Deidre's Death (#2, Rhyn Eternal) (5 page)

“It’s okay. Whatever happened … There’s
nothing to stress about,” he added when she was silent. “But you’re
not exactly the same woman I saw here last night.”

Deidre’s careful story didn’t even make it
to her tongue. She simply gazed at him. He definitely never
would’ve spoken to her like this, as if …

…as if he was Death and
she was not. She never stopped to consider what it would be like if
he became the person she had been. If their roles were completely
reversed. In her mind, she saw only them being happy, finally,
after an eternity of struggling to understand one another. She once
thought the problem was him, because he was of human origin. Many
years ago, she figured out the opposite was true: they had issues,
because she
wasn’t
human.

Changing that, then, was the only thing that
lay between her and her love.

Except, something still wasn’t right.
What?

Deidre pushed herself up carefully, unable
to take her eyes off of Gabriel. His hand fell from her leg,
breaking her trance enough that she looked away. She pulled her
knees to her chest and leaned against the backboard.

He was waiting. The Gabriel she remembered
would’ve dropped it and left. This Gabriel wasn’t going
anywhere.

“I am me,” she said at last.

He raised an eyebrow. Her face felt warm.
She wasn’t certain why.

“I made a deal with Darkyn.” She paused,
trying to figure out what to tell him.

“Don’t stop there,” he said grimly.

“I’m what’s …left of the two of us,” she
said and stopped. Lying was hard as a mortal. It didn’t feel good.
She touched her neck and felt the scars. Was human-Deidre going
through the same pain many times a day at Darkyn’s hands?

“Are you in pain?” Gabriel’s voice softened.
He reached out to her again and pulled her hand away, placing his
against her neck. She shivered at the odd connection, the heat and
warmth. The fact he touched her without hesitation. Did she like
that or not? She debated.

She never offered to heal him, either, when
she had been Death and he was her servant. She didn’t understand
what pain was at that point. Her greatest warrior, Gabriel had
experienced his fair share of battle wounds. The idea he’d gone
through something like this, and she didn’t know to help him made
her sad.

She never wanted him to suffer.

“No pain,” she murmured, pulling her
attention back to him.

“So you just made a random deal with
Darkyn.” His thumb brushed her jaw line. Back and forth, back and
forth, in a way that left her skin tingling and her feeling as if
she was falling under some sort of spell.

“Sort of,” she replied. “You didn’t used to
…touch me without asking.”

“You didn’t seem to mind me holding you for
hours last night on the beach.”

“I don’t mind. I …” She shook her head. “I
can’t think when you do.”

“Tell me what happened,” he said and dropped
his hand. “I’ll wait to touch you until after.” He was amused.

Deidre’s brow furrowed. He
didn’t say he’d
ask
to touch her. Just said that he would.

“I made him a deal to take the tumor out. He
made the two of us one,” she said slowly. It wasn’t coming out the
way she practiced it, maybe because Gabriel was sitting close
enough that she wanted to lean against him instead of the bed and
place his large hands on the parts of her body hidden by
clothes.

“You are past-Death and … Deidre?” Gabriel
asked.

“I’m
both
Deidres,” she replied with some
offense. “We are the same person.”

“In some ways, maybe,” he allowed. “The
tumor is gone?”

“Yes.”

Her first thought was that he wasn’t buying
it. His gaze remained steady.

“Turn around.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“I want to make sure you’re my mate and not
a shape-shifter demon.”

“Do I
look
like a demon?” she
retorted.

“You can show me your marking, or I can hold
you down and look myself,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t …”

Gabriel shifted towards her. Deidre sprang
back.

“Okay,” she said, uncomfortable with the
idea she had no control whatsoever over the man before her. He
didn’t answer to her anymore, as he had for thousands of years.

Did she expect him to?

Confused, she turned her back to him and
pulled her shirt up to expose the marking. Gabriel placed a large
hand on her back. She gasped, the heat and energy of his touch
making her shiver. Fully splayed, it would almost cover the width
of her petite frame. The thought of letting him run those hands
wherever he wanted thrilled the human in her and terrified the
former goddess.

She pushed her shirt down and moved away to
break contact, facing him again when half the bed was between
them.

“Just when things seem to be going well,” he
said and stood. Fire flashed in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked uncertainly.

He crossed his arms, dark gaze hard,
towering in the bedroom that suddenly felt too small for her.

“What’s wrong,” he repeated. “Do you have
any idea what he could’ve done to you?”

She was quiet.

“Why the fuck couldn’t you come to me
first?”

She flushed and looked away. She’d seen him
upset but never angry. Neither she nor human-Deidre thought to
involve Gabriel in their plans. They were more alike than Deidre
realized; they both sought out Darkyn for quiet deals they hoped
would result in ending up with Gabriel. Only one of them made it
out of Hell, though.

“My mate trusts the Dark One over me to help
her. It’s a shitty way to start things off.” Furious, he started
towards the door.

Deidre swallowed hard, wanting to chase
after him but unsettled by his anger and the changes in him. She
waited her whole life for this moment, and all she was able to do
was watch him leave her. The human emotions were crippling the cold
logic that brought her to this point. She couldn’t lose him now,
because of human weakness!

“Gabriel, wait!” she called.

He stopped at the door but didn’t turn.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To do my job. Right now, I need to kill
some demons.”

“I thought … I thought this would make you
happy.”

“You know what would make me happy,
Deidre?”

