Poisoned Garden

by Tracy Korn

  "Samael…" Eve stepped in front of me. "I should have known it was you helping Ghob all this time."

  "Ah, the lovely handmaiden. You're on borrowed time," he said, giving her a long, slow grin." I would watch how I spoke to the Angel of Death, were I you."

  Everyone froze, including my former friends. Alec stopped advancing and turned to the black–winged angel. "Uri?"

  Another flash of lightning lit the sky, followed by a roar that shook the ground. When it passed, Alec took several steps back from the edge of the cliff he'd somehow just climbed, and Rhea dove to stand by his side. Even Leo landed not far from Bryce and Alita and stood staring at the angel in disbelief. No one except for Eve and me seemed to have been able to see him as the one she called Samael until now.

  "What happened to Uri?" Rhea shouted into the sky.

  Samael laughed, flames flickering in his dark eyes. "At this very moment, he's sulking on a bench in that ridiculous poisoned garden."

  "No, he was just here with us!" Leo shouted, every muscle in his torso clenched with the effort. "What did you do to him?"

  Samael reached out toward him, and without even touching him, lifted him into the air by his throat. Leo clutched at the invisible hand, but it wasn't any use.

  "I was here with you." Samael growled, the sound registering low in his chest and echoing off the stone surfaces all around us. He threw Leo to the ground, and both Bryce and Alita rushed over to him. "My brother wants nothing more than camaraderie among our kind. It wasn't any harder to persuade him to orchestrate my masquerade than it was to persuade him to allow me into The Garden…just for a glimpse." He turned his gaze on Eve and gave her a lecherous smile.

  "What's he talking about?" I asked.

  Eve raised her chin defiantly at the dark angel, still hovering above in flames.

  "A small group of angels became obsessed with Lilith, the first of womankind, who was made from the same earth as Adam," she began. "Samael was fascinated by her, and talked Uriel into allowing him to walk in The Garden to praise and tend Adam as God had instructed all angels and First Bloods to do," Eve went on, all the while Samael's fire grew, and the same disgusting grin spread across his face. "He persuaded Lilith to leave Adam. To run away with him, instead. And on the twenty-eighth day of his seduction, that's exactly what she did."

  "Of course she did!" Samael roared. "Why would she stay bound to a mud-packed mortal when I wielded the very fire of life?" Samael raised his arms to his sides, and the flames grew all around him.

  Leo met my eyes, his, tortured and pitiful. Clouded black and purple colors smeared all around him, somehow suffocating me even from several yards away.

  "God was furious and commanded Lilith to return to Adam, but she refused to leave Samael." Eve raised her voice over the angel's boasts. "He then commanded that any children who left their cave in the desert would be put to death, and any who survived would be turned into the Lilin…incubi and succubi demons condemned to live in eternal darkness," she shouted, as if to torment Samael. But he shot right back at her.

  "How many times did I overhear Adam telling you the story of his lost love?" Samael mused. "How many times did I hear him compare you to her, and like a mindless clay tub of entrails, you did nothing."

  "Samael wanted revenge for the curse laid upon his children," Eve continued, unflinching. "So he left Lilith to be dragged to Hell by the very three angels who were charged to kill the children. Instead of helping her, he blackmailed Uriel to let him into The Garden again, where he then tried to lure me from Adam by charming Djin snakes—the most beautiful and revered of all animals at the time." Eve took a step toward Samael as he began to bear his teeth at her, seething. "He tricked the snakes into allowing him to perch on their backs and fly him around like the king of all he surveyed. Finally , he sneaked Lucifer into The Garden disguised as a Djin snake, claiming he spoke for God…" she trailed off, the light around her dimming.

  "Still bitter after all these millennia?" Samael sighed. "But so is Lilith. That is, until I return to her the blood of our blood." He turned his gaze on Knox and pulled a flaming scythe from the storm cloud behind him, pointing it at Eve. "First, you will return to the dust."

  "No!" Knox and I shouted at the same time and started running toward Eve, but we were cut off by Bryce's snarling wolf. Alita's fox jumped on Knox's chest and started snapping at him as he struggled to keep her at bay.

  "Stop! Didn't you hear anything?" Leo called to them, but they ignored him even as he and Alec rushed to intervene. "They were just using us!"

  Samael laughed so loudly it shook the ground again. "Ignorant half-bloods. Look at yourselves! I have no qualms about killing all of you." His voice echoed as he lifted Knox a few feet into the air with an invisible hand. "All except the one who will lift the veil, and then return with me to Hell."

  Samael raised his scythe again over us all, a black bolt of lightning escaping. Time seemed to stop for only a second as Max met my eyes while he ran in front of Eve—a second to say everything we hadn't had a chance to say, or didn't know how in the years we'd been friends.

  It must have only been a second, but it was enough time for me to decide I couldn't let his life end this way, here at the beginning of it all. He would go on to become Authorized, or maybe he would manage Mr. Burke's store. I knew it didn't matter because he would make life better for others in either place. My purpose was to make sure there was still a world left for him to make better.

