He felt his lips curl in a bitter smile. “Exactly like Black.” The dog had pressed his skinny body tight against Kelsey’s legs and was trembling all over, and he bared his fangs again at Asher, warning him away. “I won’t care what happens to you anymore. In fact, I’ll want very much to hurt you.”
“But you can fight it.” She still looked so hopeful, it broke his heart. The girl who had no hope left for herself still had hope for him.
“Eventually it will happen.” He looked away, unable to face that hope. “I don’t know why it hasn’t happened already.”
“Maybe you’re wrong. You haven’t done anything so terrible.”
“I told you what I did.” The dog growled. His hackles were suddenly standing up, and his eyes were fixed on something behind Asher.
“What is it?” Something was moving in a patch of weeds toward the middle of the field, something that hadn’t been there when she passed that way before. “Asher, can you see it?”
“No,” he said, but he was lying. He knew exactly what it was. It was the man he had killed—or some projection of him—lying writhing on the ground, just as he had been when Asher last saw him. The sword Asher had defiled in killing him and abandoned was still sticking out of his belly, and he was moaning, swearing under his breath, cursing God and all the saints of a thwarted Catholic education.
“What is it?” Kelsey repeated, putting a hand on Asher’s arm.
He looked at her, his expression sullen. “He’s here for me.”
“He? It’s a person?” At the sound of her voice, the thing’s moans rose into a scream begging for help. “Asher?”
“I told you,” he said. “I killed someone.”
“And that—?”
“It’s not a person anymore,” Asher said. “It’s dead and damned.”
“Like me?” As they argued, the distance between them and the creature on the ground had seemed to close up, sweeping them back away from the gate. Before Asher could answer her, Kelsey had turned away from him toward the creature.
“Kelsey!” The dog barked, too, a horrible, strangled sound, calling after her. But she didn’t look back.
She fell to her knees beside the damned soul on the ground. “You’re an angel,” he said, sobbing as she reached him, his face slick with sweat. “Help me, angel.” The sword was stuck straight through his belly, pinning him to the ground. “Please, angel, get it out.”
“I’m not an angel.” She leaned closer, looking at his face. “I know you.”
“You don’t,” he insisted. “Swear to Christ.” He screamed, clutching at the sword. “Just pull it out!”
“You attacked me on the street.” The sword was glowing blue, soft as moonlight. “You were one of the ones who tried to kill me.”
“No,” he insisted, tears running down his cheeks. “We didn’t mean to kill nobody, not you or your boyfriend with the sword. Just play with you a little bit, I swear.” He grabbed her wrist, tight at first, then gentling his hold. “But you and me, we’re the dead ones now, right?” He had beautiful brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes—an innocent’s eyes. “We got to stick together.”
She looked back at Asher, still standing where she’d left him, arms crossed on his chest, looking like a statue in a church. The dog had raised his haunches and dropped his snout to the ground between his paws. When he saw her looking at him, he whined, digging at the grass, obviously distressed. But Asher was just watching.
She turned back to the man on the ground. “Say you forgive him,” she said. “Say you forgive the angel who killed you.”
“Fuck that,” he said, his mouth twisting in a snarl.
“Forgive him, and I’ll forgive you. Say it and mean it,” she said, standing up. “Or I’m leaving.”
“No! Shit…” He was whimpering now. “Okay…I forgive him.”
She put both hands on the hilt of the sword, and a shiver passed through her like swallowing a sip of ice water on the hottest summer day. “You mean it?”
“I mean it, shit.” He gasped for breath, reaching up to take hold of her wrist again, an almost loving gesture. “Just do it.”
“Okay then,” she said. “I forgive you.”
The dog howled, his whole body shuddering with the effort, and Asher looked at him as if he were waking up from a trance. “Kelsey,” he said, moving forward. “Kelsey, don’t.”
Kelsey drew the sword out, shocked by how easy it was. She did it one-handed, leaving her other wrist in the suffering creature’s grip. Light poured outward from the sword, bright white now, and it shuddered in her hand. She heard a sound like rushing wind, and her heart was pounding fast. Asher was coming toward her, running, but the ground was playing tricks again; the distance between them kept expanding. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. She read his lips, “Don’t drop it!”