Page 109 of Death is My Ride or Die

And that’s when I heard it. That strange ringing cutting through the greenhouse. It was soft at first, but then it grew louder, and I winced.

I fisted the back of Death’s hair and pulled his face up from my cleavage to look at me. His wicked eyes bored into mine like liquid fire. He looked positively elated and erotic. His eyes were lustrous and wicked like two stolen, radiant emerald and peridot gems.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

He peered around. “No, and neither did you.” He tried to face-plant back into my breasts, but I tugged on his hair again.

“That ringing, Death . . . ”

The same ringing as when Ahrimad had appeared in the bathroom mirror.

I clamped my hands to my ears as the panic set in.

“Faith?Faith!”

In an instant, everything changed. Death’s voice faded into the distance. The garden altered like I had taken a hallucinogenic drug. I turned in a circle. Exotic plants melted away, the ground stretching and shifting to wild grass.

I tilted my head up and fell to my knees.

It was the dead of night, and I was no longer in Ace’s greenhouse. The moon shone through weeping shadows of branches that reached like roots across a starry sky and arced down like fallen angels. Wind caressed the willow leaves, swaying them softly.

The sound of footsteps edged closer.

I lurched onto my feet, my heart hammering.

“Who’s there?” I demanded.

“This is certainly unexpected,” said a bored, raspy voice.

A figure emerged from behind the willow tree. Moonlight slanted over Malphas’s unforgettable features, creating a doll-like gleam to his stark black eyes and forcing the illusion of life within their cold, bottomless depths.

“Hello, Faith.”

Fear slammed into me. I grabbed a rock off the ground and held it up between the raven demigod and me like weapon. “Don’t come any closer!”

Malphas raised an eyebrow at the rock, then calmly slid his hands into the silken pockets of his pants. “How did you do this?”

I viewed him as if he were crazy. “Do what?”

“Find me,” Malphas said, staring at me for a stretch of time. “Youcame tome.”

I couldn’t breathe. What. The. Hell.

“Accident, was it?’ A grin revealed Malphas’s white teeth, which weren’t dripping with black venom for a change. “Must have been because of the scar that marks your arm. Near-death experiences can form powerful bridges, you know.”

“Am I . . . unconscious?’

“If I were to guess, yes. The strange part is . . .I’mnot.” Malphas corralled me back a few steps. We both knew the rock wouldn’t save me from him. Tossing it to the side, I raised my fists. My heart was thrashing a mile a minute. Malphas showed his palms, amusement dancing in his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why the hell should I believe you?”

“Because even if I wanted to, I couldn’t,” he explained, as if already uninterested in this interaction. “I believe you’re having an out-of-body experience. It’s called astral projecting. Your body remains on Earth, but your soul is here with me. At least, it appears that way, based on the glowing aura around you. Now I see what the big deal is. Your soul is indeed light itself.”

I looked down at myself. Sure enough, I was a freaking glow stick.Great, I thought.I’m a lamp on Earth, and I’m a lightning bug here.

I gazed at the willow tree behind him. The same willow from Death’s memories two-thousand years ago. “Where are we?”

“The Unknown,” Malphas said. “It’s a realm of time beyond Limbo, where forgotten souls and memories come to fade away.”

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