by Nour Zikra
A scream sounded through the parking lot. Adriel rushed toward me, but I didn’t understand why. His arms pulled me in. He held me against his chest, one of his hands supporting the back of my head.
Another scream rang through my ears. This time the sound seemed muffled.
“We will fix everything,” Adriel said. “Please calm down.”
With my head pressed against his chest, I craned my neck up to look at him. Why was he holding me and telling me to calm down? What had I done?
“It’s all going to be fine, Addy.”
I saw my reflection through his brown eyes just then: the tears streaming down my face, my gaping and trembling mouth, my disheveled hair. I realized I was the one who had screamed.
Hiding my head in the crook of his neck, I let one last cry out. He held me still, saying nothing, his arms wrapped around me. When the tears dried and I felt strong again, I pulled away a little, just enough to look at him.
He placed his icy hand on the side of my face, his eyes dancing back and forth between mine. “Whatever is happening, I promise we will fix it together.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but we will.”
“I hope so.”
With no space between us, blood rushed to my cheeks. I couldn’t escape the hardness of his chest or the smell of the coffee he had just sipped. Adriel smiled, glancing at my lips, then back up. I was suddenly aware of his left hand on my lower back and his right one on my face.
“Rosy cheeks,” he whispered.
“What?”
His dark eyes stopped moving, and that wild look I saw in him yesterday returned. He bent his head forward, his lips crashing into mine. His hand shifted to cradle the back of my head, holding me in place.
I closed my eyes, feeling nothing but his soft lips, the pressure of his thumb on the side of my neck, and the icy air around us.
With a sigh, I let him have me. His tongue slipped in, tasting of caramel and dark coffee, my favorite. Wind burst around us, leaving his nose cold where it brushed against my skin. I pressed my hands against the taut muscles of his chest and felt his heart beat violently alongside mine.
Tightening his grip on my waist, he pulled me even closer. Every inch of him pressed against me, and I couldn’t help feeling his bulge nudging my leg. An electric charge fired down my spine.
Wanting so much more, I let my tongue meet his halfway. A primal moan roared in his throat, and with it came a stream of warmth into my mouth. My legs became limp. And when I thought he couldn’t turn me on any more than he already had, he sucked on my lower lip, his teeth grazing my skin just as he pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, breathing like he was out of air.
“I . . . It’s okay.”
He let me go and stepped back. “That was out of place.”
I put my hand on my lips, feeling the intoxicating sting of his teeth as if they were still there.
“I just shouldn’t.” He ran a hand through his jaw-length hair and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was really out of line.”
I swallowed, feeling a sharp pain in my throat. “It’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m supposed to do better.”
Turning away from him, I tried to compose myself. My heart pounded, and I wished it would stop entirely. He didn’t want me; he didn’t want me because he could do better. I couldn’t even blame him. Who would want the daughter of the devil? Taking a deep breath, I told myself I felt nothing for him. Because I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. And because he didn’t want me in the same way.
I whirled back around, my face dead of any emotion. “It’s okay. Let’s just forget about this.”
He took a step toward me, sadness in his eyes. “Addy—”
“Let’s get going,” I said, cutting him off. Before he could say anything else, I walked inside the coffee shop.
Lizzy sat in her chair, looking at her polished, clear-painted fingernails. She was obviously pretending she hadn’t witnessed an entire show outside the window.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said.
She frowned. “Are we really going back to the apartment?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, we do.”
I grabbed my warm cup of coffee and leftover food from the table, taking a big bite of the bagel as I headed out. A rich, creamy goodness clung to my tongue, though I was sad to get rid of the caramel taste of Adriel’s mouth.
Lizzy trotted behind me, leaving her coffee at the table. “You’re still going to eat that? You didn’t pay for it.”
“When the world is back to normal, I’ll come back here and dump a fifty-dollar bill on that barista’s counter. Does that sound good to you, Mom?”
She crossed her arms and walked out without holding the door open for me. “I don’t like your attitude right now.” She hurried to the parking lot.
Adriel waited by Lucy. When I avoided eye contact with him, he took the backseat, letting Lizzy sit in the front. He didn’t say anything in the car, but I occasionally saw him looking at me through the rearview mirror.
H
At Sunny Meadows Private Residences, I parked Lucy as close to our building as possible in case we had to run out again like we did last night. Adriel and I got out of the car, but Lizzy didn’t budge. She kept her arms crossed and looked into the distance, reminding me of six-year-old Reed when he threw tantrums.
I watched her through the windshield. “Liz, are you coming?”
She shrugged and looked away. “I don’t feel right about this. I already told you.” She rolled her window down a smidge.
Upstairs seemed quiet. I glanced up at my bedroom window on the third floor, but it wasn’t like I was going to see much inside from where I stood.
“Come on, Lizzy. You don’t even have to come in with us. You can stay with Nate.”
At the mention of her boyfriend’s name, she took off her seat belt and hurried out of the car. “Is it safe there? What if something happened to him?”
“We won’t know until we go upstairs.”
