Read After Moonrise: Possessed\Haunted Online
Authors: P.C. Cast
After Moonrise: Possessed\Haunted (11 page)
“Fight for the twins? If I’m gonna come
down there to kick your scaly ass, I want more than just two women if I
win.”
Raef stalled as Braggs taunted him, hissing insults while his
tentacled tail tortured the struggling souls in the pit.
Think!
Raef ordered himself again.
Listen to Aubrey! Remember what she taught
me.
What the hell had she taught him? She’d made him feel. She’d
taught him that instead of holding on to suspicion and negativity, he could feel
joy and laughter. She’d reminded him that there was pleasure to be had in
life.
She’d taught him to have hope.
Hope was exactly what was missing in the Land of the Dead!
As the understanding came to him, Raef felt the truth of it
swell within him—and joy and laughter, happiness and pleasure and hope filled
his floating spirit, warming him like a hearth fire.
“What are you doing?”
Braggs
snarled. He’d turned all of his attention from the pit to Raef.
Raef looked down at himself and blinked in amazement at what he
saw. From the middle of his chest light glowed scarlet and orange, yellow and
white, like an otherworldly flame.
“I
—
I don’t know. My Gift’s not supposed to work
here.”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until Aubrey, obviously
using the last reserves of her strength, shouted up at him.
“It’s not your Gift—it’s you. It’s who you really are, so you brought it
with you.”
“Silence, bitch! It is time for you to
cease to exist!”
Braggs pressed a clawed foot against Aubrey’s head,
holding her under the liquid.
“No, Braggs. It’s time for you to cease to
exist!”
Acting on instinct Raef reached within himself and found the
Gift that was truly his—the joy and pleasure and hope that Aubrey had awakened
in his life. And, like he was the starting shortstop back in middle school—back
when he’d been an unlikely hero for anyone who was weaker than himself—Raef
threw the ball of luminous emotions directly into Braggs’s face.
Blinded, the creature shrieked and began lunging and snapping
and biting so violently that it attacked itself—tearing huge hunks from his own
flesh, which seemed to goad him on, making Braggs writhe and shriek and bite
himself even more desperately.
With no hesitation, Raef rushed down, slipping past the
creature that, blinded by hope, was destroying itself. He found Lauren first and
held out his hand to her.
“Grab my hand!”
he shouted
over Braggs’s panicked roars.
Lauren grasped his hand, but as he began pulling her up she
shook her head and resisted.
“No, I won’t go without
Aubrey.”
“I’ll come back for her. I’ll come back
for as many as I can,”
he said.
“No. I’m not leaving without her—not
without the rest of them.”
“Lauren, we don’t have time for this. I
don’t know what the hell is happening back in Tulsa with my body. You’re
alive. You’re the only one here who I am one hundred percent sure is
alive.”
“If you believe that, we’re all doomed,”
Lauren said.
“Damn it! I’m just being logical. I can’t
pull you all out. No damn way I’m strong enough. I’m gonna lose everyone
that way. I have to
—
”
His words cut off
as Raef realized what he was doing. It wasn’t force or logic that had blinded
Braggs and caused the creature to turn on itself. It was hope and joy, pleasure
and laughter. He met Lauren’s eyes and smiled.
“You’re
right, girl. We’re all going home today. Find her. I know you can do it, and
I’ve got you until you do.”
Lauren’s smile was almost as brilliant as the beam of light
that shot through Raef’s body, sizzling with heat and hope, speeding down into
Lauren, lifting her as it lifted Raef. As Lauren’s body slid from the slimy pit,
the ray of light extended down and Raef watched as a hand reached from under the
surface, grabbing on to it. Aubrey’s head broke the surface. She gasped and
coughed, but she held tight to the ribbon of light, which passed through her and
snagged another fading swimmer—a teenager. Lifting, Raef saw another swimmer
grab the life light, and another and another until he had all of them free of
the pit and of the creature of hatred as it completely self-destructed.
Raef’s ribbon of light whipped up and up, carrying a whole
trail of spirits, bright and glistening, all with colors of their own. Laughter
filled the air, along with luminous light as the spirits Raef had freed floated
around him, causing the bleak sky over the Land of the Dead to shimmer and
shine, rainbowlike. And then, with a bright flash, each of the spirits began
spinning off, reminding Raef of shooting stars, until he was left there hovering
with Lauren and Aubrey.
“You did it!”
Lauren cried. She was
still holding tight to his hand, which she lifted to her lips, kissing his palm
softly.
“Thank you, Raef. Thank you so much.”
He started to respond. To tell Lauren that she’d had a whole
hell of a lot to do with the saving part, but before he could speak her eyes
widened in surprise, then she gasped and disappeared.
“Lauren? What the hell?”
“She’s not dead, Kent,”
Aubrey
said, drifting to him.
“She went back to the mortal realm,
back to her body.”
She smiled, and even though joy sparkled like
champagne all around her, tears filled and then spilled over her eyes.
