Chapter Seven
The moment they were outside the safety of the church, Thane checked the vicinity. The city rumbled along, oblivious to the danger around it. Above him, geometric swatches of the heavens shone between the buildings. Not a hellraider in sight. He could move onto the next problem.
Thane put his hands on his hips and asked Reya, “Out with it. What did you see?”
She slid him a glance, and then focused on the street traffic. “How did you know I saw something?”
Because he was paying very close attention to her. “You were quiet.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’ll have to watch the next time.”
He waited. “And?”
She hailed a taxi and got one in a heartbeat. Amazing. Maybe she was an angel. The angel of city cabs.
“Three symbols. One across the top, two on the bottom.” She climbed into the cab, and Thane got in next to her. He gave the driver the address to his apartment.
“What did they look like?” he asked, skeptical but hopeful. He hadn’t seen anything. And if nothing was there, then this mission would stop right now in this cab. He was plumb out of other leads.
“Confusing. Messy. The top one wasn’t too bad but the bottom two looked like a tangle of lines and circles. I’ll draw them when we get back to your place,” she said, sounding distracted.
He didn’t want to wait that long. “You’re sure you’ll be able to remember them for that long?”
“I can recall everything I see on a piece of paper,” she told him in all seriousness. “It’s my job.”
He wasn’t going to go there. “You haven’t seen them before?”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “And I’ve seen a lot of symbols.”
He considered that. “So do you live forever, like a vampire?”
She rolled her eyes at him then. “I’m not a vampire. But yes, I’m immortal. We all are. You are, too. The only difference is that I remember my past lives. Well, many of them. Some, actually. A few.”
He almost wished she were a vampire. Then maybe he’d understand half the shit she was saying. “And I have past lives?”
Reya turned and blinked at him. “Yes. Thousands of them. Most of them on Earth.”
He couldn’t imagine wanting to come back here more than once. “And the point being?”
“To experience.”
He laughed and shook his head. Here he thought she was just playing with Martin when she told him that. Without thinking, he put his arm over the back of her seat. “This lovely place? Why?”
“To learn,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Every life is your choice and yours alone.”
“Good, then I choose to get out,” he said, surprised by the bitterness in his own voice.
“Too late,” she said with a smirk. “And if you don’t figure it out this time around, you get to do it all over again.”
Like hell. “I can tell you right now, this life is shot.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, her tone serious. “It’s never too late. Besides, you aren’t alone in this. There are a lot of other souls helping you, supporting you.”
He’d take his father over them any day. Still, the more he learned, the more he knew where he stood in this entire game. “If this is a plan, then who’s in charge? God?”
“In the broader sense, yes. Mostly, it’s the spirit council made up of guides, guardians, elders, and ascended masters, among others.”
It was like a whole ’nother world. “So why is my soul any of their business?”
“Every soul is their business. They watch over you. They run the show.”
That got his attention. “You mean, control the show?”
She shrugged. “They call it guiding.”
Same thing. “So there have to be bad guys somewhere. Otherwise, everyone’s a saint.”
She shifted a little, nestling into his arm. “They’re called Controllers. They manipulate, lie, cheat, break the rules. They control big business, politicians, energy resources, research, the world economy, wars. They want power.”
He rubbed her hair between his fingers. “So pretty much, they’ve already won.”
She looked at him. “Surprisingly, no. Humans still love.”
His fingers stilled as he looked into her eyes. “How do you tell the good guys from the bad guys?”
“By how they make you feel,” she said. “The light won’t make you feel cheated or lied to. They won’t stab you in the back. They won’t lie to you. You may not like what they have to say, but you’ll know it’s the truth.”
“Even in this dimension,” he guessed.
She smiled a little. “Very good. But this isn’t the truth. Controllers want to control reality, which really isn’t reality. The spirit council controls the spirit world, which is the true reality.”
The headache that had started at the church was getting worse, but he tried to hang on to her logic. “The true reality.”
She said, “This is not real. This world you put so much stake in, it’s an illusion. A game you helped to create, complete with bad guys. A billion souls created this and now it’s your playground. Your real life is in the spirit world. That’s the world you need to worry about. Not this one.”
Thane stared back at her. She was dead serious. “So nothing here matters?”
“Everything matters,” she said. “What you do here affects your place there.”
In that case, he was in serious trouble. “So what? Saints get the oceanfront view and the rest of us get the view of the alley?”
“It’s not funny, Thane,” she said, staring straight ahead.
He thought it was hysterical. “Pardon me if I don’t give a shit.”
“You should,” she said. “Your eternal soul is at stake.”
* * *
They spent an hour playing guess what the scribbles mean before calling it a night. Reya gave Thane the bedroom and waited until he shut the door. Then she waited until she heard him get into bed. Then she called Orson.
