Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (42 page)

“‘I am yours, body, mind, heart, and soul. And I always will be.’” Tod looked up, and Avari’s eyes narrowed until they were slits leaking darkness into the Netherworld night. “See? She is mine, body, mind, heart, and
soul.
And if she’s
mine,
she can’t be
yours.
Let. Her. Go.
”

The demand was a formality. Avari had no choice but to stand by his word. To break it would mean rendering his promise to me a lie, and if I was sure of anything about hellions it was this: they cannot lie.

I knew I was free even before he opened his mouth, but the bellow of rage that he unleashed upon the Netherworld at large was more than confirmation. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but cover my ears, trying to protect my brain from the sonic assault.

Ira spread his arms, like a child bathing in sunlight, and began to laugh. The sound of his joy swallowed Avari’s rage like a sponge soaking up water.

Avari’s mouth closed, and his eyes narrowed. Even without pupils, I could tell when his gaze found us. “You!” he thundered, and Ira laughed some more.

“Kaylee!” Tod shouted. He tried to run to me, but monsters poured into the path between us.

“It has been my
pleasure
to conspire with the young
bean sidhe
to provoke your wrath, an emotion certain to feed me for centuries to come, as you watch her live on, beyond your grasp.” Joy dripped from Ira’s voice. “Now, return her soul, and let the fun begin!”

Avari roared again, and again I covered my ears. His fists were clenched, and his featureless eyes glowed like black lights, gleaming in fury. He lifted one arm, and for a moment I was afraid his gesture was calling me closer for yet another demon kiss. Instead, he opened his hand and twisted it, curling his fingers in my direction, and something deep within me
unfurled.
It felt like a snake uncoiling in my stomach, a great, frozen serpent, chilling me from the inside out.

Avari jerked his hand back, and that serpentine coldness—his own breath—was ripped up through my core and out my mouth with a metaphysical brutality that made me gasp. For a single second, my insides were a gaping vacuum, sucking at the world—at eternity—in search of something substantial. Something to support my existence and anchor it to the physical reality of my resurrected body.

Then he held up his other hand, but I couldn’t clearly see what it held. I could no longer clearly see anything. Sight and sound were already fading as I faded, for the lack of a soul. I collapsed to my knees, but didn’t feel the impact.

“Do it!” Tod shouted, and distantly I registered the panic in his voice.

A second later, a blast of something light and warm hit me. It surrounded me like a blanket molded to the shape of my body, then sank into me. Through me.

I didn’t realize how cold I’d been on the inside until the warmth of my own returned soul brought me back to myself for the first time in four interminable years. I gasped, sucking in one great breath, and the Netherworld came into focus around me. Creatures eyeing me like Sabine would eye a hamburger. Avari,
simmering
with rage eager to bubble up and over him.

And Tod...

Tod pushed his way through the inhuman crowd toward me, trying to see if it was over. If my soul was indeed restored. If I was
back.

And I
was
back.

“Little fury, our business is complete,” Ira said from my left. “I’ve already guaranteed your safe passage to the human world, as part of our agreement, and I suggest you leave now, before you find yourself in trouble you cannot bargain your way out of.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

I raced across the room, and what remained of the crowd split for me. Tod’s eyes widened and filled with tears. His arms opened. My letter fluttered to the ground. I threw myself at him—arms around his neck, legs around his waist—and the moment we touched, fog rolled up from the floor and over us.

The Netherworld faded, and Avari’s bellow of fury faded with it.

The school basement came into focus around us, and I exhaled like I hadn’t had a breath to release in years. And in truth, I hadn’t.

Tod’s arms tightened around me as he lowered us to the floor, my limbs still wrapped around him. Tears poured down my face as I clutched him, feeling the muscles shift beneath his shirt as I ran my hands over his back. He felt so solid. So real. His features didn’t shift into monstrous shapes with each change of temperament. His teeth didn’t bite. His touch didn’t hurt.

