Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (51 page)

Say it one more time,
he whispered in my mind. 
One more time, just for me, Em.

I love you, Tyler,
I told him, as the heat of the light I’d become reach its zenith.  It wasn’t the same kind of love I had for Nathan, I could never love anyone else the way I loved him, but I loved Tyler, too.

“Thank you,” he whispered out loud as we were sucked into a white, swirling void.

He kissed my forehead as the world exploded around us.  I wasn’t afraid, though.  I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.  I had saved the people I loved.  I had avenged those we had lost.  It was okay if it was all over.  I would get another chance to get it right in the next life.  I could drift off into that beautiful light with my heart full of the love I had been given by the people left behind.  And they would remember I had loved them.  They would know that, when the time had come for me to make the choice, they had meant more to me than my own life.

And, it has to be said, if you’re going to die, doing it in the arms of an angel really isn’t a bad way to make your exit.

The world came back into focus in blips and flashes of sound and motion.  I would feel, even hear, for a second or two, then I would be sucked back into the dark, cool void of unconsciousness.  Then the whole process would repeat itself.

My senses came back in stages.  First, I recovered the sense of touch. 
The soft, warm soil beneath my fingertips felt silky against my skin, and I wished I had the strength to run my fingers through it until I reached the coolness just under the surface.

Hearing came back next.  People were running around me frantically, their footsteps seeming way too loud to be normal.  I could hear panicked voices, but there was something else beneath that panic.  I tried to name it, but somehow it kept eluding me.  I got the impression, though, that something had gone very right…and very wrong at the same time.

Then came the sense of smell.  I wrinkled my nose when an acrid burning smell reached my nostrils.  Whatever they were burning, I wished they would put it out.  It was foul, like burnt skin and…feathers.  Damn!  Were they roasting birds?  Whole?  Feathers and all?

“I think she’s waking up,” Kim’s
soft voice said close to my head.  Oh, if only it had stayed that way.  But, of course, because she’s
Kim
, it didn’t.  Her next words were shouted in an excited shriek that had enough volume to cause permanent hearing loss.  “Shea!  Mom!  She’s waking up!”

More footsteps came running, and I was suddenly wrapped in my favorite scent.  I flinched as tears, actual
tears,
burned my eyes as I breathed it in.  When they started slipping from beneath my lashes, it just caused more to replace them. 

I had never been so happy to be crying in my life!

“Ember?  Look at me, baby.”

I tried to do as Nathan ordered, but I couldn’t quite find my way back to the light.  The dark was just so…
amazing
after that terrible, beautiful light that had nearly killed me.  Or maybe it had.  Maybe
that
was why I could suddenly cry again.  But then, why was I hearing everyone like I was right there with them?

Maybe it was a trick.  Maybe letting me think Kim and Grams and Mrs. Val were all there was just the Powers That Be rubbing salt in my wounds.  Maybe letting me hear Nathan’s yummy voice, smell his amazing scent, in the afterlife was a cruel trick being played on me to make me suffer for some sin I couldn’t remember committing.

Because if they thought it was a reward, they were sadly mistaken.

I decided punishment for my sins was much more likely when gentle hands reached out to lift me and my body screamed in protest.  I screamed with it, an eerie, weak, screeching sound that sounded like something a wounded rabbit might make.  Yep, definitely being punished.  Judging by the pain radiating everywhere through my body, maybe even smack dab in the middle of Hell.

“Put her down, Nathaniel!” Skippy snapped in his best mob boss tone.  “Can you not see that you are hurting her?”

I was immediately lowered back to the ground.  Ah, back in the soft soil, feeling the warmth of the earth cradle me as I tried to breathe through the agonizing pain.

“Come on, baby,” Nathan murmured again, close but not touching me.  “Open your eyes, Em.  Look at me.”

I tried again, just because he sounded so desperate, and was excited when I was able to crack my eyes open just a little.  I immediately frowned when everything remained too blurry to see anyone clearly, and regretted even that small movement when the skin of my forehead protested
the action, sending another wave of pain radiating through my face.

“Grams?” I whispered, feeling like I was trying to choke up razorblades.

