If I Die

  Beck laughed, and his knife hand jiggled. I gasped as the point of the blade poked me through my shirt, almost firm enough to break my skin. “I like your spirit. But letting you go would be an unconscionable waste of resources.”

  “So you’re just going to stab me in the kitchen?” I demanded, mining my terror for remaining fiery threads of anger to keep panic at bay. “Shouldn’t you at least try to make it look like an accident? I mean, this whole stabbing thing sounds messy, and you’ll never get all that blood out of the tile grout.”

  “I’ll be done with your body before it even cools, and mine is the only blood I plan to dispose of.” But he glanced around the kitchen, as if he were truly seeing it for the first time. “However, now that you mention it, the kitchen does seem a bit…cold. Why don’t we take this to your room? You’d like to die in your own bed, right?” he said, and chill bumps burst to life on every inch of my body. “Then your dad can find you, and it’ll look like a crime of passion. Maybe they’ll even blame Nash. Didn’t the two of you have a big, public fight the other day?”

  Oh, nooo. Beck was right. The whole world had seen me kiss someone else, then seen Nash stomp out. Em and Sabine would know he hadn’t killed me, and our families would believe him, obviously. But if he couldn’t stay off frost, the police would know he was messed up on something, and even if they couldn’t pin down the actual substance, he’d look unstable, at the least.

  “No.” I felt my eyes go wide, but Beck only grinned in return, clearly enjoying my misery. “Please, no, Mr. Beck. Nash didn’t do anything to you. You can’t let people blame this on him.”

  “Oh, I think that wraps things up nicely, and it’ll throw the school into fear and chaos, which should keep the local hellion population happy.” He grabbed my arm in his free hand and before I could blink, he’d spun me around, the twin knife points now poking into my back, on either side of my spine. “It never hurts to pay tribute to the local hellions, if you ever plan to revisit their haunts.”

  “You’re paying tribute to Avari?” Terror tightened my throat, and I could barely force the words out, but I had to keep talking. Keep trying to distract him long enough to…do something drastic.

  “You know him?” Beck pushed me forward, and I didn’t dare resist, with death so close at my back. Where the hell was my dad? Or Tod?

  I held my arms stiff at my side, wondering if I could grab a makeshift weapon before he could shove the knife through my spine… “I know he’s going to be pissed if I die and he doesn’t get my soul.”

  On the dusty mirror over the couch, Beck’s brows rose, and he glanced at me in sudden interest. “Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m planning to leave him a tribute, huh?”

  Crap. Had I just given him another reason to blame Nash?

  “No!”

  “Shh. I don’t think you want to wake Emma and your cousin.” Beck pushed me across the living room and into the hall, where I took one last look at my best friend, still passed out on the couch, before he shoved me toward my room.

  “Sit.” Beck nodded at my desk chair as he marched me through my own door—it hadn’t been hard to find in a two-bedroom house.

  Huh? But I sat, the knife now pressed into my side, only more confused when he leaned over me to open my laptop. I hadn’t shut it down when I closed it, so it flared to life instantly, my email inbox greeting me with unnerving normalcy while I sat with a mystical two-bladed knife pressing into my ribs.

  “You’re going to send Nash an email, begging him not to come over. Tell him to calm down, and you’ll talk to him tomorrow, at school, but you’re not going to let him in while he’s this angry.”

  My teeth clenched together so hard my jaws ached in protest, and I had to force my mouth open to speak. “No.”

  “Do it. It has to be in your own words, with only your prints on the keyboard.”

  I craned my neck to look up at him, wishing he could see the fury surely raging in my irises. “You want to kill me? Fine. Kill me. But I’m not going to help you frame Nash.”

  Beck leaned so close I felt his breath on my ear. The tip of one blade bit into my skin. I gasped at the sharp pain and couldn’t help wondering how much worse the real thing would hurt. “You’re going to do it, or when I’m done with you, I’ll take Emma and your cousin back to Emma’s house and we’ll have a little fun while your soulless corpse cools.”

  A bitter, black pain settled into my stomach, and threatened to swallow me whole. “Don’t touch them,” I whispered furiously, with all the volume I could manage.

