Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) (26 page)

“Come on, honey. Tea will make you feel a bit better.”

“I don’t want it.” Her voice was smaller than a tick on a dormouse.

“I don’t want it either. But it’s either this or tequila, and neither one of us is in a good place emotionally to sit down and get drunk together.”

Her chest lifted before her shoulders sank. She exhaled and offered a hand to take the cup. For several minutes, neither spoke. They only took intermittent sips of tea, Riona with her eyes fixed on Marc, and Dee with eyes looking anywhere but.

Finally, the witch broke the silence. “What’s the procedure?”

“For?”

“Finding his replacement.”

Damn, some girls were the “let’s look forward and focus on the future” type, but they usually waited for the body to be buried first.

Clearing his throat, Dee thought it was a better subject than most, given the situation. “There’s a series of rituals. Takes a few days to get everything ready. But first, there’s a closing out rite, kind of a spiritual send-off for the departed or fallen. There’s no rush, Riona. We can take our time and mourn…”

Determination steeled her brow as she finally let go of Marc’s hand, turning toward Dee. “I want the third as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

A jerk of her head noted the dead body behind her. “Revenge.”

“Against?”

“Who else? Lucy, Lucifer, the devil, and whatever other names that bastard is known by.”

Dee shook his head. “That isn’t going to happen.”

The witch jolted to her feet, splashes of tea spilling over the sides of the mug. “Why the hell not?”

“The devil was vanquished. Probably not something he saw as a probability, or he’d never have risked making himself corporeal. Angels, they aren’t a one-chance-to-play like demons are, but rules exist to make sure everything’s equitable. Lucifer may have fallen, but the essence of his being is still angelic. There’s a moratorium whenever one of the elite on either side is vanquished. He can’t return personally to Earth again for twenty-nine years.”

Her anger melted into confusion. Dee continued.

“I know, ‘twenty-nine years,’ right? It was a negotiation process, and the particulars really aren’t that interesting. But, unless you’re planning a trip to the underworld, which by the way, isn’t possible for a living human, you’re going to have to put off the personal vendetta thing until you’re well into your sixties.”

As though it could do nothing else, Riona’s frame slackened. Her eyes glistened, but fighting the tears was too much of an effort. They began flowing again, dropping into her teacup like rain.

“How can you be so… calm?” she sobbed accusingly at Dee. “How can you not show any emotion over this? I thought he was your best friend!”

“I am emotional,” Dee boasted as a Texas-sized smile crossed his face, drawing a sneer from Riona. “I’m proud.”

“Proud?” she asked, like it was a foreign word.

“Riona, if it really went down the way you and Ramiel said, how could I be anything but? You both were willing to throw away salvation to save the other. Marc just upped the ante beyond anything you could do. Do you really think Lucifer would have let his soul go? Naw, he would have found a way to keep it, just because he can’t stand having to lose pride to anyone. That bastard could find loopholes like a drunk finds trouble. No wonder, with Jerry helping him out…”

“Jerry.” Clouds moved over her countenance.

Dee barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Yeah, Jerry… Anyways, loopholes. He’d have released the punishment for that sin, but all he’d have done is found another way to tempt Marc later on. And if he had you as a demon, just imagine how easy that would have been. So Marc beat him to the punch by committing the only cardinal sin there’s no loophole for: suicide.”

“You’re saying, Marc killed himself…”

“…to save you from Satan, yes,” Dee confirmed.

She chewed on that like a piece of tough meat. “What did Lucifer mean, about the stars aligning and me being a bride of Hell? Dee, am I … You said there’s no such thing as predestination.”

“There’s not.”

They both turned to find Ramiel filling the doorway, his expression looking like a wrecking crew had been using it for training.

Despite her somber state, Riona gasped when she realized that the two slips of white behind him were the wings she always suspected he had, but never seen. Their appearance shocked her. She didn’t know what she expected — probably something like you’d see in a painting: billowy, feathery, bird-like wings, blown up to a superhuman scale — but they were nothing like that. The two alar masses that jutted up from his back weren’t like a dove’s in any way. They were radiant, burning, as though in motion even when at rest, and made of light. Or fire. The effect wasn’t regulated to just those features, however. In the glow of his angelic aura, all of Ramiel was transfigured. The same shape of his face, the same contours and flow of wavy, blonde hair, but purer, simpler. Less sexy and more reverent, for lack of a better term. He was…
heavenly.

