Urban Mythic: Thirteen Novels of Adventure and Romance, featuring Norse and Greek Gods, Demons and Djinn, Angels, Fairies, Vampires, and Werewolves in the Modern World

by C. Gockel

  “The good kind?” Clark asked. He wiped the blood dripping into his eye.

  “Help me out,” she said. Confused, Clark watched as she undid her seatbelt, moving slowly and wincing in pain.

  “Out? As in out there? You were unconscious like two seconds ago,” Clark said. “Let me talk to them.”

  Michaela shook her head, breathing heavy from the exertion.

  “Those are Descendants back there—”

  “I know,” Michaela snapped.

  “Well, they are probably going to take me back for deserting, so you need to stay in the car and leave as soon as I distract everyone.”

  Michaela’s hand clutched the door handle. She looked back at Clark with an eyebrow cocked and an are-you-so-stupid expression, which Clark noted she had learned from him. “That’s your big plan? Distract the Seraphim before you turn yourself over to the Descendants while I make a getaway?”

  “Your plan it is,” he said under his breath as Michaela weakly opened her door.

  The Seraphim and the Descendants drew within twenty feet of the car. He limped around to Michaela’s side and helped ease her out, his arm wrapped low on her hips to support her weight. The moon lit a path on the potholed pavement in front of Clark.

  A seraph stepped forward, distinguishing him as their leader. He wore no shirt, only filmy black pants that floated around his ankles. He was slender, but every muscle on his body stood out. His hair was stiff and unnatural, slicked back from the wind. He pointed a long finger at Clark and Michaela.

  “You both will be coming with us,” he commanded. The angel’s voice sounded too alien to come from the shape of a human mouth. The pauses between its words were clipped and awkward.

  “Where are we going?” Clark whispered to Michaela.

  “Heaven, he thinks,” she answered. Her eyes locked on the Seraphim, who clearly heard her because they returned her gaze with hated glares.

  “How would they take me to Heaven?” Clark asked. His eyes shifted from Michaela to the Seraphim. His sweaty palms were leaving wet spots on Michaela’s shirt.

  “Your soul,” Michaela answered.

  “You are not needed. Leave now,” the seraph said to the Descendants. Clark looked over his shoulder. The Descendants looked more nervous than he felt, which made him feel slightly better.

  “Sir, the human is a deserter. Our orders are to bring him back for trial,” one managed to say. Clark flipped him off.

  “No. You aren’t.” The seraph’s words were final.

  “Yes, sir,” the Descendants said, speaking over each other. They nodded briskly and retreated to their cars. Clark looked back at the angels as the Descendants drove away. The night breeze flopped a lock of hair into his eyes.

  “You have been summoned,” the leader spoke to Michaela. She snorted.

  “Oh sure, I bet that will be a fair judgment, just like Gabriel’s.” Her hand clenched Clark’s arm weakly.

  “The Aethere have sent us to bring you back.”

  “I won’t go back as a traitor,” Michaela said.

  The Seraphim saw Michaela’s injury, and Clark knew they calculated the fight would be easy, almost laughable. But Michaela leaned forward as if she was ready to spring into action. Clark’s grip on her tightened, worried she would actually try it.

  “You have no shame? Betraying Heaven, and you stand here proud? You have no honor.”

  “And what do you have, seraph? You fight for a leader who bargains human souls with the devil.” She spat the words out.

  A seraph to the left looked toward their leader with confusion written on his face. “Jehoel? What does she say?”

  Jehoel shook his head violently with his fists clenched tight against his sides. “Don’t listen to the lies of a fallen.”

  “Call me what you will, Jehoel,” Michaela began. “But think about how your precious Aethere weaseled their way into the Archangels’ position.”

  “From the serpent’s tongue!” another seraph exclaimed.

  When Michaela made no move other than a defiant shrug of her shoulders, Jehoel signaled the other Seraphim to circle around them. They closed in, and Clark held Michaela tighter mainly for his own comfort.

  “You will see me for what I am,” Michaela said before the angels came any closer. She stepped away from him and tugged at the frayed hem until inches of her flat, white stomach was exposed. “Help me with my shirt,” she said when Clark didn’t move.

