Read Online Blurred by Tara Fuller - Free Book Online Page B

her. Like we’d been there before. It had been enough to put me completely off-balance.
    For a moment, I’d let myself forget what she was. I couldn’t let that happen again. She wasn’t some girl who was going to end up in the back of my Bronco or my heart. She wasn’t even a girl as far as I was concerned. She was the reason I was here, living in the ninth circle of Hell on Earth. Right? I shook my head trying to sort out the emotions running through me. Shadows dripped down the windshield, changing shape as they pooled along the wiper blades. A reaper would have come in handy right about now.
    Screw it. I had to get in this house. I couldn’t sleep in my truck all night. I flipped on the headlights just to make sure my path from the driveway to the front door was clear, and stopped cold. Two beams of light spilled across the concrete drive and landed on…a guy. He stood, arms folded across his chest, caught between the two beams of light. He wore a gray wool coat with the collar turned up and had ash-blond hair that brushed the space just below his eyebrows. His eyes were gray, a shade lighter than his coat, and what looked like a spiderweb of black tattooed lines crept up his neck. Shadows curled around his ankles, giving him the illusion of floating on smoke.
    It was him . The guy from school and the library. I pushed open the door to my Bronco and hopped out onto the driveway, heart racing.
    His gaze shifted from me to a car rolling past the driveway, the neighbors’ noses all but pressed up against the glass. He frowned, watching them until they were over the hill, and muttered, “God, I hate small towns.”
    “You,” I said, approaching him cautiously. “I saw you at the school.”
    The guy looked me up and down with cold, calculating eyes and nodded. “I’m Noah.”
    Thrown by his introduction, I tried to get my bearings. I don’t know what I expected from him, but it sure as hell wasn’t his name. “And I’m Cash, but something tells me you knew that.”
    Noah chuckled and flicked his fingers, shooing the shadows away. To my amazement, they obeyed, scattering to the edges of the driveway, creating a tight circle of darkness around us. “Well, now that the introductions are out of the way, I believe you wanted to talk.”
    “Are you a reaper, too?”
    “No.” A grin curled Noah’s lips. “I’m better. They get an afterlife of slavery with no reward. Do you want to know what I get, Cash?”
    I took a step closer, knowing I shouldn’t, watching Noah pull an apple out of his pocket. He took a bite and tossed it into the yard as he swallowed. He swiped the back of his wrist across his mouth and smiled. “I get to live.”
    “Slavery?” I asked. “Who are they slaves to? Balthazar?”
    Noah sneered the second the name passed through my lips. “Yeah. That’s him. He’s got them all on strings. Like freaking puppets.”
    “And what about you?” I shoved my hands in my pockets, trying to snuff out the sparks going off beneath my skin, setting my veins on fire. “What are you?”
    Noah walked a slow circle around me and the shadows mimicked his movement, creating what looked like a cyclone of black oil around us. They slipped through and over each other so quickly, they started to look like a single slithering entity instead of a horde.
    “I’m like you,” he said, effectively stopping my train of thought. “We’re two of a kind, Cash. And believe me when I say we’re a rare kind. You, my friend, are in high demand.”
    I swallowed, watching a shadow slip away from the circling mass and mold itself around one of my boots. Noah’s eyes narrowed into slits and he knelt down in front of me, eyeing the demon. He wrapped his fingers around the shadow’s neck, watching it writhe and hiss under his grip, then tossed it back into the group, where it faded into blackness.
    My breathing calmed as I counted backward from ten under my breath. Anaya said to keep my emotions under control, but