The woman chuckled, shaking her head. “Perhaps it is a match made in heaven. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone who could be as stubbornly foolish as he.”
“Angeline?” Gabby gasped, her brain finally snapping into gear.
Angeline tipped her head, kind of a confirmation and a hello. “He told you about me, I take it.”
Gabby nodded, easier than saying it was really Christos who’d educated her on Valin’s lost mate. Who was standing here. Now. In the same room. Gabby jerked her gaze away, feeling tainted, like the other woman simply for holding Valin’s lifeless body. Though she’d be damned if she set his head back on the bloodied floor.
“He misses you.” She couldn’t say missed. Despite the fact it had been almost a minute since she’d picked up the sound of his heartbeat, she couldn’t, wouldn’t…
Still time. You can still bring him back. Fight for him!
Her gaze dropped to the knife still gripped in her left hand. Was this woman who she was supposed to bargain with? If so, He had played a cruel trick. His mate, the mother of his child, would of course want him to come home into her embrace.
“I miss him too.” Angeline sighed, the light around her rippling. “However, it is not as much as he shall miss you.”
Gabby’s fist clenched tighter around the knife, her lungs seizing. She understood what Angeline was saying. If she went ahead with this and took her own life, even as part of a bargain, it would not be to go into His realm. Which meant that Valin would be irreversibly lost to her.
“If that is what it takes,” Gabby vowed, pleased her lungs cooperated enough to let her calmly agree to the bargain.
Angeline chuckled again, her amusement like a cheese grater on Gabby’s effort to be calm and dignified when all she really wanted to do was yell and scream and plead and…yes…break and kill. Starting with this woman who was—Fucking. Laughing. At. Her. Loss.
“Oh, yes, definitely a pair.”
Gabby’s head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. Angeline tilted her head to the side, her blond curls dancing as she shook her head in the slightest of movements. “What? You think he isn’t up there right now trying to make the same bargain?”
A chill ran down Gabby’s spine, fear gripping her heart. Between herself and Valin, he had more clout, and though the Grand Poobah might rather keep Valin in the fight, it seemed that Angeline was part of this decision, and so far Gabby hadn’t been doing the most spectacular job of endearing herself to the angel.
Gabby shook her head, not sure what she should say to convince Angeline.
“Try the truth,” Angeline suggested, her voice strangely gentle after the grating laughter.
The truth was…“It is he who should live, not me. I’m just…” She looked down at her bloodstained skin. Valin’s blood, Annie’s blood. Oh what had she done?
Unloved. Unwanted. Evil…Monster.
A hand touched her chin, tipping her head. Angeline had sobered completely, her blue eyes darker as if her light had been diminished. “And you have even less belief in yourself than he, don’t you?”
Gabby met her gaze, sure that the haunts of her past and how they’d tainted her would be visible to the angel. “I’m a succubus. A vampire. And I killed him. I killed the man I love.”
“Love, is it?”
Gabriella flushed, seeing immediately the blasphemy of such a statement in the face of what she’d done.
“He would say he gave his life to spare yours.”
Gabby shook her head vehemently. “No! I don’t want that. I would not ask that of him.”
Angeline pursed her lips, her finger tapping lightly on Gabby’s chin. “Hmm. Then I guess there is really only one choice now, isn’t there?”
“What?” Gabby all but leapt on her, just barely stopping herself from grabbing her arm. “Tell me, please, what can I do?”
“Will you still give your life for his?” Angeline asked, straightening.
“Yes. YES! I’d give anything.” Her life. Her soul. Her very existence—oh, yes, she’d gladly give that. To wipe out the past, to erase all the pain she’d caused?
Angeline nodded, smiling sadly as she gazed once more at Valin. “Then I guess it’s time for good-byes.”
Gabby blinked down at Valin, her vision blurring, or at least it must have been because he was but a smudge of light before her.
This is it. Say it quickly…
“I love you, Valin. Forgive me.” She bent to kiss him, momentarily confused by the salty wetness on her lips as she licked them in preparation. Her tears. Of course. Gently she pressed her mouth to his, needing this one last touch to seal the bargain. Her eyes widened, surprised at the warmth of his lips. She drew back just as the room blazed. Like a star exploding, the power rocked through her, ripping her from her body. And then came the pain. Endless, unfathomable pain as the purging of His light tore through what she guessed was her soul. And God, how could she have been so foolish as to think that being wiped from existence would be the easier path? It went on and on and on and all she wanted to do was scream though she had no earthly body to house such misery.
And then it stopped.
She floated. The light, which had burned before like a raging inferno, now soothed like a balm. It tugged her gently from here to there, touching on everything that was good or even remotely happy in her life, oftentimes showing her things in a way she’d never thought to look at them. She wanted to cry again, though this time her tears would be of joy, as something Logan had once said to her drifted through her thoughts: He’s a merciful God. The truth rang through her being like a cymbal crash, and she began to think that perhaps, just perhaps He was merciful enough to hold her here in His planes. And if that were the case then maybe, someday, she might possibly see Valin again. Even if it would simply be another good-bye as he passed on to the woman he truly loved. The mother of his unborn child.
“You little fool. How could you even think I would pass you by?” The gruff voice pulled her like a bungee jumper who’d reached the end of her cord, snapping her back into her body.
She blinked, trying to figure out what the heck had just happened by opening her eyes. She was still sitting on her heels in that horrid room only…holy crap…
“Valin?” she choked, reaching for him, only she couldn’t because he was already holding her, his hands tight on her biceps as he glared at her out of perfectly alert, perfectly lively eyes. No, make that livid.
She frowned, her body tensing as she waited for the one-two sucker punch. Bloody room, check. In the coven’s house, check. But that was most definitely a very alive Valin sitting on his heels before her.
Careful, nightmares never end like this.
Oh how well she knew. They got far, far worse than a little glaring from the man she loved.
Valin gave her a good shake, an imprinted memory telling her it wasn’t the first one in recent moments. “How dare you try and trade your life for mine.”
“What do you mean, how dare I?” She punched him in the gut, eliciting a satisfying oomph that still did nothing to ease all the pent up anger and horror and fear she’d felt when she’d first snapped free of Christos’s evil influence and realized what she’d done. No, what he’d done—selfish bastard! Of course, she ruined her anger by throwing herself at him. He gave another oomph, but caught her, his arms linking with a reassuring tightness around her shoulders.
“Oh, God, you’re alive. I can’t believe…” Sobs chocked the rest of her words in her throat. Valin’s hands slid into her hair, his lips pressing against her forehead as he murmured reassurances. Words like “it’s okay” and “I’m here now” and all sorts of crap that didn’t change the facts at all and had her heart racing with fear that this was just a horrible, horrible nightmare that would end with her waking and having to relive the eviscerating moment of Valin dying in her arms all over again.