I jump out of the car as Xavier uses his spade-shaped blades to slash at Reed. He misses with the one in his right hand, but not with the other in his left. The razor edge connects with Reed’s cheek, cutting it from his lips to his ear. My wings eject from me as I scream. Reed rears back from Xavier. I lift my hand, making Xavier’s car rise into the air from the ditch; it crashes down on the pavement directly behind him. Before Xavier can hurt Reed again, his feet leave the ground as he’s thrust back through the empty windscreen of his car. He lands hard in the driver’s seat, staring at me with a murderous expression. The shattered glass on the pavement collects and finds its way to the front of the car, settling into place and smoothing to transparency.
Xavier pounds his fist against it trying to break it out again, but the glass holds. “Evie!” His muffled voice is barely discernible above the sounds of his thrashing. When it still doesn’t break, he slams his shoulder against the door. It doesn’t open either. He beats the window, leaving smears of blood on it from his fists.
I walk to Reed who holds his hand to his face to stem his blood. “Are you okay?” I ask worriedly, as I touch his other cheek.
“It’s not bad,” he says, reaching out and wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me to him. He hugs me in an attempt to comfort me. “We need to go.”
“Okay, just a second.” I pull away from Reed and go to the driver’s side of Xavier’s car. When I near his window, I bend toward it, steaming it with my breath. Using my finger, I write: UOY ETAH I.
Pain shows in Xavier’s mismatched eyes. He leans to the glass and fogs it with his breath. He pulls back, and with his finger, he writes: COME BACK TO ME. He rests his palm against the window. My heart squeezes tight, leaving no room for my blood to breathe. I feel hopeless as my eyes meet his again. I hate this. My hand twitches with the urge to meet his on the glass.
Reed backs our car next to me. I back away from Xavier’s window and bump up against the door, blindly searching for the handle. When the door slides open, I retract my wings and scramble into my seat, refusing to look at Xavier again. Reed drives in the direction of my house. Xavier’s house, my mind corrects.
Reed gazes in the rearview mirror. “He’s not following us.”
“He can’t. I killed his car and locked him in. The spell should last for a little while, but the farther away I get, the weaker it’ll become. He’ll be out soon. How’s your face?”
He pulls away a torn piece of fabric and I hiss at the violence of the wound. I should’ve killed him, I think.
Reed tries to smile but winces. “It’ll be gone in a few minutes, love.”
Opening the console, I’m not at all surprised to find a small first aid kit there. “I know. I’m so glad you heal faster than me,” I murmur, unwrapping a gauze bandage and dabbing it lightly to his cheek.
“You shouldn’t have stopped us, Evie. Xavier and I will have to face one another.”
“Maybe not, Reed. Time can change anything.” My hand stills. I panic. Time could change us, like it had with Xavier and me. I feel like my heart unravels, but I don’t let him see it. “One day, Reed,” I begin dabbing at his cheek again, “you and I will get in the car and just drive. We’ll wander from silver cities to golden coasts.” I use an alcohol swab to clean the blood from his cheek. “We’ll sleep when we’re tired. When we wake, I’ll find a way to make you laugh and I’ll live in the sound of it.” My throat gets tight because I long for that day to be now. “We’ll find somewhere you’ve never been and we’ll make it ours—fill it with memories of us. That’s what I want.” I finish with the alcohol swab. Leaning close, I gently blow on his healing wound to ease the sting.
Reed takes my hand and brings it to his lips, kissing it tenderly. “And when we get that sleep, there will never be a your side or a my side of the bed—we’ll always meet in the middle. And when I hold you there, in our bed, you’ll let me rest my lips here.” Reed lets go of my hand to move his thumb to caress the sensitive skin of my neck just beneath my ear. I get swept up in him: my body his with one touch. I turn and rub my cheek gently against his palm.
“And we won’t rush...ever,” I murmur, forgetting to be scared. I want that future with him.
“The world can spin around us but we’ll take our time, savor every moment.”
