Blood Redemption (Angel's Edge #3)

by Vicki Keire

  Now that it was sinking in that the immediate danger was over, I wanted nothing more than to lay back into the grass and enjoy the miracle of breathing, but Ethan reached for me and pulled me into a sitting position.

  As the sounds of battle faded, I looked up to see that Belial’s red-cloaked Nephilim now stood around Asheroth in loose groups. I bolted to my feet, fingers flexing against the air as Shadows danced across my palms, ready to defend us as best I could without Jack. Although the thought of his absence sent a sharp pain through my heart, I knew what these rogue Nephilim could do. Their gifts could be unpredictable as were their allegiances.

  “Ethan, Asheroth.” I said their names as if willing them to come with me, backing away slowly, palms still outstretched. “Belial’s Nephilim,” I said softly by way of warning. Some of them snapped up their heads when I called them that. I recognized the young Caroline Bedford amongst them. She dropped her red hood and stepped forward defiantly.

  “We don’t belong to Belial anymore,” she practically snarled. She stripped off her cloak in a series of quick, jerky movements. I could see that she had tears in her eyes. “Not ever again. I will never belong to that demon, thanks to him.”

  It took me a minute to realize she meant Asheroth.

  He had saved them? What the hell?

  To my complete and utter shock, my insane angelic former guardian placed a possessive arm around the girl and drew her close. His eyes were as clear as I had ever seen them as he indicated the other Nephilim with a sweep of his free arm. “They are all under my protection. They may return with me to the Dark Realms, to stay with me in my Twilight Kingdom. The Light will not bother them there, under my protection. I have seen to it. I have no desire to start wars, or to traffic with the mortal world in any way.” Caroline dropped her head, but not before a look of relief crossed her face. “They will be safe there with me. I will make the Twilight Kingdom into a refuge for all Nephilim, into a home they’ve never had.” He indicated the battlefield with a sharp slash of his hand. “And when I remove the Gifted from this mortal realm, the armies of the Light will have no more reason to fight you.”

  “What’s to stop them from coming after Caspia and Logan?” Ethan asked.

  Asheroth made a strangled, impatient sound in the back of his throat. “I said mortal realm, E’than’i’el. Whitfield is something else entirely. As long as neither of the Chastain siblings strays from the protective barrier for too long, they should be safe.”

  Beside me, Ethan’s jaw dropped. I don’t even know what my own face looked like. Somewhere between hit with a frying pan and kissed by a bear, probably.

  “I suppose there are worse things than being stuck here,” I said. After all, I was the girl who never really wanted to leave anyway, and Logan could just learn to deal. But then the rest of Asheroth’s little speech sunk in. “What do you mean, your Twilight Kingdom?” I asked. This was Asheroth, after all. Maybe he was merely on another one of his insane rants. I turned back to the twelve-year old Nephilim. “And what about your father, Caroline? He has to be going crazy with worry.”

  “He’ll understand,” she said softly, regret and longing plain in her voice. “He’s always known I’m different, just like he knew my mother was different. He’ll know this is best. And it’s not like I’ll never see him. Asheroth says the Twilight Kingdom is to be a haven for my kind, now. He says he’ll even set up a kind of school where we can develop our gifts until we can control them, and understand them. So really, as I see it, this really is the best way.”

  A school, for Nephilim? Run by Asheroth? Just what had happened to him to cause such seismic changes?

  But Asheroth had more pressing issues to contemplate. He sheathed the sword as if he already owned it and gave Belial’s dead body another experimental kick. The dead demon stayed dead. Asheroth frowned. “Pity. One death just isn’t enough, sometimes.” The hard glint of my sometimes-cruel protector flashed across his face, but was quickly replaced by the clarity I found every bit as unnerving and unexpected. He turned his back on the demon and waited while Ethan helped me to my feet.

