by SJ West
A whisper of a girl’s cry reaches our ears, stopping Liana from phasing us back to my planet.
“Help! Please, whoever’s up there, help me!”
Liana and I look at one another.
“You heard that too, right?” I ask Liana.
“Yeah,” she says while nodding her head. “It was faint, but I think I know where it came from. Come on.”
Still holding my hand, Liana and I carefully climb across the mountain of debris until we’re on the backside of the building that was blown up. None of the rescue workers are over here yet. They’re all too busy with the wounded still lying on the ground on the street below.
“Help me!” the girl shouts again. Her words are much clearer now, and I know Liana guessed right about where the voice is coming from.
“Stay close,” Liana orders. “Your parents will kill me if something happens to you.”
“I’m not leaving your side,” I promise her.
Liana lets go of my hand and kneels down on the fragmented slabs of stone. She places her face right above a small crack leading down through the rubble.
“Can you hear me?” she yells to the girl. “Are you still in there?”
“Yes!” the girl shouts back, her voice filled with joy and relief at finally being heard by someone.
“Do you know how far down you are?” Liana asks.
“I don’t think I’m that far. I can see your red coat,” the girl answers in a more normal voice before she begins to cough uncontrollably. “The dust is choking me in here though. Please, can you get some help to get me out?”
“Just sit tight,” Liana tells her. “We’ll help you.”
Liana looks up at me. “Cal, I’m going to need your help to move some of this debris away. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” I say. “Are you thinking we should move some of this stuff ourselves to get her out?”
Liana nods her head. “Everyone else is too busy. We can do it, but we’ll need to be careful. If we move the wrong piece of stone, it might collapse and crush her to death.”
“Okay.” The thought of killing someone, even by accident, scares me, but the girl keeps coughing, and I know if we don’t at least try to get her out, she might suffocate soon. “What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll move the stones and hand them to you,” Liana tells me. “Then you just set them down until we’ve cleared enough away to get her out, okay?”
“I can do that,” I tell her, trying to remain brave, even though I wish I hadn’t badgered Liana into bringing me to Earth. It isn’t the grand adventure that I imagined it would be, and all I want to do now is go back home.
“I know you’re scared,” she says to me understandingly. “I’m scared too, but we need to do something quickly. Otherwise, I think she might die.”
“I won’t let you down,” I promise. “I’m ready when you are.”
Liana looks back down at what we’re facing. I assume she’s moving the rubble in her mind to figure out where we should start and what shouldn’t be moved because it’ll shift the wrong way. After a few seconds of considering her options, she reaches down and picks up the first stone.
It takes us a good five minutes to remove what’s just on the surface. After another five minutes, we see a small hand shoot up between a small crack between two rocks.
“I’m here!” the girl says as she lets out a shout that sounds a bit like a laugh mixed with a cry of joy.
Liana grabs the girl’s hand with one of her own. “Is anyone else down there with you?”
“No, it’s just me.”
Liana holds out her other hand to me. “Take it. I’m not going to risk moving any more stones. It’ll be safer if I just phase us all somewhere else.”
She doesn’t have to tell me what to do twice. I take her hand gratefully. I thought Liana would take us to her cloud city, but we end up at the edge of some woods by a factory of some sort.
“Where are we?” I ask her as I look around and see large metallic machines with what look like sharp blades sitting by a two-story brick building.
“It’s a copper mine,” she tells me as she stands to her feet while helping the girl we saved to her own.
“Thank you, Princess Liana,” the girl says, bowing to my friend. “Thank you for saving me.”
The girl begins to cough uncontrollably. She cups her hands over her mouth so she doesn’t spit on Liana, but when she moves them away, they’re covered with blood. The girl ends up sinking back down onto the ground and closing her eyes like she’s fainted.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask Liana as we both rush to the girl’s side to check her.
“I don’t know,” she replies worriedly. “We need to get her to a doctor.”
“Well, don’t you have one in Cirrus?”
“The only one our parents let us see is Desmond,” Liana says distraughtly. “My dad probably has him helping people back in town.”
“Then we need to take her back there.”