My head rests on his shoulder. “Just you and me.”
He kisses the top of my head. “I doubt Buns or Brownie will allow that.”
He has somehow found a way to make me smile. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Detroit—to your childhood home,” Reed answers. “I’ve been there.”
“That’s right,” I murmur as I remember that he went there to take care of things after Freddie killed my Uncle Jim.
“I’ve been there several times when I was looking for you after you left Crestwood.”
Once we reach the highway, the rest of the trip to Detroit passes quickly as Reed flies by cars like they’re standing still. When we exit, he weaves in and out of traffic on the icy two-lane roads. We enter my neighborhood and Reed is forced to slow the car. Garlands decorate doors shrouded by iron bars. People are getting ready to celebrate the winter holidays and the familiarity of it all seems foreign to me—my life prior to Crestwood is so far removed from the one I have now.
Everything in this city is the same, which shocks me. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed so much since I was here that I expected it to have changed as well. But it hasn’t. It’s the same. The rectangular-shaped storefronts and restaurants hide behind growing piles of plowed and shoveled snow. People with scarf-wrapped necks and gloved hands hold shopping bags as their boots hurry toward parked cars to get out of the cold.
After we pass the fire station, we turn right onto the street where I grew up. It’s all single-family, two-story dwellings with postage-stamp lawns and open front porches. Reed avoids the driveway and pulls up to the curb in front of my childhood house, parking beneath the snow-covered branches of the elm tree. It had belonged to Uncle Jim’s parents, my grandparents. He’d inherited it when they died. I don’t remember them at all—they were gone before I was born.
The red brick façade, black-shuttered windows, and bright red front door of my house cause my throat to tighten and close. I have to take shallow breaths—I can’t afford tears right now. “Someone replaced the net,” I murmur, gesturing to the basketball hoop affixed to the detached garage. I open my door and step out of the car; Reed is by my side immediately. “We always kept shovels in there.” I point to the small potting shed beside the garage as I walk up the driveway that has been snowplowed recently.
Reed goes to it and finds a shovel inside. Taking it, he follows me to the fenced-in backyard. After I open the gate, it’s immediately apparent that we’re too late. A hole and small pile of dirt beneath the base of the enormous oak tree makes that painfully clear, not to mention the tracks in the snow leading to and from the house. The back door of the house opens and Xavier steps out onto the deck wearing the ring that I haven’t seen since high school.
Reed takes my hand and we turn to go, but there are at least ten Powers walking up the driveway toward us. None of them display their wings, but I know them to be Powers—Dominions. It’s in their stride, the military way in which they carry themselves. All of a sudden, it feels like the house itself is bearing down on me. I turn back to face Xavier and find my father has joined him. Tau’s gray eyes, so much like my own, are on me and I’m struck by our resemblance to one another, though we look more like brother and sister than father and daughter. I had thought once that I shared my Uncle Jim’s eyes. I was wrong. They’re my father’s.
My heart gives a lurch and I panic. I drop Reed’s hand as I raise mine. I let energy pulse out from it, the force of which connects with Tau. The smell of burnt cotton is in the air at the fury I unleash on him. The railing in front of him cracks, and then explodes, shattering. Tau cringes upon impact, but he absorbs the energy that should’ve easily
lifted him off of his feet and thrown him back. He staggers a step, but then holds his ground as the windows behind him are blown out. As Tau’s hands curl into fists, I notice the wink and shimmer of a platinum ring on his finger. I can’t be sure, but from this distance it looks very similar to the one that Xavier now wears—like the ring that I buried in the yard.
“They work,” Tau growls through his teeth to Xavier.
Cole materializes from the house and stands beside Tau. With his crimson Seraphim wings out, he’s ready to defend his leader. Assessing the situation, he frowns at Tau. “Stings, huh?”
Tau exhales a deep breath. “A bit.”
