Chapter 36

A loud banging woke me, pulling me out of my first nightmare-less sleep in months. I felt Death’s warm chest under my cheek and, remembering the night before, a blush burned up my throat and into my face.

“Morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep. Clearly he’d been as rudely awakened as I had.

“Hi.” The heat still burned my cheeks, and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off Death. I’d never seen him look anything but perfect, so seeing him in my bed, his hair mussed from sleep, those deep eyes only half open, he looked so…real. It was cute.

With a move almost too fast to follow, Death rolled us so that he pinned me down with his body. I gasped, and his mouth suddenly covered mine. The knock sounded again and Death broke off the kiss to glance over his shoulder.

“Think they’ll go away?”

“Probably not. Let me up.”

He twisted his head, cocking an eyebrow over one handsome eye. “You’re a little pink there, Alex. Not going to risk forswearing yourself, are you?”

“I’m not running,” I said, not sure if I should be insulted or not. But he was smiling and I found myself responding with the same expression. Damn, it’s hard to be mad at the man.

“Well, in that case…” He rolled again, taking me with him so I ended up straddling his hips. “This is a rather nice view.”

He reached up, running his thumbs along the undersides of my breasts and my skin tightened in response. I was sore from last night, but it was a good kind of sore, and I could feel he was not in the least bit displeased to be where he was.

Another bang sounded on the door.

I twisted, sending my door a glare that should have melted it on the spot. PC whined at the foot of the bed, as if complaining about me not answering the door. I sighed and extricated myself from Death’s arms. Which took a hell of a lot of willpower and yet another banging knock at the door.

“Geez, I’m coming,” I muttered as I stalked across the room looking for something to wear. I spotted my robe and shrugged into it.

“Your charm, Alex,” Death called from where he’d propped himself up on one arm on the bed.

Right, I’d actually gotten used to the pale glow, especially since it was barely noticeable in the light streaming in through the windows. But barely wasn’t “unnoticeable” so I slipped the perception charm over my head.

I jerked open the door, ready to give whoever was on the other side an earful—until I saw the gaunt figure with long brown hair and deep sunken eyes.

“Tamara?”

She gripped a coat closed around her despite the warm morning air. I’d seen her wear it in the morgue only a few days earlier and it had fit fine. Now the coat swallowed her frame.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, her voice raw, as if she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry. She lumbered through the doorway, her movements strained and jerky, like a badly controlled marionette. “You said you got the—” She cut off as her eyes landed on the man in my bed.

“Oh, you have company.” Her voice was completely flat. She turned to Death. “Sorry to break up your morning, but I need Alex now. She won’t call, she doesn’t do second dates, and she won’t remember your name next month, so you don’t really need a long good-bye.”

My eyes bulged. “Tamara.”

She turned. “What? It’s true.”

“He’s not random,” I hissed under my breath, and her pale lips formed a small “O” before she turned and gave him an appraising glance.

“He’s also not you-know-who,” she whispered, shielding her mouth with her hand.

“I can hear you,” Death said as he sat up and stretched. “I assume you’re not coming back to bed?”

Damn, I wish I were. I shook my head. He sighed and climbed out of the bed, gathering the sheets around him as he moved. He kissed the top of my head as he passed me on the way to the bathroom. My eyes followed him, taking a more than appreciatively long study of his broad shoulders and muscled back that tapered down to a very nicely defined ass that the sheet did little to disguise.

I wasn’t the only one staring.

“Remind me I have a fiancé.”

“Stop ogling my—” I cut myself off and Tamara whirled around.

“Were you about to say boyfriend?” She grinned, which with her gaunt cheeks was a rather ghastly expression. “I want details. Dish.”

I’d actually been about to say my Death, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Or talk about him. Besides, there was a far more pressing issue.

“What happened? I know we destroyed Larid. Trust me, I got a good look at him.” Way too close of a look.

“Well, something went wrong.” Tamara let the coat fall open. Her clothes hung off her emaciated body. “I know every bride wants to lose a little weight before the wedding, but this isn’t exactly what I planned.”

I chewed at my bottom lip, staring at the way the skin sank into the hollows between her sternum and ribs. It was like she’d burned off all the fat in her body in a single day. It would start eating her muscles next—if it wasn’t already. And what about the baby? I was too afraid to ask, but I saw the haunted look in her eyes that was for more than herself.

We’d killed the ghoul. I’d been under Larid when the creature went up in flames. Why was she still turning?

“And then, well, see for yourself.” She opened her mouth, peeling back her lips. Her teeth were slightly pointed. Not yet full-on ghoul-like, but definitely changing.

“Damn. Wait here, okay?” I hurried around her and tapped twice on the bathroom door before bursting through it.

Steam rolled out of the shower as Death stuck his head around the curtain, water streaming from his hair and over his broad shoulders. “Here to offer to wash my back?” he asked, dark eyes twinkling.

“This is serious. Can you see Tamara’s timeline?”

Death frowned, the flirtatious glow leaving his face. “She’s not one of my souls.”

“Well, can you find her collector? I need to know how much time she has before she turns ghoul.”

“Alex, you’re not even supposed to know about the fact we can see time fluxes.”

I wasn’t above indebting myself over this one, but before I could shape more than the pl in “please,” Death held up a hand.

