by Amity Hope
“So why aren’t I already dead?” Ava blurted. The words seemingly coming from nowhere and yet they were everywhere.
“You have to remember that my father has been around nearly since the beginning of time. These last few months have been little more than a blink of an eye to him.”
“And it’s supposed to be done by you?” Ava asked, unable to look him in the eye. She felt his tentative grip on her fingers loosen, become even more unsure. She made no move to reassure him of anything at that point. Visions of her dead self and Gabe’s face spattered in her blood were all she could see.
“Yes.” The word was tortured.
It was finally Grier who relieved them of the silence that had ensnared them. She asked the question Ava was unable to ask. “Why you?”
“I think…” he began and his voice trailed off. He started over, trying again. “I think because Rafe has done things to prove himself to our father. He has never hesitated and often volunteers himself to be at Azael’s disposal. He has…talents that I don’t have, which make him far more useful than I could ever be. Azael has no questions about where his loyalties lie. I, on the other hand, have been a colossal disappointment. I think this is his way of forcing me to prove my loyalty to him. I am not saying that I have never done things I am not proud of,” he quietly admitted. “I am simply saying I have been of little use to my father. He’s made sure I know he sees you as a threat. If I were to…if I were to do as he commands. That would prove my loyalty.”
“Okay,” Ava said, even though there was nothing okay about this at all. “That explains why you. You’ve also explained why he isn’t in any rush to do away with me. But what I really don’t understand is this…this involvement in my life. He wanted you to integrate yourself into my life? Why? Why not just swipe me off the street one day and do what you were supposed to do?”
Gabe shrugged helplessly. “That’s the part I don’t understand either. The only explanation I can think of is that getting to know you would allow me greater access to you and possibly make it easier to carry out his request at the time of his choosing.” He swallowed, as though he wanted to swallow the words themselves. “I think it would be easier to lure you away as your friend than to lure you away as a stranger.”
Ava couldn’t argue.
“That,” Grier agreed, “but also, he is toying with you. Both of you. Do you not see?”
Apparently neither Gabe nor Ava did see.
“Gabe, taking the life of a stranger off the street, while repugnant, would not be nearly as difficult as taking the life of someone you have gotten to know. Someone you have spent time with. Developed a relationship with. Am I correct? I would think even for your kind, being utterly devoid of morals, taking the life of someone who has found some type of place in your life would be much more difficult.”
Gabe nodded slowly, processing Grier’s words as well as the implication behind them. “He probably even planned that I would start to care for her,” he admitted to Grier. “He didn’t seem surprised by it. Rafe admitted to checking on the progress of…of how I felt. I just didn’t understand why. But what better way to test my worthiness than to see which one of them I would choose.”
Grier shrugged. “If you do not kill Ava, do you think he will let you survive?”
“No.” Gabe’s answer was immediate and decisive. Considering what a torment his entire life had been, death, he decided, seemed like a reprieve. “He would not allow me to live.”
Her eyebrows rose. “And yet knowing this you still choose to defend her?”
“Yes.” Again, his response was immediate and this time filled with determination.
Grier stared at him for an interminable amount of time. As if she could pull more information from his head with just her gaze. For all Ava knew, she could.
“We are done here,” she announced.
Ava blinked in surprise as Grier’s hand came to rest on her forehead. Before a coherent thought could form…she was swirling into a sea of blackness.
&nbNewontsp
Chapter 21
“Gabe…?”Ava whispered into the darkness. A slant of moonlight shone across his face, allowing just enough of a glow to see that he opened his eyes instantly. He tried to pull away from her. He would have possibly succeeded if his arm hadn’t been pinned beneath her body. “How did I get here?” she asked. They were in her cabin. She knew that much.
He shrugged and his arm felt rigid with tension beneath Ava’s hand.
“Grier? The last thing I remember is watching you crumple in the church. Then she reached for me. I woke up here, on the kitchen floor. You were next to me, shivering uncontrollably so I carried you in here and covered you up but it didn’t seem to help.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t have gotten into bed with you if I thought you could warm up on your own. There’s no heat in here. I have no idea how long we were lying on that hardwood floor before I woke up. I just meant to warm you up,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I mean, I almost never sleep, so I can’t believe I fell asleep. After everything I said in the church, you must hate me. I hate me and I’m sure you don’t want me anywhere near you right now.”
Ava put a finger over his lips to stop the cascade of words. He blinked at her in surprise.
“I get it,” she said softly.
“ze="+0" face="Times New Roman">He shook his head, clearly mystified by her confession.
“When Grier touched your forehead, she was looking through your memories. I tried to pull her hands away but it somehow pulled me in…into your head. I don’t know how to explain it. I saw these last few months played out as you lived them. I thought what you thought, I felt what you felt. On the way to the church you told me there was no explanation good enough. But being completely immersed in your thoughts and feelings like that? It explained things in a way no words could. So, yeah, I get it.”
He heaved out a breath full of anguish.
“What was that? What Grier did?” Ava asked, not fully expecting him to know.