I slid my fingers into his hair, and his curls were the softest thing I’d ever felt. He smelled so good—so sweet and clean—and he felt so good, so I kissed my way down his jaw until I found his mouth, then I kissed him. And kissed him. And kissed him some more. And finally I had to make myself stop before I devoured him whole, because I was starving, and he was the first sustenance I’d had in
years,
and he was exactly the
right
sustenance, but I would never feed from him like Avari fed from me, and just that thought sent horror rolling through me and...

I opened my eyes. Tod was shaking. His whole body was trembling beneath mine, and when I pulled away to see his face, I realized he was crying. At first I thought I’d hurt him. Then I realized how ridiculous that was. I couldn’t hurt anyone. I was the least threatening thing in the world. In
either
world. I had no claws, or fangs, or tail, or horns, or any abilities strong enough to command respect or fear....

“Are you real?” He pulled me close again and whispered the halting words into my ear. “Did that really just happen? You’re alive?”

My arms slid around him again. “No more now than I was before, but yes.” My voice was hoarse and I couldn’t stop grinning. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a room as glorious as my grungy high-school basement, based solely on the fact that it was in the human world. Beyond the reach of hellions.

“You were dead. Gone. For
four years.
We mourned you. We
grieved,
” he said, and I could see the truth of that in his eyes. In the solemn slant of his mouth. “Everyone else moved on.”

“They moved on.” I blinked, denying fresh tears an exit. That was good. I
wanted
them to move on. That was why they couldn’t know. “Did you...move on?”

Tod shook his head. “I tried. I tried so hard. But no matter where I went and what I did, I could still feel you. It was... It felt like I could walk into the next room, and you’d be there smiling. Waiting for me. Like I could turn a corner, and you’d be standing there. I missed you so much. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He put one hand on either side of my face and kissed me. “It makes sense now. I had part of your soul. You gave it to me. That’s why I couldn’t let you go.”

That’s why he’d suffered for four years, like my father had been suffering for thirteen, since my mother died.

Nope. Seventeen.
The past four years in the Nether had felt like an eternity, yet I could hardly comprehend that same passage of time in the human world. I felt like everything in my native plane should have stood still. Like the world should have stopped revolving in my absence, only to resume when I returned. But that hadn’t happened. Tod had lived through those four years without me, suffering a subconscious promise to wait for me. Carrying a bit of my soul with his own.

My eyes closed as I realized the depth of the pain I’d put him through.

But I’d had no choice. If I hadn’t done what I’d done, he’d
still
be suffering. We all would. And it would never have ended.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and I opened my eyes to find him staring at me. I started to nod, but he continued before I could. “Of course you’re not okay. You’ve been there for four years. Four years of what?” His features twisted with some form of suffering I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around. He wasn’t hurt.
I
wasn’t hurt. Yet he was clearly in pain.

Empathy.
That word came out of nowhere. From deep within the well of things I hadn’t needed in the Nether. Things I hadn’t seen or used.

But that wasn’t it, exactly.

Rage.
That one I’d used. That one I’d seen. But that wasn’t quite it, either.

Tod was hurting for me. He was angry for me. He felt...powerless. Helpless. Useless. Those I saw in his eyes, in the moment before I became overwhelmed by the fact that I was
staring into his eyes.
In my more rational moments, over the past four years, I’d been convinced I’d never see him again.

“Four years of what, Kaylee?” he whispered, and his voice cracked on my name.

I shook my head slowly. “Doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”

“It matters. I need to know what you...what I let...”

“No.” I took his chin in my hand and made him look at me, terrified by what I saw in his eyes now. Guilt. “You didn’t do this. You couldn’t have stopped it. I went through a lot of trouble to make sure you didn’t know about it, because I knew that if you thought I was still here—still
anywhere
—you would move heaven and the Netherworld to get to me. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

“What happened to you, Kaylee?”

