Eighth Grave After Dark

Osh braced an arm against the door and rested his head on it, his shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath he took.

“How did you know?” Reyes asked me.

“My dad, I think. He told me there were spies and it just made sense. Mostly because she didn’t make any.”

“Any?” Osh asked, still panting.

“Sense. She didn’t make any sense. She was way too put together, too smart to be so upset she couldn’t even talk to me. And why in here? Where Reyes and I slept?”

“And talked,” Reyes added.

I sat on the bench, Reyes still holding my hand as I said, “That was kind of amazing.”

“Thanks for the meal,” Osh said, crossing his arms over his still-heaving chest. His shoulder-length dark hair hid most of his face, but from what I could see, he was quite satisfied.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that. Isn’t that, you know, God’s job?”

“You are a god.”

“Not here. Not in this realm.”

“Since she was sent from hell, I doubt he minded.”

“From hell?” I asked, surprised.

Reyes looked down at me, his presence so powerful, I wanted to melt into him. “Who else would spy for my father?”

“You mean, she had been sent to hell and Lucifer sent her back? To spy on us? Is that even legal?”

“It would seem so,” Osh said. He laid his head back against the door, still recovering.

“Can you take someone’s soul who is still alive?” I asked him.

“Only pieces of it unless it’s been marked. Otherwise, I have to wait until those who have lost their souls to me die.” He bowed his head and looked at me from underneath his lashes, the wolfish grin back and darkening his features. “Then they’re all mine.”

“But, as per our agreement, you can eat only the souls of those undeserving of them.” I knew that good people had lost their souls to him. I’d saved one from him a few months back and made him promise to be more selective.

He lifted a shoulder in agreement. A reluctant agreement, but an agreement nonetheless.

“Hey,” I said, “I could mark my stepmother for you.”

Reyes sat down. “You can’t mark your stepmother.”

“Just a little mark. Barely visible.”

Osh laughed softly and stuck his hands in his pockets.

I grabbed a bottled water off my nightstand and nestled back beside the son of evil. “So, why do Daeva eat souls?”

Reyes spoke from beside me, his gaze hard on Osh’s. “It’s what they were created to do. Work. Fight. Entertain. Live off the suffering of others.”

“And what were you created to do?” he asked.

“Send people like you to their deaths.”

“Wait,” I said, holding up a time-out sign. “When did this turn south? We were all friends a minute ago. Weren’t we all friends?”

“It’s all good,” Osh said, sobering. “Rey’aziel tends to forget where he’s from sometimes. And that we were created by the same being.”

“But not in the same fires,” Reyes said. “Not of the same substance.”

Osh shrugged an eyebrow, unfazed.

“Maybe you’re a spy as well,” Reyes said.

“Maybe,” Osh replied. “And maybe you know more than you are letting on.”

“Maybe.”

So, now we were playing the maybe game. What was going on? They’d been getting along famously, then this. I decided to change the subject.

“So, explain to me this whole marking thing,” I said to Osh. “Are there others on earth who eat souls?”

“Yes,” he said without elaborating.

“Are they all Daeva?”

“No. I’m the only Daeva ever to both escape and make it through the void.”

He was right. Reyes’s tattoo was a map to the gates of hell. It was how he could traverse the oblivion, the void between this plane and his. He was literally a portal to hell while I was a portal to heaven. And we hooked up. Stranger things had happened; I was certain of it. He told me once that most all of those who tried to get onto our plane from hell never made it through the void. They were stuck there, slowly going insane. I wondered what would happen to one of those creatures if it finally, after centuries of living in the void, actually made it onto this plane. What would it be like?

A shudder rushed through me with the thought.

“You know,” I said, realizing something else, “all twelve hellhounds made it through the void and onto this plane. Someone had to have helped them.”

Reyes nodded. “I would guess that whoever summoned them had a hand in that.”

“But it took your father eons to create you, you who had the map imprinted on his body. He created a portal. Without the map that you and only you have, even he can’t cross onto this plane easily. Is that right?”

He lowered his head in thought. “Yes, it is.”

“Then how would he help them get here?”

“She’s right,” Osh said. “Whoever summoned them must have already been on this plane.”

Reyes stood and started pacing as Osh bent his head in thought. They were trying so hard to figure out the puzzle. They had been for months. I still couldn’t imagine why Osh was helping us. He hated Satan. I got that. But there seemed more to it than just hatred. He had an ulterior motive. I could feel it.