“No!” he roared and shoved up to his feet. “Tell me what I have to do to keep you alive. I don’t care what it is. If you die, I can’t save you. I’m not stronger than the demon after you, and it can only kill you.” He broke off his rant and started prowling around the room.
To anyone else, they’d think this was when Vincent was at his most dangerous, but if he was the same in death as he’d been in life, he was just confused and pissed off at himself. This was when he was always the most capable of doing the worst damage to himself.
Bryna shoved herself up off the floor and stepped in front of him. His body jerked to a stop before he plowed into her. “It can only what?”
His eyes closed, and he took a visible gulp of air before he looked at her again. “There is a death beyond the afterlife. We call it Oblivion. Nothing of you exists anymore. The demon will make it so we cannot be together even in death. I can’t kill it.”
The last time she’d seen this much desperation in him had been the afternoon before he died. Her uncle had been one of his rare moods, and while most of the time he hadn’t cared what she did or who she was with, he’d threatened to have Vincent arrested if he ever saw Bryna again. To this day she didn’t understand what the problem had been. She’d been fifteen and Vincent seventeen. Everything had been perfectly legal and easy, up until the point Vincent had gotten angry with her uncle and cowed the man back into a corner with his bellowing the day before he turned eighteen. It had freaked her uncle out, and he’d made the declaration. She’d agreed to go home with her Uncle Ron to keep Vincent out of jail.
As much as her Aunt Jeni could be worse than Cinderella’s stepmother, she’d always had a thing for true love. She was five years younger than her Uncle. It would have taken a day or so for her Uncle to calm down and for her aunt to explain to him everything was all right. Really, it wasn’t because her aunt cared that much, but it was easier on them if Bryna was hanging out at Vincent’s apartment. The whole sordid mess probably had Romeo and Juliet stamped on it from the beginning, but she kept getting that wrong, too. Now, maybe she hadn’t messed up nearly as much as she thought.
If her freakish power hadn’t killed Vincent, and her death now caused him to be sent back to save her…No, she couldn’t quite get there yet. “What did you say?”
“I can’t kill it,” Wraith repeated.
Her brow furrowed at the way he was looking her as if she had some power he didn't possess. “But…I can?”
Vincent’s eyes went huge for a moment before he let out a whoop and lifted her up by the waist and spun her around in a quick circle. “That’s it! In every other instance, you killed Draven before the demon, or didn’t know about the demon and Oblivion! That’s what has to stop the apocalypse and why you can’t die, because you’re meant to kill it.”
“Yeah, I don’t do the whole apocalyptical battles well. If you want someone to help, then we need to go talk to Andy. He’s way better at this stuff than I am.”
His head cocked and his jaw started to tic. “Andy? Isn’t he your demon hunter friend?”
Then she was confused. “Yes. You’re dead. Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”
He snorted at her. “You always thought that I did, but I still don’t. If I knew how to keep you alive, we wouldn’t be standing here now talking about it.”
Whoa, that one came back around to knock her upside the back of her head. “Wait. How many times have I died?”
He winced. “One hundred ninety-one times.”
She blinked a few times. So, she had been heading for death, but like with everything in life, it took her longer than average to figure out how to do it. She shook it off, and then her face blanched. “You’ve watched me die that many times?”
He wrapped his arms around her and growled low in his chest. It was a tingly, rumbly feeling that would have been nice, if it wasn’t making the walls rattle. “No. This is only the second time Felix has sent me back to help you.”
“Second? Felix? Back?” She pulled back a little from him. Then she decided it was good she’d learned not to react during a crisis. She only reacted afterward. Once she had time to process this, she was going to be a quivering mess on the floor. “You need to explain things better here. I don’t like being confused.”
He captured her face and kissed her before he looked at her with his too stern expression. “I’ve been dead for two hundred years. I can time walk. Anywhere, anytime I am needed to stop something really fucked-up from happening to the world, I can go there. It’s kind of my job.”
That would explain why the boy she’d known didn’t present in the man in front of her. Still, this was messing with her. “But you’re dead. You look like you’re in your mid-thirties. You can still age while dead?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I really haven’t paid attention to that kind of thing, but I’m guessing it has more to do with experience points than anything else.”
Her brow winged up. “This isn’t a video game.”
He grinned at her, and all of that bad-boyish charm she’d fallen in love with flashed across his face. The scar ran deep, but it still suited him. “Sure it is.” His face took on a greenish hue. “But I do not want you experiencing the game over again.”
“Yeah. I’ve been working hard toward that end. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to pull out of it.” The truth hurt. She didn’t want to be dead. She wanted to be with Vincent, and now he was here. He seemed to have so much life in him, but she’d buried a body.
She’d seen too much of the world not to believe most of what he said, and the other parts she had to believe because he was Vincent. It didn’t take away the soul-deep need she had to be with him in some meaningful way for the rest of forever, but what if he failed to keep her alive? She didn’t know how death worked. Could he get into trouble and be sent to Hell if she died too many more times?
Her stomach twisted. She needed to figure this out.
His hand stroked down her hair as he used the tips of two fingers on his other hand to tilt her chin up. “Death comes for everyone, Bryna, sooner or later your time will come, but it can’t be right now.”
She searched his face. “I want to be with you.”
“I know,” he murmured softly. “But you need to live. I can survive forever without you if I know there is still a you, but I can’t if there isn’t anything left of you, sunshine.”
This wasn’t fair. She couldn’t survive without him. Hadn’t she already proved how much she messed everything up without him? The thought of Vincent never existing again was enough to promptly send her into the pending meltdown.
Chapter 10
He decided he was the bastard he felt like. He held her while she cried. No matter how much her tears shredded him. He was going to hold her for as long as she needed him to. No matter what he did or how he tried to spin it in his head, every tear she cried was his fault since the day they’d met.
He wasn’t stupid enough not to learn his lesson the first time around. Trying to prevent himself from ever meeting her had turned out catastrophic. There was something huge in this he was missing. Which brought him back to Caleb and his mysterious need for Bryna to bake him cookies. There was no way she’d learn to bake in this time line, but it was possible she learned to do it in another, possibly one where Vincent lived. But saving himself still went against Felix’s number one rule. He tried to shake off the hope. Just as soon as she was done falling apart yet one more time because of him, he’d summon Caleb, and go have a talk with this Andy guy.
He really didn’t like the surge of jealousy that she’d found a guy friend she depended on when a supernatural crisis hit. This was his specialty, and she should have been able to call on him.
“You’re shaking the room,” she murmured between hiccups. She sniffled a few times and then looked up at him. “So this is it? We really weren’t supposed to be together?”
If she could have asked any other question, he might not have felt like his chest was about to cave in. Love did a lot of things. It had saved the world hundreds of times. It was the closest thing two people living could get to Heaven. When it was real, it was destined. Their love had been real. It was still real. He swallowed hard and stooped down so they were closer to eye level. “That’s the worst part, babe. We were—are—in love. That doesn’t get any more destined than that, but death is what it is.”
Her face crumpled as she looked down and picked at her pinky finger. “Then don’t be dead.”
He ground his teeth together. “If I thought it might actually get you what you want, I would, but I can’t go back and save myself. It kind of defeats the point of death.”
She let out a huge sigh. “Fine.” She turned away from him. “I need to go get a shower and then get dressed. If something big is coming at me I should warn Andy. He gets pissy when evil things get past him.”
There she was talking about this Andy guy again. He wasn’t going to think about it. He’d assess the bastard, and if he could pass the inspection, maybe he’d think about doing something with it later. Much later. Like after he’d saved her life and she was ready to move on. Yeah. That would work. Just as soon as he could convince himself to let some other man love her.