Reyes switched positions. He turned around and straddled me again. I thought he’d been unaffected by the wraiths. I was wrong. His chest fought to push air in and out of his lungs. His fists clenched at his sides. His biceps bunched into rock hard mounds.
“Where is it?” he asked for the ten thousandth time.
I shook my head, astonished. “Reyes, what were those things?”
He shifted his weight and lowered a booted foot onto my chest, pinning me to the ground. “Where is it?” he asked, his voice low and deadly serious.
I spoke as calmly as I could. “Get off me.”
“Where is the ash?” He squeezed his eyes shut, as though trying to remember, then refocused on me. “The ember? Where is it?”
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do!” he yelled. He jerked me off the ground and thrust me against a metal beam. “It’s yours. You must know.”
“What’s mine?”
He closed his eyes again as though racking his brain, frustration welding his teeth together. “The ember. No.” He opened his eyes at last, as though it were coming to him in bits and pieces, and the world fell out from under me with his next words. The barest hint of triumph widened his mouth when he said, “The Stardust.”
I blinked in surprise, then denial, then horror. The book. When two stars collide, they create stardust. It was the author’s way of writing about Beep.
He was after Beep.
Artemis growled beside him. He glanced down at her, and in that heartbeat of opportunity, I dematerialized out of his arms and into Garrett’s house.
He’d been watching Pari and brought her home. She sat in his living room, curled up on his sofa, reading. I heard him in the kitchen and hurried to it.
“Beep,” I said, suddenly terrified beyond clear thought. “He’s after Beep.”
Garrett, who’d been standing at his stove scrambling eggs, turned to me in alarm. “What do you mean?”
Pari walked into the room as well, confused.
“Rey’azikeen. He’s after Beep, only he called her Stardust, like in the third book. But Reyes knows where she is.” My voice rose as I began to panic. “He knows where the Loehrs are.”
Garrett stepped to me and put his arms on my shoulders. “No, he doesn’t.”
I fought for air. Fought the darkening edges of my vision. Fought for coherent thought.
“Charley,” Garrett said, rustling me with a slight shake. “I moved them the moment you told me what happened.”
He let that sink in and everything that it entailed. He knew. He’d been prepared. When I realized what he’d done, I threw my arms around him.
“Oh, my God. Thank you, Garrett,” I said into his T-shirt.
He wrapped me up and held me tight.
“Thank you,” I said, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
In the next instant, he thrust me away from him. Or at least I thought he did. Instead, Reyes had wrenched him off me. He threw Garrett against a wall, then looked back at me.
“Your Rey’aziel. He’s hidden the ember away from me. Always so clever. He doesn’t trust me any more than you do. But now I know how to find it.”
He strode toward Garrett, his steps full of purpose.
“Reyes,” Garrett said, backing away. He turned and searched for a weapon, anything he could use against him. Spotting a knife on the kitchen counter, he dove for it, but before he even got close, Reyes was on him. He threw him against a wall and pinned him to it, the force shaking the house off its foundation.
“Where is it?” he asked, forcing his forearm into Garrett’s larynx.
Struggling for air, Garrett tried to shove him away, but Reyes was simply unmovable. When fighting a human, anyway.
But as he’d told me repeatedly, I was not human.
I ran to them, wrapped my arms around Reyes from behind, and shifted us onto the celestial plane. Reyes shifted us right back, but it was enough time for Garrett to scramble out of his hold.
As triumphant as that moment was, I’d forgotten about the incredible speed, the astounding agility, my husband possessed. He shoved me into Pari and went after Garrett again. Faster than my mind could comprehend. My only hope would be to slow time, but before I could even form the thought in my head, Reyes reached Garrett, wrapped his hands around his head and twisted, snapping Garrett’s neck.
The loud crack that followed immobilized me. I had fallen to the floor with Pari and watched in stunned disbelief as Garrett Swopes, one of my closest friends, slumped to the ground, dead.
20
The Devil whispered in my ear,
“You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.”
