The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (22 page)

R
oxanne could feel herself blushing as she followed Santo into the kitchen. She still couldn’t catch her breath, thinking about the feel of him. How hot his body was as it entered hers. How desperately she wished she could stop time and stay there for just a little while longer. She couldn’t help it.

Making love with Santo had rocked her whole world. She couldn’t believe that Louisa wouldn’t see how profoundly it had changed her and know exactly who and what was the cause.

For his part, Santo appeared as cool as could be. Until he looked her way. Then it was all heat.

Louisa had prepared a veritable feast for dinner. Tender spiced pork and hot salsa with the tang of cilantro and the bite of jalapeño. Beans so creamy they
melted in her mouth and fat slices of Mexican
queso
as white and smooth as milk. Louisa warmed fresh tortillas and delivered them hot to the table, refusing to allow either Roxanne or Santo to do more than fill their plates and eat. Roxanne found herself shoveling it in like she’d never been fed before and only stopped when she realized that Santo was watching her. His grin made her heart do funny things.

“So,” Louisa said once they’d both pushed back from the table. “What will you do now?”

“Roxanne’s brother is missing,” Santo said. “We think that whoever is after Roxanne has her brother, too. If we can find him, maybe we’ll find everyone else who was taken as well.”

And then what? They didn’t know how to fight these demons. They didn’t even know what the demons wanted.

“You think they are alive?” Louisa asked, surprised. “On the news they say everyone’s dead.”

“We won’t know until we find them,” Santo said, giving Roxanne’s hand a reassuring squeeze under the table.

“You are lucky to have Santo helping you,
mija,
” Louisa told her. “He has a good heart. He’s a strong man.” She gripped his bulging bicep, as if to prove it.

“Yes, I know,” Roxanne murmured, looking everywhere but at Santo and his manliness.

“When Marisella died,” Louisa said, “I thought I lose him, too. He don’t come here. He just . . .
go
.”

Santo shifted uncomfortably, and a dull flush stained his face.

“He feels it’s his fault,
sí?
He thinks we blame him.” She looked at Santo and shook her head. “Death comes when it chooses. It took my Jorge last year. It doesn’t care that he wasn’t ready.”

“I’m sorry,” Roxanne said.

“Jorge, he worry about Santo. He say to me, ‘Santo will take this hard.’ ”

“He should’ve worried more about himself,” Santo said gruffly. “Or about you.”

“He knew I’d be fine. I understand how God works. When my time comes, I will go happily to meet my maker. I hope so anyway,” she qualified with a laugh. “Although I have sinned.”

Santo gave her an indulgent look. “No, you haven’t, Louisa.”

“We all sin. You sin, Santo, by blaming yourself for everything. It is not up to you who lives and dies. That is His job.”

The words seemed to startle him, and for a moment Santo looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or argue. It was an odd reaction that brought to mind her first impressions of Santo. She remembered thinking his way of phrasing things was
off
. Had that really been just last night? It seemed like days had passed since she’d met him.

“I’m glad he has found you, Roxanne. I like how he
watches you. His eyes, they sparkle. Life. This is what is life.”

Santo stood and carried his dish to the sink, but Louisa waved him away. “You two have much to talk about. I see. And this . . .” She indicated the mess. “This will take me no time to put away.”

He stared at the older woman for a moment, and Roxanne felt the depth of his emotions. The tangled quandary he seemed to be mired in all too often. He looked lost, as if he had no idea how to respond to this woman he obviously cared for.

At last, he gave her a gentle hug. “I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Ah, there you go again, thinking it is you who makes such decisions. Take your lady to bed, Santo. She looks tired.”

Santo didn’t need to be told twice. With a look of promise, he took a step toward Roxanne and her body immediately responded to the silent invitation she read in his eyes. She didn’t know what future—if any—waited for the two of them. Odds were good that she’d end up with her heart broken. But she didn’t care. Stupid or not, she was into him. She’d stay on the ride as long as it lasted.

A sound coming from outside the kitchen window stopped Santo before he reached her. Roxanne heard it, too, but wasn’t sure what it was. His sudden stillness was her only warning that it was something to fear.

Santo crossed the kitchen and turned off the lights. Warily, he pulled the lacy curtain from the edge of the window and peered out. Moving as quietly as she could, Roxanne joined him there.

A fat moon gloated in the sky, diminishing everything below with harsh light. Bushes and trees seemed overlaid on a canvas of pitch. The night had no depth, and the eerie absence somehow magnified the absolute silence. Roxanne scanned the shivering quiet, feeling the chill that coiled around the trees and bushes, hushing the chittering leaves and restless limbs. Behind her, Santo held himself rigid, his tension feeding her own.

A sudden gust crackled the barren branches and agitated the leaves. A flutter caught the corner of her eye, then something darker than the night parted the shadows as it soared toward the window. Immediately she thought of the locusts and stumbled back into Santo.

An enormous bird—
a
raven?
—alighted on the sill, black wings spread wide and beak open in a greedy smile. Easily the size of an eagle, it gripped its perch with clawed feet and stared at them with watchful, ebony eyes.

