Fire

by Angelina J. Steffort

  “Help me,” she asked and someone moved beside her.

  There was the sound of splashing water and some dripping before warm liquid trickled onto my back. It stung at first when something soft—not skin, but some sort of sponge—touched the destroyed tissue, but then the feeling of being cared for won out over the uncomfortable sensation. Whether it was Jenna or Claire, or any of the others in the room who were working on my wounds, it was more than any of the demons had ever done for me, even if it hurt a little.

  We weren’t in Claire’s house anymore. I could tell by the sounds. The room was much bigger than her bedroom, I noticed by the reflections from the walls. The hard floor under my stomach had been exchanged for a softer material. A thick carpet maybe, or a sofa. One wing was angled upwards and resting against some item. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but better than the cold, stone walls and floors in the demon caves.

  “Maybe Liz knows something,” Claire said over my back. It was her dabbing on my wounds. I should have known by how gentle the touch had been, even with the sponge in between our skins.

  “That’s a great idea,” Jenna agreed. “She helped with Chris’ wings, she knew about the Contextus Daemonicus—who knows what theory she’ll come up with for this.”

  “We do need to get more information. Maybe you should call her.” By the tone of his voice, Jaden seemed to find the thought needed immediate execution.

  So I had identified three of the presences in the room. My stepmother, Claire, and her guardian angel. There were also two pacing pairs of feet in the room. My father and my brother? It was the most logical guess.

  Claire stopped working on me and her footsteps moved away until she was climbing steps somewhere nearby.

  “Liz?” she spoke and the echo of her voice reminded me just how big the house was. We must be in the Gallager estate, where else would they have taken me?

  “Liz, we need you,” she said to an inaudible conversational partner. “We have a situation here… Yes, actually…if it is not too much to ask, now is pretty much when we’d need you to be here… No. It’s best I don’t tell you over the phone.” The sudden lack of footsteps let me guess she had sat down on the stairs. “Thank you, Liz.”

  She was quiet after that, disappearing into the background noise in the room. Someone was pacing behind me, there were the heartbeats and the whispering.

  “She is holding up well, considering….”

  “I was lucky Adam didn’t kill me.”

  “He’s not evil,” Jenna’s voice interrupted the other two. “He didn’t know what he was doing. Those are two completely different things.”

  While she was still scolding them, the fourth voice spoke next to my ear. “We are here for you, Adam. Come around when you’re ready.” It was my father, encouraging me as he had always done. He had always believed in me, and it seemed that hadn’t changed.

  “Black wings,” Ben sighed and walked around to stand behind me. “Why black? Why not red or purple?”

  “I wish I knew the answer,” Jaden replied and walked toward the same direction Claire had. “We should feed her,” he spoke his concern. “She’s been through so much.”

  “We all have,” Ben said without obvious concern about Claire. But there was something else in his tone that made me a bit uncomfortable. I couldn’t name it, though.

  I wanted to wake up already, but the haze was still too heavy, pushing down on my body. The last time I had been half-conscious, I had been trying to gather intel on the Gallager family—my justification to stay with them a little longer. This time, I didn’t need information about who they were or what they were capable of. Today, I remembered exactly. I didn’t want to be the mute observer, I wanted to tell them that I knew who they were, I wanted to thank my father for his trust in me, my stepmother for caring for him and my brother when I had been on the dark side. But this time, I didn’t remain silent by choice. I was caught in my own black prison. Whether it was just in my mind or something was seriously wrong with my body was too early to tell.

  “Hi,” Claire spoke in the entrance hall, voice small compared to the architecture of the house.

  “Hi,” Jaden replied. His footsteps ceased like Claire’s before, and I assumed he was in the lucky position to sit right next to her.

  “You look horrible,” Claire said with the slightest amusement in her tone.

  He chuckled as a response.

  “So…” He dragged out the word. “He kissed you?”

  There was curiosity and another emotion I couldn’t name in his voice.

