Inwardly Raz sighed with relief the moment they crossed the border and were out of purgatory. To be honest he didn’t like purgatory that much. It really was a mood killer, even for someone like him who didn’t feel a lot of emotions to begin with. At a hiss coming from the side he glanced at Lillian whose wings had disappeared and who was now struggling with her shirt, trying to hold it in place – well, what was left of it anyway.
“The first few times it can hurt.”
She looked at him, as if ready to murder him. “Thanks for mentioning it.”
“No problem.”
She started to open her mouth but then decided on shutting it again. Shame, since for some reason he liked yanking her chain. Seeing her discomfort and the dark circles under her eyes that showed her exhaustion though, he decided to turn off at the next hotel. He was an angel after all, not some insensitive jerk.
“Why did we switch cars? Don’t get me wrong, I really like this one, though I’m more of a pony car type. But I mean, if you did it to make it more difficult for demons to follow us, then shouldn’t you have gone for a…I don’t know, less obvious car? A Honda or some such?”
“I could have. But really would you prefer a long ride in a boring Honda over this fine, rumbling baby?”
“Good point.”
He smiled. “So…pony cars, huh?”
“My Dad,” was all the explanation she gave him.
As he signaled his turn, Lillian asked, “Why are we driving to Iowa anyway? Couldn’t we just fly?”
“I could, you not. Ivorys can’t fly.”
“Heh. Guess that must piss you angels off that that didn’t turn out to be part of the package.”
“Everything has its reasons, Lillian. You guys don’t have the necessary wings, you can’t get into heaven on your own.”
“So what, we’re good enough to fight your battles but not enough to go into heaven?”
“Ivorys, given what you do, are surrounded by the strongest of temptation and sin on a daily basis. Not everyone, no matter the training, is strong enough to resist that. Evil is like a disease. So if one of you falls prey to it, it’s for the best you can’t get into heaven and spread it.”
She frowned for a moment, going it over in her head before nodding in understanding. Lillian would have to get used to it. To the grand scheme of things. The greater good.
But she still didn’t seem to like the idea. “So Ebonys can fly but we can’t? That doesn’t seem fair.”
Raz scoffed, “When has it ever been?”
He pulled to a stop in front of a small hotel that had seen better days but would have to be enough for the night. Raz really hoped Lillian wasn’t the nagging, uppity kind of girl that wouldn’t sleep in a hotel that had less than three stars. But he shouldn’t have worried, she didn’t utter a word of complaint as he got them two adjoining rooms, nor when they stepped into hers and switched on the lights. It was simple and worn with use, but at least the maid seemed to try her best concerning basic hygiene. The bath was really fairly acceptable, at least to him; he’d seen much worse.
“I’ll be in the other room. If you need anything, come by. If you need help, scream.”
Lillian stared at him for a moment, before pushing out a weary breath and softly nodded her head. “Yeah, sure.”
The lack of sleep and all that had happened to her in the last hours seemed to have finally caught up with her. He hesitated in the door, looking at her face again and taking in the bruises. Gesturing towards them he offered, “You need help with that? Ice or something?”
“Thanks, but I’ll manage.”
“Once you’re a real Ivory, I mean battle proven, your healing will accelerate but until then it’s at the usual rate.”
A corner of her mouth lifted. “Good to know.”
After she closed the door behind him, he got into his room, which was absolutely identical to hers.
Usually an angel could do without sleep, but being somewhat close to human form without the wings and in the human world, he needed some hours of it and so, after taking a quick shower, he fell into bed.
It felt like he had only slept for about half an hour when a scream woke him up.
Lillian.
In a blink he was in her dark room, his gaze searching for opponents. When he found none his eyes went to Lillian, who was slowly sitting up in bed and breathing heavily. Some strands of her hair clinging to her sweaty skin, her eyes glazed with sleep and yet wide with fear until reality flooded back.
“A dream,” she mumbled, running a hand over her forehead. “Just a dream. Just a bad dream.”
