The Taken Page 2

  “Better?” he asked, swallowing hard.

  If she heard the shake in his voice, she didn’t show it. “Much.”

  Then, though she hesitated, she reached out and put her still-warm hand in his. “Thanks.”

  “All in a day’s work.” And despite the ache in his heart, and the ghostly memory of all his mortal pain, he shook it off and led her away.

  Proof that he really was an angel.

  Though ostensibly leading the way, Grif allowed Rockwell to go first. As he’d told her, he was a gentleman, and though he was careful to keep her close—last thing he needed was for the kid to get lost in the moon shadows—he gave her enough space to keep her from feeling flanked, like a dead woman walking.

  Another calming tactic: the use of doorways to pass from the Surface and into the Everlast. Or if a door wasn’t available, a window. Some sort of passageway a human mind could latch onto to ease the transition. Opening the door to find the cosmos splayed before you like a celestial buffet was shock enough, so it was best if the Take didn’t notice it until it was too late. So Grif kept his hand at Rockwell’s back, and waited for her gasp as he used his celestial power to will the door open at her touch.

  Yet Grif was the one who jolted at the sight of the grungy hallway. He jumped again when it began to bend, rippling in the same way pinned sheets moved in the wind.

  That wasn’t right. In fact, it was all wrong.

  “Get back,” Grif told Rockwell, as the ripples merged across from them to form a giant, diaphanous bubble. Features began emerging in the bulge of that apex, pressing through wood grain and peeling wallpaper until they became recognizable as an enormous face.

  Rockwell stared at the emerging face like it was part of a magic show, wonder and delight replacing wariness. After all, it was her first glimpse of sinless sentience. All she saw was a brilliant smile forming in the wood chips. A nod of welcome in the dip of the giant head. A shimmering film of gauzy Everlast to mask the staggering appearance of one of God’s most awesome creatures.

  Grif saw fangs and a predatory gleam in an incendiary eye. “Get back!”

  But Rockwell had already forgotten him. Once a newly gleaned soul glimpsed a Pure—in any form—the Centurion who guided them to the Everlast was just a leaf in the forest of their memory. Utterly forgotten.

  “Do you know who I am?” The voice ground deep and low with the sinew of the splintering walls.

  “No,” Nicole said dreamily, stepping forward.

  “Yes,” Grif replied and reached out to grip Rockwell’s arm, but she’d begun the Fade and merely shuddered as his energy invaded hers. Gaze locked on the Pure, she stepped directly into the undulating hall.

  This wasn’t right. “Stop, Nicole! It’s an angel!”

  The hallway cocked sharply at that, casting Rockwell to one bowing side. The face grew more prominent, as if pressing against a thinning membrane . . . and Grif realized that was exactly what was happening. The Pure wanted something, but wouldn’t, or couldn’t, breach worlds to get it.

  Its chin sharpened. “Use my proper title,” it said in that slivered voice.

  Grif swallowed hard. “A Pure.”

  “I am of the order of the Powers,” it hissed. “The first of the created angels, kin to the Dominations and Virtues, controller of demons, and guardian of the heavenly pathways.”

  “Whoa,” said Rockwell.

  But the voice, with breath as hot as a furnace, was directed at Grif. So was the fiery gaze. “Do you know who I am now?”

  Grif knew only one angel in the order of the Powers. “Anas.”

  Keeper of the Gates, the chosen Pure who shepherded mortal spirits into Paradise proper. It was said Anas was the first angel that uninjured souls saw after death, though to say she welcomed them into heaven was giving her too much credit. From what he’d seen, she mostly ignored the human souls, chin high and gaze distant as they passed through the Gates.

  But Grif wasn’t at the Gates. Anas—and her big, bulging forehead—was on mortal turf, so he reached forward to pull Rockwell back.

  But the mouth opened, and the Pure inhaled, lifting Nicole Rockwell from her feet. The woman was like a rag doll sucked into a tornado, gone in an instant, jerked into the fanged mouth, and a throat that was black and specked with burning stars.