“What?”

“Being able to trust my own mate. Neither
Deidre ever understood that.”

She stared after him. She had to say
something to keep him from leaving her, but she was too stunned. He
waited. She screamed at herself silently, afraid he meant to walk
out the door forever.

“Did that go the way you expected?” he asked
quietly.

“N…no,” she whispered.

“Last night you were ready to trust me. What
happened?”

Deidre thought back, struggling to remember
what human-Deidre felt, if not the events. Gabriel had held her on
the beach. They’d sat for hours, until human-Deidre’s distress
faded and turned first to disbelief then hope then resolve. It was
the same sequence Deidre went through before making the private
deal with the demon lord, the one that resulted in her
reincarnation and condemned human-Deidre to become the mate of the
Dark One.

“I knew Darkyn could give me a second chance
with you,” she said. “Clean slate.”

“Everything would be different – better,
perfect – overnight.”

“Yes.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t be walking out right now if it
did.”

She sighed. Her eyes grew blurry, and hot
wetness slid down her cheeks. Deidre touched them, surprised to
find they were tears. She’d never cried as a goddess. Ever. Why was
she crying? There were too many emotions for her to identify them,
but one of them – or all of them? – caused the tears. Frustrated,
she realized she wasn’t able to control whatever it was.

Gabriel left. The door closed behind him.
Her Gabriel was gone.

The pain settling into her was of a
different kind. It had no physical source, but it hurt her
physically nonetheless. She was hardly able to draw a deep breath
through her tight chest. A new emotion formed. It felt much like
dread. She rested back on the bed and cried.

The tears stopped of their own accord after
a while, and the calm of her mind brought back her focus.

She gave up her power, her domain, and her
entire life for this opportunity. She didn’t factor Gabriel’s
transition into Death into the equation. She didn’t factor her
transition into a human, either. The overload of emotions, the
inability to read Gabriel’s mind to find out what he thought, so
she knew what to say or do.

How did she win him, if she had to guess
what he was thinking? How did she win him, if she wasn’t able to
control the human feelings?

Trust? As a goddess, she had no need for
those around her to trust her. They feared her, and this was what
kept them in check.

Gabriel didn’t trust her. This made her hurt
more. After all their years together, he didn’t trust that she
would do what she had to in order for them to be together.

The night before, he’d left his dying mate,
praying he was able to save her life. This morning, he left a
perfectly healthy woman – who looked like his mate and wore the
Immortal mating tattoo – and yet was distinctly different.

Gabriel was still reeling from the sudden,
inexplicable changes in his mate and the admittance by Deidre that
she had made a deal with Darkyn. Maybe he should’ve felt it. He
noticed something … missing the night before, soon after he left
her. The instinct was nothing more than a tiny warmth at the edge
of his mind. He barely noticed it was gone until this morning, when
it abruptly reappeared. He was able to sense her presence once more
without knowing she’d been gone from his reach for an entire
night.

What if she was in danger? What if Darkyn
hadn’t let her go? If he noticed her absence soon after it
occurred, would he have been able to follow and stop her deal with
Darkyn?

Right now, the only thing that made much
sense was killing shit.

Gabriel hacked at the demon before him then
straightened. Chest heaving, he gazed around the meat locker to
assess how many bodies were present. Immortals and death-dealers
battled the remaining demons at the warehouse-sized storage
facility where the demons had been gathering the human dead.

There were hundreds of them. He sheathed his
weapons, grim at the discovery. Rather than taking souls and
risking a run-in with him or his dealers, the demons snatched the
dead or killed whomever they wanted and brought them here, where
they’d have more time for soul extraction.

“Clear!” one of the Immortals shouted from
the far end.

“All good,” Landon, Gabriel’s
second-in-command, told him.

“Count and collect,” Gabriel ordered.

Landon issued the orders through the mind
message system. Gabriel moved through the meat locker, unaffected
by the cold after the half hour battle.

“Fifty four dead demons, three hundred dead
mortals,” Landon reported after a few minutes. “Fifteen dead
Immortals, three dead dealers.”

“Damn.” Gabriel’s attention was caught on a
faint green glow on a table in the middle of the stacks of dead
bodies. He crossed to it and saw a shallow bowl filled with water.
The glowing green gems on the bottom were souls the demons had
extracted. “This isn’t three hundred souls. Maybe twenty.” He
lifted a small soul-tracking device off the table, a round compass
whose edges were lined with symbols from a dead language too old
for him to read.

“They’re picking and choosing the ones they
want,” Landon said.

“Darkyn’s after someone in particular,”
Gabriel said. “They got another compass. Unlike me, they can read
it to find who they want.” He studied the compass. It was a new
one, recently made by the Ancient Immortal that Gabriel hired to
help, indicating another of his dealers had defected. “Find out who
this one was issued to.”

Landon accepted it. Gabriel drained the bowl
of water and placed the souls in his pocket.

“Darkyn doesn’t have the numbers to set up a
facility like this in too many places. He’s not in much better
shape than we are,” Rhyn, the leader of the Immortals and Gabriel’s
best friend, said as he approached. The half-demon rippled with
power. His silver gaze was wary and his muscular frame only
slightly smaller than Gabriel’s.

“Whatever he wants is around Atlanta.”
Gabriel’s thoughts drifted to Deidre. He initially suspected the
soul in Deidre’s tumor was what Darkyn sought. But the demon lord
had Deidre in his clutches and let her go.