  “Excuse me?” Clark asked, watching as Michaela struggled.

  “Lift my shirt,” Michaela said through gritted teeth. Clark understood, and together they pulled the thin fabric up enough to expose her back, which Michaela turned toward Jehoel.

  “Have you seen a fallen angel with scars like these before, Jehoel?” she asked.

  The angry burns from the explosion oozed across her back and arms. They were red and bloody, but healing. Such simple wounds—enough to kill a human—were easy to tell apart from the other, more powerful sort.

  Two long lines jagged down the middle of her back from beneath her shoulder blades to above the top of her jeans. The scars were raised and looked like a flaming whip had been thrashed across her skin. They were an unnatural black color. Dark bruises spanned across her shoulders where the wings had been yanked from a source deep within Michaela. Even her back looked slightly twisted as if Lucifer altered the alignment of her bones when he tore off her wings.

  She let her shirt fall back down and she turned back around. “My wings were taken from me. If I were a fallen, do you really believe I would be treated with such disrespect?” Michaela was exhausted. She leaned heavily against Clark.

  The Seraphim stood quietly for a long time as if Michaela had proved her point. For a moment, Clark thought they had convinced them. Finally, the Seraphim blinked awake from their trance and slowly winded back to life like an old toy.

  Jehoel’s eyes settled on Michaela’s arm. He traced the dark scars that wove around her arm and spiraled toward the crook of her elbow. Clark watched the seraph closely, and he knew immediately when the angel decided not to listen to Michaela. The angel’s eerie eyes flicked to the other Seraphim.

  They converged like a flock of vultures. The Seraphim yanked Michaela from Clark’s arms before he could even blink. Michaela struggled against Jehoel and three other angels. Fresh blood spread across the back of her shirt as her injuries ripped anew. “Listen to me!” Michaela screamed. “Just listen!”

  “Let her go!” Clark shouted.

  He cussed and spewed into the quiet night air outside the metal fence of the cemetery. A seraph kicked him hard in the chest. Michaela disappeared from his vision as Clark flew backwards. His back slammed into the concrete.

  The air in his lungs jarred out, and his vision slanted drunkenly for a moment. Two Seraphim walked over to him. One held a long dagger with edges framed in gold. Clark’s eyes grew wide, and he kicked and punched at anything within reach.

  The red words on his skin were alive as he flailed his arms through the air. One of the Seraphim clamped down on his forearm hard enough that Clark felt his bones bend. He didn’t register the pain or notice the second seraph holding the dagger crouch beside his throat. Instead, his eyes focused on the foreign, secret language inked onto his arms.

  His eyes swept across the letters as they formed words, which he heard spoken aloud in his mind. He felt their power, their capabilities. They consumed him with their sheer beauty.

  The dagger settled against his throat. In the next millisecond, the seraph would apply the faintest pressure and end his life—dashing it out with a thin, red line. It was almost that millisecond later when Clark spoke two words that stood out from the others on his arms.

  The words weren’t English or human. They were the magic of the Watchers. For the tiniest of breaths, nothing happened except time seemed to pause, allowing the two Seraphim to recognize the distinct sound of a language the angels thought was long lost.

  Time whirred back into mot
ion, and everything was real again. The two Seraphim’s eyes ignited. They jerked back, dropping Clark and the dagger to the road. They opened their mouths and screamed.

  The sound was a whistle, and it was complete torture. Clark forgot what he had just done. His body writhed against the pain of the sound. He clasped his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut. Horrified, the other Seraphim and Michaela stopped to look at the angels stumbling away from Clark.

  The Seraphim didn’t stop shrieking as they looked at their outstretched hands. They were burnt, but not like Michaela’s back. The skin on their hands was black, charred. From the tips of their fingers, smoke rose into the air, stinking and putrid, and not like any burnt smell Clark had experienced before. A breeze started and blew against them all. The two Seraphim’s skin crumbled and joined the wind.