  Claire coughed. “Yeah.” It was all she said.

  Jaden didn’t push her to tell anything she wasn’t ready to, and she obviously wasn’t ready. There was a long silence outside in the entrance hall, but inside the room, Jenna, Dad, and Ben were still discussing.

  “Is it a sign for evil?” Ben asked, still musing about the color of my wings. “I mean, how can we know that he won’t attack the second he wakes up?”

  “Let’s wait for Liz,” Dad suggested. “Maybe she has an explanation for the color.”

  He didn’t comment on my brother’s fear of my demon-nature. Jenna, however, did.

  “We need to be prepared for any outcome. There is no guarantee he will remember that he remembered, if you know what I mean.”

  “And we can’t let him anywhere near Claire until we know he’s our Adam.” It was Ben again. He seemed to have the least hesitation about speaking his worries concerning the most likely outcome of the near future events: that I would harm one of them. I couldn’t deny how attractive their angel souls were to me. Each of them was a feast on two legs. Nothing was going to change that.

  The sound of the doorbell confirmed I had guessed right about the location. It was a familiar, bright ring, lacking the shuffling footsteps of our butler, Geoffrey, who usually answered the door. Instead, Claire’s light feet almost ran down the stairs, rushing to get the door.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  “The traffic was horrible,” the woman from the library explained. “I’d have been here sooner if it wasn’t for that truck that drove like we are having ice and snow. Trust me, I did everything to speed them up—”

  Why did her amused voice sound so threatening to me?

  “Anyway… What’s so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow morning? I don’t dump a hot date for just anyone.”

  “He’s still sleeping?” The sound of Jaden’s voice appeared beside my ear and I would have jumped up, prepared to defend myself, if the haze hadn't kept me in its claws like a body-shaped coffin. I shuddered at the thought.

  “Right,” Ben confirmed and shifted somewhere beside me.

  “Whatever we do, we need to shield Claire from any danger, understood? When she moves, we move. Never leave a gap for him to jump through.”

  I assumed he was talking about me. Why would I want to hurt Claire? The moment I asked myself the question, I knew the answer was in my empty, demon heart. I needed to feed, and she was such a delicious light.

  As the only answer he got was silent agreement, I focused on the conversation at the door again.

  “I am so sorry, Liz.”

  “If you hadn’t called, I’d have had to find a different excuse to bolt.” The woman laughed and moved, shoes clicking on the marble floor. “Nice house. Do you live here?”

  “No. It belongs to Adam’s parents—to his stepmother, to be precise.”

  Their voices moved around the entrance hall.

  “So, what’s this emergency you called me for?”

  Emergency. I wanted to laugh at the irony. I hadn’t even planned to hunt her down this time, and yet here I was, memory recovered, the medical emergency of my real family.

  “Maybe it’s best if I just show you—”

  “Okay. Show me.”

  Two of the angels in the room shifted near my face.

  “Liz, meet the Gallager family. Everyone, this is Liz.”

 
There was a brief silence in which the new addition to the heartbeat-ensemble started racing.

  “It’s an honor to meet you,” Liz said, followed by the click of her heels.

  “Please,” Jenna said in return, sounding somewhat nervous. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  She crossed the room. “You saved my husband. We owe you so much. Please come in, take a seat.”

  Saved Dad? From what? How long had I been gone exactly? What had happened to him? How I wanted to wake up and just ask them, but the haze didn’t lift.

  “Such a pleasure to meet you, Liz,” Dad greeted the woman with a voice full of gratitude—and hope. “My lovely wife is right. We owe you everything. If it wasn’t for you, I would still be flightless.” He chuckled.

  Flightless? Had he hurt his wings? An accident?

  “Please meet our son, Ben.” As he said my brother’s name, someone moved around the room. He must have been the one standing behind the couch. By now I was almost one-hundred percent sure it was the couch I was resting on.

  “Well, this is different,” Liz took a deep breath.