A nightmare. Damn. He had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation. Slowly, not quite sure what to do, he approached the bed. He was barefoot but had left his jeans and shirt on before going to sleep for exactly that kind of situation. Well, not exactly this one, he had expected more of the screaming and fighting kind. Lillian hadn’t slept in her clothes, or maybe after all that had happened she had just wanted to surround herself with the comfort of habit by choosing to wear her pajama. As she sat there shoving the covers aside, he saw that dark blue pants and a white top covered her.
He stopped close to the bed, staying in the shadows. What should he say? “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Raz knew she was lying. Raking a hand over his short cropped hair, he asked, “I think it usually helps to talk about it, doesn’t it?”
With the orange light flooding in from outside he could see one corner of her mouth curl up in a rueful smile. “I dreamt of Amber. Of what happened to her.”
Shit. “Oh.” For one moment a foreign, stabbing pain pierced him at his own memory of the blond angel with her green eyes smiling sadly and throwing one of his couch cushions at him. Frowning, and puzzling over it, he sat down on the bed.
Lillian looked at her hands, bunching the covers in her lap and went on, “She was nice to me. When I called for her. She didn’t mind me asking questions.” She gazed up at him, her gray-green eyes strong but not able to hide the tears behind them. “I didn’t know her and yet I feel as if I lost a good friend.”
“She liked you too. Amber was looking forward to training you.”
That sad smile again. After a moment she shook her head, rubbed her hands over the corners of her eyes and took a deep breath, pulling herself back together. Somehow it was amazing to watch, how she grabbed all the pain that had been nearly tangible moments before and stuffed it away.
“Will you get a new partner now?”
“No, it’s hard to explain. Suffice to say that it doesn’t work like that and we’ll be on our own.”
She nodded softly. “So. Iowa.”
“Iowa.”
“I don’t think I want to go back to sleep.”
He understood the hidden question and got up from the bed, glad to be his charming self again. “Then let’s hit the road. Oh, and no playing around with the radio. No complaints either. I’m older, I’m wiser.”
SIX
Lillian soon had the feeling that wide-ranging didn’t even begin to describe his taste in music, though rock and jazz seemed to be his top choices. Somehow she had associated angels with classic music. Brows knitted together in confusion she glanced sideways at him. The last song had been classic rock. Journey blasting through the car as the road ahead of them spread into the black night had suited him. Amazingly, so did the slow, jazzy song currently playing since he had switched to a European station with some kind of angelic power. She didn’t recognize it.
“What’s that song?”
“Port Coton, by a French singer.”
“It’s beautiful.”
He only nodded and the both of them continued staring out the window, absorbing the sad beauty of the song and silence settling over them once more. Not the awkward kind, but the peaceful, lost-in-thoughts kind.
The rest of the night flew by and soon morning touched the horizon, turquoise and then gold exploding over the still dark landscape in the ea
stern sky. As the sun climbed higher, exhaustion finally caught up with Lillian and she fell asleep against the side window, the steady hum of the engine her lullaby.
Around noon she awoke finding that Raz had stopped the car on a rather hidden path at the side of a field to rest as well.
Slowly waking, she took a moment to stare at him. Even in sleep he had this confident presence about him. He didn’t look like an angel. In her imagination an angel should be eerily beautiful or boyish somehow. Raz was neither. Well, he was beautiful, but in a tempting, rugged way with his short cropped hair, the strong, straight nose and the stubble that began to dust his skin. His body wasn’t that of an angel either, it was that of a man who moved, who fought. He would never be lean, but he wasn’t broad in a clichéd bouncer kind of way. Tall and sinewy. Beneath his black shirt she saw the strong biceps and, as she looked closer, the beginnings of a tattoo. Amber had said he was the angel of mysteries. How fitting, Lillian thought now.
As if he could sense her eyes on him he awoke.
“Good morning. Well, noon actually.”
