Reap & Redeem (30 page)

She pushed up on her elbows. “My list! I must have left it at the chapel.”

“Nah, I picked it up. It’s in my pocket.”

“You saved it?”

“Yes.”

“How is it you keep saving it? And me? I would have never finished that list without you. Or almost finished it, anyway.”

“You did finish it.” He smoothed her hair off her face and framed her head with his palms.

“No. I had one left. The last one.”

“Number 60,
save a life?
What do you think you did when you sliced off Camael’s head like a pumpkin? You saved
my
life. Not once but twice. You saved me the first time we met. I was dead inside, Olivia. If not for you, I still would be. I can’t lose you again.” He pressed his forehead to hers.

“You won’t. I promise.” She pulled his hips down and arched up against him, pressing her core against his hard heat. “We’ll make a new list together. Let’s start with this.”

Kylen groaned against her breast and nipped at her with his teeth. He pressed against her slick core and pushed into her like a blade into a sheath. She was exquisite. Her heat wrapped around him, and her walls tightened against him, holding him inside. When she released, he drew back out, and then plunged into her again. She arched against him and pushed herself down the bed, driving him deeper into her.

Clutching her shoulders, he pinned her into place and held her as he found a rhythm and drove into her again and again. She clawed for purchase at his back and held onto him as he slid one big hand under the small of her back to press her full body against his. Blue light sizzled between them, and Kylen was sure the dormers must be glowing like fire from the outside.

He couldn’t believe that Olivia wanted him as he was: broken and raw and ruined. Hope flared like a beacon in his chest, but its nemesis, doubt, wasn’t far behind. How could he ever keep her safe enough?

With her new lease on life, he knew she’d be more than ready to live again. Even though she was strong and nearly invincible, she wasn’t
completely
invincible. How long before Camael or something or somebody else came after her again? He pushed those thoughts away.

All they could count on was the here and now. He was going to have to learn to live in it, one way or another. Shattering beneath him, she compressed her muscles around his shaft and squeezed his own release from him. He came inside her again and filled her with blue light, his essence, and a prayer for her long, long life.

And, selfishly, his own.

Chapter Forty-One

When Maeve felt the pull of newly dead souls from her watch station by Ruth’s bedside, she knew they were in trouble.

“Whoa, do you feel that?” Ruth asked, struggling to sit upright in the bed.

“Yeah.”

“What does it mean?”

“This many souls simultaneously in need of reaping? Disease. War. Disaster. In light of the current demon problem, I’m betting on disaster. The demon variety.”

“God help us.”

“That would be nice for a change.” Maeve moved to the doorway and pulled it open a crack, the bright light of the hallway filling the gap.

Outside Ruth’s room, orderlies and nurses continued with their normal busy hustle and bustle, oblivious to the coming threat, until the overhead intercom system sounded a series of sirens.

“This is a Code Black: Dangerous Intruder Alert. Repeat, a Code Black: Dangerous Intruder Alert. Please find a room and barricade all doors until the All Clear is sounded.”

Maeve watched for a moment as the staff spurred into action, and then closed their door. Dragging all the furniture she could move over to the doorway, she stacked it into a pile against the entrance. It was a ridiculous defense. One that would stop only the laziest of humans. Certainly not a determined demon.

What better target for a freshly minted horde of demons to cut their teeth on than a hospital? St. Mary’s Hospital held the population of a small city even when it
wasn’t
crowded. Lately, it was packed to the gills. Deacon had used his reaper powers of persuasion to ensure that Ruth got a private room, but most of the patients were packed like sardines in a can. Now that the demons weren’t following the rules, so to speak, and were tearing the souls from still-living victims, what was easier than attacking a patient? Weak, defenseless, easy pickings. It was a miracle it hadn’t happened sooner.

The question was fight or flight? If the horde was moving through the hospital, there was a chance they wouldn’t even make it to Ruth’s fourth-floor room on the first round, but it was a chance Maeve wasn’t genetically wired to take.

“What are we going to do?” Ruth said weakly as she flipped back the blanket covering her and tried to get out of bed. She managed to get her feet swung over the side before the pain of her wounds laid her back flat, sweat beading on her forehead and chest.