“It’s called reaping. It’s what Azael does to pull information from people. It’s a way of…absorbing their knowledge, their feelings, their experiences.”
“Was that your mother?”Ava asked.
“Yes.”
“What…what made her do that? To your wings, I mean.” In that context, the words tasted foreign on her tongue.
He hesitated, heaving out another breath. “Rafe is several years older than me. He was a horrible child, right from the start. I think she thought…I mean, I remember her telling me that my wings were what made me evil. That she had to get rid of them. It was the only way to save me.”
“Is that true?” she asked. “Not that I think you’re evil but that that kind of essence could be held there?”
She felt him shrug in the dark. “I think she thought that because on the outside, it’s the only thing that keeps us from passing as human. But as Grier enjoys pointing out, I still have my father’s blood coursing through my veins. Nothing can change that.” He hesitated. “On the other hand, Rafe is capable of things I’m not. I’ve wondered if that’s why.”
Ava’s stomach twisted in an unpleasant way. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ava, I want to be honest with you because I haven’t been so far. But I don’t know how much of this is safe for you to know. Or how much you should even want to know,” he added.
“I want to know whatever you can tell me,” she insisted. “I think the more I know, the more prepared I can be.” Honestly, she wasn’t sure that was true. If Azael decided to come after her, she didn’t think knowledge was going to be her savior.
“Rafe has this nasty ability to persuade people. All he has to do is look someone in the eye, plant an idea in their head, and it is as well as done. For example,” he said tensely, “if my father wanted someone out of his way, all Rafe would have to do is tell that person to step in front of a bus, tot o save m jump off a building, to put a gun to his he
ad. Or if he’s bored, he may command a friend of yours to pour vodka into the punch. You get the idea.”
“I get the idea,” Ava agreed, her stomach twisting into tighter and tighter knots.
“It works for other things too. My father is a very rich man. Wealth is easy to obtain when people just hand over their money, or their jet, or even entire companies because they were compelled to do so. The house we’re living in? My father didn’t pay a dime for it.”
She mulled that over for a moment. And then, “What can you do?”
“Nothing,” he said, too quickly. “Well, almost nothing.”
“Meaning something,” she corrected.
“I think that maybe, before my mother did what she did, I was meant to be able to read people’s minds. At least, that’s what Azael insists. He’s quite disgusted with my complete lack of abilities.” The words should have sounded ludicrous but after all that they’d been through that night, they sounded rather benign. “Instead, I just get a taste or an impression of how people are feeling. Deeper than what you can get from body language. Or maybe that was all I was ever supposed to have. Maybe it’s as Rafe says and I’m just the weak one.”
Ava hesitated before asking, “So essentially you’re an empath?”
“If you want to label me, I guess that one would fit,” he admitted. “I do know that your friend Julia hates me.”
Ava instantly opened her mouth to protest but Gabe cut her off with a look. “You can’t argue with me when I’m telling you, I know.”
Ava nodded. “Right. Sorry. Maybe she just needs to get to know you. Molly—”
Gabe made an odd face. “Molly doesn’t hate me. She likes me. Maybe a little too much.”
Ava’s lips twitched. “Likes you or lusts after you?”
“It might be more of the second one,” Gabe admitted, looking humored.
Ava nodded as she smiled. “I figured. But Molly’s harmless.” Her smile faded as the seriousness of the situation settled around them. “Is that how you knew what Grier was? Or was it something else?”
Gabe thought about it briefly. “It was just a feeling I had when she opened the door. It was more physical than emotional. I knew that she was angelic but I wasn’t sure until tonight which order she belonged to. It was as if I could feel her purity rolling off of her. It was almost suffocating. It’s difficult to be around her,” Gabe said, feeGabit bling uneasy with the admission. “I believe she feels the same about me. My…my depravity is probably too much for her. At the very least, it disgusts her.”
“That’s because she doesn’t know you,” Ava said quietly, trying to reassure him.
Gabe knew better. “No, it’s because she does know me. Or of my kind, anyway.”
“You understand that I don’t feel that way, don’t you?” Ava demanded.
Gabe cast a careful glance her way. “You feel something else entirely.”
“Can you tell what I’m feeling right now?” she asked, causing Gabe to suddenly look serious.
“Yes, I think so,” he said tersely.
She wondered what he was picking up on that he found so offensive. She wondered how he could pick up on her emotions when at the moment, she wasn’t sure she could even decipher them herself.
“I feel…forgiveness,” he said, not all that happily.
“That upsets you?” she asked, perplexed. She had forgiven him. Just moments after Grier’s reaping she felt the anger and resentment slip away. “Of course I forgive you! Why would that upset you?”
“You can’t mean that!” he exclaimed, sitting up with such force that he jerked his arm free.
“I do mean it,” she said, sitting up as well. “What’s done is done and I forgive you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t forgive me so easily. You can’t just…do that!”
“I already did,” she replied softly, reaching out to him but he jerked away. “Apparently you need to forgive yourself.”
“For being part of a plan to kill you?” he asked with revulsion.
