Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(61)

I swayed and looked down. Not pavement. After a quick scan of the area, I realized we were on top of a building. A very tall building.

I wasn’t exactly afraid of heights, but they weren’t my favorite of the three dimensions. I much preferred depth. Deep buildings. But Reyes had placed us on top of the Albuquerque Plaza, the highest building in the city.

Still feeling like a light breeze could send me hurtling to my death, I took hold of Reyes’s T-shirt again. Curled my fingers into it as though that one article of clothing could keep me from falling off, because Reyes hadn’t placed us on the center of the building top. Oh, hell, no. We were smack-dab on a nifty edge looking over a 350-foot drop.

In his defense, the very top wasn’t flat. If he’d placed us there, we would have slid off. So there was that. But we were on the highest edge, and while the world looked super cool from that viewpoint, it was not a place I wanted to be.

“Reyes, this isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be.”

“Why are we here?”

He wrapped his arms around me. “I wanted you to see. You are the desert. You are the whole. Until you believe that, you’re in danger.” He looked out over the city. “You don’t know what Eidolon is capable of. Everyone in this city, in this world, is in danger.” Then he returned to me with a hard gaze. “Our daughter is in danger.”

He was right. If I could do something, anything, to stop Eidolon, I had to try.

He set me at arm’s length but held me tight. Still, for my own peace of mind, I kept my fingers curled in his shirt.

“You can save everyone here. You are the most powerful god in all the dimensions combined.” He shook me. “You just have to believe it to the very depths of your soul.”

I nodded. “I’ll try.”

He relaxed. Pulled me to him. Kissed the top of my head. “That’s just not quite good enough.”

And then I was airborne.





15

If at first you don’t succeed, it’s only “attempted” murder.





—MEME


Few things in life are as surprising as having your husband, the man you gave your heart and soul to, throw you off a 350-foot building. I should know.

The second my feet left the building top, the moment I felt that thrust, I slowed time. And hung, quite literally, in midair. Stunned. Breathless. Slightly irked.

“Reyes Alexander Farrow!” I screamed, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

He stood on the top of the Albuquerque Plaza. Arms crossed. Smirk in place. “You stopped time quickly. That’s a good start.”

He had a plan. Surely he had a plan. “Okay, I get it! I’m a god. I have to know this to the marrow of my bones. But it won’t do me any good if my bones are in a big squishy pile at the bottom of this building.”

“You’re doing great,” he said, completely unmoved.

“Reyes, this isn’t funny anymore. Time is going to bounce back any second—”

“You’re a god. Time doesn’t bounce back unless you allow it to.”

“—and when it does, I will hit that pavement so hard, you will wish you could die before I’m finished with you.”

His white teeth flashed against his dark skin. “Then don’t hit the pavement. Become it.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I screeched.

He laughed. Laughed! “Absorb it,” he said. “Stop being so human. Just be a part of all that is around you. A part of everything. Like a proper god.”

“You. Are. So. Dea—”

Before I finished my threat, time did indeed bounce back, and I fell faster than I ever imagined possible.

I turned in midair. Not on purpose, because who the hell wants to see that? But I did. I barely had time to focus on the instrument of my death when I was there. Slamming into it. The excruciating pain riveted through my …

Wait. Where was the pain?

Then I felt it, but not my own. I felt it in others around me. Along with joy, annoyance, love … pretty much every emotion imaginable coursed through me like heroin.

And I saw. Everyone. Everything. I saw every blade of grass. I saw every ray of sunshine. I saw every strand of hair on every person who walked through the plaza. That worked in the surrounding buildings.

I saw good as though it were a physical thing. Bad as well, only there was less of it, thankfully. Love overshadowed hate. Altruism overshadowed greed. Confidence overshadowed jealousy. Though in each case, the margins were narrower than I would have liked.

I saw a lizard scurry along a wall two blocks away. A child trip over her ball in her living room on the other side of the mountains. An elderly man offer a homeless kid who’d been making fun of him five dollars to get something to eat in Seattle. A doctor wash the feet of his ailing mother in India.

I absorbed it all. I basked in it all. Like bathing in light.

“Well?” Reyes asked, pressing against my backside, his mouth at my ear.

I leaned in to him as though I’d been standing on the sidewalk the whole time. Astonishment, and a fair amount of shock, had taken hold.

Gazing up at him, I asked, “Have you felt that? Is this what Jehovah feels all the time? No wonder He likes us so much. We are amazing, complex beings.”