I shook the thoughts out of my head and stepped away from the wall. I couldn’t worry about that now. If I didn’t find Cash, Easton was risking everything for nothing. The thousand years that had led us to this moment would be for nothing.
“Cash!” I slipped in something thick and wet and caught myself on the wall. In the dim blue light, blood dripped down from the ceiling like rain. I pushed my wet braids out of my face and unsheathed my scythe, moving forward. Only forward. Never looking back.
“Please be here,” I whispered into the darkness. “Please be alive.”
The cave finally opened up into a wide room. Stones like fangs lined the walls. The sounds of my breaths echoed in the hollow place. He’d been here. I could feel the memory of him, the essence of him. “Cash.”
Something splashed behind me and I spun around shaking. I refused to let fear overwhelm me. I didn’t have time for that. When I couldn’t find the source of the sound, I walked the perimeter of the room, keeping my wrist over my nose to block the smell. I was halfway around when I saw it. Silver ropes that looked as if they were made of some type of flexible metal lay unraveled on the ground next to a stone. And beside them, Cash’s bracelet. The little scrap of hemp and beads he never took off, even to shower, lay saturated in a puddle of blood. A whimper escaped my throat and I stumbled back into a set of hands so hot they scalded my skin. Fear surged through me and I raised my scythe, turning around.
Easton grabbed hold of my arm and frowned. “Slow down, princess. It’s just me.”
His black hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat, and somewhere along the way he’d shed his long black coat, leaving him in a plain black T-shirt. Pale white scars looked like spiderwebs crawling down his biceps out from under the sleeves of his shirt. I was a little shocked. Most of us chose to shed the scars of our life, symbols of our death. Yet Easton had kept his.
“Are you okay?” I finally managed to ask.
He nodded. “Yeah, but we need to go.”
Trembling, I spun around and snatched Cash’s bracelet up from the ground and slid it onto my wrist.
“He was here,” I said.
Easton’s jaw clenched as he looked down at the bracelet. “And now he’s out there.”
“What?” My freshly beating heart nearly stopped. “Is he alive?”
Easton grabbed my hand and started tugging me out of the cave. “Not for long. It’s feeding time out there.”
Chapter 31
Cash
The world fell out from under me.
The fall felt endless. Monumental. It felt like whatever was waiting for me on the other side was going to determine the rest of my eternity. I wasn’t ready to face it. My feet hit the ground with enough force to buckle my knees, and ash billowed up around me in a cloud of gray. The soul wriggled, trying to break my grip on his arm, but I held tight. I didn’t want to be the one holding him.
Bringing him to this place. But I didn’t know what else to do. I tried to stand, and pain exploded through my kneecap when I put weight on my leg.
“Damn it,” I gripped the soul by the back of the T-shirt and stumbled onto my other leg. He laughed, nervously. I started to think he’d finally snapped, but then I saw him looking at my T-shirt.
“The shirt’s a little bit of an understatement, don’t ya think?” I glanced down. It was the shirt Em had gotten me. It said I see dead people.
I shook my head and turned my attention to the shadow-infested cliffs. “You have no idea.”
Noah approached me, his fingers wrapped around a fistful of the girl soul’s long brown hair, and shook his head. She didn’t even yelp. She just looked lifeless. “Don’t worry. Once you get rid of that body, it’ll get better. Right now, it’s slowing you down, but you’ll be amazed at how powerful you’ll feel when it’s gone. It feels like you’re shedding a suit of armor.”
Better? Noah was full of shit. There was no “better” in this place. He’d just drunk too much of the devil’s Kool-Aid. Convinced himself that this wasn’t wrong. I looked into the kids’ eyes, wide with terror, and I felt sick. This wasn’t okay. Dead or alive, this wasn’t any kind of existence. Not one I wanted to live, anyway.
“Come on.” Noah pulled the girl behind him. She followed, limp and resigned to her fate. There wasn’t any fight left in her. Mine was another story. He ground his heels into the ash when I pulled him forward and whimpered.
“Please don’t,” he whispered. “I can tell you don’t want to. You’re not like him. You could let us go if you wanted. You could.”
I could…but where would he go? I slowed my pace behind Noah and glanced up at the black swirling hole in the sky that had deposited us here. My heart pounded against my ribs. As far as I knew, that was the only way out. And I had no idea how to get up there. Ash landed on my face, soft as snowflakes and hot as hell.
“Please!” he cried. “We didn’t do anything wrong! We just weren’t ready to go yet. But we’ll go now, wherever you want. Just not here, please…”
I jerked on his shirt and shut my eyes. “Will you shut up? Please? I’m trying to think.”
Even if I could get them away from Noah, how was I supposed to get them back? They may be dead, but they’d never last down here. An afterlife of wandering the Earth as a ghost was one thing, but this was something entirely different. Who would even want to last down here? We were close enough to the cliffs now to hear the hisses and screams. The waves crashing against the rocky cliffs in a deadly rhythm.
“So, how do we get back up there?” I asked, picking up my pace. “You know, Earth? Life? Whatever the hell it is.”
Noah shot me a suspicious glare over his shoulder and a gust of wind plastered his ash-blond hair against his forehead. “Why do you want to know?”
I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I’m supposed to be learning the ropes, right?”
He stopped and I almost stumbled into his back. He stood a few feet from the cliff edge, staring out over the sea. Rocks crumbled and spilled over the edge from the pressure of his boots. I imagined him as a painting in that moment. Wishing he was, so I could control the outcome with my fingers and brush. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” I asked. “Learn? I thought that’s why we were here.”
He shook his head and spun around. “Don’t try to play me. You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know what you’re thinking?”
I took a step back, putting pressure on my leg, and winced. “You have no idea what I’m thinking.”
Noah’s steel-blue eyes narrowed on me, and his fingers released the girl, who fell into a crumpled weeping pile of soul to the ground. “Yes, I do. I’ve stood where you’re standing. I’ve faced the uncertainty. And let me tell you something. Down here…” He spread his arms wide to motion to the wasteland of death around us, and his gray coat rippled out in the wind. “There is no room for a conscience. There is no place for the things you are feeling. So turn them off.”
I balked. “Turn them off? Do you hear what you’re saying? They’re kids.”
“That doesn’t mean anything here. They are souls. It’s my life or theirs. I choose me.”
“Your life?” I laughed bitterly. “Noah…you’re dead! This isn’t a life. It’s not even an afterlife. It’s a fucking nightmare!”
A life was the feel of a charcoal pencil between my fingers. A paintbrush in my hand. Kissing.
Laughing. Cheap beer and good music every summer at the lake. Eighties action movies with Em on a