  “You asked where the hell I had been, E’than’i’el,” he said, walking across a battlefield that had grown still. Now that Belial was dead, his forces seemed scattered, off-kilter. Those few still fighting ceased their activities and moved out of our way when we came near. “I have been in the Twilight Kingdom, spying, discovering, and, when necessary, removing those who stood in my way.” He indicated the fallen demon, now far behind us, with a toss of his black hair. “Belial was the last piece in the game. And now that I have removed him, there is nothing to stand in my way of complete mastery of my little part of the Dark Realms.”

  Ethan and I exchanged a quick, uneasy glance. Asheroth, in charge of the Twilight Kingdom? Was that how it worked? Asheroth killed Belial, and got his kingdom in return? For the millionth time I wished for a manual, a guide that would explain “the rules” of the supernatural games and power plays that went on around me all the time. But there was nothing of the sort, and we both knew it.

  I cleared my throat. Of the two of us, I was the least likely to set him off. “Asheroth,” I said as calmly as possible given the fact that we were crossing a battlefield littered with dead bodies. “What are you talking about? You have a place here as one of the Guardians. You can’t just set yourself up as a demon king. We…” I took a deep breath as I said the words I had never, ever, not in a million years, dreamed I would say. “I need you. To stay here.”

  At that, his diamond eyes blazed as bright as the night he’d first kidnapped me from Blind Springs Park.

  “Oh, my Caspia.” He stopped dead still in the middle of the battlefield. The Nightmare Forest pulsed around us with its shielding properties. But Asheroth, even though he stood surrounded by the same things, was miles away in some other place, maybe some other life entirely. He caressed the side of my face with his cold marble hand. “She is waiting for me there. She has been there since she first left me, waiting in the Dark Realms, knowing I would find my way there eventually. Her. The first Caspia. She chose the Dark, when she could have had Light, to wait for me. I don’t know why. I don’t deserve it.” His voice took on the reverent tones of one who had seen his own personal god. He dropped his hand and fisted it, striking the pommel of Azazel’s blade as madness mixed with hope blazed forth on his face once again. “But I shall spend the rest of my days there, remaking that world just for her.”

  I thought of the Grey Lady, the one who always felt like warm, gentle rain, and who had helped me during my own imprisonment in Belial’s kingdom. The one who had shown me images from her past. The first Caspia, my ancestress, and the one woman who had the power to save Asheroth from himself. The one who waited in the Twilight Kingdom.

  Asheroth’s kingdom, now.

  “You’re the Guardian now, Caspia. I always meant for the post, and the estate, to go to you.” Asheroth smiled. He actually smiled, and in that moment, I knew I would do anything to help nurture this new, saner version of him. Including assuming responsibilities I wasn’t ready for and didn’t want.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I admitted, wanting to be as honest as possible. Could I live on that huge estate and assume my guardian’s responsibilities?

  “You’ll have help,” he said, but he was getting restless again, and I could tell he wanted to be back there. In the Dark Realms, with her. Ethan had slipped up beside me and held my hand in his. The Shadows were dormant under his touch. I leaned into his warm, human body and wondered: what wouldn’t I do for him, what heaven or hell would I leave unturned to find him if he was taken from me?

  I knew the answer immediately. It was written in my bones. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, there was no place I wouldn’t go to save him. To be with him.

  But we had our whole lives together. Our whole human lives, and when our time came, we would go into the Realms together. Dark or Light, the choice was ours.

  A portal blazed into e
xistence between groups of Belial’s former Nephilim. I guessed they were Asheroth’s now. He inched backward. Eager to be gone, but tied to us still in indefinable ways. He fingered the hilt of Azazel’s blade before removing it from the loop where it swung on his belt. He offered it to Ethan.

  “This needs to stay here in the Mortal realm where it can do the most good,” he said. Ethan took it with reverence, and a nod of understanding. “Besides, she can use all the protecting she can get.”

  “She’ll have it,” Ethan vowed.

  Asheroth was at my side in an instant. With that dizzying quickness they all had, he stood so close the cold of his stone skin radiated off him. “Caspia,” he whispered, so soft and low my name was almost a hiss. “I will never forget all you have done for me.” Cold lips pressed briefly, so briefly against my own. Then, as fast as a butterfly sweeps its wings, they were gone. He was gone too, gone from my side and soon from my life, standing feet away surrounded by his Nephilim. In that instant he was inhumanly beautiful, and I found myself aching for him, for the absence he would soon create in my life.

