Her Werewolf Hero (22 page)

“I don't know what he has to do,” Kizzy offered.

And in that moment Bron knew the answer. This day Kizzy's nightmare would come true.

He lifted his head and met the soul bringer's bullet gaze. A triumphant defiance held him frozen. He couldn't speak. Couldn't imagine what it would be like. Only knew this sacrifice was only just getting started.

“Bron Everhart will be my champion. He will be the one going to Purgatory,” Blackthorn said. “Since I am unable. Blade!”

The bowie knife flew out of the sheath at Bron's hip and landed with a
shing
in the soul bringer's grip. “Get over here, wolf. You've just become my heart-plucker. Remove all electronic devices. They will prove a detriment in Purgatory. This has to happen fast.”

“No, I...” His legs wouldn't move. He dumbly patted his pocket with the phone in it.
Remove all electronic devices
sounded so pedestrian. As if he were merely stepping onto an airplane security scanner...

He couldn't step up and rip out Kizzy's heart. All the armies in all the world couldn't make him. There was nothing...

He'd made a vow. He would not break that vow as he had with...

Claire sat in the cage, intently focused on the three of them.

“Please, Bron.” Kizzy's brown eyes teared, and her hand extended, awaiting his. “You have to do this. You're the only one who can save us all. Claire. The soul bringer's love. And me.”

Fuck. Three women depending on him?

When he felt sure he should fall to his knees and yell for mercy, Bron instead lifted his chin and stepped forward. Tugging out his cell phone, he absently handed it to Kizzy. He stook another step. He nodded once.

And the soul bringer dragged the blade down Kizzy's chest.

Chapter 23

T
he knife that cut open her chest did not hurt. In fact, Kizzy had to look down to see that the blade was actually against her skin. She did not bleed either.

The soul bringer stood, stretching back his arm, fingers gripping the bloodless knife. Bron then kneeled before her, taking in the long, open gape in her chest. He looked as if he could be sick. Tears dropped from his eyes. He clenched a fist before him. Kizzy wanted to hug him, to reassure him that she was not in pain, but all she could manage was a few tears, as well.

“Quickly, wolf,” the soul bringer stated. “Pluck out her heart. Or I'll have to cut her open again.”

“I'm so sorry, Kisanthra,” Bron said. “I promised I would never hurt you.”

“You're not,” she reassured. “I'm not in pain. Just find the sin eater and come back to me. Promise me that.”

He nodded. “I will. You are everything that I live for now. But I...how can I take out your heart?”

“Grip it,” the soul bringer instructed. “And pull. Come on, wolf, she doesn't have all day.”

“Back off!” Bron growled at the man.

Holding his hand over her open chest, his fingers shook, then suddenly he gripped his fist tightly and nodded once. He whispered, “I love you,” then plunged his fist into her chest.

Kizzy sucked in a gasp. The weird, muffling sensation of something moved in her chest, yet she panted to breathe through it. No pain, just an odd sense of being possessed. Claimed. By a man who had just said he loved her.

And yet, the nightmare had just come true.

When he pulled out his fist, she felt something leave her. A warmth. Vitality. Life?

Bron's bloody hand held a beating heart. She gaped at it. That was her life. Out of her body. And yet, she was breathing. Alive.

For now.

“What is your woman's name?” Bron asked the soul bringer, “And how will I find her?”

“Desdenova Fleetwood is her name. She goes by Nova. She will be the only embodied soul in Purgatory. Slight of frame and dark hair. The most beautiful woman in creation.”

“Yes, yes. They always are.” Bron bowed over Kizzy. His teared eyes searched hers and then he kissed her mouth. “You okay?”

Probably not, but he didn't need to know that. “Hurry,” she whispered. “I love you.”

“She will be fine unless you drop the heart,” the soul bringer said. “It is your return ticket back to this realm. Now. Turn it to grip it directly over the handprint, and that should—”

When Bron turned the heart in his grasp, suddenly a brilliant white light exploded out from his hand, and then he was gone. Only a few blood droplets stained the concrete floor where he'd just knelt.

* * *

Bron had been gone twenty minutes. Kizzy wandered the floor, feeling better when she moved. She was light-headed. The cut on her chest had closed up, and she'd buttoned up her shirt. Somehow, she felt her missing heart as an emptiness in her very soul. It ached and pulsed in her core. And yet, nothing beat in her chest. No heartbeat. How wrong was that?

Had she done the right thing? Whether or not she survived this, she wanted to feel as if she had done the right thing. But that hinged on her trusting the soul bringer.