Behind her Santo sucked a breath between his teeth. He pulled Roxanne away and faced the room with worried eyes. Santo, who’d fought snarling, rabid
hellhounds
without flinching.

The bird rapped its beak against the glass, waited, head cocked, and did it again.

Knock, knock.

The sound, almost polite for all its insistence, lit a wick of superstition she hadn’t realized she possessed. Louisa crossed herself and turned her back on the window, as if not seeing would make it go away.

A sound—bizarre and yet familiar in a way she didn’t understand—
flapped
in the cryptlike silence. Roxanne found herself shaking her head as she tried to place it. Like a low sonic pulse, she
felt
it in her gut. When the recognition came, it stole the air from the room.

Wings. Hundreds of them
. That’s what made that sound.

Her imagination blotted out the swollen moon and covered it in birds, flocking like a plague. Santo turned his eyes upward as the scratch of clawed feet skittered across the tile roof.

Then his gaze shifted and met Roxanne’s.

“This is going to be bad,” he said softly.

R
eece stood beneath the shower spray until his skin hurt. He’d scrubbed the blood and gore away once, twice, a dozen times, but still he felt it. Warm and sticky. A blanket of shame; a cape of pleasure. He’d
liked
the killing, the violence, the dirty mess of it. No amount of soap and water could wash that away.

When he finally gave up, shut off the water, dried and dressed, he felt no better. His reflection was different. His eyes looked hungry now. Desperate and dangerous.

He stepped out of the small bathroom to find Gary leaning against the wall in the hallway, waiting for him. “Feeling better?” he asked cheerfully.

“No.”

Gary pushed away from the wall. “But you see
what we’re up against, aye? No denying the face of your enemy anymore, is there?”

“No.”

Yet a part of him did deny it. A part of him felt that despite what he’d seen, despite the blood he couldn’t seem to wash off, despite the fear and the thrill, he’d been . . . duped. The facts had been laid out in black and white, indisputable, but ultimately false. As if everything had been prearranged so that Reece would be forced to draw a logical conclusion that made no fucking sense at all.

And that bothered him nearly as much as the secret joy he’d felt in killing.

Gary watched him, trying to track his thought process to its end. The corners of his mouth tightened when Reece said nothing else.

“What we fought this morning, Reece,” he murmured. “It has your sister. Do you understand that?”

So Gary kept telling him. “The man who took Roxanne looked nothing like those things out there.”

“You’re right,” Gary replied encouragingly. “The
man
who has your sister is no man at all, though. He’s an imposter, isn’t he? He pretends to be human so sweet little Roxanne will trust him. But she doesn’t know what
we
know. He commands those beasts, Reece. Are you hearing me? They are
his
to control.”

Reece couldn’t imagine anything controlling the creatures that had attacked them, and the idea that
someone might hold that kind of power terrified him. The thought that that same someone had his sister . . .

“What does he want with Roxanne? I still don’t get it.”

Gary nodded with understanding. “I couldn’t explain it to you before. Not until I made you a believer. He wants your sister because he’s a demon. It’s as simple as that.”

Simple? Reece shook his head. There was nothing simple in that.

“Hear me out. I know it’s a bitter reality, demons on earth,” Gary went on. “Every time I’m forced to confront it, a piece of me still doesn’t believe. But the bigger pieces, they want to fight. They want justice.”

Justice.
Gary liked that word. He’d used it earlier when he’d laid out his theory about Santo Castillo, the cop who had taken Roxanne. The cop who was really a demon, if you took your crazy with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

“Let me tell you a story,” Gary went on.

“Why don’t you just tell me the truth?” Reece demanded, sick of Gary and his stories.

“ ’Tis one and the same this time, Reece. One and the same.”

He paused, waiting until Reece gave a tired nod for him to continue.

“This story is about a man who never dies—or rather, a man who can’t seem to
stop
dying.”

Reece stiffened, skin chilling between heartbeats. And Gary knew it, the bastard. His sad little smile held a glint of satisfaction he didn’t hide.

Gary went on. “Every time this man releases his last breath, he opens a door between our world and the other side.”

“The other side of what?”

“The Beyond, Reece. Heaven, hell—Hades, Elysium. Call it what you want. But in the end it’s the same. That door lets darkness seep in. And lurking in all those shadows, just waiting for a chance to scuttle through that opening, are demons.”

Reece swallowed hard, wanting to tell Gary to shut the fuck up, but Gary moved closer, stepping into Reece’s personal space, drilling him with a gaze that seemed to see everything he wanted to keep secret.

“These demons hide in plain sight. They slip beneath the skin and pretend to be human. They become the six o’clock news, only what we hear about is the man who rapes an eighty-year-old woman and burns her alive.”

Gary took another step, and Reece fought the urge to retreat.

“Or the one who snatches a little boy from the playground and sodomizes him before dismemberment. Or the—”

“I get it,” Reece said, pushing Gary back and stepping away.

Gary eyed him speculatively. “I hope you do, Reece.
Because even though that door between our worlds may be shut right now, the demon who kidnapped your sister knows how to open it again.”

Reece felt like a puppet, yet he was powerless to stop the question that emerged. “By killing me?”

“Aye. By killing you.”

There was more. Reece could feel it, hovering there between them.