by Nour Zikra
Copyright © NOUR ZIKRA 2017
This edition published in 2019
The right of NOUR ZIKRA to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1976.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-7331940-5-1
Cover and Interior Design by Eight Little Pages
Edited by Courtney Rae Andersson
To my three guardian angels in heaven:
Aunt Houda, Uncle Nabil, and Great-Aunt Georgette.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter ONE
ADRIEL
Flames tore through the feathers of my large white wings. The crimson blaze spread farther and farther up, scorching through my muscles and bones, which I thrust back and forth in an effort to keep me in the air. A wail erupted from my throat as I plummeted to the ground. I could feel nothing but the flesh on my back tightening, burning red. The feathers slowly turned to ash, leaving nothing where my wings had fluttered just moments ago.
“Father,” I shouted. “I’m sorry!”
He leaned down, silent, and placed a firm hand on my blistering shoulder. The flames danced harmlessly around his fingers. His eyes were watery, yet he showed no anger. He was as calm as ever.
“What will happen? Are you sending me to the fire?”
Instead of responding, he turned his back to me and walked away. Bright rays shone around him, growing stronger as they engulfed his body until he disappeared without a trace. Blinded for the first time by the beautiful light, I shut my eyes. Within seconds, something strange began happening behind my eyelids. Small beads of liquid pushed out, trickling past the ridges of my cheeks. They tickled my skin. When I finally opened my eyes, I found myself in total darkness. The ground had disappeared. In its place, a black hole inhaled me into its depths.
I crashed onto alien ground, my exposed knees scraping against the gravel and mud. Red oozed out of my skin, sending thousands of twinges through my body. My voice rushed out in a seemingly endless scream that shook my Adam’s apple. For a moment, I didn’t move as I watched the blood—my blood?—soak into the soil and rocks. Then a rush of cold wind stirred me, forcing me fully into consciousness.
My wings had burned out of existence, leaving my raw, burnt back uncovered and icy. What would I do without my wings? How will I fly? More importantly, where was I, and why wasn’t the rest of me burning?
I fought past the mind-numbing pain and straightened. Acres of land with colossal sassafras trees stood in salute. Behind me lay a narrow, paved road with a faint, flickering streetlight. I moved in its direction.
Finding no crosswalk in sight, I walked by the forest’s edge and hoped to find some sort of guidance. The road was empty, but it curved toward a deserted gas station with a broken, tilted sign that read “Towhee Petroleum.” This had to be Earth, because it sure wasn’t Hell. That was, unless Father had placed me in infinite captivity, doomed to walk in pain forever.
The silence of the night made it hard to tell whether people were tucked inside their homes or nonexistent, and as I moved farther down the road, my fears doubled. Convenience stores and little shopping outlets lined up behind the gas station, all displaying “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs. The small parking lot leading out onto the road was more rubble than concrete, and cigarette butts and dead tree leaves littered the area. It smelled odd, almost acidic.
“God,” I said, looking up at the cloudless sky with all its blinking stars. “What do I do?”
Just when I thought my question would go unanswered, something tiny lit up in my peripheral vision. It flew past my arm, its light fading for a moment before glimmering again. I smiled and reached to catch the firefly. It drifted away before I caught it, moving toward the road. An instant later, bright lights gleamed in the distance, growing more powerful with each second. As the lights neared, I could clearly hear a whirring engine. A red car sped down the isolated road, racing by the vacant stores and buildings.
I ran to the center of the street and began waving my arms high in the air. It took the driver a second to register my presence. The car shifted to the side, grinding against gravel before stopping in the mud on the side of the road, five feet from where I stood.
My chest heaved and the sound of my new, beating heart drummed in my ears. I moved my hand to block the car’s high beams that illuminated the entire area and stepped closer until I stood by the driver’s window, where I saw a young woman in her early twenties sitting with a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Her wide eyes stared back at me, a tear dripping down one cheek.
I raised my hands, palms facing her. “Hey, don’t be scared. Please . . . I’m just lost.”
She looked back at the road and bit her lip. A heartbeat later, she hit the gas pedal with her foot.
“No, no,” I yelled. “Please.”
The car inched forward before slowing down, the tires spinning in the soft mud. She hit the pedal harder, but the car was stuck.
My heart pounded as I moved closer to her side again. “I’m really hurt. I just need some help, okay?”
The woman turned to face me. Her big eyes studied me, moving down my body and pausing just below the shroud that covered my hips to mid-thighs. I followed her gaze to my bleeding knees.
“I’m just hurt,” I repeated. “Just a little, okay? Don’t be scared of me.”
