The Helm of Darkness

by Kim Richardson

  He looked at her, eyes flashing. “Do you remember the time I drove by your house, and we saw your mother together? She was outside. She went to get something from her car.”

  Alexa felt cold, and the ground wavered at her feet.

  “I remember the car ride, I remember you, but I don’t remember seeing anyone. I can almost remember a feeling of longing in that car ride, but I don’t remember seeing her.”

  Alexa blinked the tears from her eyes.

  “Erik. I don’t remember my own mother. What’s wrong with me?”

  “I don’t know,” Erik was pale. “What about your father? Do you remember him? Or maybe a brother or a sister? Maybe you were closer to them?”

  Alexa tried to focus on her father or remember whether she had a brother or even a sister, but her mind drew a blank. She closed her eyes to help her concentrate, and images burst like flashbulbs behind her lids. She saw blood and bodies, demons, and marble floors stained with red. She heard the cries of the dying, and she smelled the rot and sulfur of death. She even saw the rolling red dunes of Operations and the endless blue sky on level six, but she had no recollection at all of her family.

  She searched for the basic childhood memories that everyone should have: riding her first bike, birthdays, Christmas, the first day of school, friends—nothing. It was like a stone wall blocked her. Her past had been stolen.

  “I can’t remember my father either,” she said somberly, her throat tight. “Or a brother…or a sister…or even if I had a pet dog or a cat. I don’t remember going to school, or having any friends, or even people I might have hated. There’s nothing there. It’s like I never existed in the mortal world.”

  Some distant memory ached in her heart when she spoke. All around her the world itself seemed to be falling apart, and it began to snow.

  Erik looked sad, and Alexa had to look away before she broke down in a sloppy mess of sobs.

  “You’ve been through a lot lately. Maybe you just need some more time,” she heard him say softly. “Maybe a two-month break wasn’t enough. Maybe you should go back and rest.”

  Alexa shook her head. “I can’t go back—not yet. My soul’s imprint—”

  A wave of dizziness came over her.

  Erik rushed over to her. “Are you all right? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

  Alexa dismissed him with her hand. “I can’t remember my past. Of course I’m not all right.”

  The thought that she had had a past teased her. But when she tried to concentrate, tried to retrieve it, it slid away like water through her fingers.

  Erik glanced at her uneasily. “I’m sorry. It’s just—could the Legion have done this to you without you knowing?”

  “What? No,” said Alexa in disbelief. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  But Erik wasn’t letting it go. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am. You’re wrong.” She didn’t like what Erik was insinuating.

  “The Legion would never do this to me.”

  …Would they?

  “They have complete control over you. They can do whatever they want to you, without you even knowing. They could have just pressed a number and then—voila—memories erased.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Alexa ignored his doubtful look. “We’re not freaking robots. We’re not programmed—”

  “I disagree.” Erik almost smiled as he assumed her naiveté.

  She replied angrily, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He held her gaze for a split second and then looked away from her.

  “Fine.” Erik took a hard breath. “What’s your earliest memory?”

  Tears fell from her cheeks.

  “Waking up in Horizon. I remember standing with a group of strangers at Orientation and feeling disoriented, but I don’t remember anything from before. I know I had a life—a past, I feel it, but I just can’t reach it. It’s like waking up from a fantastic dream and trying to latch on to it, to remember it, but it slips further away with every passing second. I don’t even remember how I died. It’s like—”

  And then she knew. Hades had taken that part of her soul. He’d taken her past.

  Not only was she vulnerable to evil and darkness, but her human memories were gone too. Her humanity was gone.

  Alexa knew that if she wanted to be whole again, to regain her soul and her mortal past, there was only one thing left for her to do. She was still strong. She wasn’t about to fall apart. She had a plan. Even if it was a little insane, she would try to retrieve the missing part of her soul.

  Hades had to die.

  Hate flooded through her so violently that she had no control over it. There was no song in her soul but a war cry. First, she would kill Ryan because he started it all. And then she would kill the pagan god.

  “I have to go.”

  Alexa tossed her stick away, turned on her heel, and sprinted across the clearing and into the forest.

  “Alexa, wait!”

  Erik’s voice was like a distant whisper, just as the bond they had once shared had become a whisper. If she had felt emotional loss before, it had been erased just like her past.

  Alexa had nothing left but a fool’s hope that she might outwit and defeat a pagan god who was as ancient as the earth beneath her feet.

  CHAPTER 17

  ALEXA WAS IN A DAZE as she rode the elevator up to Horizon. It was like a dream. Her surroundings were foggy and nothing felt solid. It was almost as if she were moving in slow motion between two realities and never settling in one. But her mind was running on jet fuel.

  From the moment she’d left Erik in the forest, Alexa never stopped working to break down the wall that blocked her from her mortal past. She rummaged through her memory, demanding, forcing, and pushing at its fragile boundaries. Her head hurt, and she felt that she was running out of breath, but she pressed on. The images that flashed past like the pages in a flipbook were always the same. She remembered death, dying, blood, demons, angels, and even Horizon itself, but she could remember nothing at all of her mortal life. It was as though she had never existed.

