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The kid wriggled under my grip. My heart pounded so hard in my chest I could feel it in my toes.

“Well, are you?” he asked again.

I thought about those things at the foot of my bed at night. Trying to get to my soul, right through my skin, the day of Dad’s funeral. They’d do that and worse to Anaya if she went down there trying to save me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

For a moment I let myself linger with her memory. The way her lips tasted, the little sounds she made when I kissed her. Her smile, warm and sweet against my skin. If I did this, she’d hate me. Memories would be all I had left. I took a moment to mentally lock them all away with the piece of myself I’d never give to the shadows, then steeled myself for what was to come.

I looked at Noah and shook my head. The fear thrumming
in my chest for the girl I was pretty sure I was in love with wouldn’t letting me answer any other way. A satisfied look spread across his face and he nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter 30

Anaya

Ash rained down from the sky and the heat of the underworld swallowed me. Easton stepped up beside me and looked out over the barren wasteland to the skull-lined cliffs.

“How are we supposed to get him out of there?” I asked, watching shadows scream and dive from the cliffs.

Easton narrowed his gaze as if trying to find a way in. “I don’t know. But we better come up with something soon. He’s not going to last long down here.”

The memory flooded over me in an instant. The pain. The moment when I realized Tarik was never coming back. I couldn’t go through that again. There would be no escape from it this time. No blade to take me away. He’d be gone. And I would have to live with the absence of him…forever.

I forced the panic exploding to life in my chest down until it was just a faint throbbing in my gut. We would get him out. We had to. I hadn’t found him after a thousand years only to lose him now. Not like this.

Easton nudged my arm and walked out ahead of me, his boots crunching in the rocks and ash. “Let’s go.”

I hurried after him, one hand on my scythe. I didn’t know how much it was going to help me against a horde of shadow demons, but I held on to it anyway. Ready to destroy anything that got in my way. When we were close enough to the cliffs to see the flaming shadows leaping up from the waves, Easton grabbed me and pulled us behind a skull. My shins hit the thick ice base and I winced. It…burned. I stared down at the red slashes marring my skin.

“You okay?”

I looked up at Easton, trying to conceal my horror. I could feel pain in this place. It stung and throbbed and reminded me of the end of a life I didn’t want to remember. The memory of the blade slipping between my ribs almost caused me to cry out, but I held it in. They could end me here, just as easily as I’d ended myself. “I…yes. I’m fine. How do we know where to find him?” I placed my hand on the stone to brace myself and looked down the coast at the endless row of skull caverns. “He could be anywhere. Where do we even start?”

Easton stared into the flaming horizon where Hell beckoned him. He was ignoring a call. I could see the pain written all over his face. The scythe smoking at his side. Here, where we became flesh and blood, it had to be burning him right through to his skin.

“Easton?”

“We need a diversion,” he finally said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. “There’s no way we’re going to get inside to search. And even if we do…we won’t make it out. We need something to draw them out. We need to empty those caves.”

A shadow slithered around the side of the cavern as if drawn by our scent and we froze. My fingers curled around the pearl handle of my scythe and Easton placed his hand over mine to stop me.

“You’ll attract more of them,” he whispered. The shadow swooped down until it hovered right in front of my face, hissing, wanting a taste. I inhaled and the black scent of death swirled down into my lungs. It burned like fire and my eyes watered. Even when my body had been living, I’d never felt anything like this. Everything inside me screamed for self-preservation. Telling me to run away and never look back. But I couldn’t give in to that fear. There was too much on the line. Easton squeezed my hand and I shut my eyes. I couldn’t look at it, this thing that had Cash. I wanted to destroy it. After an excruciating moment, an awful shrieking sound escaped the shadow’s throat and it whipped around the skull and dove into the frothy gray sea. I sagged against the skull and Easton blew a long breath out, releasing my hand.

“Is he worth this, Anaya?” Easton stood up. “If he is, we’ll do this. But we are about to reach the point of no return. In fact, I can’t promise you any of us will make it out of this. So I’m going to ask you this once, do you love him? Do you love him enough to face the possibility of this being your end?”

Easton stood in front of me, waiting. He’d jump in feet-first whatever I decided. I knew that. I knew it because whether he wanted anyone to know it or not, Easton had a heart. So did I. And it belonged to Cash. “I love him. I won’t leave him here. But you should go. I don’t expect you to risk yourself for this.”

