“Okay, we can go now,” she said.
Leo gaped at her.
“We can go? That’s it? No explanation of who that woman was and how you did…what you just did?” he said with incredulity.
Faith sighed softly and then turned her body to face him. “When we die, we move our spirits from one plane to the next. It is a plane of peace and comfort that provides anything that is needed. I guess you might call it heaven, in your religion. It’s called many things in many religions, but the principle is the same. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because instinctively we know there is another world beyond this one, and that it is a place without pain or disease or abuse.” She hesitated, her clean white teeth worrying the plushness of her bottom lip as she seemingly debated what to tell him next. “When we die we immediately get sent to this place. Except…sometimes something happens and it keeps us from going. It traps us here.” She looked down, watching herself smooth wrinkles out of her dress by running soft, slow pressure along the length of it. “Without getting into too much detail, what I do is…I help them find their way.”
“So that,” he pointed toward the hood of the car, “was a ghost? Is that what you’re telling me?” He could hear himself sounding more and more shrill, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“Not at all,” she said, “she’s a soul.”
“What the hell difference does that make?” he demanded of her.
She stopped all her fidgeting and went severely serious in the next moment, meeting his accusatory stare with an aggressive one of her own.
“It makes a hell of a lot of difference to the person trapped here, I assure you,” she bit out. But then she seemed to rein her temper back in. “If you’ve learned anything about the Nightwalker world, you know nothing is what you might expect or assume it to be. Souls get trapped here in two ways. One, they won’t let themselves go. They fight death so hard, resist the natural process for so long, that they miss their opportunity to cross. Like, say, a boat in the water that needs to go past a drawbridge to get to its destination, but instead of going forward with the current they throw the engines into full reverse. Eventually the drawbridge closes and the boat has missed its opportunity.”
“And two?” he asked, feeling somehow disturbed by the concept of a trapped soul, a stupid sort of empathy that made him very uncomfortable.
“Someone or something purposely holds them here. There are spells and such that can achieve that. But there are also…there’s another force that can do it very easily. They are called Wraiths. If they kill someone and are touching that person at the time of its death, they will trap the soul and use its pain and torment to fuel themselves, to fuel their power. It takes someone like me, a Night Angel, to lead them through portals that only we can find. The wind…” She trailed off. “I guess you don’t really care about all of this.”
Leo wished he could say that he didn’t. But he did. In spite of himself he was eaten up with curiosity as to how things in this other world worked. Actually, she made him curious. Maybe because she was a Nightwalker in a pretty, bearable package, or because listening to her made him want to know more if for no other reason than to continue hearing the soft sweetness of her tone of voice. She was strong and vibrant when needed, but moments like this, when she turned gentle and almost a little sad…it made him lean in and want more. More of…something.
“The wind?” he prompted after a long moment.
She looked at him sideways through the corner of her eyes, her brow wrinkling a little bit as she tried to decipher his intent. He kept his expression carefully neutral, nothing discouraging and nothing encouraging. He hoped that whatever she could see on his scroll didn’t interfere with her responding to him. But there was nothing he could do about that, so he just let her decide how to dictate the moment.
“The wind blows over everything. There’s nothing it doesn’t touch, almost no corner it can’t get through to. Angels can get the entire topography of an area for miles around in any direction just through our sense of the wind. But it also allows us to feel the cusps. The cusps are small alcoves in the edge of normal perception…and they are the thinnest point between here and the next plane. We can find them and lead the trapped soul to them.”
“Is that what you did? You led her to the afterlife?”
“No. I merely promised her that, if she remained here, I would come back for her and help her then. I realize time is of the essence for Jackson, and this soul has already been here for over one hundred years. She can wait a little bit longer. I will come back and I will take care of her,” she said with determination.
“But why not now? How long could it possibly take?”
“Not long at all, actually,” she said. “But I can’t help her like this.” She indicated her appearance.
“You mean…because you’re in sunlight?”
Faith nodded.
Then, for a bright and shining moment, he really understood that this state of being was very unnatural for her. That in its own way it troubled and hurt her.
“Are you all right like this? Is…is this going to cause you pain?” he asked, unable to keep himself aloof. He wasn’t that much of a prick…was he?
“Eventually, if I stay in daylight long enough…yes, it will become increasingly more painful. Physically as well as…well, it’s very painful to see a tortured soul like that and know I can’t help her. Leaving her behind where she isn’t really safe disturbs me.”
“I don’t doubt that in the least,” Leo said thoughtfully.
Not even realizing he was going to do it, he reached out and brushed a thumb over the powder-soft cheek closest to him, momentarily marveling over how dark his Hispanic complexion was in contrast to all of that white…and yet, when she was out of sunlight, she would return to her black coloring and then it would be he who would seem paler than she was.
But coloring was not what compelled him to touch her, and when she startled at the contact and looked at him questioningly, he should have snatched his hand away. He didn’t want to engender a sense of connection between them, a sense of camaraderie. He wasn’t in this to make a new friend, only to save what was left of an old one. But the more he felt the fragile softness of her, the more he wanted to stay in contact.
