I’D HEARD PEOPLE describe post-death, out-of-body experiences. They talked about floating above a surgical room after their hearts stopped during an operation, or seeing their prone bodies following a car accident. All the ones I’d heard featured people saying they didn’t feel any particular attachment to what they were looking at, as if all their normal emotions were too petty once they were outside their bodies.
I didn’t have that kind of blasé attitude.
For one, I could have cheered myself hoarse when I saw Adrian take advantage of Demetrius staring at me in fear after I grabbed the spear. While I was being blasted apart internally, Adrian grabbed Demetrius’s throat and ripped his heart out of it. Then, while his father’s body was still falling to the ground, he flipped Demetrius in an MMA-worthy move that ended with the demon on his back and Adrian’s leg around his neck. Adrian then used all his incredible strength to rip Demetrius’s head right off.
Cue me doing cartwheels of joy despite not having a body.
Adrian didn’t stop there. He also grabbed the biggest piece of the shattered golden bowl, spilling out the remains of the cursed tree that hadn’t been enough to overcome the power behind the spearhead. Then Adrian used that piece to beat Demetrius’s decapitated head in. Afterward, Adrian started bashing Demetrius’s body to a pulp with that heavy golden remnant. Costa finally stepped in and pulled Adrian off Demetrius, which I understood, although after everything Demetrius had done, I could’ve stood to see Adrian wail on his crumpled body a little longer.
Adrian’s shoulders slumped as he dropped the now heavily dented piece and looked across the room. My body was there, and wow, did I look terrible. It looked like I’d showered in blood. I hadn’t, of course, but at some point, I must have rolled around in the puddle my wounds had made, because you couldn’t tell what color my hair was anymore. The only thing more jarring was seeing the stump at the end of my right elbow. It looked even more ragged with my new bird’s-eye view.
Adrian ignored all of that grossness when he went over, threw his arms around the bloody, mangled mess that was my body and cried. It hurt to watch and not be able to do anything to comfort him. I wanted to tell him it was okay, that we’d done what we’d hoped to do and I wasn’t in pain or afraid anymore, but of course, I couldn’t say any of that.
Costa knelt next to him. I was touched when I saw his shoulders heave with sobs, too. Then someone appeared behind them, although neither of them noticed.
Zach. He stared at them, his expression showing more empathy than I’d ever seen from the Archon. Wow, he was capable of feeling deep emotion after all. Go figure.
Zach suddenly looked straight up and one eyebrow rose in his usual, challenging way as if to say, Oh, really? If I still had eyes, they would have widened in shock. Could he hear me?
Zach! I tried screaming, but he only tilted his head down and looked at Adrian and Costa again. That was when Adrian finally noticed him, and he swung around so fast, he was holding on to the hem of Zach’s hoodie before Zach could take a step backward.
“Please,” Adrian said, his sapphire eyes never more vivid. “I don’t care what you were ordered. She did everything you people wanted her to do, even though she was pregnant, and she doesn’t deserve to have it end like this!”
“As I told you and her many times before, I cannot raise her,” Zach began, only to have Adrian shove him away violently. Then, to my anguish, he grabbed the reassembled spear that had fallen a few feet from my body and hugged the length of the weapon to him.
But he didn’t drop dead, which was obviously his intention, because he frowned at the weapon, then shook it as if that would make it work. Zach sighed and held out his hand. The spear pulled free of Adrian’s grip and zoomed over to Zach, turning itself spearhead-side up before the pilum landed in his hand.
“The power it contained has been used as it was intended,” Zach said. “It is now depleted and can do you no harm.”
“But you can,” Adrian said, and lunged at Zach.
The Archon sidestepped him with a speed I might not have been able to track before. Then he held up his other hand, and Adrian was suddenly frozen in place.
“Let me go,” Adrian snarled.
“I know why you’re filled with more darkness and rage than you’ve ever felt before,” Zach said with his usual annoying calmness. “Your humanity died when Ivy did. The bond that had tethered your souls together dragged it with her into the grave. You are fully demon now.”
Costa looked as stunned as I felt. Zach had previously assured me that Adrian would survive my death because his humanity was the smallest part of his Judian/demon makeup. But he sure hadn’t told me that it would result in this.
“Fine.” Adrian was the only one who wasn’t reacting in shock to this news. “And Archons kill demons, especially the Archon general himself, so do your job, Michael.”
