The Holiday From Hell (10 page)

The barramundi burger had been bloody good, if a bit too big for Mel. He'd had to finish the last of hers for her. Now they only had thirty minutes to kill and, leaning over the railing to survey an even deeper collapsed doline, some of that would be spent on the descent. More stairs.

Mel's hand touched his arm. "My love, tell me how many people are here for the tour."

He shrugged. "I didn't ask. Does it matter?"

She laughed softly. "Seek out their souls, Luce, and tell me what you find."

It was an odd request, but not a difficult one. Human souls had a balance of darkness and light, a little like his used to before Mel had helped him burn away the darkness. The difference was that the darkness was generally a part of their own soul and not some other soul trying to take over. He started counting the energy signatures. "Six…seven…no, nine."

"Eight," Mel whispered. "One is the ranger in the ticket office. What can you tell me about them?"

"None of them are completely damned," he replied quickly. A flicker of red across one soul made him reconsider. This was an odd soul. The darkness in this one was more red than black, marking the soul as a violent killer, but the darkness was wispy and faint compared to the brightness of this soul. Like wine dripped into water. A reformed killer? One who'd spent their time in prison, regretting their crimes, but who still felt the urge for violence? "And…one of them is a convicted killer who could kill again."

"Sometimes death is justified," Mel replied, as if hinting at depths he hadn't seen.

"Like in war?" Luce guessed.

Mel looked grave. "Look again, Luce. At the soul and the body wearing it."

Luce focussed on the strange soul's signature and turned to look at the soldier. His jaw dropped open as he realised he was staring at a petite teenage girl. From her olive skin and dark, alluring eyes, he figured she was from somewhere in the Middle East. "A child soldier? A terrorist?"

Mel was silent, so Luce crossed the boardwalk to get a better look at the teenager. Her clothes were tailored to her body, so it didn't look like she was carrying weapons or explosives. If she was a terrorist, she wasn't on duty today.

The door to the museum opened and a man stepped out. Luce placed him at close to thirty, with the physique of someone who put in hours at the gym. Yet his soul matched the girl's – red and black intertwined, but where hers held more light, his leaned toward darkness. Yet that wispy red thread wove through it, disappearing into the darkness only to reappear somewhere else without warning.

This one was a soldier, surely. One whose guilt over every death dragged him down into a mire of despair. Not damned, but headed there. Especially if he turned those killer instincts on himself.

The girl's eyes were on him. Was he her target?

The wind slammed the visitor centre door and the soldier ducked for cover as if training was instinct. Luce had seen similar behaviour in veterans during fireworks displays in America.

"Well he looks like he's one wrong word away from suicide," Luce remarked to the girl. "I haven't seen a case of PTSD that bad since the Fourth of July in the US. Where do you bet he was stationed, Afghanistan or Iraq?"

She looked shocked, her eyes darting from the soldier to Luce. Those dark, doe eyes flashed like a night-time thunderstorm as she bit out, "There are worse things than war that can do that to a man."

Luce waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. Snarky teenager. What was she to him? The soldier had to be twice her age, but he didn't look old enough to be her father. "So you're his friend – girlfriend, maybe?" Satisfaction at being right made him grin at her defensive reaction. "Get out while you can. You don't want to be the one to find him when he offs himself. No one needs to –"

Mel's lips cut him off with a delicious kiss. "My love, are you scaring people? Maybe we should have spent the day at home."

She was probably right – she'd have been better off resting in bed and he wouldn't have ended up in the creek. The girl was still staring at him, though, so Luce figured he'd mess with her a little more and maybe even make Mel blush. "Hey, if you want to chain me to the bed, you know I'm up for that, Mel. Like I said –" He stopped at the girl's sharp intake of breath. Her face was paler than Mel's wings. What had he said? He tried to read the girl's soul, but she'd locked it up tighter than a drum.

Mel stepped between them and grabbed the girl's arm. She murmured something in a low voice, but Luce couldn't make out more than a word or two of it. The dangerous look in Mel's eyes told him not to say another word. It was Japan all over again.

Mel's hand curled around his arm instead – she'd let go of the girl and a slight jerk of her head indicated they should head down the stairs away from the strange girl. "My love?"

Luce nodded and departed with her. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Mel looked mischievous. "Honestly, Luce, I'm beginning to think chaining you to the bed wasn't such a bad idea after all."

He grinned. If that's what she wanted, Hell, so did he. "Of course it's not a bad idea. I suggested it." A dangerous thought occurred to him. "But it only works if you're there with me. If you chain me up alone and leave me there while you go sightseeing without me, it's the worst idea I've ever heard."

She laughed gently. "I agree. I'm not sure I could look the landlord in the eye again if he walked in and found you." She blushed.

"Can you tell me why you wanted me to read souls up there? And what that girl is?" Luce hoped his voice was quiet enough not to carry to the strange girl.