  Grif stepped into the hallway to follow after her.

  “Not you.”

  And the walls shifted with a whipping exhalation. Blown from his feet, Grif tumbled back into the mirrored motel room, and the door rocketed shut.

  Heart pounding, Grif just lay there for long seconds.

  When nothing else happened, he wiped at his eyes, which were suddenly gritty and dry. In fact, his whole etheric form felt like it’d been sandblasted by the hot, needled breath. Even still, instinct and stubbornness had him stupidly rising to the fight. Rockwell was his Take.

  Crossing the room, Grif motioned to the door again, willing it open with his celestial power. The door didn’t budge. The cosmos didn’t appear.

  “Fine.”

  And dropping his head and arms, Grif fisted his hands so that his wings flared with a rip of the silky air. Gossamer-black, dripping dew, sprung directly from the Everlast itself, the wings rose and plunged like a waterfall of spears. He whirled, propelling himself forward until the wingtips caught the door and sliced it from existence.

  Anas awaited.

  “Disobedient! Child of wrath!” Her face was inches away, contorted with rage.

  “No need to get personal,” Grif told her evenly, though the membrane between worlds was now stretched so tight she looked like she was being smothered in plastic.

  Anas hissed, and her fangs elongated, the sound of wood stretching. “Breath . . .”

  “Oh, that?” Grif got it now. He was in trouble for joining his energies to Rockwell’s, for reanimating her body with his. He shrugged it off. “That wasn’t breathing. I was just trying to help.”

  “You donned the sinful flesh—”

  “It wasn’t really a sin. More like a lapse of judgment—”

  “You have breath!”

  “I gave it back.”

  “And now flesh!”

  He drew a blank until he recalled the grit in his eyes when she blew him back. He looked down, panicking. “You gave me . . . skin?”

  Her snarl grew to a fanged smile. “You cannot enter the gloaming, Child of Sin. You have no place in the Everlast.”

  “That’s Child of God to you.” Grif’s eyes narrowed. “And I have wings.”

  “Ah, that’s right.” She grinned so widely that wood grain punctured the plastic. “I’ll take those.”

  And she plucked his wings from his body—his flesh—then pushed him so hard that decades rushed by, along with burning stars and rioting universes that roiled around him like debris as he fell . . . fell . . . then landed with a jarring thud.

  Rockwell’s corpse bounced as he landed on his back, on the bed. Unmistakably, on the Surface. It shocked Grif into losing the breath he didn’t even know he possessed. Then the pounding began in earnest, starting at his shoulder blades, where his wings should have been. It spread like lava through his core and into his limbs, nothing like the lapping low tide of the pulse he’d shared with Rockwell. This was a red monsoon. His veins throbbed and surged as they . . . what?

  What?

  “Fill with blood.”

  Grif turned his head and found Nicole Rockwell’s eyes fixed on him, though her pupils were overtaken by surging flame as Anas stared from the dead girl’s body. His heart leaped again, and his veins pulsed and rushed and, yes . . .

  Filled with blood.

  And the yearning ache he’d felt while inhabiting Rockwell’s body crested in his chest. Rearing against the pain, Grif felt new flesh stretching over bone. A scream lodged against his unused vocal cords, and he fell still, closing his eyes, trying to hold it all back.

  “Breathe,” Anas instructed through Rockwell’s corpse.

  Gri
f gasped and shivered. This was the animation of skin coupled with life force. This wasn’t just the innate desire to live. This was rebirth. This was life.

  Clamminess lunged to seize the new oxygen in his lungs. It was only the experience of having been alive for thirty-three years once before that kept the confining flesh from being revolting. Maybe when it warmed, Grif thought, he wouldn’t feel such a need to run from himself.

  But blood still clotted most of the virgin veins, and his heart had to struggle to move it. Its amplified thump hammered like the lead bass in a marching band.

  “Breathe.”

  The word banged like a pot off Grif’s competing thoughts. Worse were the spasms ripping through his chest. Fear, insecurity, guilt, and sorrow all huddled in newly exposed corners, naked, cowering things, frightened children trying to pull the covers of the Everlast up to their chins.

