by D. N. Hoxa
I’d never seen any of my helpers before or while they broke free from their deals. This was the first time, and it was beautiful.
I knew I needed to stand back and let it all play the way it was always going to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t not get involved, not when I’d finally found him.
Adrian fought his brothers for the girl he loved. Fucking poetic. The least I could do was slow them down. Give him a better chance to get out of there as quickly as he could.
I would follow them wherever they went until I had the chance to see his face, to talk to him, to release him completely. It was terribly wrong that I was so excited, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. Not as I turned time around for Adrian’s brothers, and they fought like they were under water.
Adrian thought they were letting him go. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. They were still his brothers after all, and he still managed to run away.
Flying in towns like Granton was a bad idea. No huge building to shield you, and I needed a good amount of concentration to keep the illusion up for every person living there and to fly. That was why I got a car.
Adrian and Willow were already gone, and I gave them a few more minutes before I followed. I needed to let everything run its natural course.
But as soon as I turned the engine on and the headlights of my car hit the trees on the other side of the road from where I was parked, I stopped breathing.
She stood there, half hidden by the trees. She was far, and it was dark, but I would know her face anywhere.
I was turned back in time, six hundred and eighteen years ago, and I was turned back in time just a few days ago to a masquerade party in Manhattan.
It was her. That was why I’d thought I’d seen her before.
It was my Magdalena.
She was there. She’d been there in New York, too. And like she did at that party, she was looking right at me. Maybe I’d really lost my mind, but I didn’t care. She was there. I could see her.
I got out of the car, my body weak. I ran across the street, but by the time I got there, she had disappeared.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on what I could hear.
Nothing.
No footsteps. Just the memory of her face, hiding behind the trees.
She couldn’t have disappeared, just like that. It was impossible.
I ran deeper and deeper into the woods, searching for her, for a woman I hadn’t seen in more than six hundred years. If there was a chance…just a small chance that she was real, I would take it. I would search the world if I had to, to see her again.
I still remembered her smell. Her soft hair. Her skin on mine. Her smile.
I had met her in the Roman Empire, in a town that is now in Germany. She could always see right through me. Right through my illusions. It was extraordinary. It had never happened before and never again after. And she’d come to me, spoke to me when everybody else couldn’t even see I was there.
“Are you an Angel?” she had asked me, her voice soft, the most beautiful melody to my ears.
I was so shocked that I just stared at her for a long minute.
“You have wings,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”
I’d never been in love before, but with Magdalena, it was impossible not to fall hard, fast, deep. She was the human version of perfection, at least for me.
So I let her in. I told her everything. Who I was. What I did. And she believed me.
The time I spent with her was better than anything Heaven had to offer. She was Heaven for me. She was home.
And when her time came, much too soon, that was the only time I pleaded with my brother. I begged him to let her stay with me, just for a few more years. I offered him everything I had, everything I could give him.
That was the first time I truly understood why. Why humans did what they did. What made them fools. What made them braver than any other living creature. What made them alive.
But the Devil wasn’t the Devil just because. His heart was tainted. He laughed in my face and took her a day before her time.
I never thought I’d see my Magdalena again, and now there she was. Centuries later, in America.
I stopped running when I realized that I wasn’t going to find her anywhere.
She wasn’t real. I was just losing it. She’d died in my arms all that time ago, looking at me and believing that I would save her, and I hadn’t. I’d just cried and kissed her and told her how much I loved her.
I returned to my car with a new wave of hatred in my chest for my brother. For myself.
Adrian was mine. I wouldn’t let him go, not for as long as I could.
I was going to fight my brother again, until the end of time, for that one day he took away from her. From me.
And that was the other half of the reason why I’d never leave Earth.
Xara
I let him see me. When he climbed into his car and turned the headlights on, I was there. It was the strangest, most difficult thing I’d ever had to do. Just stand there and wait to be seen, in between the trees.
I found him right where Trip said I would. In the woods across from a large house. I found him looking at a young man who was crying, screaming, all alone in there. Then I followed his every step. I kept the distance Trip always wanted me to keep, just to make sure he wouldn’t see me.
I saw the young man again, as he fought two others, and got into a car with a girl and left. I didn’t understand any of it. My head was a mess. I’d tried my best to figure at least something out while I flew to Wisconsin from New York, but I had failed.
It was impossible. I’d need to read Trip’s mind to figure out what exactly was going on. Who that boy was. Who the girl that ran away with him was. Who the Angel I was supposed to follow was.
Who my brother was.
Nothing was worse than doing something practically blind and deaf. But I had no other choice. I was going to find him. I was going to do whatever it took.
That’s what I concentrated on as I ran away from the Angel. I barely made it before he saw me.
I headed straight back to the motel I was staying in, because there was no decent hotel around those parts. I’d left my phone there because I couldn’t afford any distractions. Especially since Nora continued to call once every minute.
