The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (37 page)

April moved closer, a gun in her hand. Reece met Roxanne’s eyes and looked quickly away, but in that one fleeting glance, she saw it all. She knew exactly what her brother meant to do, and killing Gary was only the beginning.

“Don’t be stupid, Reece,” Gary said.

Roxanne didn’t like the way Gary kept using her brother’s name. Like they were old buddies. Confidants.

Reece gave Gary a dismissive glance and said, “You keep talking like you’re still in charge. But guess what? You’re not. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, asshole. You’re not going to hurt my sister. You’re not going to hurt any more of those people out there. And you’re not going to be bringing any more fucking demons to earth. I know what you are.”

“You go against me and you go against Abaddon.”

“Yeah? Fuck Abaddon. I know what waits for you here on earth,” Reece said. “Decay. Day by day, a little more of you will rot off until you don’t even know what you’ve become. I don’t have to kill you. I could lock you up in a cage and watch you turn.”

The threat worked. Gary’s snide expression couldn’t hide the panicked look he sent the hellhounds. From the corner of her eye, Roxanne saw Santo’s head move and his lashes flutter. He was waking up.

Roxanne turned all of her focus on the hounds and pushed with her mind, pushed with that hot light she felt building inside her, hoping to keep them distracted from Santo. The ravens scattered. Even the locusts scuttled out of her radius.

As if sensing a threat they couldn’t see, the hounds turned on one another with furious snarls, tearing at flesh as they fought. Gary tried to shout, but Reece held the knife too tight. The pale, icy eyes narrowed as he twisted, trying to get a better look at what Roxanne was doing.

Roxanne’s heart felt like a jackhammer. She kept her hands clenched in her lap so Gary wouldn’t see their shaking. It took all of her will not to glance at Santo again. Not to give anything away.

“What are you doing?” Gary demanded.

Roxanne tossed her head fearlessly. “I’m not just going to shut your door, Gary. I’m going to shove you through it and seal it tight.”

Gary said nothing for a full count, and then he laughed. The sound agitated the ravens and sent the locusts whirring. The hounds paused, jaws bloody, eyes wild. Gary snapped his fingers and they broke apart, subdued but not quite back under his command.

She could feel the tension running through the others in the room but no one moved. The echoes of screams from the mall came at them in waves—sickening, terror-filled bursts that made her want to jump to her feet and run.

Roxanne risked trying to stand again. In the same instant, Santo came up and around, taking out the man standing behind him with a quick elbow to the face. He scooped a rifle from the floor and fired point-blank, swung it and took down two more of the demons, while Reece made Gary hiss with pain.

The elephants trumpeted the victory, swinging their heads back and forth and flapping their ears. Before they grew quiet, the monkeys started up followed by the jaguar, until they all roared and groaned, growled and screeched in a deafening cacophony. Santo turned the gun on Gary, who was still pinned by Reece’s knife.

“What’s your play, Reece?” Santo asked.

“End it.”

What happened next came in halted jerks. Roxanne saw more scavengers rush in from the door. Santo spun to stop them just as Gary snapped his fingers and spoke a sharp command that Roxanne didn’t understand until the hellhounds attacked.

The big one flew at Roxanne’s throat, and the smaller one caught her shoulder and jerked. She screamed. Reece cried out, slicing Gary’s throat with a deep, fatal gash. Santo had turned at the sound of her pain and as the
hounds took her down, she saw him charging into the fray. A loud gunshot boomed an instant before red blossomed over his chest. Another shot, another hole, and then a third. Santo hit his knees and fell beside her, eyes open but dazed.

She was screaming inside, screaming as the hounds ripped at her flesh. Fear tried to make Roxanne its victim, but she refused. She gathered her thoughts, remembering what he’d told her. They do this together.
Together.
She called Santo’s name as she focused and felt the power swell within her just as it had before.

It worked. The hounds recoiled.

She had a moment to breathe. She reached out for Santo but he was sprawled beside her, his eyes glassy and fixed. She couldn’t find a pulse. Frantically, she searched, calling his name, crying.

“Roxanne!” Reece shouted.

She looked up to see her brother standing with Gary’s body clutched in his arms, the other man’s head hanging gruesomely. Reece held a lighter in his hand. It took her less than an instant to understand what he meant to do. April was on the other side of the room, trying to fight off the demons who’d come in. She gave Reece a desperate glance as he turned the wheel on the lighter.

“It’s what I want,” Reece said.

She thought of what Santo had told her about the man whose life he’d taken.
Santo was ready to die. I did us both a favor.

Just like Reece was ready. The thought came before she could stop it.

In Reece’s eyes, she saw despair and mixed with it, determination. While every instinct urged her to stop him, she felt the finality of the moment weld her to the spot and understood there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to reverse his tragic decision.

Reece held the lighter to his sweatshirt and it caught. He went up like a bonfire in a whoosh of heat and flame that engulfed both him and Gary. Roxanne screamed again, and April shouted Reece’s name as she tried to get free of the demons that held her.

Roxanne searched through the pain for that kernel of fury that had grown so bright when the ravens had come to Louisa’s. She watched her brother scream in agony and felt the last of Santo’s lifeblood drain away.

She’d lost them both. Grief filled her in a painful rush.

It felt as if she moved through a thick gel that kept her from hearing, from feeling. One of the demons raised a gun and fired at her. The bullet plowed through her chest and out the other side. She looked down at the blood and thought,
Yes. It’s how it should be.

She teetered on the edge of consciousness, aware of Santo’s skin already beginning to chill. Hearing Gary’s words . . . had he told the truth? Would Santo be stuck between worlds?

