by Mason Sabre
He would.
In a moment.
Something hard thumped against his chest, then he was moving, and something else scraped along his back like it was being dragged. No. He was the one being dragged. He reached out with heavy cold hands and grabbed for something … anything, but all he came away with was a hand filled with cold wet sludge. He let go, seeming to come awake in his mind.
“Stop,” he said. “Let go.” He batted away a hand and then tried to roll over … roll away, but he missed, and the hand pressed down on his chest. Pressed down with such a weight he gasped from it and bolted up.
Eyes widening, light slammed into the back of his pupils. He held his chest, feeling for what had hit him … no. No. It was his heart. His heart restarting and waking him up, filling his body with reanimated life and dragging him from the depths of the abyss.
He shot up, shot to his feet and spun around, sloshing through the waste where he had just been. “Where is she?” he demanded, fists clenching at his sides, memories washing back into his head. His top lip curled back, exposing his fangs. His eyes shone out in deep shades. He stormed forward, but an arm stopped him, grabbing him like the barrier to a gate and knocking him back. “Move out of my way, Nina,” he shot, fixing those blazing eyes on her. “Now.”
“You need to calm down.”
Henry’s mind burned at the memory of the woman’s words. Kill Gemma … He’d die before he ever did that, and the thought of it reignited the fury in his chest … emotions he thought were long gone. Gone when Mary had been killed. “I have work to do,” he ground out, trying to push past Nina. “Please remove yourself from my path.”
“Not like this,” she said, shaking her head. She put her hand against his chest and gave a gentle push back. “You’ll do something crazy.”
He met Nina’s eyes then. Her face was soft, gentle, caring. The sight and presence of her threatened to tip Henry off his angry ledge. But he needed that anger. He needed the fuel, so he could put right all the things fate kept on messing up.
He blinked and stepped back, trying to shake the fog from his mind. A fog that Nina seemed to create. He took in a sharp, deep inhale of the air around him and regretted it instantly. The putrid stench of the water and sewage mixed into it, burned his nasal cavity. His senses hadn't been this sharp since the first day his heart had started beating. Like that pulse around his body and the blood flowing, made everything work better.
“That smell would be you,” Nina said, curling her lip and moving away from him, obviously sure enough he had calmed down and didn't need her intervention. She wiped her hands on a piece of tissue. Clearing away dirt and grime.
“I need to go,” he said. “I need to check on her.” The need to go to Gemma was almost overwhelming. Too much—too much like when he had been Human, and he had run the length of the lane to their house, with fear wedged in his chest. He couldn't go through that. Not again.
“She’s fine,” Nina said. “It’s you I am worried about.”
“No …” He couldn't believe it until he had seen it. Until he had seen her with his own eyes.
Nina stepped in front of him once more, tussles of red hair hung down, framing her face, making her skin almost porcelain white, like her dress. It was seamless, perfect. She was ready for some kind of fantasy ball and had got lost along the way. But the back of her dress, where her wings were meant to be, ugly stubs poked out leaving only a smattering of feathers. Her wings had been something … something amazing, but they had been cut from her. They had been so beautiful that a creature like him couldn't fail to see the perfection in them. It was such a loss to see them missing, even now. “I thought you were dead,” Nina said. “Your heart stopped. I came to find you, and I found Gemma. I promise you, she is fine.”
“I need to check.” Of all the people in his life, Nina was one he trusted. She’d never done him wrong. Not so far. Even when she had been the one to lead him to the Humans all those centuries ago for his crimes, she had given him warning, given him a choice. But with Gemma … Mary, it was different. He trusted only himself to keep her safe and even he had failed that once.
“You need to go home and get washed up. Maybe burn off your skin or something,” she said, turning up her nose when she leaned in to sniff at him. Nina was his angel. His guardian. She’d been tasked with the job long ago, and so far, she hadn’t ever done him wrong. Hell, she’d even come to him when she needed help and sacrificed herself and her husband for the cause. “You’ve been lying there, in that filth for days. It’s taken me a while to find you.”
“Days? No. That is impossible.” Hours? Yes. It had been dark when the woman had hit him. Dark when he had come here, but she had hit him not long ago.
“Ask him,” Nina said, pointing to Joel who was now awake and actually standing. He adjusted his bags and rags, puffing them up for a comfier seat, if that were even possible. “I saved you.”
Henry didn’t ask Joel to confirm anything. The beggar would be lucky if he could confirm his own name. He probably wouldn’t even have realised Henry was there.
Henry patted himself down and when he moved, his legs shook. His foot caught on the edge of something covered in slime and he slipped, landing back down in the mess. He gave a splash and cursed. “If you had wanted to save me,” he ground out, “Then you would have let me die.” Henry’s words were harsh, cutting. But some days he wished only for death. At least that way, as he waited for Gemma and his soul to join him, his years of pain and suffering would be over. He’d often considered taking his own life. After all, that would release his soul too, but Nina had told him he’d be punished for it.
