I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) (15 page)

Smell of ozone, leaving a bitter, antiseptic
taste in my mouth.

A palomino mare materialized out of the
darkness before me. Three guesses who was riding her, and the first
two don’t count. The sight sent a jagged chill through my
heart.

Mitchel’s youngest brother wore a long,
tattered cloak as black and shiny as freshly pressed celluloid film
stock. He held a truly terrifying weapon: a long steel scythe blade
balanced atop an intricately carved wooden staff.

The world went into
super-duper-slo-mo
for me at that point.

Sounds from all around me, distant but clear.
The sounds of approaching police sirens. Screams and cries of
dismay as some of this sleepy town’s residents began waking up to
the horrifying creatures descending onto their main street. The
clack of hooves, the grunt of approaching demons, the beat of
leathery wings in the sky…

But all I could see, all I was fixated on,
was the incarnation of the Grim Reaper as he looked down upon me
from his pale horse. With his free hand, Death tugged back his
pointed hood and to reveal his terrible face. He revealed a face
with bulging eyes and a bone-white skull.

And then he did something so unexpected, so
cliché, that I came dangerously close to busting out laughing and
crying at the same time.

I didn’t dare move.

I had War, Famine, Pestilence, and their
backup band of The Demons coming up on one side.

And here was their younger brother on the
opposite side. That would’ve sounded slightly comforting in any
other circumstance. The man with the cloak and the scythe then did
something completely out of left field.

He extended his free hand towards me, and
calmly spoke one sentence.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

Get real now. I work in the Hollywood
celluloid mill. I’ve labored alongside writers who couldn’t pick up
a pen without an homage or cliché dripping out the end, and I
didn’t see
that
one coming.

But I didn’t move. I just stared. Heart
whamming up against the rib cage as if it had a sledgehammer and
wanted out.

“Cassie,” he repeated, “We need to go
now.”

I just stared at him. Fear still had me in an
iron grip.

Look. I know how bad things were at this
juncture. Car wrecked, ankle tweaked, bad guys closing in to chain
me to a hellacious spouse for-
ever
.

But I need you to keep one thing in mind
before you judge me on this one, therapy buddy. This was the
friggin’
Grim Reaper
, the guy who’s the only constant in the
universe, except for taxes! And here he is, telling me ‘we need to
go now’, just as I’ve crawled out of a car accident, and I’m
fighting for my life and freedom.

What would you think? Am I dead? Already
dead? Maybe I’ve been rotting in a grave for a while, and I’m
trapped in some godawful remake of the movie where that kid sees
dead people. And then Mitchel’s kid brother is going to take me
down that long final passage to judgment. Where Saint Peter tallies
up all the mai-tais I drank, all the people I screwed, and all the
times I said ‘fuck’ to people who didn’t really deserve it, even if
I was pretty sure they did at the time.

And then Saint Peter’s going to say, ‘Oh my,
Cassie, you’ve been a naughty girl, please step this way into the
hand basket. Dress for a warm climate.’

Oh, that’ll be just fine and dandy, because
my only problem is I’m
dead…

Wait a minute.

Wait! A! Minute!

The Sphinx’s regal voice echoed in my head. I
stood inside Sound Stage Macbeth again, with her kind face beaming
down at me.

“
What is it that looks like a door to
some, a passage to others, a message from those who seek to do
evil, and yet solves all of life’s problems?
”

The Sphinx placed one warm, soft paw upon my
shoulder as she added, “There will come a time and a place where
all seems lost, Cassie. Where darkness overwhelms the light of the
Dancer of the Sun. And at that time, you must surrender yourself.
Surrender yourself to the answer to that riddle. And in doing so,
you will have a chance to yet triumph.”

And I knew.

The answer was standing right in front of me.
Holding a hand out to me.

Death.

I held up one trembling hand, and grabbed
onto Death’s wrist. He smiled, and his awful skull-like countenance
morphed back into the pale, handsome face that I’d seen at the
Thantos’ family ranch.

“Thank you for trusting me, Cassie,” Gabriel
said, almost shyly. “Hang on. This will be slightly disorienting
for you.”

His grip on my hand tightened. He made that
same click-pop noise with his tongue that I’d heard before. The
street, the buildings, the approaching demons…they swirled like
images tossed into a blender. I felt myself falling.

A soft
thump
, and I found myself
reclining in an automobile’s passenger seat. I looked around
wildly, confused. The motor purred silently, and the wreck of my
Porsche fell away in the distance as if we’d been aboard the
Millennium Falcon and Han had just put his hunk-of-junk spaceship
into hyperdrive.

I gasped, tried to make sense of things.
Outside, trees and buildings flashed by or dematerialized as we
went through them. But the dashboard looked like a normal car’s,
right down to the expanses of tan leather. A delicate scripted logo
had been emblazoned on the panel in front of me, followed by a
name:
Muerta
.

“Easy, Cassie,” Gabriel said. I managed to
release the death-grip I had on his wrist. “Muerta’s got to get us
out of my siblings’ sight before they can track us. Just sit
back.”

“Sit back. Okay. I got that.” I said. “So
we’re…
inside
your horse right now?”

“She’s a good deal more versatile than a
normal steed.” He patted the steering wheel kindly.

