Page 15

OLLIE

Ollie choked. Pain tore through him like glass, severing his throat. He screamed, but no sound came. Everything was black—agony—his whole body pulsing. This couldn’t be real.

The throbbing in his neck grew, turning into a loud rhythmic beat.

Ollie’s eyes flew open to a light so blinding he couldn’t see. His head spun. Was he falling? Was he moving at all?

The pain faded, replaced by a hollow sensation as memories assaulted him.

The beach.

That… man .

Ollie’s hands flew to his throat. It had been ripped out. A whimper fell from his lips as phantom fingers dug into his neck, pulling him apart.

He gagged, nerves crawling at the gross violation, but the skin beneath his fingers was smooth, not torn open.

Ollie’s vision cleared. The beach was gone. There was no sky overhead. He was inside somewhere. Where the fuck was he? His heart clattered against his sternum, sweat coating his body. What happened ?

“Ollie,” a soft, broken whisper reached him.

Ollie swung his head around. Dante kneeled beside him. Ollie’s hand shot out of its own accord, grabbing for Dante like he could save him. From what, Ollie didn’t even know.

Dante’s hand closed around his. “I’m here, Ollie. You’re okay.”

Ollie choked on the air in his lungs. Air. He’d been dying for air, choking on his own blood. How was he not dead?

Or was he?

Ollie looked closer at Dante. He had dark-gray wings protruding from his back and silver-gray horns sticking out of his hair. Ollie trembled. The other man had wings and horns too. The man who’d killed him.

“Ollie, talk to me,” Dante begged, his face twisted in a way that hurt to look at.

“B-blood,” Ollie managed.

He looked down at himself. He was covered. So was Dante. Wait, was he on a couch? Did the afterlife have couches? Why wasn’t the blood gone if his neck was put back together?

“I’m so sorry, Ollie.” Dante choked out a sob, squeezing Ollie’s hand. “I’m sorry I let him hurt you.”

“I…I died.” Ollie pulled his hand away, sitting up and rubbing his throat. “W-what are you?”

Dante shifted until he was as close to Ollie as he could be without touching him. “You didn’t die, Ollie. I saved you?—”

“How?” Ollie asked before Dante finished. His clothes were heavy with blood, sticking to his skin in challenge to Dante’s statement. “There’s no way I… Not with… This is my blood.” His stomach turned and he gagged, doubling over, head between blood-soaked knees.

“Let’s clean you up, and I’ll explain.”

“No, explain now.” Ollie’s hands shook as he straightened. They were sticky. Fuck, the smell of copper was everywhere. “ Why do you have wings? What the fuck, Dante? I know I’m dead. Just admit it.” Ollie buried his head in his hands as a sob tore from his abused throat.

Dante pulled Ollie’s hands from his face, encasing them in his.

“You aren’t dead. We’re still on Earth. I saved you with magic.

I’ve always had wings, but I kept them hidden before.

I’m sorry. I tried to put them away so it wouldn’t alarm you when you woke, but I’m too worked up.

I was too worried about you. Here, let me try again. ”

Ollie stared transfixed as the dark-gray feathers at Dante’s back ruffled, then disappeared, his horns along with them. It didn’t convince Ollie he wasn’t dead. Maybe this was some strange misfire in his brain, happening as everything shut down.

“See?” Dante twisted to show his back, where a large tattoo of folded wings covered his smooth brown skin. “You’ve seen my tattoos before. That first time at your apartment with Harper, remember?”

“When you didn’t have a shirt.” Ollie hadn’t thought about the tattoos since, but the memory must be where this hallucination had come from. “Why weren’t you and Ash dressed that day?”

Dante turned back around. “We’d been flying and didn’t have shirts with us.”

“You expect me to believe Ash has wings too? You’re like angels or something?” Ollie wasn’t that gullible. But if this wasn’t real, what did it matter? Or if it was real, he was one hundred percent dead. Either way, nothing mattered.

Dante ran a dirty hand through his hair. “We aren’t angels. I’m a demon, Ollie, but it’s not what you think.”

Well, that made no sense, but for some reason, Dante looked deathly serious. What the fuck? Dante was an agent of Hell?

Ollie shivered, suddenly freezing. Was this shock? Could he be in shock if he was dead ?

Could this be real?

Dante cupped Ollie’s cheeks, wiping away tears Ollie hadn’t felt fall. “Come, let’s clean you up. You’ll feel better, and then we can talk.”

Ollie allowed Dante to pull him from the couch and guide him through the large modern house.

It felt like a dream, floaty and distorted.

Even the proportions of the hallway and doors weren’t right.

Ollie’s whole body felt wrong, like he’d lost more than blood.

