Hereafter

Hereafter by Jennifer Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Hereafter by Jennifer Snyder Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jennifer Snyder
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult
communicate. Doubt crept back into my mind, and my resolve that I was making the right decision faded, until images of my father, drunk and lying broken across my bedroom floor, flashed through my mind once more.
    Sacrifice. A word I now understood the true meaning of.
    Either I remained a Reaper Council member and got to be with Jet, but left my father to suffer in his own form of hell. Or, I chose to save him by coming back, but lost everything I had with Jet.
    Could I settle for a shadowed sense of myself, because I knew that was what I would be without Jet in my life, whether I remembered him after all of this or not. My very soul would be shadowed by its loss of him forever.
    I leaned my head against his chest just as tendrils of blackness began to swirl around my ankles and I felt a familiar tug pulling at my soul. I was being summoned to another Reaper Ruling.
    “No, every time you leave it’s always forever before we can meet up again. Hold on to me and close your eyes,” Jet demanded.
    I did as I was told and felt anxiety swell within my soul. A strange sensation rippled through me, one I distinctly remembered from crossing through the veil and into the Spiritual Realm when Jet had been training me to become a Reaper. When I opened my eyes again, I found that I was standing in front of a gray stone doorway with the words Purgatory Portal harshly etched into it.
    The difference between this portal and the Crossover Portal was infinite. Instead of a cute little building with a golden sign hung above a set of double doors, green grass, flowers, and an endless blue sky above, there was nothing besides the stone doorway standing by itself in a patch of burnt, brittle grass. A cool wind blew, sending strands of long hair brushing across my face. I shivered, actually feeling the chill sweep across me.
    “I can already feel its coldness seeping into me,” I said, gazing up at the enormous door.
    “I know, but we don’t have time to stare. Either we’re going to do this or we’re not. Decide now,” Jet demanded, taking my hands in his.
    The blackness had already begun to create my cloak. I had mere seconds before I disappeared from his grasp, before I could no longer fight against the tugging of my soul.
    “I don’t know what to do… I don’t want to lose you, but at the same time, I can’t leave my father the way that he is when there’s a possibility I could change everything back to the way that it was before,” I said, my voice more of a plea than anything. I was terrified Jet would think I didn’t care for him, that I was selfish and horrible for what I was about to do.
    I watched as an emotion I could easily name clouded the blues of his eyes. It was the same emotion that had smothered me with a feeling of being isolated and cut off from everything more than once since I had become what I was—loneliness.
    “I have to do this,” I whispered before he could speak, praying that he understood. Gazing into his sapphire eyes, I saw the tiny bit of hope Jet had that I would chose to stay with him die before a wall was put up to hide it.
    “Let’s go then,” he insisted. His jaw set as he pulled me behind him toward the menacing doors of Purgatory.
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    Torment and sin, pain and evil floated through the air in a near suffocating haze. I could feel it surrounding me, brushing up against me, attempting to lure me in deeper and away from the door so I couldn’t escape as though it were alive. I licked my lips and tasted the bitterness of this place on my tongue. Jet’s hand tightened around mine, and I could sense his tension as he glanced at what lie before us. My eyes darted about in wonder, taking in my surroundings.
    Purgatory was eerily beautiful, in a gothic sense. It was as if stepping through the door had taken us deep underground without taking any stairs. Cold, dark dirt lay beneath my bare feet, etched with deep ruts and grooves. There was no sky, only more dirt

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