Jade cocked a brow. “I get that you’re the big, tough supernatural and all.” She lifted up the keys. “But I’m the one who knows the area, so I’ll be the one doing the driving.”
He blinked at her.
Jade grinned. “Move on back, angel.”
She slipped in front of him. Started the engine and enjoyed the purr of the motorcycle.
Az’s thighs pressed around her. His arm slid around her stomach.
“Hold on,” she told him and shot away from the tree. A cloud of dust followed in her wake. “Things are going to get rough.”
Just the way she liked them.
CHAPTER SIX
Ten minutes until midnight.
Az stared up at the tombs as they rose over the heavy, brick wall that surrounded the cemetery. The scent of flowers teased his nose, but he knew that scent wasn’t coming from some floral tokens left on the graves by mourners.
You can always catch the scent when Death is close.
A tell-tale sign that an angel was nearby. Death Angels were at their strongest when they were about to take a soul. In those few moments, humans could catch the sweet scent of flowers.
A death scent.
Death didn’t really smell like decay and rot. That smell just came to the bodies after the souls were gone.
Tonight, death was close. Following him.
His eyes narrowed as he scanned the darkness. Who’d be dying tonight?
“Okay, this is as far as you go.” Jade crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. Her eyes seemed to shine under the light of the moon and stars. “Now you take the motorcycle and go someplace safe.”
His lips twitched. How . . . charming. She thought to protect him once more. She kept doing that, despite what she knew of him. “Trying to get rid of me again?”
She shook her head. “Look, I don’t even understand . . . why do you want to help me? I’m nothing to you!”
Anger stirred within him as the mild amusement vanished. She was hardly nothing.
“I appreciate the white knight routine, believe me, I do, but why?” A faint line appeared between her brows. She stood just a few feet away, on the cracked sidewalk, and asked, “Why do you want to help me? Why are you risking your life for me?”
And the truth came from him. “Because I think you can give my life back to me.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He shoved down the kickstand and climbed from the motorcycle so he could close in on her. His gaze tracked to that line of stark tombs that rose over the steep walls. “I’ve been here before.”
“Yeah, well, you, me, and every tourist who wants an up-close look at the cities of the dead—”
“I fell here.”
She didn’t say anything in response to that. Interesting. He’d found that Jade often had plenty to say. Not this time.
Her mouth actually hung open a bit.
He brushed by her and headed for the heavy gates that led into the cemetery. Dark shadows stretched from the entrance. And he remembered . . .
Crashing. Agony. Pain.
“I didn’t know who I was.” Not at first. The descent had been so intense, the fire so hot, that his memories had been wiped from him.
Az crossed the threshold into the cemetery. His gaze swept around, and then he was snaking through the old graves. Left. Right. Moving more by instinct than anything else.
She followed closely behind him. “Az . . .”
“After the fall, no one ever remembers, not at first.” It had been good, too, not knowing. Living in ignorance of the lives he’d taken. The sins he’d committed.
Another turn. Another.
He heard her gasp behind him. Before them, an old crypt had been smashed, and wide cracks spread out from the broken tomb’s middle like spiderwebs. Beside the remains, a broken stone angel looked mournfully at the wreckage.
It only seemed fitting that she’d lost a wing, too.
He stared at that crypt. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up in hell?”
“Yes.”
Frowning, Az glanced back at her.
Her gaze was on him, not the crypt. “We all have our own hell.” Her hand touched his shoulder. “I-I’m not sure what you’re exactly expecting. I can’t give you back heaven.”
Maybe not.
But maybe . . .
“A witch found me.” He turned to better face her, and Jade’s brows lifted at his admission. “She cleaned me up, gave me food, then, just when I was growing stronger, she turned around and sold me out to a bunch of bastards who got off on torturing Other.”
Jade swallowed. “What happened to them?”