Guilt makes my throat feel tight. “But Heaven was telling me to save him in my dreams.”
“They were presenting you with the option.”
My stomach clenches. “Why did they change the plan and take you away from me?”
“I can only speculate. I was not allowed to know the mission other than that I was assigned to protect you as your guardian, like I always am. When I was taken from you, I know that without me to advise you otherwise, you clung to Russell. You made the choice to keep him—to change him—to make him like you. Heaven didn’t break their promise to you not to let him stay here...you let them out of it.”
I nearly push the door from the hinges as I fling it open in my attempt to get away from what he’s telling me. Exiting the car, Xavier rounds the hood and is in front of me in a moment. He pulls off his shirt, his muscles flex as they come into sight. Scarlet-colored wings punch their way from his back. I glance beyond him to Reed who already has his shirt off as his dark gray wings match the aggressive expanse of Xavier’s.
Xavier grasps me by my upper arms, forcing me to look at him again. “You have to come with me now, before you get them all killed.”
“Russell,” Reed calls out, “let me out!”
Russell hesitates in indecision, watching the sky as it darkens. The gray overcast day changes. Black clouds move, roiling like waves. “Y’all, I’m not makin’ the sky do that! Can you smell the magic, Red?” Russell goes to Anya, getting in front of her; his wings extend to shield her. Anya turns away from him, her black wings serrate to full extension, as she makes ready to protect his back.
“Russell!” Reed’s hands press against the stout field of energy holding him at bay.
Zephyr pulls knives from holsters strapped to his thighs. “Buns, take Brownie inside.”
Buns shakes her head. “We have our sticks. We’ll be fine.” Zephyr growls a warning at her, which she chooses to ignore.
When I glance back at Xavier, his face is turned toward the sky beyond his car. He moves to me so fast he becomes a blur. His arm slips around my waist. He pulls me close to him, whispering in my ear, “Run on now, honey, back behind your wall before the devils see you go.” He nudges me in the direction of where I came through to meet him. His macabre words chill me, leaving me frozen in place. I can’t leave him here.
Eerie whistling sounds from the sky surround Reed’s manor house. The wild calls come from all sides—in stereo; they carry with them a sickening lullaby that raises goose bumps on my arms. The sun is gone like an unwanted guest. Its absence makes my feet heavy with fear.
“Where’s my ring, Evie?” Xavier demands. His lips brush the shell of my ear. “Tell me quickly, and then slip back in and I’ll lead them away from you.”
I quake as I grab his hand, tugging it. I try to make him move with me back toward the barrier. “You’re not staying out here alone. I’ll protect you—”
But all at once, the freak show begins. The wicked black-winged shapes of reconnoîtres, demon scouts from Sheol, pour out of the shadows of the clouds. Hundreds of them fly like migrating birds, following swirling wind patterns and shifting in geometric formations until they dive en masse. Black leathery wings puncture the air with moaning soughs that disturb the gravity of snowflakes. A group of these creatures break formation from the rest to circle Xavier and me; wings blur by with the reek of brimstone trailing them in a rancid haze.
Next to me Xavier rips from my grasp. Nearly obscured from my sight by black monsters, his wings are forced wide by sharp talons. The reconnoîtres lift him into the air. He fights back with his spade-shaped blades, slicing limbs and wings from the ones in front of him. Yellow-colored pus blood spews out of them while shrill screams hurl from the reconnoître’s ghoulish, taffy-puller mouths.
A dark flurry of reconnoîtres snatch Xavier into mid-air. He kicks like a mule, sending a few of them tumbling away from him. As they go, they claw feathers from his wings that swirl in the air and compete with snowflakes for supremacy.
A slash to my ribcage makes me suck in my breath as a reconnoître’s long, silvery talons dig under my skin. They’re not faceless like I had thought. The space above this one’s jagged mouth is covered with a dozen camouflaged eyes. Pools of black barely contrast against his skin as they blink at staggered intervals so that he never lacks a moment of sight. The scent of sulfur wafts from his gaping maw as he leans forward, presumably to eat me. His forked tongue hisses out as saliva drips from several rows of bared teeth. Suppressing the urge to scream, I hold up my hands, expelling bursts of light from them. Blood-curdling shrieks fly from him as overripe-tomato eyes pop and yellow blood mists the air. His skin runs like melted wax before he drops to the ground, writhing from pain.
