“Yep. The Argents are too. Time walkers aren’t exactly mortal, but you managed to get yourself in a bad situation when you let that vampire kill you. Please tell me he’s at least dead.”
“I killed him last night,” Vincent said. His life caused the apocalypse? But that wasn’t possible. “I’ve been dead for two hundred years.”
Zerek pulled everything needed to make a ham and cheese sandwich out of the refrigerator. “It took Felix ten years to figure out where the turning point was, and another one hundred and ninety to figure out who the key was to keep the world from going to shit.”
“It’s not Bryna, is it?”
Zerek made the sandwich in silence, and then brought it over to her on a folded paper towel. He set it down on a broken coffee table in front of Bryna and stepped up in front of Vincent. “There are a lot of people in the world who died on the day you did. Felix had a lot of shit to sort through. He kept trying to save Bryna’s life, but she kept doing stupid shit to be with you. Felix ran through every possible endgame scenario and the only one we don’t end up in a burnt-out husk of a world is the one where you didn’t get yourself killed.”
Bryna jumped up with a whoop of excitement. “I told you! I told you! Now you have to go back and save your life.”
“Eat,” Zerek snapped, he turned a glowing glare on Vincent. “And it’s not that fucking simple or one of us could have gone back in time and saved your ass when you were a kid. Once you cross the gates of Heaven or of Hell in spirit form, it’s game over.”
Vincent was sure Zerek was saying all of this just to make his brain hurt. “You were in Hell, apparently.”
“I had to go get someone for the guy higher up than Felix, but that’s entirely beside the point.” He took to pacing the length of the dilapidated coffee table. “If you’d have crossed either of those gates, we’d lose the chance to bring you back. A living time walker is a hell of lot more useful than a dead one. You can pulse and kill demons and shit all in the form you are in, but you’re not strong enough to snuff out a Hell Spawn, and that’s exactly what Draven is working for.”
“Hell Spawn?” Vincent felt like he was that almost eighteen-year-old kid again sitting in Felix’s office trying to come to terms with his death, and the possibility Bryna had betrayed him. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
Zerek slapped a hand on his face and dragged it down before letting out a huff. “Because if you’re supposed to be dead, then you need to get rid of your damn baggage to cross the pearly gates, but since you’re not, having you cross those gates would be very bad for humans, and for your girl there.”
Vincent looked down at Bryna. She hadn’t touched her sandwich, but Vincent could have predicted that. She didn’t like ham. He drew in a controlled breath and let it out slowly. “I am missing something else. It’s not all adding up. Bryna has a powerful pulse. Can’t she kill this Hell Spawn?”
“Bryna pulsed the night you died, yes, but so did you. She took out the two vampires next to her. The rest would have killed her, but you also pulsed. Everything undead in that clearing was gone. Have you been able to achieve that kind of pulse again?”
Vincent leaned against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting on the olive-green shag carpet. “But the rule? How do I avoid Hell if I go back to save my own life?”
“Finally,” Zerek said. He picked up the sandwich and handed it to Bryna. “I don’t care if you don’t like it. Eat.”
She scowled at him. “Finally, what?”
“Eat and I will tell you.”
*
Bryna never ate a horrid ham sandwich so fast in her life. “Now, make sense. Why did we have to figure out this out ourselves?”
Andy—or she guessed his real name was Zerek—shook his head and sat next to her on the couch. “Vincent is the Wraith, and a lot of vampires and demons and you name it will be after him and you. He’ll need to retain his memories if either of you have a hope to live past your eighteenth birthday. They know how to get to him, and it’s always been through you.”
“That’s why I wasn’t allowed to know about her,” Vincent said. Anger pulsed around him as he shoved up to his feet. “You’re so full of shit. Felix let her suffer for fucking two hundred goddamned years because he wanted me good and ready to fight for him.”
“Vincent,” Bryna said in a soft tone as she moved over to him. “Does it matter now? It’s not like we can change it, but we can save you. We can save us, and you will have the knowledge and power needed to keep this from happening to us again.”
