The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (27 page)

“No big deal,” he lied. “Like you said, bullets only slowed them down.”

She nodded, unconvinced, and grew quiet. He still didn’t know what had happened and it appeared that he’d have to pry the information out of her. But carefully. That much was clear.

“Okay. Let’s talk about the ravens,” he tried again. “How did we get away from them?”

She shrugged, a grim, defensive movement.

“What about Louisa?”

“She hid in the garage. When the birds were gone, she came back. I couldn’t figure out how to get the car started, so she told me to take the truck. Evidently, hot-wiring isn’t in my skill set.”

He nodded, still watching her, still trying to analyze the nuances of her reactions and that strange sense of
transformation
that he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

He wanted to demand an explanation. Abaddon’s
ravens didn’t just
go away.
But Roxanne reminded him of a trapped animal that might be dangerous if her cage was rattled. He wanted her to talk to him, not come out snarling and bolt.

“How are you holding up?” he asked, backing off when she obviously expected a full assault.

She shot him a surprised, grateful glance and said, “I’d give my eyeteeth for a glass of water and a bathroom. Not necessarily in that order.”

He checked the gas gauge. It hovered at a quarter tank, and Roxanne looked like she was running on empty. Gently, he reached out and covered her hand on the steering wheel.

“What’s going on,
angelita
? Talk to me.”

She nodded, then shook her head. “I just thought . . . for a while I wasn’t sure if you were going to wake up.”

In her voice he heard the ring of fear and, overriding it, responsibility. As if
she
could have somehow stopped Abaddon’s ravens. He brushed his knuckles against her cheek and she bit her lip, exiting Highway 60 at Mill Avenue and taking a right.

“Where are we going?”

“Reece’s condo.”

He couldn’t stop the shocked glance he shot her. “What about the reporters? The news? Won’t they be there?”

She looked at the clock on the dash. “About fifteen
minutes ago, my sister made an anonymous call to the Channel Twelve tip line. She told them that Reece and I were spotted at a convenience store near Payson.”

“Where I bought your phone,” he said, impressed.

She nodded. “That should keep them busy, especially when they see you on their security camera. I told Louisa to wait two hours before calling in the abandoned car in front of her house. By now, anyone who’s interested should be headed north.”

“Pretty smart.”

“Not really. But it might work. Reece lives in a gated complex anyway. The reporters aren’t allowed past the street. If we can get there without being spotted, I know the codes to get in.”

Santo let out a deep breath. It was a risky plan, but he could see she’d thought it through. They’d be hiding in plain sight, someplace that had been checked and dismissed already. They just might get away with it.

“Do you want me to drive for a while?”

She shook her head. “We’ll be there soon.”

Watery daylight spewed over the streets and sidewalks. Clouds offered thin cover as Roxanne took a back road that led to a side entrance of a sprawling condominium complex.

“They have security cameras here,” she said, pulling the hood of her jacket up. “You should get down.”

He did as she asked, wedging himself below the
dash as she punched a number in a keypad and waited. After a few seconds, she began driving again. “Okay, we’re clear of the cameras.”

Santo sat up and looked around as she turned down a twisting drive. The silence in the truck had become a presence, seated squarely between them as she navigated around the buildings of the complex. Desert landscaping crawled over rock gardens, and bright green paloverde trees offered low-maintenance shade to the walkways. A small pool positioned near the rental office and clubhouse glittered, surface as flat as glass, chairs at precise attention around the perimeter. All of it vacant and looking too serene to be real. It buzzed his already stretched nerves.

Santo had never been patient, and reapers did not require forbearance. Not surprisingly, the hybrid man he’d become didn’t care for waiting either. But he forced himself to swallow his questions until they were safely inside. Then he would get his answers.

Roxanne stopped the truck in front of a single-car garage, put it in park, then moved to another keypad. A moment later, the big door groaned as it moved up, and she pulled in and closed it behind them.

