Dark Halo (An Angel Eyes Novel)

by Dittemore, Shannon

  A bundle of off-white pages have been added to the chest. I snatch them up. They’re folded in half and in half again, the square of paper looking far more docile than the blood-crusted weapon next to it.

  “What is that?” Kaylee says.

  “I don’t know. Pages of some sort. They look like they’ve been ripped from . . .”

  But Kaylee’s not looking at the paper in my hand. Her eyes are trained on the dagger. I lean past her and grab the lid. It’s awkward with her in the way, but I heft it back in place, shutting the past away.

  “Do angels always keep bloody swords in their trunks?”

  In spite of the heaviness surrounding us, I snort.

  “I guess that didn’t come out right,” Kaylee says, lacking all of the humor I’ve come to expect of her.

  “It’s not Canaan’s, Kay. The Throne Room put it there.”

  Her face goes white. “Why?”

  “I think they were warning us about Damien’s return.”

  “That’s Damien’s?”

  I nod.

  She picks at the polish on her thumbnail. It takes her seventeen scratches to eliminate every last blue sparkle she’d painted on.

  “He said he’d killed you once before. The other day make you whole.”oute, in your living room, he told your dad he’d killed you before and he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.” It’s painful watching someone else dissect the events of yesterday, but I let her do it. I know she needs to understand. “This is how he did it, then. At the warehouse. This is how he killed you, isn’t it?” Before I can answer, she presses her fingers to her eyes. “I remember . . .”

  “What, Kay? What do you remember?”

  “Rain. And blood. All over your shirt. All over your hands.” She lets her hands fall away and starts picking at her other thumbnail. “But I can’t . . . Why can’t I remember more?”

  “Doubt,” I tell her. “Denial. They make us feel better about the things our brains refuse to believe. Once they’ve taken root, they take on a life of their own.”

  “You’re saying I’m in denial about the warehouse?”

  “Not all of it, obviously, but the angels, the demons? Yeah, I’m guessing you chose denial.”

  She moves on to her index finger, scratching, scratching, blue chips flying. “I believe, though. Now I do.”

  “I’m glad,” I say, pulling her into a hug. “You have no idea how glad I am.”

  “Do you think I’ll remember?”

  “I don’t know, Kay. Maybe.” I wish I had time to sit and really explain everything to her. Wish I could open the Bible and show her the stuff Jake’s shown me. Well, really, I wish Jake was here to do that; he’s so much better than I am at the Bible stuff. I always forget where everything is. But we don’t have time for any of that. We have to figure out what these pages are.

  “Okay, bloody swords aside, what is this?” Kaylee asks, swatting at the pages still clenched in my hand.

  I think I know what they are, but I’m hesitant to say. Hesitant to hope. I unfold the wad of paper, and now I’m sure.

  “They’re pages torn from a journal,” I say. “From Ali’s journal.”

  “That ratty leather book Marco’s always carrying around?”

  “It wasn’t always ratty,” I tell her. “Ali loved that thing.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Kaylee says, fingering the pages in my hand. “This Throne Room of yours—”

  “Not mine.”

  “—tore pages out of the journal in Marco’s pocket and dropped them into this chest for Canaan to find?”

  I think it through. It’s possible, I guess. Anything’s your mother.”inowpossible, but . . .

  “There were pages missing from Ali’s journal.” I sort through the thin stack in my hand.

  “What?”

  “Before he left, Marco had Ali’s journal out. He was asking me a question about a quote she’d copied down and . . .”

  “And?”

  “And I noticed a section had been torn out.”

  “So. Okay. Then someone . . .”

  “Maybe Ali . . . ,” I venture.

  “Sure, maybe Ali, but someone tore the pages out, and then an unspecified amount of time passed and the Throne Room snatched them up and delivered them here.”

  “Sounds about right,” I say.

  “But why tear the pages out to begin with?”

  “Because Ali never carried a purse. I bet she just tore these out and crammed them into her pocket.”

  “This is all so cryptic. She could have helped us out and been a bit more specific. Do you know what these notes mean?”

