Bring Me to Life（Time Walkers 1）(10)

She was making his brain twitch. He shifted his hold because he was sure he had to be hurting her. “What are you talking about?”

Bryna stared up at him. Her hand came up, and her finger skimmed along the length of his scar. Her body trembled before she turned her head. “I killed you.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah, we established that. Let’s go over what happened that night.”

“No. You help me live for the next week, and then I get to die in whatever way I want, remember?”

He felt a sharp pain in the general vicinity of where his heart should be, but right now he wasn’t sure he’d ever had one. He had the sick feeling Bryna really wanted to die. It was a mindfuck like he’d never experienced before. After all the years of wishing she’d suffered with her death, all he wanted was for her to stop hurting because of him. Rain sheeted down on them both. He was sure he was going to end up in hell, but not before he fixed her. This was why he’d been sent back. No being, no matter what they’d done, should have to suffer the way his Bryna was suffering. “Bryna, I was just being a bastard. You don’t actually get to die. You’re supposed to live.”

A pitiful sob tore from her. “But you’re dead. I killed you. Why should I get to live when you don’t?”

“I…” He stopped, not quite sure what to say. Maybe if he explained what was happening to him she’d stop trying to rip his stone heart out. “I’m in a limbo of sorts. I help keep innocent people safe and kill off bad things like vampires until I’m judged.”

She went perfectly still and refused to look at him. “I-I don’t know what to do with this. So you’re dead, but you’ve come back for the next week to keep me from dying?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

His jaw started to tick. “I already told you. I’m supposed to protect innocents.”

She jerked out of his hold and wrapped her arms around herself as she tried to get away from him, but kept inching back toward him with each crash of thunder. “And you said you kill bad things, too.”

He was going to find a way to kill Felix. He really was. This was the most fucked-up thing he’d ever seen, and he’d seen it all. How the hell could she think she was one of the bad things? “Yeah, baby, but I was sent to protect you, not kill you.”

*

Bryna started to tremble, and she hoped like hell he only thought she was cold. What kind of hell had she sent him to where he was being forced to protect his murderer? She shook her head and moved away from him again. No. That wasn’t Vincent. He was Wraith. Even if he’d been Vincent in life—her face crumpled. No. This man standing in front of her couldn’t be Vincent. She just wasn’t going to believe it, because if she did, if she let herself think Wraith was her Vincent, then he hated her.

Not that he didn’t have every right to, but—No, she couldn’t let her thinking go there. Not if she needed to live to prevent some kind of catastrophe. He was taking up all her space and crowding her against the tree. She wrapped her arms around herself tighter and turned her head. Processing this was absolutely out of the question. “Okay. I think the vampires will be coming soon. We need to get out of here.”

“I’m Vincent,” he said hoarsely.

She shook her head and ducked under his arm. “No. You’re Wraith. I killed Vincent. He’s gone and he can’t come back. We need to leave.” She started back toward the car. They needed to get somewhere else. It was going to be a long and cold walk through the rain, but she was sure she’d seen signs for a motel a few miles back. Hopefully the vampires wouldn’t be able to get a scent with all this rain.

“Damn it, Bryna, you can’t ignore this,” Vincent said as he caught up to her.

She would not look at him. “It’s raining. You should put your hood up.”

“Bryna,” he started. “We can’t ignore this.”

“Oh yes, we can,” she snapped at him. “You do your job, and I’ll do my best not to die. Next week you can go back to fucking your protectees, and I’ll go back to doing what I do.”

*

Vincent felt like he’d been slapped in the face. Only, he wished she really would have done it. It would have hurt less. He ground his teeth as he followed her for a minute. “So you’re going to waste my effort to keep you alive by getting yourself killed next week?”

She stopped walking, and he nearly plowed into her. He growled. She stood there with her back to him for so long he was sure she wasn’t going to respond before she slowly turned around and looked up at him. Her face was scarily expressionless. “I won’t waste your efforts if that’s what you really want.”