Lizzy mumbled something and marched toward the building.
On our floor, the three of us stood in front of the apartment, staring inside. The door had been left open all night. The stool Lizzy had used as a shield against the demons had been tipped over at some point—I couldn’t remember when—and lay on the floor. In the background, I spotted a segment of Simiael’s left wing, now smeared with her blood. Even the pumpkin Lizzy had left outside was smashed to pieces, leaving orange guts all over the floor.
Lizzy shuddered and rushed toward Nate’s door. After a few knocks, he opened the door, sleep still in his eyes.
“What’s going on?” he said.
Nate’s short hair stood up in opposite directions, divided into three messy, triangular shapes above his head. When he saw us standing behind Lizzy, he raked his fingers through the bird-nest hairdo.
Lizzy wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his chest.
“Hey, everything okay?” he asked her.
Lizzy met my glare and gave me a subtle nod. When she looked up at Nate, she had a smile plastered across her face, though it didn’t reflect in her eyes. “Yeah, we just had a robbery while we were out getting breakfast, but we’re fine.”
“Oh, shit.” Nate let go of Lizzy and moved toward our apartment.
My heart thumped in my chest. For a second, I pictured Nate finding Simiael’s body. I imagined his eyes turning red, his forehead creasing, and him running out of the room to call for help. I saw him having an angry conversation with the police, leading to our misguided arrest.
Thinking quickly, Adriel grabbed the door handle to our apartment and closed the door halfway. “You don’t want to see the mess, friend.”
Nate bobbed his head. “No worries, man. Did you call the cops?”
“Yes.” Adri
el’s eyes flickered my way. “They already came and left.”
“Good, good.”
Lizzy strutted over to Nate and pulled him toward his apartment. “Baby, let’s leave these two to sort things out.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Hey, Nate,” I said. “Can Lizzy stay with you for a few days, actually? I don’t feel comfortable staying in the apartment right now, and I don’t think she should either.”
A smile stretched across his face in answer, and the two of them disappeared inside his home. Once more, it was just Adriel and me.
Feeling the slimy pumpkin gut underneath my feet, I moved inside and stepped around broken glass and rocks from the salt-crystal lamp strewn on the floor. Behind the kitchen stool, Simiael lay with her wings outstretched, the way we’d left her. Or almost the way we’d left her. Someone had engraved a message into the flesh just above her wings. The jagged cuts read, “You will regret leaving.” I knew the message was for me.
Crouching down beside Simiael, I stroked her red curls and looked at her blood-speckled face. She was beautiful, despite being dead and pale. Her eyes remained open, and it felt like she was staring inside my soul. They were green with a black halo around the irises. As I closed them, I wondered what she was up to at that moment, whether she had been given another angelic body already.
“We should bury her or something.”
Adriel squatted beside me. “Her body should disappear from this world in a few hours. If she hadn’t been visible to the human eye when she died, no one would be able to notice her right now.”
“So, her body will just vanish into thin air?”
“Pretty much.”
I left Simiael on the floor and moved past the chaos in the living room, pretending I wasn’t sad over the rustic coffee table the demons had broken that Lizzy and I had bought over a year ago.
When I made it to my room, I became even more upset. As if my picture frames hadn’t endured enough over the past few days, they were piled on top of my desk and smashed in the center so that their glass had cracked into pieces. My work papers and folders covered the floor around my bed, and I couldn’t tell which project files belonged together. They’d even destroyed my sketches, ripping the paper pads into unrecognizable shreds. If I hadn’t already lost my job from neglecting to send any work in since last Thursday, I would probably lose it now.
Adriel came to stand behind me at the door. His feet crunched on the ground. For what felt like a long time, we both stared at my ruined bed. The white comforter had been sliced vertically in half, without a doubt by that demon who had killed Simiael with his sword. Parts of the mattress had been torn too, revealing cotton and fine straw.
“Why would they do this? They didn’t gain anything from destroying my apartment.”
“They’re demons. They don’t need a reason.”
I strode around the room in search of my phone, to no avail. It wasn’t on my nightstand where I usually left it. It wasn’t under my pillows or the bed, either.
“Did they take my phone? Can they even use it in hell?” A hoarse laugh escaped my throat. “This is ridiculous!”
What I really wanted to do was rip the demons’ throats in half.
Adriel moved to the bathroom. A moment later, he walked out with the garbage can in his hand. “Is this your phone?”
He tilted the can in my direction. Inside, my phone sat in a pile of old toothpaste tubes, used floss, and fallen strands of hair. The screen was cracked, just like my picture frames. Groaning, I reached in and took it out.
“Can you still use it?”
“No. But I can do this.” I removed the slot on the upper left corner of my phone and took out my SIM card. “Now I have my identity back.” I smiled at him before remembering his rejection less than half an hour ago.
Opening my desk drawer, I searched for my old phone. In the back, I found it. I inserted the SIM card into it and turned it on. Surprisingly, it still had some juice.
“They clearly aren’t that bright,” I said.
