She leaped onto his back and raised her weapon. Lightning flashed again. Her audience remained. The Overseer bucked, trying to dislodge her. She clamped her legs around his leathery body and held on. Blade poised above her head, she slammed it into the back of his neck and didn’t stop until the hilt touched skin.
He reached up with one hand and caught her by the wings and snatched her from his back.
Why wasn’t he burning? He couldn’t be that powerful? Or maybe she couldn’t wield the sword to its full power because she was fallen, a Darkling? The blade was strong enough to kill the Terrors, but not a Darkling from a higher caste. Not without an angel wielding it.
He twisted her wings until they snapped. A long scream tore from her throat, but the sound was lost in the clap of thunder.
She looked past the Overseer’s shoulder to the dark sky behind him. One hundred feet away, a shaft of light peeked through a cloud. Though it would kill her, she reached out for the warmth.
Father, forgive me and lend me your strength. Not for myself.
The Overseer scratched a line down the side of her face. Blood welled and dripped from her jaw. His beak parted and a red tongue slithered out. She recoiled but had nowhere to go as he licked the blood from her skin. “Though fallen once more, there is still enough humanity left within you. You will fulfill your purpose and open the portal.”
The Overseer descended.
Father, hear my plea and do not forsake me.
Shafts of light punched through the thick clouds. One landed on the Overseer. His leathery skin sizzled. His scream filled the air.
Claws dug deep into her sides as he zigzagged between the deadly beams. The scent of his burning flesh choked her. She coughed and tried to pull away.
He spun her. Now, she was on top, shielding him from the deadly rays. Burning.
She screamed, flailed, and when that didn’t work, she sunk her teeth into his neck and locked her jaw. Now, he tried to shake her off.
They cartwheeled in the sky while impersonating a meteor. She spotted the house and somehow angled her body until they flipped one last time, placing the Overseer on top.
He burned. The smell of his flesh, the sound of his screams, the air rushing by as they rocketed back to earth, all music to her ears…until she hit the roof and crashed through each layer of the house and landed on the narrow ledge next to the portal.
Broken.
Agony.
Flashes of memory. The capsizing boat. The bodies floating. The dank hole, her new home. Her and Colleen dancing over a field of daisies. Her wings unfurled, catching a warm breeze as sunlight warmed her from within. Other Comforts joining them while they frolicked.
Lost. All lost.
Home. She could never go home again.
Never had clarity been so brutal, her reality so stark. She’d truly fallen. Not as a warrior who would become an UnHallowed blessed with a second chance—but as a Darkling.
No chance at redemption. Forever banished from the sun. Cut off from Father’s grace, my friends, everything I loved. I’ve lost it all and had been completely blinded.
Aurora, whispered the wind.
She ignored it. The wind had nothing to offer her.
Aurora! This time louder, angrier…familiar.
Something wet dribbled onto her forehead and cheeks. She pried open her eyes and screamed. Yards above, impaled through the abdomen, the Overseer hung from a beam. Eyes glassy, head still attached by a single tendon.
She scrambled back. At least she thought she had when actually, she hadn’t moved an inch. “Here’s as good a place to die as anywhere else,” she croaked.
“Aurora, sweetheart. Get. Up.”
Carefully, she turned her head until Warrant—blood covering ninety percent of him—came into view. Crouched on the opposite ledge, his smile cut though the gloom. She smiled too.
“Hi.”
“Hi, baby. I need you to get up.” He motioned with his hands for her to stand.
“What are you doing over there? So far away?” she croaked.
“The house shifted again, and it was easier to get out and get to you over here. Now, I need you to get up and get the pendant.” His tone was urgent, and she wanted to comply, but staying where she lay was just too appealing.
“I don’t want to get up. I want to stay right here.”
A brittle crackling sound had them both looking up. Bricks, flooring, pipes, appliances, plaster, molding, all whizzed by.
“That’s why you must get up, crack the pendant, and drink the essence within. Then we have to get out of here. The whole house is coming down, and soon.”