He was fading away and weighed down at the same time, and something deep in his chest clawed at him.

He had to put himself right—get rid of this feeling—but he didn’t know what was happening. Was this what being dead felt like?

Dante led him to an enormous bathroom with the largest tiled shower Ollie had ever seen. They both fit with room for several more people. Something had to be wrong with Ollie’s brain. It was like he’d forgotten what normal houses looked like and instead was imagining this .

He stood shivering as Dante turned on all three rainfall-style showerheads. The water heated quickly, steam hitting Ollie’s face. He stepped under the spray and pulled off his ruined shirt.

Ollie glanced down to undo his shorts, finding dark-red water circling the drain. It swirled around his toes, but no matter how much water drained, it didn’t run clear.

The heat of the shower disappeared. Ollie shook, his hands numb. He couldn’t get the button undone. He couldn’t get his shorts off. They were soaked with so much blood the water couldn’t wash it away.

Ollie was bleeding again. He had to be. This was his blood, and it was supposed to be inside him. He was dying. Dead.

Strong arms wrapped around him, and Ollie laid his head against Dante’s chest without hesitation. Ollie’s trembling hands stilled, and he wrapped them around Dante.

He was no longer floating away.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Ollie whispered, unable to stop his shivers. “It’s like something’s happened inside me, and it’s not right.”

A whine escaped Dante, sounding more like a hurt animal than a man. “I’m sorry, Ollie. There was only one way to save you. That’s why you feel this way, but we should be able to fix it. It won’t feel like this forever.”

Ollie buried his face against Dante’s bare chest. He didn’t know what Dante meant, yet Dante’s minty scent tingled his senses, and after a few deep breaths, Ollie’s tremors stilled.

Dante stroked Ollie’s wet hair. “Can I wash you?”

Ollie nodded into Dante’s chest. God, he hoped he’d feel better when the blood was gone.

Dante helped Ollie out of his shorts and underwear and tossed the soiled clothes aside, along with his bloody jeans, leaving them both completely naked.

Ollie registered their nudity in passing like he noticed the shower’s grout was darker than the tiles. His body felt foreign and wrong. He needed Dante, but not in the way he normally would have while in a shower with no clothes on.

Neither of them spoke. Ollie wasn’t sure he could have. There was a lump in his throat he was afraid to dislodge, not knowing what might come out.

He held on to Dante’s shoulders as the bigger man washed him with sweet-scented soap and a soft cloth. Dante’s careful touch felt like heaven, and slowly, the lump in Ollie’s throat dissolved.

Eventually, the water running off them turned clear, save for the suds. Ollie felt more whole than he had since opening his eyes and, for some reason, didn’t want to let Dante go .

“Where are we?” Ollie asked when Dante had finished washing them both and he’d reluctantly released Dante’s shoulders.

Dante stood frozen for a moment too long before turning off the water. “This is my house.”

Ollie turned, ignoring the emptiness growing inside him once again, and reinspected the ridiculously large shower, realization hitting him like a smack in the face. “It’s because of your wings. That’s why it’s all so…large.”

“Exactly,” Dante said as if Ollie had made a clever discovery and not the most obvious observation on the planet.

Dante stepped around a tiled wall—there was no door closing the shower—heading into the rest of the bathroom. There was another tattoo around Dante’s hips, like a rope or a…tail?

Ollie stood rooted to the spot. He was beginning to suspect this wasn’t a hallucination, which wasn’t comforting. A hollow void bubbled inside him, growing like something sick and painful was coming.

Dante reappeared, towel around his waist and another held out for Ollie.

When Ollie didn’t reach for it, Dante wrapped it around him. It was no surprise the towel was enormous and engulfed Ollie like a blanket.

Dante pulled Ollie against his chest and held him tight, and the sick feeling roiling inside Ollie faded.

“If you’re a demon, why did you save me?” Ollie whispered, lying his head against Dante’s shoulder.

Dante sighed, almost sounding content as he rested a hand on the back of Ollie’s head. “Demons aren’t evil. We aren’t what Christianity or any other human beliefs make us out to be.”

“Then why call yourself a demon if that’s not what you are? ”

“That’s a good point.” Dante paused, running his hand through Ollie’s hair. “I’m a Fallen Eternal—an immortal being who possesses magic, banned from the Eternal Realm.”

So maybe saying he was a demon was better than that. Ollie had no clue what any of that was supposed to mean. “If you saved me with magic, why do I feel so…broken inside?”

Dante pulled Ollie tighter against him. “I feel it too.”

The strange sense that something wasn’t right intensified, broadening and filling Ollie with an unfamiliar, painful regret.