“I could,” Zach agreed coolly. “Or you could use your newfound, fully demon powers to raise her.”
Now Adrian looked stunned, and I was so blown away, I couldn’t even think straight. “I can do that?” Adrian managed.
“You can now,” Zach said, his look turning knowing. “Had Ivy not died, your remaining humanity would have blocked your ability to raise her, but as a full demon, there is nothing stopping you.”
“But you said she was forbidden from being raised.” Adrian sounded confused, as if he was searching for the catch to this.
Zach’s mouth quirked in a hint of a smile. “No, I said that I was forbidden from raising her.”
“You sneaky Archon,” Costa breathed, his expression changing from shock to awe. “You knew all along that it would come to this, didn’t you?”
“I knew that it could,” Zach said simply. “But only if Ivy fulfilled her destiny while Adrian did not fulfill his.”
I still found it hard to believe that I could actually come back. Yes, that was what Zach was saying, but it had been so often stressed to me that if I died, that was it—curtains! Finito! Adios!—that I struggled to comprehend that it wasn’t over.
Adrian appeared just as shell-shocked, yet he went over to my body and knelt next to it. “What do I do?”
Zach stayed where he was. “You pour out every last drop of your power into her. Hold nothing back, and understand that when it is over, you will still technically be a demon, but you will have no demonic abilities left.”
“How’s that?” Costa said, echoing my thought. “Demetrius raised people from the dead, and he still had his abilities afterward.”
“Demetrius was older than this world,” Zach replied. “His powers had untold ages to strengthen and grow. Adrian’s are new, and doing this will deplete all of them.”
“I don’t need them,” Adrian said, taking my left hand and bowing his head over it. “I only need her.”
“Then pour your abilities into Ivy,” Zach said softly. “To do that, you must first let yourself feel all the pain you’re trying not to feel now. Hold none of it back. Then turn that pain into power and fill Ivy with it. Give it all to her, until you have nothing left, and then—” Zach looked up, and it felt like he met my eyes even though I didn’t know how that could be possible “—she will return to you.”
Adrian dropped my hand and gathered me into his lap, holding me the way he had when I was dying. He even began rocking me again. When he pressed kisses onto my face and told me how much he loved me, every tear that slid down his cheeks felt like a tug on a body that I no longer had anymore.
“You have to come back to me,” he whispered. “I can’t do this without you, Ivy. Even if I could, I don’t want to.”
Tug. Tug. Tug. It was the weirdest thing—I could feel it in a tangible way, but I couldn’t point to where I was feeling it, since my physical body was down there. I didn’t know what I had here. Disembodied consciousness, clearly, but was there more? Was Adrian pulling on a thread that reached me even here?
“You’re so tough on yourself, but that’s because you don’t know how amazing you are,” Adrian went on. “You try so hard to do the right thing. Even when you tried not to, you still couldn’t help yourself.” Then his voice became ragged. “I was so angry at you over that. I wanted you to love me more than everyone in this world and all the others, and I didn’t care what that meant for the people trapped in the realms. Not until you made me care. From the moment I met you, you made me a better man, even when I didn’t want to be. Even when I didn’t think it was possible.”
Adrian’s head dipped and his shoulders began to shake. Costa looked away, as if doing so would give Adrian privacy while he willingly ripped himself open in order to give power to his pain. Zach stood there, a silent sentry, no expression on his face. As an Archon, he was probably used to seeing the deepest, most personal aspects of people’s pain.
“You know what? I’m still mad at you.”
Adrian’s voice was barely comprehensible from how choked it became. At the same time, those invisible tugs I’d felt strengthened, until they felt less like tugs and more like hard, increasing yanks.
“Letting Demetrius trick you by pretending to be Costa? Come on, Ivy! Didn’t your tattoos flare up? Didn’t he sound different? Or were you too obsessed with getting the spearhead to notice? You were too obsessed to tell me about our baby, and I am pissed as hell about that. You knew I’d tell you to wait, that I’d make you wait if I could, and yeah, you turned out to be right about not waiting to get the spearhead, but I’m still pissed at you. I shouldn’t have heard about our baby from Demetrius. I shouldn’t have learned that I’m going to be a father that way.”
Yank. Yank. YANK!
Adrian’s face began to blur. So did Costa’s, Zach’s and even the entire room. Seeing it made me panic, yet I didn’t know what to do. Shouldn’t they be getting clearer, if I were coming back? What if this wasn’t working?
