Can I just say that dying sucks?

All that bullshit about seeing the light and having this final moment of inner peace, blah, blah, blah. It's crap.

Dying is messy and terrifying and it hurts like hell.

I ought to know. After all, I was the one on that basement floor in a puddle of my own blood and bile. And there was no peace, no light, no anything. Nothing except the ice-cold knowledge that the sins I'd racked up in the last twelve or so hours were more than sufficient to push me through the gates of hell.

Forget everything else I'd done in my twenty-six years on this earth, good and bad. You go out planning to kill a man—even a man as vile as Lucas Johnson—and your fate is pretty much sealed.

From a practical standpoint, the moment of death is a little bit late to start getting all profound and reflective. As they say, what's done is done. But that doesn't matter, because even if you're the least introspective person on the planet, you still go through the whole Psych 101 rigmarole. You tell yourself that maybe you should have said your bedtime prayers once in a while. You wonder if all those torture-porn horror movies you watched while your boyfriend copped a feel weren't actually a sneak peek into what hell had to offer.

In other words, you get scared.

When you're living, you might tell God to take a flying leap for putting your mother six feet under when you were only fourteen. For leaving you with a stepfather who decided to cuddle up with Jack Daniels because he no longer had a loving wife in his bed. For leaving you in charge of a pigtailed little half-sister who thought you hung the moon.

And for making you arrogant enough to swear that you'd protect that precious kid no matter what, even though that wasn't a promise you could keep. Not when there are monsters like Lucas Johnson trolling the earth. Monsters who suck the life from little girls.

For all those reasons, you might turn your back on God, and think you're oh-so-righteous for doing it. But you'd be wrong.

Trust me. I know.

I know, because even as my life faded, the fires of hell nipped at my toes.

In the end, I got lucky. But then again, luck is all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

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CHAPTER 1

I woke up in total darkness, so out of sorts that I was convinced I'd pulled on the wrong skin along with my blue jeans. Couple that with the fact that anvils were about to split my head wide open, and I think it's fair to say that I wasn't having a good time. I tried to roll over and get my bearings, but even the tiniest movement kicked the hammers in my head to triple-time, and I abandoned the effort before I even got started.

"Fucking A," I said, and immediately wished I hadn't. I'm no American Idol contestant, but my voice doesn't usually inflict extreme pain. Today, it did.

Today? Like I even knew what day it was. Or where I was. Or, for that matter, why I was.

I'd died, after all.

Hadn't I?

Disoriented, I lurched up, only to be halted before I'd barely moved.

I tried again, and realized my wrists and ankles were firmly tied down. What the—?

My heart pounded against my rib cage, but I told myself I wasn't afraid. A big hairy lie, but it was worth a try. I mean, I lied to myself all the time, right? Sometimes I even believed my own shit.

Not this time. I might have dropped out of high school, but I know when to be scared, and tied up in the dark is definitely one of those times. There was no nice, cozy explanation for my current sitch. Instead, my mind filled with high-def NC-17 images of a long, thin blade and a twisted expression of cruel delight painted on a face I knew only too well. Lucas Johnson.

Because this had to be about revenge. Payback for what I'd tried to do. And now I was going to die at the hand of the man I'd gone out to kill.

No, no, no.

No way was I dying. Not now. Not when I'd survived this far.

I didn't have a clue why I was still alive—I remembered the knife; I remembered the blood. But here I was, living and breathing and, yeah, I was a little immobile at the moment, but I was alive. And I intended to stay that way.

No way was I leaving my little sister to the mercy of the son of a bitch who'd raped and brutalized her. Who'd sent her black roses and mailed erotic postcards. All anonymous. All scary as hell. She would see him in stores, lurking around corners, and by the time she screamed for help, he was gone.

The cops had nailed his sorry ass, but when the system had tossed him on a technicality, I watched Rose come close to losing it every single day. I couldn't stand the thought that the system had kicked the monster free when he should have been in a cage, locked away so he couldn't hurt any more little girls. So he couldn't hurt Rose.

So I'd stolen the gun. I'd tracked him down. And God help me, I'd fired.

At the time, I thought I'd hit him square in the chest. But I must have missed, because I could remember Johnson rushing me. After that, things were blurrier. I remembered the terror of knowing that I was dying, and I recalled a warm flood of hope. But I had no clue what had happened between warm, fuzzy hope and the cold, hard slab that made up my current reality.