  I ran as fast as I could. I ran until I flew. And I flew until I soared into the black lightning, moving through it as it moved through me. I felt it burn every centimeter of my body from the inside out, starting in the deepest cavern of my heart, spreading through my chest, and finally searing over my skin in every direction. I wondered if this was what Lauren felt in her last few minutes on this earth. I would never know, but I did know that my last few minutes would be spent freeing Knox Ryder. It would be up to Eve to make sure he could save the world.

  I saw the edges of the flames, my own flames, gathering in my peripheral vision and blocking out everything, every distraction until there was only Samael's dark, incendiary eyes staring directly at me. I screamed and heard the eagle so clear and high it felt like it shattered my own eardrums, the piercing, eternal, and final declaration of who I was and what I was meant to do with my life.

  The last thing I saw before the flames engulfed me was Samael's hands—his empty, cowardly hands as he rose them to brace against our inevitable collision—until only the fire remained.

  ***

  The silence had returned. The same all-encompassing vacuum between the worlds that existed on the fringes of multiple realities. One in the woods near my house. One near the edge of the cliff in the most remote corner of the Bermuda Triangle, and hundreds if not thousands more in between.

  I thought about how many there might be…how many I might have seen if I only had more time.

  A sea of stars filled the sky beyond the snowflakes, but they quickly seemed to flare and burn away. I smiled at the idea of the very suns of the universe, the fires of countless worlds, all alight before my eyes. But soon there were fewer sparks, and then there were none at all. There were only red, shimmering wings streaked in gold and royal blue. They were massive, and I tried to look over my shoulder to see who could be carrying me, but I only saw what must have been hundreds of glowing blue and gold plumes behind me, the tips glowing with the last breaths of a fire. I watched the singed edges fade and the feathers swallow the smoke trails that remained. It was as if the smoke were becoming the plumes themselves. I looked over my other shoulder and saw only more of the same, but more importantly, I didn't see Samael.

  I turned to the cliff edge and found Max standing with Eve, his face awash with awe and hers with something I could feel more than see…certainty.

  Alma, Petra, Silo, and Tirius all approached the edge of the cliff and held their hands out, palms down toward the sea. In seconds, a pocket of daylight beamed down a
round me, and the ocean below calmed, becoming smooth as glass. In the reflection, the royal blue and gold plumes stretched farther than I could see, and the crimson, shimmering wings were wider than the entire expanse of the cliff itself. I'd never seen this kind of bird before with its long body and graceful neck, even more colorful and elegant than the birds of paradise at Eden's Bluff. I turned my head to see the side of its long, golden beak, and the bird's head also turned.

  I expected to be startled, to feel the prickling sensation crawling up my arms, but instead, I only felt warmth radiating through me. The reflection started to glow a soft, golden hue like the rays of sunshine beaming down. I felt myself drifting closer to the rocks where everyone stood, drawn in by Eve's friends, the ancient First Bloods. They brought me close to them as Alma took off her orange, beaded shawl and draped it over my shoulders.

  I wasn't completely sure what I'd just seen, but I felt such a sense of peace it was almost surreal.

  Max moved close to me and touched my hair. "It's blue…" he whispered, marveling.

  "The blue of the hottest fire," Tirius, the Salamander Elemental said. "In my thousands of years on this earth, I have experienced many things, but I have never witnessed the birth of a Phoenix…until now."

  Chapter 35

  Eve and the First Bloods brought Bryce, Alita, and me the most beautifully woven clothes to wear since our shifts had destroyed the ones we'd been wearing. Once we were all dressed, several minutes of awkward silence filled the air, and I wasn't sure how to break it. As if they somehow knew, Alma and the other Elementals shepherded everyone except Eve, Max, and me back toward the campfire, and I exhaled in relief.

  "Not to jinx it or anything," Jack said, backtracking with a hand raised toward Eve. "But did the kid just kill the Angel of Death, or...?"

  Eve smiled. "Samael isn't dead, but he has been returned to Hell. For now. We are only in the beginning to gain ground against Ghob's plan to eradicate humanity, even if it means imprisoning her own sisters."

  "We didn't know," Leo said from the shadows he'd wedged himself into with Rhea, Bryce, Alec, and Alita, all of them sitting in self-imposed exile. "We were all taught that the other Elemental queens let Ghob back in The Garden so she could take that discarded fruit and make a replica Garden…Eden's Bluff, not another Tree of Life," he explained. "The other queen's apparently didn't know either, and Uriel was being blackmailed by Ghob and Samael to keep his mouth shut," he added, nodding to me.

  I turned to Eve to corroborate. "I didn't know Samael was blackmailing Uriel either until he confessed that tonight, but I did hear Ghob say she would tell her sister that he's the one who let Lucifer into The Garden…which must mean by proxy because he'd let Samael in."

  "They were just brainwashing us," Rhea said absently. "And they'll just start brainwashing others at Eden's Bluff now that we're gone."

