The Beautiful and the Damned (23 page)

She wasn’t going to make it back.

Joe gave up after the tenth try. His eyes were red, and he rubbed a hand across his
face. “You said you had this under control. That this would work. It didn’t work!
She’s fucking dead! Do you realize what you just made me do?” He stared listlessly
at the medical supplies littering the ground around them. “What did I do?” he said
softly.

Avian didn’t notice that his wings had come unbound as he stood up and made his way
over to Cyn. He
knew
that she
didn’t kill Father Montgomery. Just like he knew she didn’t kill Hunter. The damn
demon inside him had taken advantage of the fact that she thought she was a murderer,
and now he was the one who had to make it right.

Crouching down on one knee, he gathered her limp body and put his ear to her chest.
Her lips were blue. A streak of blood dribbled out of her left ear.
Breathe, damn it. Breathe!

But she was gone.

Placing a hand on Cyn’s forehead, he threw out five hundred years of promises to himself
and tapped into the
other
side. As much as it was a struggle to hold the demon side at bay, the angel side
didn’t do him any good, so he’d never had any use for it.

Now it was time to see if it was good for something.

Memories of Cyn and Hunter laughing at an old movie, smiling as they cooked breakfast
together, and running through a sprinkler late at night, blasted through him. Then
they were lying in the back of an old pickup truck. Looking up at the stars. And when
Cyn looked over at him, he almost thought for a minute that she was seeing
him
instead of Hunter.

He would have given anything to keep that look of happiness on her face.

Then Vincent surfaced. Cyn’s face twisted as his features took over hers. A viscous
tarlike substance creeped over the edges of the
picture, but then it was suddenly pulled back. Vincent’s face stretched into a parody
of itself, and he silently screamed. The memory started to swirl like it was being
sucked down a drain, the last vestiges of black trying to hold on tightly around the
edges, clawing for that last little bit that he didn’t want to give up, but it didn’t
work. He was pushed out. Pushed on. And he slowly disappeared.

The memories changed one last time. Flashes of a gardener tending to her rows of plants,
an earth witch gathering herbs by the light of a full moon, and a professor teaching
his class the intricacies of
F. Scott
Fitzgerald. They were the souls who had lived through Cyn.

And then Shelley’s face came into view. Grinning as she slid behind the wheel of a
car she’d just charmed someone out of. Crying while she read a sad book. Contemplating
the best way to organize her closet. . . .

The sound of Cyn inhaling deeply pulled Avian back to the present. And when she took
a couple of short, jerky breaths and looked up at him with wide green eyes, he knew
then that a part of Shelley would always be inside her.

Because Shelley had been one of the souls to pass through her.

A
vian’s phone rang in his jacket pocket while he was still looking down at Cyn, and
when he moved to answer it she saw his wings.

They weren’t black anymore. They were snowy white.

“What happened?” she asked. But other than giving them a brief glance, he didn’t have
time to answer. Moving farther away, he took his call.

“Hey, Mint. You got good news for me?” There was a pause, then he said, “Yeah. It
worked. We’re here now, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. Thanks. I owe you one.”

All Cyn could do was stare at his wings. In the dark, they were especially vivid.
With his horns now gone, and the burn
marks covered, Avian looked like one of those fallen angels they liked to plaster
all over romance-book covers.

He scowled when he turned back around and caught her staring. “Sorry,” Cyn said. But
she wasn’t really.

Avian took his jacket off and folded his wings in before carefully putting the jacket
back on. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “These are going to stick out.”

“Hair dye,” Cyn offered. “Black hair dye should work.”

“Great. Like I need one more thing on my to-do list.”

For some reason, that struck her as absurdly funny, and Cyn laughed at him.

“Is that amusing?” Avian asked.

Cyn grinned. “Actually, I find everything amusing right now. I feel good.
Really
good. I can’t believe it actually worked. Vincent’s gone!” She stood up and looked
around. Everything felt different.

Then she noticed that Joe’s orange toolbox and medical supplies were gone. “Hey, where’d
Joe go?”

Avian glanced around too. “Guess he took off. Things weren’t looking too good at first.”

Cyn opened her mouth to ask what happened but then shook her head. “You know what?
I don’t want to know. It’s all good now. And even if I’m not totally fixed, if another
soul comes along, at least it’s not Vincent.”

They started heading back through the cemetery, and Cyn couldn’t believe how good
she felt.
Happy.
Which was something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not even the realization that
if Joe was gone then their ride was gone too could dampen her mood. They could always
walk back to pick up Avian’s motorcycle.

When the cemetery gates came into view, Cyn finally brought up the car situation.
“You know that if Joe’s gone, we don’t have a ride, right?” she said. “I mean, we
can walk. It’s no big deal, but I—”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Avian said.

“Why not?”

“Because we can get a ride with him.”

Avian pointed beyond the gates, and Cyn looked to see what he was pointing to. A white
car was sitting there, with a guy standing by the front of the hood.

The guy took a step toward them, and Cyn’s heart stopped for the second time.

“Hunter?”

~  ~  ~

For a dead guy, Hunter Vasquez looked pretty good.

