MySoultoSave (4 page)

Jaeryth managed to glare silently at him. He’d let Ronwe
think he would cooperate for now—but with or without his permission, he was
going after Logan. Soon.

Chapter Three

Recovering addicts were supposed to be plagued with
excessive sleep. But the night stretched on to the small hours and Logan’s eyes
refused to close. By one in the morning, she gave up and got out of bed.

The talk with Angie hadn’t helped. Her sister had always
known what to say that would hurt her the most. Bitchzilla had outdone herself
this time.

She lit a cigarette, wandered into the cat-laden living room
and switched on a lamp. God, it was quiet here. The silence gnawed at her like
a bone. After years of constant noise, this was a false peace that invited
temptation.

Her stomach voiced a protest that she’d skipped dinner. She
frowned at it and briefly considered trying the cat food. It probably wasn’t
much worse than Thursday night chipped beef at the clinic. The idea that she’d
have to cook for herself from now on lurked somewhere in her mind, vague and
threatening. For six months she’d been served three meals a day—not that she
could manage to eat that often, but she’d tried. Before that it was scrounging
whatever food happened to be lying around at whoever’s place she found herself.
When she bothered eating at all.

She started for the kitchen. There were bowls, a can opener,
a microwave. She could handle warming up peas or something. Halfway there, she
stopped. They’d passed a convenience store on the way here. One of the hundred
Wawas in the area. Couldn’t have been more than three blocks away.

Nothing stopped her from leaving this house whenever she
wanted. She didn’t need a pass, didn’t have to check in or out with anyone. And
she wouldn’t be subjected to a search when she came back. She was accountable
only to herself.

A frightening thought. She was the last person she’d trust.

It took more willpower than she expected to walk out the
door. By the time she closed and locked it—as if anyone would want to steal a
bunch of used cat paraphernalia—clammy sweat filmed her skin. She caught a
breath and descended the steps of the low-slung porch.

No orderlies burst out after her. No stern-faced security
guard demanded her pass. Her only observers were a bright nickel moon and more
stars than she ever imagined existed. For a moment she stood on the sidewalk,
pinned in place by the sheer weight of freedom.

Finally, she forced her feet to move.

At first every step required a conscious effort. One foot
forward, then the other. Repeat as necessary. The first block seemed to stretch
forever. But she reached a side street, crossed without even a suggestion of
traffic—and when she hit the other side, the storm within her calmed. The
slight tremble she’d barely noticed left her hands. Her breathing evened and
her coiled muscles relaxed. She could do this.

Four more blocks took no time. A blaze of florescent lot
lights made a beacon of the Wawa, and she was surprised to see three cars
slotted in front of the store and another at the pumps. Good to know there were
other human beings populating this sleepy town.

She pushed through the door. Machine-cooled air and canned
music enveloped her as she stepped inside. The woman behind the counter spared
her a glance and went back to swiping the credit card of a man in
grease-stained Carhartt coveralls. Besides them, there was an elderly man
standing before a wall rack of newspapers and magazines, engrossed in the day’s
Inquirer
, and three teenagers—two boys near the auto supplies, one girl
in the chips aisle.

Logan turned down the first row and tried to decide what she
wanted to eat. Preferably something that didn’t require cooking. Cereal wasn’t
a bad option. Or granola bars or Pop Tarts. There was yogurt if she felt like
being healthy. Maybe something salty—chips, crackers, peanuts. Or sweet, like
snack pies. Ice cream. Snickers.

Christ. Why did there have to be so many choices?

She reached the end of the aisle and turned absently. The
two teen boys had migrated to the back of the store and stood in front of racks
filled with over-the-counter medicine, their backs facing her. One wore an
oversized blue windbreaker that hung almost to his knees, the other a plain
long-sleeved black shirt and black pants. The one in black leaned in and
whispered to the other. Windbreaker turned his head and caught the girl’s
attention two aisles away, and she gave a bare nod and headed for the counter.

Windbreaker reached out slowly, hesitated. The black-clad
boy whispered again and his buddy completed the reach and grabbed a box of
pills from the shelf. He threw a furtive glance over his shoulder.

