The Taken

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Anne was still breathing when Grif returned, but the air rattled in her chest, liquid and low. Gently, he placed the powerful angel’s head on his lap. “Oh, Anne. What happened?”

She laughed so that blood slipped from one corner of her mouth. “I was in the rafters. Wrong place, wrong time. Isn’t that what you people always say?”

Grif looked up. He’d been outside, back on the building’s rooftop when he’d heard the ricocheting gunshot. He’d thought then only of Kit’s safety… but he hadn’t known Anne was inside. The gunshot he’d heard go off from outside. It’d missed Kit… but found Anne.

“But I don’t understand. You’re a Pure. And your wings, the feathers protected me…”

“Of course. You can’t kill what is Pure. But I am wearing flesh… and I obviously didn’t catch this bullet with my wings.”

No, her stomach was gaping wide.

Grif bowed his head. “Forgive me, Anne.”

She surprised him by placing her fingertips to his lips, and though they played there, there was nothing sexual in the touch this time. “But this is amazing, don’t you see? It’s the ultimate human experience. This pain is divine…”

But death was awful, Grif thought, eyes racing over her face. It meant the demise of all those senses she craved. It meant separation, loneliness, and losing those you most loved.

A corner of Anne’s mouth lifted as she read his mind. “Death is not the enemy, Griffin.”

“It’s the end,” he blurted, even though he knew better, even though he had wings.

“Wrong again. Death,” she said, as her hand dropped away, “is how you know you were alive in the first place.”

Grif sat back on his heels, dumbfounded because it made sense. Anne had been so greedy for every single life experience-taste, touch, sound, sight and scent, even love and hate. Even the negative ones like jealousy and rejection. Yet death, perhaps because of its finality, trumped them all.

“I’m glad to go,” she whispered, seeing he finally understood. “Mortality is too exquisite for me.”

Lifting his head, Grif gazed at the bodies of the two men lying in small lakes of their own blood, then up at the two women, Bridget and Charlotte, huddled above him, trying to salvage what remained of their world. There were wings, too, he saw, making out three pairs waiting in the steel rafters, including Courtney, who leaned forward ever so slightly and winked at him before returning to the shadows. Grif looked back at Anne.

“So… Kit?”

She was by the door now, hands folded, watching them. Watching him.

The Pure let her head fall to the side. Looking at Kit, she sucked in a deep breath, searching for the plasma that would mark Kit as doomed, before giving her head a small shake. “I’m afraid that one… is as pure as they come.”

Slumping, Grif dropped his head to Anne’s shoulder, and she patted it, briefly letting her fingertips play in his hair. “There’s one more thing. Your wife…”

Grif lifted his head.

“She never entered the Gates,” Anne whispered, eyes shining too bright. “I know the name of every soul who passes there. Evelyn Shaw was never one of them.”

Grif swallowed hard, feeling tears well. “Incubation, then.”

So Evie had anguished over her death, too. Too early, too young, too soon. And all his fault.

“I’m… sorry.”

He just nodded. “Thank you, Anne.”

“Anas,” she corrected, and with the last of her breath, added, “Centurion.”

Grif slid his hand over her smooth face, cupped her neck, and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “Thank you, Anas.”

Anas smiled slightly… and, a moment later, was gone.

You knew her.”

Kit had been totally silent after they’d left the clustered trailers. Bridget took Charlotte to her car to warm her and call the police. But Kit had chosen to stay outside, shivering in Grif’s jacket, watching him carefully. She’d seen the sadness on his face as the black woman passed away. She could mourn a needless death, too… but she still wanted to know why.

“Who was she to you?”

“Her name is Anas. She was… is…” He looked at her.

Kit gave a humorless laugh. “Just finish the sentence.”

“An angel. A Pure.”

Kit closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. More silence, and then, “Walk with me?” she asked, causing Grif’s brows to rise in surprise. “Before the police and everyone arrive?”

He hesitated, but finally nodded. They wandered from the makeshift trailers, past the white elephant looming like a scar across the earth, and further into the night. Grif held her arm now and then, seeming to know when a stone or errant rubble lay in wait, but beyond that their contact was minimal, the conversation nonexistent.

When they reached a large tract of open dirt, just behind a small mountain of discarded rock, Kit stopped and turned to him. “Show me where.”

“Where what?”

“The bungalows. Where Evie died.”

“You believe me?”

“I could lie and say I do. But… come on, Grif. Angels? Wings? Centurions?” She shook her head. “But Evelyn Shaw was real. I saw a clipping about her, and I saw… a photo of you. My mind keeps telling me there has to be an explanation, but…”

“But?”

She folded her arms more tightly around herself, careful of her aching ribs. “But I want to hear yours.”

Grif looked around, studying the dark like it was a map, but finally shook his head. “I can’t tell where the bungalows were. I have a hard time-”

“With directions.” She smiled tightly. “I know.”

