The Lost (17 page)

“No.” Kit shook her head. “I'm Chosen, one of God's own. And so is Jeannie.”

Scratch drew a smile across Jeannie's face, sickly sweet. “And yet here you both are.”

Kit managed a smug smile of her own. “Yes. And thanks for your help.”

The brow on Jeannie's face drew overly low, and all was still. The seconds stretched, then snapped. Star-struck eyes flew wide, the light within them flaring like torches, then Jeannie's body stiffened, and the stars in her eyes snuffed like matches.

Kit inched forward. “Jeannie?”

Scratch lunged, and bandaged arms ripped at Kit's shirt. The stars in Jeannie's gaze were blotted out, but the eyes had flipped to the backside of her skull, and the attaching muscles stretched before Kit like taffy. Kit fought to escape, fought for a scream, but the body jerked back just as suddenly, as if yanked by the center of the spine.

Kit twisted from the frigid grip as the body convulsed, and the room swelled with the sound of something living being uprooted. Jeannie's whole body fell onto the bed like a discarded ragdoll, and lay exactly as before, as if it'd never been possessed by a sadistic fallen angel. The wind-washed howl of dead leaves and snapping branches slid from the cubicle, and on Kit's next blink, all was still.

The heart monitor beat steadily, same as before. The chill left the curtained chamber. The noise on its other side rose again, in relieving and unbelievable normalcy.

Shaking, Kit bent to peer beneath the bed where Grif had been hiding.

Gone.

“If a fallen angel can possess her body, so can you,” she had told him, back after Jann Holmes left the hospital crying.

Grif jerked his head. “It's technically not allowed.”

“But you've done it before,” Kit pointed out, and he couldn't argue that, because he'd done it in the case that'd brought them together. He'd done it to her best friend, Nicole Rockwell.

“You lined up your pulse points with hers,” she reminded him, and he frowned, obviously wishing he hadn't told her. “You fueled them with your angelic energy. Do the same with Jeannie, bind yourself to her, and Scratch won't be able to touch her soul. Or, at least, it'll have to get through you first.”

“And doesn't that sound peachy,” he muttered, but he hid beneath the bed anyway, because they both knew Jeannie Holmes didn't deserve to spend her afterlife fleeing Scratch in the Eternal Forest.

And then he'd done it. While Kit had Scratch's attention, Grif had slipped
inside.

Rising again, this time truly alone in the room, Kit could only wonder what happened after that. Wonder . . . and settle in to wait.

Chapter Fifteen

T
wo angels battling over the same body. Grif grounded himself in the reality of Jeannie Holmes's blood and bone, and thought, This is bound to get ugly.

Lying on the cold hospital floor beneath Jeannie's bed, the first thing Grif did to prepare for entry into Jeannie's body was force his own blood to thicken, gel, and cease circulation. His angelic nature allowed his flesh to easily go malleable and light. Like atoms, his cells could disperse and travel through the cold and unyielding wilds of the Universe, as long as he kept a clear picture in his mind of where he was going. That's how he delivered souls into the Everlast, and that's how he entered Jeannie Holmes's body.

But Jeannie was having none of it. He'd been careful to line up his energies with hers, felt their chakras click into place, but fumbled blindly for her precariously tethered soul. She was hiding. Thus the darkness.

Don't let go yet, he thought, just as her pulse points flashed, and a jolt of lava-hot electricity shot through his etheric form. Her energy lit like a landing strip, but her body temperature immediately dropped twenty degrees. Scratch had arrived.

Grif looked around at the reality illuminated by the fallen angel's presence, unsurprised to find an exact replica of the cubicle where Jeannie's mortal body rested. The curtains, the bed, the sounds of the ER were all the same, and Grif approached the bed, surprised at the thoroughness, though he shouldn't have been. Even on the Surface, even fully conscious, people always created their own individual realities.

So while Jeannie might've been wearing a hospital gown back on the Surface, in this reality she wore a cotton shirt, jeans, and lace-up boots, all black. Her skin was unmarred by open sores, her eyes alert and clear, and she was a slightly older version of the Jeannie who'd stared back at him from Jann's well-worn photo. It was how she really saw herself.

Yet even here, her plasmic outline was a violent ring of red flame. It seared the space around her like a solar flare, and sent heat radiating throughout her body. Jann Holmes, Grif thought, was going to have her heart broken one last time.

Worse yet, this Jeannie lay bound to the bed by thick, winding coils of enormous tree roots and dead branches. Grif didn't know enough about possession to know if this was how she felt, or if Scratch had placed her there once it'd entered her body, but she was trapped, and clearly unable to free herself.

Grif rounded the bed, flexing his shoulders so that his wings flared. “He's after me,” Jeannie whispered, as he leaned over her.

He paused, the onyx blades of his wingtips glinting in the light. They could appear softer, like dew-tipped smoke, if he willed it. Sometimes he did, depending on the skittishness of the Take, but there was a reason God gave angels wings like weaponry. Sometimes the rise and fall of a waterfall of spears was the tool needed to navigate through the silky Universe. Like now.