  “You have my word that I won’t, if you do exactly what I tell you to.”

  Hellions can’t lie; did the same thing go for incubi? I didn’t know, but I had no doubt that if I didn’t write the email, he’d do to Em and Sophie what he’d done to Danica. Or maybe what he’d done to her mother.

  He was making me choose. Nash or Emma and Sophie.

  If I wrote the letter and the police found it—no doubt Beck would leave it open on my laptop—Nash would probably spend the rest of his life on the run. As would Harmony, because she and Tod wouldn’t let him go down for my murder.

  But if I didn’t write the letter, Emma and Sophie would die, either from the energy Beck would drain from them, or to give his demon children life.

  I couldn’t let them die. Not again. Not because of me. So I started typing.

  Tears blurred out the screen. I blinked, and they trailed down my cheeks in hot rivers of my own terror, and anger, and remorse. But I did what I had to do. I begged Nash not to come over. I promised I’d talk to him at school, but not until he calmed down. And at the end of the letter, I told him he scared me when he was like “this,” as Beck ordered. Tears dripped on the keyboard when I typed my name at the bottom of the screen. More dripped from my chin while my pointer hovered over the send button.

  “Do it,” Beck whispered into my ear, and I could hear his breathing escalate, like he was turned on by what he was making me do. By the pain and chaos he was creating. “Do it, or I swear they will die screaming in both pleasure and pain. Tonight.”

  My entire body shook with sobs. But I clicked Send. And ruined everything, for everyone I’d ever loved.

  “Good girl…” Beck crooned, pulling up on my arm until I had to stand. My legs almost refused to hold me. Shock settled over me, blurring things. Numbing me. I couldn’t think through the fog swirling in my head, like my brain had given up and crossed over into hell without the rest of me.

  “Sit down,” he murmured, and I only realized I’d sat on the bed when I felt the mattress sink beneath me.

  I may as well have killed him. I’d ended Nash’s life just the same, with the press of a few buttons and a single click of the mouse.

  “Here, let’s take your shirt off—just a little scene setting. Small-town cops usually need it spoon-fed to them, and we don’t want to leave any doubts.”

  Would Tod forgive me? He’d never know why I did it, but he’d know it wasn’t true. Would he hate me for eternity for what I’d done to his brother? To his mother?

  I barely felt Beck unbutton my shirt, but vaguely I was aware that he did it one-handed, because those twin points of pain—promise of an end to this new misery—never left my side.

  “Lie down now…” There was gentle pressure on my bare shoulder, and the bed rose up to meet me. I was drowning in guilt, so cold and bitter I could no longer feel the fear I’d been living with for the past five days. Fear didn’t matter anymore—I was going to die whether I was afraid of death or not.

  The only things that mattered were the people I loved, and I’d just betrayed every last one of them. My life was a series of small lies, but my death was the biggest one of all.

  Beck leaned over me, his head backlit by the light on my ceiling. His cheek brushed mine, an intimate invasion I hated, even on the verge of death. “This’ll only hurt for a minute,” he promised. “And since you’re not going to make a last confession, maybe I should.” He sat up then
, and I forced my gaze to focus on the cruelty and joy shining in his eyes. “I’m still going to take Emma and your cousin. They’ll die screaming my name.”

  I blinked, and my room roared back into focus, so sharp and crisp my eyes burned. Rage blazed through me, igniting my every nerve ending, sparking in every synapse. And suddenly I realized I had nothing left to lose.

  “The hell they will.” I smacked his knife hand away from my chest, and one blade sliced across my left palm. Blood flowed, and the pain was sharp, but I’d caught him by surprise. I sat up, my right fist already flying, and through sheer luck, the blow actually glanced across his chin.

  Stunned, Beck reached for me. I dropped beneath his grasping hand and rolled off the other side of the mattress, reaching for Nash’s bat. But it had rolled too far under the bed, and Beck was there in an instant, my incompetent fighting skills no match for his supernatural speed. He threw me against the wall, one hand around my neck. Gagging, I tried to shove my knee into his groin, but he blocked the blow with the fist still clenching the knife.