“EVIE!” Xavier barks my name. I flinch at his obvious censure, my panic doubles. I raise both my hands with my fingers spread out wide, whispering a hasty spell. Closing my fingers, I pull my fists toward me. I wait a second hoping to see them drop to the ground as magic squeezes oxygen from their lungs. Xavier, Tau, and Cole each grasp their chests, struggling to take a breath, but none of them fall to the ground as I’d intended. Inhaling deep gulps of air, they manage to stave off my charm. It only serves to infuriate them.
Reed has moved behind me to protect me from the Powers who continue to approach us with cautious strides. He pulls the spade-shaped blades from his pockets, gripping the notched handles in his fists. I close my eyes, pushing energy outward. It creates a barrier surrounding Reed and me; the Powers come up short when they bump into it, becoming unintentional mimes. A flood of relief swamps me that my spell works on them, rendering them useless in this arena. Reed, recognizing the shift in power, turns and faces the Seraphim, moving in front of me to protect me from them.
“So those rings protect you from me?” I want to scream at how unfair that is.
Tau holds his hand up, displaying a platinum band fashioned into an intricate sword over a shield, much like Xavier’s ring. “They’re divine; they make us impervious to all types of magic. Do you know where I found mine?”
I shake my head.
“It was outside your window at school, lodged between the wall and the rusting hull of your fire escape in Crestwood.”
“How did it get there?”
“I lost it when I ascended—the day you moved in. It must have fallen off me right after you cut your hand. Cole’s was harder to find. It came off him in the front yard of this house. Someone found it and pawned it. We suspect one or more of the Murphy boys next door. It took us awhile to track it down. Then, all that was left was to find Xavier’s.”
I school my features to reflect Tau’s blasé mask. “Can’t leave that stuff laying around.”
“Come inside, I’ll explain it to you.”
“No, thanks. We’re good right here.” I cross my arms in front of me.
“What I need to impart requires secrecy for your protection,” Tau says with a neutral stare.
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“You’re still such a child,” Tau sighs. He gives me a dismissive look before speaking to Reed in Angel.
Reed takes my hand in his again, warm fingers weaving between mine causing a current of love to swell in my heart. “I’m afraid I can’t comply with your orders. My allegiance is to Evie. I swore a blood vow to her. We won’t be willingly separated again.”
Xavier tenses before taking a threatening step toward us. Tau puts his hand on Xavier’s arm and stays him, before giving Reed a pitying look. Xavier is barely restraining himself as he rocks from foot to foot like a caged animal. “She has a hold on you. She builds like floodwater until you drown in her.”
“I’m not drowning,” Reed replies. “I’ve only just begun to live.”
Xavier grows still. “You should remember that you’re here for one purpose: to kill fallen, not to interfere with our mission.”
Reed doesn’t back down. “She’s my mission. That couldn’t be more plain to me if it were written in the stars.”
Tau speaks again in Angel, this time to the Powers behind us. They retreat, seeming to dematerialize at the speed with which they depart, and just like that, Reed and I are alone with Cole, Tau, and Xavier.
“What did he say?” I ask Reed.
“He ordered them to await him at the chateau.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
Tau gives me a small smile. “If only you’d obey my orders like them.”
I don’t return his smile. “Hold your breath for that to happen.”
“It will happen. I’m not here to be your friend. You’ll need to learn to obey me.”
“Any hope of that died when you wouldn’t help me in Ireland. You think you can make me obey you now?” I scoff.
Tau smiles again. “Not me. Xavier. I have an army to lead. Reed will accompany me and be my right hand in that for now.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask with a sinking feeling.
“Because he doesn’t want me to hurt you,” Tau replies, “so don’t make me.”
Something shifts inside of me. I start looking for weaknesses in him. “We may share some of the same DNA, you and I, but Reed is my family. Try to separate us and it’ll be war with no winners. Are we clear?”
“I think I understand you,” he replies in a relaxed tone. He holds up his hand—the one with the ring on it—for me to see. “These rings don’t just serve to protect us...they also protect a secret.”
