Esprit de Corpse (9 page)

He reached for Shannon’s hand again—like he hadn’t been holding it enough lately.

My turn now. I grabbed her other hand and jerked her toward me, right out of Dante’s grasp. I shouted nearly the same words I had the day of my own scything, “Hell, no. We won’t go!” I thrust Shannon behind me. “By all means, Dante. You go. Report in to Sergeant Schotz. Then come back to us. But you know Hell. Easy to get into, but really hard to get back out again. Plus you can’t teleport her with her body still alive, so we’d have to walk. And that means we’d have to encounter the . . .” I lowered my voice and hissed, “Gee-gnomes. What if she gets stung? Then what?”

Shannon hissed in a sharp breath. “What are gee-gnomes?”

“Dante knows,” I told her. “And that’s all that’s important right now.” Turning back to Dante, I pleaded, “Don’t do this to her. I’ll stay here with Shannon. Please?”

Dante gave me a look that was hard to interpret, but I don’t think he was pleased. He tended to be a very by-the-book guy most of the time. His honesty and trustworthiness were two of his many good points. A tiny voice at the back of my mind wanted to know how I could be jealous of someone I trusted. I stomped it down; I was busy.

“Remember what you said to me, Dante. The thing with Hell is you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

Dante’s stern look grew fuzzy around the edges just as his whole body had when he’d become corporeal. He couldn’t hold it any longer and he started to laugh. “Okay, Kirsty. We’ll see this through. But only another forty-eight hours.” He lowered his voice. “She’s starting to fade.” He gestured toward Shannon. “And so are we.” He held out his hand like you do when you want to see if you’ve got the shakes, but it didn’t look much different than usual.

I held out my own, squinting at it. Had it always been a little blurry around the cuticles or did I need glasses? Or a manicure. I thrust my hand in my robe pocket and decided not to think about it. A lot could happen in forty-eight hours.

Suddenly the lights came on. Wake-up call in cell block B.

Conrad mumbled something about rising and shining.

The upper bunk creaked and Maddy landed on the cell floor with a thunk.

Chapter 11

Deus Ex-Girlfriend

“THAT’S IT. I
can’t stand it anymore!” Maddy grabbed Conrad by his long brown hair, hauling him out of bed. She loomed over him, her free hand clenched. She shook with fury. “I’m closing your fuckin’ trap forever!”

Either Maddy telegraphed her punch or Shannon’s self-defense class kicked at her muscle memory, but no matter why, Conrad ducked. The momentum of Maddy’s onslaught threw her off balance. She released Shannon’s hair and grabbed the bedpost to steady herself.

“Ha!” Conrad taunted.

God, what an idiot.

Maddy recovered her balance, madder than ever, and tackled Conrad. He fell heavily to the floor, Maddy on top of him. Now she raised her fist again. He had no way of avoiding this blow.

But it never landed.

“Stop! Maddy! Shannon!” Theresa charged down the hall, radio already in hand. “Fight in cell block B. Need immediate assistance.”

Maddy lowered her fist, instead locking her hands around Conrad’s stolen throat.

Theresa panted to a halt at the cell door, swapping out the radio for the keycard. “Break it up, you two!”

Conrad tried to speak. Was he trying to beg for his life or to taunt Maddy again? He grated out nothing resembling words, scrabbling at Maddy’s hands ineffectively. Maddy’s grip tightened, her face twisted with as much evil as any demon I’d ever met.

Conrad’s face quickly turned bloated and red, a lot like his demonic form.

Shannon threw herself at her father’s attacker, but sailed through her harmlessly, bouncing along the cell floor, ending up with her head and shoulders thrust into the wall. Unlike Dante, she didn’t know the trick of becoming corporeal. I wasn’t sure she could even do it with her body still alive.

Theresa finally got the cell door open and dove into the fray, trying to yank Maddy off Conrad.

Maddy elbowed Theresa hard, sending her flying back toward the bunks. With a soft
Oof
, Theresa hit her head on the edge of the bunk and she flopped on the cold floor, unmoving.

Maddy flung herself on top of Theresa now, wrapping her big paws around the guard’s throat and squeezing hard enough to turn her own knuckles white. “I’ll kill you all!” she yelled, her face a sick mask of rage.

To my utter shock and amazement, Conrad recovered enough to leap onto Maddy’s back, trying to pull the blood-crazed inmate off her new victim. He hung on like a bull rider while Maddy tried to shrug him off without breaking her stranglehold on Theresa.

Had Conrad come to care for the saintly guard?

“Dante! Kirsty! Do something!” Shannon begged. “Save them.”

I scrunched up my eyes and concentrated, trying to make myself corporeal. If I could at least appear to them out of nowhere, maybe my unexpected materialization would be enough to shock Maddy out of her killing spree. If not, I didn’t know what I could do. Being a Reaper didn’t give you superstrength or anything. And that Maddy was big and superscary.