“I’ve watched several of these things form. Based on how fast she’s progressing, she has less than a day left. In a couple of hours, the changes will be irreversible.”

Hours?

“How do I stop it? We killed the ghoul. I—”

“Love, if we’re going to continue this conversation, either join me in here, pass me a towel, or let me finish and I’ll be out in a minute.”

I left him to his shower. When I stepped back into the main room of my apartment, I found Tamara collapsed in the only chair I owned, her head buried in her arms on the short bar. She looked up when she heard me, and her pale lips tugged downward.

“By your grim look I take it that wasn’t a quickie in the shower.”

I tried to smile, to make my face more reassuring but the word “hours” echoed in my head. “Let me see your arm?”

She nodded, sliding out of the coat. She’d covered the stitches with a gauze infused with a healing charm. And not an over the counter OMIH issued bandage either, but one of her own creation that was probably a hell of a lot more potent. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working on this particular wound.

“Damn,” I whispered, looking at the blackness that crept like rot around the edges of the sutures.

Tamara glanced at her arm, a puzzled look crossing her face. “Of all things going wrong, the wounds not healing as fast as expected is the least of my concerns.”

“Not—” A thought occurred to me. “They don’t look black to you?”

“Uh, no. Alex, you just went pale. What?”

I didn’t answer but cracked my shields. I’d seen the patch of darkness bleeding over into reality, but once I opened my shields I saw thinner black lines snaking completely through Tamara’s body, her very soul, as if the rot had entered her blood and now filled every vein. I thought I caught sight of a twisting cord leading up, out of the wound, but there were too many different layers of reality to keep one thread in sight. I opened my shields wider. Before the raver had moved us through the collector’s plane, she’d forced me to narrow my focus on one reality. I’d done that by watching only the souls. Well, I could see the yellow glow of Tamara’s soul just fine; what I needed to see more clearly was the darkness.

I focused all my attention on that darkness and the room around me decayed as wind whipped through my apartment, blowing the mail off the counter and ripping free cards usually held to the fridge with magnets. PC yipped, a high-pitched, nervous sound, and vanished under the bed.

But the other realities dimmed and the thread jumped into stark relief. From everything I knew about ghouls, they were connected in single chains. The prime was on top, and then like family lines, those infected by a ghoul were tied to that ghoul—or ghouls as was sometimes the case when a person was attacked by more than one. Kill the ghoul directly above on the chain and everything under them broke. Ghouls died and those infected were no longer in danger of turning.

Except Larid was dead and Tamara was still tied to the land of the dead by a thread.

Actually, it wasn’t a single thread. There were three dark lines. One had a jagged, twisted end, clearly severed. Larid. That had to have been the link to him. The next was thin and spindled off, deeper into the land of the dead. The bridge to the ghoul waiting to take her body. Which left the final cord. It was thick, glutted with Tamara’s draining vitality, but it didn’t fade into the depths of the land of the dead like the other. Instead it snaked out of the room, leading…somewhere. To the rider? It’s feeding off the bodies its ghouls create?

If each ghoul had a second link back to the prime, that could explain why Briar was having so much trouble clearing the cemeteries. The chains didn’t break. It also explained why cutting the link with Larid didn’t stop Tamara from turning.

“Alex?” Tamara’s voice trembled and she stumbled back as I stepped forward.

“I can see it,” I said. “If I can sever it…” I retrieved my dagger from where it sat in its sheath on the dresser. The dagger had cut through a soul chain once, hopefully it could cut these threads as well.

Tamara’s tired eyes widened as I approached, but she didn’t move. I reached out, grabbing for the threads, but my hands passed through the darkness as if it were a shadow and not a feeding tube draining my friend. I need to be deeper.

I let my mind cross farther over the chasm. My apartment crumbled around me, but the threads solidified. I tried again, both with my bare hand and with the dagger. I nicked the tube, making it ooze gaseous drops of darkness. How much deeper into the land of the dead can I reach? I was close, I just needed to push a little farther. I let myself drift in the tempest.

Barely tangible arms wrapped around my waist in a ghostlike embrace.

“Come back,” a distant but familiar voice whispered. Death. “Alex, I need you to come back.”

I looked at the threads I was so close to reaching, but the desperation in his voice tugged at me. I drew back, pulling my psyche out of the spreading wasteland until I could see the ruins of my apartment, and then the apartment whole once more as I crossed the chasm.

Death’s arms around my waist solidified as reality settled around me again, but they were cold, a slight tremor running through them. I twisted in his arms. He was pale under his tan, his breathing labored; water streamed from his hair, dripping onto my shoulder as if he’d rushed out of the bathroom—though at least he had on a pair of jeans.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

His arms around me tightened, the tremors already passing, and he nodded. “I will be. Alex, please don’t take my essence to planes where my soul can’t reach it.” The last was a whisper for my ears only.

Take?

“Alex?” Tamara’s voice was thin, high, and tainted with fear. “What was that? You were less substantial than the shades you raise.”

Crap. I forgot I wasn’t actually a corporeal being. My psyche kept me grounded in reality, but when I’d reached into the land of the dead, I’d sent my psyche there.

And I’d nearly killed Death in the process.