  “Hi, Liz. Nice to see you again. Thanks for coming.” Jaden. He sounded almost enthusiastic about her presence. It was unusual for the brooding, overly-cautious guardian angel.

  “Nice to see you, too, Jaden.”

  All the pleasantries they were exchanging. This was so much different from the chilly gatherings in the demon lair. Volpert had called me his son countless times, and yet, he had made me a tool of his bidding, and cruelly turned me against the ones I had died to protect. The contrast was so strong, I wanted to laugh and cry, just to express how it made me feel.

  “Who is that?” Liz’ tone was suddenly as cold as my fellow demons’. She must have noticed me there, the black sheep in the middle of the white herd.

  “That’s the reason I called you,” Claire filled her in. “This…is Adam.” She came closer. I could hear her heart hammering in her chest and I almost expected to feel her gentle touch on my shoulders again, but I was disappointed.

  “He’s back,” she said as if she couldn’t believe she was actually speaking the words.

  “He is,” Claire’s guardian angel confirmed that it was true. “And we need your help.”

  “Whatever it is you need, I’ll do everything I can to assist you. The code of The Guard demands it and my heart verifies it.”

  There it was again. The Guard. Who was she that angels relied on her—even the most powerful of us…of them…I wasn’t one of them any longer, wings or not.

  “My time to serve is now and I am ready.”

  “And we honestly appreciate your assistance,” Jaden spoke, humbled by her readiness to assist. “But first, let’s sit.”

  There were sounds of chairs being moved and Dad announced he’d get refreshments. It would normally be Geoffrey’s task to do so, but then, would they want the human butler to know about their secret?

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Jenna said as Dad’s footsteps returned, accompanied by the rattling sound of china on a tray.

  “Milk and sugar?” he asked.

  “Liz?” Dad repeated after a moment of silence.

  “Excuse me. Just milk.”

  “We are normal people here in Aurora. Please don’t treat us as anything different.”

  “I’ll try,” Liz answered.

  While they started on their snack, I pondered my situation again. Four angels and two humans were in the same room with me. The guardian angel I had knocked out several times so far, and he was supposedly the strongest of them. Maybe Maureen was right after all. I was strong, even without the stored energy in my chest. Would I be strong enough to escape again in case they decided I was too dangerous? Claire wouldn’t let them come to that conclusion. I relied on her feelings for me to make sure I’d come out of this unharmed.

  “So, how can I help?” Liz asked, finally coming to the point.

  “Well, it’s hard to overlook what happened to Adam,” Jaden said, as if it was obvious. To me, it wasn’t. I had my memories back, but besides that…however, I’d gotten new wings…

  “What happened, exactly?” Liz asked the question I would have asked. Blame it on my education in medicine that I wanted to understand how things worked and why. Symptoms were always tricky…but if you knew about the source of them, it was a whole different story.

  “It’s best when Claire tells the story,” Jaden suggested. “After Adam knocked me out, she was the only one to witness.”

  Claire sighed somewhere at the other end of the room, at a safe distance, I guessed.

  “The quick version—Jaden helped me study at my house. I took a shower before returning here and when I came back to my room, Adam had knocked Jaden out. Adam wasn’t there to attack me. He asked me the same question he’d asked before. He wanted to know who I am and why there is a connection between us—apparently, he kept dreaming about me the same way I did about him.”

  As she spoke about the dreams, they themselves seemed as if they belonged in a nightmare, a time when Claire was a blank spot in my memory…and heart.

  “I told him that he marked me when he spread his angel wings…that he hasn’t always been like this, and that part of his soul is still with me…and that I love him.” She rushed the words, the last part fading into a breath. She didn’t want to share this, I could tell by the sound of her voice. The faintest idea of her love for me, however, made me feel stronger. The darkness became a bit less dense.

  “What happened next?” Liz interrogated, focused on her task as a Guard, whatever that meant, but it was clear she was taking this seriously.

