The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (26 page)

“It can be beautiful,” she said in a wistful voice. “Death is as much a part of life as birth.”

He thought of this morning. The violence. The blood. The death. There’d been nothing beautiful in that. But then again, there’d been nothing human in it either. And yet, he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t felt the glory of it. The power. The electric
charge
of killing.

“Why didn’t you want to join in the killing this morning, then? Wasn’t that like a free buffet?”

She swallowed and looked away. “No, because the victims weren’t human. But there’s another reason.”

He waited, knowing he wouldn’t like the reason she gave but conversely glad it existed.

“I’m having a hell of a time wrapping my head
around any of this, April.” He paused. “I guess April isn’t even your name.”

“It’s the only name I’ve ever had,” she answered. “Picture where I come from like a hive. Endless hives. Each hive has a ruler. Those are the names you know here on earth.”

“What about the rest of you?”

“We aren’t important enough for names. God, in His wisdom, chose not to make us individuals. Not to give us emotions that could confuse or derange us.”

“Yeah. How’s that working for you?”

She bowed her head and he felt like a dick for saying it.

“We were intended as creatures of service and nothing more.”

“What about now?” he asked. At her blank look, he grudgingly explained. Because he wanted the answer. Wanted it with a desperation he wished he could deny.

“Do you have those things now? Feelings?”

Her smile held overwhelming sadness. “I do. I feel everything.” She looked him in the eye, all artifice stripped. The anger that had simmered around her before, banished. “I don’t have words to describe what it meant to come to you this morning.”

A tightness had gathered around his heart; now it eased. “I thought it might have been an act. Something Gary put you up to.”

“No. He thought Karen would be your sin of choice. I don’t think it occurred to him that you’d want me.”

Another flush colored her face. He brushed his knuckles over her cheeks, wanting to kiss her. In spite of everything she’d told him, he still wanted to kiss her.

“You’re different from everyone else here,” he said.

“There’s a reason for that, too.”

“Good.”

She went on, determined to tell this tale. “I don’t know when Gary first found the way in, but it’s only been recently that he’s figured out how to stay . . . how to take over the dead. How to inhabit a body after he’d killed the human inside it.”

Reece watched her intently, but she avoided his eyes.

“It’s tricky, taking the dead,” she said in a hoarse voice. “It requires killing them without reaping. It has to be done quickly and cleanly because a death is a beacon to the Beyond. Gary figured out how to kill a person and possess their body in the same fell swoop. He abandons the soul because if he sent it on its way, they would know.”

“They?”

“In the Beyond, life and death are catalogued on a strict schedule. If souls suddenly appeared before their time, it would cause problems. A soul without a death would be noticed.”

He’d had to ask.

“Gary never told us how it would be, though. We followed him, not knowing the risks.”

“But you knew you’d be killing innocent people and leaving their souls to be damned?”

“Not damned,” she said. “Just lost.”

“That makes it so much better.”

“No,” she whispered. “It makes it so much worse.”

Her sorrow was too real, too aching to ignore. He didn’t think she was pretending, even though a voice inside him warned him to be wary. There was so much he didn’t know about her, about what she was, how far she’d go or how desperate she could be. She might be lying, manipulating. She might be the best actress in the world. Or, God help them all, she might be telling the truth.

“Gary sent us to April’s home, to Harvey, to take everyone between the ages of twelve and fifty. The rest were killed and covered with the fire. Those who were lucky enough not to be home when it happened thought their loved ones had been burned to death.”

It was too horrible to contemplate, but Reece forced himself to ask, “There are that many of you?”

She shook her head. “Most don’t survive. They expire in the first few minutes. It’s a dangerous thing.”

Especially for the humans.

“What happened to April’s parents and her big brother?”

“Clyde was with the hunting party this morning. Ellen works in the kitchen. James didn’t make it.”

Shock wended its way through him like an electric current. “Why tell me? Doesn’t this go against Gary’s grand plan?”

She nodded. “He’d destroy me if he knew.”

“Then why?”

She faced him then, her eyes so filled with anguish that he felt her pain in his chest. But he still didn’t know if he could trust it.

“You asked why I was afraid this morning. Why I didn’t want to kill.” She looked around, as if hoping to find her next words among the waving grasses and tumbled stones that littered the pasture. “Have you noticed that people around here seem to have skin problems?” she asked at last.

The random question startled him. “Yeah.”

“The bodies we take, they fight us. Even dead, they fight us. They reject us. Bit by bit, they begin to degenerate. They deteriorate until they become our worst nightmare.”

He thought of the rash on Gary’s face. He’d noted variations of it on the others, but he hadn’t equated it to anything like this.

“The rash is a symptom of what’s going on inside. The weaker the scavenger, the faster the change. They start out looking human, but before long, the first signs begin to show. They lose all pigmentation. Their hair,
skin, and eyes turn white, as if the human world is eating them away. Finally, they regress into something ravenous. Mindless creatures that live only to appease their hunger for souls.”

He stared, uncomprehending for a moment, until the reality of her words took shape. In his mind, he broke down the creatures he’d fought this morning, remembering how freaked out he’d been by their paws, which looked so much like hands. The creatures had been huge—too big for a dog or wolf. Human-sized, but so grizzled and deformed that he hadn’t made the connection.