Buried beneath two tons— “Then you should go. I’m gonna stay.”
“Like hell you are! You will get off your ass and get up now, Aurora,” he commanded.
“I’m Humpty Dumpty,” she sing-songed.
“Then I’m coming to get you.”
She’d laugh if she had the energy. He was in worse condition. Yet, he climbed up the rocky wall, grabbed hold of a nearby pipe and pulled himself up.
Breathing slow and steady, she pushed up onto her elbows. “Stop it. You’re gonna kill yourself.” Her words slurred, and her vision faded.
“Aurora, don’t you die on me.” He grunted as he maneuvered from one beam to another. He balanced on some ductwork. A bundle of wires dangled a few feet away. If he leaped and caught it, he’d be directly over the fissure, directly under the wreckage of the house.
“Please, Warrant—”
“Don’t distract me. I’m not immortal anymore. I will make a splat.”
“One of us must survive this. And that’s you.”
“No. I am coming for you.”
Stubborn man. “And then what? I’m dying,” she shouted, though it came out as a whisper.
“You die. I die.”
No. Not another death on her conscience. Not a single one. “All right. Where is the pendant?”
“By your right side, near your hip.”
Aurora patted the ground. She found it, brought the orb to her face…and spotted the Blood Portal reflected on its smooth surface. The crack the sword had made now stretched across the surface vertically and horizontally. A viscous, silvery, reddish membrane bulged in the center.
And beneath that membrane, a face. From the faint outline, human. A lot of things appeared human on the other side of the portal and were the opposite of everything living on the surface of the planet.
It was a facade, constructed so the being could blend in, be the predator secreted amongst the prey. How a thin layer of tissue and skin could mask something so horrid… The Terrors chirped. Drool poured between the Overseer’s fangs in an attempted grin.
She had to stop it. All of it.
Chapter Fourteen
“Aurora? What are you doing?”
She ignored Warrant and rolled onto her stomach. Crawling over glass, pieces of plaster, twisted metal, and rock, she focused on one thing. The Blood Portal.
“Aurora.” He snarled her name. The warning in Warrant’s voice was clear and had the opposite of his intended effect.
She couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not until it was too late for him to stop her.
“Talk to me, Aurora. What are you doing?”
Breathless, she wheezed, “I’m closing the portal.” Only a few more feet and she’d be able to reach it.
“No! You need it!”
She couldn’t save herself and doom everyone else. She may be a Darkling, but she wouldn’t act like one.
“We can’t leave the portal like this. It’s just a matter of time before the breach is complete.” Already, it visibly thinned. The features of the being more defined with each passing second.
The ductwork he’d rested on zipped past and fell into the fissure. That whipped her head up. He hung from a bundle of electrical wires. She hung there with him until he swung to more stable pipes jutting from a wall of the destroyed house. “We’ll find another way.” He leaped to another s
et of pipes, releasing more debris into the fissure.
“No time,” she grunted through a vicious pain in her abdomen that left her reeling. Her knees wobbled, then gave out, and she slammed shoulder first into the wall next to the portal. Now the pendant glowed, a beacon the dark shrank away from. She raised it above her head, prepared to strike.
“Please…don’t do this.”
She paused, and though she knew she shouldn’t, she cranked her head around and met his gaze. Balanced precariously on a beam that groaned from his weight, Warrant had to cross a distance only a leap of faith could make. She had no doubt he would make that leap. Warrant wasn’t the type to fail. At anything.
And when he made that leap, he’d be next to her within seconds. But it was the expression on his face. The love reflected in his eyes and the unspoken plea not to rip away their unspoken future. A future she had no idea she wanted until meeting him. She had to swallow past the tears clogging her throat to say, “You know this is the right thing to do. It’s the only thing we can do.”
“I don’t care,” he shouted.
“You do. I know you do. You gave centuries of service guarding the Blood Portal. And that’s why we must do this. It’s not about you or me, but we. You gave your life for this. Now, it’s my turn.”