“Excuse me.” The girl’s voice rang loud as she hailed the
clerk. “Hey. I was in here yesterday, and I lost my cell phone? And I was
wondering if somebody turned it in?”

From back here, Logan couldn’t hear the clerk’s reply—but
she understood what these kids were doing. One distracted, the others stole.
Not candy bars or cosmetics, but cold pills that would give them a temporary
high. And probably lead to stronger stuff when the thrill wore off down the
road.

Confrontation wasn’t on her shopping list, but she had to
try something.

She approached the boys. Everything inside her churned and
shook, but she managed to keep her outsides still. She tapped the one in the
windbreaker and said, “Hey. Kid.”

His head jerked around. Wide brown eyes blinked and
twitched. “Yeah, what?”

“You don’t want to do that. Put it back.”

He looked away fast. “Dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” he
muttered. His friend in black hadn’t moved.

“The pills.” Deciding this little pep talk should be about
more than shoplifting, she drew a fortifying breath and pushed up a sleeve. Most
of her scarring was on her inner thighs, but the marks on her arms were ugly
enough. Keloid patches clustered and overlapped on the inside of her elbow. A
few marked her forearm and one the size of a half-dollar rested midway up her
biceps.

“Jesus, lady,” the kid said. “You got a disease or
something?”

She shook her head. “Crystal meth. Keep doing what you’re
doing, and you could have pretty spots just like mine. You’ll also lose your
teeth, your hair and eventually your life.”

The kid’s mouth opened, closed. He reached in a pocket. She
hoped it was to get the pills and put them back. Still no response from the
black-clad boy.

“Your friend should see this too,” she said.

“What, Lisa? She doesn’t do this stuff.” He flushed and
dropped his gaze as he realized he’d just outed himself, along with their
scheme. “I mean…”

She tried not to laugh at his fumbling. “Your other friend,”
she said and nodded at the silent boy.

The boy in black pivoted slowly. Not a boy—a man. With
glittering eyes that were completely black, corner to corner, top to bottom.
They focused on her and he cocked his head in a quick, birdlike motion.

Sclerals, she thought with a frantic bid for sanity. Gotta
be scleral contacts.

The kid glanced at the man, then back to her. His brow
furrowed. “What other friend?”

She pressed her mouth closed and stumbled back a step, heart
banging wild against her ribs. She couldn’t tear her gaze from those alien
black eyes. “You’re fucking with me, right? That guy right next to you. He
was—”

The black-eyed man’s face twisted in rage. He uttered a
feral hiss, turned and dove at the medicine display. Through the display. His
passage disturbed nothing and left only a few wisps of smoke curling toward the
ceiling.

The bottom dropped from her stomach and the world took on a
grayish cast that blurred around the edges. She couldn’t—
would not
—pass
out. If she ended up in an ambulance for any reason, they’d cart her ass back
to rehab first and ask questions later.

She bit her tongue. Hard. The colors sprang back, everything
sharp and blazing neon for an instant before returning to normal. If you could
call a guy disappearing into a wall normal.

The kid stared at her as though she’d sprouted wings.

“Never mind.” She forced a weak laugh and hoped she didn’t
look as bug-eyed crazy as she felt. “I must’ve been seeing things for a minute.
That’s what this stuff does to you.”

“Um. I gotta go.” The kid turned away. Without looking at
her, he put the pills back.

A corner of her mouth lifted. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“You’ll be okay, kid.”

He mumbled something and made a beeline for the girl, who
was still haranguing the clerk.

Logan tugged her sleeve down with a shaking hand. Maybe she
really had been hallucinating. Not once, even on her worst trips, had she seen
something that vivid or defined. But anything was possible. Wasn’t it?

It had to be. Because she wasn’t crazy. Fucked up, yes, but
completely sane. Probably a little too sane.

At least she didn’t have to worry about deciding what to
eat. She wasn’t hungry any more.

