Page 75 of Till Death

My mind no longer a muddled mess, I drifted along and waited, but for what I didn’t know. At least, I didn’t know for long, until something surfaced from the emptiness.

The last time I’d been here, scenes from my past had gradually come to life in front of me, memories of the past. All of the lives I’d lived until this one, until the pieces faded away into nothing at all.

There were no memories this time. I waited for what felt like an eternity until panic took root and gripped me in an unbreakable hold. I wasn’t supposed to panic. Panic was for the living, not for the dead, especially not the dead outside of the afterlife.

Floating felt less comfortable and more out of my control.

There was nothing left for me.

Nothing more to look at and hold onto. I’d already lost the memories of my past lives, but I’d expected my living memories.

Pressure grew inside of my head and my throat clenched forcefully. Oblivion no longer felt peaceful or empty, but brutal in a way I never expected.

No matter how hard I fought, it took much too long for sensation to return to me from a distant corner of the universe. My feet landed first and I solidified from a shadow to my old body—boots, jeans, and a comfortable black tank top until I was me again.

I waited for three breaths before I opened my eyes. Sure, three breaths were more than enough to reconcile being alive after death, I thought sarcastically. Slapping my chest with my hands didn’t hurt, but I felt the pinch of flesh on flesh. Here but not.

It didn’t work.

Fuck.

Dizziness had my stomach rumbling and turning in on itself, my vision blurred and the space I stood in reeled out of control. I gulped in enough air to kill a fish in one go and the dizzy spell subsided only when I latched on to a figure in the distance.

The darkness began to fade into a familiar gloom the color of the moon until everything went a blinding white. Uh oh. The Void.

How did I get here again?

At least I knew someone with the answers. If only he’d deign it important enough to give them to me without a riddle. In those terms, Hank was worse than a troll on a bridge demanding payment for passage.

Slowly I pushed my shoulders back to face the figure head-on. Hank, growing larger as he walked toward me. I still felt no pain. Not the way I should after being stabbed. My legs shook when I took a step forward, but I attributed the trembling more to confusion than anything else.

“Hello?”

My heart thudded against my ribs once, twice, before it started beating a little too fast. Anxiety was probably the one constant of the world and the afterlife, although by all rights and with everything I’d learned, I shouldn’t have a heartbeat.

Yup. I knew those shoulders. Although none of this made sense, I knew the man facing me, and the realization of his identity hit me with an impact larger than anything I’d felt before.

Not Hank.

His face held a smile I would know even blind, those brilliant blue eyes and devil-may-care attitude. This was the Cole I’d first met. This was the half-demon, gun-for-hire, who killed people for a living. This was the man who was a master at his job and knew his way around a gun and a woman.

“Oh my gosh, you’re here. You’re all right.”

I crossed the distance between us at a run and flung myself into his arms without a single care for anything else.

Gasping, jerking back to stare at him as he scrambled to claim my lips in a searing kiss, running my hands along the planes of his face to memorize him with my fingertips. He felt the same. He tasted the same. He made my spirit soar the same way he always had.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “What happened?”

He pressed his forehead to mine, our eyes closing in unison as emotion rose to burn the back of my eyes and throat in tandem. I was dead. I’d ceased to exist because hey, giving up my powers meant no more reincarnation for little old me.

If Cole was here, then did this mean we were finally going to be together? Somehow?

Had he died when he disappeared from the building?

He had to have, if he was with me in the Void.

He said nothing, relaxing against me and kissing me again without missing a beat. His tongue seared a path across mine and we tangled together. I gripped his hair, my fingers tangling in the silken strands. His hands on me were the only things keeping me grounded when my body reacted like a supernova. My emotions ran wild like a living beast inside of me, which was pretty silly considering the obvious fact of my death by stabbing, and for a moment I couldn’t care less.

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