Before I could figure out how to manifest, I heard the sound of more soles squeaking and pounding down the hall. I opened my eyes to see three new guards charging toward us, stun guns and nightsticks at the ready.

The first to arrive slammed her nightstick against the cell. The metal bars clanged. “Shannon Iver. Maddy Stryker. Cease and desist. Lie on the ground, facedown, hands on your heads.” The guards held their ground at the open cell door.

Maddy released Theresa, tossing Conrad to one side and scrambling to assume the position on the other. “That bitch attacked this guard. I was trying to save her!”

Conrad heaved himself slowly to his knees and crawled back toward Theresa, who lay very, very still.

“Halt, Iver. Do not touch her.” One of the new arrivals swung her stun gun toward Conrad.

Conrad ignored them. Reaching Theresa, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and put his ear to her chest.

“Get away from her!” one of the guards yelled, stun gun trained on him. Another guard entered the cell, weapon holstered. She grabbed Conrad’s shoulder and pulled him away. He knelt where she’d dragged him, yelling, “She needs CPR. Call 911, you idiots!”

To their credit, the guards immediately radioed for medical assistance.

Conrad climbed to his feet, panting hard. He moved as far from Maddy as the cell would allow and placed his hands on his head.

Another of the guards knelt by Theresa’s body, repeating Conrad’s assessment. “She’s dead. I don’t think any—”

Suddenly everything froze. The guard ceased speaking mid-word, mouth open like a badly timed photograph. Conrad’s panting and Maddy’s accusations ceased. Even the dust motes stopped dancing in the cell’s fluorescent light.

And speaking of light, a small radiant glow formed in the middle of the cell. As I watched, it rapidly blossomed and expanded until it grew into a large oval. Although it was nothing like the swirling vortex of evil I’d accidently opened (and deliberately closed) between Hell and Heller, I recognized it as a portal between dimensions. But which dimension had decided now was the right time to access ours?

“Dante?” I whispered, suddenly willing to be mentored into the ways and means of Reaperdom.

He shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on the portal. Was something evil coming through? Didn’t we have enough evil right here in suburban Milton’s superjail? I readied my scythe and assumed a fighting stance. The expression on Dante’s face surprised me. He looked . . . hopeful?

The portal stopped growing once it was about the size of a doorway, but unlike the Heller one, this one wasn’t sucking things in. Instead, something came out.

And that something was a beautiful young woman.

She wasn’t tall, standing about my height of five-five. The wings made her look taller. She radiated presence though, along with a shining nimbus of golden light. Her features were fine and even, her crowning glory a fabulous mane of thick red hair twisted into a simple bun. A pearl clasp held it low on her neck. Her emerald eyes seemed kind and intelligent. Even though she was the newcomer, her manner made me feel warm and welcome.

Her most arresting feature, however, were not those on her lovely face, or the nimbus of fire limning her head, but rather the great fiery sword she held like a torch in her left hand.

I loved her on sight. That is, until she swept her gaze right over me and onto . . .

“Dante,” she sighed, laying her right hand over her heart. “How fare thee?”

Figures. This special angel—the wings and the halo were dead giveaways—would know my Reaper.

And boy, did he know her. “Beatrice,” he breathed, going down on one knee before her, clasping her hand and planting a kissing on it, all in one smooth move.
“Behold, a deity stronger than I; who coming, shall rule over me.”

Poetry. Damn. Despite the translator chip in my scythe, I had no ability to comprehend poetry. They might have been setting up a secret assignation right in front of me for all I knew. I stood there bristling, wishing I could get my pal Ira on the line to ask him who the heck glow-in-the-dark Barbie was to my Reaper.

Shannon stepped up, surprising me. “You’ve come to take me to Heaven, haven’t you?”

Beatrice turned her gaze to Shannon, her hand still held by the kneeling Dante. A beatific smile bloomed on her angelic face. “No, child, thy time to enter Heaven hath not yet come.”

Child, huh. She looked about five years younger than Shannon, although come to think of it, age probably worked the same in Heaven as in Hell, so Beatrice could be the same age as Dante. Maybe they’d been alive together. Maybe they’d been lovers.

Dante rose, reluctantly releasing the angel’s hand. “Art thou here on business?”

“Sì,”
she said. In Italian. I was beginning to get the picture. A sudden memory surfaced of him once calling me by the wrong name
in bed.
I gasped, drawing everyone’s attention. My cheeks burned. How could I admit to base jealousy of this obviously perfect creature?

She now turned her beneficent gaze on me. I ducked my head.

“Thou must be Kirsty. Dante hast waxed poetic about thee. Thou art all things as portrayed by my friend.”

“Uh, thanks.” Her use of “friend” to describe Dante made me feel better. “He told you about me?”

Now Dante blushed and looked away. “I might have.”

A goofy smile spread over my face. I liked this Beatrice. How could I not?

Shannon, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be warming to the angel. “So if not for my soul, then what are you doing here?”