The door from the garage to the house opened into a compact, immaculate kitchen with a breakfast counter and two bar stools. A strange transitional space—too small for a table and chairs, too big to be a walkway—joined the kitchen to the small living room, where a chocolate brown couch and a coffee table faced the
all-important flat-screen TV. He caught a glimpse of two bedrooms down a short hall. No pictures hung on the walls, no knickknacks on any surfaces.

Roxanne dropped the truck keys on the counter and went straight to the bathroom. A few minutes later, she was back and still avoiding his eyes. She pulled two water bottles from the refrigerator and tossed him one. They both drank thirstily.

“Is your house like this?” he asked.

Frowning, she looked around. “What do you mean?”

“My hotel room had more personality.”

Her gaze lingered on the clean surfaces and the blank slate of walls. “No, Ruby and I share my parents’ old house. It’s got more personality than working features. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. We keep saying we’re going to get rid of all the old stuff my dad left and move, but . . . we never do.”

“Why not?”

She lifted one shoulder. “My mom died when I was born, but I like having her things around. It makes me feel like I know her, just a little.”

She looked so lost and sad that he had to force himself to stay put. He’d finally got her talking. He didn’t want to do anything that might bring back that heavy silence.

“Just you and Ruby live there?”

“Ryan moved out when I was eighteen and never came back. Reece went the same year.” She took a deep,
shaky breath. “Dad left us all some money. Reece bought this condo with his, but I don’t think he likes it here. He spends a lot of nights on our couch. Or Ryan’s.”

“What did you buy with the money he left you?” Santo asked.

“Nothing.” She turned to the refrigerator and rummaged for a minute. “Are you hungry?”

He wasn’t surprised that she was hungry again. Roxanne was like a little wolf cub. But he sensed that what motivated her now had more to do with avoidance than appetite. He came up behind her, putting an arm around her waist and pulling her back so he could close the refrigerator door. For a moment the soft heat of her relaxed into him and he wanted nothing more than to swing her in his arms and carry her to one of those nondescript bedrooms.

Reluctantly, he eased back and guided her to the couch. With equal reluctance, she let him. When they were seated, he turned to her.

“What happened at Louisa’s, Roxanne? What happened with the birds?”

“I told you, I don’t know. It’s the truth,” she insisted when she saw the doubt on his face. “I think I blacked out.”

“And when you came to, they were gone?”

“More or less.”

He let his silence ask the next question. With a frown, she shifted, scooting away from him.

“I was trying to fight them off. I could see that they were smothering you. You fell and they just . . . they were
everywhere. The stench and their sound. I came unhinged. I got so
angry.
I couldn’t see past it. I think I screamed and I just kept on screaming. I remember curling around you, trying to protect you. Then the house lit up, like a spotlight got turned on somewhere. It blinded me . . . then Louisa was shaking my arm and the birds were gone.”

“Where did the light come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Louisa didn’t see anything?”

“She said she saw the light, too. That it was so bright it came through the cracks in the doorjamb. It scared her, so she didn’t come out until it was gone.”

He looked away, stumped. What light? And why had it chased the ravens away? It didn’t add up.

“I remember the birds breaking through the kitchen window,” Santo said slowly. “I remember making it as far as the living room.”

He scowled. He could still feel the ravens crowding around his face. They’d suffocated him in feathers and evil.

“Did they speak to you?” Roxanne asked in that toneless voice that revealed nothing. But her eyes . . . they spoke volumes. The fear hadn’t vanished, but anger had shoved its way in and overpowered it. Sharp and biting, it snapped like lightning in the stormy colors swirling there.

“Yes,” he answered. He couldn’t tell if she felt relieved or terrified by that. He shifted on the cushions so
he was closer to her and took her hand. “What did they say to you, Roxanne?”

“They said they’d found me.”

“Abaddon found you?” he asked in a low voice.

“They said I should go to him. They called to me.”

The last came in a low, shamed voice. He understood it. Their power sucked away the will to resist and left their victims feeling violated. He knew. He’d felt it himself.