  “No…” I croaked, desperate for a breath—just enough to wail my way into the Netherworld. Beck would follow me, but at least then I’d be running, and I could lure him away from Emma and Sophie. At least then, I’d have a chance. But Beck only tightened his grip.

  “You stupid little bitch,” he spat, swinging me away from the wall by my throat. “You couldn’t just play nice, could you? I was going to make it fast—both blades straight through your heart. But now I think I’ll let you suffer.”

  My vision darkened. My throat burned. My terror knew no limits.

  Beck pushed me backward, his fingers flexing around my neck until my ears rang. The backs of my legs hit the mattress, and he kept pushing until I had to sit, clawing at his fingers with both hands.

  He shoved again, and I fell onto my back with him straddling me. But finally his grip on my throat loosened, just enough for me to suck in a shallow, unsatisfying breath—not enough to scream, just enough to live. The fresh air burned all the way down, and Beck clucked his tongue. “Can’t let you suffocate,” he said, raising the double-bladed knife for me to see, twisting it so that the light overhead glinted off every shiny surface. “You have to die by hellion-forged steel, or you’re no good to me.” The knife disappeared from sight, and an instant later I felt both tips press into my skin, in the center of my stomach. “Any last words?”

  He relaxed his grip on my throat a little more, just enough that I could croak out a couple of words. And a couple was all I had for him.

  “Fuck—” I gasped, ignoring the pain “—you.”

  “Well said.” His right arm flexed. My pulse roared in my ears. And the blades sank slowly, steadily into my stomach, bringing with them a fiery pain like nothing I’d never felt.

  I gasped, and his hand fell away from my throat. My world shrank to encompass nothing but the agony spreading out from my center, spilling from my flesh in warm rivers of blood.

  Beck crawled onto the bed next to me, on his knees, watching in fascination as I blinked up at him. My hands shook as they reached for my stomach, hovering over both the devastating damage and the hated instrument.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked, eyes shining with eagerness.

  I pulled in an agonizing breath and licked my lips with a tongue that was suddenly dry. “You tell me.” Then I grabbed the hilt and pulled, screaming as the blades slid free of my flesh. And with the last of my strength, I shoved the dual dagger up beneath his rib cage, straight into his heart.

  22

  Beck’s eyes went wide. He gasped, and that sudden intake seemed to last forever. Blood poured from his chest, sluicing over the hilt of the knife to soak my comforter.

  “Hellion-forged steel, huh?” I whispered, with all the volume I could manage. Guess I found something that will kill an incubus. The question was, would it capture his soul?

  Beck blinked one more time, his eyes already losing focus. I forced myself up on one elbow, my other hand clutching at my own wounds, blood pouring through my fingers. He fell backward on the bed, his head hanging off the edge. And while I watched, paralyzed by the burning pain spreading out from the core of my body, a dark aura developed around him, darkening by the second.

  He was dying. I’d killed him. But Beck’s death wouldn’t prevent my own.

  I lay back on the bed, terrified by the feel of my own blood pouring through my fingers, racked by pain I could never have imagined. There was so much blood between us, I could practically taste it in the air, and the thick, coppery scent made me gag with each breath.

  Desperate now, I dug in my pocket with my free hand, horrified by the darkness growing on the edges of my vision. That wasn’t Beck’s death aura—that was me losing consciousness. I was dying. Was my reaper already here? Tod had said I wouldn’t see him….

  I flipped the phone open and held it up long enough to press and hold the number four. Then my hand fell back on the mattress, useless.

  While the phone rang, I turned my head, my left cheek pressed into the mattress. Beck lay inches away, and as I watched, the phone still ringing faintly from my open palm, I saw his soul struggle up from his body, like it wanted to rise. And almost as fast as it appeared, it began to trail toward his chest, like smoke pulled up a chimney by an unseen draft.

  His soul was cloudy and streaked with dark ribbons of smut, and as Tod answered his phone with a greeting I didn’t have the strength to answer, Beck’s soul seemed to soak into the hilt of the dagger until a second later there wasn’t a trace of it left.

  “Hello?” Tod said again. “Kaylee? Are you all right?”