  But the protective coating was slipping away. He knew it, and it was why—even without a true heartbeat or thawed blood or a sense of self and place in the universe—he began to shake in his new flesh. “No . . .”

  “Breathe,” Anas hissed again.

  “It hurts,” he managed, squinting into her fiery gaze.

  “Being clothed in sin does, yes.”

  “I can’t . . .” The shake of his head, side to side, set the pots to clanging again. He had no idea how he heard Anas’s voice above them, only knew that she said, “It will hurt more when you die again.”

  And a knock sounded at the door.

  He stilled, looking at Anas.

  “You must flee,” she said, eyes still burning, breath still scalding. Still merciless.

  “Why—”

  She cut him off. “There’s a window in the bathroom. Go while you can.”

  “But I—”

  “But you’re lying next to a murdered woman. And you, Griffin Shaw, are alive.”

  He couldn’t comprehend it, but the burning skin, the pulsing blood, the breath in his chest . . . “It’s too much.”

  It was all too much.

  Another knock at the door, louder, accompanied by annoyed voices on the other side.

  Anas was right; the time for privacy was over.

  “Just enough then,” Anas said impatiently when he still didn’t move. She pursed Rockwell’s blue lips. Everlast washed over him in a cooling balm and he could sit, and then stand.

  “It won’t last.” And the burning eyes dulled, then snuffed out completely, leaving behind Rockwell’s black, sightless pupils.

  Yet the small hint of Everlast had cleared his mind and Grif could see what Anas had, and what anyone else would when they entered this room: a man standing over a woman’s blood-splattered body.

  Whirling, he darted into the bathroom, and wedged open the small, single-paned window. He heard the door to the room open just as he clambered through, and reached the rusting ladder right before screams sounded behind him. Half-falling, half-jumping, Grif hit the ground seconds later, and ran from the voices and the building. He ran blindly. He ran until the sliver of Everlast wore off.

  He ran until he could run no more.

  Chapter Two

  Kit had never been to the station house on a Saturday night and found it even noisier and more crowded than during working hours. The irony was that if she had stuck to those hours—if they had—she wouldn’t be here now. Waiting to be interviewed by a cop. Shivering in a dress meant for cheerful occasions, not sober ones. Mourning the death of her best and oldest friend.

  “Kit!”

  She looked up, relief washing over her at the voice, strain immediately returning as she spied the tight look marring her ex-husband’s always handsome face. He might be able to hide his emotions from an entire courtroom, she thought as he wound his way through the noisy room, but she’d known him too long not to see the irritation bristling from him. The hard-pressed man was one of his best looks, and Kit knew then that he’d only come in case she needed council. The go-to attorney. Another favorite.

  Kit chided herself, feeling stupid as Paul neared. But they’d once shared a life and a bed, and Kit needed someone around her who’d known both her and Nic well. Yet as soon as Paul perched on the plastic chair next to her, her loneliness doubled.

  And it made her wonder. If he’d been the one she’d never see again after tonight, would there be anything left behind to miss?

  The shame accompanying that silent question settled next to the guilt already at home in her gut.

  Nic was dead.

  “What the hell happened, Katherine?”

  “Don’t interrogate me, Paul.”

  “Hey, I left a Caleb Chambers fund-raiser for this,” he said, which explained his tuxedo, the over-styled hair, and the hint of scotch lacing his breath. No, Kit thought, catching two underage girls whispering from behind cupped palms as they stared at Paul. She wouldn’t have missed him at all.

  “At three thirty in the morning?”

  “VIPs and generous donors to his various charities are often invited to his house for a private party after the gala.”

  Of course they were. And Kit didn’t have to ask which group Paul belonged to. He was always trying to buy his way into something. “Well, while you were brown-nosing the don of the social scene, someone murdered Nic. She’s dead, Paul.” She blinked. “I could be dead.”

