Secret Worlds (403 page)

I rub my cold arm. “I only expect respect, Alek. And maybe some consistency instead of these wild mood swings.”

“It’s who I am.”

I drag my fingers through my damp hair. “And I’m stuck with you.”

He narrows his eyes. “Leave if you don’t want to be ‘stuck with me’.”

Alek knows this isn’t a possibility in my current life, and I can see his anger sweeping back in. “I’m getting changed.”

Heart thumping hard in my chest, I head for my room. The size of the space feels more claustrophobic than ever, suffocating me like my life in this house. Like my world. Again the urge to leave comes back, but where would I go? Dragging my damp clothes off and dumping them in a corner, I pull on my yoga pants and a thick jumper. My soaked hair has begun to dry in tendrils around my face, and I twist it into a high ponytail. The top of the house is cold and too close to the point the Shades come through, so I reluctantly return downstairs.

Alek sits on the shabby sofa near the gas fire in the lounge, staring straight ahead. I hesitate, unsure whether to go to him.

“Lizzie isn’t back,” he says as I pass him.

I’m unsure if this is concern or a statement. I don’t want to talk to him. I pick up the bag I dumped by the floor, ready to walk out again.

“Rose,” he says softly. “I’m sorry. This scares me.”

“I scare you?”

“No, this situation with us. I’m somewhere I don’t want to be, and I don’t know how to cope.” His voice is flat, features drawn down into unhappiness.

“I don’t like living here either. We’re both stuck and looking to each other for help.”

“Is that all?” He turns to me, and the confusion he speaks about reflects in his eyes.

Of course it’s not all. I crave to be around this man, touching him, and gaining comfort from the energy we create when we’re together. To have him look at me as if he can fix everything and for me to believe that’s true.

“What are you trying to say, Alek?” I cross to the sofa and sit on the edge, far enough away from him to counteract some of the effect but aware of my arms prickling.

“I was an addict,” he says.

“Before you became Between?” He nods. “Drugs?”

“Yeah. I’d been clean and relapsed shortly before. Life was shit, and I went back to the one thing that made my life a brighter place. Which I know is fucked-up, but I tried to be clean and got dragged back in.” He huffs. “When I became what I am now, taking people’s energy became a new drug for me. I’d take when I didn’t need to because of the high. You felt it the time you took too much from me; you know how incredible it felt, and you didn’t want to stop.”

“Yes, but I had to.”

“Now, I don’t know the difference, Rose. I don’t know if wanting your energy is why I’m obsessed with you or if it’s more. When I’m with you, I’m calmer and happier. Is it our connection? Or is it you? Us?”

The time we had sex, after I took too much from him and gave it back, floods my mind. The connection to Alek at that point felt more natural, as if we were meant to be. But is he right? Is this us trapped in the situation?

“I want to share myself with you, but I don’t know how,” he says quietly. “And I think if I do and you reject me, the pain will be too much.”

His words stun, classic Alek mood swing in action here. “You’re pushing me away, Alek.”

“I’m trying to protect myself from you.”

“What do you mean? I said I’ll stop if I’m draining you, we can both stop.”

“No, Rose, not from you taking my energy, but from you taking my ability to stay inside myself and protect myself from hurt. I want you. But not just the part of you that I physically crave; I want us.”

The sadness etched on his features, in his downturned mouth and confused expression, tugs at my heart. “Then you have to give yourself to us.”

“I’ve already given you a lot more than I ever have before – alive or as this. This terrifies me because everything I feel is so sudden and out of control.”

“That’s the energy connection, though.”
Is he really saying he feels more than that?

“Can you see I’m saying these things without touching you? To prove to you this is more than the physical ache I have around you?”

“Alek, you’re carrying a lot of pain with you. I don’t know if it’s from your isolation or from your life before you died, but let some go instead of turning it to anger.”

He touches my cheek with his fingers. “I’m trying; but you make me feel vulnerable, as if you’ve got your hands around my heart and you could tear it out at any moment.”

The usual physical intensity between us is eclipsed by the words and the painful truth in his eyes. We’ve been pushed together, into a shared reality, and touched part of each others’ lives. We’re lost souls who have connected; and what’s growing between us is more than physical.