What the hell is wrong with you? he asked himself meanly. Keep your goddamn head on straight.
What she had told him only proved what he’d been thinking all along. These things were dangerous and they were carriers of their own unique brand of absolute power. Power that could crush humans by the hundreds—perhaps even thousands—if they put their mind to it. And he knew he and every other ignorant son-of-a-bitch human out there was going to get caught in the crossfire and there was nothing they or he could do about it.
Soft to the touch she might be, but he had seen her powerful side. She was strong, self-assured, and did not need someone to point her in a certain direction and give her instructions on what to do next. She just rolled up her sleeves, turned her brain on to maximum and began to plow through one moment at a time. Being a mercenary, when a plan went south, it forced him to work off the cuff and…well, that was his forte. He could appreciate the skill for what it was. But it was easy to dive right in if you’d been born with the power to back it up.
Or…at least he thought she’d been born with it. When it came right down to it, he didn’t know anything at all about any of them, and that really kinda scared the piss out of him. Being out here, chasing more Nightwalkers down with only her for backup…yeah, it really did scare the piss out of him.
Leo pulled away from her, though not as quickly as he probably should have, his fingertips lingering just a moment or two too long. It was hard to pull away from something that soft and, well, comfortable. That was the word for it. In the face of all her strangeness, there was just something about her that made him feel comfortable.
And comfortable was the last damn thing he needed to be around any of her kind.
He
threw the truck into gear and moved them down the road. Faith was glad to have his focus and his hands pointed in another direction. There was no way of explaining how much his touch, as unexpectedly tender as it had been, had disturbed her. The brush of his thumb had swiped a streak of heat across her cheek, the sensation startling. It was all she could do to keep herself from touching the still-tingling spot. She’d never been touched by a live human being before. They’d always been souls…apparitions with no corporeal state. And while she’d met her share of Bodywalkers before, this was somehow different. He didn’t have half the ability they had, but he did have something incredibly dynamic about him. And it wasn’t just the anger and rage he kept bludgeoning her with. It was…indefinable, really. He just seemed so alive.
“Better grab your belt.”
“My…?” Faith looked down at the dress she was wearing. It didn’t have a belt. She hadn’t seen the use for it.
He abruptly leaned toward her, one muscular arm shooting out so close to her face that she pressed farther back into her seat and drew a startled breath. But instead of hitting her which, she had to confess, she’d thought he was about to do, he grabbed hold of the seatbelt over her right shoulder. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he used the other to drag the belt across her and snap it in.
Once she was latched in he eyed her with a peculiar expression.
“Did you think I was going to hit you?” he asked her, breaking eye contact briefly to check the road.
“No. No, of course not,” Faith said hastily. She fidgeted nervously with the belt strap.
She was lying. Leo could see that. And she was painfully bad at lying too, he noted. But he let it go. He wasn’t out to get to know her better. They had a job to do. He would see this thing through because he owed Jackson at least that much. Whether he was the Jackson he’d loved like a brother or…or something else, he needed to do this for him. Him and Docia.
He tried not to think about Docia. He didn’t want to examine that closely. No more than he wanted to examine the Night Angel that closely. Turning to watch the road, Leo frowned and made himself pay attention to his surroundings.
Faith was a strong woman, he reasoned with himself. There was absolutely no reason to think she would be abused in any way. He stole a glance at her, doing a quick perusal of her delicate whiteness. He had seen no marks on her, no telltale warning signs. No. He must be mistaken and reading too much into it. Hell, he probably would have flinched too if a man of his caliber had practically shoved a fist under his nose.
“Tell me something,” he said after a minute. “Is there anything else your people can do besides read script and the other things I’ve already seen?”
“It all falls under the same categories, more or less. Why do you ask?”
“You mentioned not being strong in this form. Did you mean just the fact that you can’t use your power?”
“Oh. The sun leaches away our strength along with our pigmentation. Our reflexes slow down. Even our thinking becomes weary. If I stay out in the sun, I will eventually lose the ability to see script, and, like I said, I can’t do anything else I’m used to doing.”
“I see. So in essence it makes you human.”
“It makes us less than what we are,” she said in a combination of sternness and irritability. “Would you want to be exposed to a condition that made you feel alien to yourself and robbed you of your skills and healthful condition? For instance like now. You’ve been injured and it’s slowing you down. Do you mind it or do you find it frustrating?”
“How do you know—?” Leo cut off the demand when he realized he already knew the answer. It was all he could do to keep himself from grabbing her, shaking her and demanding she mind her own goddamn business.
“Your anger speaks for you,” she said. “I will take that for your answer.” She reached down to the floorboards of the truck, where the scarf had slipped away to. Her lashes fell to half-mast as she seemed to focus on it for a second. “The Djynn is closer now. I can feel the connection to her nik growing stronger. With any luck she will feel us coming and will hopefully think we are Docia and Ram and will find a way to meet us. Otherwise, we might have to wait until night to track her down.”