Yet somehow she had resisted. Somehow, she’d escaped. And she’d managed to save him
and
Louisa. She couldn’t know how incredible that was.

“The ravens kept telling me to come home,” she said. “That I belonged with Abaddon. And for some reason, I believed them.”

“You will never belong with Abaddon. Not as long as I have breath in my body. You belong here.”

With me.
It shouldn’t have been so difficult to keep from saying it. But he felt as if a hole had been carved out of his chest and now all the emotions he’d disdained from the start had settled there, waiting for the moment when they would consume him.

“I kept hearing your voice in my head, Santo. You tried to stop me, and I could feel you holding on, protecting me. They were trying to kill you, but you kept protecting
me
.”

She gave him a tremulous smile he didn’t deserve. He’d succumbed to their power. He’d been the weaker
of the two of them, and that shamed him. He might have lied when he’d said he had come to protect her, but he’d never meant to fail her in this way. Abaddon had almost snatched her away from him.

She said, “
Ask better questions
. I kept hearing you say it in my head. The ravens tried to tell me that it was Abaddon who waited for me when I died, and I knew they were lying. I knew that something so vile couldn’t make me feel . . .”

She stopped and her cheeks pinked. But then she went on, passionately disputing the lies Abaddon had told her.

“I knew it wasn’t Abaddon who waited for me when I died. And that made me think . . . if it’s not Abaddon . . . then what does my
death
have to do with any of it? If you’re right and I can really close this door that lets in all these horrors . . . then why do I have to die to do it?”

He felt himself go very still. “And what was your answer?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t answer. But you said you felt it close when I took my last breath. My
last
breath. Those were your words.”

He nodded, thinking of those moments, the timing of each bizarre event. She was right.

“I don’t know if the ravens could hear my thoughts or if they just sensed it in me, but they inched back. And . . .” She shook her head, her gaze far off, her brows pulled. “I felt it.”

“Felt what, Roxanne?”

“What Louisa saw. The brightness. The light. I felt it right here.”

She clenched a fist and pressed it to her chest before turning those beautiful eyes on him.

The heart he no longer scorned came to a painful, stuttering halt.

“I could feel
you
with me. Guiding me. And I thought, I have an angel to help me. I can do this.”

And then his heart broke. He looked away, destroyed by the adoration in her eyes. Damned by the lies that had put it there.

She moved closer to him and took his face between her palms. “If not for you, I would have gone with them, Santo.”

Her words tore into flesh and bone. Helplessly, he touched his forehead to hers. “No, you wouldn’t have,” he said. “You would have fought and you would have won. It was all you, Roxanne. It was all you.”

He looked into her eyes and let his thumbs brush her cheeks. He didn’t deserve her, this woman he’d come for. But he couldn’t let her go. Her eyelids fluttered shut, but her lips softened in invitation.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

That might have been funny if he hadn’t been so confused himself. He didn’t have a fucking clue. He only knew he needed her. Roxanne. He needed the truth in her touch. The honesty in her kisses. Needed them though he knew she’d find none of that in his.

Her hands came up, tentative, seeking. They found his chest and settled softly there, fingers spread over his heart. Their gazes locked as he tried to find words, but he couldn’t begin to decipher the complex and frothing mix of his emotions. His goal had been so clear when he’d stepped into Santo’s skin. Find Roxanne Love and reap her mortal soul.

Now he wanted only to stay in this minute, freeze this small moment in time, and hold her. Forever.

But even he could see the fallacy of his plan. Roxanne was more special than she knew. More than he had imagined. If she’d figured out how to force Abaddon’s ravens from her mind, from her world, then it was only a matter of time before she figured out how to do it on a bigger scale.

Soon she’d be asking herself how she could do the same thing to the demons who’d invaded her life. She’d be working on a way to send them all back to the Beyond, where they belonged.

All of them.

That meant his time was running out. She would learn the truth, then. She would know his lies.