  I opened my mouth but what came out wasn’t a real word. I could only manage a hint of sound riding a pain-laden sigh. Then my eyes closed, and I was alone with the sound of my own irregular breathing.

  “Kaylee?” Tod sounded closer now, and when his hand brushed hair back from my face, I would have jumped, if I’d had the strength. “No…! Kaylee, wake up. Please wake up.”

  Tod was crying. I’d never heard him cry before.

  I forced one eye open, and there he was on his knees by the bed, still clutching his own phone. “So sorry,” I mouthed, but the words carried no sound. I was so sorry for what I’d done to Nash, but I couldn’t tell him. And that meant he couldn’t tell Nash.

  “You’re gonna be okay.” Tod dropped his phone and slid one arm beneath my shoulders, the other beneath my knees. “Can you put pressure on the wound?”

  But I couldn’t even shake my head in answer. I couldn’t move.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital, but I can’t go that far in one shot carrying you, so we’ll have to stop a couple of times on the way. Okay?”

  I couldn’t answer, but that didn’t matter. I closed my eyes, then opened them almost immediately when something cold and wet fell on my face. It was raining softly, and I was outside, in a parking lot I didn’t recognize. The lot faded, and the next instant Tod stood in a park, still clutching me to his chest, still crying.

  My eyes fell shut again, and a second later, a familiar, antiseptic scent burned my nose, while bright lights rendered the world red and veiny through my closed eyelids.

  I blinked, and the hospital came into view. A hallway, full of beeps, and voices, and the steady metallic clink of carts wheeled on linoleum. Tod laid me on a stretcher and pressed something to my stomach. It didn’t hurt anymore, and that should have scared me, but nothing scared me more than seeing him cry.

  Reapers don’t cry. They don’t. But I’d made Tod cry. And he didn’t even know what I’d done yet.

  “They’re going to fix you, Kaylee,” he said, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “I promise.”

  I shook my head, but Tod stepped back anyway, pulling his hand out of mine. He glanced down the hall, toward the source of most of the noise. “Hey, somebody help! This girl’s bleeding!”

  “My dad…” I mouthed, when I couldn’t force any more sound, and Tod nodded. Then he disapp
eared.

  A second later, footsteps pounded toward me, and the first nurse appeared from around the corner, clad in Looney Tunes–print scrubs. “Holy—” She yelled something else I couldn’t focus on, and more people came running. They wheeled me past a long desk and into a room full of equipment, and someone started cutting my remaining clothes off.

  Minutes later—or seconds; I’d lost all sense of time—Tod reappeared with my father in tow.

  “Kaylee!” my dad shouted, and a man in scrubs held him back. “That’s my daughter!”

  “Sir, how did you get in here?”

  My dad threw one punch, and the nurse hit the floor. In the next instant, he was at my side, and someone was yelling that he could stay, if he stayed out of the way.

  “Kaylee…” Tears trailed down his face as he brushed hair back from my head. Someone pushed him aside and an oxygen mask was lowered over my face, then he was back and Tod was with him.

  They watched me, tears standing in their eyes, and every time I blinked, it became a struggle to open my eyes again. I didn’t hear the questions, the slosh of liquids, or the crackle of sealed packages being opened. I didn’t feel the needles, or the sterile solution, or the pulse monitor clipped over my finger. I only saw Tod and my dad. The men who loved me. I wished I could tell them how sorry I was that I’d ruined everything.

  Then I blinked, and the world dimmed. And suddenly a little redheaded boy was there, completely out of place in an E.R. operating room. He pulled Tod away from the bed and said something I couldn’t hear.

  Levi.

  It was time. Levi had come to reap my soul.

  But instead, he handed Tod a slip of paper, watching solemnly as he read it, and Tod gaped at him. Then shook his head. Levi repeated whatever he’d said, then gestured to me with one open hand. Tod crossed his arms over his chest and held his ground. And finally I understood.

  Levi wasn’t my reaper. Tod was. By bringing me to the hospital, Tod had put me on his own reaping list. And he was refusing to kill me.

  I glanced up at my dad, but he was still crying, still stroking my hair, and he saw nothing else.