“Her memories,” Zerek said softly. “All of them would return to her.”
“No,” Vincent snapped. “Then I fucking stay dead.”
“Vincent.” Now that she had all of his attention, she had no idea how she was supposed to calm him down and make him see reason. Life, all life, went to hell without him, and he needed to get that through his thick skull. “I’ll be okay.”
“No,” he snapped. “I thought you killed me. Do you want to relive that? Knowing I thought you killed me?”
She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She sat on the coffee table, and then stood right back up when it moaned under her slight weight. She sat on the floor instead, and tried to catch her breath. She’d thought she’d killed him, too. Would it matter? Did it matter? She dropped her head back to look all the way up at him.
Self-loathing and misery marred his beautiful scarred face.
She thought back to that night. She’d seen his eyes when he saw her with a vampire sucking on her throat, and a beer can in her hand. She’d known it then. He’d thought she’d been cheating on him, but he’d still fought Draven. According to Zerek, he’d pulsed to save her life. That was what she had to hold onto, or she’d go mental. She was going to get her Vincent back. It didn’t matter how screwed up they were before this point. She forced herself up to her feet and placed her hand over his heart. “You thought I betrayed you, and you still saved my life and died in my place.” Tears burned in her eyes. How she ever managed to win that kind of love from anyone, she couldn’t say, but now it was her turn to save him. Damn it. She was going to do it. Vincent always gave her want she wanted. There was no reason to believe he’d be different now. “I want to meet Felix.”
Chapter 11
Vincent’s arm was locked around her when they appeared in a long white hallway with gold trim.
“This is where you’ve been,” Bryna murmured, trying not to let the beauty of this place make her go stupid.
“Only when I talk to Felix. Are you sure you want to meet him? He’s a bastard.”
She wrapped her hand around Vincent’s, absolutely sure she did not want to meet Felix, but there had to be a way to save Vincent. This Felix guy was probably the only one who knew how. “Yes.”
He let go of her long enough to lock his hand around her wrist. “Stay behind me.” Then he started walking. Out of nowhere a door swung open, and they walked into a white office with gold trim. A man sat at a desk writing nothing on a clear piece of what looked like cellophane paper. Two chairs appeared in front of the desk.
“Sit,” he said in a curt voice.
Bryna went to sit, but Vincent didn’t move, and wouldn’t let her go either.
“Fuck you,” Vincent snapped.
Felix set his cellophane and white feather quill down on the desk and stood up. His jaw was clenched and his eyes narrowed. “I like blondes, but thank you for the offer. Sit.”
Bryna tilted her head up and stared into Vincent’s eyes. “For me, please.”
His lip curled, but he grudgingly moved to the chairs, and let Bryna sit, but he did not. “Tell me what is going on.”
“You have a new assignment. The Argents and Zerek will accompany you.” He handed Vincent a new piece of paper. “Take care of this one.” He sat back at his desk and started writing again.
Bryna waited a beat and then leaned forward. “How does Vincent not go to Hell?”
A smile curved Felix’s mouth. “I can’t send anyone to Hell who isn’t already dead. Death for an immortal is a long way off. I am sure he can earn his place in Heaven before the end of his life.”
“He’s what?”
Felix stopped writing and looked at her with grey eyes. “He’s a time walker. Anyone who can pulse is one.” He looked down at his clear paper again. “You’ll have a long, eventful life with him. Go, Vincent has an assignment he cannot ignore.”
Vincent pulled her out of the chair. He stared down at the paper in his hand, and he looked at her with a mingling of hope and fear in his eyes. “Are you ready to be a teenager again?”
“With you?” A smile bloomed over her face. “Totally.”
His arm locked her against his strong body. “Let’s do this. Close your eyes.”
Bryna did as he asked. A wave of nausea hit, and the world felt like it was spinning away from her. When she opened her eyes, she was in the living room of Vincent’s old apartment. She wasn’t wearing what she put on this morning. Instead she had on a bright yellow sun dress and didn’t have any shoes on. She felt her hair. It was done in a side braid with a bow tied on the end.