“Something that doesn’t make you pass out.”

Maeve wracked her brain to figure out their best option. Flashing with Ruth again was absolutely out of the question. Flashing without her to find Deacon was equally impossible.

That left staying and fighting.

She was good with a scythe, and she knew she could hold a demon attack at bay, but for how long? She could dispatch one or two easily enough, but more? She didn’t like her odds or her options.

Maeve hiked up her pant leg and drew out the push blade sheathed there, handing it to Ruth. “Here. It’s only good up close. Let’s hope you don’t have to use it.”

“We should just flash.”

“Absolutely. Not. Deacon will have my head if I flash you again. We’ll do this together. The cavalry will show up anytime. They will have felt the pull of souls as well, and they won’t be able to ignore it. Not when it’s this strong.”

“Thank you, Maeve.”

“Thank me when it’s over.”

Closing her eyes, Maeve listened hard to the sounds outside the doorway, trying to gauge the level of panic to determine how the horde was progressing. If the rumble from the floor below them was any indication, it felt like a one-way exit portal was being opened beneath the foundation of the hospital—Camael’s version of a Slip ’n Slide to Hell.

The evil was almost palpable as adrenaline flooded her heart. She wasn’t much for prayer, but she prayed now. She prayed for a way to protect Ruth from whatever was coming for them. It didn’t take long to discover who led the charge.

“Little reaper, little reaper, let me come in.” He taunted from the other side of Ruth’s door.
Camael.
Even without seeing him, she sensed the same power she’d felt in the cemetery when he’d taken Olivia. His essence was recognizable.

Goose bumps rose up across Maeve’s arms, and her heart hammered in her chest. Stepping to the side of the door, her back against the wall, she made eye contact with Ruth and raised one finger to her lips, indicating that Ruth should stay silent. Gripping her scythe in both hands for maximum force, she drew it back behind her head, ready to strike the first blow against whatever burst through the door.

Until this Meridian gig, Maeve had been a vanilla reaper. She’d only experienced demon hunting in books and training drills. Now she was a seasoned expert. Still, nothing she’d experienced or learned had prepared her to deal with a fallen angel.

“Let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be. I know you’re in there. You know I’m out here. How about we just get this all over with so we move forward?”

There was no way in hell that Maeve was going to make things easier for the bastard. If she stalled, maybe the Authority would make it here in time to help protect Ruth. Until then, Maeve was all that stood between the two of them and Camael’s diabolical plan.

“I see you’ve chosen the hard way. Of course.”

A discharge of light blasted open the door, pushing the furniture across the room in an avalanche. Camael stood just outside the doorway in another host body. He sent in two of his demon minions like lambs to the slaughter.

Maeve separated the head of the first with one blow of her scythe, and then sliced through the midsection of the second on the backswing. The demons streamed forth immediately, retreating to the hallway to search for another host. She should have tried to retrieve the demons, but there was no time to test her supposed new skills with Camael waiting in the wings. Seconds later, the host souls streamed forth, handicapping her efforts further. Maeve, her new reaper senses now heightened, was helpless to resist the pull of the souls despite the danger before her.

Before she could think about what she was doing, the souls streamed toward her like magnets and she consumed them.

In the melee, Camael had entered the room and was nearly at Ruth’s bedside. Helpless to defend herself, Ruth was visibly steeling herself for an attack.

As she snapped out of her trance, Maeve leaped across the room toward Ruth. When Camael turned to defend himself, Maeve saw that the flesh on his host’s face didn’t completely cover the skeleton beneath any longer. While his host was ever-changing, Camael couldn’t hide his true nature. She would recognize him in any form now.

Maeve stepped in front of Ruth in a protective gesture, pushing him away. Amused, Camael walked toward them with stiff, jerky movements and an odd cant to his head. He stopped to peel a dangly bit of flesh from his neck, flicked it across the room, and then smiled at them grotesquely. A hairline fracture appeared in his face, spidering across his cheek and down his neck.

“That’s enough, Camael.” Maeve backed up against Ruth, using her body to push the hospital bed closer to the wall.