He grunted in return and rubbed a hand over his face. Lillian had to bite back her smile. Apparently he wasn’t a morning person.
Without a word he turned on the ignition and soon they were back on the road. With the sun the temperature had risen as well and so Lillian pulled off her light sweater, slipped out of her shoes and rolled her jeans up to above her ankles. The breeze coming through the open windows – Raz obviously wasn’t a fan of air conditioning even if it was vintage and preferred the real thing – was warm and promised to be even warmer and more humid during the day.
When they crossed the Missouri in Decatur Lillian wondered to where exactly they were headed in Iowa and asked Raz.
“There’s a new hellhole near a city north of Des Moines, so that’s where we’re going.” Lillian shook her head at his reply, which made him glance at her and ask, “What?”
“Nothing.” She smiled a little, looking out the window at the endless fields stretching at her side before shifting her gaze back to him. “It still sounds so weird. Hellholes and all that, you know. And yet not.” Her brow knitted before a sad laughter burst from her. “And that’s kinda scary.”
He nodded, not taking his eyes from the road. “I know what you mean. Your human part has trouble taking it all in. The changes. But your Ivory half, which you’re just starting to become aware of, knows this stuff. Deep down a part of you is looking forward to these changes.”
“Maybe.”
Once again Raz glanced at her. “You think we destroyed your life, I get that. But let me ask you this. What exactly had you planned to do with it anyway?”
Lillian shrugged. “Go to college. Study and have fun. Meet people. Get a nice job and maybe even have a family one day.” She shrugged again suddenly self-conscious about her ordinary dreams and the lack of any actual and accurate planning in them. “The usual.”
“So you didn’t really have any clear plans, did you?”
She looked out the window again. “No. I guess not.” Suddenly anger rose in her and her eyes flew back to him, accusingly. “But…so what? So what, that I had no real idea what to do with my life? Doesn’t mean it makes this any easier. I nevertheless have to go and probably won’t ever see my parents again. It hurts, it sucks, whether I had any fricking plans or not.”
“Hey, calm down! I’m just saying that maybe a part of you didn’t have any plans because it was suspecting that you wouldn’t need them. Didn’t say it makes any of this easier on you, just that…” He glanced at her, his intense gray eyes seeing more than she wanted them to. “It’s not what has happened that hurts so much. It’s your sense of…obligation that makes you think you have to feel bad about all of this. But that’s not true. Be honest to yourself. You shouldn’t feel bad or even guilty for not having trouble accepting the changes.” Pause. “For being thrilled by them.”
Shit. His words hit a little too close to home and she had no idea what to say to that. Didn’t even want to think about it. Not now. It was too fast and too much to think about. And so Lillian didn’t reply, only stared out the window, and silence settled once more upon them.
About half an hour after passing through Boone, they crossed into purgatory again. One moment the afternoon sun drenched the green fields, nearly burning them, and laughed from the blue sky and suddenly all color bleached from the world. Her eyes blinked rapidly as her brain tried to catch up with the change and, after a short stab of pain that nevertheless made her gasp in surprise, she could feel her new wings at her back.
Lillian looked around. She liked black and white; in some movies or photos it seemed to give everything a touch of elegance. Not here though, not in purgatory. There wasn’t a touch of elegance but of menace. The sunlight, only moments before so lively, was a harsh glare now and would soon lose the battle against the clouds gathering in the southeast that Lillian hadn’t even noticed before but which now looked ominous.
Raz turned the car onto a bumpy, barely-there road between fields that soon moved to the sides and made room for a house. An absolutely ordinary, farm house…except for the fact that it was abandoned, dark gray and crumbling with age and defying the laws of physics - barely. Somehow Lillian had expected something else.
She shot a glance at Raz, lifting her eyebrow.
He shrugged. “This is purgatory, not some kind of fancy spa.”