  “I don’t. Ali always joked she was doing top secret research. I never thought she was serious.”

  “I know what this is though. This is Bellwether,” Kay says.

  “The lighthouse?”

  “Yeah,” she says, sinking back next to me.

  I look at the page she’s shifted to the top and think maybe she’s right. On the back of it is a pencil sketch of the lighthouse. Ali’s captured it well. I recognize the cliff line behind it.

  “In Beacon City,” I say. I flip through other pages, looking at their mostly blank backs. One has the sketch of a rock garden on it, but the others are empty. In the top left corner of the page with the lighthouse sketch, Ali’s delicate cursive hand has penned a phone number. I recognize the Portland area code. Below it are the words: just past mile marker 178, 1pm

  “I know that number,” Kaylee says, reading over my shoulder. “Gosh, whose is it?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  The phone’s already in my hand. I dial and put it on speaker.

  “If we knew what freeway she was talking about, we might be able to figure out—”

  drip, The voice mail on the other end of the line has picked up. My hand goes slack and the phone slips out. Kaylee picks it up off the carpet and ends the call.

  “Holy crab cakes,” she says.

  “Why did Ali have Olivia Holt’s phone number in her journal?” And then another memory surfaces. “There was another sketch.”

  “What?”

  “In Marco’s journal. It was of Olivia’s arm. I didn’t know it was her arm at the time, but it was.”

  “Okay, Dr. Frankenstein, what makes you an expert at identifying arms—especially from pencil sketches?”

  “The scars,” I say.

  “I’ve known Liv for a while now, and I haven’t seen any scars.”

  “Yeah, but I have.”

  Kaylee’s face is screwed up so tight I’m actually surprised she can blink. But she manages eleven of them before her brow relaxes and her jaw loosens. She looks like she’s going to explode with all the questions crammed into her head, but she settles for an easy one.

  “She has scars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Ali met her?”

  “Must have.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s not the right question to be asking,” I say, jumping to my feet. “We want to know where they met.”

  “I’m guessing it was a half mile past mile marker 178.”

  “Me too,” I say, dashing out of the room and across the hall into the study. I hit Jake’s desk chair at a run. I have to grab both sides of the desk to keep from sliding too far, but I steady myself and pull up Google.

  “What are you searching for?” Kaylee asks, following me in, albeit at a much more reasonable pace.

  But I can’t slow down. I can’t stop. I’ve got a feeling that . . .

  “They’ve turned Bellwether into a pastry shop?” she asks, her eyes on the page I’m clicking through.

  “Just the keeper’s house,” I say. “The lighthouse is up the road . . .”

  “Across that creepy bridge,” Kaylee says. “I remember.”

  I click on the link that says Directions and my eyes scream across the page. Looking, looking . . . your mother.”inow

  “There!” I say, jamming my finger into the screen and
reading aloud, “‘If you’re traveling on Highway 101, we are two and a half miles north of the world-famous Sea Lion Caves and a half mile north of mile marker 178.’”

  “Ali met Liv at Bellwether?”

  “I think so.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s Ali’s connection to Olivia?” I grab my phone from Kaylee’s hand and dial Canaan. After four rings it goes to voice mail. Next I try Helene. Nothing. Forcing myself not to curse, I redial Olivia’s number. But every single call goes to voice mail.

  “Don’t you hate that?” Kaylee says. “What is the point of having a phone if you never, ever answer the thing? Delia’s the worst. I’m convinced she’s just ignoring me.”

  But I’ve moved on.

  “We have to go to Bellwether,” I say.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because the Throne Room sent us this,” I say, holding up the wad of paper. “And it has information that ties Olivia to that lighthouse. And she was working with Damien.”

  “Something I still have trouble believing,” she says. “But I thought we were waiting for stuff about Jake? I thought that’s what we”—air quotes around the we—“were praying for.”

  I bite my lip, because if I’m really, truly, completely honest, that’s exactly why we have to go to Bellwether.

