Immortal (2 page)

Standing over a white-and-blue bowl, Sissy Barten cracked an egg so hard, the shell didn't just shatter but vaporized.
“
Oh, come
on.”

Turning to the sink, she cranked on the water and cleaned off her hand. Which was shaking. Actually, her whole body was shaking, like her spine was a fault line and everything else was in danger of going the way of that egg.

As she cranked off the faucet, the old mansion got way too quiet, and with a jerk, she looked over her shoulder. Hairs prickled across the back of her neck, warning her of . . . what? There were no footfalls, no screams, nobody with a knife or a gun stalking her.

Great. Guess immortals could lose their minds. And wasn't that a happy future to look forward to.

You couldn't kill yourself if you were already dead.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

Drying her hands, she grabbed the bowl and washed the thing out. Then she went back to the carton and . . .

Stalled completely. She didn't want to make scrambled eggs for herself. She didn't want to be stuck in this house. She didn't want to be dead and separated from her family. . . .

And while she was at it? She really, totally, absolutely did
not
want to have that image of Jim Heron half-naked in her head. The sight of him coming out of that bathroom in the wee hours of the night, a towel around his waist, a wasted expression on his face, was like a billboard in front of her brain. She saw every nuance of his body, those huge shoulders, the tight abs, the tops of his hip bones, and that little line of hair beneath his belly button.

Mostly, though, she saw the scratches in his smooth skin. There had been three sets of them, and there was only one thing that could have made—

Abruptly, her shaking got worse, and she tried to do something about it by cracking each one of her knuckles.

Okay, this was ridiculous. You'd think, given her current résumé of being a sacrificial dead-ass virgin resurrected from Hell into a war between a pair of fallen angels and a real, live, honest-to-God demon, that the main thing on her mind would not be some guy. Then again, reality had gone wonky on her weeks ago, so could she really be surprised—

She wheeled around.

No one was there. Again. No one was moving in the house or outside on the scruffy grounds. Adrian, the other fallen angel, had gone up to sleep in the attic where he stayed. And Jim? Jim was on the second floor, doing REM recovery from his night of pneumatic sex.

“Damn it . . .”

Bracing her hands on either side of the bowl, she leaned into her arms. In spite of her rising paranoia, fear wasn't responsible for her case of the paint mixers.

The urge to kill was.

And that was only a liiiiittle hyperbole. Because her half-naked, towel-wrapped savior had gotten those scratches on his body from a woman's fingernails. And his mouth had been
swollen not from getting coldcocked in a fight, but because he'd been kissing someone. A lot. And his walk-of-shame expression?

Well, that was on account of his clearly having banged someone for hours instead of doing his job. Which just made her furious. Angels responsible for making sure good prevailed over evil? In a war like this? Generally speaking, keeping their eye on the ball was a better idea than being with some whore for hours.

Or, God, maybe she was a nice woman. Who, like, cooked for him as well as gave him great blow jobs.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she got.

Did he have a girlfriend? Well, obviously . . . although maybe that was naive of her. Did men have girlfriends? College students did—but Jim was faaaaaar from one of those—

She glanced over her shoulder for a third time. But nope, Jim was not coming through the doorway. Nobody was.

Hell, for all she knew, he'd already left to have coffee with his—

“Stop it. Just . . .
stop
it.”

As her rage level went up another decibel, it felt like an eternity since she'd been a college student taking her mom's car out to the local Hannaford for some ice cream . . . aeons since she'd been approached there by . . .

She couldn't remember that part. Couldn't re-create exactly what series of events had brought her to her mortal end, but she recalled everything that came after that: the viscous walls of Hell, the tortured damned twisting around her, her own pain turning her ancient.

Jim Heron had ended up down there, too—for a time. And Sissy had seen what the demon did to him. Had watched those shadowy minions do . . . horrible things to his body.

“Shit.”

All things considered, she should cut him some slack, right? He was a victim in all this, too, wasn't he? So if, in the midst of
this war, the man wanted to get a little grind, lose himself in someone, have a break from the horror and the pressure . . . what business was it of hers?

The guy had gotten her out of Hell, and for that solid, she owed him. But that didn't give her the right to get all hot and bothered about him having gotten all hot and bothered with someone else.

Although granted, there was a lot at stake—if he lost, her own parents, her sister, her friends . . . herself and Jim and Adrian, all would go where she had just been. Now that was too horrific to think about. She had been down there for only a few weeks and it had felt like centuries; she had
aged
centuries. If it was going to be an eternity? She couldn't even fathom the experience.

Refocusing, she decided to have another go at the cracking routine. And what do you know, egg number two split in the wrong place, half of the shell ended up in the bowl, and she had to go back to the sink and wash her hands again.

Turning off the water, she stared out the window. The backyard was downright ugly, the landscaping version of a man who hadn't shaved for a week and didn't have a good beard pattern working for him: Even though spring was gaining a firm toehold in Caldwell, New York, with buds forming on the tips of tree branches and the snow gone even from where it had been piled up high by the plows, a coat of green leaves wasn't going to help back there.

In her previous life, she'd be getting excited for summer—even though all that entailed was her sharing an apartment in Lake George Village and serving ice cream at Martha's for two months. But hello, summer was
awesome
. You got to wear shorts and hang out with your friends from high school, and maybe, just maybe . . . meet someone.

Instead, here, she was. An immortal with no life—

“You making scrambled—”

Sissy spun around so fast, her hip slammed into the counter—and her only thought was, Where was the nearest knife?

Except she wasn't going to need a weapon.

Adrian, Jim's wingman, was standing in the doorway from the hall, and the instant she saw him, she calmed down. The guy, fallen angel, whatever, was well over six feet tall, and in spite of that bad leg of his, he was built big and hard. He was also handsome in the way of a military man, with that strong jaw and the stare that followed everything, although the piercings gave him an anti-authority edge.

