Bad Company

Zzzzzttt…zzzzttt…..

It seemed that my phone had been dinging for quite a while now, but I wasn’t entirely sure, or cared for that matter.

Go away.

I lay on my second-hand couch curled up in a ball, underneath a cheap blanket I’d purchased from the local Dollar Depot. The pattern on it was of some nameless cartoon character, all bright and obnoxious colors that only a ten year old would love, but again I wasn’t entirely sure or cared one way or the other.

Zzzzzttt…zzzzttt…..

GO. AWAY.

I rolled over and tucked the blanket firmly around my ears to drown out the dinging of my phone, hoping that whoever was texting me would get the hint and leave me alone.

All I wanted was for sleep to finally come where I could block out the world for a few hours. There was nothing inherently wrong with my bed, which was located just down the hall. The sheets had only been slept in once since I had changed them. That had been two weeks ago, or was it three? It had probably been longer, more like a month, but no force on this earth could entice me to enter that room, much less sleep in the bed that Stefan and I had shared.

Stefan.

My heart clenched as my mind threw up an image of his beautiful face as he’d lain on the ground dying, his last words whispering past his lips. Stefan had sacrificed himself to save me, and I, who should be out living the life he’d granted me, was holed up in my apartment living out of a suitcase. I could only bring myself to get up every now and then to take care of personal needs, and as for food, everything I ate tasted flat and unappealing. If this continued any longer and my bills continued to go unpaid, I’d be out on the street, and then what?

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d found myself uprooted from my life, but this time was different. This time I actually had something worth losing—not only my job at Six Underground, but all the friends I had made in the short time I’d been working there.

That is if I still had a job waiting for me. Dani had more or less said that it would be waiting for me when I was feeling strong enough to return, but seeing as how it had been weeks since I’d been released from the hospital and I had yet to take him up on his offer, that offer may have expired. Dani had a business to run, and if he’d gotten someone else to fill that position, well…I wouldn’t blame him.

Zzzttt…zzzttt….

“Damn it!”

I flung the blanket off of me and fumbled around blindly for my phone on the nearby battered coffee table. What little light had managed to filter in from the drawn curtains hurt my eyes, and blinking furiously, I finally managed to locate it amid a pile of wadded up tissues.

R U OK?

KARA??

IM COMING OVER

“Shit.”

I scrolled through the remaining messages, some eight in all since this afternoon, all of them from Luz.

IM FINE

I swept the rat’s nest of hair out of my eyes and waited for her to respond. Less than a minute passed and then:

R U SURE?

I texted back just as rapidly: YES

R U RLLY SURE????

I could almost envision Luz arching her eyebrows in that enviable manner of hers and almost felt a smile coming on.

Almost.

IM RLLY SURE

I mentally counted the seconds while I waited for her to respond.

K

Leave it to Luz to be able to read so much into that short a conversation, let alone know when enough had been said without actually saying it.

I exhaled slowly and set the phone back on the coffee table. It was a veritable sea of discarded tissues, empty soda cans, the occasional plastic wrapper from a sleeve of Saltine crackers—which was the most I could stomach these days—and a half-empty water bottle.

I froze as my eyes lit on the water bottle, which had remained in the far left corner of the table, untouched all these weeks. Stefan had been drinking from it right before we had left together to Six Underground’s annual Bash n’ Dance to confront the soul eater. While we had both felt trepidation at the inevitable encounter, neither one of us could have predicted just how horribly awry the evening would go. Certainly Stefan could not have guessed that it would be his last night alive—at least in the physical, earthly sense—but even if he had, I knew that he would have forged ahead nonetheless.

“Dammit Stefan, why did you have to go and pick me? Why choose to love me?”

This wasn’t the first time I’d asked this question to an empty room, and while I didn’t expect the universe to reply back, I still felt the need to at least get it out in the open.

If Stefan were here I’d know exactly what he would say: “I Descended for love millennia ago Kara, but with you I have been saved.”

Stefan may have felt that his actions saved his soul, but I felt damned somehow. Certainly the loneliness and grief played a large part in this, and while I knew that the love we felt for one another was not a damnable offense, this feeling remained, like I was somehow despite everything I’d already gone through, being punished.

You’d think knowing with absolute certainty that both Heaven and Hell existed would be comforting, but it actually had the opposite effect.

Sure, there were angels who hovered around watching the ceaseless and slightly boring antics of humanity, but there were also demons out there waiting to tempt them, sometimes worse.

Stefan had been a maverick of sorts, a martyr for daring to love me despite what both sides referred to as the Balance. No matter what Kyrian—or Malos for that matter—had to say about maintaining said Balance, I knew that the souls of mankind were little more than pawns in each Side’s twisted efforts to win the Game. They had been since the beginning of Time it seemed, but the fact remained that Stefan’s sacrifice was the first and only instance of a demon sacrificing their life for love, for a mortal no less.

While this may have been the first time such a thing had occurred, the possibility that other demons would try to regain their lost divinity remained a distinct possibility. That meant a threat to the Side of evil as well as a boon to the Side of good, but ultimately it meant a threat to the Balance.

The fact that I still lived and breathed meant that I was a tangible reminder of that threat, a flesh and blood totem that both hinted at and promised redemption for others who sought it.

Simply put, it essentially painted a giant metaphysical target on my ass, and while I may be safe now, I may not be for long.

My soul and my life had been at stake more than once before Stefan’s death, and as Aron had warned me weeks before, I was not yet out of danger.

I reached up and let my fingers trace the various twists and grooves of the glyph around my neck. They were all that remained of Stefan’s life on earth, a burnt and ruined shackle.

You want me, you bastards? I’m right here.

I’d uttered these words when I’d woken up in the hospital, but of course nothing had happened.

Just how did my life get so complex? All I ever wanted when I left Jason was to get far enough away to hopefully regain some sense of normalcy, yet here I was smack dab in the middle of a turf war between angels and demons.

Would I change anything even if I could? I enjoyed my job and cared for my co-workers who had fast become like family to me. I would always love Stefan and would treasure the memories of our time together no matter how much pain they caused me. The two Sides may continue to war indefinitely over the souls of mankind, but in the end Stefan had won even if the victory was bittersweet.

He had won even if I felt that I had ultimately lost everything.

I glanced around the small, confined space of the living room and the evidence of my grief and depression scattered throughout. It was beyond deplorable or pathetic, even if some part of me insisted that it was part of the normal mourning process. The truth was, it was inexcusable and cowardly.

If Stefan could take on the hordes of Hell for me, then I should be able to at least have enough courage to get up off the couch and go out and live.

R U OK?

No, but I’ve used that excuse for long enough.

I picked up my phone and set my alarm for nine the next morning. If Dani had been serious about letting me return to Six Underground despite all the hell I’d put him and my co-workers through, then it was only fair that I take him up on his offer.

I lay back down on the couch and brought the blanket up over my shoulders, and then I pressed my lips lightly to the burnt and twisted glyph. “Goodnight Stefan. I love you from Heaven to dust.”