03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil Read online

  “It’s not a burden, you insufferable twerp,” he said. “You don’t see it for the blessing that it is. Think how powerful you would be.”

  “That, right there, is why I can’t give you my powers, no matter how much I want to be rid of them. The ability to steal someone’s life isn’t a blessing, it’s a curse. The worst curse that anyone could be forced to endure. If you can’t see that, then you’re more of a monster than I could ever be, no matter what the religious would have you believe.”

  “Give them to me.” Mike snatched my hand up in an iron-hard grip, and it was like touching a live wire while being set on fire and beaten with an electrical cord all at the same time. My feet cramped as my toes tried to touch my heels and the muscles in my legs bunched against the onslaught of power, retreating by going into the fetal position to save themselves—and that was the most courageous of my bodily responses. My stomach was trying to violently expel anything I may have ever eaten, my lungs burned, and my heart was beating so hard I was afraid it might actually explode.

  When I tried to jerk my arm away he tightened his hold and the world around me flashed a blindingly bright white as my brain tried to escape the pain by forcibly exiting my skull like it was ejecting from a crashing airplane.

  I could hear myself screeching in pain, more of a wounded howl than a real scream, and Mike was laughing, sounding like some sort of insane adrenaline junkie on the high of his life. “Just a few more seconds,” he cackled and my skin began to blister from the heat of his touch. “Just hold on for a few more seconds.”

  A few more seconds, sure. What was a few more seconds when you’re being pulled apart and flayed alive by a madman trying to steal your powers? The light grew brighter around me and then exploded, the world going blessedly silent as darkness rushed up to grab me, sucking me under.

  Instinctively, I knew that the jolt I felt was my body hitting the floor, closer to unconscious than conscious, but I couldn’t really understand how I’d gone from standing upright to lying on my back in the middle of the living room floor. I also wasn’t exactly sure why I could see myself lying on the floor while I hovered somewhere near the ceiling. That couldn’t be good. Did my hair really look that frizzy?

  I watched from my super-secret hiding place as Michael let go of my hand and straightened, cracking his neck like some sort of heavyweight boxer getting ready to step into the ring.

  He held his hands in front of him, shoulder-width apart, and blue power crackled between his hands, arcing like electricity between the two poles on Frankenstein’s head. He threw his head back and laughed like a kid who’d just realized the mayhem he could do to the ants in the backyard with his new magnifying glass. Oh damn, forget my hair, this was definitely not good.

  He leaned down again and grabbed my wrist, checking for a pulse. His shoulders slumped slightly and I wasn’t sure if it was because I had a pulse or because I didn’t.

  Honestly, right then I didn’t want to think about it too much. The destruction of my physical body meant spending the rest of eternity in Hell, or trying to find some other form that fit right and didn’t bunch in all the wrong places and that idea sucked more and more as the seconds ticked by.

  Damn it, I should have known that stupid angel was trouble from the moment I clapped eyes on him. What had I been thinking to let him get that close?

  “You’re going to feel like you’ve been trampled by all four horses of the Apocalypse when you wake up,” Michael said as he let my wrist drop. “If you wake up. But I did try to do this nicely Faith. You just wouldn’t let me. I’m sick of waiting, it’s my time now. My chance to show you how this world and these humans should be managed.”

  “Hey!” I tried to push against the ceiling to shoot myself downward so that I could smite him upside the back of his head but it didn’t help. My hand sort of floated through where the roof should have been and I stayed put, trapped on the ceiling like an abandoned balloon.

  Michael nudged my body with his toes and my body rolled to one side with my head tilted downward to the floor. Great, I was currently out of body, without my powers and possibly in the process of losing my mortal body and being relegated to Hell, but at least I wouldn’t choke on my own vomit. “So begins the death of the old gods.”

  “Oh, you jerk,” I said as he started to fade. “When Matt gets back and they figure out how to revive me I’m going to be so pissed off at you. We are talking full postal, Michael. I mean it. Get back here and wake me up already. Or I’m going to pluck your feathers one by one and then I’m going to beat the holy out of you. I’m serious. Get back here!”