“Easy now, reaper. As you can see, my host is…not up to par. I’m afraid I’ll need a new ride for my work on Earth. God knows I’d love a good reaper.” He smiled again and his left ear slid along the side of his face like a slug before falling to the ground. “Sooner would be better than later.”

“I don’t think so.” Maeve drew back her scythe, ready to administer what she hoped would be a fatal blow.

“Again with the hard way? You can make this all go away, my friend. I came here with the idea of inhabiting the new reaper. Considering her current state, it would be a matter of mercy. But if you want to make a deal with me, I could be persuaded to settle for you instead.”

Maeve laughed. “What makes you think either of us would agree to that? Besides, if you’re some mighty angel, why do you even need to inhabit a body?”

“Fallen angel. While the rewards are many, there have been a few…drawbacks.”

“Like spending your immortal life in Hell?”

“Actually, Hell is quite pleasing to me most days.”

The lights went out, leaving only the eerie illumination of the emergency backup lights and exit lights in the interior hospital room. Maeve was preparing to attack when the floor and walls bulged and began to tremor.

“You have two choices, dear Maeve. Allow me entry, or I’ll bring this entire hospital down upon you and your friend. I swear to Lucifer, I’ll open a portal right here in this room so large that it will swallow this place whole. I’m certain the thousand or so guests in this hospital would not survive. Such a pity. Even your reaper friend’s survival would be questionable from the looks of her. It will be a soul buffet!” Camael spread his arms wide and his fingernails fell to the tile floor like ice chips.

“From the looks of your host, it will be the last thing you do in that body.”

“We shall see.”

“Why are you doing this? You’re an angel.”

“When everything you love has been destroyed, perhaps you’ll understand.”

A shudder shimmied up Maeve’s spine and electricity crackled all around her, emanating from Camael in waves. She shuffled backward as a ragged fissure appeared along the floor between her and Ruth and began to open into a slivered chasm. Noxious fumes poured from the split as it grew wider and filled the room blurring Maeve’s vision.

Camael’s body vibrated with power.

“Stop!” Maeve cried out in desperation. “I’ll do it. Stop now.”

* * *

“No, Maeve!” Ruth pulled herself up and against the wall, but Maeve had already leaped across the growing chasm in the floor, willingly offering herself as a living sacrifice.

“Maeve! Maeve!”

Unable or unwilling to respond, Maeve made her way to Camael and stood before him. The chasm separated the women, its distance too great for Ruth to span in her weakened state even if she could get out of the bed.

Ruth gazed down into the abyss through the wreckage of the floors below her. Dizzied by vertigo, she tried to make sense of the tumult. Instead of being able to help Maeve, she was being forced to bear witness to this, this horror. All the humor vanished from Camael’s face, but what still remained of his host’s visage held a smug satisfaction. Ruth wanted to render that face in two with her blade, but she was powerless.

Please, God. Help us now!

Maeve dropped to her knees before Camael, her head hanging like a ragdoll in defeat. Her hand uncurled from her scythe’s handle, letting the blade clang to the floor—useless. Camael casually kicked the weapon into the chasm behind her.

“If I do this, you’ll stop this madness. You’ll close the portal and you won’t harm Ruth. If you don’t promise me that, you’ll never have me.”

Camael sneered. “I think we’re beyond negotiation.”

“You can’t take my body if I resist, and I can make things very difficult for you. I want your assurance. Ruth lives and the portal closes. Say it.”

Fueled by Camael’s rage, the tremors increased in intensity—hanging pictures vibrated off their nails from the hospital’s walls and fell to the floor, and Ruth’s dinner tray and water crashed off the bed cart. Screams rang up from the floors below as concrete and steel shifted and bodies and equipment plunged toward the split.

Camael’s fury was clear but so was his need. “Agreed.”

He spanned the distance between them and grasped the sides of Maeve’s head, pulling her body up long and straight, her toes hovering inches above the floor.

“Do you freely accept Camael into your body, forsaking control and command of your form from this day forward?”

Ruth watched as Maeve’s body became seemingly boneless. A soft whimper nearly escaped her own throat on Maeve’s behalf. She stuffed it down and deliberated on the distance of the chasm once again. Maybe…