The Beautiful and the Damned (20 page)

Cyn shrugged. “Whatever he is, I’m glad he was there. He slowed down Declan enough
for me to get a head start.”

The hellhound raced beside them the whole way back to Pete’s Salvage Yard. Keeping
up an easy pace. When they reached the gates, he leapt over them and disappeared inside.

They rode in silence the rest of the way back to the rectory, and Avian let Cyn off
at the kitchen door before putting his bike away. He didn’t realize that she hadn’t
gone inside yet but was still watching him when he dropped the torn jacket into a
heap on the ground and set his wings free.

“Hey!” Cyn suddenly called. “Are you going up there?” She pointed to the roof of the
church.

“Yeah,” Avian said, and cursed himself for even
thinking
what he was going to say next. “Wanna come?”

C
yn didn’t give herself any time to think before she nodded. She took a step toward
him. “So, we just . . . go up?”

“We just go up.”

Pushing aside her fear of heights, Cyn closed the gap between them. She could feel
the warmth radiating off of him. It was like having her own personal heater.

Thirteen snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her tightly against his chest.
“So you don’t fall,” he said.

Heat rushed to her head.
It doesn’t mean anything.

But that didn’t stop her from wrapping her arms around him in return.

The ground suddenly let go of her feet, and she looked
down. They were rising higher and higher.
Oh my God, we’re flying!

They crested above the roof of the church, and he glided down to an overhang with
a ledge. The narrow ledge offered enough room for one person to stand, but with two
it was a tight fit. Cyn shifted her weight to let go of him, but her foot was too
close to the edge, and she jerked off balance.

Thirteen’s grip around her waist tightened, and he pulled her back. “I got you.”

“Can I just . . . ?” Cyn asked before wrapping her arms tighter around him. He was
ridiculously warm—
No, not warm. Hot. Oh my God, he is
so
hot
—and she could feel his well-defined chest move slowly up and down beneath her ear
as he inhaled and exhaled. Something hung around his neck under his T-shirt, a medallion
of some kind, and he could feel it next to her cheek.

“What’s this?” she asked, reaching for it without even thinking.

Thirteen’s hand slid down and covered her wandering fingers. She pulled away, and
he removed the necklace from his shirt. He glanced down at it, and in the moonlight
Cyn could see it was a rectangular piece of bronze metal with words carved into it.

“ ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future,’ ” he
said. “Oscar Wilde. It was a quote Father Montgomery used to say to me, so I had this
made.”

“Nice thought, but it’s not true.”

“The saint part? Or the sinner part?”

“The sinner part.” Cyn glanced up at the stars. They were so close. “Some sins are
too big to ever recover from.”

“Are you talking from experience?”

His voice rumbled against the ear she had pressed to his chest.

“Yeah. I am.”

He stayed quiet, and Cyn contemplated whether or not she should spill her secret.
He’d said that he knew what it was like to wish he could take something back. Maybe
he’d understand what it was like to carry such a weight on her shoulders all the time
too.

Taking a deep breath, Cyn said softly, “Declan was right about his brother. I murdered
Hunter.”

She waited for him to pull away. To stare down at her with horror. She’d just admitted
to committing a major crime.

But he didn’t say anything.

Cyn felt compelled to fill the awkward silence. “I don’t know what Declan was involved
in, but it didn’t have anything to do with his brother. I woke up next to Hunter in
bed, covered in his blood, and I . . . I panicked. He wouldn’t wake up, and there
was a knife on the floor, so I took it with me and threw it into
a river on my way out of town. I don’t know why I didn’t stay. I guess I didn’t want
to go to jail.”

He still didn’t say anything.

“So you see why I don’t believe that every sinner has a future, right?” she said.
“At least, I certainly don’t. Unless you mean a future filled with constantly running.
Always looking over my shoulder and wondering when the cops are going to finally catch
up with me.”

She looked up at him and gripped the edges of his shirt, almost desperately. “Are
you going to say anything? I just admitted to killing my boyfriend, and you haven’t
even blinked.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“What?”
Cyn shook her head. “You’re sure I had my
reasons
for killing Hunter? And what would those be?”

Thirteen stared down at her. “I don’t know. But I live in a world that’s not black
and white. There’s a lot of gray.”

“And you think this is just one of those gray areas?”

He didn’t tell her that when she reached for his necklace and he touched her fingers,
he got another flash of the scene with Hunter. Just like when he’d woken her up from
the bad dream when she was sleeping on the couch, there was no actual
memory
of the killing.

Just the after.

“Yeah. I do.” His gaze shifted to her mouth, and suddenly another memory was filling
his head. The memory of what she tasted like.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said crossly.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to kiss me again.”

Damn.
His pride was actually stung a bit by that one. “Was it that bad? Shelley never—”

His tone changed when he said her name, and Cyn glanced up at the trace of longing
that was still there. “Who’s Shelley?”

“She was someone I loved.”

“Did something happen to her?”

“She was an Echo, and she died.”

His jaw flexed, and she could tell that he was clenching his teeth.

“Why did you come looking for me?” Cyn said suddenly.