“It,” he corrected softly, then began sawing at the deadened roots, ears pricked to Kit's and Scratch's voices rumbling, and setting the surrounding curtains to sway as he worked.

But after a minute, Jeannie whispered. “It's after you, too.”

Grif looked at her and she nodded. So this was Scratch's handiwork, and probably the reason Jeannie had not yet died. It'd tethered her soul to her decaying flesh. It was using her as bait. Grif worked faster. “Just hang on. I'm going to get you out of here.”

So they fell silent, listening to Jeannie's vocal box rumble in her throat, and Kit's replies, tinny and farther away. Jeannie listened intently, the conversation beginning to relax her into interjecting her own intermittent answers about Jeap and Bella, and the
krokodil
that had wrapped itself so violently around her life.

Meanwhile, Grif labored, cutting through the deadened bark until his shoulders screamed, and branches and bramble lay in jagged mounds around his feet. Another minute at most, he thought. And then he could scoop up Jeannie's soul and have her in the Everlast before Scratch even knew he'd been here. The thought had him smiling up at her. She half-smiled back.

“I like your wings,” she said.

“Yeah? Play your cards right and you could have a pair just like 'em.”

Yet the words were barely uttered when her smile suddenly froze, and the blood in her veins roared to life. Adrenaline rushed around them, so loudly and rapidly that Grif hunched low, feeling like a stone at the bottom of a hot river.

The taste of metal flooded the back of Grif's throat, so fast and full that he almost choked. Fear, he thought, recognizing its slide beneath his tongue. The heartbeat fueling Jeannie's body sped up. The ceiling throbbed in a rapid, unsteady beat. The curtain hemming the cubicle began a misty fade to black, which was her vision narrowing. Suddenly they were someplace that was nowhere, back in a body that no longer worked.

Grif looked at Jeannie's face, but her gaze had hollowed out. “He knows you're here.”

Grif didn't correct her this time. New vines shot from nowhere to reclaim her body, and the vision Jeannie had so carefully constructed around her gave way to the darkness of the Eternal Forest. A movement caught Grif's eye as shadow separated from shadow, and a creature emerged from the gnarled stumps and protruding brush.

Grif had never seen anything like it on the Surface or the Everlast. Pure angels could look either human or monstrous, depending on their purpose, but they were never obscene or grotesque, and that was what this was. Made of kindling and thorns, it had the gait of a giant praying mantis, but with arching bramble flaring from its back where wings once grew.

It was exactly what one might think a creature outside of God's presence looked like: a hollowed-out husk housing withered sentience, a spirit without soul, and a splintering, endless hatred.

“So you really are both angelic and human,” Scratch said, studying Grif's own sturdy frame and billowing wings, though it cringed from the weak glow of Jeannie's remaining strength. “How did you manage it? Someone impregnate a mortal? God get bored with the existing species? Or maybe you're the bastard product of some bi-worldly war?”

Grif didn't answer because if Scratch knew his name, it knew his story. Besides, Grif'd seen hatred before, shredded resentment behind mortal and immortal gazes, but the way Scratch looked at him now was entirely new. That look was spring-loaded with spikes and teeth, and countless deadly triggers. Of course, there was double reason for this skinny, hunched creature to hate him.

Feeling large and healthy and powerful, Grif stepped forward. “Get out of this body.”

“It is rather crowded in here.” Scratch feigned wiping a hand over its brow. “Toasty, too.”

It turned to Jeannie. “You hot, Jeannie? Cuz you look like you're burning up.”

Jeannie just began to cry.

“Of course you are,” it said patronizingly. “You're just one big human bonfire these days, aren't you?”

“Leave, Scratch,” Grif commanded.

It simply tapped one lean finger against its chin, ignoring Grif. “Say, it's nice and cool in my neck of the woods. Why don't you take my hand, little lady? I can show you the way.”

And as it extended that hand toward Jeannie, the vines around her creaked and loosened.

Grif lunged, but roots immediately shot from the floor, impeding his progress and, a second later, his view. He dodged, expecting Scratch to counter again, but the creature just watched Grif from the corner of its shimmering, starry eye.

A smile snapped over its face as Grif pulled up short.

“She's not goin' with you.” Grif sidestepped the root, and another shot up. This one began a slow, screeching crawl toward his ankles.

Scratch's splintered smile widened. “But can't you feel the heat emanating from her every molecule? I'd be doing her a favor.” Hunching, Scratch propped its bony arms on its hips, and scowled at Jeannie. “Look what you did, you stupid girl! You destroyed the only body and life God gave you!”

Jeannie began crying in earnest.

“Stop it,” Grif ordered.

“You don't deserve to be in His divine presence,” Scratch continued, with a reptilian leer. “You don't deserve to be anywhere good!”

“Don't listen to it, Jeannie, and don't judge her, you rancid bit of celestial trash. You've never lived. You were never born so never had the chance to fail or thrive. You don't know the hardship of a real choice.”