“Listen to me.” I spoke through clenched teeth, desperate to stop the tears standing at the ready. “Forget about that. I plan to.”

“Kaylee...”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t have to think about that. Not ever again. And neither do you. Everything’s okay now, Tod. Everything is
amazing
now. Perfect.” I smiled. I couldn’t stop smiling. “We’re together.” I kissed him again, and when his tears fell, mine followed, but these tears didn’t hurt. “And this time, forever is real.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you, too. More than anything.” I stood and pulled him up with me, swiping tears from my cheek with my free hand. “Now let’s go bring me back to life. Again.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bringing me back to life turned out to be a two-step process. The first part involved a very private reunion with the reaper who deserved more gratitude than I even knew how to express for loving me. For waiting for me. For safeguarding my soul from a distance. And for braving the Netherworld one last time to finally bring me home.

Tod still had his room at reaper headquarters. He still had the same bed. The same chair. The same minifridge used as a nightstand. His dirty clothes still littered the floor. His tub was still too short for a proper bath, and he still only owned two towels and five washcloths.

He still had my spare toothbrush.

He still touched me like I was the most precious thing in existence.

I still loved every single second of it.

Based on my first two hours back in the human world, it was tempting to assume very little had changed. I knew that wasn’t true, but for those two hours, I let myself pretend.

When we’d finally done enough touching and holding and kissing to be sure I wasn’t going to simply melt from reality, like a mirage, we sat cross-legged on his bed, facing each other, eating ice cream with plastic spoons from paper bowls.

“How did you do it?” Tod dumped more caramel syrup on the mound of home-style vanilla in my bowl, then topped it with a scoopful of candied walnuts. “I mean, I know that since your soul wasn’t yours in the first place—very clever, by the way—the deal you struck with him was nullified. But doesn’t that nullify his promise to leave us all alone forever?”

I took a bite of my victory sundae—which had been preceded by my Welcome-Back-from-the-Netherworld pizza—and let the sugar melt in my mouth. If I’d ever tasted anything so sweet before, I couldn’t remember it.

But the sugar soured on my tongue with the memory his question triggered.

It’s a word game, little fury. You are building a cage made of promises, and Avari must believe that the bars he sees between you are locking you in. Then, later, he will turn and realize
he’s
the one in the cage, and that you stand on the outside, watching him, a free woman.

“Ira taught me how to negotiate.” But not until
after
he and I had struck our own deal. “The key was phrasing my demands as two separate agreements. The first bargain said that he would let my dad go in exchange for my immortal soul. Since my soul was never mine to give him, that deal is now null and void, and if he still had my dad, Avari wouldn’t have to give him up. But he doesn’t have my dad. And since the other bargain we struck is still in effect, he never
will
have my dad.”

Tod leaned over to set the syrup bottle on top of the minifridge, and the mattress creaked beneath his weight. “What was the second part?”

Water dripped from my shower-wet hair and soaked into the T-shirt he’d lent me. I swallowed another bite and licked a smear of caramel from my lower lip. “That one was intentionally simple. Deceptively so. It just said that once he took possession of my soul, he could have no further contact with you guys. Ever again. He
did
take possession of my soul, and since there were no contingencies named in case he ever
lost
possession of it, that deal still stands.”

Tod stared at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of his mouth. “You may be the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

I laughed and plucked a walnut from a peak of ice cream. “The devil is in the details.”

“Have I ever told you how sexy your brain is?”

“Finally! A man who wants me for my brain.”

“I want you for all of you. Each individual part and the sum of them all. I want you for everything you are and everything you will ever be. I will never have enough of you, because there’s no such thing.” He stared right into my eyes, and I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. I was trapped, and never in my life had I been so happy to be caught. “I will never let you go again.”

* * *

“What did you tell them?” I scooped ice into the last of the plastic cups and nearly tripped over Styx for the fourth time in the past quarter hour. She’d been following me everywhere since the moment we’d blinked into my house, and I loved her for it.