“Evie,” Reed’s rough voice makes me glance his way. He uses his forearms to push against the magic keeping him protected. “LET. ME. OUT!” The ring on Reed’s hand begins to glow with blue fire; the center of which becomes a beacon. Light cuts through the film of magic in front of Reed, allowing him to plunge through the barrier. Seeing him emerge on my side of the wall, my mouth hangs open in shock.
At a run, Reed kicks into the air. Using the same kind of blades that Xavier has, he slices through reconnoîtres, sending pieces of them to the ground. Smoke rises from the carnage he creates; severed limbs turn to ash, dirtying the pristine white of the new-fallen snow.
I concentrate, collecting energy from all around. It flows, filling me with the sizzle of electricity. When I release it, it punches holes in the black clouds. Light shines through to batter the same-sized holes in the flocks of flying Sheol scouts amassed beneath white-capped clouds. It kills all the demons it touches, turning them to ashes.
The golden glow of Russell’s clone rushes past me. It enters the body of a reconnoître poised to cleave me in two with his moon-shaped blade. The black figure convulses in agony; beams of light burst from inside him before firecracker-like flames turn him to dust in a shimmer of sparks. Similar things are happening to the reconnoîtres closest to us as hundreds of Russell’s brilliantly lit images render them to dust.
Following his lead, I go down on one knee, forcing clones from me. Hundreds of them branch out in gold-colored streams of light to kill my enemies. I almost smile as the harrowing, black creatures ignite around me, but when I stand, the sky changes again. A new wave of darkness settles over us, the holes in the clouds fill in. Cold wind shifts from it, blowing my hair away from my face. My eyes circle the area. Russell is guarding Anya, Zephyr is doing the same to Buns and Brownie, but they’re all still protected near the house. Claw marks bleed in Xavier’s skin, lending an air of authenticity to his homicidal expression while he mutilates reconnoîtres with impunity. Reed is just in front of me, acting as my shield, but there are thousands of hellish scouts swarming in. We’re going to be overrun soon.
I try to bring more energy to me, but it retreats, shifting perceptibly to dance over my skin; it continues to draw away from me across the snow-covered lawn to the wooded area just beyond. There’s someone there, someone powerful enough to divert energy from me. There’s a scent, too, a mark left in the air, which at once seems so morbidly familiar that it makes me recoil from it in revulsion. All my instincts alert me to the presence just beyond the tree line—it’s someone who, if my heart can be believed, scares me to death.
Before I can react though, I hear a loud whoosh, like a gas stove being lit. A carpet of flames rolls out from the woods. The fire hits us in seconds, and because I expect fire to have intense heat, I’m confused that it’s not burning me. Instead, it’s like gale-force wind. Twisting bodies of reconnoîtres blow like dead leaves in its current. The ground trembles as a shockwave rumbles outward, tearing up the frozen ground. It hits me with the force of a moving train, making me close my eyes. As it quiets, a familiar voice whispers in my mind, “I’ve missed you, Simone. You’re more achingly beautiful than ever. Perhaps I will let you live long enough to give me the child you stole from me that night.�
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When I open my eyes, I’m on the ground in the snow looking up at the gray sky. Black clouds are slowly ebbing. The reconnoîtres are gone. Soft, black petals float down to fall upon my cheeks. Reed’s gray wings brush up against my shoulder just before I’m clutched to his chest. His warm hands explore me, checking to see the extent of my injuries as he speaks to me in Angel. He sounds worried, but I can’t think of why at the moment.
I search the area over Reed’s shoulder; everyone I love is on the ground. Black rose petals fall upon them, covering them like a blanket. Russell stirs; he brings his hand to his forehead to rub it. When he looks around in confusion, he sees Anya on the frozen earth beside him. He lurches to her, pulling her limp body up into his arms. He rocks her, wiping black petals from her pale cheeks. She coughs, and then gasps for breath, winded.
