Read Online Something Deadly This Way Comes by Kim Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

you’ve had a soul all this time and you just didn’t know it. It’s not like angels all look or act the same. If it’s not a soul that makes us different, then what is it?”
    In my hand, the cross melted into a pair of black angel wings. Barnabas was silent as he looked at them, and then he muttered, “I left heaven because I was forbidden to return, not because I was gifted with a soul.”
    Gift, I thought. I doubted it had even bothered him that he might not have a soul until Nakita said she had a sliver of mine, with the memories the black wings stole from me, memories of being afraid of the dark, of dying, of an end of everything. “Nakita said you were kicked out because you loved a human girl.”
    The back door to the Laundromat creaked open and an employee click-clacked out, checking to make sure the door was locked before heading for one of the nearby cars. Silent, we watched until her red Pinto roared to life and puttered away.
    â€œIs that true?” I asked in the new silence. Barnabas didn’t say anything, his jaw clenched and his eyes looking black in the dark. Suddenly embarrassed, I let the angel wings shift back to the more familiar vision of a smooth rock. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll shut up now.”
    God, what was I doing, prying into his past? He might look my age, but he was over three thousand years old to my seventeen. Like he really wanted to share anything with me.
    â€œThere were no timekeepers back then,” he said abruptly, and I jumped even though his words were very soft, almost unheard over the nearby traffic’s thrum. “Scythings were meted out by the seraphs, like they’re doing now until things are settled with you. I was told to end the life of a girl whose soul was going to die. Pride was going to prevent her from asking forgiveness.”
    Barnabas shifted his weight, his hands clasped loosely over his drawn-up knees, but his eyes were not seeing the back of the Dumpster. The lost expression on his face was scary.
    â€œThe earth was so fresh back then,” he said, the lines in his face smoothing. “Not this cement, carbon-polluted ember of what it’s become. It was almost as if creation energy still rang in the rocks and echoed in the hum of the bees, or the breath of a child on the verge of becoming a woman, a woman so perfect that heaven was willing to cut her life short to bring her soul back to them unsullied.”
    I stifled a shiver, scared as to what he might say next.
    â€œShe was asleep in a field. My Sarah,” he breathed, his shoulders easing as he spoke her name, giving it an odd accent. “Her name was Sarah, and I’d never seen anything more beautiful in all creation.” His head dropped. “They should have sent someone stronger.”
    I wanted to touch his arm but didn’t. How could I even pretend to understand? He’d laugh at me.
    â€œI couldn’t do it,” he said, head down. “I . . . chose not to. I chose .” Only now did he turn to look at me, frightening me with the intensity in his gaze. “Her soul was alive still, and beautiful. It seemed wrong to take it then. She woke, and I was standing over her with my scythe bared. She was so scared. I didn’t want her perfect beauty remembering ugliness as she left the earth, so I lied. I told her she was safe, and I touched her, feeling her tremble. She believed me. I shouldn’t have touched her. I might have been able to do it if I hadn’t felt her fear.”
    He was smiling now, as if in a fond memory. “That she trusted me when I told her I’d do her no harm struck me to my core. I couldn’t betray that trust, and my lie became truth.” Barnabas’s eyes tightened at the corner, and his clasped hands separated and pressed into the dirty cement. “A second reaper came to end what I couldn’t, and I fought him, beat him, and sent