Thirteen held her gaze. “I knew the cop was bad news. I made a call to a friend of
mine and found out the cop had a brother named Hunter who was killed. I put two and
two together. Figured it was your Hunter.”

“That’s all there was to it? Nothing . . . more?”

Before he could answer, she said, “Because that kiss didn’t mean anything to me. I
want you to know that.”

He glanced away, and at the same time a crack of thunder came from overhead. A slight
breeze blew across the roof of the church, and Cyn shivered. Even being this close
to him, she was still cold.

“Let’s go inside the house before the rain starts,” he finally said. “And it didn’t
mean anything to me, either. I don’t get involved with Echos.”

C
yn forced herself to let go of Thirteen as soon as her feet touched the ground. It
was good that the kiss didn’t mean anything to him. That meant they could skip the
awkward do-you-or-don’t-you-have-feelings-for-me part.

They went inside the house, and he went straight to the coffeemaker. “Wouldn’t some
whiskey be better?” Cyn suggested.

“Maybe later.”

Although she would have preferred a shot of Jack to warm her up, she had to admit,
some fresh coffee sounded good. “Irish coffee?”

“I’m not Irish.” He ground up some coffee beans, and Cyn sat down at the table.

“Speaking of not being Irish. What exactly
are
you? You said you have a demon side, but why the wings? And why are they black?”

“I’m half demon, half angel.”

Cyn felt her eyes go wide. “You . . .
are
? Part angel? Seriously?”

The coffee started percolating, and he joined her at the table. “My father was a demon,
my mother was an angel. I don’t know why my wings are black instead of white. They
just are.”

“Is that what a Revenant is—half angel, half demon?”

“No. I’m the only one like me.”

“But there
are
other Revenants out there? Just not like you?”

“The other Revenants are reapers. When the earth was first formed, there were originally
six teams to help with reaping human souls. Each team was made up of one angel and
one demon. To make sure heaven and hell were equally represented.”

“Originally?”

The coffeemaker beeped, and he stood up. “Over time, humans started multiplying like
rabbits, and the six teams of reapers weren’t enough. So they started working exclusively
with Shades. Shades are the only humans allowed to stay on earth after they’ve died.
They’re keepers of sacred burial grounds, cemeteries, sanctuaries.”

He pulled down two mugs from the cabinet and poured steaming black liquid into each
one. “Shades have to find their other half during their lifetime in order to do their
job as guardians. After they find their partner, Revenants help them cross over after
death to become these gatekeepers.”

Cyn reached for her cup, shrugging away his offer of milk and sugar, and wrapped her
hands around it. “But you said ‘originally.’ Does that mean there are more than six
teams of Revenants now? Are there different Revenants?”

“When the original teams got tired of doing their job, they recruited Shades to take
their place. So there are more than six teams of Revenants now, but none of them are
the original angels and demons.”

“And you were never part of these teams. That’s why you’re Thirteen. You were the
odd one out.”

His grip tightened on the handle of his cup. “I was just a mistake made when a demon
seduced an angel. Two Revenants fucked up, and I was the end result.”

“So that makes you . . .”

“Very old.”

“Wow.” Cyn took a sip of her coffee. Then she said, “So why don’t you do the Revenant
job too? Help these Shades cross over?”

“I stay out of their way, and they stay out of mine. To say there’s no love lost between
me and the other Revenants would be an understatement.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t like that I do my own thing. But if they’re not going to neuter
the vamps, tramps, and demons that are out there, then I will. Someone has to.”

“So you hunt monsters? Judge, jury, and executioner style?”

“You could say that.”

“
Anything
that’s supernatural you just . . . get rid of?”

“Not everything. I make exceptions.”

“I guess that’s why you wear black all the time, then.” She grinned at him. “To match
your soul.”

“I wear black because it hides bloodstains better.”

“Ah, I should have known.” Cyn went to set her cup down on the table, but it slipped
out of her hands.

Thirteen caught it before it fell.

“Thanks.” She glanced down at his outstretched arm. It was the one covered in ink.
A small “13” was tattooed near his wrist. The word
treize
was above it,
tredici
below it. Other words and symbols crisscrossed his arm:
Tretten
,
dreizehn
,
tizenhárom
,
treisprezece
,
treze
 . . .

“Do these all mean ‘thirteen’?” Cyn asked. She knew some
French and Italian from the eight high schools she’d bounced around between while
her mom chased boyfriends.

He nodded. “One for every language that I know.” Her eyebrows shot up in surprise
as she looked at his completely covered arm again. “I know a lot of languages.”

Cyn snorted and took the coffee cup back from him. Standing, she took it over to the
sink and rinsed it out. “So, since you know so much about languages and Revenants,
do you know anything else about Echos? More specifically, what I have to look forward
to? Is it just going to be one soul popping in after another and frequent blackouts
for the rest of my life?”

She turned to face him. “Declan said something to me about following me the night
I went to the gas station and seeing the gun. He said I had it to my temple. Like
I was going to pull the trigger. Did you know about that? Did you see that in my memories
when you read me?”