I peered into the darkness again, and this time the velvet curtain seemed to be lifting. The room, I realized, wasn't completely black. Instead, there was a single candle against the far wall, its small flame gathering strength against the blackness.

I stared, puzzled. I was certain there'd been no flame earlier.

Slowly, the area around me shifted into a reddish gray with dark and light spots contrasting to reveal a line of angular symbols painted above the candlestick.

My eyes locked on the symbols, and the trembling started up again. Something was off, and I was overwhelmed by the frantic, urgent fear that the monster I knew was nowhere nearby, and that when I saw what I was really up against, I'd desperately wish it were Johnson's sorry ass that was after me.

A cold chill raced up my spine. I wanted the hell out of there.

I was about to start thrashing again—in the desperate hope that the ties would miraculously loosen—when I heard the metallic screech of a creaking hinge. I froze, my breathing shallow, my muscles tense.

The creak intensified and a shaft of anorexic light swept wide across the room as the door arced open. A huge shadow filled the gap. A dark, monstrous form was silhouetted in the doorway, emitting a scent that made me almost vomit.

A monster. And not of the Lucas Johnson variety.

No, Lucas Johnson was a Boy Scout compared to the putrid creature that lumbered forward, bending so that it could fit through the door frame. It lurched toward me, muscles rolling under an elephant-like hide. The creature wore no clothing, and even in the dark, I could see the parasites living in slime inside the folds of skin. Could hear them scurry for safety when the beast moved toward me.

The fetid smell that preceded it made me gag, and I struggled to sink into the stone slab as the beast peered down at me, a string of snot hanging precariously from the orifice that served as a nose.

The creature's mouth twisted, dry skin cracking as the muscles underneath moved, thin lines of blood and pus oozing out from the newly formed fissures. It swaggered to the candle, then leaned over and breathed on the flame. As if its breath were gas, fire leaped into the air, painting the wall with flame and making the symbols glow.

I cried out in alarm and pain, my body suddenly burning from within—the sensation passing as quickly as it had come.

The beast turned to sneer at me. "You," it croaked. Black piggy eyes lit with fury as it brandished a short, bloodied dagger. "Now we finish this business."

A piercing shriek split the dark, and I realized the sound was coming from me. Fire shot through my limbs, and I jerked upright with a fresh burst of determination. To my surprise and relief, I managed to rip my arms free, the ties flapping from my wrists like useless wings.

The creature paused, drawing itself up to its full height. It took a step backward, then dropped to its knees and held its clawed hands high. With the dagger, it sliced its palm, then let the thick, black liquid that flowed from the wound drip into its open mouth. "I serve the Dark Lord, my Master," it said, the words as rough as tires on gravel. "For my sacrifice, I will be rewarded."

The "sacrifice" thing totally freaked me out, but I took advantage of this quaint little monster ritual to reach down and tear at the ties that still bound my ankles. As I did, I noticed that I was wearing a silky white gown, most definitely not the jeans and T-shirt I'd left the house in.

Not that I had time to mull over such fascinating fashion tidbits. Instead, I focused on the business at hand: getting the hell out of there.

About the time I finished ripping, the creature finished praying. It barreled toward me, dagger outstretched. I rolled over, hiking up the skirt as I kicked up and off the slab to land upright beside it. There's probably a name for a move like that, but I didn't know it. Hell, I didn't even know that my body would move like that.

I didn't waste time savoring my new acrobatic persona; instead, I raced for the door. Or, at least, I started to. The sight of the Hell Beast looming there sort of turned me off that plan. Which left me with no choice but to whip around and try to find another exit.

Naturally, there wasn't one.

No, no, no. So far, I had survived the most screwed-up, freaky day of my life, and I wasn't giving up now. And if that meant I fought the disgusting Hell Beast, then dammit, that's just what I was going to do.

The beast must have had the same idea, because as soon as I turned back toward the door, it lashed out, catching me across the face with the back of its massive, clawed hand. The blow sent me hurtling, and I crashed against the huge brass candlestick, causing it to tumble down hard on my rib cage.

Hot wax burned into my chest, but I had no time to reflect on the pain. The beast was on top of me. I did the only thing I could. I grabbed the stick and thrust it upward. The beast weighed a ton, but I must have had decent leverage, because I managed to catch him under the chin with the stick, knocking his head back and eliciting a howl that almost burst my eardrums.

Not being an idiot, I didn't wait around for him to recover. The candlestick was too heavy to carry as a weapon, so I dropped it and ran like hell toward the door, hoping the beast was alone.