“You’ll go back soon, too.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
He
reached for her.
“Not without you.”
Aubrey wrapped her arms around him.
“I
wish I’d met you before,”
she whispered to him.
“I can feel you,”
he said, holding
tightly to her.
“It’s our souls. They know each other.
Maybe they always will.”
Aubrey kissed him then and Raef’s spirit
trembled at her touch.
“I never doubted that you would save
us,”
Aubrey said against his lips.
“Never.”
“I didn’t save you—you saved me. Because
of you I learned to laugh again. To feel again. To hope again. Without you I
wouldn’t have been able to
—
”
Raef didn’t get to finish. He didn’t even get to say goodbye.
His words were cut off as pain sliced through him and his spirit was ripped from
Aubrey’s arms, returning to his body with a terrible jolt of agony.
“That’s it! We got him back! Hang in there, man, we’re almost
at St. John’s.”
Raef blinked up at the EMT who was putting the paddles back in
the slots on the crash cart. There were tubes in his nose and arms and he felt
like his chest was on fire.
“Aubrey,” Raef tried to shout, but the name was barely audible.
The EMT bent over him, putting pressure on his chest wound, and Raef repeated
weakly, “Aubrey.”
“She’s fine. Just shaken up and a little shocky. The cops are
bringing her in behind us.”
“No,” Raef whispered. “She’s dead.” Then he closed his eyes and
the world went black.
* * *
R
AEF
CAME
TO
SLOWLY
. At first he didn’t know where he was, and
his immediate thought was that he was really going to have to lay off the single
malt. He was getting too damn old for two hangovers in as many days. He felt
like utter hell. Shit, his chest hurt! Not even eighteen-year-old Macallan was
worth this. He must have had more to drink than he’d had that night he’d gotten
so shitfaced that he’d forgotten Aubrey was dead and…
Aubrey.
His eyes opened as his
thoughts caught up to her name and he remembered.
I’m not
dead, but she is.
He must have made some kind of noise because Lauren lifted her
head from where she’d been resting it on the side of his hospital bed. “You’re
awake! Finally,” she said with relief.
He tried to smile. “Are you okay?” His voice sounded gruff and
his throat hurt like hell, but at least he didn’t sound all whispery and
weak.
“Yeah, we are.” Lauren was much more successful with her smile.
She beamed joy at him, and Raef could almost see it glistening in the air around
her.
Which was bullshit. Raef couldn’t feel positive emotions, or at
least he couldn’t feel them anymore. That ability had died with a dead girl.
The thought of Aubrey, and all that he’d lost with her, made
his heart hurt like hell. Raef turned his head. He couldn’t look at Lauren just
then. Honestly, he might not ever be able to look at her again.
“Hey,” Lauren said softly, touching his cheek familiarly and
gently guiding his head toward her. “Kent, please don’t turn away from me.”
“Don’t call me that.” He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He
really did like Lauren, really did care about her, but there was no damn way he
was going to be able to handle her calling him Kent.
“Why not? I always have,” she said.
“Bullshit—that was Aubrey. You’ve always called me Raef,” he
said, not sure if he wanted to cry or smash his fist into something.
“Yeah, well, we decided when we joined that we liked you as
Kent best. So it’s Kent you’re going to be from now on,” she said.
Raef blinked at her, utterly confused. “Pain meds. That has to
be what’s going on. You aren’t making one damn bit of sense.”
Lauren smiled into his eyes. “You are on pain meds, but that’s
not what’s going on. What’s going on is that we’re both here—Lauren and
Aubrey—together, forever.”
Raef felt a rush of hope that he tried to squelch. “No, that’s
not possible. It can’t be.”
“Why not? We were never whole without each other. It only makes
sense that we share one body since it seems like we share one soul.”
“Aubrey?”
“Absolutely. And Lauren.”
Raef looked into her shining blue eyes and saw her there—saw
both of them there, and then he
felt.
An emotion
flooded through his body that was so intense—so incredible—that he suddenly
found it hard to catch his breath.
“What’s wrong?” She was on her feet, reaching for the nurse’s
call button, when Raef intercepted her hand.
“It’s not bad,” he assured her. “It’s just a feeling like
nothing I’ve ever felt before.”
His soul mate let out a long breath of relief and gently cupped
his face in her hands. Before she kissed him she whispered, “That’s the one last
feeling I had to teach you, Kent—love....”
* * * * *
To she-just-gets-hotter P.C. Cast—aka Miss P. C.
Snowater-Cole—for the phone calls, the emails and the laughs. I had so much fun
playing in your sandbox! And of course, I love you!
To my editor Margo Lipschultz for the keen insight and kind
assurance!
To my agent Deidre Knight, for always being in my corner!
To Jill Monroe, for bouncing ideas and making me laugh with her
stories of dog vomit. (But if you baby talk just one more time…I’ll still love
you, sigh.)
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