The man who held her life in his hands stood by the dirty window, his gaze seemingly on her and Claire, but Kizzy sensed he would close his eyes on occasion. Thinking deep thoughts? The asshole. He'd involved too many to save his girlfriend. His
dead
girlfriend. Wasn't like Bron could bring her back from Purgatory alive, was it? Of course, if her soul could be saved from eternal torture, then Kizzy supposed the trip was worth it.

Bron had been forced to commit an unspeakable act. It had killed him to pull out her heart. And he had sworn that was something he'd never do so long as he lived. Poor guy. She would never forget the look in his eyes as he'd held her heart before him. In his mind he had wounded her deeply, irreparably. So she had to stay alive to prove him wrong. When he returned he would put her heart back in her chest, and all would be well.

She remembered what Eglantine had said about the soul bringer needing a champion to go into Purgatory for him. If only they had known then what they knew now. Would Bron have agreed to do it all over?

Yes. He was that kind of honorable.

She hoped his trip would not take long. For her sake, and for the sake of the poor woman in the cage. The werewolf sat on the floor, her face tilted against a cage bar, eyes closed.

Kizzy spun about and faced the soul bringer. “Why must you keep her in that cage? It's not as though she can hurt you. She's weak. Should she and I join forces, we wouldn't be able to cause you an annoyance.”

The soul bringer's eyes opened slowly. They were fathomless voids. With a smirk, he lifted a hand slightly and made a flicking motion with two fingers. The cage door swung open.

“Stay in here,” he muttered. “I can only maintain your vita within a certain range. The farther away from me you get, the quicker you die. Both of you.”

Kizzy rushed over to the cage. Claire scooted out from inside, but she was too weak to stand. When Kizzy took her hand and studied her face, the werewolf smiled at her and said, “I like you. You've got spunk. I tend to overlook humans with their weaknesses. What has made you so strong?”

Kizzy helped Claire to sit on the floor and lean against a rusted iron column. She maintained a firm hold of her hand. Touching another person seemed to ground her. To remind her that she was still alive.

“I've always been independent,” Kizzy said. “But I think dying eight months ago following a car accident really put my head on straight. I don't take bullshit from anyone anymore. Unless, of course, he's an asshole soul bringer.”

Both women eyed their keeper, who kept one eye aimed on them.

“How are you?” Kizzy asked. “Are you okay?”

“If I may be so bold...why do you care?”

“I care because you are a fellow woman, and you are an innocent in this matter. Whatever went on between you and Bron centuries ago is none of my business. I want you to survive this and to be free.”

She smirked. “Are you Bron's newest wife? Lover?”

“Not his wife. Lovers...?” She didn't need to lie to this woman, nor did she want to. “We are. Did you two ever...divorce?”

Claire shook her head. “The pack considered our marriage annulled the moment he was banished. Served him right. Unfaithful bastard.” She sighed and chuckled softly. “I had thought I'd gotten over him and what he did to me way back in the nineteenth century. I have lived a good life. I remarried the new pack leader and had seven children. I'd completely wiped Bron Everhart from my heart. And now, look. My heart has been removed, and all I can think about is the man who originally broke it.”

“He's told me a little about that time. This isn't an excuse, but I suspect he was a bit of a rogue. Untamable. Not much for settling down?”

“You nailed that one, sweetie. Unfortunately for me. I chose not to give him another thought the night he left the pack. Merely assumed he'd taken his bastard child and got on with his life.”

“You don't know? Isabelle, his daughter, she died. She was put out by the pack in the freezing winter. When Bron was finally released from the compound, he found her, frozen to death.”

“Oh,
mon Dieu
.” Claire gasped and turned down her head. Her hands shook on her lap.

Kizzy touched her wrist, but the woman flinched away. “It's what he told me.”

“I had no idea,” she whispered frantically. “I...I was the one who ordered the girl put out. But I hadn't thought she would—as I've said, I never consider humans and their weaknesses. We wolves can survive the cold. Oh, mercy. I hurt him so cruelly.”

Kizzy pulled the woman into a hug. “It's over. You have both survived. And when Bron returns from Purgatory, you can get your heart and walk away from him forever.”

Claire nodded. “We were both terrible to one another. I must apologize to him. You...you love him?”

“I think I do. I said it to him. We've only known one another a few days, but...yes... I do.” Kizzy clasped her hands before her mouth and smiled to think over the past few days and their whirlwind accidental romance amidst a crazy chase and run. “He's a brave and honorable man. I think he's changed since that time long ago when you knew him.”

“That happens to a person over the centuries. He needed to grow up.”

