by Elicia Hyder
Her concern was moving, but I didn’t know how we could help him.
“If we can get in touch with Huffman, our friend on the inside, maybe he can find out what conditions Sandalphon’s being held in,” Kane told her.
“And Iliana ruined all the high-security cells they have that I’m aware of, so he won’t be any place too heavily locked down,” Nash added.
Nodding and hugging her arms, she walked toward the water, perhaps to get her emotions under control.
It was clear, life on Earth was beginning to take its toll on Cassiel. Emotionally, this realm was heavy for angels and humans alike, but angels who kept residence in Eden struggled particularly hard with coping.
Stress, anxiety, and negative emotions didn’t exist on our side of the spirit line, allowing us to disconnect completely from the temporal chaos of Earth.
But here there was no escape.
It was one of the main reasons she’d never wanted to live here. And it was the primary reason I felt guilty for my part in her being trapped here.
I touched Fury’s elbow. “I need to talk to her.”
She nodded and stepped back out of my way.
I jogged down to the water’s edge to catch up with Cassiel. When I reached her, she was wiping away tears.
“Don’t look at me,” she said, looking upriver as she pressed her wrist against her nose.
I curled my hand around her arm, hoping my touch alone might bring her some comfort. We all carried a piece of Eden inside us, and that dose of energy could sustain us when we were away.
It was why some angels, like Rogan and Malak, always traveled together. And it was why others avoided their kind altogether on Earth. The only thing worse than the high was the withdrawal when we were forced apart.
It was likely the reason she and Sandalphon had been inseparable since even before my return.
“Cassiel.”
She wiped her cheeks again before turning to face me. Her eyes were wet and tinged with red. She sniffed and blinked hard to keep more tears from falling. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will be. This is hard for all of us. It’s okay to accept a little support.”
“Support from you?” Her words stung. “You called me a traitor forty-eight hours ago.”
“I said you had an agenda, but I never called you a traitor. I believe your intentions are pure. I just don’t trust how far you might go to carry them out.”
She looked across the water, but I closed the space between us and took hold of both her arms. “I still care about you. You’re in pain, and I want to help.”
“I think I can help,” Iliana said, walking up behind Cassiel. She reached behind her neck and unclasped the sanctonite-stone necklace. “Here.”
Cassiel shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly—”
“Of course you can.” Iliana lifted the necklace over Cassiel’s head. “Hang onto it until we can find Sandalphon.”
When the stone rested on Cassiel’s skin, peace washed over her face, and she exhaled like she hadn’t breathed in a week. She gathered her hair over one shoulder and let Iliana fasten the chain around her neck.
Cassiel grabbed Iliana’s hand before she pulled away. “Thank you, Iliana.”
Iliana smiled. “Don’t mention it.”
When Iliana had returned to the group, Cassiel’s eyes followed after her. “She really is remarkable, Warren.”
“She is.” I looked at Cassiel again. “Now you see why I had to come back.”
She nodded. “And I understand how hard it must be that you missed so much.”
My eyes fell for a quick second, but I forced them back up. “This isn’t over, Cassiel. We haven’t lost everything. Not yet.”
Cassiel took a deep breath and looked back at the group. “If anyone can restore the spirit line and help us get home, it’s Iliana. No matter what you believe about my intentions, I’m going to do all I can to help her do that.”
“I know you will.” I offered her my hand, the most vulnerable I could make myself to an Angel of Knowledge. “Truce?”
“No.” She took my hand. “A truce is between enemies. You will never be that for me.”
“For me either.” I pulled her into a hug.
“Come on,” she said, starting up the bank. “Let’s rejoin the group. We’re acting like a couple of humans.”
Fury was watching us.
Cassiel noticed. “She loves you.”
“I know. I love her too.”
“It’s as it should be,” she said.
I’d once said those words when Sloan married Nathan. It was strange to hear them now being said about me. “Are you going to be all right?” I asked Cassiel because I meant what I’d said. I did care about her.
“Yes. Just as soon as I get home.”
“Then let’s hurry up and make that happen,” I said with a smile.
We rejoined the group, and I walked over to stand beside Fury. “What’s the plan?”
Fury sighed. “We have one, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“We need to get to Asheville, but the only way to do that from here is to drive,” Iliana said.
“Well, fly first. Then drive,” Jett said.
“Drive what?” I asked. “And fly where?”
“That’s the part you’re not going to like,” Fury muttered.
“To see Uncle John,” Iliana said.
“Uncle John.” I pointed at Jett. “That Uncle John?”
Iliana nodded. “He’s only a half hour from here by air, and he can help us get across the state.”
My internal “oh shit” meter blew a fuse.
The last interaction I’d had with John McNamara, Fury’s ex, hadn’t been friendly. It hadn’t even been civil. It was days before Fury and I had left for Nulterra, and he’d just found out that Jett wasn’t his biological son.
