Something Deadly This Way Comes

I stifled a shiver, scared as to what he might say next.

“She was asleep in a field. My Sarah,” he breathed, his shoulders easing as he spoke her name, giving it an odd accent. “Her name was Sarah, and I’d never seen anything more beautiful in all creation.” His head dropped. “They should have sent someone stronger.”

I wanted to touch his arm but didn’t. How could I even pretend to understand? He’d laugh at me.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said, head down. “I . . . chose not to. I chose.” Only now did he turn to look at me, frightening me with the intensity in his gaze. “Her soul was alive still, and beautiful. It seemed wrong to take it then. She woke, and I was standing over her with my scythe bared. She was so scared. I didn’t want her perfect beauty remembering ugliness as she left the earth, so I lied. I told her she was safe, and I touched her, feeling her tremble. She believed me. I shouldn’t have touched her. I might have been able to do it if I hadn’t felt her fear.”

He was smiling now, as if in a fond memory. “That she trusted me when I told her I’d do her no harm struck me to my core. I couldn’t betray that trust, and my lie became truth.” Barnabas’s eyes tightened at the corner, and his clasped hands separated and pressed into the dirty cement. “A second reaper came to end what I couldn’t, and I fought him, beat him, and sent him back broken to be made whole again in the forges of heaven.”

His expression went sad as he looked at the dirty streets, seeing the past. “Her fate shifted in a single day because I saved her life.” His eyes came to me as if I might deny it, but I could say nothing. “She realized she had worth when I saved her life, and her soul was renewed. Innocent, I left to tell the seraphs that fate could be swayed and to stop the scythings. They wouldn’t listen, sending a third reaper even as I pleaded with them. She would have died if not for the guardian angels that happened to be with her at the time. They flocked to her. Her entire life, they clustered around her soul.” His eyes went confused. “I never understood why. Now I wonder if it was so they would be there to save her life—after she saved her own soul.”

My lips parted, and I wondered if Sarah’s had been the first guardian angel. But what shook me was that he had changed a person’s fate before and yet was reluctant to believe that it could be done again. Maybe it was because it happened so seldom.

Head tilted, Barnabas looked at me, his eyes still holding his love for her. “I refused to leave her after that, even when her soul remained intact and black wings couldn’t find her when she died. So they kicked me out of heaven.” His face changed, becoming harder as he threw a pebble to skip and hop through the parking lot. “It was worth it.”

I sent my gaze to the busy road and the brightly lit apartment complex. “You stayed with her for her entire life?”

The faint sound of a siren came from the nearby interstate. Barnabas was smiling, a fond, soft smile that I didn’t think I’d ever seen on him before. He looked seventeen to me, and I wondered how he’d handled looking that young for Sarah’s entire life. But people hadn’t lived much past forty back then. “Yes. I did,” he said, seemingly embarrassed.

“And you say you have no soul,” I said dryly as I threw a chip of cement at the Dumpster to hear it ting. “Good grief, Barnabas, if a soul is what lets us love, then you’ve got one.”

He opened his mouth as if to protest, but then he stopped, his gaze going across the street as the sirens didn’t fade but grew louder.

My heart gave a thump and I looked at my watch. It was almost nine thirty, but if there was trouble, Nakita would have told us. “It looks okay to me,” I said, then sucked in my breath when the sound of breaking glass came loud over the traffic and a tongue of flame licked out of a third-story window, searching for the sky.

“Barnabas!” I exclaimed, scrambling up. My hand went around my amulet, and I looked at the street as the fire trucks and a cop car roared up. Puppy presents on the rug, it was happening. Where was Nakita?!

“Here we go,” Barnabas said tiredly, and we edged out from behind the Dumpster.

“Tammy didn’t come back, did she?” I asked, almost frantic. I couldn’t take it if it had all been for nothing. “Barnabas, is she in there?”

“No. She’s over there, but she’s not inside. Johnny, either,” he said, his eyes going silver for an instant as he touched on the divine, and my shoulders eased. “Your warning seemed to have changed her fate again—if not saved her soul.”