Nina walked away, walking out into the light and it was then Henry realised that she hadn’t been standing on the ground at all, but hovering. Even a pretty little Seraph like her didn't want to get her feet dirty in the sludge of waste and filth. She touched down when she reached the grass. It looked like someone had had a bonfire there. The grass was dead, charred, and he pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the tatters of fabric he hadn't noticed before.
“If I let you die, then what? Your master plan would be for nothing.” She turned to face him. “Those above would have set you off on another life … without her.”
He rolled his shoulders, arching his back and stretching out the kinks that weren't really there. But he felt he should. “She would catch up.”
Nina angled her head at him. “Are you sure about that?”
No. He wasn't. The fates it seemed liked to mess with him. Like to take from him what was his. “Gemma has a price on her head,” he said finally. The words irked him, drove daggers into his mind and it was an effort to hold all of that in. The MacDonalds … that very word was an echo in his nightmares. The red rag to the bull. Blame lay at their doors for this. Just the utterance of that name. They still existed. Still lived. Not for long. He would see they were gone. He would bring every ounce of pain he’d ever had and lay it at their doors. He’d relish in their screams. He’d watch as they died slowly, and when they begged for mercy, he would give them nothing. They owed him. They owed him in more blood than they could ever afford.
Nina was staring at him, waiting for an answer. Her delicate face was angled in a way so that her eyes bored into him. But only a fool would mistake her angelic face for sweet and soft. She was one of the Seraphim. A higher order of the angels. Even without her wings and her power, she was a force to be reckoned with. “How did you find me with no power?”
“I have some,” she said. “Enough. I still have to be allowed to do my job.” She let out a breath. “Your expression, Henry. It makes me concerned.”
He gave her a shrug. “You need not worry about me.”
“But I do. It is my job to guide you. If you keep taking the wrong direction …”
He pulled his jacket off. It was ruined anyway. It dripped with brown water, and the back of it was caked in something Henry didn't even want to think about. He tossed it to the side. “You only find m
e when you have a purpose. What is it?”
She could lie to him if she wanted to. She could tell him every story she could dream of, but he saw the flicker in her eyes and knew with absolute certainty that she wanted something.
“Darius came to me,” she said.
Henry nodded.
Darius was one of the Seraph, a guardian with his own charge on the earthen plane. Henry had seen Darius only once, and that was when they had cleaned up a mess Nina had accidentally caused. The reason she lost her wings.
Despite the fact that Henry liked to keep to himself and tried in vain to avoid the angels, he moved closer … trusting Nina. “What is it?”
“Your time is almost up.”
Henry swallowed, giving himself a moment to hear those words and maybe understand what they meant before he asked her for clarification. It was like waiting for one moment in a lifetime and then it’s almost there … almost reachable. “My time?” he asked, lowering his voice as if that might make the blow lesser.
“Not like that,” she said, as if sensing what he was thinking. “Your test. I should not tell you.”
“Then why are you?”
Her shoulders sagged as she sighed, and she pursed her lips before answering him. “I know what you did was wrong. I know that you needed to be punished … but I also feel your pain, your love. I feel the crack in your soul like it is something I can touch. They will test you Henry. Test you and see if you have learnt enough to be worth redemption. It won’t be easy.”
“It never is.”
“No,” she said shaking her head. She paused for a moment and let her smile filter to her lips. A sad smile. “You will need to think with your brain, Henry. Not your heart. Even if it goes against everything you feel. You must pass.” She reached out to him and touched lightly across his cheek. It was warm air going across his skin. “Promise me.”
He said nothing. Only stared. Nina moved back.
She faded as she came away from him, faded like she was blending with the very world around her. “If you can’t promise me you’ll behave, at least give me one thing.”
“What is that?”
She smiled at him again. A smile that lit her eyes. “Get a bath.”
Chapter 18
Gemma
Although five days had passed since Gemma and Cade had lain in bed, she could still bring to mind the feel of him there, the feel of his skin under her hands, his lips against hers. She could smell him—the rich scent of him, all male and all Cade. A scent so vivid in her mind it threatened to be her undoing. Anger burned in her gut, but it could easily have turned itself into desperate panic. A need so great that if she gave into it, she would run from the house, run to Cade and suffer the consequences afterwards.
She sat on the edge of her bed, Cade’s scent all over her body, in her head, in her memories. It was unique to him. It calmed both her and her tiger. He was home. He was safe. He was where she wanted to be right then, and it almost choked her. Bringing the feel of his skin, the firmness of it burning next to hers and then adding the warm scent of him brought visceral need flaming inside her so much it made her tiger stand to alert, ready to get what they had taken from her–her wolf.
Standing, she fisted her hands at her sides. Her father might as well have put her in a cage for all it was worth. This was no worse than that. At least a cage would have real bars … real danger, instead of her own weakness to not fight against the rules imposed on her. They left her motionless, stuck. She just had to walk out of the house and all the way to Cade’s and she could have him. One word and he would be hers. He would leave. She walked over to the window and pressed her head against the cool glass just to feel something else … something more. Her body ached with the need to let go, and her tiger stretched out long claws inside her, dragging them down her flesh until she was raw, but at least that was a pain she could deal with. She could understand.