  “Oh,” Kay says, sinking back, her eyes wide, her long lashes curling into her brows. “You think Jake’s at Bellwether, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, trying to rein in the hyperactive hope, ―" class="tx"

  10

  Jake

  Jake watched as Damien tied Marco to a wooden chair. Damien was pretty adamant about wanting a metal one, but Olivia insisted it was the best she could come up with. Yellow with white daisies painted up its legs and on the chair back. Damien strapped him to it, using his zip ties and nylon rope. And duct tape, of course, around Marco’s chest. Irritated that he didn’t get what he asked for, Damien overcompensated by cinching the binds so tight they cut into Marco’s wrists and ankles. He woke screaming, thrashing against the binds, which only made them bleed more.

  After that, Damien shoved the halo onto Jake’s head and then took five steps backward, like Jake was set to explode at any moment. But when he did nothing but close his eyes and sigh, Damien yanked the halo—and a handful of hair—from Jake’s head and shoved it onto Marco’s.

  Here he arrived at something that seemed to please him more.

  Marco whimpered when Damien came toward him with the thing, but he silenced when the halo was dropped into place. For an hour Marco stared straight ahead, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Jake watched, nearly as transfixed as Damien. Occasionally Marco’s brow would crease or his eyes would close. Once he sobbed openly and twice he laughed. And then his head bobbed once, swung like a pendulum, and stilled against his chest.

  Now Damien sits in the corner of the basement, spinning the halo on his finger.

  Jake looks again at Marco. His chair is jammed in the corner of the room; his hands, like Jake’s, are tied behind his back. Every now and then a drop of blood falls to the floor. The healer in Jake has been doing everything he can to figure out a way to help.

  Even with the metal chair wobbly from Damien’s temper tantrum, Jake hasn’t been able to work either his legs or arms free. Getting to Marco could be a problem. And then there’s Olivia.

  What little light slips through the window has changed, adding brown shades to the gray, but Olivia’s perch under the stairs keeps her face in shadow. Jake can see her legs plainly enough—crossed at the ankles, her feet still bare. They’re strangely still. She drops her hands to her lap and with her right thumb she strokes the scars only to be replaced by 08p A on her forearm. Reading her is hard. Fear doesn’t shake her as easily as it shakes others. Jake would do anything to have Brielle’s sight right now.

  He closes his eyes and conjures her crystal blues, her red lips. An ache crashes around his chest, heavy like a bowling ball. There’s no guarantee he’ll see her again. The thought gains momentum, making it hard to breathe, but Jake stares into her imagined face for a minute longer before he forces his eyes open. When he does, Damien’s gone. Or at least invisible.

  He strains, finally locating Olivia’s eyes in the darkness under the stairs.

  “Where’d he go?” Jake asks. “Damien. When will he be back?”

  She doesn’t move, doesn’t answer him.

  “Olivia?” His patience is thin, his fists balled, his voice insistent. “Olivia, it’s important. Where did—”

  “Don’t ask me questions.”

  The anxiety Jake’s been searching for on her person is finally evident in her words. Her hatred for Damien is obvious, but she’s shattered. Bound to him somehow. Not with zip ties or nylon rope like he and Marco are. It’s fear that keeps her here.

  Jake presses his back against the seat. The binds against his wrists relax, and relief floods his injured arm. It’d be so easy to quit fighting. So painless to sit and wait, to accept whatever’s coming.

  But physical pain’s never frightened Jake much. Other things terrify him, but not that.

  “Marco?” he asks.

  Marco’s chin still rests on his chest, his hair a shaggy mess blocking any view of his face, and the blood continues to drip. He’s hurting, and while Jake can deal with his own pain, he can hardly stand it on others. With a glance at Olivia and another one at his suffering friend, Jake decides.

  He presses his toes into the floor and leans forward. The injured side of his body flares with pain, but he bites his cheek and takes two tiny steps toward Marco before his calves give out and his chair totters back.

  “Okay, Marco. I’m going to walk my chair closer to yours, all right? If you can turn your chair away from me so I can”—he casts a glance at Olivia—“so I can see your hands, that would help.”