“Once it begins, there’s no stopping the deterioration. It eats away at them,
changes
them until they become creatures of death. Something not seen or heard of for thousands upon thousands of years. Even we thought they were myth. Evil without thought, without purpose. Hellhounds.” She took a deep breath. “Gary is the only one who can control them. He keeps them locked up in a pit below one of the outbuildings. They’re dangerous to the rest of us.”

“Wait a minute,” Reece said. “Those things, those hellhounds we fought this morning . . .”

“They were once like me. Like Karen or Walter, any of us.”

“Why were they out there? Why did everyone know they were coming? Why—” He paused, answering his own question. “It was a show, wasn’t it? All for me.”

April nodded. “Gary had to convince you that our enemy was real. That we’re on the same side.”

“So he sacrificed his own?”

“You say that like you expected something different. They answer to Gary and Gary answers to Abaddon. The hounds were supposed to kill the police officer who’s protecting your sister so Walter could bring her home. Here, to the compound. But they failed and they almost killed
her
while they were at it. Gary was furious. He moved to Plan B—use them and destroy them as an example to the rest of us of what happens to those who fail.”

Too many thoughts crowded in his head. Rage over Gary sending those things after his sister. Hurt over the betrayal that seemed to go on and on. Horror over what it all meant and . . .

Suddenly Reece realized he’d missed an important turn in her story. He stopped and looked at her. “So what? You’re saying that the rash, the deterioration . . . that happens to
all
of you?”

“Eventually. Inevitably.”

He stared at her. She’d confessed to being a demon, and he believed her. It didn’t matter that what she’d said was incredible. He
believed
her. He should hate her right now. He should want to kill her, this demon. But he couldn’t hate her more than he hated himself. He was every bit as much a monster as she and Gary’s other soldiers were. Just because he was human didn’t make it less true. He understood what she meant about
addictions. About craving the hot, sweet fear that came with death. He’d been fighting it his entire life.

April said, “Gary has been trying to find a way to keep our bodies from failing. He’s doing experiments. He made me take this body—take April—before she drew her last breath. She was still alive when I stepped in, Reece. We both felt it when Gary ripped out her soul.”

The pain in her voice washed over him, making him see it in every single detail.

“I feel her,” she whispered. “She’s a part of me now, or maybe I’m a part of her. I can’t tell anymore.”

She began to weep. Reece watched helplessly until finally, he gave in and pulled her into his arms.

“Did it work?” he asked, pressing his mouth to the silk of her temple. “Are you safe? Can you stay like you are?”

With me?

Fucked-up on so many levels, but there it was.

“No,” she said, her face damp with tears. “I can’t. Unless you have a really strong leash.”

Neither of them laughed.

“It’s happening slower than it has with the others, but I can feel it, the changes. I’ll be able to see them soon.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want that for you.”

She seemed surprised, almost hurt by that. “You should. What I am, it’s wrong.
Wrong.
I can feel her
inside me. And I’m so sorry for what we did. I just want to die, but she won’t let me.”

“Why won’t she let you?”

“She wants revenge, Reece. So do I.”

He pulled back so he could look into her face. Wet, spiky lashes framed her big brown eyes.

“I can’t let Gary destroy this world. Not now that I know it. I need you to help me stop him. I need you to tap into that part of you that you hate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, but he knew.
He knew
.

She smiled sadly, knowingly. “You don’t have to lie to me, Reece. I see what you are.”

“And what is that?”

“Someone who wants to be good.”

S
anto felt like he’d been hit by a train. Twice.

He shifted, coming awake all at once to unmerciful sunshine and a million aches and pains. He lay sprawled on the backseat of Jorge’s old Ford pickup truck. His clothes were in tatters and his skin burned where the birds had clawed it. A few of them had gotten hunks of his flesh, and the bites throbbed. But as far as he could tell, he was still alive.

Irony. It followed him everywhere.

He couldn’t tell where they were, but the truck moved at a good clip and scenery sped past the window. Gingerly, he sat up and looked around. Phoenix. They’d come south from the mountains back to the city. Roxanne sat behind the wheel and caught his movement
in the rearview. She nearly jumped out of her skin. He waited for her to catch her breath before speaking.

“I guess we got away?”

“For now,” she said with a weak smile.

She looked different, though he couldn’t say exactly how or why. But something in her face, in the way she held herself . . . the angle of her chin . . . the squared shoulders . . . the tight grip on the wheel . . . All of it? None of it? He didn’t know, only that in some indefinable way, she’d been altered.

She turned her gaze back to the road when he would have liked to search her eyes.

“What happened?” he asked softly.

“I’m not really sure,” Roxanne answered.

“I meant, what happened to
you
?”

She didn’t glance in the mirror. Didn’t give him a hint at her thoughts. “About five hundred ravens tried to line their nests with my hair and skin, but other than that, not too much.”

He waited for her to say more. The soft line of her mouth tightened, and tension radiated through her entire body. She didn’t fill the gaping quiet.

Awkwardly, he maneuvered over the back of the seat and into the front. It hurt like hell, but now he could see Roxanne’s face. The ravens had done a number on her. Scratches marred the porcelain perfection of her skin, and jagged holes gaped in her clothes. Blood had seeped through in several places. He pulled down
the visor and looked in the mirror. As he suspected, they were a matched set.

He still wore his holster, but the weapon was gone.

“Do you have my gun?” he asked.

She gave him a surprised look, seeing the empty sheath. “No, of course not. It must have fallen out when Louisa and I were getting you into the truck.”

Outstanding. Now he was confused
and
unarmed. Roxanne looked so worried that he touched her shoulder to get her attention again.