I’ll always be waiting for you.

Suddenly, she was in the dark again. But she wasn’t alone. She sensed Santo with her, though she couldn’t see his familiar shape, his beloved face. “What will you do now,
angelita
?” he asked in that husky voice she loved so much.

“Shine,” she whispered.

She felt the smile she couldn’t see. Found comfort in the embrace she couldn’t quite feel.

She looked down, and there was the dining room of the deserted restaurant below. Reece, a burned husk wrapped around the blackened shape of Gary. Their bodies still burned and smoked. The emergency sprinklers had activated, but they’d been no match for the accelerant and inferno that had burned her brother and the scavenger demon to ash and husk. Dead scavengers littered the floor and their shadows lurked in the room, looking for the way out.

To her right was the chaos that reigned in the mall. Here, the scavengers had yet to sense the turn of the tide. They killed with glee, and lost souls wandered the carnage with shocked eyes and hopeless expressions. Roxanne stared in horror, and the tight ball of her fury became a rush of energy that lit up the spot where she and Santo lay in death. The souls of the humans who’d been murdered by the demons turned with interest to see it.

A great pressure built against her eardrums until the pain became excruciating and a blinding light appeared
above her. Bright. Hard. Warm. It coalesced, drowning out all sound. Roxanne felt like she was trapped between two spotlights, the one that shone from her own body and the other that could only be the Beyond.

The lost souls turned their faces up and Roxanne understood. The Beyond beckoned them. It beckoned
her.
Never before had it opened this way. Never had she felt its pull. Did that mean this time would be the last? Would her fifth death bring the finality that the others had lacked?

She watched as the souls began to climb the rays of light, finding the home the demons had denied them. She saw Manny, felt the brush of him as he passed her by. Jim and Sal followed right behind. After them came the others. So many others.

The light kept shining even after the last soul had entered and Roxanne knew it waited for her.

She turned in the darkness to let Santo know she wouldn’t go, but he was gone and she was alone.

Come back to me. I will always be waiting.

That’s what he’d said, but he wasn’t there anymore.

Below, the light that surrounded their bodies began to fade and Roxanne fought it. She would not give up. Not on life. Not on Santo. Not on the love they hadn’t had a chance to share. He didn’t believe he had a soul, but she knew better. His soul was a mate to her own and she would not leave him in limbo. She wouldn’t abandon him to a fate he didn’t deserve. Four times he’d
saved
her. He
was the reason why she’d survived in the past. Now she would do the same for him.

She focused everything, keeping his words in her head, in her heart.

Come back to me. I will always be waiting.

No, Santo!

You
come back to
me
.

The light to the Beyond vanished with a flicker and all that remained was the glow below.
Her
light. The one that Santo had fallen in love with. The one he’d cherished and protected.

All around her the darkness began to crumble and Roxanne shouted Santo’s name, reaching out with all that she had, all that she was, until she found him and then she held on. He belonged to her. She belonged to him.

There would be no more waiting.

She gripped Santo as tight as she could while a feeling inside her swelled like a great tidal wave, rising up and up until she could no longer see over it. And with it came pain—excruciating. Worse than dying. Worse than anything she’d ever imagined. She cried out as she plummeted down and slammed through the barriers of the Beyond and back to the world she knew.

The moment burned so hot that she feared the fires of Abaddon had followed her, but the Beyond had closed. Why, then, were there still scavengers, ravens, and shades lurking in the corners? Locusts scurrying about?

Beside her, Santo groaned but she saw a pulse beating at his throat. “Santo,” she breathed, pressing her fingers to it.

A great rumbling came from all around. It shook the floor and cracked the ceiling. The black ooze that had covered the stars shrank back. The scavengers whimpered.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“The souls,” Santo said, his voice weak. “The souls have arrived in the Beyond. They know.”

She had only a moment to understand who he meant by
they
. The powers of the Beyond. Santo had told her that life and death were monitored there. It appeared that the tally sheet had been reviewed.

She felt a huge wind sweep down and howl through the walls. It opened like a tunnel leading into a dark that smelled rotten and dank. Within it came a blast of heat that singed her lashes and burned her throat. The wind twisted and turned, sucking up the debris of scavengers and hurling them into a glowing furnace that waited at the end. The fires of Abaddon. Instinctively, she knew it. Feared it. Desperately, she gripped Santo’s hand and held on tight as the punishing wind whipped around them.

“It will take me,
angelita
,” he said softly. “There’s no fighting it. It’s where I belong.”

“No. You belong with
me
.”

All around, scavengers shrieked in fear as their dark
shadows were wrenched free of their bodies and spun into that burning tunnel. She saw her brother, eyes terrified yet determined to face whatever came next. Gary’s dark shadow wrapped itself around Reece’s soul in a strangling grip as the wind towed them both into the jetsam. In her mind’s eye, Roxanne caught her brother and held him as she’d done so many times before, but she couldn’t win, not when Gary’s grasp was stronger, not when Reece fought so hard against her.

For one horrid moment Reece hung between them. Then he was gone. She felt the wind circle Santo, tug . . . and release. And suddenly it was over. The tunnel was gone.

The scavengers were gone.

But Santo was still there.

S
anto faded in and out but finally the sound of crying brought him around. Certain that when he opened his eyes, he’d find the raging heat and the Black Tides of Abaddon awaiting him, he lay still. It didn’t smell like Abaddon, though. It smelled like . . . caramel corn. French fries. Roasted meat. A shrill scream joined his dawning awareness, a sound so unique it could only be a siren.