Her Werewolf Hero (23 page)

“You'd think. But love is so great because it has to be. It is wide and everywhere. It is our reason for being. It sometimes breaks, and then you get to find it again. That's the cool thing about love. You can never run out of it. There exists an endless source.”

“Humans make up ridiculous explanations to ease their pain and suffering. I will only and always love my Nova.”

“I'm sorry for your loss. I truly am. But you can hold her in your heart forever. Do you, uh...have a heart?”

He nodded and rapped his chest. “It is glass and does not beat. Nova used to tell me she could hear it pulsing when she put her head to my chest. I would slide my fingers through her hair and know she was wrong, but still I believed her.”

He dropped his head, and Kizzy wasn't sure, but was he sobbing? Nah. Not a big strong soul bringer like him.

“You vex me, you humans,” he hissed as he stood and marched over to the black box. Grabbing it, he strode up to her. Kizzy flinched, which startled Claire awake.

“Very well,” Blackthorn said. “She has suffered for no good reason. And she has served her use.” He tore off the cover and thrust the box toward Kizzy. Inside, the heart pulsed slowly. “Take it out. I cannot touch an earthbound heart.”

Tentatively, she reached inside and picked up the slippery organ. It was warm and pulsed even more, so that she had to hold it with both hands to not drop it. Stunning to look upon something so vital to a person's being.

“Oh,” Claire said on a fading sigh. “Mine.”

Bending over Claire, Blackthorn drew the blade he'd taken from Bron down her chest. Her ribs seemed to gape open in expectation of receiving the heart.

“Put it back in,” he muttered as he stood over Kizzy.

“Uh...” Kizzy reacted. She pushed the organ back into Claire's chest. A bright beam of white light radiated out. And the cut sealed up, breaking off the glow. With an exuberant sigh the werewolf sat up straighter. Claire held a hand over her chest and nodded that she was okay.

“You know that was an act of love,” Kizzy said to the soul bringer.

“It was a means to show I am not doing this to harm but merely to gain that which I most need. If I could have gone after Nova myself, I would have. But I am not allowed in Purgatory. And besides. There is only one way to gain entrance to Purgatory.”

“With the heart?” Kizzy asked.

“The heart is merely a portal. Entrance requires but one condition.” He smiled the tiniest smile and then announced plainly, “Death.”

Kizzy nodded. Of course all souls in Purgatory were dead. Even the soul bringer's girlfriend had died to end up there. Keith was there. He'd died in the car crash.

Had she gone there when she had died on the operating room table? For Keith to have been able to clutch her heart? Maybe.

“He means Bron,” Claire whispered as she massaged her rib cage.

“What?”

The soul bringer strode across the warehouse back to the window where he'd held post. When he leaned a shoulder against the brick wall and turned a switchblade smile on her, Kizzy gaped.

“Bron? But—no. He's not dead.”

“Apparently,” Claire rasped, “he had to die to get there. I'm sorry, Kizzy.”

“But. No, that can't be. How can he find the sin eater if he's dead? And when he returns? He can't exist
and
be dead. No.”

Kizzy touched her chest, knowing that there would be no heartbeat beneath, yet feeling as if what was missing raced toward a cliff. “You bastard!”

She lunged up to stride across the floor. When she was but five feet from the soul bringer he flicked his fingers, which lifted her from her feet and sent her flailing back to land on the hard, concrete floor.

Kizzy screamed a loud and soul-crushing sound that was heard for acres beyond the abandoned warehouse.

And it was felt in Purgatory.

Chapter 24

B
ron heard the scream and knew it was Kizzy's voice. Was she here in Purgatory? Had the soul bringer somehow sent her in his wake? He wanted to know, to seek out the voice, but the bedamned soul riding his back proved a solid and insistent force. A soul should not feel substantial, and yet, its fingernails dug in at his shoulders painfully.

“Get off!” He shook his body, but the thing was weightless, and it mercilessly clung with its one arm. “Who are you?”