My eyes go to Zephyr who’s kneeling by Brownie. He has Buns in his arms already and he’s trying to help Brownie sit up. It takes me another moment to realize that the barrier of magic that had been protecting them is gone.
I turn my head and search for Xavier, finding him near me. He’s getting to his feet, holding his ribs. Black petals cling to his blond hair. My focus returns to Reed who, unlike everyone else, is unscathed by what just happened. “That was magic, Reed. Someone just stole it all from Russell and me—they used it against us.”
“Are you hurt?” Reed’s expression is grim.
I move a little and feel the ache of bruises, but nothing seems broken. I shake my head. “No. You?”
“It never touched me,” he says. “The fire-wind blew in and knocked all of you to the ground. It wiped out your magic protecting the house. The reconnoîtres that were surrounding us they...changed.”
“Changed? Changed, how?”
He scoops up a handful of petals and crushes them in his fist. “This is what is left of them.”
I groan in disgust, brushing all the petals off of me as I shiver.
Xavier squats down next to me and looks me in the eyes. His tone is one of accusation as he asks, “You gave him Jim’s ring?”
“Um...” I look at him in confusion, “what?”
“Where’s my ring?” Xavier grasps my shoulders; his fingers tighten on me painfully. “Tell me where it is!”
The hurt in his eyes speaks to me more than the pressure on my arms and I blurt out, “Backyard. It’s in the backyard—buried near the tree where you first kissed me—”
Xavier silences me with his lips as they crush mine. He lets me go abruptly before I even think to protest. The growl from Reed says that it was long enough for him to die. Xavier’s face turns toward Reed as he straightens. He holds up his hand to Reed and says, “Soon.” With that, he turns and strides away to the car he came in. The black frame is now dotted with petals as it lies on its side, having been blown there by whatever magic had come at us across the snow-covered lawn.
He pushes the car over, righting it. The screech of metal rubbing metal hurts my ears when Xavier nearly tears the door open and gets in. It takes him a couple of slams to get it to close again. The engine roars to life just before the tires kick up clods of snow, dirt, and roses. The car fishtails onto the driveway as Xavier speeds away from us.
“What the HELL was that all about?” Russell yells to us from where he’s helping Anya up from the ground.
“Russell, figure out a way to protect the house until we relocate.” Reed doesn’t try to explain further, but sprints to the separate garage where he keeps his cars. Disappearing inside, one of the doors lifts slowly, revealing a white Lamborghini. Before the door is all the way open, the car lurches from the darkness and flies across the drive to where I’ve gotten to my feet.
“Please get in,” Reed says to me through the open window. As I retract my wings and comply, Zephyr appears at Reed’s window. “Be ready to leave when I call.”
Zephyr doesn’t smile when he says, “I will make the arrangements.”
“Shut the door, Evie,” Reed says with his hand on the stick shift. When I do, the car rockets down the driveway. Instead of applying the foot break near the end of it, Reed pulls the emergency break as he turns the wheel. The car slides sideways onto the street; he releases the hand break, and pushes down on the accelerator, burying the needle. We swerve dangerously on the road every so often as we hit patches of ice on our way out of Crestwood. Reed immediately corrects the wheel so that we hardly lose any speed.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I scramble to put on my seatbelt.
“We’re trying to catch up to Xavier,” Reed replies. I want to ask him to slow down, but I can see by the tension in his forearms that he’d be going faster if it were at all possible. “We have to get to what’s buried in the backyard before he does.”
“Why?’
“Because Xavier wants it bad enough to leave you with me until he gets it. It’s a ring, right? Like this one?” Reed holds up his hand, displaying my uncle’s class ring, which I now have serious doubts about it truly ever having been a class ring.
I nod. “It’s a ring. It’s his ring,” I clarify, “but it doesn’t look like that one.”
“Do you have any idea what it does?”
I shake my head. “How do you know it does something?”
Reed ignores my questions and counters. “How did you come by it?”
“He asked me to wear it.”
“For protection?”