He’d given us two weeks to save Anya and come back, threatening to drop Jett at the Claymore gate. We’d never returned. And for him, that had been seventeen years ago.
This reunion wouldn’t be pretty.
“Does he know we’re back?” I asked.
Jett shook his head. “We thought it best not to tell him until we had to.”
I raked my hand through my hair.
Iliana grinned. “You OK?”
Shaking my head, I blew out a sigh. “I think I’d rather deal with the Morning Star.”
Chapter Eleven
We stayed by the river until sundown, then flew farther inland toward Raleigh. When I’d known him, John had lived on the outskirts of Durham. He ran a hole-in-the-wall bar and grill called Johnny Bones.
Those days were gone.
Jett said he closed the restaurant when the economy took a nosedive during the virus. He’d sold his house and moved into a camper on some hunting property he owned well outside the city limits. Over the past couple of years, he’d built a one-bedroom cabin, completely off the grid.
No internet.
No cell phone.
No electricity.
We landed just outside a locked gate in the middle of the woods. The land was densely covered with pine trees.
“This is it?” I asked, stretching my arms. My muscles were spent from carrying Fury. The other angels were doing the same. Especially Reuel, who’d carried both Cruz and Anya.
“This is it.” Jett waved to a small camera perched on the gatepost.
I inspected it. “I didn’t think there was electricity.”
“He has his own solar setup. It’s enough to power the lights and a few small electronics.” Jett waved his hand in front of the lock, and it fell open. The gate gave a shrill shriek when he pushed it wide.
“What about running water?” Anya asked as we started up the dirt road.
“There’s plenty of fresh water out here. He has a well and septic tank.”
“Man,” Nash said, turning all the way around. “This is my dream. Think he’d mind a squatter?”
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Jett chuckled. “Yeah, he’d mind. John doesn’t do humans anymore. Not since…”
“Not since I left him?” Fury asked, saying aloud what we were all probably thinking.
Jett didn’t answer.
“He’s not all bitter and angry though,” Iliana said, glancing over her shoulder at Fury and me. “I happen to like Uncle John very much.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “It’s been a couple of years, I guess.” She looked at Jett. “I don’t guess I’ve seen him since we moved you to Wolf Gap.”
Iliana had finally answered my question that she’d been dodging for a while.
“Yeah, and I’ve only been back once since then,” Jett said.
“So you live at Wolf Gap?” I asked him.
Iliana looked back at me, clearly ready to roll her eyes. “He and Rogan have apartments in the bunker. He doesn’t live in the house.”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“Uncle John taught me how to fish out here,” she said, wisely changing the subject. “And how to build a fire and find drinking water.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine John being a friendly lumberjack of an uncle. Before he’d been screwed over by Fury, I had actually liked the guy. Or at least I would have liked him had he not been sleeping with the woman I loved.
I certainly respected the hell out of him, even if he’d never believe it. John was a former Navy Seal with a good heart and a strict moral code.
Right up until he put his hands on Fury. That was the line for me. I threatened to kill him then, and friendly relationships don’t exactly come back from that. No matter how much time has passed.
Thick trees flanked both sides of the dirt road. At the end of it was a small cabin with a wide front porch. A gentle breeze rustled the pine trees, and a strange smell floated with it. Something akin to sweet, stinky feet.
“He’s mellowed out a lot,” Iliana said. “You two would get along if you could actually get past the—”
The unmistakable ratchet of a shotgun echoed through the trees. As if purposely blowing Iliana’s point all to hell, John stepped out of the tree line with the barrel aimed straight for us.
Correction.
The barrel was aimed directly at me. I moved protectively in front of Fury.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here,” he said.
John’s head was shaved, and he had a thick white beard. He was smaller than last I’d seen him, but taut muscles pulled against his shirtsleeves.
Creases had settled in his face like canyons, mostly concentrated across his brow and between his eyes. John had done a lot of scowling in his day—exactly like he was scowling now.
Fury stepped to my side. “John?”
His eyes, but not his gun, shifted to her face and back to mine. Then he did a quick double take, his eyes widening with shock. He lowered the weapon and looked at her, his mouth gaping.
“Allison?”
She held her hands up and slowly walked toward him. “Yeah. It’s me.”
He blinked a few times, probably wondering if his sight was deceitful. “Is that really you?”
“It’s really me.”
I took a step forward, and the barrel jerked right back up toward my face. I froze.
“John, put down the gun,” Fury said gently.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “I’ll put down the gun when he gets off my property.”
Jett stepped between me and the shotgun. “Dad, we need to talk to you. Please put it down.”
Fury’s head whipped toward her son. The intimate title snagged in all our ears. Everyone’s eyes were on Fury, except Jett didn’t seem to notice. Why would he? He’d never had a mother before.
I touched the small of her back and felt her tense, as if she knew I’d peeked behind the curtain, exposing some great secret. Her eyes darted off toward the woods.
“Talk about what?” John demanded. “I have nothing to say to them.”