  Instead of answering, he continued to fade out of existence, not even bothering to look back at where he’d left my stupid body in the middle of the floor. The creep. I was going to make him pay for this. Just as soon as I got back in that body and woke up I was going to make him pay.

  I heard a muffled thump and looked up from my body to stare at the door. “Hey, Faith! Get the door. My hands are full,” Matt called. My heart started to beat a little harder. Or at least I thought it was beating harder. It could have been a psychosomatic response of what my internal organs should have been doing, though—the undead version of ghost tingles from an amputated limb.

  “Come on,” Matt yelled through the door. “These pizzas are hot.”

  “I can’t,” I said and my voice cracked. I was pretty sure he couldn’t hear me and I didn’t want to admit how badly that scared me. Shouldn’t he have been able to hear me no matter what?

  The door creaked open and he bent over, retrieving the pizzas from where he’d set them to open the door. “Next time you can come with me, if you’re going to be a pain about it,” he said as he nudged the door shut. He looked as if he was about to say something smart-assed but whatever it was died on his lips when he spotted my body in the middle of his floor.

  “Faith?” He raced toward me and I had to admit I was a little impressed. I knew the guy was in shape but I hadn’t expected him to be able to make it across a room and jump a coffee table quite that quickly. “Faith!”

  “I’m here.” I said as he leaned down over my face—completely unconcerned about the life-ending curse that should have been residing inside me—checking to see if I was breathing before he grabbed my wrist to check for a pulse. “I somehow got separated from my body but I think I’m okay.”

  “Faith.” He shook my shoulders lightly and I could hear the panic in his voice.

  Obviously, he couldn’t hear me, which was pretty much the definition of seriously bad as far as I was concerned. The upside, though, was that his life-saving act of daring wasn’t going to rip him apart at the molecular level and trap him in the Celestial realm until he could find a new body to inhabit. Which could be difficult since this body was meant to be immortal, and he’d have to find someone else who was compatible so he could body hop. Which was a serious problem since last I checked, neither Lazarus nor Jesus was ready to shuffle out of the mortal realm.

  I watched as he scrambled to get his cell phone out of his pocket and dial it. The pizza I’d been craving earlier had ended up facedown in a puddle of beer, bits of glass from the beer bottles embedded in the crust, and my stomach gave a growl of protest.

  “Malachi,” Matt yelled into the phone. “I need you at Faith’s apartment now.”

  Instead of waiting for the dread demon to respond he dropped the phone beside him before cradling my lifeless form in his lap. He slapped at my cheeks. It would have been touching if it were anyone else, but considering it was my form he was rocking back and forth, I was ready to skip to the miraculous recovery bit. Starting now. Like, right now. Immediately. Damn it.

  Things started to fade. Not like the-world-disappeared fade, but more like a picture that isn’t really in focus anymore and is going gray around the edges. “No.” I grabbed for the ceiling again. “No, no, no. This is not good. This is so not good.”

  A dim light flared to life in the corner and Malachi seemed to burst
into the room, Harold floating along behind him. Or he would have burst if it weren’t for the fact that the whole thing was washed out now and the bright light he should have been generating was more like a dull glow. Instead of being bright like the face of the sun he was more like a candle in a dimly lit restaurant.

  “Oh crap.” My bodyguard’s face drained of color and he stood frozen, staring at Matt. Malachi shook his head like he was coming out of a haze and then blinked out of existence again.

  I looked over and saw Harold staring at me. Instead of being washed out like everyone else he looked normal and if nothing else told me I was hosed, that would have done it. “What’s happening?”

  “What are you doing up here?” Harold yelled.

  “I don’t know. I’m stuck up here but my body is down there and it’s like they can’t hear me. You’ve got to help me.”