My face reddens. “No. It was because he was my friend. We were friends—”
“Friends?” Reed asks skeptically.
My cheeks flush more. “He was sort of my boyfriend when he gave it to me—but he was so weird about it,” I try to explain. “He was so hot and cold all the time that I was never really sure where I stood with him...but he insisted that I wear it on a chain around my neck, like a pendant.”
“This ring that you gave me, Evie, it just protected me.”
“It did?”
“It lit up with a blue glow. It cut through your magic when I needed to get to you. I fell right through your magic barrier to the other side.”
“How did it do that?”
“I don’t know, but it fought off the evil invitation Sheol just sent you. Whatever was controlling that magic couldn’t harm me the way it did the rest of you,” Reed says. “I can only assume it was because of this ring. Xavier recognized it. He must know what it does.”
We pass by a frozen lake on our way out of town. “Invitation? How can you say that was an invitation? They were trying to kill us.”
“But they backed off. It was an invitation to you, presented with a warning, and wrapped—” reaching toward me, Reed pulls a petal from my hair and shows it to me, “—in a love letter. Sheol just invited you to join them.”
A bone-deep chill runs through me. “Or everyone I love dies,” I say with a hollow voice.
“Not everyone. I have Jim’s ring. We need that other ring. We can’t let Xavier get it, not until we know what it does.”
My heavy breathing fogs the windshield. Reed turns on the defroster, and as the glass becomes clearer, red taillights shine in front of us. Reed tries to pass the battered Aston Martin on the icy road, but the car in front of us swerves into the passing lane, blocking us.
Reed applies more pressure to the accelerator and our car lurches forward, crashing into Xavier’s bumper. Our white car shakes violently as it pushes against the black one, nudging it aside. Xavier’s car begins to spin out; it circles to the right as Reed moves the wheel to neatly avoid it on the left. And just like that, we’re clear of the Aston Martin.
I look out the back window, seeing Xavier’s car regain the road from the shoulder and pursue us. The fogged windshield of the Aston Martin cracks and shatters violently as Xavier’s booted foot kicks it away. When it bows out in pieces, he drops his leg and uses his arm to begin clearing away the glass.
“What’s he doing?” My eyes go to Reed who’s watching the rearview mirror.
Reed frowns grimly, “Evi
e, get to that ring as fast as you can. Don’t stop for anything. When you have it, find a safe place to hide and call me. I’ll find you.” He opens the sunroof with a touch of a button. “Here, take the wheel.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I ask with a squeak, my eyes widening.
“We have to stop Xavier from getting there first.” He grasps my limp hand and puts it on the steering wheel.
My eyes stray to the rear window again in time to see Xavier break the windshield out completely. He lunges through the opening onto the hood of his car, taking two running steps with his red wings spread wide. Leaping forward from the hood, he glides through the air and lands on the back of our car as his vehicle spins off into a ditch. The Lamborghini bounces hard upon impact, and then it decelerates rapidly. Xavier’s powerful wings beat the air, lifting the back tires off the ground. I have no time to protest as Reed climbs out through the sunroof. His dark, ashen wings open wide as he emerges from the car and lofts into the air. He catches Xavier around the throat with his forearm and yanks him off our car.
The tires swerve over the road when the back ones thump onto the ground again. I manage to hold onto the wheel, scrambling into the driver’s seat. I touch the brake, coming to a stop. Shifting the car into neutral and engaging the safety brake, I turn to look out the rear window. Snow drifts in anaconda patterns over the barren pavement. With both of my hands gripping the seatback, I watch Reed’s wings thrash. He locks arms with Xavier whose wings serrate to red dagger points, and it’s clear that both angels are trying to rip the other’s arms off.
Like a revolving door, Reed spins free from Xavier’s strong fists. He runs at our car, hitting the back end; it slides forward on the road despite the brake. “GO!” Reed shouts at me. Then he turns back, catching Xavier around his waist before he can move to my door. Reed throws him back. Xavier tumbles across the ground, skidding to a stop. Growling, he rises to his feet, running at Reed with weapons in his hands.
Iniquity (The Premonition Series Book 5) Page 5