  She was so preoccupied that she was barely aware the elevator had jerked suddenly, and the doors had slid open. Someone grabbed her and pulled her out.

  She shrieked as the images fell away, and she broke the surface of consciousness like a diver rising through water.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Milo’s handsome face was contorted in anger.

  “Nice to see you too.” Alexa tried to recover her bearings. “Why are you shouting? I’m standing right here. Why are you angry?”

  Of course, she knew why, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  Without waiting for her to respond, Milo steered her away from the elevator and the other angels and into a private corner in the Counter Demon Division.

  “I’m not angry!” His face was inches from hers. “I’m exasperated. Fed up with your screwing around, Alexa.”

  Although Alexa was startled by Milo’s apparent rage, she saw the real concern on his face.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Damnit, Alexa,” he hissed. “I’m tired of covering for you. This isn’t a game. Mortal and angel lives are at stake here. There are consequences to your actions. There are rules for a reason. You can’t just pop in and out of Horizon whenever you please. For god’s sake, you’re on probation!”

  Milo lowered his voice when he realized he was shouting, and Alexa saw a few faces turn their way and whisper behind their hands. She scanned the area for the archangel Ariel, but she wasn’t here. If Milo hadn’t been so in her face, she might have sighed with relief. She should have been more defiant at his reprimands, but she just felt cold and numb.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Alexa dropped her gaze. Her head still pounded, and she was as tired as if she’d run a marathon.

  Milo lowered his voice.

  “All I do is try to protect you, try to guide you, and try to keep you out of troubl
e and away from Tartarus. But you just keep on screwing everything up. If you want to end up in prison for the rest of your angel days, be my guest because I’m done. I’m done covering for you. I’m done trying to save your ass.”

  He hesitated and then said, “I’m putting in a transfer. Maybe you’ll fair better with someone else.”

  “What? You can’t.” She swallowed hard. “You can’t give up on me, Milo. Don’t do this, please.”

  Milo let go of her arm and stared at it like he’d forgotten he had still been clutching it. When he looked at Alexa, she could see real pain in his eyes.

  “You’re not giving me any other choice,” he said more softly. “I’m the wrong angel for you. You need someone you can trust, and I can see in your eyes that you’ve never trusted me. How can I help you when you don’t trust me?”

  For a moment, Milo looked like one of the beautiful marble angels Alexa had seen in Hallow Hall. But then he swore under his breath and stared off into the distance.

  “I trust you,” said Alexa.

  Her voice was strong and even. As soon as the words had left her lips, she knew them to be true. She realized how wrong she’d been about him. His actions spoke stronger than words. Milo had always covered for her and had even shielded her with his own body. She knew the care she saw in his eyes was genuine.

  “Please don’t abandon me,” she said. “Not now.”

  Milo looked surprised at her words, and she could tell he was trying to keep his emotions hidden from her.

  “Then tell me where you were. What’s happened? And no more games. If you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me. Tell me everything—and don’t leave anything out. What’s going on with you? Is it…is it that mortal boy again? Did you go see him?”

  “Yes. No.” Alexa shook her head. “I went back to the Hellgate near Hallow Hall. Erik was there, but I didn’t go because of him.”

  Milo looked into her very core and said, “Then why?”

  She told him. She told him what the oracle had told her about her soul’s imprint, and she explained how she had run into Erik. And finally she told him that she had lost all memory of her life as a mortal.

  “I’m sorry I ran out on you,” said Alexa. “But after what the oracle told me, I knew I didn’t have enough time to look for you and hope you’d let me go. Because, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “I would have,” said the angel. “I would have let you, and I would have come to help you. Now more than ever, you’ll need my protection—”

  “I don’t need protection like some damsel in distress,” mocked Alexa. “I’m not completely hopeless. I just have missing parts.”

  Milo ignored her. “Losing part of your soul to Hades is probably the worst situation any angel could find themselves in. The oracle was right. There are dark influences everywhere, not just with Hades, and you may well be susceptible to them. Metatron doesn’t trust you because he knows this. He’s seen angels fall for far less reason than the loss of their soul. But now, with the loss of your memories…”

  He paused for a moment and looked over his shoulder as though his next words should only be shared between them. “I’m not sure what that means.”

  Alexa gave a nervous laugh and tried to be strong.

  “I was hoping you were going to tell me it was nothing, that it would eventually go away, and I’d get my memories back. It was one thing to lose part of my soul, but I feel lost without my memories.”

  Milo looked thoughtful.

  “The only time I heard of angels losing their memories was when a group of them fell and went dark. Once they had embraced the evil, they purged themselves of all their memories of things that were good and became demons. Whatever humanity had once been in them was gone.”

  Milo scratched the back of his neck. “Still, it’s not the same. Something about your situation is different.”

  Alexa could no longer bear to look at Milo.

  “Maybe this is just the beginning,” she said. “If I can’t remember who I was—it’ll be easier for me to turn.”

  “You’re an angel, not a werewolf, Alexa,” said Milo irritably. “You won’t turn into a furry beast at the next full moon, so stop it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She lowered her voice. “Something’s happening to me. I can feel it.”