“Another day. Just one more,” Gemma whispered to her tiger. They just had to hold on till after the pack run and then she could think, could calm.
Stretching her legs and arching her back as she let her arms spread out at either side. When her muscles gave that comforting twinge of the stretch, she held onto it for a few seconds and then relaxed again.
She let her eyes close and her head fall back. It was all such a mess. With a breath, Gemma strode across her room to the bedroom door and out into the hallway. This place … this place she had once called home and now it was nothing but as stark and as empty as she was on the edge of feeling. The door opposite made her tiger bow down, not in respect or rest, but with a kind of sadness she couldn’t ever touch or heal. Gemma took a step across to it and rested her hand on the handle and her head against the wood.
“I will find you. I swear to god, if it’s the last thing I do.” The only other arms Gemma ever felt comfort in were her brother’s. She closed her eyes and pulled the images into her like pulling a blanket around herself. She could almost pretend that it was years ago, and Stephen was in there on the other side of the door. “I miss you.” She gripped the handle hard enough to make her knuckles whiten and held her breath as if that alone could transport her back into the past where things made sense and she had everything.
Without thinking, she turned the handle and her heart gave a leap at the familiar sound of the door’s mechanism as it clicked into place. She couldn’t help the saddened jolt that caught in her when she pushed the door open. So much light filled the room. It hadn't been touched since the last night he had been there … since that day. It looked like he had just stepped out for a moment and would be back.
She let herself step into the room and close the door behind her. She’d not been in here since he died … since they were told he had died. She hadn't been able to bear it. The memories of all she had lost sat in this room. Cold, dark reminders of all the hope she might have had for her life. It even reminded her of Cade and Connor. Stephen was that link with them both … he was her big brother, and he was so much more. More like a father to her than Malcolm.
She walked over to his bed and sat down. It was like slipping on an old shoe, comfy, familiar, hers. She spread her hands out to her sides, spanning her fingers across the now dusty sheets. He was out there somewhere. He was out there and alone. She would find him.
On his bedside table, there was still the glass he had used. The water was gone now. The book he had been reading … book, she smiled. She often teased him. Told him he was reading comics and he would argue that they were novels, just made of graphics and she would never understand. But it sat, open where he had left it.
Had he known he would die that day? Had he known when he left this room, it would be the last time. Stephen always knew everything. He knew everything in a way that was scary and creepy all at the same time. For Stephen to have faked his own death, to have put himself in the position to be away from his family, he must have had no choice. He might have been her big brother. He might have been strong, a soldier in his father’s ranks, but he needed family. He’d always needed family and now he was alone. So alone. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, brushing her fingers across his things. She gave a final sigh. Resting her hand against his pillow before leaning down just to inhale. He was there, comforting, warm … Stephen. She let out a shuddering breath that made her bottom lip tremble. “I wish you could have told me.”
Putting Stephen in the same simmering box with Cade, Gemma left his room and closed the door quietly behind her. No one went in there … no one. Except, as she stopped at the door, her mother caught in her mind. She had sat in there, hadn't she? She had spent those first nights sitting quietly in his room, acting like a mother torn with grief.
“Dad wants to see you,” Evie said, startling Gemma from her thoughts and perhaps saving her from the anger threatening to pull inside her chest.
“Now?”
Evie nodded. “Were you in Stephen’s room?”
Gemma stared for a few long seconds, not trusting her voice.
Evie still believed Stephen to be dead. Maybe it was better that way. The youngest of the family, she had taken it the hardest. Even now, although Evie had gained weight, she was still too thin, too underweight. She’d almost starved herself to death. “I needed to think.”
Evie stared at the door, her eyes shining with emotions. “Sometimes I pretend he is in there.”
Gemma smiled. “Me too.” She walked over to her sister and wrapped her arms around her, burying her face in her hair. The hug was mostly for Evie. Mostly to chase away the sadness she could see in her face, but it calmed Gemma too. Gave her something of home that made sense.
“I miss him so badly,” Evie said against Gemma’s chest. She clutched her hands around Gemma and held on.
Gemma nodded and let Evie stand there for a while, until she was ready to let go. “I better see what Dad wants. I wonder what I did today that pissed him off. Is he in his office?” She pulled back enough so she could see Evie’s face. So she could run a hand along her hair and smooth it down.
“Yeah,” Evie said. “Mum too.”
“Wow. I am in trouble.” She gave Evie one last sisterly embrace and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Evie.”
“Love you too.”
When she got to her father’s office, Gemma didn’t knock before entering. Instead, she just pushed the door open and let herself in. Not because she was familiar with it, she could do that. This was still her father, still her alpha and still the head of the Council. No, she did it out of a lack of respect. She did it to show him she was angry.
“Still in a sulk, I see,” he said when she walked in. He glanced at her over the top of his glasses, the way he might have done when she was a child and in trouble.
“This is not sulking.” Her mother was sitting on the chair near the window. She was quiet, but watching, the way she always did. Gemma eyed her for a moment and then turned her attention back to her father. “This is the reaction to betrayal.”
