadpans, “This is why women shouldn’t have access to books.”

“
This
is why you’re the worst guardian angel ever.”

But Jax is still looking thoughtful, and without warning, he pops off with, “Jesus Christ, double-chocolate fudge brownies.”

I stare at him blankly. “What now?”

Already shaking his head, Jax only answers, “Never mind. Shoulda known. Fucking sin-eater dessert blood hound…”

Fixing him with a mock-stern look, I say, “You can’t bring up brownies and then give me a ‘never mind.’”

Jax sucks in a breath, maybe to answer the question, maybe to suggest I ring up the medcenter cafeteria to ask for a menu, but Xaine cuts in with distinct impatience.

“If you two are done bonding or whatever,” he says, attention skipping between the two of us, “I need Jax to get in contact with Mister No-Touching, because we’re going to need even more security at the mansion.” His gaze narrows, like he’s planning to dig a moat and fill it with crocodiles. “If PFC doesn’t already own a tank, it will very soon.”

“I know this is Hollywood and you people carry teacup dogs around in your armpits to shop at Cartier, but Lore’s not a pet or a toy, Xaine. She deserves to live as normal a life as possible.” Jax actually looks a little pissed now, like a birthday party magician in a roomful of kids unimpressed by the rabbit in his hand. “If I wanted her holed up in a tower and guarded by a fire-breathing dragon… well, never mind, that’s happening already, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you, Trace.” Instead of going up a notch, Xaine drops his voice to the point where a chill ripples through me and every hair on my arms stands on end. “And fuck you again if you think I’m letting her wander all over the city while a group of renegade vamps figure out a more effective way of killing my wife. And while we’re at it, why don’t we let Lore decide how much security she’s comfortable with? If she wants snipers on the roof, she can have them. And if she wants to walk down the street naked with a target painted on her back… well… she and I will have that discussion. Without your two cents
or
your gold coin. Got it?”

“You and Cas.” Jax rolls his eyes and stands, stretching his arms toward the ceiling like he’s getting ready for a yoga class. “I told him the same thing. Stick a guard on her, hell, stick two, but don’t try to keep her in a cage. Besides, she’s pretty much famous now. There’s really no stuffing that one back in the box.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Xaine sounds pissed, but there’s a desperate note under that. “Give her a five-mile radius? Put her in a shock collar that zings the ever-loving shit out of her if she wanders outside the safe zone?”

Jax shakes his head as he moves toward the door. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no ‘safe zone’ anymore.”

“Could we
not
talk about me as if I’m not in the room?” They’re discussing tanks and guards and safe zones, and I’m still stuck on the idea that I’ve somehow made a bunch of faceless enemies for life. I never did anything to anyone, but I’m getting the karmic boot like nobody’s business these days. “They’re not going to stop looking for me, are they?”

“Not unless you’re dead,” Jax shoots back. “And even then there are those who could still use the pieces Tiberius tried to rip outta you.”

My brow wrinkles at that. “What the hell would they do with my soul?”

“What is it Miller said? ‘You don’t
have
a soul. You
are
a soul. You
have
a body, temporarily.’” Jax shoves his hands in his pockets. “We’re all recycled parts, Lore. If your immortal nougaty bits could be removed from the mortal chocolate shell, then someone could, feasibly, buy themselves an eternity to figure it out.”