I didn’t give her details. I just told her I had to leave for a few days. She freaked out, because I never left my apartment. I had no one that I knew except for Trip, and she didn’t know about him. Nobody did. So I couldn’t tell her what was going on or why I disappeared.
I sent her calls to voicemail right before there was a knock on the door to my room.
Trip’s grin greeted me with its full force as he walked in without even waiting for me to ask who it was. This time I didn’t hug him. He didn’t even expect me to.
“Did he see you?” He was awfully excited about it.
“He did.” And I barely managed to run away before he found me, but I didn’t tell Trip that.
“Cheer up, Xara! You’re almost there!” he said, laughing.
“Where?” I said. I had no idea where I was even headed.
“To where you need to be,” he said. “What else did you see?”
With a sigh, I told him about the boy. About the girl. About the Angel.
“Perfect,” Trip said. “You leave for San Francisco in the morning.”
I was surprised to say the least. I’d arrived in Wisconsin just two days ago.
“What’s in San Francisco?”
“Him,” Trip said. He meant the Angel.
“So I’m just going to follow him around like a dog now?”
Trip laughed. “I don’t remember you being so…inquisitive.”
I was just a kid, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue.
“I just want to know what I’ll do in San Francisco.”
“Go to this address,” he handed me another one of those purple pieces of paper from his pocket, “and I’ll tell you all a
bout it. Catch.”
He threw a single key in my hand and headed for the door.
“Trip, I’m scared,” I said before he made it to the door.
He faced me again. “Don’t be scared, Xara. I’ve trained you well. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m afraid of failing.” I was afraid of dying.
“What does that mean?” he said.
I couldn’t meet his eyes so I looked at my feet instead.
“What if I’m not cut out for it? What if I don’t make it?”
“Do you want to make it?”
“Of course I—”
“Because everything depends on you. If you see your brother, that depends on you. If you live or die, that depends on you,” Trip said.
“I know.” Did I?
“You’re not a kid anymore, Xara. You’re twenty-six years old.”
“You’re missing the point,” I said. I didn’t cry because Trip never wanted to see tears in my eyes, but God, how I wanted to. “Maybe it’s better if I just walked away.”
I couldn’t live with myself if I failed. Well, Trip did say that I would die, but failing terrified me more.
“You can’t walk away from this, Xara,” Trip said, laughing.
Chills washed over me. The sound of his laughter was terrifying. I’d never heard it before.
“Leave for San Francisco in the morning. Wait for me there. And don’t get any stupid ideas in your head, okay? You know you can’t run from me.”
He walked out the door and left me staring after him like a lunatic. By the time I came around and ran outside to follow him, ask him what the hell he meant, he was gone.
Being surprised at Trip’s words, at the way he looked at me that night, was a stupid, naïve mistake, I realized. Maybe I never knew who he was, but it was obvious he was different. Powerful. Dangerous. As a teenager, I always pictured him as a wizard. A magician. He could make things disappear and appear again. He could make himself disappear and appear again.
I never wanted to listen to the voice in my head, the one that said he’d saved me for a reason. He brought me to live with him for a year and took care of me for a reason. And knowing I had no way out even if I wanted out—well, it was hard not to panic.
I never slept that night. When morning came, my backpack was ready, but my mind…my body wasn’t. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and knowing that I had no other choice made it worse. I’d always felt like I’d stayed a kid inside. Ever since Trip took me to that mountain, everything sort of stopped for me.
But whatever it was that was scaring me so much so suddenly, it had to wait. I had only one flight to prepare myself.
Willow Robinson
The car stopped moving. I held on tightly to my knees and buried my face between them. What was I doing? Was I praying? Crying? Hoping?
I couldn’t be sure. One thing I was sure about was that my body shook violently. All of it. I’d lost control of everything.
Then the door at my side opened, and Adrian climbed on the backseat next to me. Instinctively, I dragged myself away to the other side.
“Willow, please,” Adrian said. He sounded desperate. Hurt. Sorry.
“Get away from me,” I said, because obviously, I was hearing things.
“Please don’t be afraid of me. I would never hurt you, Willow. I love you.” I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. I did neither. “Look, I know it’s hard for you to believe me, but please try. You’re safe, I promise you.”
“You promise me?” That was even more ridiculous than I love you.
“I do!” he said. “Look at me, Willow. Those were my brothers back there. My own brothers.”
His face looked as bad as his voice sounded. It was terrible, because those men had been his brothers. And Adrian had fought them and took me out of there.
What the hell was I going to believe in now?
“Why were your brothers after me? Why did they come to my house…why…” My mouth was so dry, it was hard to speak.
“Willow, you don’t—”
“Just tell me, goddamn it! Tell me, because you know!”
That much had been obvious. He’d come inside my house expecting to see them there. The way they’d talked…he knew.