“Just so we’re straight.” Grif frowned, studying her face. “Are you mad at me or not?”

She softened a bit at that. “You just saved my life again, Grif. How could I be mad?”

“Then what are we doing here?” he asked, holding out his arms. “You want to hear me go on and on about something you don’t believe? Something I know makes me sound crazy? Because it’s kinda been a hard night.”

Laughter bubbled from Kit, surprising them both. She felt like she hadn’t laughed in forever. “I guess I just want to understand. To know something of the man who… Well, we made a good team, right?”

His jaw tensed, noting her use of the past tense, but he nodded once. “All right. You want to know about me? The truth?”

Not the easy answer, no matter how much she might want it, but the truth. “It would be nice, yes.”

“My name is Griffin Shaw. My wife was murdered while I stood right next to her, and I couldn’t stop it. I never even saw it coming.”

Swallowing hard, Kit flashed on an image of her father dying years earlier, and understood a little better how something like that could cause this man’s mental break. She nodded for him to continue, but Grif was staring blindly into the dark. She doubted he even knew he’d gone silent.

“For years,” he began slowly, “I’ve allowed guilt and sorrow and regret to eat at me, and not just at me, but at my humanity. I couldn’t get past everything I’d never change, I wouldn’t move on. So I walked around dead inside instead.” He frowned at that. “Funny how everyone knew that but me.”

Kit didn’t think it was funny at all.

“But then something happened that showed me I had it all wrong.” Looking at her, Grif turned his back on the scarred terrain where his wife had died. “I thought I was alive in order to right old wrongs and get justice-or at least find out what had happened and why. But then a very wise woman told me that we’re not supposed to just find the easy answers…”

Kit gave a half-smile, and finished for him. “We find the truth.”

“And the truth, Kit? Is that there’s really only one reason to be alive.” He took her hands in his.

Shaking her head, she stopped him. She didn’t need to hear it. She knew all about love. Lowering her head, she said, “You still love her.”

Grif bent, forced her to catch his gaze, and wouldn’t let her look away. “You told me you understood about loving someone. You said there’s no getting over it, that no one can replace a spouse in your heart.”

Kit nodded, because she had said that. Right now, though, she wished she hadn’t been quite so understanding.

“But,” Grif said, lifting her chin with his fingers, “you also said a person can carve out a new place in their hearts. For new people.” His fingers splayed, gentled, and slid to cup the back of her neck.

“What are you saying?” she whispered.

“I didn’t save you, Kit. You saved me.”

He drew her close, and she closed her eyes as his arms encircled her, his scent-body soap and a hint of licorice and Grif-washed over her. And it felt so good that she let herself be carried away, just for a moment, in the strength of those arms.

She could remember again later that he was crazy.

“You saved me,” he repeated, kissing the top of her head. “You said I needed to move on from Evie’s death. That I was afraid-”

“I’m sorry.” She pulled back. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“But you were right,” he said, holding her at arm’s length, but still holding tight. “And you made me feel things I haven’t felt in so long.” He shook his head. “My wife is gone. I guess I’ve known that for a long time, but it was a catastrophe for me to admit it. Yet the line between a miracle and a catastrophe…”

Was a damned fine one.

She looked at him.

“What I’m trying to say is… I love you, Kit Craig.” He said the words loudly, then said them again, even though she had fallen dead still. “I love you with all that’s left of my heart, and with whatever time I have left on this earth. I love your twenty-first-century mind. I love the way you fight for what’s right. I almost even love how much you talk.”

She blinked at that, but he gripped her arms and carried on. “I think I love you for all the things that Chambers despised. You’re flighty and contradictory. You’re too cheerful. You’re stubborn and, yeah, cavalier, and you never stop moving…”

“Are these still compliments?”

But he didn’t hear her. “That woman you were asking about? Anas? She died desperate to feel what I feel for you now. This passion is a gift. It’s a miracle. And it’d be a sin to throw it away.”

“But Grif…”

“This is the only reason worth living at all. She died for this.”

And gripping her arms hard, he poured himself into the kiss like his life really depended on it, like hers did, too. Kit dizzied immediately, a buzzing rising to claim her hearing, before whipping like an entire hive to short out her nerve endings.

She tasted dust and thunderbolts.

Fire flashed before turning to lava behind her closed lids.

Her blood pulsed with ozone and she scented rose petals on the air.

Swallowing hard, swaying, Kit pulled away. Not because she wanted to, but because she had to catch her breath. Her lashes fluttered exquisitely against her cheeks, and it took a moment to focus.

When she did, she gasped.

“Good God, Grif. You have wings.”

“I know,” Grif said. And his long-suffering sigh was the last thing she heard before the buzzing rose again, and Kit passed out.