Easton stepped back and rolled his eyes. “I don’t bow out from a fight. You should know that about me by now.”

“What I know is that you don’t give a damn about some human. No matter who they are. No matter what’s on the line.”

“
You’re
on the line here, Anaya!” He glared at me. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you get how valuable this kid is? How badly Balthazar wants him?” he said. “If we don’t bring him back from this…
you
will play Balthazar’s price.”

“And you are willing to risk yourself for that? For him?” I asked, my voice shaky.

He sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his black hair. “You. I’m willing to risk myself for
you
. Don’t get some preconceived notion that I give a damn about the human. I don’t.”

Despite the heat and the pain and the danger of the place around me, I smiled.

“But you give a damn about me.”

Easton caught sight of the look on my face and groaned. “Don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. I’ll leave your pretty little ass down here if you do.”

“You’re a good friend, Easton,” I said. “Thank you.”

Easton ignored me and bounced on the balls of his feet as if he were pumping himself up for what came next. “I hope you’re ready to do this.” His violet eyes narrowed on the cliffs, determined.

“What are we doing?” I said, panicked. “We…we don’t even have a plan.”

“Yeah we do. The distraction thing.”

“That’s not a plan, Easton! That’s an idea. A suggestion.”

Easton ignored me. “Whatever happens, just make sure you get in and out of those caverns before they come back,” he said. “I’ll do my best to keep them out, but I won’t be able to hold them off for long.”

I reached out for Easton, but he slipped through my fingers. “Wait! You never said
you
were the distraction.”

Easton spun around and a lopsided grin lit up his face. “Worried about me, Anaya? You should know better than that.”

He turned and ran, his duster flying out behind him like a wave of smoke. “Dinnertime, you little bastards!” He disappeared into an ash cloud and a few black blurs zipped after him. On the other side of the cliffs the shadows screamed with need.

“Anaya, run!” His voice echoed from somewhere I couldn’t see.

My legs jumped into action at the sound of his voice, and my breath sawed in and out of my lungs, burning my throat. Fear pounded in my chest like a drum. I ran, watching the black shadows pour out of the eyes and nostrils of the skull cavern closest to me. It looked like a continuous gush of oil, spilling out onto the land before it separated into a thousand black pulsing forms. I paused only long enough to wait for the stragglers to make it out, then wrapped my fingers around the mouth of the skull and pulled myself into the darkness.

Once I was inside, I pressed my back against the warm, wet wall and swiped at the tears running down my cheeks. I hadn’t been able to cry in a thousand years. And I didn’t like the fact that I could now. Easton was out there. For me. How could I let him do that? How was he supposed to make it out?

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 Friday night. A life was what I wanted with Anaya. Not this.

“Stop making me out to be some sort of super-villain!” He seethed. “I’m helping them. If it weren’t for me they’d spend eternity as one of these things. I’m giving them an out.”

Behind Noah, shadows were clambering up the cliff’s edge, as if drawn in by the scent of the souls we’d carried in. The girl curled into a ball and chanted something that sounded like a prayer under her voice. In that moment, I thought of Anaya. Of the girl in the dirty basement. I’d been horrified at the time, but she’d saved her. Given her peace. This girl…she deserved peace, too. And not the sick, twisted kind Noah offered. If I didn’t do everything in my power to give it to her, if I gave in to this darkness consuming me, what did that make me?

I didn’t know anything about my past lives. About Tarik or any of the other people I might have been over the last thousand years. But I didn’t think any of them would have been the kind of guy who would’ve given in. Anaya wouldn’t have loved me if that had been the case. All I knew was who I was in this life. In this moment.

Since the fire, everything had been leading up to this. My fate. Only I got what most people didn’t—a choice. I didn’t want to be like Noah. I’d done too many screwed-up things in my life already. I refused to end it like this.

There was only one way to be that guy
and
protect Anaya.

I had to die.

“Take them back up,” I said.

Noah jerked the girl by her arm and she yelped. “I take them back and
they
are going to want a replacement. And I’m not putting myself on the menu.”

“I am.” I stepped forward and my head spun. My vision started to go black around the edges. Everything in me hurt and I was suddenly so painfully aware of it that I couldn’t freaking breathe. “I want this to be over, Noah.”