I stumbled over the threshold, never so happy to be in a dark, dank hallway. The only light came from medieval-looking candleholders lining the walls every eight or so feet, but as I wasn't sightseeing, the lack of light didn't bother me much. All I wanted was out of there. So I raced on, down musty corridors and around tight corners until finally—finally—I slammed into the push bar of a fire door. An alarm screamed into the night as the thick metal door burst open, and I slid out, my nose crinkling as I caught the nasty smell of rotting food, carried on the cool autumn air. I was in an alley, and as my eyes adjusted, I turned to the right and raced toward the street and the safety of the world.

It wasn't until I reached the intersection of the alley and an unfamiliar street that I paused to turn back. The alley was silent. No monsters. No creatures. No boogeymen out to get me.

The street was silent as well. No people or traffic. The streetlights blinking. Late, I thought. And my next thought was to run some more. I would have, too, if I hadn't looked down and noticed my feet in the yellow glow of the streetlamps.

I blinked, confused. Because those didn't look like my feet. And now that I thought about it, my hands and legs seemed all wrong, too. And the bloom of red I now saw on the breast of the white gown completely freaked me out. Which, when you considered the overall circumstances, was saying a lot. Because on the whole, this experience was way, way, way trippy, and the only thing I could figure was that someone had drugged me and I was in the middle of one monster of a hallucination.

Then again, maybe the simplest explanation was the right one: I was losing my mind.

"You're not."

I spun around and found myself looking down on a squat little man in a green overcoat and a battered brown fedora. At least a head shorter than me, he was looking up at me with eyes that would have been serious were they not so amphibian.

"You're not losing it," the frog-man clarified, which suggested to me that I was. Losing it, I mean. After all, the strange little man had just read my mind.

He snorted. "That doesn't make you crazy. Just human."

"Who the devil are you?" I asked, surprised to find that my voice worked, though it sounded somewhat off. I glanced up and down the street, calculating my odds of getting away. Surely I could run faster than this—

"No need to run," he said. Then he stepped off the sidewalk and into the street. As if it had been waiting for his cue, a sleek black limousine pulled to the curb. Frog-man opened the rear door and nodded. "Hop in."

I took a step backward. "Get lost, dickwad."

"Come on, kid. We need to talk. And I know you must be tired. You've had a hell of a day." He nodded down the alley. "You did good in there. But next time remember that you're supposed to kill them. Not give 'em a headache. Capisce?"

I most definitely did not capisce. "Next time?" I pointed back down the alley. "You had something to do with that? No way," I said taking a step backward. "No freaking way."

"It's a lot to take in, I know." He opened the door wider. "Why don't you get in, Lily? We really should talk."

My name echoed through the night. I looked around, wary, but there was no one else around. "I want answers, you son of a bitch."

He shook his head, and I could imagine him muttering, tsk, tsk. "Hard to believe you're the one all the fuss is about, but the big guy must know what he's doing, right?"

I blinked.

"But look at you, staring at me like I'm talking in Akkadian. To you I probably am. You're exhausted, right? I tell you, jumping right into the testing . . . it's just not the best method." He shook his head, and this time the tsk, tsk actually emerged. "But do they ask me? No. I mean, who am I? Just old Clarence, always around to help. It's enough to give a guy an inferiority complex." He patted my shoulder, making contact before I could pull away. "Don't you worry. This can all wait until tomorrow."

"What testing? What's tomorrow? And who are you?"

"All in good time. Right now," he said. "I'm taking you home."

And before I could ask how he planned to manage that, because I had no intention of getting into the limo with him, he reached over and tapped me on the forehead. "Go to sleep, pet. You need the rest."

I wanted to protest, but couldn't. My eyes closed, and the last thing I remember was his amphibian grin as my knees gave out and I fell to the sidewalk at the frog-man's feet.

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CHAPTER 2

I woke up on a bathroom floor, curled around the base of a porcelain throne. My stomach felt strangely empty, and the lingering taste of bile hung in my mouth.

Other than that, I had no general complaints, and the fact that I was alive—despite Lucas Johnson, despite the freakish monster, and despite the strange little frog-man—seemed something to celebrate.

At the same time, I had to wonder if it had all been a dream.

Surely, I thought, it had been a dream.

I sat up, then dragged my fingers though my hair, frowning to find the hair longer than I expected. I drew my hand back and looked at it, only to find that it wasn't my hand at all. Or my toenails, painted that dainty shade of pink. And the Hello Kitty pajamas I now wore were most definitely not my style.