They parked the car and got out. After Lillian took her duffle bag she looked once again around, taking it in. The house was a wooden, two-story construction with a porch running along one side of it and wounding its way through rampant grass and around to the back. A couple of shrubs, barren trees and lonely split trunks stood around it. Silent guardians that weren’t happy to see them and that looked about as welcoming as the house. Charming. But what really gave her the creeps was the silence she only now really noticed. There were no sounds of nature, no rustling from the wind, no chirping birds, no crickets. Nothing. A cold shiver ran down her spine and she involuntarily shook herself to get rid of it.
Together they walked up the stairs and after Raz opened the surprisingly stable door they went inside. Dust covered the wooden floor. Well, every surface it had found actually. She plopped her bag in a corner next to Raz’s and followed him on a tour through the house.
The inside was luckily not as neglected as the outside. It really could have been worse, Lillian guessed. Only two walls, one of which separating the living and dining room, boasted crumpling holes that showed splinted strips of wood. The paint on the walls was gray now; flakes of it covering the floor. The kitchen, like the rest of the rooms, was old and a little…rattly and could definitely see some chemicals and water. Under the dirt there was tolerable potential though. There was a gas stove, but no electricity. An old, dusty couch in the living room and a mattress in one of the three rooms upstairs would have to do regarding sleeping arrangements. Moving along and walking into the bathroom upstairs, Lillian exhaled in relief as she discovered they even had running water and a functioning bathtub. A glance at the rest of it, the tiles covering the floor and walls, assured her that after some in depth cleaning it could live up to basic hygiene requirements.
Lillian followed Raz back out to the car. “You got anything that could help me clean that a bit?” she gestured towards the house.
He popped the trunk, grabbed inside and then tossed her something. Lillian caught it and stared. A big can of salt.
“Huh? What…” Lillian stared at him, bewildered.
“First things first. We’ll need that to keep the house safe.”
She still had no idea what he wanted. “Okay.” Pause, breathe. No elaboration came. “But what the hell’s the salt for?”
“Protection against Ebonys and demons. Scatter it along the windows, doors and any other openings you can find.”
Right. Her mind had still trouble digesting that but noticed one thing. “That damn house is a damn Swiss cheese.”
&nb
sp; “Better get started, then. Don’t forget this, though.”
Another can came flying. Cayenne pepper.
“Against angels?”
Wrong thing to say judging by the dark scowl. “Of course not! Why the hell would you do that?” Shaking his head he continued rummaging in the trunk. “It’s against mice. They eat all the good stuff otherwise. And besides, I don’t want to wake up to girly squealing in the middle of the night.”
Right. Protection against demons and mice. Shaking her head Lillian went back inside. And she had thought their Iowa-discussion had been weird. This one topped it, by far.
SEVEN
After she finished scrubbing the house from top to bottom and scattering the salt and pepper everywhere, the sun had long disappeared behind storm clouds and Lillian was barely able to drag herself up the stairs to the bedroom. Already half asleep she got rid of her jeans but decided to leave the top on since there was just no more energy left in her for more movement. As she crawled into the sleeping bag that lay atop a new mattress that Raz had gotten from who knew where, she had a moment to be thankful before the utter exhaustion that had been clinging to her every bone took over, not leaving any place for bad dreams this time.
Her mind and body told her that she’d barely closed her eyes as firm shaking awoke her again. “Get up and pull on some sweats.”
Lillian mumbled something incoherently and turned onto her other side, snuggling back into the warmth of sleep. The next moment she yelped as her sleeping bag was abruptly pulled open and cold air kissed her bare legs.
“What the hell?” Her searching eyes were wild until they found the source of disturbance. Raz.
The angel stood in her room with a too happy grin on his face and arms folded across his chest, dressed in black sweatpants and tank. “Your training starts today. What did you expect?”
Oh, maybe a snatch of sleep? After all that happened Lillian had thought it wasn’t too much to ask for. Apparently she’d been wrong. A glance out the window as she sat up confirmed her suspicions that the sun was barely flirting with the horizon, and she had to stifle a groan.
Ivory Guard Page 5
