Kisses From Death | Book 1

T W E N T Y

T W E N T Y
Bad Dream, Bad Reality

"ADDISON, ADDISON WAKE up!" There was a rhythmic gentle tap to my cheeks, the sound of my name echoing from far beyond as my sight began to sharpen. Jolting forward, I gasped sharply for air as my eyes shot open, my voice strangled as my heart raced across my chest at tremendous speeds. "Addison, are you alright?"

When I turned to the left, I was met with Minnie's concerned round eyes, her hand placed on my back as she supported me to sit upright.

"Minnie, you're alright." Without consideration, I slammed myself into Minnie's arms, wrapping my own around her so tightly that I might as well had just squeezed the living daylights out of her.

Her hands came to hug me back, gently patting my back as I tried to ease my own breathing. When we pulled away from each other, Minnie's eyebrows were scrunched in confusion. "Yeah, I'm alright. Why wouldn't I be? It was you we were worried about, on the contrary."

"We were all worried sick." Bella fussed, placing a hand on her chest as she used her other to brush a stray strand of hair away from her face. "Cassiel brought you back in here, and your eyes were shut and you were barely even moving, barely breathing. We thought that Death had caught up to you and that you were..."

"Dead." Cassiel finished for her before lightly shoving his way towards me. "How are you feeling?"

Taking a deep breath, I allowed myself a little time to glance at my surroundings, examining each of my companions' worried faces – even that of Gabriel's – before nodding slightly, pursing my lips. "As good as I can be. What happened when I was out?"

"I was gonna ask you."

Raising an eyebrow, Cassiel gently placed a finger to my forehead, tracing an old faint scar as he pushed a stray strand of hair away from my face. His bright green eyes trailed after my lips for a split second before concentrating on my own ever-changing ones.

"What happened to you back in the yacht?"

And so I began to retell the story, explaining about how I had stepped into the yacht only to find stray dead bodies, some slashed right open while others without even a single sign of physical harm. I told them about the strange woman that had jolted back up from the dead and practically preached of how Death was benevolent. Of how I saw Death in my old bedroom, and how he manipulated whatever dark magic he had to change the room into a bizarre carnival filled with even weirder people. Of the maze, and how I encountered a killer clown and another one of those ghouls, another pale green one.

Remembering that I had shot the creature right in the shoulder, I took a quick glance at my bracelet, eyeing my watch as well. The time was working again, the second-hand ticking loudly in my mind as it displayed 8:20 against the bright sunlight from outside. My bracelet was another diamond down, the most recently decolored one turned into a pale green, similar to the previous. Thirteen crystal clear diamonds were now reduced to ten.

In other words, we had ten shots left.

"That sounds..." Lucius trailed off, eyes looking anywhere but me as he searched for a word to say. "Intense."

"And that's not all." I swallowed a bile in my throat. "When I woke up, I was inside a dunk tank and Death asked me questions. He said that the water that I was placed over was taken from this place called Heaven's Falls and that it was acidic and deadly to mankind. So technically I was hovering over a vat of poison. He threatened to dunk me in if I didn't answer his questions honestly."

"Vat of poison?" Cassiel snorted rather ungracefully. There was a hint of humor in his eyes. "Heaven's Falls is a waterfall that links the realms of Heaven and Paradise. It is the course in which the fallen angels take on their descent. It would've done nothing to you except make you as high as a damn bird. It contains hallucinogenic properties for mortals that last for a few hours at most. To us, it's as good as plain water."