The woman nodded, put the car in park, took off her seat belt, and opened the door. The rusty hinges creaked, sounding like they might break and come right off. She took slow, measured movements until she stood with the door between the two of us.
My eyes met hers, and I realized for the first time that I was intruding upon her life in that precise moment when she clearly wanted to be alone on this lonely road. The white around her irises had a faint red to it, the same red the tip of her nose and apples of her cheeks displayed. Avoiding my gaze, she blinked and composed her face. Then she really looked at me.
“What happened to you?” Rosy Cheeks nodded toward my bleeding knees.
I looked down at my body. What must thi
s young woman think of me? I was half-naked, bleeding, and muddy, and she couldn’t even see my burnt back yet. Telling her the truth was not an option. “It’s a long story.”
Her hard, uneasy stare told me she didn’t buy my excuse. “How can I help you if I don’t know what happened? You could be a bad guy.”
“I’m not.”
“Sorry, but I can’t help you.”
She leaned down to get back inside her car, leaving her hand on the door’s frame. I reached out and gripped her hand, just strong enough to keep her from leaving. She whirled around and tried to pull her hand free, but my hold tightened.
“I can’t tell you what happened. But I can show you my back.” I freed her hand and turned around, letting her have a full view of my raw, blistered flesh.
She let out a small gasp and, a second later, had her hand on my upper arm, tugging for me to face her. When I turned, she was looking down at the ground.
“I’ll take you to the hospital or something.” She shut her eyes. “Just please don’t show me that again.”
“I won’t.”
She glanced at her car and sighed. The tires had sunk in the mud. It was my fault, really. She’d had to brake and swerve to avoid hitting me.
“Let me push the car.” I didn’t exactly know my new strength, especially with the pain I felt, but I needed her help, and there was no way out of here without me helping to fix the situation.
“Okay.” She sat inside the car and started the engine.
“Please don’t drive away, okay?”
She didn’t answer.
I trudged to the back of her car and placed my hands on the bumper. Tree tar and decomposed bugs made the surface bumpy under my skin. The small effort of pushing felt like weights were pulling at my arms, tearing my shoulders from their ligaments. The palms of my hands were suddenly clammy.
“Are you pushing?” Rosy Cheeks shouted.
I was trying, I wanted to say, but my head started to spin and I couldn’t force the words out. Sweat trickled from the roots of my jaw-length hair down the nape of my neck just as a vile, sour taste hit me. My mouth opened, releasing what must have been vomit. In that moment, I knew with absolute certainty that I had truly become human; God’s punishment for what I’d done.
The engine stopped again. Rosy Cheeks rushed over and stood a few feet away, keeping her distance. She avoided looking directly at me, probably because my slouched, disfigured back was in perfect view.
“Are you all right?”
“No, but I’m going to push this car if it kills me.” I straightened and put my hands back on the dirty bumper. “So, come on, put the car in drive.”
She pulled her hair back and shook her head. “You could really die.” But she went to the car anyway and started the engine.
I pushed as hard as I could with this new, weak body, my muscles pulsating and my heart furiously pumping blood. The car didn’t budge. With each forceful, useless shove, my vision dimmed. In my angel form, I could have simply flapped my wings at this car and it would’ve toppled over like a tiny fly blown in the wind.
“Hey, the car’s not moving,” she said over the droning engine.
The edges of my vision went completely black. “No,” I muttered. “It has to.”
In the dimness around me, a small dot of light rested on my hand. The car slipped forward, moving away from my sweat-slicked fingers. The dot of light flickered, and my sight came back. The car, which had been a foot away from me, had now rolled onto the paved road. I looked down at the back of my hand and saw the firefly resting there.
Rosy Cheeks came to stand by me. “How’d you do that?” Her eyes were wide again as they searched me, trailing across my shoulders and arms, wanting to know the secret of my strength.
“I don’t know.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and moved to her car. “Let’s just go.”
A few moments later, we were on our way. I sat in the passenger seat, slouched forward so my burned skin wouldn’t rub against the fabric.
She glanced in my direction before turning her attention back to the road. “You should buckle up.”
“Buckle up?” I looked around and saw the seat belt most humans use to guard themselves while in a car. “Oh, I get it.” I reached for the belt with my sore arm and groaned. It took a second to “buckle up.”
Rosy Cheeks watched me with quick glances, her brows scrunched and her lips in a tight line. Every time her head turned toward me, her wavy brown hair slid over her shoulder. “Seriously, what happened to you?”
I gave her a weak smile. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
She sucked on her bottom lip for a moment before looking at me again. “Try me.”
