Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

utterly unoriginal.
    The devil woman screamed. Pitiful noise.
    Khan took a breath and shrieked a sound that made her ears bleed.
    The devil scuttled toward the hallway like a cockroach. He’d crush her out of this world. She’d be a gut smear on the floor. A mess to clean up, nothing more.
    But a muffled sob off to the side brought his attention back to Layla.
    Layla, whose clear gaze told him she was free of the devil’s fear.
    Layla, who now witnessed the grotesque glory of Death: him.
    Â 
    Â 
    Layla peered beyond the glass, into the observation theater, where a mass of churning shadows had condensed, solidified, shifted through the murky spectrum of the color gray. A line of blackness became the hulk of a chest thickening as something— Khan? —formed beast-big shoulders. His features, in profile, were harsh, the menace in his posture severe, cutting, cadaverous.
    The sound he’d made turned her blood cold.
    Oh, dear God. Her sweat chilled to ice. The pulse of life in her veins stalled. Her vision went dry, too clear, as she stared unblinking at the horror before her.
    Death.
    That’s who Khan was. That was his secret. She should have known it from the start. Every cell in her body screamed Death.
    And she’d let him touch her.
    Her legs gave and she caught herself on the wraiths’ cold slab, quailing against the moment Khan’s regard would settle on her.
    Please, no. She didn’t want to die. Not yet.
    She must have made a sound because he turned his horrible countenance in her direction.
    Please don’t see me. Please don’t look at me. Please. I’m not ready. I just found her, she begged inside her head.
    But his gaze fell on her just the same.
    This was it then. So much time, wasted. Her moment with Talia, over.
    She raised her hands and face to stop the inevitable. She knew she had about as much chance as a butterfly in a hurricane. But she met his hoary gaze. Tried to speak to him with the panic of her soul.
    Please.
    As she begged, the dry gray parch of his skin rippled, then rolled. He was changing again. His monster body settled and took on the posture of a man, strong and fit and naked, all of him large, legs braced, muscles flexed with power. His features smoothed, cheekbones lifting to structure his tilted fae eyes, black with soul. Shadow eroded the sharpness of his teeth and left him mouthing her name, Layla .And in the storm whip of his darkness, his long hair gleamed.
    Oh.
    Wait. . . .
    Something turned in Layla’s mind, like a key in the lock of her memory. Her two selves, Kathleen and Layla, merged at a singular point of awareness. Her bones shook with the force of its clarity.
    She recognized him as she had on the winter plain in Twilight.
    Kathleen and Layla together. She knew him. The word burned bright on her tongue.
    Death, yes. But he was more than that. More than “Khan,” which was just another one of his illusions, a misdirection for his convenience. Males were such idiots sometimes, even this one.
    Layla felt a smile stretching her face. She could never be afraid of him.
    How could she have forgotten?
    â€œShadowman,” she said, naming him. At last.
    But wedged in the sense of triumph that followed was an unbidden knowledge.
    Her smile faltered.
    The knowledge was crystalline in its perfection, igniting her mind with a purpose and a task that was hers, only hers. Because of all the people on Earth, only she might accomplish the feat.
    She knew why she’d been reborn.
    Â 
    Â 
    With his name from her lips, all Shadow went still, and with her smile, he knew he was saved.
    Fate had woven different lives for Layla and Kathleen, but both women had conceived the same body for him. Would it have been the same had he revealed his nature to Layla from the beginning? Or had this form been fixed in her mind that day on the docks? He didn’t know and didn’t care. As long as she accepted him.
    Her gaze broke with his, flicking to the left. “Devil got away.”
    The devil was no problem whatsoever. She was an irritation, a splinter, no more. There was nothing that could stop him now that Layla was his. He advanced toward the glass wall separating them.
    â€œEveryone else okay?” Layla took a small step back in her room and was stopped by some cabinets on the wall.
    She was still afraid, but the color of her emotion was now mixed with fading exhilaration . . . and tremendous sadness.
    â€œThe