“What?”

Dee looked at her, dumbfounded, as though worried. Sure, Riona realized, Dee had known Ramiel for decades. The whole winged-warrior incarnation was probably nothing new to him. The thought reminded Riona of how, despite the magnitude of what had just occurred, she was still so new to this way of life. Maybe if she hadn’t been, she’d have known earlier on that something about Lucy was fishy, or found another way to save Marc.

As though realizing he’d left the kitchen light on his way back to bed, Ramiel took account of himself and somehow turned down the ambience. As his skin faded from brilliance back to “colors that exist on Earth,” the wings dissolved from view, leaving the less-interesting panorama of the living room behind him.

He took a few steps into the room, all the time his eyes fixed on Marc’s body with mistrust, as he continued. “There’s no such thing as predestination. What would be the purpose of living if there were? But there is something akin to destiny. They’re the same signs I was telling you about before, but as to their meaning… I think someone in the soothsayer division in Hell was looking for a way to scoop up a promotion and misinterpreted just enough to snag a corner office.”

She sighed with relief. “So I’m not going to be the bride of Hell.”

Ramiel came to a stop next to Marc’s body and looked across to her. “Not likely.”

“Not likely?” That brought Dee to his feet, as he found himself instinctively positioning his ready-to-kick-ass physique in the space between the angel and the witch.

“The sign that was given wasn’t about a place, it was about a person,” Ramiel informed them. “It said that Riona would be a lover to one who had arisen from Hell. Lucifer assumed that meant him. We angels, we weren’t as sure.”  

Riona balked. “What’s so special about me? And how the hell is that not predestination?”

“Because, dear, it’s more like looking at where you’re driving than putting you on a bus. You’re choosing this route. It’s just… There’re a few beings that exist outside time. Big Boss is one, the Oracles… This whole time thing, that’s for the lower creatures like you, me, and woodchucks to experience. For them, all that
has
happened, is yet to happen, and everything that
will
happen, is one all-encompassing truth. Like pushing light through a prism, they get to see everything stratified, but upside down. And as for you… Believe me, sweetheart, I want to tell you, but I’ve been given strict orders that you have to figure it out on your own.”

The witch began to pace as a string of groggy curses slipped out under her breath.

“But I do have something to tell you,” Ramiel continued, drawing both Riona and Dee’s attention back to him. “The third has been chosen.”

Riona stopped on the spot. “Third what?”

“Third Pure Soul.”

“Already?” Ramiel’s chin gave one quick, affirmative dip to Dee’s inquiry. “But, the rituals… And the search of the soul… I thought we had to go through all that nonsense to find the next chosen.”

Crossing his arms, Ramiel cocked his hip and shifted his weight. “Normally, yes. To find a new Pure Soul, that’s standard procedure. But this isn’t so much a new Pure Soul as one being called up from retirement. But I need your consent. They won’t let him descend without your agreement.”

Dee didn’t need to think. While there were just two of them, their power was in imbalance. Riona wasn’t in a good place emotionally; if Dee didn’t have a counterpart and she decidedly to go all vigilante, he would have no way of keeping her power in check.

“I agree,” he spat out without further delay. “Riona?”

But she proved more incredulous. “Who is it?”

“A former Keystone,” Ramiel replied, his gaze stretching past her and out the window. “Don’t worry, he’ll be reincarnated as just a pillar; you’ll still be the sword of this cavalry, but he’ll bring a whole bunch of knowledge and experience that you’re going to need for what seems to be coming.”

“For what’s coming?” Riona took a step back for reasons she couldn’t quite grasp.

The angel motioned to the priest’s body on the floor. “Lucifer can’t come to Earth, and the next biggest tool he has in his arsenal is using your own love for Marc against you. It takes him fifty-two days to remake a human soul as a demon body, and then you better believe after a few introductory courses on demon magic and the best damning practices, Demon Marc is going to be sent earthside to corrupt your ass and take you back home to Papa.”