And that scares me more than anything else, too.

“Let me in, then. If you feel vulnerable, don’t lash out at me, or that’s what will happen.”

Alek strokes a damp strand of hair from my face. His lips touch mine; a soft buzz sparks into life whatever lives inside me that wants Alek physically. He inhales and we both fight the growing intoxication. I turn my head away and bury my face into his chest, and Alek, hesitantly, wraps his arms around me. We haven’t held each other since the night in his bed, as if we only can if everything else is satiated.

“Help me make this right,” he whispers into my hair. “Make me believe someone as beautiful inside and out as you could possibly have room for me and my darkness.”

My heart flips at these words coming from Alek, at the sad earnestness from the depths of a lost soul. As he strokes my back, I know this can’t last and we’ll give into the building surge of arousal. But in this moment, I can understand how Alek feels about me - us - is more than I believed; how I feel for him is more than I admit.

The Alek I wake up with the next morning has loosened, his eyes less guarded than before. We shared a bed last night, despite my better judgement. Inevitably, our comforting embrace became something physical and intensely sexual, but we fell asleep together, and I awoke wrapped in his arms. A voice niggles I’ll regret him using me again but after our conversation last night, I’m more comfortable with the situation.

Alek sits at the table as I get ready for my hospital shift, eating toast as he watches me move around.

“Are you working tonight?” I ask him.

“I’m not leaving you alone in the house until we figure out where the stronger Shades are coming from.”

“I fought the last one, Alek. I’ll be okay.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to risk losing you.”

I don’t want to revisit last night’s conversation. “We’ve been invited to a party.”

“A party? Whose? You don’t know anyone.” He smirks. “Don’t tell me... the ghostbuster?”

I hit him on the head with the teaspoon I’m holding. “He’s not a ghostbuster. Why are you so horrible?”

“Because he’s a sad geek?”

“One day, I think you’ll eat those words. He’s helping you. Us.”

“I’ll think about it.” He shoves toast into his mouth. Funny, we still have to sustain our bodies; the need for people’s energy is in addition to food and not instead of it. In a way, I’m happy; I can’t imagine a life without junk food.

I haven’t seen Lizzie since yesterday and when I mention her, Alek gets cagey. A creeping feeling he’s not telling me everything grows.

On the way to work, I check my phone. There are a couple more messages from Finn, which I ignore, but ignoring Finn forever isn’t an option. I check my jobs list when I arrive for my shift and groan when I spot ICU on there. Suspiciously, Finn’s roster always matches mine, so I suspect he’s working today.

Finn goes one better and hovers outside the entrance to the porters’ locker area as I arrive for work. He leans against the scuffed, magnolia-painted wall, legs crossed at the ankles and hands folded across his chest. He isn’t dressed in nurse’s blues; instead, he has long legs in dark denim and a black shirt over a T-shirt. His tattoo is visible, snaking around his wrist.

“Hey, Rose,” he says as I approach.

“Finn.”

“I really need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“About what’s happening. I get the impression you think I’m killing people.” He cocks a brow.

I want him to leave. “Someone is.”

“Correct. Not me.”

I step to one side as a guy passes us to get into the room. “Who?”

“Tom gave you the wrong story. Yesterday, when I saw you in ICU, were you checking up on me?”

“Tom?” I rub my head. “When did you speak to Tom?”

“Yesterday. Nice guy, invited me to a party.” Amusement sparkles in his eyes. “Are you going to the party?”

“Maybe.”

“With Crazy Boy?”

I ignore him. “What did Tom say?”

“Look, why don’t we sit down?” I eye him dubiously. “I’ll buy you another cup of tasteless coffee?”

Curiosity overrides common sense and I sit at the scratched wooden table, wiping away crumbs from the last occupants. Finn queues with the two cups in his hands, waiting to pay. Has this become our unofficial meeting room? His height is noticeable around others, but he’s not as imposing as he could be. I study people around him, as if their reactions to him were a measure of his nature. A young guy leans around him to pick up a sandwich from the display and their arms brush. No reaction. I guess it’s just me who gets frozen pain when he touches; otherwise, how else could he be a nurse? The public has more of a problem with me than with Finn.