Mel bit her lip. "She's a twenty-four-year-old intern doctor. When she was seventeen, she was abducted and spent almost a month being tortured like one of the souls in Lili's level of Hell. She survived because that man she was with helped her kill her abductors." She closed her eyes. "If I hadn't stepped between you, she was going to gut you with a hunting knife she keeps up her sleeve. You said something that made her think you knew what had happened to her and in her mind that marked you as one of her abductors."

"So that explains the soldier. Did they fall in love in Iraq or whatever and he brought her over here, where it's safe?"

Mel's eyes widened. "Iraq? Luce, she was abducted right outside the HELL Corporation offices on the Terrace and held in a place not far from where we're staying now. And he's no soldier – he's a security guard at the Perth Arena."

"Outside our building?" Luce sucked in a breath. "Were any of our staff involved?"

Mel shook her head. "No, they were all human, if you can call them that. I'm sure you can find their souls in Hell, if you want more details. Well, unless any of them are still alive."

"I thought she was a terrorist," Luce admitted. "I figured you wanted me to stop her from doing whatever she had planned."

"I wouldn't put you in danger like that, Luce. I only wanted to know how well you could read souls from a distance. Next time, I'll stick to the more saintly sort."

They were the first to reach the lower landing, so Luce pulled Mel to one of the few benches below the rocky overhang that wasn't wet. "Are you all right?" he asked, looking worried.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Mel lifted his hand, which was clamped around hers, to her lips for a light kiss. "It's my soul that's tired, not my body. A few flights of stairs aren't going to kill me, though you've been very conscientious in trying to heal me at every opportunity. It's very sweet of you, my love."

Why wasn't he more surprised? "So you did notice. I thought when you didn't stop me…" He eyed her laughing smile. "Right. Yeah. I should have known. Just that you've been drifting off to sleep so easily that I figured that was one of the symptoms of…whatever's ailing you."

"I've been watching you," she began, sounding almost timid. Luce felt his dread build – of course she was watching him for signs of his demonic nature reasserting itself. Not even Mel believed he was properly redeemed yet. Especially not after his lapse in Japan with the horrible Han woman. "And it's easier to focus on your soul when mine isn't engaged in maintaining my body. Sleep allows me to give your soul my full attention and you definitely deserve it, my love." She wasn't smiling – why wasn't she smiling?

"What have I done wrong?" he blurted out, not wanting to know and dying to, all at the same time.

She hesitated, seeming as reluctant to tell him as he was to hear it. "The way you heal me. It's…different, slower than the way I heal, and I thought perhaps if I watched you more closely, I'd work out why and I'd be able to help you." He sighed and her eyes widened. "No, I'm sorry, don't take it the wrong way. I just wanted to help you and I thought…oh, never mind. I was wrong."

Luce snorted. Mel was never wrong.

"You said you were a healer before, when you were in Heaven. Before the Heavenly Battle. And you told me you only healed angels, but I never understood what that meant until I saw you heal me. When you did it in Patrick's flat, I felt the air currents change the moment you started. I dismissed it as just his draughty old building, but then I felt the same thing in your penthouse and again here. Whatever it was, you were responsible. So I watched and tried to understand." She swallowed. "I'm sorry. I really thought you were doing something wrong, something I'd need to help you fix, but it wasn't until last night that I understood. You've been drawing energy from everything surrounding you – especially the kinetic energy from the air. Your soul concentrates it somehow and then directs that flow into mine. Not my body, which is what I initially thought. You're channelling the energy in the room into my soul." There was wonder in her eyes. Not since the night she'd transformed him from demon to angel had she looked at him quite like that.

"How –" Luce began, but it sounded hoarse. He coughed and tried again. "How am I supposed to heal you?"

Mel shook her head, a strange negative when her shining eyes shouted the opposite. She wet her lips. "I…I heal by taking the energy from my soul, summoning the atoms you need to heal…or to be clothed…and transferring these to you. It's a rapid, intimate exchange that flows easily between us because of how much I love you and how willing I am to give it to you. What you do…is slow, because it must be, but it's not limited by you. You could take the energy from a gust of wind and use it to restore a soul…or assemble a diamond from the carbon in charcoal…or transform yourself. Or you could take the energy from an explosion to protect everyone in the blast radius. And you can do this without depleting your soul's own energy. You're a remarkable angel, Luce. No one else can do what you can."

He stared at her, unable to close his mouth. She thought HE was doing something wonderful? That had to be a first. He had to be doing it wrong, that was all. Tonight, when they were alone in their apartment, he'd ask her to show him how to do it properly.

"No, Luce. I've been learning from you. Last night, feeling the tingle of energy flowing from you deep into me, restoring me more every moment. Oh my. It was better than…better than…" She blushed furiously. "And you know you're good, Luce, but what you did last night was incredible."

Surely she was joking. "But…last night I fell asleep. So did you. I don't understand how –"

"Shhh." Mel jerked her head at the humans making their way down the last flight of stairs to their landing.

Reluctantly, Luce shut up. For the moment. As soon as they got to the car, he was going to ask her how he'd managed to be incredible while sending them both to sleep, so he could do it again when he was awake, alert and watching her reaction.