Omega, exactly, but rather other, similar belief systems that covered both how you treated yourself and others while you were mortal, and also considered what happened to you after your coil, so to speak, got popped. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and countless other religions, they were all efforts to give more of a vista after death than just a coffin and a grave. Or a pyre.
He knew from pyres.
God, did he ever.
What he no longer knew from, however, what he no longer believed in, was all the rest of that stuff. He’d never been particularly spiritual, but man, you didn’t know how much you had been until you were not any longer.
At all.
Anyway, prior to the whole truck/intersection/almost-obliteration thing, he had been considering what was not exactly a sin, but rather a really, very not-so-hot idea. Assuming you were a believer. In the lexicon of both vampires and Shadows, if you took your own life, that was it. No Fade for you, motherfucker. Now, no one had been able to provide him with a good explanation of what the alternative repercussions were—sure, lore had it you were closed-door’d on the whole Fade thing. But where did you end up? Dhunhd? Worm food? Who knew. Yet everyone and their uncle was damn clear on the fact that you weren’t going to be elbows deep in people you liked for the next jabillion years.
The message apparently being, if you took your own life, well, then, to hell with you if you didn’t appreciate the gift you were given at birth.
Yeah, like this whole breathing/heart-beating thing had been such a fucking prize, these years he’d been upright and walking around such a goddamn joy. He’d been destined for a loveless mating since the night he was born, been responsible for the senseless suffering of both his parents, watched a dear friend get tortured by a psychotic cunt for a good twenty years—that was fun—been a pimp, a drug dealer, and an enforcer.
Real partridge-in-a-pear-tree shit.
And then that heaping sundae of shit-chip ice cream—which he’d self-medicated with an outstanding sex addiction, thank you very much—had been cherry-topped by the granddaddy of all gut-wrenchers.
He’d met the female of his dreams, fallen in love… and, after what felt like twenty minutes of happiness, had had to hold her hand as she died of a wasting disease right in front of him.
Honestly, he hadn’t just been born under a bad star; he’d been born under one that kicked him in the nuts so badly, he’d coughed them out in his hand.
So now he was here, in this BMW he’d just bought, on this snowy night, during the motherfucking human season of cocksucking joy, contemplating suicide—only to have the GODDAMN ACCIDENT THAT COULD HAVE MADE IT ALL COME OUT ALL RIGHT DENIED TO HIM BY A SET OF ALL-SEASON RADIALS THAT HAD WORKED JUST FINE AT EVERY OTHER FUCKING INTERSECTION HE’D EVER DRIVEN THROUGH.
Not to put too fine a point on things.
But FFS, he couldn’t even have a chance to get dead in such a way that he could both end this bullshit AND not run afoul of the maybe truth that suicide got you, literally, nowhere.
Not that he believed in the afterlife anymore anyway. No matter what he’d thought he’d seen after Selena had died.
Hell, if there was anything that the last three months had taught him, it was that death was a hard stop. Especially if you were the one left behind.
Well, Trez thought, as he sped along in the snow, at least there was still the embankment option.
There was that to look forward to.
CHAPTER THREE
Her shadow lover came to her once again through the dense darkness of dream, his naked body pulling free of the ether, taking form before her. Tall and strong, wide of shoulder and long of leg, he was the fantasy made real in the realm of the subconscious, the representation of secret yearnings she held so dear they were in her soul.
Holding her arms up, she reached forward from her recline, and he came unto her without any entreaty, covering her with his warm, hard flesh so readily, it was as though he required her as much as she did him. His mouth, familiar and a shock at the same time, took her lips, drugging her with kisses, his tongue, his scent. Hands, broad and masculine, skimmed her breasts and her waist, going lower… ever lower.
As she moaned, she begged for his name without words. Her thoughts were known to him,