“But you were right again.” Adrian’s voice was completely broken now, and the sob that heaved out of him made everything vanish. I couldn’t see anything anymore. Couldn’t feel anything, either, yet I could still hear his voice.
“If I had stopped us from coming to the island—and I would have, we all know that—then Demetrius would’ve kept chasing you through his link to our child’s blood. One day, he would have caught you, and he would have made you find the spearhead for him, either by tormenting you, or by tormenting our child, if it was born by then. Things would have been worse, and it would have been my fault. Now we have another chance, and it’s because you were strong when I would have been selfish again. Even at my best, I’m not like you, but come back to me, Ivy, and I swear I’ll try to be...”
Suddenly, I couldn’t hear him anymore. I couldn’t hear anything! What was happening? I couldn’t see, feel, hear or touch. I was supposed to be coming back, not fading away completely. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong! Zach? Zach? Zach! This isn’t working! Don’t leave me like this! You have to help—
“...always,” Adrian said, and relief shattered me when I could hear him again. “For you, Ivy. I promise. I love you,” he whispered, brushing his lips over mine.
Wait a minute. I felt that. I FELT THAT!
I opened my eyes. At first, all I saw was red and my eyes stung. I tried to wipe the red away, which had to be blood, but I used my right arm out of habit and ended up hitting myself in the face with its stump.
“Ivy?” Adrian’s whole body stiffened, then he grabbed me tight enough to hurt and leapt up, swinging me around in a wild embrace. “Ivy!”
“I love you, too, Adrian.”
My voice wasn’t hoarse. I don’t know why I thought it would be. Maybe because my arm hadn’t magically regrown even though the other wounds in my body had to have supernaturally healed or I’d still be dead. I didn’t even hurt anymore, although my arm felt...weird. The skin around it was now smooth and closed over. Not seeing the mangled inside of it anymore was a relief.
“You’re back!”
Costa ran over, hugging both of us, since Adrian had yet to let me go. Not that I wanted him to. I couldn’t get enough of feeling his arms around me again.
“You did it,” I whispered to Adrian.
He kissed me, so hard and fierce, I wasn’t sure if I was tasting old blood from my former wounds, or if my lip had gotten nicked on his teeth. Either way, I didn’t care. I didn’t even care that my right arm now ended at the elbow. I had never felt more whole in my entire life.
“Your tattoos are gone again,” I heard Costa say several moments later.
That caused me to pull back from Adrian’s blazing kiss. I looked down. My top was torn enough to see that the staff etching was gone, and the sling hadn’t reappeared anywhere else that I could see.
“I hope I don’t need them anymore,” I said, looking over Adrian’s shoulder at Zach. “Right? Am I done with all that now?”
“Yes,” Zach said, those tiny lights glowing in his dark eyes. “From now on, the fight belongs to Archons, not humans.”
I was so relieved that I sagged in Adrian’s arms. He bent to kiss me again and I wanted that kiss, but I turned my head. There was something else I had to know that couldn’t wait.
“Zach. Did I...”
I stopped. It was hard to continue on without feeling ungrateful, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I was unbelievably happy to be back with Adrian, and beyond thrilled to know that right now, thousands of formerly trapped humans were making their way into the Archon realms. Asking about more felt insanely greedy, but I had to know.
“Did I come back alone?” I finished in a halting voice, my left hand resting over my stomach.
Adrian took it, lacing his fingers through mine. “Either way, I love you, and it’s going to be okay, Ivy.”
I knew it would, no matter what Zach said. I did. But one way or another, I needed to know the answer.
Zach began to smile. It didn’t stop at the barest twitch of his lips, which was his normal version. Instead, it spread out to one of his rare, teeth-showing, full-faced smiles.
“No, you did not come back alone.”
I started to cry. Hey, pregnant women do that a lot! Adrian hugged me again, far more gently this time, and through my tears, I saw Costa smile and swipe at his own eyes.
“Enough of that, you two. We still have work to do. Demetrius trapped Brutus in a sinkhole on the island, so we have to get him out. Then you two can break the news to that spoiled gargoyle that he’s no longer going to be an only child.”
“It’s okay,” I said, repeating the words I’d heard so often today yet had only believed during the past few minutes. “I know Brutus will make a wonderful big brother.”
* * * * *