He appeared surprisingly fast. “You bellowed?”
“Funny,” she said, and handed the piece of paper she’d drawn the trio of symbols on. “What are these?”
“No small talk?” he quipped.
She was tired. She’d dealt with dead people, half-dead people, and one man who asked way too many questions and didn’t believe half of what she told him anyway. She’d totally given up trying to hide anything from him. What was he going to do with that information anyway? Who would believe him?
“Please,” she said.
Orson’s eyebrows went up, and he studied the drawings. He turned the paper upside down and sideways. He tilted it. He even tried to curve it.
Finally he handed it back to her. “I have no idea.”
She gave a sigh, and shoved the paper at him. “Then find out. Because that’s the key to some mystery…thing.”
“That’s specific.”
She rubbed her forehead. “Don’t start. This is serious. I’m betting Surt wants whatever mystery thing that leads to. And he’s going to a lot of trouble to get it.”
Orson nodded. “I see. I’ll do my best.”
“And make it quick. I know how Surt operates. If something is in motion, it’s as good as done.”
Orson eyed her. “You think it’s too late?”
She hoped not. She hoped, in fact, that she was completely wrong about all of this. She was sorry she’d even brought it to Orson’s attention. And she was sick and tired of dealing with lowlifes who tossed their opportunities aside for greed and pride, and brought nothing but misery to this already miserable world. No wonder Surt was here. He probably wanted this pathetic world for himself.
She sucked in a breath. Oh, shit.
Orson frowned. “What is it?”
No, that couldn’t be right. Surt was perfectly content in his own little dimension. Wasn’t he? “I don’t know what Surt is up to, but it can’t be good. Any updates on why he’s taking out these innocent people?”
Orson shook his head. “You were right. They shouldn’t be coming up. Their timetables are all messed up.”
At least she knew she was reading it correctly. “I think you better hurry, Orson. Surt doesn’t do anything without a reason.”
* * *
Thane lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. The clock read 3:15 a.m. He was going to be dragging ass tomorrow.
His brain just wouldn’t shut off though.
Reya had drawn the three symbols out, if they were symbols at all, but he didn’t recognize any of them. No progress there. He didn’t know why his mother hadn’t told him about his father and the whispers. He didn’t know why this Surt a*shole was torching random people in the streets. In fact, he didn’t know shit except a bunch of nonsense about a thousand meaningless lives. And that was why he couldn’t sleep.
He heard something rustle next to his bed and had his gun out in flash. The darkest corner of his bedroom had turned pitch black and the air thick. Hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he realized the room was freezing cold.
He braced himself to fire at whatever came out.
The black shifted and a woman stepped out of the shadows—human and solid.
“You won’t be needing that,” she said, her voice low and sultry.
She was tall and lean, with blond hair, blue eyes, and wearing very little clothing. A gold crop top that stretched across her breasts, a short black skirt, and black stilettos. Either he was hallucinating or the dark side had the hottest women of all time.
Regardless, he was still keeping the gun on her. He threw the covers off and got to his feet. He glanced at the closed bedroom door and debated calling Reya. But what kind of cop would he be if he did that?
“How did you get in here?”
She walked to his closet and pulled out one of his shirts. She held it to her cheek and rubbed it gently. “I love the smell of clean shirts.”
Thane came around to face her. She sure looked real, but he had a feeling she wasn’t. “Who are you?”
She acted like he wasn’t even there, wasn’t holding a gun on her. “Darcy. Don’t worry, I’m not here to harm you. I’m just here for a visit. A warning, actually.”
This should be interesting. “What kind of warning?”
She pulled a sweater off the shelf and brushed her lips against the wool. “So soft.” Then she looked at him. “About your little protector, Reya.”
That put her in a whole other dimension. His gun was useless. “You know her?”
Darcy ran her hands along the length of his dress pants, fingertips lingering against the fabric. “Oh, yes. Did she tell you that she was on the dark side?”
She hadn’t, but he bluffed. “Sure. Not a problem.”
“I see,” Darcy said. She stood back and ran her fingers along the woodwork of the closet. “Did she tell you that she and Surt used to be lovers?”
Shit. Well that explained a few things. He’d deal with Reya later. Right now, he had a line on Surt. “What does Surt want with me?”
“He wants you to join us.”
Thane almost couldn’t believe he got an answer so easily. “Why would I want to do that?”
“To get justice,” she said with a smile. She turned her back to him and pulled out the top drawer of his dresser to peer inside. “To find out who killed your father and get justice. To make things right.”
He held his composure despite the onslaught of revelations. Not only did she know Reya, she knew everything about him—what happened to his father, what he felt, everything. Was he a complete open book to these people? “And you’ll promise me all that.”