I couldn’t help smiling at her reflection in the passenger window. “You’re relentless.”
Her eyes shifted back to the road. “I have a right to know. I rescued you, didn’t I? You’d still be out there if I didn’t happen to drive by. You could at least tell me why you’re wearing that Jesus diaper thing.” Her mouth dropped open for a split second. “Are you in a cult?”
I sighed and tried to change the subject. “My name is Adriel.”
This didn’t distract her. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, one eyebrow quirked.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She took a left turn into a big parking lot and drove until we were in front of a large building with a giant sign that read “Latrobe Hospital.”
“This is it,” she said.
I glanced at her for directions, but when she didn’t give any, I opened the door. “Thank you for helping me.”
“Sure.”
I stepped out and ever so slowly bent down to talk to her one last time. “You never told me your name.”
She smirked, her eyes dancing with glee for the first time that night. “You never told me what happened.”
Just like that, she leaned across the passenger seat, closed the door by pulling at the handle, and drove off.
I watched her taillights disappear, leaving no trace.
Chapter Two
ADELAIDE
My worst fear was being just another tragedy on the news, and tonight proved to me just how easy it was for that scenario to become real. I could imagine headlines reading “22-Year-Old Female Found Dead in Pennsylvania Wilderness.” Lucky for me, Adriel—if that was his real name—had left me in one piece.
Still, even after I’d dropped him off, I could almost feel his presence in my car. It felt like the scent of his scalded skin had clung onto my polyester seats and wrapped itself all over me, disregarding my personal space. I cringed. Finding him alone on the road like in a scene straight out of a horror movie had alerted my senses, and his never-ending persistence to learn my name had set warning bells ringing in my head. But maybe I was just too tired to judge him correctly after the week I’d had. All I knew was that having him in my car, even for a short duration, had made my stomach knot.
Ten minutes after dropping him off at the hospital, I stopped by the nearest gas station to fill up Lucy, my 1991 red Oldsmobile. It had creaking doors and peeling paint, but I loved the trusty machine. The car was nowhere near empty, but I needed some fresh air. I stood in the chilly night, breath escaping my mouth in a fog, and waited on the nozzle to feed the gas tank to the brim while I checked my phone.
Throughout the drive from Pittsburgh to Latrobe, my cell phone had received several text messages, some from my boss and coworkers asking why I hadn’t shown up to the office earlier today. The remaining messages had come from Lizzy, my best friend and roommate. I’d already read most of these messages and had chosen not to respond.
“Addy, where the heck are you?” Lizzy’s first text had read. “I’m at Euphoria.” Attached with the message was a photo of Lizzy and a few mutual friends at our favorite club. With a margarita in one hand and the phone in the other, Lizzy had somehow managed to get the selfie to includ
e three friends standing behind her, all flashing their pearly whites at the phone screen.
The person standing closest to Lizzy in the picture was our next-door neighbor, Nate. He had his arm draped over Lizzy’s shoulders and his cheek pressed against hers, though they weren’t officially a couple yet. His smile reminded me of another person, which sent my heart hammering in my chest. With a knot in my throat, I pushed back the tears.
After fifteen minutes of me not responding to her first text, she sent another. “Everything okay? Please text me back. I’m worried.”
She had sent a couple more while I was with Adriel, but my hands were too shaky at the time to check the phone. Leaning against the car now, I considered whether I should tell her what was going on. That was when my phone started ringing and flashing Lizzy’s name. My thumb hovered over the answer button. Three rings later, I rejected the call.
“Addy, I know you’re there. Why aren’t you answering?” Lizzy texted a few seconds later.
Staring at the starry sky, I searched for the right response and came up with: “I’m fine. I’ll tell you when I’m ready. Staying at Reed’s dorm tonight.”
“Addy,” she wrote back, “you know you can tell me anything, right?”
I couldn’t blame Lizzy for worrying. We never kept anything from each other. Ever since the day we’d met four years ago during our freshman year at Mountain Peak College, we knew we’d be best friends. We had bonded over my poster of Lucille Ball crossing her eyes behind crazy glasses. But still, I ignored her message now and sent a quick text to Melissa, my boss, letting her know I had a family emergency. It was a lie I could live with. I apologized for not telling her sooner, hoping that my good record at work would get her to be lenient for a few days as I glued myself back together.
The gas nozzle released its hold on the tank and the machine printed a receipt. I shut the fuel door and went on my way.
I sped down the almost-empty streets, slowing only when I thought I saw a white car with light bars on top. Being pulled over by a cop was the last thing I needed tonight. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if my week went downhill again.