  Alec sighed, then put an arm around her.

  "I just wanted to fit in," Alita added. "Everyone was just so sure it wasn't a big deal. But when we actually had to attack them, I just—" She met my eyes, hers brimming with tears as she pulled her red hair forward and tried to hide her face. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted to kill anyone," she added, turning then to Knox and Eve as tears streamed down her face. "I'm so, so sorry."

  "I've put my faith in the wrong people before too," Eve said. "I forgive you. All of you, if you truly believe you can see a clearer path now that your eyes are opened."

  I wasn't as gracious as Eve, nor did I think I ever could be. But I guess she did have thousands of years of experience. I decided I would try my best when everyone started coming forward, first to Eve, then to me, all of them with heartfelt apologies for leaving me in between the tears in the veil.

  I stiffened when Bryce approached me because he had been so adamant about eradicating humanity, but that all dissipated when he couldn't even get any words out. He just broke down in sobs, and I let him hug me. We stood there for several seconds before he finally regrouped, and while I wasn't really angry with any of them anymore, I would be lying if I said I trusted them.

  I watched as Alma and the others went to the new generation First Bloods of their line and spoke softly, offered comfort and guidance as Frankie, Jack, Knox, and Eve watched on, smiling. But in the deluge of emotion and newfound fellowship, Leo's arms were still wrapped tightly over his chest. He'd already discarded the shirt Tirius had given him and was standing there as he'd arrived in just his black school pants and sandals. He paced slowly, turning away from Tirius when he approached, making his way to the edge of the cliff instead. Max stood across from me, watching it all like I was. We traded looks, and though there was so much we needed to discuss, we both knew it would wait. He nodded to me, and I started to walk toward Leo.

  He wouldn't look at me as I stood next to him staring out over the moonlit sea. I didn't know what to say—how to begin. I didn't know if I forgave him, so I couldn't even offer. I didn't even know if he wanted to apologize, or even if I would believe him if he did. I didn't know if anything he'd said to me was the truth. If anything between us at all had been real, or just the façade that the rest of the island had been.

  "You'd already taught yourself how to fly that night," he finally said. "You just didn't believe you could do it, but I knew you could."

  "Why do you think that?"

  "I felt it when I kissed you," he said without hesitation. "I knew then that Midori was right. You weren't a Sylph at all…" Leo met my eyes just for a second, the muscles in his jaw tensed as he took a deep breath. "You were the brightest fire I'd ever seen."

  He gripped his elbows tightly when a visible shiver gripped him. A shiver? I thought, as he stood next to me radiating heat as he always had. But before I could say another word, his wings shot out behind us, and he leapt from the cliff. He caught the cool breeze and soared under the moon, into the falling snow, and disappeared into the darkness.

  I stood there for several minutes watching the place in the sky where he had been, wondering where he might have gone, or if he'd be back.

  "It's hard to hate someone you can't ever leave," Knox said, walking up behind me with his arms crossed over his chest in the same way Leo's had been. "And that's the trick… You can't leave, so you have to find a way to stop hating."

  I looked up at him, his dark eyes and heavy brows seeming to hold up the weight of the world. He couldn't have been thirty yet, but he seemed much older, and so tired.

  "I don't know where he went, or if he'll be back," I said, turning my eyes to the stars again. "I didn't get to tell him that I forgave him for betraying me."

  "Do you?"

  I glanced at Knox quickly this time, surprised at the question. "I guess I don't know."

  A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Then that's the only answer you need to work out." I smiled at him as he gave my shoulder a squeeze. "And thanks, by the way…for going all supernova and saving the world from the Angel of Death—apparently, my primordial…grandfather."

  "Any time," I gave him a half smile, but his expression suddenly sobered.

  "Any time?"

  I looked at him, surprised again. "Uh, yeah, why?"

  He heaved a long sigh, then drew in a deep breath. "I went ten rounds with Eve on this, but you know, you never win an argument with a normal-aged woman, let alone one who's thousands of years old..." He added with a chuckle.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, feeling my voice thinning as my heartbeat began to echo in my ears.

  Knox sighed. "Someone has to go after those queens in Hell, and as much as want that person to be me, I'm out-voted." He studied my face, his, sympathetic and resolute all at the same time, and I held my breath for whatever he was about to say next. "Halsey..."

  "What?" I forced out the word after several seconds of silence, my throat closing with impatience and fear.

  "That someone...has to be you."

  Poisoned Garden is the second book in Tracy Korn’s new Sci-Fi / Supernatural Thriller seri
es, First Bloods

  (books can be read out of order)

  Prequel 1:” Feral”

  Prequel 2: Nervous Water

  Book 1: Bad Seed

  Book 2: Poisoned Garden

  Other books by this author include The Elements series:

  AQUA

  TERRA

  AER

  IGNIS

  Don’t forget to sign up for Tracy Korn’s reader group and get some free welcome reads!

  http://www.TracyKorn.com