As she stood staring at him, Cyn wondered if this was all a trick and she was dead
too. If she’d never really woken up after Avian stopped her heart.

“Can you see him?” she finally said. “Avian, can you see a guy standing over there?
Is he . . . alive? Or dead?”

Avian took a minute to answer. “That’s something you should ask him.”

Cyn frowned, but Hunter started moving toward her. “Cyn!” he called out. “Cyn!”

“Keep it down!” Cyn started walking to him. “Don’t you have any respect for a cemetery?”

Hunter pulled back and waited for her to come the rest of the way. As soon as she
got close enough to the car, she could see a bouquet of red roses sitting on the passenger
seat. “Either this is the most cliché afterlife dream
ever
, or this shit is really happening,” she muttered.

Crossing her arms, she stopped just short of him. “What. The. Fuck. Is. This.”

“I know this is confusing, but I—”

“You were dead, Hunter. I
saw
it with my own eyes. I
killed
you!”

Hunter shook his head and held out his hands in a pleading gesture. “I know you think
that, and I’m sorry. I never thought it would go this far.”

“
What
would go this far? Were you playing some kind of sick frat-boy prank on me?”

Avian came up behind Cyn and stopped beside her. “In case you haven’t figured it out
yet, you didn’t kill your boyfriend.”

Cyn whirled around to face him. “Oh, yeah, you think? Did
you
have something to do with this too? Is this all one big joke? Who the hell are you
to—”

“I’m the guy who realized you didn’t kill him when I read your memories and didn’t
see it there. The only memory you had was of waking up next to him. So I made a call
to a friend in Louisiana, Mint, and he looked into it. He’s the one who gave me the
dirt on Hunter’s brother, by the way.”

“So, what, you were, like, working some case or something? Playing detective?” Cyn
spat.

“No. I was trying to help someone.” Avian moved closer and held her gaze.
“You.”

Looking up at him made Cyn suddenly remember what it was like to be right up against
his chest, and the back of her neck grew warm. She readjusted her wig. “What happened,
then? Why did I wake up in bed covered in blood?”

Avian looked pointedly over at Hunter.

“There are these . . . people that I know,” Hunter said slowly. “Actually, my brother
knew them, and he helped me get some work with them.”

Cyn’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh my God, Hunter. Was it the vamps?”

“You know about them?” Hunter’s face was filled with surprise.

“Yeah. Your fucking brother stalked me and then kidnapped me because he thought
I
was the one responsible for your murder.” She laughed harshly. “Or so-called murder.
He said he was working with some vampires that were going to turn him.”

Hunter nodded. “The Navarro coven.”

“So, when were you going to tell me about this little surprise?” Cyn asked. “And how
does your not being dead play into it?”

“You weren’t supposed to be brought into it at all. Those were the rules. I did the
job for them, they left you alone. But then Declan mentioned that he wanted to be
turned, and somehow they thought I wanted to be turned too.” He glanced away. “In
order to do that, you drink their blood and then . . . you have to die.”

“So that’s what happened. One of these little vamp buddies of yours ‘killed’ you to
turn you. And I got stuck picking up the pieces.”

“You didn’t
exactly
pick up the pieces, Cyn.” Hunter’s face turned hard. “You just left me there. You
stole a car and ran.”

“Because I thought you were
dead
!” Cyn exploded. “And I
thought I was the one who went psycho and killed you! Do you have any idea what that
was like, Hunter? The hell that you put me through letting me think I was a
murderer
?”

“I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”

“That’s the part that hurts the most.” Cyn’s voice was sad. “You didn’t think about
this at all.”

She turned away from him. Looking up at Avian again, she searched his eyes. “You really
didn’t believe I did this, even from the beginning, did you?”

“No. And for the record, you didn’t kill Father Montgomery, either. Declan did. The
police investigating the murder told me they found his hotel room, and there was evidence
in it that points to him going to the church to find you. He must have run into Father
Montgomery there and thought he could make him tell him where you were.”

“But I had a knife. And I remember finding it there, in the church.”

“You found it after the fact. You never actually saw Father Montgomery, you just picked
up the knife and left. Probably because of what happened in Sleepy Hollow.”

“So Father Montgomery died . . . protecting me?” Cyn’s voice broke.

Avian reached down to touch her cheek. The rosary beads
were still tied around his wrist. “He died doing something honorable. He wouldn’t
have had it any other way.”

Cyn briefly turned her face toward his hand. “Thank you,” she whispered. She glanced
up one more time at him and then pulled away. “Don’t come looking for me, Hunter,”
she paused long enough to say. “
Ever.
No matter how long you live.”

Then she turned back to Avian and gave him one last smile before heading toward the
exit to the parking lot. “And you? Do me a favor and get a helmet, okay?”

Hampton Falls, NH

Two weeks later

C
arefully slipping into Lenny’s room at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, Cyn left the door
cracked behind her. Visiting hours were long over, but she had a debt to repay.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a brand-new, unopened packet of cigarettes.

“Here you go, Lenny. Now we’re even. And you don’t have to keep track of it anymore
in that goddamn steel trap of yours.”