“And much more,” she said with a slow, sexy smile that would have melted a lesser man. Somehow, it did nothing for him.
“I’ll pass.”
She closed the dresser drawer and looked at him in cool surprise. “We aren’t all bad,” she said, turning to him. “We just don’t like be told what to do and when to do it. We don’t like playing by rules that we had no part in designing.”
Thane eyed her. “You don’t like the spirit council.”
“No,” she said with a sardonic laugh. “They have a plan for everyone. But not everyone wants to have a plan. We don’t care to be dictated to so we chose a different route. You know what I’m talking about.”
He took definite umbrage to that. “Is that why you’re setting people on fire?”
She smiled wide and approached him, moving in close to the gun. Her eyes focused on him with singular intensity. “You are a very interesting man.”
“Answer my question,” he said.
Darcy pushed the gun to the side and stepped within a foot of him. He sensed spice and heat. “You don’t like to follow the rules either. You’ve been fighting the council for eons. Does that surprise you?”
It didn’t. He hated the idea of someone having a plan for his life, his soul. “Are you setting people on fire?”
“No,” she said and drew a line down the front of his T-shirt with a finger. The heat turned to ice. He stepped back, out of reach, and put her back in his gun sights.
“Surt?” he asked.
Her eyes lifted to his. “He’s taking out people who cause problems. Just like you do. We are so very much alike. Don’t you want to be with people who understand you?”
Thane felt the jab to his heart. “Tell Surt to stop. They’re good people.”
Darcy gave a soft laugh. “Is that what you think? Is that what Reya told you? You need to think for yourself, Thane. Think about what you want. And the best way to get it.”
He heard a sound in the other room. Reya.
When he looked back, Darcy was gone. The black cloud that had hung in the corner of his bedroom dissipated. The air temperature returned to normal. All that was left were her words.
* * *
Reya watched the local news. Two more people had burned to death overnight. Surt was really outdoing himself this time. It worried her that she cared so much, and she told herself that it was because these people didn’t have a chance against a power like Surt.
“You didn’t tell me that you and Surt were lovers,” Thane said from behind her.
Crap. How had he found out? And here she thought the dark side was gossipy. Served her right for not being more forthcoming. She turned to face him. He had showered, and his hair was still wet. He wore a soft chambray shirt and jeans. And a gun.
“Ancient history,” she said. “Really ancient.”
He didn’t look appeased. “I’d like to hear about it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want details?”
“About the relationship,” he said.
She tried to sound nonchalant. “We met between lives. I thought he was my soul mate. Followed him to the dark side. Broke up. Came back to the light. End of relationship. And how did you find out?”
Thane crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “Had a visit last night. From Darcy.”
Reya couldn’t hide her surprise. Christ, were they coming over in droves now? If this kept up, there would be no safe places from thieves and backstabbers. Speaking of which. “Don’t believe anything she says.”
“Funny, that’s what she said about you, too.”
They stared at each other for a long time. Reya knew that if he didn’t trust her, this would end badly and soon. God, she hated soul-searching crap. “Do you know why I’m a Redeemer?”
He shook his head.
“Because it was the hardest, most painful job available on this side. So I could get out of the darkness and come back to where I belong. To where I can trust souls again.”
“I don’t know if I buy that,” he said slowly. “You get free food, a free place to live, know everything about everyone, have some cool weapons and powers. Doesn’t sound like a hard job to me.”
Reya walked up to him and looked into his eyes. “It hurts.”
He blinked. “What hurts?”
“Every time I get a new assignment,” she said, willing herself not to lose control. But damn tears burned in her eyes, and she blinked them away. “I feel everything they’ve ever done to anyone. Every punch, every rape, every bit of red rage, and every scream they draw.”
She stared into his eyes and lost herself in the process. “I hear the victim’s pleas for mercy. I taste the blood. I feel the fear. It’s a nightmare that never goes away. It just changes from a*shole to a*shole.”
Reya closed her eyes and let the tears fall. Her heart felt heavy and tight in her chest. She hated this job. She hated that she had no choice.
She felt Thane’s arms around her as he pulled her to him. For a moment, she fought it. But it felt so warm and so good and the stupid tears wouldn’t stop.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that,” he said softly.
She soaked in the physical comfort for a moment longer than she should before stepping out of his arms. He let her go.
She turned away before she could see the pity on his face. “I asked for this. My choice.”
Then she looked at him to make sure he understood what she’d just given him. “We always have a choice. We are free to choose our paths—right or wrong. And I was wrong to follow Surt.”
Thane was watching her intently. “I believe you.”
“Good,” she said and grabbed her coat. “Because we have to stop him.”