He was feeling sick again. As much as he wanted to demand she deal with this and they come to some kind of favorable conclusion right now, one that didn’t keep her trapped in this destructive guilt cycle, doing it here wasn’t the brightest of ideas. He clenched his jaw and gritted out through his teeth. “We’ll talk about this later. We need to get out of here.”

“No,” she said. “We won’t.” Then she walked off again.

Vincent followed close behind her. Yeah, it had been a hugely fucked-up mistake to kiss her. It wasn’t like they were going to be able to pick up right where they left off when this was over. In the end he was still dead, and she wasn’t. He’d have to go back to his afterlife job of preventing the end of the world, and she’d—his chest constricted—she’d go off and get herself killed to pay for a crime two hundred years old, by his timeline.

He needed to find out how her life ended. At this point, any fear Felix had of it sabotaging the mission was over. His job was to save Bryna’s life, and he knew the old bastard well enough to know this one would extend beyond the mission’s end. There was no way whatever apocalypse threatening existence would end if she died next week.

They got to the car. Bryna strapped on the backpack and draped a huge black poncho over herself. She stopped in front of him, but stared at his chest instead of looking at his face. “I’ll need the food.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, looking at the top of her wet head. “I’ll make sure it gets to where it needs to go.”

She nodded once and started off in the direction of the nearest motel. He couldn’t help the bit of smile that curved his mouth. She hadn’t been able to navigate her way out of a phone booth, and now she was able to find places without having been there or getting directions. He watched her for a couple of seconds before he ducked into the car to scrawl a quick message on his crumpled assignment sheet. With any luck Felix would give him the answers he needed and a few reinforcements to back him up.

To his relief she was becoming as important as any job he’d ever had, but it was short-lived. As sure as he was dead, he knew without doubt the woman he was supposed to save was already gone.





Chapter 4


Bryna clenched her jaw. Her teeth would shatter if she could get them together any tighter, but she was not going to talk to him, nor look at him. She had to live. Screw that. Good, innocent, deserving people had their lives saved to prevent the end of the world. Not murderers. The questions bubbling in her head didn’t matter. They couldn’t. What Hell did she send him to where he was forced to save the life of the woman who murdered him?

“Bryna.”

“No.” Her jaw ached, but she clenched it again, anyway. This pain was better than the one threatening to swallow her alive. She marched through the dreary, soaked street. The rain refused to let up. There was no hope to see the sun again today, maybe never again.

“Bryna.”

She whipped around. “The motel is right there. I’m cold and I’m wet, and I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me what happened.”

“You know what happened.” Before he could demand she recount every horrible nanosecond of the moment he died, she slapped her hands over her ears and pretended she couldn’t hear him. He was old, appearing maybe thirty with a god-awful scar slashing across his beautiful face. She didn’t know, and wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to know what could be horrible enough to age a dead man. Hell. She’d sent the man she loved to Hell, and then he had the freaking nerve to demand she live. Not. Going. To. Happen. If there was any kind of justice in the universe, she’d die today and trade places with him. She’d been so terrified that night, she’d pulsed. After the vampires were gone, when the ash settled, she’d realized she’d killed Vincent as well, though she’d never killed a living person when she pulsed previously. Her Uncle Ron was a prime example. When he yelled and screamed at her when she’d been a teenager, the fear inside of her bubbled out. Uncle Ron would end up sailing across the room. But not once had she killed him.

Pain seared through her chest. She dropped to her knees right there at the asphalt entrance to a dingy motel with a bright orange vacancy sign flashing in the window. She gasped for air, and her heart threatened to hammer out of her chest. Vincent’s strong arms looped around her. No. They were the arms of the Wraith. A being so powerful and terrifying every vampire fled from him and rarely uttered his name in fear that somehow the two syllables would cause Wraith to appear and slaughter the whole nest.