Leo’s hands clenched on the steering wheel for a moment, and Faith could tell he was angry. She could also tell he didn’t want anything to do with her. Which was fine, she told herself, because she didn’t want anything to do with him either. He was an obnoxious and dangerous individual. With all the anger he was keeping contained within him added to the aggressive skill he had just displayed, it made him a powder keg. He was able to hold back during this last altercation, but would that hold true in the future? He was clearly fraying at the edges. It was only a matter of time before he lost all cohesion and started reacting irrationally to things. Not unless he got some sort of help, be it a doctor or a friend.
“May I ask you something?” she asked.
“No way to stop you, really,” he said, his hands tightening once again on the steering wheel.
“You are willing to do this thing, this task that could be very dangerous, but you hold a great deal of distrust for the Bodywalker Pharaoh. I am curious as to what your motivation is. There are so many words evoked whenever you think of him, that I find it very confusing.”
“A very good reason why you should mind your own business,” he said caustically.
“Perhaps you are right. But since I have asked the question, perhaps you might answer.”
“I’m not particularly inclined to,” he said.
“Very well,” she said, settling back and contenting herself with the wild-looking scenery, all its varied browns and russets broken up by the odd green patch of cacti.
To her surprise he huffed a breath out his nose and said with obvious reluctance, “I don’t trust that thing inside of him. How do I know any of the Jackson I know has survived the possession of him? If he’s usurped the Jackson I know…I want to know. I want to know so I can do the right thing by my friend.”
“I don’t understand. The right thing?”
He paused for a long minute and she saw the fiercely bright scrawl of a word on his light.
“Because if that thing inside Jackson has destroyed the soul of my best friend, I’m going to do everything in my power to kill the fucker.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Marissa and the Bodywalker inside her, Hatshepsut, were grieving. She touched Jackson’s face, squeezed his hand tightly within her own. Hatshepsut had loved Menes for lifetimes, since they had first met in Hatshepsut’s first host. By then Menes had been reborn twice already and was very familiar with the nature of the Ether and the way to live in harmony with a host after the Blending. It had been long before the Templars had separated from the Politic. Long before the Bodywalkers had even had enough cohesive numbers to organize a working government.
They had known from their first touch that there was something powerful between them. They had known they would be together from that moment until the day they experienced the actual death, if such a thing were ever possible.
But these last few incarnations had been so painfully short, the war robbing them of the time they craved to spend with one another. In her last incarnation Hatshepsut had only lived a week before Odjit had caught her exposed and slaughtered her. One week. And that had been a cruel and painful death, Odjit truly showing the color of her nature as she had tortured Hatshepsut and her innocent host. It had been a horrible way for that innocent to die and that was why, although she had craved Menes with all of her heart and soul, she had not wanted to be reborn. Reborn to what? To another painful death? To a time much too brief? For her ability to put physical hands on her beloved to be robbed from her far too quickly again? And what of the innocent soul she would share her body with? How could she willingly put that soul in the line of fire?
And then there was the grief. The grief the lover left behind would be blinded with. A grief so insurmountable that, in spite o
f how badly their people needed them, they could not see their way to living another hundred years before their mate could be returned to them. Last time she had been the first to go, but Menes’s grief had been so total that he and his host had preferred to take their own life rather than go on without her.
And now she was facing that same mourning, facing that same chasm of time without her soul mate. And as deeply well worn as Menes’s and Hatshepsut’s love was, the love between their hosts had been just as white hot and undeniable…but so new, so untried. And unlike their Bodywalker souls, Jackson’s and Marissa’s original souls would not be reborn in a hundred years. They might not be reborn at all…ever. As far as the Bodywalkers knew, they experienced the actual death.
This time…this time they hadn’t even had a week together. They were being wrenched apart, again, much too soon. The senselessness of it was more than they could bear. She could not stop the tears that ran from her, sometimes in great, painful sobs. She could not breathe…not without him.
She felt more than heard Docia enter the room. She wanted to scream at her to get out. Wanted to throw herself over his body and keep anyone from touching him. She had knelt there in that stupid garden and had simply watched while that savage thing had cut her lover down. And where had Ram and Docia been? The Templar soul inside of Docia, Tameri, had extraordinary power at her fingertips. Why had she done nothing to save him? How could they have simply watched?
Just as she had simply watched. Watched him put his life at risk in order to protect hers.
“Shh,” Docia said softly, reaching to rest comforting hands on Marissa’s shoulders. “We can’t give up hope.” But Marissa could hear the shaky doubt infecting the other woman’s voice. “We have to have faith in…well, Faith. You know as well as I do that the Night Angels are capable of extraordinary things.”
“I do understand that,” Marissa said quietly. “But I am afraid that nothing can fix this. What if…” She trailed off, unwilling to give her fears voice. Obviously she didn’t need to. Docia sighed shakily.