  The seraph who restrained Clark was burnt the most. He had no skin covering his bones up to his biceps. Even his muscles and tendons and inner parts of his arm were singed and melted into dripping ooze. The seraph holding the dagger was burnt on his right hand. The tips of his fingers were bone poking through the tattered edges of peeling skin.

  The injured Seraphim turned and ran from Clark without a backwards glance. They took to the air with frantic beats of their shivering wings. The other Seraphim stepped away from Michaela and retreated.

  The only seraph remaining was their leader, Jehoel. He stared at Clark. If he had believed Michaela before, his eyes now said he assumed the worst of her. He finally looked at her before he stepped into the air and flew away, taking with him any hope of concealing Clark’s markings from the holy angels.

  Clark propped up on his elbows with a shocked, slightly terrified expression. He watched the sky where the Seraphim disappeared. When he looked at Michaela, they both shifted their gaze to the marks on his arms.

  For once, Clark couldn’t find an appropriate curse word.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Welcome to the Jungle” permeated the depths of Clark’s dream. Groggily, he tried to understand the sound. His eyes drooped heavily from a fitful sleep full of nightmares about Seraphim. Only when the phone vibrated off the bedside table and crashed to the floor did Clark understand the meaning of the ruckus. In a tangle of sheets and pillows, Clark stumbled from the bed, and scooped the phone up.

  He glanced at Michaela, watching to make sure she didn’t wake as he rounded the edge of her bed. She was stretched out, laying face down on the bed with a single, thin sheet bunched at her hips. Her back was bare, exposed to allow the bubbling burns to heal beneath the cool air of the wobbling ceiling fan. Her arms were splayed out at her side. She didn’t wake. She hadn’t moved for hours.

  Clark tip toed the rest of the way out of their new motel room and closed the door quietly behind him. Only then did he look at his phone’s screen. He froze. It was his father.

  If he waited any longer the call would go to voicemail. His finger swiped across the screen before he stopped himself. “Hello?”

  “Clark.” Isaac exhaled in a huff, like he was surprised Clark answered.

  “What do you want?” Clark asked, not unkindly, but he was definitely suspicious. He waited, drumming fingers across his ribs. His foot danced against the stained, cracked concrete. From the interstate, a semi-truck’s horn blared. The smog settled at the back of his throat, tickling like a cough.

  Isaac cleared his throat. “I need to talk to Michaela.”

  Clark needed a moment for his father’s words to sink in. Isaac knew he was with Michaela, but somehow, Clark wasn’t surprised. He rolled his eyes to the motel’s overhang as he grappled for a response. His father waited patiently for the first time in years. Clark looked back to the motel door and then back to his phone, wondering if he was still dreaming.

  In the end, he only managed a stunned, “What?”

  “I know you’re with Michaela,” his father said evenly, calmly. His tone only confused Clark more. “I know you found her in the cave that night. It’s okay, Clark.”

  “Um, okay?” Clark said, unsure what to think. It was early in the morning, but the parking lot started to stir. Truckers and late night workers pulled in to the Waffle House across the road. Clark heard voices in the neighboring rooms.

  “I’m not mad,” Isaac said, like he thought Clark might be worried about that. “But I need you to let me talk to Michaela.”

  “You can’t,” Clark said, still bewildered.

  “Why?” Isaac asked sharply. “She’s still with you, right?”

  “Yeah. But she’s in bed, healing. There was an explosion…” Clark pictured his father tapping an expensive ink pen into the thick cherry wood of his desk. A tumbler of scotch was probably condensing from the ice and the warm Kentucky air coming through the open window behind his father’s desk. A half-smoked cigar likely burned in an ashtray.

  “Is she okay? How badly was she injured?” Isaac pressed.

  “I guess the burns were pretty bad—”

  “You guess?”

  Clark narrowed his eyes, preparing for a fight. His hackles rose instinctively. “I’m not a doctor, but I would say for an angel, a few third degree burns aren’t a big deal. She’s sleeping now. Her back is almost healed already.”

  Isaac breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Don’t repeat me. You know how that pisses me off. I need you to bring her here,” Isaac said.

  Clark frowned. “Here?”

  “Damn it, Clark, what did I just say?” Clark heard Isaac pause to fortify his patience before he went on. “Bring Michaela back to the compound.”