“I’m right here, sweetheart.”  Her warm, tear-filled voice was a comfort to me.  If Grams was there, I wasn’t dead.

I was just kind of wishing I was.

“Hurts,” I whispered.

“I know it does,” she crooned, her fingers lightly brushing the hair away from my forehead.  “Just lie still for a minute.  As soon as the pain passes we’ll get you somewhere warm and comfortable.”

I lay there, surrounded by the people who loved me, and waited for that miracle to happen.  When I decided it wasn’t going to happen anytime
soon
, I tried opening my eyes again.  It worked a little better that time.  I could see all of them gathered around me, see their expressions, but they were still a little blurry, a little distorted.

“Holy shit!” Kim suddenly gasped to my right, jerking back in shock.  “Nate!  Look at her eyes!”

I frowned again, even though I knew it was going to hurt like hell, as I saw the expressions on the faces hovering over me go all dazed with shock—and maybe a little bit of awe.  Most women would have loved being looked at like that, like the people doing the staring had never seen anything so beautiful, but I took it as a sign that I wasn’t going to be happy when I finally found my way to a mirror.

“They go very well with the hair,” Mikhail drawled from somewhere just out of my line of sight.  I didn’t like him enough to endure the pain it would have caused me to turn and look for him.  “Oh, and the skin, we can’t forget about that.  Who ever heard of a darkling with a tan?  It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.  She looks like a bloody angel.”

Speaking of angels… Where was mine?  My newly amazing eyes filled with tears again as I looked around the group peering down at me, sure that I had just overlooked him in the chaos.  But he wasn’t there, and part of me had already known that.  That smell, that awful stench of burnt feathers, was suddenly all I could smell despite the fact that so many other scents were hovering around me.

“Tyler?” I croaked,
as tears start to slide down my cheeks again.

The others looked at each other, then everyone turned to look at Nathan.  I saw real anguish in his eyes when they met mine, and I knew.  Even before he shook his head, I knew.  If Tyler had still been there, he would have been with me.  He would have been kneeling right across from Nathan, ordering me to open my eyes and talk to them.  But he wasn’t there.

He was gone.

“No!” I wailed, feeling like my heart was being ripped out.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Nathan whispered, caressing my cheek, his beautiful voice choked with tears.  “I truly am.  But he’s not, Em.  Wherever he is, I know he’s not sorry at all.”

I barely felt the pain when he lifted me into his arms again.  The pain in my heart eclipsed it a hundred times.  Tyler had died because of me.  He had loved me so much he had let me
destroy him to save me.

Like a movie playing in my head, I saw Tyler changing my tire the night I met him. I saw him smiling at me like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him across the heads of a platoon of soldiers at the local bar the night before my first showdown with Bastian.  I saw him leaning against that car in the parking lot the day I found
Sierra’s body at OA, looking ready to wait me out forever if it meant I would talk to him.  I saw him laughing at me as I burst into flames the night he finally revealed what he was to me.  I saw it all, every single moment we had shared, and it broke me.

But the most heartbreaking memory was of a stolen kiss in a locked cell.  It was a declaration of love that didn’t come with any strings or demands.  It was the proof of that love as he wrapped his arms around me, his body burning, as he gave up his own life to save mine.  And I had let him do it.  I hadn’t even tried to stop him.

I clung to Nathan, ignoring the pain in my body as I sobbed against his shoulder.  I deserved that pain and much, much worse.  Because I was too weak to control my own power, I had killed someone I loved.  How was I supposed to go on, knowing that?

“You dishonor him with such thoughts,” a deep, soothing voice said, breaking through my agony to reach me.  I turned my head to find Lark kneeling next to me, his deep brown eyes pools of infinite grief.  “Tyler wouldn’t want this.  He made a choice.  He made the very same choice you made yourself.  He loved you above all others,
Ember.  Don’t turn his gift into a curse.”

He smiled at me sadly and laid a comforting hand on my arm.  I nodded slowly, letting him know I understood, and he squeezed my arm affectionately and got to his feet.  I watched as he strolled over to where Erin and Ryan were standing and then, with one last wave of farewell, he and Ryan disappeared, leaving Erin behind.