“You've got her heart. It's mine! I won't let her go!”

Ah, hell. This had to be the boyfriend. The bastard who had gripped Kizzy's heart from Purgatory and put her in this mess in the first place. Keith...something or other.

Clutching the heart to his chest with both hands, Bron twisted and attempted to swing the soul from his back—when he stepped into an icy wall. Turning to crush the soul with a forceful shove against the wall, he was rewarded with a throaty moan. The fingers at his shoulders slipped away.

Scrambling away from the maniacal thing, Bron ran as quickly as the slick ice surface would allow. Ahead loomed a dark forest of what appeared steel trees. Behind him he heard the soul shout that he would
never let her go
.

Cursing this madness, Bron ran. And when he entered the forest, razor-edged branches cut his cheeks, shoulders and thighs. But before he could ascertain a safe passage, the ground dropped away, and he fell into a muddy pit lined with long black, gleaming thorns that oozed a metallic substance from their pin-sharp tips.

Checking the heart he held had not taken any damage, Bron stepped to the center of the pit. It was about twenty-feet in diameter, but he maintained a mere five-foot circle in the middle safe from the thorns. He could use them as ladder rungs to climb out, but perhaps for the moment he was safe down here from Keith's soul. He had no idea how strong or powerful the souls were. Keith was dead. A figment of the man he had once been. Right?

This mission had turned into a proper adventure. And he was just fine with that. Hang on to the heart. Beat off the souls. Let the shrapnel fall where it will.

“Wh-who are you?” asked a shivering voice from the darkness.

Panting and scanning the sky above for signs of Keith, Bron checked again to ensure he hadn't let go of Kizzy's heart. “No one,” he gasped when he determined the voice didn't sound like a threat. “Just here for a stroll.”

The owner of the small voice crept forward, and clinging to a pointed thorn, her face was revealed. Heart-shaped, pale, with long black hair. And she looked solid. Not like the souls he had seen since arriving. More calm than Keith's soul and expressly fearful. He could smell her fear as he had not been able to scent anything from the lost souls.

She was...embodied. The soul bringer had said she would be.

“Are you Desdenova Fleetwood?”

She gaped at him.

“I've been sent by Blackthorn Regis to rescue you.”

“Oh, mercy. You must be his champion! I had hoped he would send someone to save me. I've been hiding in here. The demons. They want to take me to the Toll Houses for torture.”

“You're safe. I'll get you out of here.” Bron stretched his gaze up toward the gray sky. “I just need a moment to figure how.”

With a banshee howl that stirred all sorts of things in the darkness, the insistent Keith dropped from above. The annoying soul of Kizzy's ex-boyfriend swiped at him. Bron lashed out—with the hand that held the heart. Keith snarled, revealing extremely sharp teeth for a dead soul, and snatched at the heart. The slippery organ loosened in Bron's grip and...fell away.

“No!” He could not return to the mortal realm without that heart. And by all the gods, he was its protector.

He loved Kizzy. Life was not worth living without her. And he had come so far. Beyond all his better arguments against hurting Kizzy to help the enemy, he was here in Purgatory claiming a dead woman for a soul bringer who had threatened Kizzy's life. He would not fail now.

Bron swung and punched Keith's soul, but his fist soared right through the figment. The soul misted into a black curl and spiraled upward toward the pit opening.

The bottom dropped out of the pit, and it grew longer and deep. Suddenly falling, his instincts kicked in. Shifting to werewolf, Bron pushed off from the spiked wall of the pit with a foot and free-fell, diving, wishing his body would soar downward faster and faster. He could smell the heart. It smelled like her. The human woman who loved him without question.

And when he paralleled the falling heart, the werewolf snatched it with a clawed paw, curling the deadly instruments carefully about the slick organ. With his other paw, he grasped blindly and managed to grip one of the steel stakes jutting from the pit's wall. The pointed tip tore his paw in two. He yowled and dropped his hold. Thinking to reach for a hold with his other paw, at the last minute, he put the heart into his maw, gently, and managed to secure a grip.