By them, I assumed John meant me and Fury.
“You’re not even a little curious where they’ve been all these years?” Iliana asked.
“Or why they look exactly the same,” Jett added. “I know you’re curious.”
And he was. It was obvious from the way John’s eyes kept flicking toward Fury. He shifted nervously on his feet, like he was debating whether to relax or start shooting.
I hoped for the former, but the whites of his knuckles around the shotgun’s barrel warned the latter was a real possibility.
“Don’t make me disarm you,” Jett said. “You can’t kill him anyway, remember?”
That got John’s attention. With a frustrated huff, he lowered the gun and swore under his breath. Then he turned on his boot and started toward the cabin.
We all looked around at each other, then Jett started after his dad. Everyone else fell in step behind him, but Fury’s feet were reluctant to move.
“You all right?” I asked quietly.
Her back straightened. “I’m fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Reuel, Kane, Nash, and Cruz waited outside. Mainly because there wasn’t room for everyone in the living room.
“Uncle John, can we have some water?” Iliana asked as he put the shotgun on a rack above the fireplace mantle.
“There are cans in the storage pantry.”
“Cans?” Anya asked. “Of water?”
“Humans stopped using plastic bottles about a decade ago,” Cassiel explained.
“Who the hell are you?” John asked her.
Cassiel bowed her head. “My name is Cassiel. It’s nice to meet you, John McNamara.”
“You’re one of them?” There was that word again. Spat like a curse from his lips.
“I am an Archangel of Eden,” she said.
His blue eyes turned toward Anya. “And you’re the sister? The rescue mission?”
“Yes. Thank you for your sacrifice. They saved my life.”
John’s face softened. Missions. Rescues. Sacrifice. Those were all things he understood. John may have had his moments of being a complete asshole, but he was a hero—no doubt about that.
He finally looked at Fury. “Wanna explain to me why the hell you look like you just left here?”
“Because I did,” she said.
He stared, waiting for an explanation.
“We were in Nulterra for less than two days.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true,” Jett said.
John pointed at him. “A little heads-up would have been nice.”
Jett shrugged and sat down on the sofa. “You would’ve left had you known we were coming.”
John didn’t argue.
Iliana returned to the living room with an armful of canned waters. She passed them out, and when she reached Cassiel, Cassiel held out both hands. “I’ll take the rest outside to the others.”
“I’ll help you,” Anya said, rushing to her side to help.
Couldn’t blame them. The tension in the house was toxic.
When they were gone, Iliana cracked open her own water and sat next to Jett. I watched her touch her ear, then static crackled in mine. “It’s not going well, is it?”
I shook my head.
“Should we give them some privacy?”
I shook my head again.
The last time Fury and John had been in a room together, he’d almost hit her. There was no way I was leaving her alone unless she explicitly asked me to.
John walked over and sat down in an old recliner. “Two days?”
Fury took that as her cue to move closer. She sat across from him on the edge of the coffee table. “I swear, John. For us, less than a week has passed since we saw you at Claymore.”
“It’s been seventeen years, Allison.”
“I know. I still haven’t really come to grips with it.” There was a hitch in her throat. “John, I missed everything.”
“Ye
ah, you did.” There was a bite to his statement.
I waited for him to launch into a tirade about how he had to raise a boy who wasn’t even his son. How she’d dumped her responsibility on him and took off.
He didn’t.
Instead, he visibly swallowed, choking back emotion. “We thought you were dead.”
“I nearly was.” She leaned forward and reached for his hand. “I didn’t disappear on purpose. I never meant to not come back.”
He pulled his hand from hers. “But you didn’t come back. And now, here you are. What do you want?”
“We need to get to Asheville,” Jett said.
“So flap your arms. I assume you flew here.”
“It’s too far. We need the RV.” Jett sat back. “And some cash.”
John sat back with a humph. He stared at Fury. “Shoulda known you needed something.”
“It wasn’t my idea to come here,” she said.
“Of course it wasn’t.” He got up. “I’m sure this would be the last place you’d show up of your own free will. It’s not like you’d come here to apologize or anything.”
She started after him. “I did want to apologize. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“I have no doubt. Can’t imagine you’d willingly spend a couple of decades in Hell.” He stopped and faced her. “If that’s really where you’ve been.”
“You know it is.”
He started walking again. “I don’t know shit.”
“I promise we were stuck there. I had no idea how much time had passed.”
“She’s telling the truth,” Jett said.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Fury huffed.
John opened a door on the far side of the room. Behind it, on a shelf, was a small safe. He punched in a digital code, and the box clicked open. “Still, it doesn’t change anything. You walked out on me, and you walked out on him.” John pointed something at Jett. It took a second for me realize it was a stack of money.
He pressed the money against her chest. “So here’s the money.”
“John, I—”
Ignoring her, he lifted a key ring off the hook on the inside of the door. “And here are the keys to my RV. Take them and don’t ever come back here again.”