  It’s already happening.

  “Turning to the dark side is a choice. You have to want it and accept it,” he said.

  Jim, the oracle, had told her the same thing.

  Milo continued, “Angels don’t just go bad. It’s gradual, and it only occurs if the angel already has a dark streak in him. Angels are chosen very carefully because they are inherently good. Granted, you’re more susceptible to evil now that your memories are gone. It’s going to be difficult for you to protect yourself. But it will not be impossible. I can teach you.”

  Alexa started to feel a little better.

  “You can become evil, but you have to want it. And from what I’ve seen from you, you don’t have what it takes to turn. It’s not who you are.”

  “But that’s the thing,” said Alexa. “How can I be me if I don’t remember who I am? Don’t you remember your past? Aren’t you the echo of your past actions, of your history?”

  Milo had gone quiet, and then he said, “Not all of us want to remember our past.”

  Alexa considered him for a moment. For some reason he was wearing tall leather boots and a fur-trimmed wool overcoat. His sculpted chest suggested that he had spent a good amount of time training. A large scar at the top of his collarbone and smaller ones on his arms showed that he had a warrior’s body that had taken a long time to hone. Then she noticed a strange marking on his neck that looked like a Sensitive’s sigil. While theirs looked more like letters, this one looked like a snake. It was a definitely a mark, but it had been scarred over. It looked as if it had been mutilated, as though he had tried to cut it off.

  Before she could ask him about it, Milo broke the silence. “Just as our life and circumstances today are the products of our past thoughts and actions, so will our actions today determine our future.”

  Milo was a strange creature, thought Alexa. When he spoke like this, she felt as though he had come from a different age and was only pretending to be modern.

  Still, she wasn’t sure what kind of future she was going to have without memories and with only half a soul.

  Milo looked over his shoulder and gently steered Alexa towards the Vega tanks.

  “Actually, there’s a real reason I was looking for you,” he said.

  She saw him smile.

  “What reason?”

  Alexa crossed the chamber, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. She lowered her voice, “Does it have anything to do with the Cleansing?”

  “No.” He frowned. “Who told you about that?”

  “Jim, the oracle, told me.”

  “Well, you would have found out anyway,” said Milo, looking grim. “But that’s not it. While you were out playing mortal—”

  “I wasn’t playing mortal,” growled Alexa.

  Milo grinned. “We’ve been given a new assignment.”

  “We have?”

  “We’ve discovered a few things about the Deus Septem,” said Milo, talking fast. “And why Hades wants it.”

  “Which is?” Alexa suspected that her plan to confront Hades was becoming more likely. “Does it have anything to do with why you look like a ranger from The Lord of the Rings?”

  Milo looked smug. “The archangels don’t have copies of the books because the originals were given to the mortals. A group of elder scholars, the Elders’ Guild, have been studying the originals and adding to them for years. Apparently, Hallow Hall’s books were just copies. And for security reasons, the more delicate and dangerous material wasn’t recorded in the copies.”

  Milo glanced at Alexa. “We know the original books contained magical artifacts, treasures, dark spe
lls, and secrets. We believe Hades needed the original books.”

  Alexa moved around a desk and said, “I’m guessing Hades doesn’t know that Ryan only stole the copies?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Milo, “not yet.”

  She imagined Ryan’s face when he discovered his mistake. She wanted to laugh. Ryan’s smile would fade into a scream when Hades obliterated him. She was anxious to get a move on, and she hoped that the pagan God would eliminate Ryan for her.

  Milo continued, “We still have time to get our hands on the originals before he does. We know he wants those books, but the problem is…we still don’t know what he wants from them, or what their connection is to the dead mortals from The Crowns of the World. We haven’t been able to figure it out. But whatever it is, we need to figure it out fast and stop him before he finds them. Otherwise what happened in Hallow Hall will look like a walk in the park compared to what Hades will do.”

  Alexa was quiet. “And you’re sure the elders will let us look at these precious books? Even after what happened in Hallow Hall?”

  Milo moved past the Vega tanks and grabbed a wool winter coat and a pair of knee-high winter boots that looked a lot like the ones he was wearing.

  “Metatron arranged a visit with the elders,” said the angel. “I doubt we’ll be welcomed with open arms. I’m not going to lie, Metatron had to pull a lot of strings and call in a lot of favors to arrange this visit. Still, they’ve granted us special permission.”

  Alexa knew if they could figure out what Hades was after, she would be that much closer to ending the pagan god once and for all.

  Alexa became conscious of whispers, and she flinched when she looked up. Everyone in the chamber was staring at her as if she were some kind of stranger. Maybe she was.

  How much did the other angels know?

  “Here, put these on.”

  Milo gave her the boots and coat. Its deep pockets were stuffed with matching wool mitts. Neither she nor Milo felt the cold the same way that mortals did, so these items only fueled her curiosity. The boots were exactly her size, and her new coat was surprisingly light and comfortable. The hood was trimmed with fur and smelled department store new. She loved it.