“I haven’t flashed forward to see it,” I said, and we started toward the busy street, made twice as dangerous now that it was dark. There was a crosswalk, and Barnabas angled us to it.

“Maybe her soul isn’t safe yet,” Barnabas said.

“Maybe.” That Tammy’s soul might still be at risk was not a good thought. Barnabas pushed the cross button, and I fidgeted, wanting him to fly me across, but that would be hard to explain. We had time. If Tammy and Johnny were out of the building, we had time. Maybe now she’d listen to me. If Johnny didn’t die, then she wouldn’t give up on life, would she?

My fingers gripped my amulet, and I tried to relax enough to reach Nakita—if the fire trucks weren’t enough of a clue. Nakita, I thought, closing my eyes against the don’t walk sign flashing across the six lanes of traffic, but Barnabas’s shout jerked my eyes open and my attention shattered. My mental call for Nakita hit the ceiling of the air and broke, unheard.

“Black wings!” Barnabas said, his eyes wide.

My fingers on my amulet clenched, and I followed his pointing hand across the street. My knees seemed to wobble, and I reached for the light pole. Black wings. Scavengers of lost souls. If they were here, then there was probably a dark reaper on the hunt nearby. And if there was a hunting dark reaper, a light reaper was not far behind. Damn it, did Ron flash and send someone?

“You think they’re here for someone else?” I whispered, and Barnabas shook his head as the slimy sheets of black glided like stingrays over the apartment complex. They looked like a shiny, silvery line from the side, and most people, when they saw them at all, thought they were crows. I wanted to believe it was coincidence, but the heartbreaking truth was more likely the seraphs had decided I’d mucked this up too far and had sent in the professionals. And here I was, stuck on the wrong side of the street.

Barnabas pushed the cross button again. The fire trucks were causing some confusion, and the light hadn’t changed. Tammy was over there in that crowd—with half a dozen black wings circling overhead.

“Barnabas, we have to get over there!” I said, desperate as people started fleeing the apartments, dogs, cats, stereos, and TVs in their arms. A fireman was at the door keeping people from going back in for more as part of his crew went in to get the stragglers. And still the cars zoomed between us.

A boom of sound made me cower, mouth open as a huge gout of flame took one corner of the complex. “She isn’t in there,” Barnabas said, grabbing my arm. “I know it. Her aura puts her outside. She’s outside, Madison!”

It was a small comfort. I looked up the road, then down. The smell of the burning building was thick, and the black smoke blocked out the stars. We didn’t have time for this. “Let’s go,” I said suddenly.

“Madison! The cars!” Barnabas said, but I was already wiggling out of his grip and stepping off the curb.

Nakita! I thought, trying to touch her mind, my hand holding my amulet in a death grip as the first car laid on the horn and screeched the tires, dinging the car next to it as it slid to a halt six feet in front of me.

Scared, I kept moving forward. The driver was screaming at me, but three lanes of traffic had stopped in a frightening sound of horns, skids, and a crunch of plastic.

My pace bobbled as the double image of Josh’s house on a dark, deserted street overlaid itself on my reality of fire trucks and the three-story apartment complex. It was Nakita. I’d reached her. What was she doing at Josh’s house? Waiting for him?

He’s brushing his teeth, Madison, came Nakita’s bored thought into mine as I saw through her eyes and she saw through mine, our connection that tight. This might be a while.

The apartment is on fire! I thought back at her, but she was already wide awake, having glimpsed my reality of another car slamming on its brakes only to be rear-ended and shoved forward another three feet, almost hitting me. I felt Barnabas take my elbow, shifting my path to avoid another car.

Madison, don’t go in there! she shouted into my thoughts.

Scared, I wondered if I could enter a burning building and be okay. I was dead. I didn’t need to breathe. She’s not in there, but there are black wings. Nakita, I need you!

I looked up as Barnabas hesitated at the curb until I took the step up. Nakita saw the black wings through my