“Owen was never my boyfriend! He was just a random blind date!” I gnash my teeth, realizing what Emil says is true. I killed him. I tore Owen’s heart out with my bare hand. Taking a deep breath, I smell the scent of urine on Emil. I realize what’s happening. “You possessed him!” I accuse. “Mr. Kendrick—you’re in his body—somehow. It’s all an illusion.”
Emil’s smile is blasé. “They’re so willing to let me in, Simone. They’re weak,” he replies with a casual shrug as he looks at Owen. “All I had to do was promise your boyfriend here that I wouldn’t hurt him if he let me in. It was really that simple. Humans are so willing to cooperate with us.” He looks at me then. “They so rarely say no.”
“And if they did say no, you’d kill them.”
He shakes his head. “Not true. If they say no, then the laws of Paradise protect them. It’s not like it was for you in Lille. When we reunited there during the war, I would’ve killed you had you defied me, just like I’d killed your aunt. You and I were both humans in that lifetime. Now, I can’t touch a human unless they allow it.” His head dips conspiratorially towards mine. “Fear is the best weapon. You see? They, the humans, have to agree before I can possess them, but it’s not hard to convince them. Most people are willing to do anything out of fear—agree to anything—hurt someone else just to save themselves. The irony is that it is what truly damns them.”
My mind reels. “Freddie—Alfred—he was an angel—a reaper—he killed my uncle—my human uncle!”
“Did he?” he asks with a smile. “That’s not how I heard it. I heard that he convinced another human to slaughter your uncle while he watched. Otherwise, he’d have had to pay the consequences for his actions from both Sheol and Paradise. They’d never let him live after that. We just can’t openly kill humans. It’s not how this is done. It’s a game of souls, Simone. Sheol doesn’t like it when our angels give Paradise an uncontested soul, especially one that we’ve been after for several lifetimes. Given the right set of circumstances, your uncle could’ve been ours.”
“He’d never be yours!” I retort, tasting bile.
“Everyone has a price, Simone. Everyone. Your uncle included. What’s more, he could’ve been your price, wouldn’t you agree?” Emil studies me. “I know you. You’d have done anything to save him...anything.”
What he says scares me, not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. “I’m going to kill you,” I promise.
Emil laughs with delight. “How?” he asks. “You’re so much weaker than me—always have been and still so very guileless. I do admire your iron resolve, however. It keeps me entertained in every lifetime I spend with you.”
My eyes widen is surprise.
“What—” he smiles with delight, “you didn’t know we’ve been together before? You don’t remember us, do you? You don’t remember me!”
“It was in Lille—”
His laughter causes me to fall silent. “Oh, you really are at a disadvantage, aren’t you? Sheol must have negotiated it all from you! Everything! So...you remember nothing before Lille?” he asks me. He tries to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear, but I evade his hand, stepping farther from him. “You’ve truly come here blind!”
“I know enough about you to know that you need to be destroyed at any cost.”
“Any cost? Are you quite certain about that? You couldn’t do it in our last lifetime, and I was merely a human then. Now I’m a god.”
“You’re a coward,” I snarl. “You hide behind humans.”
He’s a mere breath away in a millisecond with his hand wrapped around my throat. He lifts me up to his eye level as my feet kick out wildly. “You have no idea what I’ve become. I’m going to kill everything you love, Simone, and I’m going to make you watch, helpless to prevent it. Then, I’m going to destroy you until there’s no more you—just me.”
I reach out to him and put my hands to his face, sending out all the energy I can gather into one, intense pulse. Mr. Kendrick’s body is blown away from me as if I were a live grenade. Emil’s essence separates from his human host into a black, smoky cloud. Mr. Kendrick lands on the icy pavement of the street and slides across it until he comes to rest in a snow bank.