She shook her head so hard, the effort made her dizzy. “Marc would never do that. I don’t care what Lucifer does to him, Marc loves me.”

“Yes, but so few demons are strong enough to resist their hard wiring that they don’t even question Lucifer’s purpose. He loves you, but once he’s been remade into demon flesh, it’s not going to be the fluffy, die-for-you love that you expect. It’s going to be ugly and possessive and dominating. And beyond that, a Pure Soul has fallen to Hell. This only happens once in a blue moon, Riona, and we need every possible defense for when the ramifications start falling out. So, yes or no?”

If she thought her heart was broken before, she was utterly and entirely wrong. An emotional spike drove into her soul, as though her body itself were being cleaved in two. Marc, her enemy? Burning in Hell was one thing, but working on its behalf… Was there no end to this nightmare?

“I agree!” she huffed out, positive that it wasn’t going to matter. If Marc came for her, she was going with him, no matter the consequences.

When he comes for me,
she corrected herself.

Ramiel thanked her, then turned his attention to Marc’s body.

“I suppose we should call an ambulance,” Dee offered. “You guys can find some way to explain this, right? Undiagnosed heart condition, or something?”

The angel knelt down to the corpse, running the tip of an index finger over Marc’s forehead, tracing a line between his eyes, then tapping lightly on each side of his forehead. “Unnecessary, there will be no body to explain.”

Dee and Riona leaned in, only to leap back a moment later when corpse before them began to twitch.

“Holy mother!” Dee took Riona into his arms, caging her, ready to turn and flee with her in a moment’s notice.

But when the body sat up, shook his head, and his eyes fluttered open, Riona knew in a moment that she was both out of danger, and in the worst danger she had ever been.

The blue orbs sparkled as the newly arisen Pure Soul took in the view of his feet, examining the length of his limbs and twirling his fingers in the air as though playing an invisible piano. The voice that came out was like a cover of a song that had originally been sung by Marc; the tone was the same, but the meter and rhythm were all screwy.

The man laughed. “I think this is a record.”

Ramiel’s face stretched taut. “How so?”

The new man looked to the two other Pure Souls across from where he sat on the floor. “I have to be the first being ever to have been inside the bodies of all three Pure Souls in turn.” He looked coyly at Riona. “Though I wouldn’t mind being inside your body again anytime soon, baby.”

Riona’s foot translated her thoughts,
Not for all the coffee in Seattle,
perfectly as it swung full mast and landed squarely in his ribs. The man only took amusement as e rubbed his sides and Riona stormed out of the room.

Dee, not really up on the joke, looked on in confusion as the man now using Marc’s body struggled to his feet. “Who are you?”

It was then that the stark blue eyes turned his way. The current resident of Marc’s body extended his right hand in an attempt at introduction. “The name’s Gaius Gallicus, or if you prefer the one you already know, Mr. Jerry Romani, at your service.”

About the Author

Killian McRae would tell you that she is a rather boring lass, an authoress whose characters’ lives are so much more exciting than her own. She would be right. Sadly, this sarcastic lexophile leads a rather mundane existence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She once dreamed of being the female Indiana Jones, and to that end she earned a degree in Middle Eastern History from the University of Michigan. However, when she learned that real archaeologist spend more time lovingly removing dust with toothbrushes from shards of pottery than outrunning intriguing villains with exotic accents, she decided to become a writer instead. She writes across many genres, including science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction.

www.killianmcrae.com

Other titles:

A Love by Any Measure

Tallis (Books of Andresium #1)

12.21.12

And look for Book 2 in the Pure Souls series in Spring 2013!

Hey: Little note from your friendly authoress. As an independent writer, one of the toughest things for me to do is just to get my book in front of readers for consideration. I want to say thank you for taking a chance on this read and on my work. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. With hope that you did enjoy it, would you mind helping a girl out? There’s two little things you can do that can give a lot of kick for the kettle. The first is the easiest thing: Have friends who read? Tell them about my book. And the second, if you’re willing to spare a few moments, can you leave a review on Amazon? Amazon reviews help readers every day in their reading selections, but only if there’s reviews there for them to read.