“The pain?” He pressed his palm to her forehead. He was no healer, but he could allay some of it. Comfort eased the taut lines of her mouth.
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet, Dahlia,” he said, intoning her name and testing each syllable for her worth. The woman lying there had not lived a happy life, nor one of great comfort. But she had a good soul. A kind one. She sought to help others, even the trash who left her lying here. “You help people?”
“Sometimes,” she said, a faint smile curling her lips. “Not at the moment.”
Humor. She was delirious in the ghost of her pain, and still, she found humor.
“I cannot save you,” he told her, and understanding kindled in her glazed over eyes. “This you must accept from the beginning of our bargain.” She watched him, but made no move or attempt to answer him, slipping far too fast, even as time slowed for him.
“This should not have happened to you, and while I can’t undo it, I think we can help each other.” Even as he made the offer, a small piece of himself took a step back and looked at him askance. This flew in the face of all the rules. While not strictly forbidden, this was not an action to be undertaken lightly, and there were rules. For him.
For her.
“How?” Barely a whisper on her lips. Holding them in that moment between her next and last breath required great skill and effort.
“I can share my grace,” he told her quickly. “But it will only buy you time. Time for you to help me punish my brothers for abandoning you, and I will punish the one who did this to you.”
Understanding kindled in her gaze right before her lids fell shut. “How long?” She coughed.
“A month, maybe a little longer.” If his calculations were right. “But that passing will not be this. The pain and the injuries, they will be gone. You will simply—stop.”
Another tear trembled on her lashes, and she gasped her next words. “I can’t kill your brothers.”
No, she really couldn’t. “There are more ways to punish someone than to kill them, Dahlia. The punishment, after all, should match the crime.”
“Will you tell me their crime?”
He allowed himself a smile. “Perhaps. But you must agree to this now, or I’m afraid your life ends here.” Her kindness and nature should have been rewarded. Instead…
Dahlia swallowed, and somehow, she managed to open her eyes. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Seth,” Judgment told her as he threaded fingers through the blood slickened hair at her temple. For a moment, her lucidity returned with a bit of her strength.
“Okay, Seth,” she whispered, lips quirking like this was all a joke. “If this isn’t one of those light at the end of the tunnel moments where I’m experiencing a hallucination because of oxygen deprivation to the brain…I accept. I’ll get retribution for you. You take care of Alex. I was wrong to want to fix him. You can’t fix evil.”
Judgment considered her for a moment. “You are not asking for mercy for him?” He had to be sure.
Dahlia’s gaze hardened. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
No. He really didn’t.
“Then you have my word.” His voice softened, and he slid his hand deeper into her hair, carefully palming her damaged skull as he lifted her. “And my grace,” he whispered before he released time and caught her last breath with his, closing his mouth over hers and exhaling it back into her body, igniting that stubborn spark that fought on, even as it guttered in the darkness.
Light flashed. Authority resounded through him, and her heart thundered as he gave her what she would need. Not much, it couldn’t be too much. Her human body wouldn’t be able to take it. But life flooded her, and then her hand clasped his nape, fisting around his braid, and she slid her tongue against his.
Lightning sizzled through his system as something shifted and changed. Then he lifted his head and met Dahlia’s dazzled gaze. “Wow…” she whispered, then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed. He caught her easily and rose. Her body used his grace and was already working hard to repair itself.
Sleep was what she needed most for now. Climbing the stairs, he exited on the roof. The hot, humid air rushed against him as he unfurled his wings and shot into the sky. First, he would settle her.
Then he would take out the trash.
A deal was a deal.
2
Huh, they always said I had the ‘face of an angel.’ Pretty sure they didn’t mean this… - Dahlia
Dahlia
The afterlife wasn’t so bad. I was warm, cozy, surrounded by miles of fluffy blankets. At least, I imagined it was miles of luxury bedding. When I tried to open my eyes, nothing happened.
Because I was dead?
Damn, memories slowly trickled back into my head of going to that God forsaken bar, Sinner’s, with Alex. He was upset about a one off comment his boss had made about firing him. So what? The owners of the construction company where he worked were always spouting shit off. They were hot heads to the extreme.
Then I had made one little joke, something to lighten the mood, but he hadn’t been impressed. In fact, he turned downright hateful. Over the last year of our relationship, he’d been drinking more, quicker to anger, and all around spiteful. Stupid me, I had wanted to help, thought I could bring him back to the funny, handsome man I had fallen in love with.
I learned my lesson the hard way.
And now, I was in some kind of in-between place that smelled like clean linens with a hint of lemon, and cradled in a mound of softness. I guessed there could be worse ways to spend eternity.
But something else niggled the back of my mind.
At the end, I was drowning in an abyss of endless pain, almost unconscious, definitely not coherent. Through the wavy haze of tears, a man crouched over me. I wanted to say I had imagined it, but he was probably the angel coming to take me to heaven. He had made the pain go away, so he couldn’t have been bad.
Our conversation about punishing his brothers so Alex could get what he deserved was probably a figment of my desperate imagination. I had wanted him to pay, I had wanted him to suffer like the bastard had made me suffer over the last twelve months.
A distant chime dinged, reminiscent of a cooking timer, or maybe an old-fashioned doorbell. Soft footsteps sounded through the space, a little more substantial than the delicate bell. Actually, the delicious scent of bacon drifted to wherever I was, replacing the clean smell of the bedding.
That was odd.
Please, God tell me I wasn’t destined to be a ghost, forever cursed to smell amazing food without having the ability to eat it.
Dishes clattered together and cabinet doors closed gently. This place had soft close cabinets, something that was too fancy for our apartment, even though it was one of the nicer but affordable options in town.
The footsteps were getting closer, and with it, the bacon.
With more effort than I’d like to admit, I finally opened my eyes, blinking rapidly to clear the blurriness.
Only, it didn’t go away. Damn it, I needed contact solution.
“Good morning, how are you feeling?”
That voice, I knew that voice. The man who took my pain away stood mere feet from me, and I couldn’t see him! I rubbed my hands furiously over my eyes, but when I blinked again, it was still blurry.