  Beside me, Ethan made a choking sound.

  “You will come visit me in the Dark Realms,” he ordered, as if we were already his subjects. As if visits to certain regions of hell were as fun and easy as going to Disneyland. “If you do not, I will come and force you.”

  I knew it wasn’t an idle threat.

  The small smile he gave me was equal parts whimsy and regret. Then he was gone through the portal, his red-cloaked Nephilim following.

  Ethan’s lips were at my ear, his warm strong hand at my waist. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t be right for a long time. I thought of Jack with an ache so hard it felt more like a knife wound, before stuffing the grief down. I would have to take it out and deal with it later; right now, the living needed me more. Jack had no family, so I would take his body home with me to be buried on the estate Asheroth had left me.

  “What can I do?” He dropped his hand to my hip and turned me so that we faced each other. The remnants of battle ceased to exist; there was no one, nothing for me but him.

  I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck and thought, this. This is all I want and need. But out loud I said, “You can help me rebuild. Whitfield’s going to need you.” I added, more softly, “I’m going to need you.”

  His kiss was all the reply I needed.

  hat night, as she so often did, Chloe Burke dreamed of fire.

  In her dream it was not the fire itself that was frightening. Rather, it was the sensation of burning noxious metal ripped from deep within the earth and stretched thin as air, hot as supernovas. The acrid heat threatened, at any moment, to coalesce back into metal, trapping her and crushing her lungs, making it impossible to run or scream.

  In her dream, there was also the boy.

  He came to her, moving low to the ground. Her first vision of him was always of wild dark hair and a pale, determined face peering up at her from the side of her bed. Moving slowly, with a feline grace that made him seem older, surer, than he must have been, he slid into her bed covered with blankets like strips of jewels stitched together. He pinned her firmly with one arm until she could not move at all, even though the smell of fire crept across her senses.

  “Stay still, Chloe, and do not speak,” he whispered. “My uncle will come for us soon, he told me so. We are to remain as still as possible, so as not to attract their notice. The wards will hold until he gets your mother out.”

  She wanted to speak. She wanted, badly, to scream and thrash, but for some reason, in the dream, she could not. His command, his hand upon her, made it impossible.

  She turned to him, mute and frightened. His eyes shifted colors, flecks of greens, blues, and even gold boring into hers. She never forgot his eyes, not ever, not even as she grew up and learned to agree with her parents, that it was just a very bad, recurring nightmare, the result of a childhood fever. She never forgot the eyes too vivid, too desperate to be called hazel. Sparks. His eyes were sparks in the void of her nightmare, waiting to catch and burn.

  “Chloe,” he whispered, and the room around them exploded into a ring of fire. There were shapes in the fire, of people who were wrong, who were stretched too thin and who undulated with the flames. Their hands were flattened and sharp with fingers and teeth like razors, and she knew they had to get out. There were no adults to save them now. She did not cry out as the boy dragged her out of her bed. His slim body blocked her from the flames, his hands a strange alchemy of object, motion, and light. He cut through blood-colored flames with a single flare of gold, with a strength and steadiness that did not match his age, and walked through them, past razor-sharp hands that reached for them. He brought her to a place thick with the smell of forest and river where her mother waited, catching her up in the smothering embrace frightened parents reserve for their children. As she looked over her mother’s shoulder, she saw, through what looked like an arched, open door, a world engulfed in flames. There were tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t know why, except that a world was burning, her world, and there was nothing she could do.

  Distantly, another voice urged her towards wakefulness.

  “Chloe! Breakfast!”

  She gripped her pillow with taut fingers, reluctant to let go of the dream and face Saturday morning reality. Tossing and sliding against cool sheets, her white cotton nightgown twisted up around her thighs. “Not hungry,” she growled. Smooth hardwood creaked under her as she stumbled toward the bathroom, years of practice the only thing keeping her from crashing into the bathroom doorframe and bruising her forehead. The white tiles and halogen lights made her feel like someone’s neglected science project. The mirror, of course, didn’t help things. Her face was even paler than usual. Her dark brown eyes were fever-bright, and her hair framed her face like a shroud. She splashed her face with very cold water and stared, empty-eyed, at the mirror.