Finn returns and drops two chocolate chip muffins onto the table next to the cups. I pick one up and tear open the plastic wrap. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The first time we sat and chatted, he was confident and aloof. This time Finn sits stiffly, tapping his long fingers on the side of his cup.

I lean down to get my phone from my bag and he startles. I frown. “I’m not leaving.”

“How long until your shift starts?”

“Half hour.”

Finn rubs a broad palm across his face. “There’s so much more going on than I thought,” he says. “I thought this was about you, but they’ve thrown me right into the middle of shit.”

His stronger language surprises me. “So you did... come here for me?”

We’re in a corner, at a table as removed from everyone else as we can get. I sip my coffee, grimace at the lack of improvement in taste, and then look expectantly at him.

“That Tom guy, he’s deceptive-looking.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has a lot of knowledge and looks so ordinary. He threw all these questions at me about Reapers, knew things I didn’t think humans did.”

I flinch at Finn using the word human so casually, putting people in a different box to us. “He has a network.”

“He said. I’d like to get to know him better. Maybe he can help me, once he realises I’m not the bad guy here.” He studies my attempt at an impassive face. “You do believe I’m not the bad guy?”

I slump back and study him. “You don’t have a bad vibe about you but I’m not the best judge, am I? I saw you with someone; someone Tom believes is killing people in the hospital.”

“Who?”

“The doctor I saw you with in the ICU room where the patient died.” I study Finn’s reaction, hoping to gauge the truth.

“He’s nothing to do with me! He knows who I am, and I’ve been trying to counteract what he’s doing. The doctor, he’s a demon and a powerful one. He’s orchestrating the deaths and calling on the Dark to take their souls.”

“And you’re not involved? Tom thinks you might be Dark.”

“No, Rose! I’m not a Dark Reaper!”

“What are you then?”

Finn rubs his hands across his face. “Fuck it,” he mutters, and drops his hands, fixing the intense blue eyes on mine. “What do you think a Reaper is, Rose?”

“Someone who takes souls when people die?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. People are assigned their time of death before they enter the world and follow their human lives until that moment. Then, Reapers arrive at the allotted time to take the souls into the next world. We never kill people; we go to them when they’re dying. Dark Reapers want to take the souls for themselves instead. They interrupt the natural course of someone’s life by creating an accident or event and wait for them to die. If we don’t get to those dying quickly enough, their souls are lost to the Dark. Anyone who is taken by the Dark is tortured day after day until they break and agree to become a demon.”

“The Dark Reaper came for me and Jamie?”

Finn scrunches his face in the way people do when you know they’re going to give you bad news. “Jamie’s time was due to end; yours wasn’t, so I was there to take his soul. You weren’t supposed to die, too; when I saw you dying and saw the Dark Reaper, I knew he’d come for you. I was on my own and I didn’t know what to do.”

“What did you do?” I whisper.

“The Dark had his hands inside you, taking your soul. I wasn’t assigned to help you Over, so I was going to leave you until I saw you fighting against your fate.” The world retreats into the distant memories from the night, and I shake the feeling away. “I left Jamie...I interrupted the Dark and we fought until I managed to banish him. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stand seeing your pain and knowing what your soul would suffer if he took you. When I won, I was happy because I thought I’d saved your soul and could send you Over with Jamie.”

“But you didn’t? Why didn’t you?”

“Other Reapers appeared, screaming at me for interfering. I didn’t understand what I’d done wrong. They told me I wasn’t allowed to take your soul because the Dark Reaper had torn into it. Your soul was broken and your physical body dead. They told me to leave you, but I couldn’t. If I’d left you, you’d be stuck in the Void, or the Dark would come back for you and it would be my fault.”

The image from the fog, from the dreams and of the men around me, contained him. I always knew. “So how am I here?” I ask hoarsely.

Finn inhales and closes his eyes. “I gave you life and returned you to the living again, not understanding what a fuck-up that would be.”

“Is that why I’m... like this? Because I have no soul?” I whisper.