Bile rose in my throat again as I remembered how out of it I'd felt when I'd been running for my life, and I reached up, grabbing the side of the sink, and hauled myself to my feet.

I pressed the heels of my palms against the countertop and stared at the face staring back at me.

Who the hell was that?

The girl I usually saw in the mirror carried ten extra pounds that refused to come off—probably because she refused to give up the Kit Kat bars she kept behind the counter at Movies & More. Her ears were double-pierced and she had a single, tasteful stud through the side of her nose. Her thick mousy hair was cut into a super-short, no-muss, no-fuss style.

That girl no longer stared back at me.

Instead, the face in the mirror had perfectly trimmed coal-black hair that hit midway down her shoulders and moved with all the grace and shine of a shampoo commercial. Her green eyes were shown off under plucked eyebrows that arched slightly in an expression of either interest or disdain. Her complexion was perfect, not the ruddy skin I was used to seeing. And tiny little diamond studs graced her single-pierced ears.

A strange wooziness came over me, and I realized that I was hyperventilating. Purposefully, I dropped onto the toilet seat, tucked my head between my knees, and breathed.

What the fuck?

What the fuck was going on?

I couldn't be someone else. It was impossible. That didn't happen. It wasn't real.

I was me.

Me, I thought, and I could prove it.

Frantically, I yanked the Hello Kitty top up, exposing my belly. My fingers probed taut, unblemished skin that had never once been stabbed in the gut. Confused, desperate, I shoved the waist of the loose pants down, searching for a wound but finding nothing. But I remembered it. The searing pain. The grin on Johnson's face as he plunged in the knife. And the pungent smell of blood and bile as it gushed out of my body.

I trembled—the kind of shaking that's deep in your bones. This wasn't the kind of thing that happened to people. It wasn't the kind of thing that happened at all.

I'd turned into someone else.

Holy fucking shit.

My body might have bled out, but the essence of me went on, alive and kicking in this stranger who was becoming more familiar by the second.

I didn't understand how, but I couldn't escape the truth staring back at me from the mirror. That was me. No matter how unfamiliar she looked, that body with cutesy PJs, perfectly trimmed hair, and unblemished tummy really now housed me.

Dear Lord, how?

For that matter, why?

I turned away from the mirror, my whole body shaking. Then I saw the crumpled white gown on the floor, and the shakes turned into near convulsions. A bloom of red spread out from the bodice, and my mouth went dry. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

I turned back to the mirror and ripped the T-shirt off over my head. As with my belly, my chest—or, rather, this chest—was unblemished, the skin marked only by a small tattoo on her left breast. I looked closer and realized the tattoo was a small dagger. Not what I'd expect from a girl who wears Hello Kitty jammies and keeps bubble bath above the toilet, but hardly nefarious.

There was, in fact, nothing about this body that suggested foul play. Certainly nothing that suggested she'd recently been cut by a knife or stabbed with a dagger. But how could that be possible? She'd been covered in warm blood. I'd been covered. A sacrifice strapped to a cold slab. A feast for a monster.

There had to have been a cut. A stab. Something.

But there was nothing. Just my own memories, and those faded and spotty.

I sank to my knees and bent forward, resting my forehead on the cool bathroom tile, the sacrificial gown clutched tight in my hands as I fought to remember. To organize my thoughts and bring some semblance of normalcy to a completely not normal situation.

My memories. My life. My own personal nightmare.

Lucas Johnson. Rose. The haunted terror in her eyes. My rage. My promise to keep her safe.

The taunting snarl on his tattooed face before I'd pulled the trigger, intending to blow him away. And the icy glint of steel before he shoved the knife deep into my flesh. The horror of knowing that I was dying and that, despite my best efforts, he would live on.

Something new teased at the edge of my memory—the sensation of falling, the thrum of wings beating against the stale air, and a brilliant light that both warmed and blinded me. A soft voice had emerged from the light. A voice with a beautiful face and gossamer wings. An angel, and it offered to let me live. Offered to pull me back from the nipping flames of hell.

Offered me a future and a chance to atone for my multitude of sins. Lying. Stealing. Drugs. Larceny.

And, yes, attempting cold-blooded murder.

I didn't fully understand the bargain I'd made, but at the time, I made the only choice I could.

I chose life. But as I stood up and once again faced the reflection in the mirror, I had to admit that this wasn't exactly what I'd expected.