  “Chloe Burke,” she told herself severely, “it was just a dream.” The scent of apple bread and coffee chased her as she rifled angrily through a basket of clean but unfolded clothes. She tossed aside black t-shirts, dark jeans, and black dresses.

  She knew that downstairs, only two places were set. The place at the head of the table would be empty, just as it had been every morning, noon and night for the last two months. She pulled a wrinkled black t-shirt over a black lace bra, dreading the tense silence and empty space waiting for her downstairs.

  Apple bread. Her father’s favorite. With a single vicious jerk she ripped the shirt over her head and threw it into a corner. She felt cold and exposed, hugging herself tightly as her tangled dark hair tumbled over her shoulders and brushed the tops of her breasts. “No more black,” she told the pale face in the mirror before stalking to her closet to find something, anything, that didn’t remind her of death.

  Chloe lurked in the kitchen doorway, nose slightly upturned. Every year she could remember her mother baked on the first day of fall. Using tri-colored apples ripened to bursting on the hunchbacked little tree in their back yard, Miranda Burke made apple bread so dark and moist it was more cake than bread. Chloe smiled. The motion felt unfamiliar. Despite the aching, bewildering silence that had descended on them since her father’s death, she still loved to see her mother baking, her hands measuring and pouring and pinching as if she were casting spells.

  Her mother Miranda had her own private way of deciding the seasons. Her method had nothing whatsoever to do with what the weatherman might say, or when the calendar proclaimed the first official day of fall. It was fall when Miranda Burke made the first loaves of apple bread, just as it was winter when she put the folded flannel sheets on the foot of the bed for Chloe to change. Chloe still loved her mother’s ways of marking the seasons, and even though it was only early September, weeks before the official start of fall, she was glad for the coming change.

  “Apple bread for breakfast,” Miranda remarked with her back t
urned.

  Chloe thought, for a single frozen second, about throwing herself against her mother’s back and crying like child. She looked, instead, for a coffee mug. “So I smell.” The sarcasm was heavier than she meant it to be.

  Miranda only sighed. She turned and raised a cup of steaming coffee as if it was armor. “Happy Birthday, sweetheart,” she said carefully, as if she was alone in very small boat and Chloe was the changeable sea. Her mother treated her like a bomb about to go off at any minute, these days.

  Chloe’s actual birthday had been days before, swallowed by the grief that hung over everything. Miranda seemed to think that dragging the event out in pieces over the course of days was some sort of solution. She gulped her breakfast so fast she almost choked. “Happy Saturday, Mom,” she shot back, wishing her mother would let this year’s un-birthday just die.

  “Got big plans?” Miranda asked carefully. She leaned over the sink, but she wasn’t washing anything. Instead, she twisted the dishtowel so tightly Chloe was surprised she couldn’t hear it screaming. So it’s going to be a fight again. She’s going to tell me no, and I’ll have to sneak out.

  “Not really,” Chloe replied carefully. “Just some hanging out, with Holly, you know. Shopping and a movie, later.” Plus I’m going out with that boy you can’t stand, and then a party you wouldn’t approve of, she added mentally.

  “Where will you be?” Miranda asked with the careful neutrality of a hostage negotiation.

  “Around Little Five, I guess,” Chloe answered slowly, surprised. Her mother hadn’t protested. Yet. And she sounded…strange. Focused, instead of mad. “The Majestic, the movies, some shopping.”

  Miranda’s knuckles were white around the dishrag. She had stopped all pretense of washing and stared, motionless, out the window directly over the sink. Their stunted, odd little apple tree stood directly in her line of vision. Chloe could see her Saturday night going down in flames as her mother stood, clearly wrestling with competing urges. ”I just don’t know how to protect you anymore,” her mother finally said, facing the window as if talking to the apple tree.