* * * * *

The crowd gathered on the lawn, in the streets and the
parking lot, anywhere they could view the figure balanced precariously on the
ledge above a window of the church steeple. A few enterprising souls took
pictures or recorded movies with cell phones in hopes of capturing a possible
jump. They could all see the priest leaning from the window, his upper body
twisted strangely as he attempted to calm the troubled soul poised to leap.

They could not see the Tempter demon standing easily beside
the suicidal man, urging him to take that final step into oblivion—or rather,
the torments of Hell.

Jaeryth circulated through the crowd, whispering helpful
suggestions.
Taunt him. Make him jump.
Sirens warbled in the distance,
the impatient strangled bleats punctuated with horn blasts as the emergency
vehicles attempted to maneuver through standstill traffic. Rush hour, the
mortals called it. A time when they managed to do everything but actually rush.

He hoped to incite a few fights, perhaps even a small riot,
before the human officials arrived.

A young man with an upraised phone several feet away caught
his attention. The human was large and solid looking, his face flushed as
though he’d been drinking. He wore a sneer on his lips and a feral gleam in his
eye. Now there was a likely candidate for trouble.

As he moved toward his target, another figure approached the
same man and reached him first. The new arrival was clad in pale, shimmering
blue from head to foot and its eyes were solid blue and gleaming.

Oh, wonderful. A Shepherd.

Anger roiled through him at the sight of the angelic
assistant, the Host’s counterpart to the Tempters. The primary difference
between them, aside from the colors, was that Shepherds were homogenized,
gender-less beings, which allegedly made them holier or some such nonsense.

It had been years since he’d seen a Shepherd in his
district. Its presence meant that his hold was slipping, the balance shifting.
Not possible.

The Shepherd murmured in the young man’s ear and the human’s
features relaxed as he blinked a few times and lowered his phone. Now the
mortal looked slightly ashamed.

“Meddling bastard!” Jaeryth shifted into demon form. The
humans nearest him shivered and shrank away in response to his fury, and a
small child in a stroller began to wail. He moved toward the Shepherd, baring
his teeth. “Get out,” he growled. “This place is mine.”

“Is it?” The Shepherd faced him with a benevolent smile. “A
change is in the winds, demon. And it comes from within.”

“Really. How fascinating.” He advanced another step,
intending to get close enough to tear its throat out and send it crawling back
to Citadel, despite the consequences. None stood between them. The bull-necked
human had already fled for saner grounds and the crowd had unconsciously
parted. “Within what, you riddle-speaking monkey?”

It kept smiling. “You, demon. You are Heaven-touched.”

“Lying spawn!” He reared back, talons poised to strike.

The Shepherd held a hand out calmly toward the steeple.
“Behold.”

He looked. There on the ledge, another Shepherd had appeared
and drawn the Tempter away from the suicidal human. While the lesser beings
fought, the man gripped the ledge harder, once more aware of his mortality and
clinging to it. He would not jump now.

Jaeryth glared at the Shepherd before him. After a moment,
he leveled a cold smile. “I have not changed,” he said. “Heaven has no sway
over me. I’ll prove it.”

Before the Shepherd could respond, he rushed toward the
steeple, phasing through the mob and sending all the terror and disgust he
could generate through the gathered mortals. One of them cried out, “Jump, you
chicken-shit!” Others joined in, taunting the frightened soul huddled above
them, screaming for his blood. A few females burst into tears.

When he reached the closest of the onlookers, he paused and
spoke softly to one of them, who’d just shouted, “You can fly!” and chased it
with a wild laugh.

“Throw rocks at him,” Jaeryth said. “Perhaps you’ll hit the
priest. Make him bleed. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Blinking, the mortal grinned and bent to the ground,
searching for rocks.

As the crowd’s frenzy grew, feeding on itself now, Jaeryth
reached the building. Though both demons and angels had wings, demons could not
take flight. However, they had unique abilities of their own. He ran at the outer
wall of the steeple, then up it, as though the vertical surface were level as
the ground. A slight leap near the end carried him onto the ledge and he strode
toward the crouching mortal, radiating blackness.

“Do it,” he snapped. “Jump.”

The human cringed and shuddered. His head turned, and though
he could not possibly see Jaeryth, his wild, haunted gaze seemed to lock on
him.