  “Then I felt all strange, like I would pass out. At first, I thought Adam was doing it to me, but he wasn’t. And when it became almost unbearable, it stopped. His eyes glowed and he had his new wings. And he remembered everything.”

  As she kept rushing over the story as if it hurt to speak the words, I noticed she left out the one part most significant to me. Our kiss.

  “He remembers everything?” Liz asked as if she didn’t quite believe it.

  “That’s a good question,” Jaden wondered aloud. “One we have yet to answer. But it is very likely he does. At least he remembers Claire... or he wouldn’t have kissed her.”

  Ben coughed and then there was an awkward silence.

  If I could only open my eyes and speak, I would tell them exactly how much I remembered. Every little detail of every memory, but the haze was still too strong.

  “He has wings,” Liz noticed.

  “He does, and that’s why we need your help. He has wings. Going by what you told us about the Contextus Daemonicus, Adam is a demon. And demons—”

  “Demons don’t have wings,” Liz interrupted Jaden.

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s the first thing we are wondering about. Why does he have wings? Does it mean there is some part of his angel-self alive in there?” Dad was the one asking the serious questions, the ones not just stating the symptoms, but finding the source.

  “Like it was in hibernation—” Ben suggested, back in control of his voice.

  “And now that he remembers who he is, his body also remembers,” Jenna threw in a theory.

  They were being them. Thinking together like they always did. Jenna and Dad, and Ben…just this time they had support from an apparently knowledgeable Guard and a guardian angel, a powerful being. Wherever Claire’s place in the process was, was yet unclear.

  “So have you ever heard of anything like this? Or read about it? Even the wildest theory would help,” Jaden eventually asked.

  While I was still trying to get my thoughts together, I wondered how much my family really knew. I had seen the wings on them, and now they were discussing supernatural matters as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Does it mean anything that his wings are black?” Claire asked quietly, as if embarrassed to interrupt my family’s conversation.

  “Very likely it does,” Be
n was the one to answer.

  “I wish I knew,” was the only thing Liz had to say to that. Not so knowledgeable after all? “Why is he injured?”

  A better question was: why was I trapped in this half-conscious state?

  “We don’t know exactly,” Jaden answered.

  “He collapsed in pain and then we found the wounds. There was blood everywhere around the roots of his wings. His skin was ruptured like the wings just tore through it,” Claire explained. But she got one detail wrong. The wounds weren’t from my wings tearing through the skin, but from my body rejecting them. It was possible that they would fall out eventually. Who knew how long my demon-physique could tolerate the foreign object.

  “I healed the wounds as much as I could, but the ruptures won’t seal more than what you can see now.”

  “You tried everything?” Liz asked.

  “Everything,” Jaden confirmed.

  “So, can you help?” Claire asked, eyes on the target.

  “There is nothing about Contextus Daemonicus that I haven’t told you.”

  There it was again, Contextus Daemonicus. I wanted to scream out loud that I wanted to know what exactly that is.

  “Let’s look at the facts,” she continued as if she’d heard my silent plea. “Adam is an angel-demon-human hybrid. We don’t know exactly how strong his demon-lineage is, but apparently, his angel-gene was stronger, as it catalyzed first.

  “His angel and human parts were destroyed by demons—or so we think.” She was right about that. My own clan had killed me. “But his wings—black as they may be—are living proof that there is something more than a pure demon inside this boy.”

  “Demons don’t have wings,” Jaden objected, this time it wasn’t more than a whisper.

  “The wounds, of course, are shocking and deserve all our concern. Personally, I believe this is a good sign. If I think of Adam’s wings as something non-demonic, that would explain the wounds. His body wasn’t prepared for them. When Adam died, his angel powers must have died with him. And when he woke up as a demon, his body must have forgotten that it has the ability to sprout wings.”

  She was partly right. It wasn’t that my body had forgotten, it rejected them. But at least she was trying to deduce something that made sense. It wasn’t mere guessing, it seemed.