“Doesn't make me wrong,” Scratch snapped.

“No, it makes you Fallen.” Grif kept his attention on Scratch, but tried to soothe Jeannie. The fallen angel was too close to her. If its lies swayed her and she accepted its hand of her own free will, then Grif could do little to stop it. And Jeannie would be Lost forever.

“You can't see it in this light, but there are two open sores on that thing's back. Its wings were plucked when it betrayed God. They still bleed like a river, and they'll never stop.”

“Wings are for the weak,” Scratch interjected, circling now.

“You tell the archangels that?” Grif countered, circling as well.

“Those glorified pigeons have no sense of humor,” it scoffed. “The fallen ones get a kick out of it, though.”

“I want to go home,” Jeannie said, blubbering now. Branches snapped in the darkness around them, her mind cracking, and Scratch smiled. “Please, I just want to go—”

“You have no home, you thankless wretch!” Scratch screamed. “You are unwanted and unloved! I am the only one who cares what happens to you now!”

Again, it held out its hand to Jeannie. This time she looked at it.

“No,” Grif told Jeannie, and another vine shot up next to him with a resounding snap. He ignored it. “Scratch is a world-class liar bent on your destruction. But its power is confined to the Eternal Forest. Wingless, it can never ascend again. It certainly can't overcome anyone bathed in God's light.”

“But Jeannie's not
in
God's light, is she? She's dirty and vile. A disgrace to the God who made her.”

“Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .” Jeannie sobbed, but there was no hydration left in her body, and no tears to be had. She was also becoming more inflamed along with her emotions. Her slipping soul would soon be entirely untethered. Scratch, Grif realized, was just biding its time until it could seize her.

It was also forming a meticulous patch of briars around Grif. Though spaced to give the illusion of randomness, the jagged mounds could easily intertwine to form an impenetrable hedge. Grif's own personal forest in the wilds of Jeannie's mind.

“Don't listen,” Grif told Jeannie, because she was the key. “There's a place for you in the Everlast. Loved ones wait for you there. You'll forget your mistakes, you'll forgive yourself. There is more after this, and it's all there just waiting for you.”

“What would you know about it,
Centurion
?” Scratch spat Grif's title like chewing tobacco. “You're just as Lost as she is.”

The blades in Grif's wings scraped as he shrugged. “So leave her be and take your chances with me.”

“Rest easy, old boy. I've already carved out a place of honor for you in the Forest. But for now”—it glanced at Jeannie—“I'm going to add to my collection.”

And with a fracturing curve of its spindly spine, it leaped, bridging itself over the girl's shaking body. Its limbs squeaked as they elongated to form a hovering cage atop her, and leaves bloomed on twisted boughs, dying instantly and falling to the ground.

Grif whirled on bent knees so that the blades on his wings brought down the deadened boughs and briars as easily as if slicing through cheese. He prepared to leap over the short hedge, dead yet already sprouting again, but Scratch turned its head, bared its teeth, and let loose a gusting, glacial howl. The raw wind cut at Grif, and though he could hear Jeannie's anguished cry, brittle leaves whipped into his face, obscuring his vision.

I need water, Grif thought, wishing he could shed—and somehow cast—at least one defensive tear. I need more blades and time and help.

I, Grif realized, with a panicked start, need
God
.

Teeth chattering, suddenly freezing, he whirled again so that the leaves fell away, and the hedge was again cut low. Scratch, he saw, had already removed all of Jeannie's ties, but it hadn't yet touched her. She lay there, vulnerable and frozen, but she was still God's child. She had to choose it for herself.

“No, Jeannie!” Grif screamed. Icy air howled back at him, and a branch rose from nowhere to wallop his back. Thrown forward, he barely dodged the shoot that threatened to impale his chest, instead bracing himself against it with one hand. Vines immediately wrapped around his wrist and caught him there.

He screamed into the raw wind. “Don't accept his hand! Trust me, Jeannie—you'll only be exchanging one personal hell for another, and there's no escape in that one. You are not meant for the Forest.”

Gnarled roots slid over the top of Grif's feet, trapping him in place. That's when he remembered his piece. It was strapped to his ankle here, just as when he died, and before the roots could recover and trap his right hand, too, he yanked the snub-nose from his ankle holster and shot Scratch right through the chest. The fallen angel was blown from Jeannie's bedside, rib cage splintering into chips. Grif shot again, skull this time, but a second spear ripped through Grif's side. They both cried out at the same time, and the shadowed forest shook around them.

That's when the globe appeared over Jeannie's bed, a translucent sun spun from the filament of crystals and precious gems. For some reason looking at it made Grif want to cry and laugh at the same time. It made his heart swell like it was engorged with light. Even Scratch fell still, marveling at its beauty. But Jeannie, frozen beneath the floating orb, reacted the most strangely. She stared up at it before giving a slight nod, then closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. Scratch gasped and reached out from where it'd fallen, but it was too late. The sun lowered and slipped into Jeannie's mouth like a glistening wafer.