“You’re crazy.” Noah stepped away from me like I was a virus that might infect him. With truth. Guilt. Things he’d obviously made himself numb to long ago.

“I’m not crazy.” I released the kid I was holding and he took off so fast he was nothing but a blue blur in my peripheral vision. Noah cursed under his breath and held himself back from going after him. “I’m just…tired. I’m so fucking tired it hurts. You’re going to have to find a new replacement because I am not going to be like you. I can’t. I’d rather be dead.”

Noah’s eye widened and he slowly wrapped his arm around the girl’s neck to drag her back toward the cliff edge. I was going to have to stop him. I followed after Noah, gritting my teeth as I put weight on my leg and fought through the pain. I may not have a badass scythe like Anaya, but I had something else. I flexed my fingers, feeling the power pop like fireworks under my skin. It was all I had. That, a bum leg, and a body that was past ready to quit. I couldn’t let it quit. Not yet.

I didn’t even think about what I was doing. What I was risking. I plowed into Noah and the air whooshed out of my lungs on impact. The air around us sizzled and my skin burned where we touched. He dropped the soul he’d been holding and she screamed, scrambling away from us. Noah grunted, pulling me down with him, and rolled me onto my stomach.

“Stupid human!” he growled. “You have no idea what you’re playing with. How long do you even think they’ll last out there?” Noah grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face over the edge of the cliff. Shadows howled and sprang out of the crashing waves in flames. They slithered up the side of the cliff, and my heart felt like it was in my throat.

This was it.

I couldn’t breathe. I pushed back, but Noah’s grip on the back of my neck forced me back down. And let’s face it—by this point, I had the strength of a baby bunny. There wasn’t any fighting him. Even the hum of electricity under my skin was staring to fizzle.

“You’re a real asshole,” I growled, spitting ash out of my mouth. “You know that, right?”

“Look at it, Cash,” he said. “It’s your fate. It’s your end. There won’t even be a soul left when they’re done with you. Just skin, bones, blood, and the pathetic memory of a kid who’s too stupid for his own good.”

Sharp rocks from the cliff edge dug into my hands. If I could have painted this moment, it would have been a bitter black. A painful red. I gritted my teeth and focused on staying in place. I focused on Anaya’s light. A bright gold hope. Weak or not, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“If that’s my fate,” I said, “it’s yours, too.”

With one last burst of energy, I reached back, grabbed on to Noah’s arms, and pulled. The second my palms left the rocks, our weight sent us tumbling over the edge. My stomach dropped as the ground underneath me disappeared. I reached out on instinct, my fingers finding a sharp shard of stone jutting out over the edge. Something jerked on my ankle and Noah grunted below me.

The stone sliced open my palm and blood trickled down my forearm. A few droplets fell into the horde of shadow demons below us, sending them into a frenzy.

“You idiot!” Noah shouted. “Do you have a death wish?”

I wrapped my other hand around the stone and winced. “I’m going to die anyway, remember?”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.” Noah squirmed, obviously searching for something more reliable than me to grab hold of. But there wasn’t anything there. The cliff side was too sheer and slick. “We could be a team. You could still be with your reaper.”

I looked down at Noah, swinging beneath me. He was wrong. I could never be like him and still be with Anaya. That’s not who she loved. And she deserved better. A shadow leaped up from the darkness, nipping at Noah’s ankle, and a flame swirled up his leg, wringing a scream from his chest.

“Cash!” His fingers were slipping loose. My fingers were slipping, too. “Do something. Pull us up!”

“I can’t.” I couldn’t. I could barely hold on. There wasn’t anything left in me. And those freaking shadows were closing in. Piling up on top of one another to reach us. “I can’t…”

I shut my eyes and took a deep, painful breath, wanting Anaya’s voice to be the last memory in my mind.

Just breathe.

I thought about her heat. I remembered her smile on my lips melting into a scorching, earth-shattering kiss. I inhaled and imagined the scent of thunderstorms and dreams. I wouldn’t let these things go. They were going with me. I let one finger slip free. Another. My left hand dropped to my side.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Noah cried.

“Letting go.” My right hand opened and…

I felt weightless for an instant, falling…

Then hot fingers wrapped around my wrist, jerking me to a halt. I opened my eyes and blinked up at a guy with black hair falling into his violet eyes.

He grinned. “Need a lift?”