Descent (Kissed by Death) - Tara Fuller Page 0,8

a wave of glittery particles around us. Fear flooded her eyes and she took a step back.

“I don’t what?”

She swallowed, still hanging on to the human habits that no longer applied. “You don’t look like an angel. That’s all.”

Behind me, Scout burst into laughter as he worked at releasing his assigned soul from its body. I stepped back, ignoring him. “Trust me, sweetheart, I’m no angel.”

“That’s an understatement.” Scout laughed.

“Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?”

He grunted, ripping the last of the soul from its skin, and tossed his ridiculous curls out of his eyes. “You know, some people think my voice is intoxicating.”

“I think you misunderstood,” I said, watching him struggle with the soul, who was flailing about and screaming. “They must have said nauseating.”

The angel across from me wrapped her arms around her middle and watched us warily. Tired of standing in the street, watching Scout make a jackass out of himself, I stepped in to lend him a hand.

“Calm down, man.” Scout reached for the soul, who slipped out of his grip, flashing from one side of the street to the other. A hiss rose from the dark drain near the curb, and a shadow demon slipped up through the grates. “This isn’t as bad as it looks.”

“It’s not?” The soul looked back at him wide-eyed in disbelief. “I’m…dead. I’m dead! I’m dea—”

A second shadow slipped up from the grates and I cursed. This was ridiculous. We should have been gone by now. Instead we were about two minutes away from luring in a horde of shadow demons for a feeding frenzy. And now we had two angels milling around watching us like we were some kind of sideshow. If those shadows caught a whiff of them, there wouldn’t be any stopping the chaos that would ensue.

I waited for the soul to pass back in front of me, then reached out and snatched him by the throat, cutting off his words. His soul sizzled under my touch, burning us both.

“Name,” I growled.

“Troy,” he gasped.

When he started to slip through my fingers, I placed the tip of my blade under his throat, tipping his chin up. “You ready to listen, Troy?”

I raised a brow and he nodded.

“Good. You’re dead. You’ll have an eternity to dwell on that, but right now, you need to get over it so we can get you processed. If you don’t cooperate, I promise you’re going to have things far worse than us to be afraid of. Understand?”

He nodded again, and I dropped him.

Scout reached his fist out, waiting for me to bump it with my own, and I rolled my eyes. “Get your shit together next time. You can’t baby them when they’re like that.”

Scout dropped his hand and nodded, his jaw set into a hard line. “Yeah. I know. Thanks for the help.”

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just don’t let it happen again. We need to move. We’ve got company.”

I motioned to the shadow demons closing in, soulless, forever hungry beings that fed on souls. This blast zone had just turned into a lunch buffet. I turned to find my charge kneeling near the boy who still gasped, holding on to life by his fingernails. She ran a ghostlike finger over his cheek, and sadness throbbed like a bottomless black pit where her heart once beat. They were both pure. I could feel it. The strings of Heaven were already trying to pull them home, relying on me to get them there. Everything about this felt unnatural. Each earthly territory had three assigned reapers. One for Hell. One for the Inbetween. And one for the Heaven-bound. Once upon a time, when Finn and Anaya had been at my side, that’s exactly how it had been. I looked down at the girl, hating the peaceful pull of Heaven coaxing me to give in to this responsibility. It should have been Anaya here. She was Heaven’s reaper, not me. Hell, she’d existed for this once upon a time. But that was before she’d decided to trade her reaper card in for life as a guardian. Before Finn had decided to grow a heart and become mortal again. Now there was only me.

“He’ll meet you there,” I said, knowing this was the closest thing to comfort I had to offer.

“Promise?” She looked up, eyes full with the memory of tears.

I looked down at the boy, startled to see him blinking up at me, pleading without the use of words.

Don’t promise.