“I am here on a mission of divine mercy. I hath come for her immortal soul.” Beatrice raised the hand not holding the flaming sword, pointing at the frozen tableau in the cell behind us. “Canst thou not discern her goodness?”

A slight glow emanated from Theresa’s chest. As we watched, the glow grew, becoming a bright mist, swirling just above Theresa’s body. It wasn’t like the fiery glow that had become Beatrice’s portal. Nor was it like when a mortal soul popped out of their human body. This was a soul that had finished its rounds on the Coil. It wasn’t going to Hell for reassignment, but to Heaven, the last stop on the merry-go-round of life. Here’s your brass ring, what’s your hurry? Theresa must have accrued the kind of Karmic Kredit the rest of us only dream of.

You might think that I just knew this without having to be told, but actually, we’d covered it during the classroom portion of my Reaper training. Having a fallen angel in your study group lends additional insight.

We waited a few minutes, or whatever was passing for time for us, until the swirl of energy seemed about the size and mass and general outline of a twenty-eight-year-old woman, but it stayed unformed. It wasn’t a person-esque dead soul like you or me.

Okay, just me, then.

“Isn’t it going to coalesce into a, you know, more person-shaped shape?” I asked.

Beatrice shook her head, but her eyes were on Theresa’s swirling soul. “Theresa Mudders. I hath come to escort thou unto Heaven.” She raised the shining sword. “Thou must—
Hey!
”

While Theresa Mudders had had boundless patience in life, her spirit was apparently done with that shit. She didn’t bother waiting for Beatrice’s pretty speech. She ducked around our little grouping and shot through the flaming portal into Heaven.

“Well, I never!” Beatrice stared after the dearly departed soul, hands on hips, flaming sword point resting on the ground. She turned back to us with a grimace. “Well, gotta go. Great meeting you, Kirsty. I’ll see you ’round. Say hi to Ira for me. Dante, take care.” She looked at Shannon, a puzzled expression suffusing her angelic face. “You, too. Shannon. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.”

She gifted us with a last bright smile and vanished into the portal, which winked out of sight instantly, much faster than its dramatic entrance.

“—one can save her now.” The guard finished saying as time kicked back along its ticking path.

Maddy screeched again about being attacked.

Conrad burst free of the guard’s restraining hand and threw himself at Theresa’s body.

The guard dove at him, but he shook her off. He slapped one hand on Theresa’s chest, the other over it. “One, two, three, four, five. Help me here! We can save her!” he shouted between chest compressions.

Instead of trying to pull him off again, the guard who’d restrained Conrad took up the relief position on Theresa’s other side, ready to take over when Conrad’s stolen arms grew tired.

I stepped closer, watching Theresa’s body for signs of life. I didn’t want her revived. She’d gotten in to Heaven. It would be like getting picked out of the lineup for the most exclusive club in town and then being told to come back later.

Could I stop Conrad? I could appear only to him, right? I closed my eyes and concentrated on materializing, just as I heard a sharp gasp.

Suddenly I felt awful. My throat ached and steel bands seemed to cut my chest in two. My head hurt and my neck hurt and my shoulders . . . Forget the list, let’s just say
everything
hurt. I raised one hand to my forehead but it merely fluttered limply by my side . . .
just like it had back in my hospital bed when my body had been re-souled.

Now I sucked in a harsh gasp.

“She’s alive. She’s alive!” someone yelled. Lots of someones began yelling.

Oh, skeg. This was the last thing I needed. I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The guards’ worried faces hovered over me. Didn’t anyone in correctional services trim their nose hair?

“M’okay,” I rasped. “H’lp m’up.”

My voice kept cutting out, like bad phone reception. Someone helped me up onto the lower bunk where I lay, resting my back against the cold wall.

The paramedics arrived. I guess it had only taken them about four minutes, but what with the angel dropping by and all, it seemed longer. I was shifted to a gurney and wheeled to the prison’s medical facility. I kept insisting I was fine in a hoarse whisper that clearly said I was not.

I refused to go to the hospital. I did agree to let them X-ray my throat right there in the prison infirmary. While lying quietly on the gurney, I attempted to cut my spiritual tethers to Theresa’s body, but no luck. I was well and truly stuck.

I’d been sucked back into my own body when they’d tried unplugging it. I should have stood farther back from Theresa’s.

But that time, I’d been able to exit my body. It had taken extreme effort and saving my aunt’s life as incentive, but I’d done it. Well, I had Shannon’s life to save now. Why the hell couldn’t I get out?

I tried again and again, flinging my immortal soul at the edges of Theresa’s mortal body without success. Maybe because my body had lain empty for so long it had been easier to get out whereas Theresa’s body was young and healthy and not interested in giving up being alive just yet.

“You’ll have to hold still, Theresa,” the X-ray tech ordered.

And so I lay still, a plan beginning to form in my newly acquired brain.