“She’s decided to stay here,” Nathan said, following my gaze to the angel who was walking toward Ainsley and Zan.  “She’s been alone for a long time.  This bunch will be good for her.”

Yeah, if she stays far away from me,
I thought bitterly, seeing another angel in my mind.  An angel with a calming voice, a quick smile, and a soft, beautiful, pair of golden wings. 

An angel I would never see again.

∞§∞§∞§∞§∞

I made Nathan take me home.  Skippy looked disappointed, but he didn’t press the issue when I told him I wasn’t going with the rest of the group to his home to recuperate.  Instead, he gave me an understanding smile and kissed my hand, the only part of my body that really didn’t hurt that bad, and promised to come see me as soon as I was up to having visitors.

Nathan was very gentle with me.  He brought me mug after mug of whiskey-laced coffee until I sounded normal again.  He found me a mirror when I demanded one and then held me close as I stared at my shimmering opalescent eyes and completely white hair that glowed with a pearly sheen in the low light of the lamps and cried.  Then he tucked me into bed and, without asking any questions, without saying a single word, started healing the jagged, gaping wound in my heart by just being there.

It had grown late and
another snowstorm had blown in when I finally decided I needed to talk.  I’m not really sure why I picked that moment.  Maybe it was the snow and the quiet and the way it felt like we were the only two people left on a frozen planet.  Whatever the reason, lying on Nathan’s chest, my hand over his heart, the words just started pouring out of me without any thought to the effect it might have on both of us.

“He kissed me,” I whispered, watching as the snow fell past the window.  “Tyler, I mean.  When I made him leave me in that cell to wait for
Hamilton, he kissed me.”

“
I wondered when he’d get around to that,” Nathan said quietly, giving me a gentle squeeze and kissing the top of my head. 

“And I felt something, Nathan,” I whispered, refusing to feel ashamed of that fact.

“I know, baby,” he murmured.  “I know you felt something, and I know you couldn’t explain it.  But I can, if you want to hear it.”

I shrugged my consent and snuggled closer to him and he wrapped his arm tighter around me.  I wasn’t really sure I wanted an explanation.  Why couldn’t it have just been love?  Why did there always have to be a reason?

“You and Tyler were kindred spirits, Em,” Nathan began, running his fingers idly through my hair.

“I already know we were friends,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes.

“I didn’t say friends, baby.  The human definition of a kindred spirit would be a friend, someone who thinks like you, shares the same likes and dislikes.  But in our world,” he paused to hug me closer for a second, “it means so much more than that.”

“What does it mean?” I asked, tilting my head up so I could look at him.  “In our world?”

“Kindred spirits are like Fate’s little backup plans,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down my arm like he was distracted.  “They’re there to ease the pain in the event that we lose a soul mate or fail to find them when we should.  It’s rare to find a soul mate and a kindred spirit at the same time, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you managed it.  You have a way of achieving the impossible.”

I laid there and thought about that for a secon
d.  So Tyler was…what?  My backup soul mate?  He was Fate’s messed up version of the rebound guy? 

Somehow, that didn’t set very well with me.  It made what Tyler and I had felt, the bond we had shared, seem cheap and fake.  I had cherished that bond—and Tyler had died for it.

It doesn’t get much more real than that.

“When did you figure this out?” I asked softly.  “When did you know Tyler and I were kindred spirits?”

He was quiet for so long that I decided he wasn’t going to answer me.  I couldn’t blame him for that.  I wouldn’t want to talk about it, either, if I was in his place.  Nathan, I decided, was the real loser in the tragedy.  He
knew
there was a part of me that had really loved Tyler. 

He was stronger than I was, that was for sure.  I don’t think I could have stood it, that knowledge.  But rather than get angry or act like a jealous ass, he just accepted it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I’ve known since before the two of you met,” he said, quietly, taking me by surprise.  “This isn’t the first life you could have chosen to spend with him.  You met him in another, when you were Elena.  I met up with him again at Mickey’s when I was stalking you back in October.  Even then, I knew he would be better for you than I would be.