to Morrigan and back at them. Then he raised his daggers and slammed them both into his own heart.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Was this death? This half-awake, half-sleeping sensation. It wasn’t a bad deal if it was. She’d just expected something different.
Is that a voice?
Maybe or maybe she was imagining things. She was cold, which wasn’t fair, in her opinion. She’d been cold for years, except when she’d been with Maccus.
Sorrow filled her. He deserved better. Yes, he was an assassin, but that didn’t mean he was a bad person. Not if he rid the world of bad people.
Most people wouldn’t follow the logic, but that didn’t matter. There were monsters in the world. And humans would have been in huge trouble without someone like Maccus to deal with the problem they didn’t even know existed.
The voice grew louder and clearer. This time she understood it.
You love him.
Maccus?
Yes.
I do.
It was odd that the entire conversation was in her head. She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t get her body to work. She was dead. Wasn’t she?
Will you help him?
Anything.
She wished she could be there to help him in person, but that wasn’t to be. Then the entire world lit up brighter than the sun. She tried to close her eyes, but they were already shut. Pain exploded in her chest.
Morrigan bolted upright, her eyes flying open. The knife in her chest was jerked out by some unseen force. The blade flew toward Lucifer. He yelled and ducked just in time to avoid being hit. The weapon slammed against the wall, buried to the hilt.
Both men stared at her, their mouths wide open. She was lying on the ground. Someone was leaning over her. Not someone. Maccus.
She patted her chest just to be sure it was real. There was no blood, no sign of any wound. Even her shoulder was healed. And she could breathe.
“Maccus.” She scrambled to her knees. He, too, was kneeling. His head was bent, his hair falling over his face. “Maccus,” she called, this time louder. When she grabbed his shoulders and shook him, his big body swayed to one side. He would have fallen if she hadn’t caught him.
There were two large daggers protruding from his chest.
“What did you do?” she demanded of the other two, not for one second stopping to consider who she was talking to.
“He did it himself,” Gabriel told her.
“Didn’t want to live without you,” Lucifer mocked. “It’s really too bad. I was looking forward to him going into a killing frenzy.”
“No. No. No,” she chanted. “Come back to me. I came back for you.” Because they were both wrong. He hadn’t done this because he couldn’t live without her. He was the strongest person she knew, had lived for thousands of years.
No, he’d taken his own life so he wouldn’t become like the monsters he’d killed. To save tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people who would never know his name, to possibly even save Heaven and Hell, he’d ended himself, after so many years of fighting to survive.
That was noble and good.
She grabbed the daggers in his chest and yanked. Maccus gasped, his entire body bowed. Lucifer cursed, and Gabriel yelled.
Shit, she had to protect him. Daggers in hand, she rose to her feet. But the men were spellbound by what was happening behind her.
A bright light filled the alley, turning it from night to day for a brief second. Maccus rose into the air, plucked from the ground by an unseen force. His hair blew back from his face, pushed back by the wind, even though the night was calm.
His eyes flew open. They were still as black as midnight but were now rimmed in a golden light.
What was happening to him?
…
Maccus gritted his teeth to keep from screaming aloud. Was he back in Hell? He’d killed himself to keep from becoming a monster, hadn’t he? To have a sliver of a chance to