I begin to fear what he’ll say next. Reed feels it because he inches in front of me. Tau grasps the hilt of the tiny, silvery sword in his ring that pierces the shield diagonally from top to bottom. He twists the sword, turning it over within the shield. Suddenly, the sword loosens and he pulls it free from the shield base. He reinserts the sword into the shield from bottom to top, and lifting it up, he opens the surface of the ring to reveal a hidden compartment within it.
He waits for Cole and Xavier to open their rings. Cole’s brown eyes watch mine as he reaches into his ring, extracting a round silver ball a little smaller than a marble. It’s flat on top with a hole hollowed out. He hands the orb to Tau. Tau pulls a flat, silver square from his ring. It’s a trifold of metal. When he straightens it, the hinges lock it in place, creating a single rectangle only a few inches long. Xavier removes a delicate, silver hollowed-out cylinder. He pulls the ends apart and the cylinder expands to become a small, arcing pipe. One end is cut at an angle and the other end has a lip on it.
Reed and I watch Tau deftly assemble the pieces, fitting them together. Reed whispers to me, “It’s a whistle—a boatswain pipe. Cole had the buoy, Tau had the base—‘the keel’, and Xavier had the pipe—‘the gun.’”
I exhale in relief. “A whistle.”
Tau smiles. “It’s a very special boatswain, Evie. It’s a key.”
“A key to what?” I ask.
“Sheol,” Tau responds.
Reed tenses, whispering, “Evie, leave now. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Not without you.”
“Together then.” Reed’s eyes lift to the sky, indicating that we should fly.
Xavier calls something out loudly in Angel. The word is familiar; I recognize it from my time at Dominion’s chateau when Reed had declared himself my protector in order to fight for me. He’d said the same word then, before just about every Angel there repeated it—it means “Champion.”
Reed stills before he glances at me. “Go, Evie, contact Zephyr and Russell—I’ll meet you after.”
“After what? I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t want to see this,” Reed murmurs. “Xavier has challenged me. I cannot refuse to fight him.”
I inhale sharply, before I say, “Yes, you can. Come with me now.” I tug his hand in desperation, but he doesn’t move. The wind stirs his dark feathers, showing the crimson one that lies between them.
“I won’t lose,” Reed promises. His thumb caresses my hand, but I barely feel it.
My eyes leave Reed’s green ones to shift to Xavier’s imposing stare
. “Xavier, don’t do this.”
“It’s done,” he says grimly. “I can’t hold out forever. I’ve been dreaming of you—of us. I need you with me.”
“This won’t fix what’s broken between us.”
“When you remember me, he won’t matter, Evie,” Xavier’s face darkens in its earnestness.
The sky turns gray with overcast clouds that threaten the daylight, as if Heaven disapproves. Reed lets go of my hand and I feel the loss of it more deeply than just the cold air turning my fingers to ice.
Xavier leaves the deck like a charging bull and hurls himself at Reed. Tau is next to me in less than a second; his arms engulf me. He holds me back when I would jump into the fight to pull them apart. I struggle in Tau’s arms. “You have to stop this!”
“What worries you the most...that Reed will lose...or that that he’ll win?”
I still. Blood runs from Reed’s blade, spraying the white snow in violent patterns of red from a slash above Xavier’s left eye. They stalk one another like wild things. Xavier counters with a gory slice from Reed’s neck that mists the air with an iron scent. My eyes turn to Tau’s; for a moment I discern sadness in them. My heart squeezes with a terrible ache as I beg, “Stop them. Please. For that little girl you once loved!”
He hides all emotion behind a blank stare. “They won’t thank you for interfering.”
“Please,” I beg again, “do something!”
“No,” he frowns and shakes his head. “This has to happen—”
I whimper in agony. “You don’t know what we are to one another!”
Tau’s eyes stray to the fight again. “Are you referring to Reed...or Xavier? I may have a clearer view than you do of that. This is a blessing in disguise for you. Now you don’t have to choose.”
Iniquity (The Premonition Series Book 5) Page 6