Today I whispered back, “I am the storm.”
—MEME
My hands flew over my mouth, and I cried out in horror. Then, without thought, I scrambled to catch Garrett before his head hit the floor, but Reyes knocked me back, the air whooshing out of my lungs.
Then he stood over Garrett, waiting.
His actions confused me at first before I realized what he was doing.
We had two different agendas, Reyes and I. He stood like a sentinel, waiting for Garrett’s soul to leave his body, a soul he could coerce and threaten, while I had to act fast to make sure his soul stayed in his body so I could heal him without breaking my one rule. Without being cast from this plane.
A few months prior, Reyes had sent Garrett to hell on an unwitting reconnaissance mission. He would do it again. Or at least threaten to. I couldn’t let that happen, because if there was one absolute in this entire scenario, it was the fact that Garrett Swopes would burn in hell before giving up Beep’s location.
But there was still time. I dove forward, ducked under Reyes’s swing, and grazed my fingertips along Garrett’s arm.
He jolted awake and clambered to his feet only to face Rey’azikeen’s wrath again. And again, before Garrett could even think about dodging him, the angry god snapped his neck.
I slowed time, healing Garrett before Rey’azikeen could match my temporal speed. I dragged Garrett, who was now frozen in time, to the side, then turned to face my husband.
He matched my speed almost instantly, and we squared off, as they say, preparing for battle.
“At last,” he said, a knowing smile on his face. “The god eater emerges. Will you devour my heart as you have so many before me? Will you feast on my soul?”
“I’m seriously considering it,” I said, only half lying. To keep him away from Beep, I might have no choice.
But now I had a new problem. Rey’azikeen was painfully aware that Garrett knew where to find Beep. Where could I put Garrett so that Rey’azikeen couldn’t find him? And how would I do that without my bloodthirsty husband knowing?
He seemed to have the uncanny ability to read my mind. He would know where I’d stashed Garrett. And if I involved anyone else, that person would be in just as much danger.
No, I didn’t need to stash Garrett Swopes. I needed to stash the god Rey’azikeen. Even for just a few moments.
I charged forward and shifted. He was ready, but the moment I started toward him, another thought hit me. If I could slow time, who’s to say I couldn’t speed it up as well?
I reversed my hold on time, sped it up to roughly the speed of light, and slammed into him. He had no defense ready against a guided missile. I disintegrated his molecules along with mine, and I took him to the one place I feared. The place of my nightmares.
I dragged him to the center of the sun.
We crossed through the void of space in seconds, splashed into the corona, and careened through the layers of gas until we stopped at the core of the burning ball of gas. Then I did the unthinkable. I shifted us, body and soul, back onto the earthly plane, forcing us both to materialize into the center of a fireball with temperatures reaching twenty-seven million degrees.
I’d surprised him. He gazed at me with utter shock on his face a microsecond before I dematerialized and left Reyes in my dust. Or, well, my solar gases.
In the seconds it took me to get back, I came up with a plan to get Garrett to safety and was working on finding a way to get Reyes back when it hit me. I’d done it. I’d faced my nightmare.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t a nightmare at all. Maybe it was a message, but from whom? Had someone planted that idea—the one where I accidently materialized in the center of the sun—in my head via my dreams?
Stranger things had happened. Perhaps not to me. My life was completely and perfectly and incandescently normal. Gawd, I loved Pride and Prejudice.
I materialized back in Garrett’s apartment, completely naked once again, smoke drifting off me.
“Chuck!” Pari rushed forward and patted my hair, hopefully because she liked me. My hair could not afford to be on fire. It had been through so much this week already.
“Again?” Garrett asked, incredulous.
“I left him in the center of the sun, but I don’t think he’ll stay there long.”
They stood speechless for a solid minute.
“Is that a metaphor for something?” Garrett asked.
I gaped at them. “Seriously, guys, we don’t have much time. We have to get you out of here and have them move Beep, this time without your knowing where.”