  But Marco doesn’t move. Neither does Olivia.

  “Okay. Well. We’ll deal with that when I get there.” Jake cracks his neck and shakes his own hair away from his face. He pushes the pain in his shoulder to the back of his mind and rolls onto his toes again. He leans forward and lifts the chair legs off the ground. Sweat breaks out on his upper lip as he moves toward Marco. He manages a few steps before the pain in his shoulder demands a break. He throws his head back, breathing in the musty air as the pain ebbs. Then he grit was made by the Creatornt1As his teeth and tries again. It’s several minutes before he gets to Marco’s side.

  “Okay, Marco. I’m here,” Jake says. He’s drenched in cold sweat now, his hair matted against his face and neck, and still Marco ignores his presence, his effort to help.

  And now Jake’s done all he can do. Marco’s hands are bound behind him; without some help from Marco, there’s no way Jake will be able to reach them.

  “Marco, my man, can you turn your chair at all?”

  Just the drip, drip, drip of blood falling to the ground.

  Jake tips his chair a bit, knocking his shoulder against Marco’s. “Look, man, I know this sucks, but I can help. Really, I can. Look, the halo gave you nightmares, right? Visions? Okay. It gave me a totally different gift. I can . . . my hands . . . I can heal the cuts on your wrists, Marco. I can do it with a touch, but I need to be able to reach them.”

  Marco’s sniffles taper off, but he doesn’t move.

  “Come on, let me help. I need you better. I need you to want to get out of here. Let me help. Please.”

  Marco’s face tilts up, but his eyes are glassy, and though they meet Jake’s, they’re focused on something beyond him. On something beyond the room. Jake throws his weight against the wobbly chair, and his knees connect with Marco’s.

  “Hey, listen to me. Whatever’s going on in that head of yours, snap out of it. Pay attention. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “He’s not here,” Olivia says, leaning into Marco’s face. “Not really.” Jake’s been so focused on Marco he didn’t hear her creep up behind
him.

  “Turn his chair for me,” Jake says. He doesn’t ask. He can see the compassion she feels for Marco. The tenderness. She doesn’t want to see him in pain.

  She reaches out, but fear grabs hold of her hands and they tremble. Jake doesn’t care. He’s done giving in to fear.

  “Turn his chair, Olivia. Turn him so his hands touch mine.”

  She stands there, her shaking hands frozen in midair. “I didn’t know, Jake. I didn’t know he was going to take you.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. Please. I can help Marco, and we can get out of here. All of us.”

  Her head shakes violently now. “You don’t know what he did to me.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. But I know Damien.”

  “Not Damien,” she says. She kneads her hands together, her eyes locked on Jake">have to do anything.”D1A’s. He knows that look. Seen it many times. She wants to talk. To confess. She has horrible timing, but if he can get her talking, maybe he can help her too. “Javan. Henry’s Javan.”

  Jake exhales slowly, keeps his voice calm. “He did that to your arm.”

  She nods. “I was ten when I went to live with my grandfather. My vile, pedophilic grandfather. Javan said he could protect me from him.”

  Jake knows this part because Brielle’s dreamed it, but it’s different hearing it from Olivia. It’s sadder, more real, when you consider that Elle’s nightmares were someone else’s reality.

  “Did Javan keep his word?”

  Another dip of her chin. “Henry never touched me.”

  “And Javan . . . ,” Jake asks.

  “Not like that,” Olivia says. “Never like that.” Her eyes look like Marco’s now. Glassy. Far away. “That wasn’t Javan’s way. I’m fairly certain I repulsed him. That everyone repulsed him.”

  “What did he do to you, Olivia?”

  Her mouth hangs open for a second, the bottom lip quivering. Despite the pain she’s obviously in, Jake can’t help but appreciate her show of emotion. It’s good to know the woman can still feel. She might not be as broken as he thought.

  “He crawled inside my head.” Her hands fall to her sides, the seemingly ridiculous statement pulling her back to the room. “That sounds weird to you, doesn’t it?”