I grabbed the phone’s charger from the drawer, retrieved my wallet from my purse, and packed a couple of outfits and toiletries for Adriel and me for the next couple of days. I put together anything I found of Devin’s and told Adriel to search Lizzy’s room for Nate’s clothes and add them to the duffle bag.
He crossed his arms, much like Lizzy had earlier that morning. “Isn’t that stealing?”
“Nate is my friend, and he’s Lizzy’s boyfriend, so I think he’ll understand. Besides, she had his stuff for like a month. I don’t think he’ll notice them gone now.”
“Fine, but I’m returning everything to him when we come back.”
I bit my bottom lip. “If we come back.”
He started out the door, heading toward Lizzy’s room. “We will,” he called as he went.
Chapter Eighteen
ADRIEL
Jenna’s face came to my mind as I sifted through Lizzy’s closet. A few hours ago, Simiael had died, but the last death I’d witnessed before that had been Jenna’s son, Matt. Nearly moments before I’d become a human, Jenna had kissed Matt on the forehead and covered his face with a pillow. I had watched from above, thinking it was the best choice, the only way to end Matt’s misery and Jenna’s pain.
Who knew I’d lose Jenna and Simiael, two beings I knew well, in such a short time? Now Jenna was out there, probably being prosecuted for doing what she’d thought was right for her son.
Down the hall, I could hear an unfamiliar voice talking, though I couldn’t pick out the words. I dropped everything in my hands and rushed to Addy’s room. She wasn’t there. I ran to the living room, where the sound was coming from. Addy stood in front of the TV with the remote control in her hand. She had changed out of her pajamas and was now in jeans and a plain white T-shirt. She kept distance between herself and Simiael, as though she feared getting blood on her shoes.
“Look at the news,” she said without looking at me. “They’re saying crime rates have increased in the past two days in Pennsylvania.”
I moved to stand next to her to better see the TV. Unable to help it, I stared at her profile. She pressed her rosy lips together as she concentrated on the news. She was unaware of me, of the hungry way I watched her, craved her, even. Only a little while ago, she had been in my arms. I wanted to reach out again and hold her against me. Body against body. Mouth on mouth. Hands in her hair, hers on my chest.
“This is crazy,” she said, bringing me out of my reverie. She was still talking about the news.
Putting some distance between us, I looked at the TV screen.
The newswoman spoke about the three fires that had occurred earlier today and mentioned multiple battery cases in the past forty-eight hours. Two people were nearly beaten to death and five others were killed from severe knife wounds. “Police have not been able to track down the persons involved,” she said. “However, they are working on finding out who is responsible for these crimes. We will keep you updated as we learn more.”
Addy put her hand on top of her head and pulled her hair back. “Is this because I took Reed? Because I’ll do it again if I have to. But is that why this is happening?”
“Evil will happen no matter what we do. It’s just how Lucifer and his demons are.”
“It’s never been this bad, though. This world has always had corruption. We’ve always had wars, murders, people hating people, but evil never grew this fast. Two days, and all of this?” She waved the remote at the TV screen. “What will it be next? Killing babies? Feeding poison to the poor?”
It was scary how far her imagination jumped.
She left the TV on and headed back down the hall into her room. I followed behind her.
“Sure, it’s bad, but Lucifer and his demons are not indestructible, Addy.”
She grabbed her duffle bag from the foot of the door before moving to Lizzy’s room.
“But I couldn’t even hur
t Lucifer,” she said. “You were there. You saw what happened.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t be hurt.”
She shoved every item of clothing I found of Nate’s inside the duffle bag. When she finished putting everything away, she handed me the bag to carry.
Heavy with grief, her eyes met mine. “You were his friend before he fell from heaven. You probably know him better than anyone. Do you know anything about his secret weapon?”
I thought back to yesterday morning, to the way the color had drained out of Addy’s face when she saw Lucifer pull the knife out of his chest and drop it to the ground. Daughter against father, and he was merciless.
“Adriel, come on, you have to know something,” she begged, her hand reaching for my arm before she changed her mind at the last second and dropped it to her side.
“If he has a weapon, he must have created it after he fell. I have no idea what he was talking about.”
“But what could be so powerful? What is he protecting himself with?”
“I really don’t know.”
Frowning, she walked back to her room. She disappeared inside her bathroom for a moment, and when she came out, she had her hair pulled back into a ponytail. I stared at the contours of her face, at the perfect symmetry of her cheeks and nose and eyes, at her small, double-pierced ears. She took my breath away, but I couldn’t think like that. I’d caused enough damage already.
“Are you going to stay in your pajamas?” She stared back at me. I realized in that instant that I was standing in the dead center of her bedroom door, blocking the exit.
I went into the bathroom, changed clothes quickly, and met her in the kitchen.
Like a warrior ready for battle, she snatched a couple of knives from one of the drawers and strode out with her back straight and her head held high.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced at Simiael’s body one last time before closing the door behind us. The angel would be okay, though it could be a while before I saw her again. I hurried down the stairs, Addy’s duffle bag in my hand.