Hanging there, the heart a pulsing reminder of all that he desired and cared for, the werewolf pulled himself upward using only his paws. He climbed the thorns, one paw over the other. It took utmost control not to relax his jaws and bite into the heart. When he neared the top, the diminutive sin eater, who had climbed out using the thorns, reached for him with a tiny, pale hand.

As did Keith's re-figmented soul.

The werewolf slashed its healed paw across the soul, reducing it to dust. Then he leaped from the pit and studied the delicate sin eater. He towered over the woman. Opening his maw he let the heart fall into a paw. He turned it over and over.

“Whose heart is that?” the woman asked. “Is it our passage out of here?”

In his werewolf form he could not answer, though he knew from her pleading tone what she had asked. Unsure what to do next, the werewolf tossed the sin eater over a shoulder and began to race across the vast desert.

He howled to a moon that did not exist in this terrible, desolate land. A place in which he did not belong. And when he squeezed the heart so hard it almost burst, suddenly the werewolf was sucked out from Purgatory.

* * *

Bron landed on his feet, in werewolf shape, and staggered across the concrete floor.

Someone yelled and rushed toward him.

Aware the air was lighter, cleaner, and that he was no longer in that vile place, he dropped to his knees, setting down the human he'd carried over his shoulder. The woman he'd claimed in Purgatory did not stand but instead dropped into a sprawl before him, arms splaying out at her sides, eyes closed. And he felt inclined to do the same. He was weak. His breaths...did not come, and yet he was conscious.

“Bron?”

He recognized the female voice as his mate. Or one he would take as his mate forever should she allow it.

“Nova!” Some other voice, sounded male. The figure leaned over the one Bron had carried up from Purgatory. With a glance to him, the man said, “Don't tell him he's dead, unless you want to seal his fate.”

Bron's werewolf heard the words, and yet in this animal form he had difficulty understanding them. And he wanted to return to his were form, but he was so exhausted. Even to think about shifting did not bring it on. So he collapsed, his head lolling onto the concrete. The heart pulsed against his chest.

“Is he really dead?” the female asked, and again, he didn't understand the words but sensed apprehension.

“As soon as he realizes he is dead, he will be,” the male voice answered.

The sudden, immense relief at knowing he was away from that awful place and near others he sensed were friends allowed him to release his werewolf shape and return to were form. Unfortunately, he was naked, so he squatted and bowed his head as Kizzy wrapped her arms about his shoulders and hugged him from the side.

“Kizzy,” he whispered. The name felt like gold to his soul.

“You did it! You found her. I knew you would.” Kisses to his face felt like redeeming rain after a forty-day drought. And he had walked through such conditions while in Purgatory. “Oh, Bron, I thought I'd lost you.”

“Why?” he croaked. “You didn't think I'd come back to you?”

Her sigh fell heavily against his cheek. “It's just...all that matters is you're here. You're solid. Real.” She placed a hand over his chest and frowned, then shook her head and hugged him. “Did I tell you I love you?”

Remembering he still clutched her heart to his chest he carefully pulled it away and held it before him. The handprint was gone. Did that mean it was...deactivated?

He must hope for that.

“I dropped it,” he said quietly. “Down a deep pit. But I caught it before it hit the ground. I almost lost you, Kisanthra.”

“Never.” She hugged him so he almost toppled. “I'm yours. You have my heart, wolf. You really do.”

“We must put it back. Where's the soul bringer?”

“Yes, we should take care of that before...” Tears shimmered in her eyes. He couldn't read her thoughts, but they seemed deep. “Uh, yes.” She swiped away a teardrop. “Just yes.”

Whatever it was she wasn't willing to say to him bothered him. And yet, he was so relieved to be back in her arms, he didn't linger on what was probably nothing.

The twosome looked aside to where Blackthorn knelt over Nova's body. For it was a body. The petite figure, dressed in black and with skin as white as cream, did not move. He didn't see her chest rise and fall with breath. She was dead.