  “Faith!” Harold yelled, louder this time, and moved closer to me. “I can’t hear you.”

  “What? What do you mean you can’t hear me?” I grabbed my ponytail and pulled on it in frustration.

  Harold floated close enough so that we were almost touching. “I can see you, but I can’t hear you. But don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

  “Help me!” I screamed, panic clawing at my throat. “You have to help me. Please.”

  “I will.” Harold tried to touch me, but his hand slipped through where my shoulder should have been. I was a ghost that even other ghosts couldn’t touch. That was so very much the definition of not good. “I will help you. I promise. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, making my movements big enough so that I was sure he could understand them. I pointed at the man currently curled up on the floor below us and then back at myself. “Tell Matt.”

  “Right,” Harold said. “I’ll tell Matt what’s going on. Well, what I know about what’s going on.”

  The room below us exploded in a dozen tiny balls of light as my family burst into the room, not bothering to worry about the effects of their power on the fabric of reality.

  J was the first to Matt, and he dropped to his knees and immediately started trying to catalog what was wrong with me, Tolliver right on his heels. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Matt’s voice was pinched and his hands were shaking. “I went out for pizza and when I came back she was on the floor.”

  “What did she do today? Where did she go?” The Alpha was at Matt’s shoulder, His hand gripping the other man’s forearm. “Matt. Look at me. Tell me where she’s been. Who’s been around her?”

  “I don’t know.” Matt’s eyes were wide. “I don’t know what happened. She told me that she’d spent the morning at work and then she had Lisa’s midwife appointment.”

  “What then?” the Alpha asked. “Where did she go after the midwife’s appointment?”

  “She went back to work for a few hours and after that we were both here.” Matt swallowed but his voice was shaky.

  J closed his eyes and golden power enveloped him, his entire body radiating light like he was his own personal Hiroshima. He grabbed the sides of my head and my whole body lurched. I felt a light tug at where my toes should have been and looked, desperately, at Harold, hoping he knew what the hell was happening. The poltergeist stared at me, his eyes wide, and all I could think was that I was in serious trouble.

  “Help them,” I mouthed and pointed at where J and the Alpha were working on my body while Malachi and Tolliver had my father pinned against a wall in the corner, the three of them watching as the others tried to find a way to bring me back to life. “Please.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Please.”

  “Come on, Faith,” J said and I felt another tug on my toes as the body below me lurched under the onslaught of the Celestial version of a defibrillator. “Wake up or I swear on Dad, I am going to kick your ass.”

  “She’s not there,” Harold said as he appeared on Jesus’s right side.

  “Yes she is.” J dropped his hands from my head and put them on my chest. “We’ve got to get to her.”

  “She’s not in there,” Harold said, louder this time.

  “Yes, she is! She’s in there.”

  “No, she’s not.” Harold shook his head. “She’s trapped against the ceiling.”

  “What?” The Alpha let go of Matt’s shoulder and looked at Harold. “What did you say?”

  “She’s not in there.” Harold pointed at my body. “She’s up there.” He jerked his hand back and pointed at me. Even though he was the only one who could see me, I gave him a thumbs-up and smiled, nodding my head so that he could know that I heard him.

  “She’s up there?” the Alpha asked. “You’ve seen her?”

  “Yes, I can’t hear her or anything but I can see her.”

  “Are you sure?” Dad said. “Are you sure it’s her?”

  “Who else is it going to be? It’s not like I’m going to mistake Faith for some other random poltergeist is it?”

  “You can’t hear her?” Malachi asked. “You said you can see her, but you can’t hear her?”

  “Exactly!” I yelled even though he couldn’t hear me. “That’s the exact problem. So what you need to do is get me back into my body and fix this because it really sucks. You guys hear me? This really sucks.”

  “You don’t think she’s…” Tolliver stopped, staring at my body, his hands tucked in his armpits.

  “Trapped between realms?” Malachi looked over at where I was floating and even though I didn’t think he could see me, he was staring straight into my eyes like he could sense where he was. “I think it’s possible. Now what we need to figure out is how.”

