Shadow Kissed 03 - Shadowman

family is safe. The attack is over.” Why was she sad?
    He lifted his hands and pushed Shadow against the transparent wall. His darkness insinuated itself into the atoms of its composition, and with a sigh of power, the wall fell to dust.
    He didn’t even pause in his approach.
    Layla gripped the countertop behind her, eyes wide, her breath coming in short pants. He came to a stop before her, close enough to feel her trembling. “Hello.”
    â€œIt’s, um, good to see you.” She spoke to his chest.
    â€œLayla,” Khan said. To stand before her without effort filled him with an exquisite joy he’d not felt since he first stood before Kathleen.
    â€œBeen all spooky shadows for the past couple days.” She feigned lightness. Her sadness was turning to desperation.
    â€œLayla, look at me.” He put his arms around her waist.
    â€œI am. You’re an inch away.”
    â€œA little higher, sweetheart.”
    Kathleen had been brave and strong, as if her heart pumped courage. And Layla had that same quality, heightened by recklessness. If anyone could look Death full in the face, it was she.
    Layla stopped breathing, but her chin lifted. Her gaze skimmed over his mouth, his nose. Found his eyes.
    â€œThere you are.”
    â€œAdam’s going to be mad about his wall.” She was shaking harder, and Khan wondered if she realized that she had transferred her grip from the counter to his arms.
    â€œYou are my Reason,” he said. “Do you understand?”
    She shook her head, blinking hard and looking away. He followed the dodge of her gaze and caught her again.
    â€œThe light in Shadow.”
    Her eyes were full of hurt. “Don’t say that.”
    He tightened his hold on her. He had a strange sense that she was slipping away from him, when all should finally be well. “You don’t fear me, so what is it?”
    The color in her face went ashy, and her heart stilled for a long, awful beat. “I know why I’ve come back. Why everything is happening right now. What I’m here to do.”
    She tried to shrug him away but he gripped her hard, her body squeezed against his. He wasn’t letting her go.
    â€œOut with it then.”
    Layla strained again. No use.
    â€œSpeak, if you’ve something to say.”
    She pulled a little air, steeling herself in his embrace. Met his gaze. She had to force the words out of her mouth, because she sure as hell didn’t want to say them. “Shadowman, I’m here to ask you . . . to beg you . . . to pick up your scythe again and do your duty.”
    The room went silent except for her labored breath.
    â€œYou can’t mean it.” He released her and drew back from this revelation.
    But Layla, his woman, his life, nodded her head. “I do. Please, you have to. You won’t listen to anyone else, but maybe you’ll listen to me. It’s why I was sent.”
    Shadowman shook his head. “I don’t want to be Death anymore. You know I can’t.”
    She looked at the floor and had the gall to sniffle. “Please. This is what I came to do. I can’t fail. It’s too important.”
    The scythe cried from Twilight, the blade weeping for mortal blood. And she wanted him to answer it? “This place is a grave, and you are not dead,” he said. “Let us go.”
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    Rose made quick time across the compound aided by the knuckle push of her bad hand on the ground. Run, run, push. Run, run, push.
    Shots were fired, but they skimmed by her as she vaulted a wall. Then over a jeep. Then took a gallop at the fence along the perimeter of Segue. Leaped. Swung her body over. Her bad hand and arm might be ugly, but they were lovely in their usefulness and strength. How many times had they saved her now?
    She had to get out of there.
    She urged her body faster, through the trees and growth and up to a knobby ridge, away from the evil that was Death. She only paused, holding her breath, to listen for pursuit. The night was silent. Trees swaying. Winter wind snaking through the branches. And above it all the cruel, cruel heavens. To allow that thing to walk the earth when she’d been sent to Hell made no sense whatsoever.
    Hell had nothing compared to the monster she’d seen at the compound. Nothing.
    The world was upside down, is what it was.
    What if good was bad and bad was good? They were just words, after all. What if somewhere along the