“Can you bring her back to life?” Kizzy asked the soul bringer.

He shook his head. “It's never wise to bring a dead thing back to life. Much as I desire just that, I am no fool. She is gone.” He stroked the hair from her face. “But now she is safe.”

“But you said that Bron...?”

The soul bringer nodded. “As I've said to you, as soon as he realizes it...”

“I don't understand.” Bron looked at her. “Kizzy?”

“Thank you for your sacrifice, werewolf,” Blackthorn said. “You'll need clothes.” With a gesture from the soul bringer, Bron was suddenly clothed in the pants, shirt and boots he'd worn into Purgatory. “And thank you, Kisanthra Lewis, for the use of your heart. Now I must bring Nova to Above before it is too late.”

The soul bringer scooped up his dead lover into his arms.

“You have to put Kizzy's heart back first!” Bron insisted. He choked, finding it difficult to breathe. Was he even breathing? “What the hell?”

He'd endured much in Purgatory, but he was sound and of his body. The weird lack of breath must be some residual effects from his adventure.

“You can put it back in for her, wolf,” the soul bringer said. “Do it fast. She won't have much time after I'm gone. Nor do you. The bowie knife is over there.” He nodded behind him and then was gone.

Bron grabbed Kizzy's hands. “What does he mean by that? That I don't have time?”

“I don't know. What matters is you are holding my heart, lover, and I want it back. You know, because here is where it belongs.” She pressed a hand over her chest. “But don't think that doesn't mean you are the one who has ultimately won my heart.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, stroked his beard and sighed heavily.

Bron held the heart tenderly. “But to cut into your chest again... To cause you pain. Kizzy, I can't.”

“You have to! He said I didn't have much time. And you...” Her eyes fell over him, and tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don't understand all of this. Maybe the witch can help.” She picked up Bron's cell phone, which had been abandoned before he'd been sent to Purgatory. “I'm babbling. Don't listen to that stuff. Just...please?”

“A witch can help him,” Claire called from across the warehouse. “You know one close?”

Bron eyed his former wife. He'd not seen her for ages. She looked the same. Beautiful, ethereal even. And she was out of the cage, standing. Relief flooded him.

“The soul bringer put her heart back in while you were gone,” Kizzy said. She turned and asked Claire. “How do you know a witch can help him?”

Claire shrugged. “It's my best guess. Hand me the phone. Do you have a witch listed in your contacts, Bron?”

“Yes, but I don't know what you two are talking about.” He wheezed and clasped his chest. “What's going on?”

“Hurry, Kizzy.”

“Yes, do it,” she said, shoving his shoulder. “Please, lover?” She touched his cheek and then kissed him lightly. “I need you, Bron. Do this for us.”

She dashed for the blade, and Bron stood, ignoring his own weird symptoms. Time was of the essence. Hell, he had not signed on for this when he'd agreed to find and seize a legendary object for Acquisitions. But he wouldn't change meeting Kizzy for all the fortunes in the world. Yet what was up with Claire's insistence they call a witch? She scrolled through his contacts.

“Bron!”

Attention averted, his instincts reacted. When Kizzy slapped the knife into his hand he winced and shook his head. Growling, he resisted dropping the foul instrument that could serve as much pain as a slash from one of his claws.

“You did it before,” Kizzy said. Opening her shirt revealed an angry red line on her skin. “If you love me, you'll do it...” She gasped and wobbled. “I can't...”

“Kizzy?” Claire called. “Wait! Eglantine says not to put the heart in just yet!”

Kizzy began to fall, and Bron caught her about the waist and lowered her to the floor. Her eyelids fluttered. She gasped for breath. She looked at him with such wonder. And love.

The fluttery blouse she wore spilled up to reveal the bottom of the scar from the open-heart surgery. He pressed the knife blade to the red line. When the soul bringer had done this he had been able to staunch the pain. Bron had no such powers.

“Wait,” Kizzy gasped. “The witch says to...wait...”