“And that obviously upsets you.”
“Hell yes, it upsets me! It should upset you too! You should hate me for this! You should want me dead! Or at the very least want me as far away as I could possibly be!”
Gabe had been on the far side of the bed, up against the wall. He gingerly crawled over the top of Ava, careful to not so much as touch her. The dim glow that she had assumed to be moonlight flared, filling the room with a golden haze.
“What,” Ava asked as she rolled over, “is that?”
“That?” He pointed at the softly glowing inscription on the plum colored wall even as he backed away from it. “It’s called a sigil.”
“A sigil?”
“A seal. Grier’s placed them on all of the outer walls of the house. Each of the archangels has a sigil, or a seal. In this case, I would say they’re being used for protection.”
Upon closer inspection the inscription, which at first had seemed like an ornate, flowing, decoration, did seem more like writing from an archaic language. The writing was in gold and seemed to pulsate. Ava lifted her hand, curious.
“Don’t!” Gabe shouted in warning, leaping toward her but then falling to the floor, hands on his head. A low, pained moan escaping his lips.
“What happened?” she asked, dropping to the floor beside him. Already he was backing away from her, or the wall, or both. She couldn’t be sure.
“Don’t touch it,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
“What? Why not?” she asked. “I already did. What’s going to happen?”
“You did? It didn’t burn you?”
Ava shook her head. “No…but…” Understanding started seeping through her slowly churning brain. “Is that what happened to you? Is the sigil doing something?”
He nodded and held out his hand, palm up. It was full of watery blisters. “I made the mistake of touching the wall earlier. I should’ve known better. She’s put them on every outer wall of the house. I can’t go near them. The closer I get, the more I feel like my blood is scalding its way through my veins.”
“All of the outer walls. So you can’t get close to a door or window,” Ava said, sorting things out. “So you can’t leave?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think she wants me going anywhere.”
“Why would she do that?” Ava asked, feeling her own blood start to simmer. “We can’t be trapped here!”
“You aren’t trapped here,” he gently reminded her. “But more than that, I think that if I can’t get out, my father can’t get in. And even more importantly? If the sigils work the way I think they work, they will block him from finding us. For a while anyway.”
“So you think this is a good thing?” Ava asked, taking his hand to inspect his injuries once more.
He nodded. “Yes, I think it’ll help keep you safe. At least until we can come up with a plan.”
“But look what it did to hatafeyou! And why isn’t it healing?” she demanded. “Grier said you heal quickly. Why does this look so terrible?”
“You should’ve seen it when it first happened,” he said, meekly. “Trust me, it’s healing.”
Ava let out a little whimper of disgust. And then she noted something else. “You’re burning up! Is it making you sick? Do you have a fever?” she asked, suddenly feeling frantic because his skin was far hotter than any skin she had ever felt before.
He shook his head. “No. But if you saw into my head before, you saw what the holy water did to me.” He looked away as he said this. “It’s like a burning that starts in your marrow and works its way outward. I’ve managed to desensitize myself to holy water, at least somewhat. But this,” he motioned to the glowing sigil, “is not something I’ve ever been exposed to before.”
“So I need to get them down,” Ava said, scrambling to her feet once again.
“Ava!” he exclaimed. “Leave them! They’re here to protect you as much as they’re here to hold me. Maybe even more so.
”
“But it’s making you miserable!”
“Ava, please. It’s fine. I’m dealing with it. As long as I don’t get too close, it’s tolerable.”
She looked, helplessly, from Gabe to the wall and back to Gabe again.
“Besides,” he continued, “I’m pretty sure they’re inscribed in Grier’s blood, which make them bound to her. I don’t think the seals are coming down until she’s ready to take them down.”
Grier’s blood? This glowing, pulsating gold substance was the blood of an angel?
“Okay,” she told Gabe as she backed away. “But I’m going to get some burn cream for your hand.”
She left.
He started to follow, creeping out of the bedroom, staying as close to the inner wall as the furniture would allow. She disappeared into the bathroom and swiped some ointment out of the cupboard. When she returned, Gabe was sitting on the sofa, staring at the walls with trepidation.
“What?” she asked. There was a sigil burning brightly but it wasn’t much different than the one in the bedroom.
“You don’t see it?” he asked.
“The sigil?”
“Is that all you see?”
“Is there more?” Ava wondered.
He nodded. “I think this is what would be considered a demon’s snare. When I move around too much, the sigils seem to connect, like an intricate web. The walls are covered in it. The closer I get, the brighter they burn and the more my blood heats up.”
“Why can’t I see it?” she asked, futilely squinting, searching for any glimmer of what he was looking at.
He shrugged. “It’s not meant for you. It’s clearly meant for me. To let me know that I am not getting out of here without Grier’s consent.”
Ava looked toward the invisible cage. “What do you think would happen if you tried to get out?”
He paused for several heartbeats. “One time? I put a burrito in the microwave and forgot about it until it exploded into like a million pieces. When I look at the wall…that’s the thought that crosses my mind.”
