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My frown deepened. “I’m still not seeing the problem here.”
“Your father,” he said, slowly and somewhat heavily, “is thought to be working on a device to permanently close the gates to all things that come through.”
Confusion swirled through me. “But that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? It would save you the hassle of hunting down the bad things that break through, at the very least.”
He was giving me that look again—the one that suggested I was an idiot.
“The problem with shutting the gates permanently is the fact that it would not only stop things from breaking through, but also prevent things from leaving.” He paused, his oddly colored eyes searching mine and leaving a strange sensation of dread stirring in the pit of my stomach. “Which means no soul could move on. And that would be a disaster that could destroy us all.”
I STARED AT HIM FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, THE implications running through my mind.
The dead permanently caught in this world? A flood of ghosts who were both angry and confused, never able to move on and not understanding why? That would certainly be hell on earth for those of us able to see and feel them.
But a disaster that could destroy us all? Wasn’t that overstating it a little?
“Your expression suggests you don’t understand the true danger,” he said. “But think on it. If souls cannot move on, they cannot be reborn into new flesh. Where would that leave the human—and nonhuman—races?”
“Up shit creek without a paddle, if your expression is anything to go by,” I said. “But by saying that, you’re suggesting no new souls are ever created. And yet the population of the world continues to grow, so that can’t be true.”
He nodded gravely and entwined his fingers, oddly reminding me of a professor I’d had—both as a teacher and as a lover—in college. They’d both had the same sort of grave, all-knowing air.
Although it has to be said that the professor had never been as hot as this reaper, in clothes or out.
“New lives—and new souls—are created daily, true, but that doesn’t change the fact that the majority of these new beings contain old souls.”
“Is there a finite number of new souls?” I asked curiously. “And is there a limit to the number of people the earth can carry? I can’t imagine it’s the master plan of whoever is in charge to keep adding souls until our world collapses under the weight of us all.”
He smiled. Once again it was merely a quirk of the lips, but my pulse nevertheless tripped happily at the sight.
“There are always limits,” he said, his deep voice low, creating nearly as much havoc as his almost-smile. “That is why there have been—and always will be—natural disasters. Once a limit has been reached, the clock is reset.”
It was a hard statement to believe and yet, if you were inclined to believe in a higher power looking over us all, then it wasn’t such a big leap.
“I still can’t see how the gates shutting would be such a disaster. I mean, people would still be born.”
“Yes, but if no souls could move on and be reborn, then the majority of the newborns would be little more than mindless flesh.”
I stared at him for a moment, for the first time actually taking in the implication of his words. And I sure as hell didn’t want to believe them. Surely if there was someone in charge upstairs, they wouldn’t be that cruel. “Zombies?” I said incredulously. “You’re saying they’d be zombies?”
He hesitated. “No. Zombies are flesh brought back to life by the deadly desires of others. A body born without a soul is little more than a slab of meat. It is incapable of thought, emotion, or feeling. It has no needs or desires. It hasn’t even got the will to live.”
Vegetables, not zombies, something within whispered. I shuddered, and tried not to ima
gine the hundreds of babies lying in ICUs all over the world, their tiny bodies being kept alive by machines but never becoming capable of knowing love or life.
It made me want to throw up.
But bad situation or not, it really didn’t make his following me any easier to swallow.
“Look, I hope like hell you track down my father and stop him, but I really think you’re tackling it from the wrong angle. He’s never had anything to do with me, so why on earth would he want to do so now, when he’s about to embark on a course of action that could endanger all that I hold dear?”
He shrugged again, but I had a suspicion that the nonchalance was faked and he wasn’t telling me all he knew. And that his reasons for following me were far more complicated than what he was saying. Though I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt this. It wasn’t as if his countenance or body language had changed in any way.
“As I said earlier, him contacting you is only a possibility, but one we must explore.”
“So, you’ve explored it, and I’ve denied it. What happens next?”
He raised an eyebrow—another ever-so-elegant gesture. “Nothing. I will continue to watch you until we are sure there is no likelihood of him contacting you.”