  “No.” I shook my head back and forth as violently as I could so that Harold could understand what I was trying to say. “You need to figure out how to get me”—I pointed at my own chest—“back in there”—I pointed at the body lying on the floor. “How I ended up like this can totally wait until later.”

  “I think Faith would rather you concentrate on getting her back in her body first,” Harold said. “Or at least that’s what I think she’s trying to tell me.”

  I nodded and smiled at him.

  “Right.” J looked over at Harold. “So you can see her and the two of you are managing to communicate somehow?”

  “Sort of.” Harold swallowed. “It’s not perfect. Sort of like charades with a chimpanzee, but we seem like we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Okay, find out if she can hear us.” J looked toward me. “Obviously she can hear you, but can she hear the rest of us?”

  “Yes!” I gave Harold a thumbs-up and nodded so hard that I could feel the ghostly version of my ponytail bobbing in time with the movement.

  “Oh yeah, she can hear you.”

  “Can she tell us what happened?” Malachi asked, staring at where I should have been. “It could be critical for getting her off the roof and back into her body.”

  “Michael.” I crossed my arms over my chest and growled in frustration that the stupid angel had managed to get the drop on me so easily.

  “What?” Harold looked confused and held his hands up in a huh gesture.

  “Mike!” I yelled. “Mike did this to me!”

  “I don’t understand you,” Harold said, dragging each word out like I was the one who had problems hearing him instead of the other way around. “What happened?”

  “Oh for the love of evil.” I grabbed my hair and tugged on it. “Mike!” I put my hand in front of my face and pretended I was singing into a microphone, moving my head from side to side.

  “She had an accident while doing karaoke?” Harold looked at the others in confusion and mimicked my movements, except he added a butt wiggle that I could never unsee, no matter how long I lived after this. “I’m not sure what she’s saying.”

  “Not karaoke, you jackass.” I held my hand out like I was waving a mike at him. “Mike! The archangel of dumbassery and sexual repression.”

  “N
ot karaoke. I don’t know what happened. She’s waving her hand at me and pretending to sing but she looks pretty pissed off.”

  “A mic!” Tolliver cried out and clapped his hands together before pointing at Harold. “It’s not the singing she wants you to see, it’s the mic.”

  “The mic?” Matt asked and his grip tightened on my shoulders. “Why would she care about a microphone?”

  “Because Michael is the head of the reapers,” Malachi said. “He was there when Valentin gave Faith his powers. He was pissed off that she got the gig instead of him. He seemed to think that he was next in line for a promotion or something.”

  “He’s been angling for the job for years,” the Alpha said. “Every time the position is about to come vacant he petitions to take over the role but I’ve always rejected him. He’s not the sort of angel who should have that kind of power.”

  “Well, duh.” I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. “Thanks for stating the obvious.”

  “I think Faith is agreeing with you,” Harold said cautiously.

  “So what happened?” Matt asked. “How did the Archangel Michael kill Faith and trap her essence outside her body?”

  “He forgot to open the window on his way out,” Dad said, his voice icy. “He’d have been afraid of being caught by Matt, otherwise he wouldn’t have forgotten it. Without the window open—”

  “I couldn’t escape,” I said even though no one else would be able to hear me.

  “She was stuck in here,” Harold said at the same time. “Her soul couldn’t leave because there was nowhere for it to go.”

  “I don’t understand,” Matt said. “What does a window have to do with anything?”

  “Faith’s soul left her body without a reaper there to guide her,” Jesus said. “Now, it shouldn’t matter because not only is she no longer an actual physical entity, but she knows where her remaining life force needs to go. It’s not like she is going to get lost on her way to Hell or anything. For some reason, though, there’s this quirk when it comes to humans that has also passed to nephilims like us, if the soul doesn’t have a reaper, it begins to float, looking for an escape from whatever room it’s trapped inside.”