Meanwhile, the man came forward, stopping underneath a light bulb that hung from the ceiling on a rusted chain.
Under the harsh lighting, his face looked barbaric with rage, the hollows under his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the slash of his brows, the very depiction of wrath and vengeance, his anger so great it was tangible—
“I’m never fucking you again.”
The words were spoken with hatred in every syllable, and as the brunette stamped a stiletto in response, Erika tried to focus. Looking down at her chest, as if that would help, she saw absolutely nothing. No chains of steel, no bands, no compression. Yet the breathlessness and suffocation, the tilt to her body as if it were suspended in midair at an angle, were all very real.
With her mind trying to reconcile the inexplicable, she had a thought that either none of this was happening… or the world she had always known was a lie: The thin veil between nightmare and consciousness had been blurred to such an extent that she was beginning to believe in things that made no sense—
Was he taking out a knife?
As her vision went on the fritz, she blinked things back into focus. Surely he wasn’t putting it against his—
“You’re not going to kill yourself,” the brunette snapped. “You shouldn’t bluff with something like me.”
“I’m not bluffing. And I don’t care if I end up in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.”
With a savage yank of his arm, the man sliced open his own throat, blood geysering out of his vein. As Erika screamed again and still made no sound, he spoke in a horrific gurgle.
“Never again.”
The man went down on his knees, that illumination from over his head casting him in a theatrical light, the terrifying red rush pouring over his black leather jacket and covering what appeared to be a weapons holster. He did not raise his hands to try to stop the flow, he did not fight the effect of a critical hole in his windpipe. He just stared in utter fury at a spot up and over to the left of Erika.
She yelled again, feeling the stretch of her mouth, the burn in her throat. Nothing came out—and all the while, the sound of him breathing through the blood, the most terrible thing she had ever heard, seemed to be loud enough for the whole world to hear—
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The brunette’s voice was merely annoyed. Like people killing themselves in front of her was at least a monthly, if not weekly, inconvenience. “I mean really. You’re just going to see me in Hell.”
As the man bled out, his face paled to the point of fresh white wall paint, his skin becoming matte in a way Erika knew she was going to never forget. Then he fell forward and landed on the floor in a clang of metal from the weapons on him hitting all that dirty concrete.
God… the copper in the air—
The brunette passed through Erika’s field of vision, those stilettos clipping along until she stood over the man. A pool of blood was forming fast around his head, and she extended one of her shapely legs, cocked her fancy shoe, and drew the fine point tip of her heel through it in some kind of pattern.
Erika’s eyes strained to track what she was doing.
Devina
“Well, shit,” the brunette muttered as she finished what clearly was her name. “You were a really good lay.”
Then her head flipped up and she looked toward the storeroom’s open door. “Oh, come on.”
In spite of Erika’s delirium, she saw what had gotten the brunette’s attention: A light had gathered out in the shop proper, at first little more than a pinpoint, now becoming bright as a car beam… and continuing to intensify until it was the kind of floodlight you’d find at an airport or running up the side of a skyscraper.
The brunette put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot again, a splash of the man’s blood landing on her pant leg.
And then something close to a miracle happened.
The illumination somehow entered the storage room, as if it were a sentient being moving at will. And instantly, Erika felt an easing of her discomfort, her fear, her sense of impending doom. A split second later, she knew why. The glow coalesced into a figure that was at first made only of the light, but then solidified into something that appeared to be living and breathing, a man with blond-and-black hair that was down below his shoulders… who had eyes that were as compelling as a rainbow, as full of vengeance as a crusader’s.
“Oh, and now you’re going to do what you accused me of doing.” The brunette jabbed a manicured finger at the apparition. “You’re interfering, you’re over the line—blah, blah, blah. The Creator’s going to have a goddamn opinion about you playing the resuscitation card here, unless you just showed up to watch him die.”