He turned away and looked outside the window for a long time. I had no idea where we were. I wished I had my phone with me so I could call the police. But then again, I wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to do that.
No, I wanted to hear what he had to say first. Because even after everything that happened, a part of me was still a bit glad that he was there. A part of me believed that he would keep me safe. A part of me remembered every word he said to his brothers. How he fought them, how he got me out and drove away. And that part of me made me feel almost sick of myself.
“You’re not going to believe me,” Adrian said after a while.
“Try me.”
“It’s not going to make any sense to you.”
“Just tell me, Adrian. I need to know what I got myself into.”
I hated how my voice shook, but it was out of my control.
“You didn’t…” he stopped and sighed loudly. “You didn’t get yourself into anything.”
“Look at me.” He continued to look out the window. “Look at my face, Adrian!”
Reluctantly, he turned his head, and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. Something tightened inside my chest at the sight. Somehow, I never thought I’d see a man like him crying.
“My Dad…he was dying. Bone cancer.” The shiver that washed over him covered his arms in goose bumps. “And one night a year ago, just days before he would have passed away, someone came in my dream. In all of our dreams. It was the Devil, and he offered us a deal. He would keep Dad alive for seven years if we agreed to work for him.”
He looked so sincere that I wondered if he really believed the things he was saying. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he was mentally ill, and he thought all of it was real, in which case, I was in worse trouble than I thought.
“I agreed because I thought it was a dream,” he said, and his voice broke. “You have to believe me, Willow. I thought it was a dream. I would’ve never made the deal if I’d known it was real. But it was.”
He lowered his head and strands of his hair fell forward. He stayed like that until he finished his story.
“Dad was okay the next morning. Completely healed, but he wouldn’t speak. He hasn’t said a word ever since, but he’s perfectly healthy. Stronger than all of us. And we started getting people at our door. Requests to beat people, scare people, blackmail them, all kinds of weird shit. Until two weeks ago.”
He scratched his nails so hard, I wondered why his fingers weren’t bleeding. His hands shook, too. Worse than mine. But he continued.
“George Mitchell came to our door.” My heart began to pound again. “He said that his wife had a daughter she wouldn’t let leave. Said he couldn’t have her all to himself for as long as the girl was around. His wife wouldn’t go with him to New York. She would never agree to have a baby with him as long as the girl—you—were still there. So he asked us to kidnap you and…get you out of their lives for good.”
Was I supposed to laugh? I thought of George’s face. My mother’s. Did he really expect me to believe this?
“We have done many things before, my brothers and I, but we’ve never kidnapped or killed a person. But the deal…the fucking deal doesn’t let you say no. I wanted to kill George right there on the spot. I wanted to tell him no. To get the hell off our property. But I couldn’t. None of us could. Because of one goddamn deal.” He laughed dryly for a second. “I asked my brothers for two weeks. I wanted to at least get to know the person I was going to kill. So they gave me two weeks.” He shrugged. “But I had no idea I would fall in love with you, Willow.”
He turned to me again and found me the same as he left me. Staring at him, never blinking.
“And I was able to ask you to run away with me. I could a
sk you to leave, break the deal, send George’s request to hell. I broke out of it.”
In those seconds, his eyes looked hopeful. It was all so beautifully real, coming out of his mouth. He truly believed it.
“I know how this sounds, Willow.” He reached out a hand to touch me, but thought better of it. “But you have to believe me, because it’s the truth.”
Oh, God. It was true. Adrian was mentally ill. I’d seen him for the past two weeks speak truths the same way he was saying this. He really believed that he’d made a deal with the Devil.
Panic filled me from head to toe, and my fingers squeezed around each other. I couldn’t stop looking at him. How had I missed it? How had I not seen it coming sooner?
I had no other options. I’d seen enough movies and documentaries to know that when a mentally ill person said something he really believed in, going against him led to getting yourself killed. So I swallowed hard.
“Okay.” The word had the weight of a thousand tons on my tongue.
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay. I believe you.”
I wasn’t as good at lying as he was, but I tried with all I had to believe myself when I said those words. And Adrian looked at me without moving for a long second, before he let his breath out in relief.
“Oh, God,” he mumbled and put his arms around me to hug me. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. Talking was one thing, but touching was my limit. He realized I wasn’t moving soon enough, and he let go of me, sitting back. “We’re going to be okay, Willow. I promise you, okay? Nothing and nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“Okay,” I said again. My tongue hurt to speak, because my mouth was so dry. “I need something to drink.”
I did. And I also hoped he would take us to a store to buy water, and I would see someone who could help me. I’d scream with all the voice I could muster as soon as I saw another person.
But unfortunately, Adrian stepped out of the car, opened the trunk, and brought a bag full of things to eat and drink back.
“You should come sit in the front.”
He opened the door to my side. Running away right then and there was out of the question. He would catch me before I could blink. So I slowly stepped out and got into the passenger seat.