  His brows knit, and he reached for her hand after a brief hesitation. He really was a handsome man, Kit thought, automatically pulling away. His golden hair glinted even under the station’s harsh fluorescent bulbs, and his eyes were the color of spring moss. But they were unable to hold a gaze, which meant unable to hold a promise. The girls across from them didn’t seem to notice. Nothing but experience could teach them that anyway.

  “Let me guess,” Paul said, oblivious to the teens, to Kit’s fractured heart, to everything but being right. “You came up with some harebrained idea and Nicole ran with it.”

  Kit looked away, jaw clenched. Paul knew them, that was for sure. Nic had run with it like she always did—blindly, blithely, madly. Like the idea was chasing her instead of the other way around. But this time it’d chased her into the grave.

  Kit covered her mouth with a fist to hold back a cry.

  “Dennis said you guys snuck into an illegal brothel.”

  Her head shot up. “You already spoke to Dennis?”

  “I need all the facts if I’m going to represent you.”

  “I don’t need representation,” she spat, twisting the word. “My best friend was murdered while I waited only yards away! Those are the facts!”

  “Please lower your voice.”

  “Right,” she said bitterly. “Paul Raggio’s first rule of decency and decorum. Don’t make a scene.” Don’t make a mess. Don’t make a real effort when phoning in an emotion would do.

  Yet he surprised her by putting a hand on her knee. “I’m trying to help.”

  Kit sat back and tried to steady her breathing. When she thought her voice would hold, she looked up. “It wasn’t just an illegal brothel. It was a movable operation. Truckers let each other know about it online.”

  Hearing the explanation aloud didn’t make it sound any better. Paul’s answering silence made it significantly worse.

  “Look, Katherine—” he finally said.

  “Kit.”

  Paul gave her his courtroom look, the one solely responsible for her falling out of love with him. “Truckers tweeting about their roadside lays is tawdry, but hardly breaking news, and if I know you, you were going after a bigger fish. What was it?”

  “It” was a Pulitzer. At least, that’s what Nicole had said. Make our mark before we’re ancient . . . or at least thirty.

  “Truckers passing time on the road in the most predictable way possible might not be news, but concrete proof that judges and councilmen are passing the same women between them is prize-winning reporting.”

  Paul leaned forward, the sweeping angles of his face hardening into calculated thought. “What do roadside
hookers have to do with Nevada politics?”

  “Good question. Though not one I was even asking. Not at first.” Kit wasn’t interested in politics, but people. What they did and why. Human nature fascinated her, and this had started out as a human-interest story—on johns, their habits, and why they’d even use hookers when they presumably had wives and girlfriends waiting at home. “In order to find out, we put an ad out on Gregslist.”

  Paul’s brows lifted high. “And these guys talked to you?”

  “Of course not,” Kit scoffed, but that hadn’t deterred Nicole and her. It was too fascinating an idea, and Kit was too curious, to simply let it go. Especially after Nic came up with the idea of posing as a hooker just to get a chance to talk to one of them. “But she didn’t catch any action until she started playing down in age.”

  “Gee, what a surprise. Pretend you’re a hooker, get a revved-up guy alone in a hotel room, and then ambush him with a camera and a legal pad. That is a good way to get killed.”

  “We’re not stupid, Paul,” she said, back on the defense. “We weren’t meeting a john. Another prostitute answered the listing. She warned us we were encroaching on already staked territory.”

  “Gregslist has street corners?”

  Kit shook her head, remembering. “You should have seen this message, Pauly. It was full-on text-ese. Whoever this girl was, she should’ve been giggling over school dances, not sexting strangers.”

  “Underage?”

  “That was our impression.”

  Paul leaned back, crossing his arms. “Maybe she’s illiterate. Or just playing the juvie for extra dough.”

  “We considered both. But then she sent us this.” Kit drew a printout from the handbag at her side.

  His eyes widened at the names on the list. He’d probably been hobnobbing with half of them just hours before.

  “And that’s just some of them,” Kit said, pleased she’d managed to surprise him. “She promised more if we met in person, but she wanted to verify we were legit first. After that, she swore to give us names that would make fat-cat heads roll.”