My eyes refused to keep up with the
constantly shifting kaleidoscope of images outside, so I focused on
the dash. The logo of a running horse next to Muerta’s name looked
familiar to me, at least.

“Is Muerta…a
Mustang?
”

He shrugged. Unlike his brothers, the gesture
didn’t make him look monstrous. In fact, it made him more
human.

“It seemed…appropriate.” He gave me a
critical, appraising look. “I’m afraid that you look more than a
little frazzled. Understandable, given the circumstances. When did
you last sleep? Or eat?”

I thought about it. “Slept for a few hours
last night, at a rest stop. Maybe an hour or two at the motel,
before Raphael came to take me under his wing. As for eating…I sort
of had breakfast early this morning. No appetite since then.”

He grimaced. Again, the expression of emotion
wasn’t horrifying on his face.

“She’s not going to like that.”

“Who? Dora? You didn’t tell me that I was
supposed to do a photo shoot today,” I said, trying hard to tamp
down on this giddiness I was feeling. “I don’t even have any
clothes. They’re all back at the motel your brothers just
wrecked.”

“No, not Dora.” Gabriel pursed his lips and
seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Can’t take care of the
food issue yet. But the other…I need to put you to sleep.”

Fear surged back into my body.

Oh, come on. Imagine that
Death
is the
guy telling you that you ‘need to be put to sleep.’

“Wait!” I cried, as he reached out towards me
again. He touched my hand gently. “I don’t think–”

Okay, that was a new one.

Well, not
new
, but it had been a while
since I’d blacked out mid-sentence. The last time had involved some
wrap-up party in Cancun. Actually, come to think of it, it involved
a wrap-up party, a drinking contest, and one-too-many Harvey
Wallbangers.

I remember waking up with the guy I’d been
dating on-and-off at that time. What’s more, I remember feeling how
tender my lady parts were and thinking, ‘Whoa, the sex must’ve been
awesome
last night. If only I could remember what the hell
we did…’

At least my lady parts weren’t tender this
time. I soon as I swam to consciousness, became aware that I was
swaddled in a nice set of sheets, I did a quick check. What’s more,
these sheets were definitely silk. I’d slept on high-thread count
cotton stuff before, but only silk made that whisper-soft
zip
sound when you moved around on it.

I opened my eyes. It took a while for them to
adjust to the dim light. In a far corner of the fair-sized room,
the tiniest crack between a pair of curtains let a sliver of
sunlight in. So it was daytime, at least.

What time was it, anyway?

Quick check of my wrist. It was bare. I
lifted the sheets and felt around, confirmed that aside from my bra
and panties, I was bare all over as well. Not sure how I felt about
that. I hadn’t been exaggerating to Raphael – my clothes really did
have that oh-so-fashionable campfire smell – but I didn’t exactly
appreciate his younger brother undressing me as I slept.

Gingerly, I reached down to touch my ankle.
It didn’t hurt. That was nice, in any case. Then I looked around
some more. I’d spent the night lying in a nice four-poster bed.
Nice, but a little odd.

As my eyes continued to adjust, I squinted
and confirmed that the fabric of the bed’s canopy was black,
trimmed with black lace. The quartet of ornately carved posts were
also black. As were the silk pillowcases, top sheet, and
comforter.

A familiar floral scent perfumed the air, but
I ignored it for the moment. I spotted a nightstand and chair to
the right of the bed. A light jacket, a pair of blue jeans, and a
cream colored blouse lay across the chair, along with a pair of
socks and athletic shoes. It was easy to spot them, as they were
silhouetted against the mass of the black wood that made up the
chair and nightstand.

One yawn and stretch later, I sat up. Pulled
the clothes on, and slipped into the socks and shoes. To my
amazement, they fit perfectly. My remaining possessions, such that
they were, lay on the nightstand. Circe’s silver tube, my Italian
leather wallet, car keys (lots of good those would do me now), and
my watch. Too dark in the room to read the time, though. I put the
watch on and stuffed the rest of my things in various pockets.

There was a little black clock radio on the
nightstand as well. Of course, the buttons were black, and so were
the labels. And when I did press something, it didn’t really help.
A little black light on the face of the device lit up in black, so
still
I couldn’t see what time it was.

“This is getting ridiculous,” I said out
loud. Either I was being hosted by the world’s most depressed
interior decorator, or…

I stood up and sniffed the air. It took me a
moment, but I finally recognized the floral scent.

Lilacs.

Yep, I was in Gabriel’s home, wherever that
was. I suppressed a giggle as I considered that I was, quite
literally, at Death’s door.

The sound of a turning knob and the tinny
squeak of wheels broke the silence. Gabriel entered the far side of
the room, pushing a dining cart laden with covered silver platters
and a steaming carafe of coffee. To his credit, Mitchel’s younger
brother was dressed normally at the moment. I liked him, but his
cloak and scythe outfit still did a number to my jangled
nerves.

He stopped by the window and smiled as he saw
that I was up and dressed.

“Good morning, Cassie,” he said. “I was
hoping that I wouldn’t have to wake you.”

“Ah, thanks,” I replied intelligently. “I
guess that it is morning, isn’t it?”

“Late morning, in any case. We felt it best
that you got some shuteye. I trust that you slept well?”