Last Chance for Love(7)

Death.

Panic shot through Nick, hand-in-hand with abject terror. He’d never expected this and didn’t know how to wrap his mind around it. Was it real?

“What—”

“I’ve come to take you,” Death said, and its voice became low and musical, almost soothing.

Nick gulped, or at least he thought he did. “Where?”

A pause for just a moment and then. “Above.”

“I’m dead?” As soon as the words left his mouth, they made sense. He’d died on the couch, hadn’t he? And now he was being collected.

“Yes,” the musical voice said. “You are. Everything is going to be okay though. I’m taking you to a good place.”

“That thing wanted to take me, too.” He remembered its red eyes and its cackle. He searched the face of the being in front of him but it was lowered. He couldn’t see the eyes, see if they were red, too—he thought they wouldn’t be though. “Where would it have taken me?”

Death shook its head, keeping its gaze lowered. “Below.”

Was the universe punishing him for the last five years? For doing nothing but wallowing in his own guilt and depression? Nick shuddered in an odd, unfamiliar sort of way. “Was I…bad?”

Death tilted its head “What do you mean?”

“It wanted to take me below? To Hell? Does that mean I was bad in someway?”

“No. It doesn’t work like that. Not really.” Death gestured with its hands as if trying to find some way to explain. “When you die, your soul is left free for a little while. Stuck in the body anyone can come and claim it. It is simply a question of who gets here first. The good or the bad. You were put on the list to be collected, which means that you were deemed good enough in life to warrant taking above. Of course, that’s no guarantee that you end up there. It’s all down to who makes it to the soul first.”

“You’re from the good side?” Nick asked, trying to wrap his head around this new reality. “I saw the strange light on you.”

Death nodded. “Yes.”

Katie. Her image came to him then, filling every corner of this new mind, and inexplicably a strange sort of relief filled him, banishing the terror and worry. This wasn’t the end, not even close. There was something after death, a way forward. Surely when Katie had died, the same thing would have happened? She would have been taken above as well. She was too lovely not to have been put on the list, and that meant she was still out there somewhere. It meant there was a chance for them to be together again, that this all made a horrible kind of sense.

He shuddered with longing. He would see her again! Hold her and touch her and do all the things he’d ached to do for so long. Katie, his wife, the woman he loved so damn much.

“I need to take you right now,” Death said, interrupting his frantic thoughts. “There’s another waiting for me, and if I don’t get there on time she’ll end up below.”

He was almost eager now to get things moving. He’d see Katie soon surely? Her beautiful hair and her dazzling eyes and he’d hold her, kiss her, and tell her how much he’d missed her. How she’d taken his heart with her when she left.

A weird feeling, almost like excitement, vibrated inside of him, and he felt as though he nodded. “Do whatever you have to.”

Death leant forward and reached into his body with a hand, right through him, and Nick felt as though something was being grasped. Something he’d never known existed before. At first it felt fine, just a little tickle, but then the hand clenched and pain the likes of which Nick had never known filled him. He screamed again, agony searing through his body, but not his body really, only the squashed part.

The headaches of the last few years paled in comparison to the pain when Death pulled. He roared, blackness grabbed him, and then, before he could even consider what was happening, he was standing by the couch, looking down on what was once him.

“Oh my God,” he breathed.

“Not quite. Not yet at least.”

He looked at the robed being stood next to him, gaze still lowered, shocked to find that it was a good foot smaller than him. Could this really be Death? “Who are you?”

“Stand still.”

Death swung the scythe, and he almost jumped but whatever it did was over in a flash and he felt different. Lighter somehow. Free.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I severed you from your body. Now we can go.”

Nick glanced down once more at what had been himself. It was only now that he noticed how much he’d let himself go over the last five years. After all what reason had he to look good? To work out or eat properly, or even bother buying new clothes? “That’s really me?” he whispered. “I look—”

“You look just like you always did.”

Death took a step back, and as it did, Nick saw a flash of skin through the rip in the long, black robe. Tanned, soft skin. What the hell? He gaped and from the robed face to the skin and back again. How could Death have tanned skin? What was this being, and why did something feel…off?

“You’re a person,” he said slowly. The skin, the voice… Death had to be a person, not a demon or anything. It was the only thing that made sense.

“We’re all people. Just different people.”

“But….” Nick semi-shuddered again and tried to order his thoughts. He was almost convinced that something was wrong, apart from being dead and all. What though? What was prodding him?

You look just like you always did.

“How do you even know what I looked like?” he asked. “Or look like, or you know what I mean. Do you guys have old pictures or something?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Death said, turning.

Nick shook his head, confused and out of sorts and just plain shocked, when he saw a color he thought he’d never get to see ever again. Everything clicked with a certainty he could not explain, and he inhaled sharply. Jesus Christ.

“Wait,” he said.

Death paused, hand clenching the scythe by its side.

Nick reached out and placed a hand on its shoulder, excitement fizzing through him when it did not move. The rip in the back of the robe went from the very top right down to the waist, and he wanted to scream in exultation. Just one movement and golden strands fell through his fingers, strands he’d never thought he would feel again, falling like a waterfall of softness.

He swallowed dryly and felt his new heart expand. “Katie?”





Chapter Nine





Even through the robe, the feel of Nick’s fingers on her shoulder was like breathing fresh air again after a lifetime spent indoors. Katie Ripley stood stock-still and both cursed and thanked the Hell Reaper for slicing through the heavy material.

“Katie?” he asked, and she shivered all over again at the sound of his voice. She’d missed him so much, for so long, the sound of his voice could easily be enough to undo her.

“Katie, is that really you?”

His voice was hesitant, enquiring, and her heart squeezed even as she blinked back tears. Never in all her fantasies over the last few days had she ever imagined this could possibly happen. That Nick would recognize her, would know her, that she would have the chance to talk to him again as her. Katie not Ripley. Nick’s wife, not Death come to collect his soul. Part of her wanted to stay in what was once their sitting room and turn to him, look into each other’s new eyes, hold each other’s hands, and rediscover one another. But she knew it wasn’t allowed, that there was no time. She had less than a minute to get to the next soul, and Nick wasn’t hers anymore. He had one destination in front of him, and it was one, thanks to her stupidity, that he would have to do alone.

“We have to go,” she whispered.

“But—”

“There’s no time for this right now.”

“But, Katie, it is you isn’t it?”

Heart racing frantically, Ripley closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She so wanted to turn around and wrap him in her arms, soul skin to soul skin. Never had she wanted anything as much in her entire existence. Not even after her death when she’d begged for her old body back. But five years of responsibility weighted heavy on her shoulders, and mere miles away another soul was about to emerge. She had to be there for it.

“I have to take you above now,” she said, hardening herself against the intense wave of longing that filled her.

“Damn it, talk to me,” he said.

He sounded just like he always had, and her breath caught, her head spun.

“Please…Katie, if that’s you….”

His voice broke on the last word, and with it, Ripley’s resolve. Why deny it any longer? Against all the odds he knew, somehow he knew it was her, and it was unspeakably cruel to brush him aside. Ripley turned around slowly and pulled the robe back from her head. His eyes widened and a smile, magnificent in his brilliance, shot across his face. It turned all the little frown lines into laughter lines, and Ripley’s heart thumped desperately.

“Katie,” he breathed. “I knew, as soon as soon as I saw your hair. I just knew.”

“Nick—”

“You came for me,” he continued. “To collect me. Oh God, Katie.”

“No,” she whispered, because she did not like the way his thoughts were going, could not like them. “It’s not like that.”