As did the fact that he was blind in one eye, the pupil having gone milky white from some kind of injury.

He frowned. “You all right?”

Nope. She was rip-shit pissed and absolutely terrified—both for no good reason. “Yup—I was just going to make breakfast.”

Like he hadn't already figured that out?

Adrian limped over to the square table in the center of the kitchen, and when he sat down, his body was like a sack of loose bones, landing in the chair with the grace of Twiddlywinks falling. But that didn't mean he was a lightweight.

“What's going on,” he demanded.

Yup. For what she'd learned about him, this was pretty typical: straight shooter, no bullshit.

“You want four eggs?” She turned away from him. “Or three.”

“Talk to me.” There was another groan and she imagined he'd leaned his heavy arms on the table. Or tried to cross his legs. “You might as well. We're the only ones up.”

“I guess Jim had a hard night.”

“He told you about the loss?”

“Yes.” Way to go, Jim. Fantastic. Hope those orgasms were worth it. “So how many eggs you want.”

“Seven.”

She glanced at what was left in the carton. “I can offer you four. I broke two and I want two myself.”

“Deal.”

And Jim could fend for himself. Or go ask his girlfriend to make some breakfast for him—

“Girlfriend?” Adrian asked.

“I didn't say that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

She threw up her hands and pivoted back to face him. “Look, no wonder Jim is losing. He's too busy with some woman to pay attention to what he's doing.”

Adrian just stared at her. “You mind if I ask where this is coming from?”

“Let's just say I caught him coming home at four in the morning.”

Adrian cursed under his breath—and didn't go any further than that.

Sissy shook her head. “So you know about his girlfriend, or fuck buddy, or whatever she is. You know what he was doing last night.”

“Look, it's complicated.”

“That is a Facebook status. Not an excuse for screwing around on your job. Especially given the biblical stakes he's playing for.”

On that note, she got cracking, so to speak. And made it through the rest of the carton fine. Poured a splash of milk in. Whisked her little heart out as she got the pan warmed up and the butter melted.

“My mom always told me to wait,” she muttered.

“For what?”

Okay, either her mouth needed to stop working or he needed to lose some hearing. Like she was going to talk about sex with the guy?

Then again, it'd just be a short convo, at least on her side.

Sissy shot his big, hard body a glance—and decided the topic would probably not be a quickie on his part. “Till the butter was right. Before you put the eggs in, you know.”

Ironically, the whole virginity thing was the reason the demon had taken her, the very thing that had set the wheels in motion and landed her here: just a couple of miles away from her family but separated by a divide so great she might as well have been on another planet.

“Something's burning.”

“Shoot!” Sissy lunged for the smoking pan and picked the thing up without a pot holder, burning her palm— “Goddamn it!”

From out of nowhere, that murderous rage made her want to destroy something: The stove. The kitchen. The whole house. Blinded by anger, she wanted to splash gasoline around the base of the wooden mansion and light everything on fire. She wanted to stand so close to the blaze her pores got tight and her eyelashes curled.

And maybe, just maybe, she wanted Jim to have to claw his way out to safety.

Big hands came to rest on her shoulders. “Sissy.”

She was
so
not up for some kind of parental pep talk. “I don't need—”

“Jim is not your problem. Do you hear me?”

With a yank and a shove, she stepped away. “It doesn't bother you that he's distracted?”

Adrian stared down at her, that eye on the right positively opaque. “Oh, it does. Trust me.”

“So why don't you do something about it! Talk to him or something—you're close, right? Tell him to stop . . . doing what he's doing. Maybe if he refocused, he'd start winning.” When
there was no reaction, she cursed. “Don't you care about what happens? Your best friend is up in that attic, dead because of—”

Adrian shoved his face into hers. “Stop right there.”

The tone in his voice shut her up.

“You and I?” he said. “We get along. We're cool. But that doesn't mean you get to talk about shit you don't know about. You have problems with Jim? I get that more than you realize. You don't appreciate him getting wound in the head about some chick? Join the fucking club. You're worried about what happens next? Head to the end of a very,
very
long line. But watch your mouth about Eddie, 'cause that was before your time and it's none of your damn business.”

For some reason, the fact that he was partially agreeing with her just pissed her off even more. “I gotta get out of here. I just . . . I gotta get some air. Make your own eggs—you can eat my share.”

Back in her real life, Sissy had never been much of a stomp-and-slammer. She'd been a good girl, the kind who had besties instead of boyfriends, was always the designated driver, and never, ever made a fuss about anything.

But death had cured her of all that.

She marched over to the door, ripped that thing open like she wanted to tear it off its hinges, and pounded her way outside. As she kick-shut those wood panels behind her, it occurred to her that she didn't have anywhere to go. But that problem was solved as a glint of metal caught her eye.

The Harleys were parked inside the detached ancient garage, and she went for the one she'd used before. The keys were in the ignition—which would have been stupid except for the fact that this was an otherwise good neighborhood, and say what you wanted about Jim and Adrian, they were the kind of men who could get a bike back if it was stolen.

And not by calling the police.

Throwing a leg over the seat, she pumped the engine, tilted the weight so she could free the kickstand . . . and a second later she hit the gas and roared off, screaming down the drive past the old mansion's flank, screeching out into the street and powering off.

With no helmet on her head, the wind roared past her ears and mixed with the engine's din. Her sweatshirt offered little buffer between her skin and the cool morning, and would offer even less protection if she wiped out and hit the pavement.

But she was already dead.

So it wasn't like she had to worry about pneumonia or dermabrasion.

Besides, who the hell cared?