Nate cradled Jessie in one arm and shook out the glowing Veil. “Jessie.” Stay with me.

Her eyes fluttered open and a faint smile creased her lips before she coughed, sending blood oozing out her nose, ears, and corner of her lips. No! He wouldn’t let her die! Not after they’d defeated Asmodeus. Soon after he’d wrapped the Veil around the demonic prince and sent him back to Hell, the barbed tongue had vanished, but the damage it had done to her was unspeakable.

He positioned her more carefully between his legs, and placed the Veil over the grizzly hole in her chest. This will work. It will. I believe. I do. Good always conquered evil. It had to. She would therefore live.

Or he would lose his mind.

Her heartbeat. Slow. He felt it. Ebbing. A quaver shook his frame.

Her voice in his head.

I.

Love.

Y—

His hands pushed down harder on the Veil, heating it, trying to fuse it to her devastated flesh, but…

What? His heart stopped with the sudden absence of her essence.

His gaze flew to her face. Jessie? Her beautiful eyes. Her vibrancy gone, now empty, staring beyond into the endless night.

The earth trembled beneath him, rolling outward beneath his thighs as a great crescendo of anguish exploded through his being. His whole body shook as he threw his head back and roared. The pain, the pain.

Vast. Dark. Cold.

Absolute.

He gathered her broken form to his heart. His throat, chest, neck—all brittle, filled with a thousand razor blades. He kissed her lips, pushing all his life energy at her. He sliced his throat and let his blood pour down to mingle with hers.

He rocked her in his arms and cried as all the grass died and the leaves withered and fell from the trees. Headstones heaved from the ground and the branches moaned and sighed and snapped though the wind had stopped. The ground shook, gravel from the road like dice in a cup, translating his dangerous rush of emotion.

“Alexios!” He bellowed at the universe. Where was their leader? Please, brother, come. I so desperately need you.

Nate breathed in her scent, the coils of her hair silky against his face, her grandparents’ weeping echoing his own.

A large white owl swooped over him, its throaty hoot and soft whoosh of wings making him shiver for lost dreams. For so many other wonders he’d never share with her.

The owl hooted softly once more and landed on the heaving ground in front of Nate. The ground instantly calmed as the owl morphed in a flash of white into a tall man with long dark hair, a black goatee, and slashing eyebrows over enigmatic brown eyes. Nate’s heart kick-started in his chest, and he hurried to his feet with Jessie in his arms. The figure in front of him crackled with power. Nate reached out to discover if his energy was light or dark, but this energy was different from anything he’d ever encountered before. He gathered Jessie’s inert form closer to his body. Maybe he should fight to the death himself. He had a strong feeling he wouldn’t last long in battle with one such as this. “If you are here for a fight, be warned, I have nothing more to lose.”

“I come in peace, Guardian. You need not fear me. I am Archangel Raphael. Alexios heard your plea, sent word to Michael, and so, I am here in your time of need.”

Raphael’s bass voice held notes of timelessness that reverberated with sacrifice and…something else. Something more human perhaps.

Nate’s throat worked as he went down on one knee. He’d heard stories of this one. The healer archangel. Of course, Nate had known Alexios had been trained by the soldier Archangel Michael, but he’d had no idea that Alexios was so important to the archangels that they’d heed his calls for aid. “Healer. Please, I beseech you to aid my compar.”

Raphael’s dark eyes bored into Nate’s, probing for what, he had no idea. But he had no more walls. Jessie had brought them all down with her love. She’d shown him what it meant when love was freely given. It was the most beautiful gift of all.

“You would take an imperfect human as your mate?”

“She is more pure than I could ever hope to be.”

Raphael was silent for a time. “She cannot be as you. She was good in her lifetime.”

Unlike the Guardians. “All the more reason to bring her back. The world needs her goodness.”

“You would bring her back to fight horrors when even now she is enjoying all the gifts of the Afterlife as befits one of her character?”

Nate opened his mouth, then closed it. Hell yes, bring her back! he wanted to shout. He wanted to be selfish. He wanted to think she’d fight to come back, that fighting evil at his side was worth giving up the…whatever good stuff happened after you died.

But…the archangel’s question sucked.

Nate’s heart broke all over again. He turned away from the healer’s stare and then squeezed Jessie, pressing his lips to her cold ones. She deserved more than anything he could give her. He wouldn’t bring her back to feel more pain.

Are you sure about that? You will be forever alone without her. It was a dark voice crawling through his mind and firing up his anger. I can bring her back. I can, and…I will.

A command. Nate glanced quickly around him, but the echoing voice wasn’t coming from anything with physical form. He turned back to Raphael. The archangel hadn’t moved.

The dark seductive voice was evil. And Nate had no doubt that somehow, evil could raise her up.

Yes. Look at her lying still and cold in your arms.

Something shifted in the grass beside him. Let go the Veil, and I shall summon her back to full, vigorous life.

Nate’s arms flexed. Jessie’s lips were purple, her skin going waxy and pale in the moonlight. It’s wrong. Nate ground his teeth against the terrible push and pull of his conscience as he lifted the Veil from her chest. It glowed in his hands. It failed me, what use is it to any of us?

Raphael’s burning brown eyes held knowledge that Nate couldn’t begin to fathom. “Know thy true path, Guardian.”

“I love her.” I need her. I can’t…function without her.

“You can and you will. Do not debase her memory by becoming that which she gave her life to defeat.”

Horrific screams pealed in his head, shrieking at him to destroy the angel in front of him. His skin began to crawl as though bugs had come to angry life beneath his flesh. He swung this way and that, his raging senses flaring out to drop seventy-foot trees. They crashed around the cemetery as the Christ on Calvary statue burst into flame, and he began running toward Jessie’s grandparents, her body flopping lifeless in his arms. He crumpled to the ground in front of the burning Christ. What am I doing? His mind flooded with images. Jessie’s beautiful eyes at the moment of her orgasm. Her dancing on the bar. His aimlessness before she came into his life.

This one calls himself a healer, but he chooses to let her decay while you live on in pain. I can change all that. Choose her. There is no decision.

Raging electric guitars blared a dissonance. Get out of my head!

Raphael appeared at his side and raised his hand to the statue, diffusing the flames in an instant.

Nate turned to snarl at him. “Why won’t you help her, damn you?”

“It is not my choice to make, Guardian. What will you do?”

A hand on his arm. He shifted Jessie to one arm, launched to his feet, and struck out violently. Who dared get near his—

Dear God. Jessie’s grandfather. The one she loved the most lay bleeding on the grass from a contusion to the forehead.

By his hand.

What have I done?

The darkness shrouding his mind dropped away like shattered glass. He dropped to his knees beside Walter. He held Jessie tightly against his chest, using his other hand to pick up the old war veteran. Walter’s eyelids cracked open.

“Forgive me. I—”

“The path to Hell is paved with good intentions, young man.”

Nate nodded and…

Surrendered.

He pressed the Veil to Walter’s forehead, healing it instantly. Then he stood, kissed Jessie one last time, and walked woodenly to lay his beloved in the archangel’s arms.

His fists clenched, red seeped into his vision, and his breath came hot and hard as his lips opened and his gaze fastened on the archangel. “I don’t ever want to see your fucking face again.”

Then he turned and ran as fast as he could until his emotions couldn’t keep up with his legs.

And he faded into black.