The membrane split apart. A face she thought only existed in her nightmares emerged as if born from one world into another. The face that greeted her when she first fell. Grotesquely handsome, so much he stunned the senses of female and male alike. Supremely masculine matched with absolute evil. Was he from this realm or another? Did his evil inhabit all realms? No. She’d met one Demoni Lord, and the creature breaching the membrane was vastly different from that Demoni Lord. Otherworldly with horns and an oddly shaped head.
Aurora slammed the pendant into his open mouth and smashed an uppercut into the underside of his jaw. Glass crunched as his head snapped back. She watched his perfect face morph into his true self.
Her name was a multi-syllable cry filled with disappointment. Good. He would get not pleasure from her.
He spit out the glass shards and as much of her grace as he could. Too late, she mouthed with a grin as the membrane knit over his horns and then the rest of his face, his bleeding eyes, the last she’d ever see of him.
The membrane retracted, followed by an empyreal seal zipping closed and smoothing over like it had never opened.
Aurora collapsed next to the now defunct portal. Her sputtering heart a slowing roar in her veins. She heard Warrant land on the ledge beside her. Registered him scooping her up from the hard ground. His arms cradled her, his strong body sheltered her. He had to go, not die with her. If only she had the strength to tell him to leave.
His blurry face came into view. What she wouldn’t give to clearly see his rugged features one more time. That would have to be enough, knowing he was there in the last moments. The roar in her veins ceased as suddenly as it started.
“Thank you,” she whispered with her last strength, and faded away.
Chapter Fifteen
Silence so thick even her own thoughts couldn’t survive, greeted her. And the White—oppressive blanket of nothingness—was everywhere. So profound, the silence enveloped her from the inside out. This is what it meant to die as a Fallen. No joyous noise. No homecoming ceremony. No dispensing of her grace amongst the remaining Comforts so that she continued to live on as a part of them. No belonging.
Silence is what the Fallen received. The UnHallowed had a chance at redemption. The rest who fell from grace, doomed. An afterlife of silence, aware for an eternity that they are alone. She counted herself lucky. At least she was free and not slave to the Overseer who’d acquired her after he’d had his fill.
Aurora sank to her knees and rested on the cool floor. She wouldn’t waste her time and abuse her sanity by searching to dispel what she already knew, or close her eyes hoping to blunt her new reality because the White had invaded there too.
Regret chewed her strung out nerves. Missing Warrant for the rest of her afterlife would be worse than the White and the silence. The memories of their time together would buoy her. She brought his face to the forefront of her mind…nothing was there. A blank space filled the slot where his image should be.
War…What was his name? “No! Please don’t take…”
Tears raced down her cheeks, dripped onto her white shirt. She couldn’t fathom why. Oh, I’ve lost someone. Someone precious, but the memory of that person was gone, replaced by White space.
The anguish of the loss remained.
Something sweet flavored her mouth. Thick…succulent. More potent than any narcotic, yet smoother than a five-hundred-dollar box of Debauve & Gallais’ Le Livre chocolate. The flavor hit the back of her mouth and slid down her throat with an erotic glide. She’d moan if she could but didn’t want to take the tiniest amount of energy away from the experience.
Heat washed over her as she lay on the cold ground. She burned in the most pleasant way. The inferno began in her abdomen and fired each cell in a cascade of sensations.
Feeling like this, if she could hold onto it, staying in the White wouldn’t be so bad. Too soon the euphoria evaporated. Rough, uneven planks replaced the smooth ground under her back, a warm breeze replaced sterile coolness. To her right was a source of light, and a splinter pricked her elbow. Absently, she rubbed the spot.
“Open your eyes, baby. Let me know you’re okay.”
Fingers threaded through her hair. Felt nice, and she turned her face into the palm stroking its way down her cheek to caress her neck. It’s just a dream, but… Her eyes cracked open for a peek. Warrant hovered over her. His face the only thing she could see.
