He’d kill her himself if he had to. And with the gate’s control over her mind, he most likely would.
Shadowman poured his strength into forming a body. Lungs to move air. Tongue and teeth to shape words. Hands to throttle her with. The body he created was the one most familiar to him, the one created from Kathleen’s imagination, the hero of her dreams. Better still would have been the terrors other people made of Death. Monsters of deepest nightmare. Something to scare her into submission.
“Don’t,” he repeated in her ear. His spine cracked into place. His legs assumed the weight of a man.
But her arm was already outstretched. Her hand gripped black metal. The cursed lever turned.
He threw himself toward the gate as her weight shifted back.
The woman turned to face him, still gripping the metal behind her, her confusion and terror bleeding into the shadows. Where before her heart had calmed, now it raced again. “I . . . I’m sorry.”
A queer deathlight lit her features, illuminating, stripping away the mortal coil of her life, shining through her fresh, pink flesh as if the atoms had little substance at all, revealing her soul.
It cannot be.
And Shadowman slammed the gate shut again. Held it closed with his greater strength while the woman trembled in the cage of his arms, her lips parted, breath frozen mid-inhalation.
But too late. Something wrong was in the room with them. A presence edged with bloody menace. A devil.
Shadowman almost didn’t care, not as the woman got her first good look at him. Her mind functioned as all other mortal minds did, remaking Death to her conception of him, and for once in almost thirty years, his Shadows nearly obeyed. Such was the power of mortals. Shadowman had held Kathleen’s conception of his physical form, her dark prince, since their meeting. Kathleen, who had named him. Kathleen, who had loved him.
But now, this woman . . . here, today . . . threatened to shred him completely and make him over to fit her idea of Death.
Of course he had to forgive her, escaped devil and all. He had to forgive her everything and damn himself, holding on to his favored body with every iota of power he had, lest the woman see a beast and know his true nature.
No wonder his Shadow could not stop or harm her. His Shadow had ever sheltered her.
Kathleen was not in Heaven. And Kathleen was not in Hell.
She’d kept her promise. She’d found a way back. She’d traded her memories for a slim chance, a small hope that they’d meet once more.
Shadowman’s gaze raked the woman’s face, memorizing her new features. She had wide-set, gray eyes in a narrow face, a small nose, defined cheekbones and jaw. Sweet, full lips. Dimpled chin. And a mess of light brown hair waving to her shoulders.
He gripped the gate to Hell for a little calm.
Kathleen was not dead.
She’d been reborn.
Chapter 4
“How did you find me?” The blacksmith’s gaze roved her face. Firelight cast a flickering band across his features, but Layla could make out slightly tilted black eyes, tensed with strong emotion. Her heart stumbled in reaction; the intensity of his gaze was painfully familiar and cut straight to her core. A sudden fierce burn rushed along her nerves, so when he shifted to stroke her hair, her shock allowed the intimacy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t mean to—” She was shaking with confusion. The attack on the street must have been worse than she’d thought, because the rattling gate, the strange blacksmith, the impenetrable dark . . . She was used to her visions, fighting them, compartmentalizing the real world from the aberrations she saw from time to time. This was different.
“Kathleen. Tell me you remember.” His voice was husky.
She felt his fingers lightly stroke the side of her cheek. Where he touched, sensation spread, sensuous and enticing. Her blood sang as heat flooded her, humming through her system in a gorgeous awakening of want and need. This was too much, way too much, so she turned her head away.
The gate behind her breathed against her body, a living thing. Throw me wide. The voice hurt her head. I was made for you. This wasn’t right; gates did not speak, did not simmer with life. She understood that now and gritted her teeth against the compulsion to obey.
“Be at ease, Kathleen,” the man said. “You’ve nothing to fear. I’ll take care of everything.”
She gave a tight shake of her head. This, at least, she knew, and it was a start at getting things straight. “I’m not Kathleen. You must have me mistaken for someone else.”
And she could take care of herself; she had since she was a kid. She found her spine and slapped his hand away from her face to prove it. What had gotten into her? She didn’t know this man, and he certainly didn’t know her. Why did his open arms seem like a haven of safety and comfort?