  “The comp—” Clark stopped himself. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to bring her there. Everyone is hunting her. You are hunting her.”

  “I know. But there is something she needs to see. You and I will keep her safe, Clark. I will make sure she is protected.” Isaac reassured him.

  “How can I believe you? How do I know you won’t turn her as soon as we pull in?”

  “Clark, on your mother’s grave, I swear I won’t do anything to hurt you two.”

  At that, Clark was silent a long moment. He battled with wanting to believe his father and a strong disbelief that Isaac would ever go against the Descendants. But Isaac never mentioned Iris, and he certainly wouldn’t swear on her grave if he didn’t mean it. Clark could at least figure out what had happened and let Michaela decide.

  “What’s wrong?” Clark asked. He stepped forward and wrapped his hand around the rusty bar of the second floor’s railing.

  Isaac didn’t answer for a moment, like he debated telling Clark. Finally, he said, “It’s Zarachiel. He was cast out of Heaven…They took his wings.”

  “Did he fall too?” Clark asked, wondering why this was such a big deal.

  “No.” Isaac’s voice was very careful, controlled. “He didn’t fall.”

  “But he was still holy! How can they cast out a holy angel? And take his wings?”

  “We are dealing with a very different type of holy angel, Clark. The Aethere want to make a point. They are so fervent for this Purification, they don’t care who is hurt along the way,” Isaac said.

  Clark’s gut clenched. His grip on the rail tightened until the flakes of rust painfully scraped his palm. He released the bar and looked at his hand. Angry red lines slashed across his skin. “Is he alive?” Clark asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  Clark heard the hesitation in Isaac’s response. “Okay,” Clark said.

  Isaac released a heavy breath. “Good. Meet me in the cherry orchard.” Clark was about to hang up when Isaac added, “Clark, there is something else.”

  A moment later, Clark went back into the hotel room with a sinking heart and a churning nausea in his stomach. He quietly closed the door behind him. Michaela hadn’t moved. He sat his phone beside the television and wondered what he was going to do. Restlessly, he raked his hand through his scraggly hair. Soft fuzz grew on the sides of his head, framing
the shaggier part of his fading pink Mohawk.

  He crossed to Michaela’s bed and crouched beside her. Her eyelids twitched. The breaths from her parted lips were cool and even against his face.

  “Michaela, wake up.” Clark reached over and poked her arm. He kept poking until she stirred.

  She blinked slowly. The corners of her eyes were crusty, her eyelashes clumped together. A dirty lock of hair fell into her eye. She groaned.

  “It’s Zarachiel. Something’s happened.”

  She moved her arm to brush the hair out of her face. Clark rocked back on his heels and silently regarded her. When Michaela lifted her face off the bed, impressions of the sheet lined her cheek. “What?” she croaked.

  “Abel threw him out of Heaven.”

  Michaela rose onto her elbows, grimacing. “How do you know?’

  “My dad called,” Clark answered simply. “He wants you to go to the Descendants’ compound.”

  Blearily, Michaela shook her head. “I need to stay here. We have to figure out what Cassie is doing.”

  Clark had known Michaela would say that. He had agreed to his father’s request only because he knew Michaela would refuse to leave Charleston. Then Isaac had told him about Abel’s message. Now, he wasn’t so sure what Michaela might decide.

  “Abel left you a message.” Clark looked down to the faded, dishwater gray carpet. “He wrote it on Zarachiel.”

  Michaela remained quiet for a long moment. She turned, facing the opposite wall, and pulled a shirt over her head. It stuck to places on her back, but she yanked it over them. The pain must have been severe, because she took a moment to steady her breath.

  “What did it say?” she asked finally. Clark looked up and met her eyes. “What did it say?” she demanded.

  “It said, ‘Are you proud?’”

  Clark watched Michaela, but he already knew how she would react. Her eyes darkened to the familiar shade of navy blue, and her face paled with fury. The shadows stirred at her feet, bunching and gathering, twining over her bare feet. They rose up her legs, their darkness a shuddering contrast to her pale skin.