“How are you here in the White?” One blink and color returned to the world. Though pale from lack of sun, as she suspected, his hair was a russet shade with reddish undertones. His eyes were brown, gold flecks twinkled in their depths. Above her head, an azure sky, and a yellow sun.
“How? Why? I don’t—”
His tongue gliding against her own halted her words and thoughts. A groan slipped out instead, followed by a moan. Her arms wrapped around him as he yanked her against him.
“There was a drop of grace left on a fragment of the pendant. I placed it on your tongue and prayed for the first time in…” His eyes closed, shoulders drooped, and his head bowed.
Aurora pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “Thank you.” Warrant helped her to a seated position and eased the pressure on her wings. Wings? She flexed the muscles on her back and peered over her shoulder. Not the pale green she so loved, but a dingy gray. Tears watered her vision.
“Weeping, Aurora? You should rejoice.” a melodic voice said, and then Colleen appeared standing next to the tree that sheltered her only a day ago.
Aurora leaped to her feet. She ignored Warrant’s confused shout and questions, and marched across the barren front lawn. Colleen held up her hand and halted Aurora’s impulse to throw her arms around her best friend.
“We can’t touch.” No glimmer in her eyes, no easy grin making her dimples appear. Colleen’s neutral features and monotone voice conveyed more than her words.
Aurora’s shoulders sagged. “Can’t even offer me comfort?” She already knew the answer, yet felt compelled to ask.
“Not to an UnHallowed.”
Aurora’s stunned expression earned her a microscopic tweak of Colleen’s lips. “I have a second chance?”
“Your deeds today have been noticed. Don’t squander this chance the grace you consumed has given you. Goodbye, Aurora.” Colleen’s snowy wings unfurled.
“Wait! Can I see you again?” There was so much Aurora wanted to say to her.
“You know the answer, Aurora.”
“But-but,” she cried, “I want to apologize for everything.”
“You just did. I and all the other Comforts had forgiven you since the moment you fell. You always had our love, Aurora, and will continue to have it.” Colleen took to the skies.
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Humbled, Aurora almost couldn’t find the words. “Please don’t go.”
“Though you will not see me, I’ll never be far.” Her voice drifted on the wind.
A hand landed on her waist and moved to the center. She leaned back and rested on the solid body behind her. With the gentlest touch, he brushed her wings. “They’re beautiful.” He pressed a kiss to each, causing a spike of desire to stab low.
She tucked her wings close and spun in the circle of his arms. “Really? You like them?”
“They’re perfect.” His kiss was slow. His mouth and tongue lingered over each flick, stroke, and suck.
When he let her up for air, she got a look at the changed landscape. The house was gone but there were two neighboring farmhouses on the horizon that weren’t there a day ago. “How?” she croaked.
“I’m human now. I don’t have the power to hide in plain sight anymore.”
That made sense. “So…I’m an UnHallowed.” It would take time to wrap her head around her new reality. More like decades. Decades Warrant didn’t have. “I’m immortal and you’re not. The tables have flipped on us. Doesn’t seem fair.”
“Shh.” He silenced her with a kiss. “We have more than we had before. We have each other for however long we have, I won’t waste it. Will you?”
She eased away from him. Everything ached. Even her feathers hurt. But she was alive and that was better than dead any day of the week.
Aurora took a cleansing breath, though she didn’t need to breathe. “So, when do I meet the rest of the UnHallowed?”
“Umm…” He paused. “Let’s get you acclimated first, then we’ll deal with that in increments.”
“And the Blood Portal?” she asked.
“At the bottom of the fissure. I pitched it in. The fissure snapped closed when it hit the bottom.” He showed her his burned palms. “If the earth wants it, I say let the earth have it.”
That was good enough for her. “And us?”
“I say we find your car and hit the road. Take it as far as it will go.”
“What about my wings?” She extended them and basked in the wind ruffling them.
Moonlight Mist: A Limited Edition Collection of Fantasy & Paranormal) Page 33