“He has. You would be proud of him.”

“But the girl. Oh, I am so sorry.” Claire sniffed back a tear, and Kizzy clasped her hand. The werewolf gave it a squeeze. “So how are you? Are you okay?”

“I'm weak, but I know Bron will find the sin eater and bring her back. We'll both be okay. He'll save us.”

Claire clasped her hand tightly. Nothing else to say. They would hold vigil for the man who had touched their hearts in manners so opposite yet long lasting.

* * *

It didn't take Bron long to get a handle on the conditions of Purgatory. They were ever changing, vile, and not something a man could predict. One moment he trod sun-baked earth, sweating and struggling to hold the slippery heart in hand. The next moment he walked into the teeth of a blizzard, which singed his nostrils and eyes with an icy burn.

Clutching the heart to his chest to secure his hold, he stepped onto soggy ground. His boots suctioned into mud as red as blood. And the meaty smell made him wonder if it were not mud but in fact blood. He wouldn't think about it.

He saw...things. Dark, shadowy figments that were most often human shaped yet with black spaces for eyes, mouth and nostrils. Others were more solid, perhaps souls attempting to cling to the human form they once held? When he walked near one they swayed away from him, as if fearing his presence, and misted into nothing.

Damned eerie, the lot of it. He was sure he hadn't felt his own heartbeat since arriving.

And when he came upon a bridge that stretched into the foggy distance, he decided that must be the path to a Toll House. CJ had explained there were twenty that the departed soul must pass through. He didn't need to go there. And if the sin eater was not allowed to pass through the Toll Houses, then she would not be there either.

He tried calling out her name, Desdenova, and then Nova, but his voice echoed back to him, and the air thickened like pudding, clogging his throat so he struggled to take a breath. And yet, breathing felt...odd. Unnecessary. So he didn't try again.

He neared another soul. A mostly solid soul that appeared as a man in dark clothing. His arm was torn off, and his scalp was bloodied. Must have been what he looked like when death took him. And once closer, he was more misty than solid. He spied Bron—his black eyes averting to the heart—and his mouth dropped open.

“Kizzy's heart!” The soul lunged for him.

The creature jumped onto Bron's back and snaked an icy hand down to claw for the heart.

* * *

The soul bringer hadn't moved from standing before the window. Kizzy felt Claire's head heavy on her shoulder. She had fallen asleep, which was a good thing. Better than being alert and having nothing to do but worry whether or not she would ever again get back her own heart.

A heart that sat in a black box on the floor in the middle of the warehouse. As if a forgotten gift after the birthday party celebrants had left for cake in the next room. Could
she
put it back in Claire's chest for her? Probably not. But the need to do something more than sitting was strong.

She remembered the digital camera and tugged it from her pocket. Clicking a picture of the box, she then took a few of the soul bringer, silhouetted by the high sun beaming through the open window. He didn't notice. The camera mechanism was silent. These were photos she might never publish. Not without a wild explanation of what they really were.

What if she did publish them and people believed? Would there be hysteria? Fascination? Laughter? Was the mass population really ready to believe in all the creatures that only moved about on the silver screen and in the pages of books?

Publishing such photos was a big decision. She should not take it lightly. And she would not. But she couldn't stop taking the pictures; it was how she recorded life. As strange as it had become.

She hoped Bron got back soon, so she could record him. To commit him to pixels. To know that he was alive.

“It's been hours,” she called across the room. “How long will this take?”

“You starting to think your hero has abandoned you?” Blackthorn taunted.

“If he gives up on me, he gives up on you, as well.”

The soul bringer shrugged and turned toward her. Leaning against the wall, he crossed one ankle over the other and peered across the concrete floor at her. “I am not without mercy.”

“Could have fooled me. You sent harpies after us.”

“I thought they could get the heart out for me.”

“Nice.” Kizzy kicked out her feet before her, and when she wanted to put her hands behind her neck, she did not because that might wake Claire. “How'd you ever fall in love if you're so all about the lacking emotions?”

“Nova showed me what love is.”

“A sin eater and a soul bringer.” There were so many wonders she had yet to discover. “How long were the two of you together?”

“It seems like mere moments, but I was allowed a few decades with her. I would give my life to have Nova back. Alive.”

But if she had died, then Bron would be bringing back a dead woman, right? Kizzy wanted to ask, but as much as she hated the guy, she couldn't put that terrible question out there.

“I understand that. Love is great. I've been in love a couple times.”

“I don't understand the human penchant to love so often,” Blackthorn said. “A love so great should only happen once.”