“The only phase points I have in the down-world are here and on top of that rubble,” she says. “I need to go get my mom to help us. Come on. I’ll take you back while I get her.”
“No,” I say stubbornly, jerking my shoulder out from under Liana’s grasp. “I’ll stay with her while you go get your mom. She shouldn’t be alone.”
“I can’t leave you here!” Liana insists, trying to grab at my coat again.
“Would you just go?” I yell back at her. “If you had gone already, you would be back here with your mom by now.”
Liana groans in frustration and phases, presumably back to Laed-i.
When I look down at the girl we saved, I see blood begin to trickle out of a corner of her mouth. I reach out and take one of her hands with mine, wanting nothing more than to help her in some way.
“I don’t know what to do for you,” I whisper to her. “I wish I was a doctor so I could heal you.”
Suddenly, the hand I’m holding hers with begins to glow gold like the rays of the sun, and I feel a tingling sensation where my skin is touching hers.
“I knew it!” I hear a strange man say in triumph behind me, just as I feel him grab my wings with both of his hands.
I automatically let go of the girl’s hand and begin to stand up to get away from the man attacking me, but he’s as strong as my dad and keeps me down on the ground. Before I know it, he phases me somewhere I don’t recognize. Once we’re at this new spot, the man lets me go. I quickly scramble away from him across the snow-covered beach. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a small house, but I don’t recognize it. I’m pretty sure we’re still on Earth since it’s snowing, but I’m not certain.
I turn to look at the man who has kidnapped me.
He’s pretty normal looking with brown hair and eyes. He looks a little skinny underneath the big green padded coat he’s wearing. The only thing that looks out of place on him is the expression in his eyes. I’ve never seen a crazy person, but if I had to put a label on his expression, crazy would be it.
“Who are you?” I ask. “Why have you brought me here?”
The man smirks as he continues to study me closely.
“You know, I almost believed your mother when she said you were dead,” he says. “I should have known the bitch was a liar. She probably couldn’t tell the truth to save her own life, much less yours.”
“Don’t talk about my mom like that!” I order him. “She’s the best person in the whole universe!”
The man looks at me like I’m the one who’s crazy, not him. When his eyes narrow on me, I can tell his next words will be a question.
“What are your parents’ names, boy?” he asks, eagerly awaiting my answer.
I feel like he’s trying to trick me in some way, but it’s obvious he knows who my mother is. I don’t see any reason to keep the identity of my father a secret, since he probably already knows him too.
Before I can answer, Aunt Anna phases in between me and the man. She’s facin
g me, so she doesn’t see the man behind her before it’s too late.
Just as she asks, “How did you get here, Cal?”
I see the man run the blade of a strange looking black sword through her back until its point is poking out on the other side of her body. He laughs like a madman while he stabs her, but he doesn’t stick around very long to bask in his triumph. He must have known Aunt Anna would have asked for backup, because just as she falls to the ground, my dad phases in carrying his own sword. He quickly looks between me and my aunt.
“Come here, Cal!” he orders while picking Aunt Anna up in his arms. As soon as I grab ahold of him, he phases back to the ballroom on Laed-i.
Gasps of surprise can be heard from those gathered when we arrive.
“Zane!” my dad calls out. “Go find Desmond! He’s helping Malcolm with the Stanton victims. Gideon, clear this room and then go guard my phase trail back on Earth to make sure no one follows it!”
Zane immediately phases while my dad lays Aunt Anna on top of an empty table in the room. Gideon quickly ushers the guests at the party who don’t need to be here out to give us some privacy and then phases back to Earth like my father instructed.
“Mom!” Lucas shouts as he, Liam, and Liana gather around the table where their mother lies dying.
My dad phases somewhere but hastily reappears in the same spot only a few seconds later. I see that he’s now holding one of the silver healing wands from Cirrus that Aunt Anna gave us.
“What happened, Ethan?” my mom asks as she pulls me closer to her. I hug her around the waist, unsure if I’ll ever find the will to let her go.
“I don’t know,” my dad says, looking more frantic than I’ve ever seen him before as he passes the wand over Aunt Anna’s raw, gaping wound. His eyes become wild with worry when he sees that the wound isn’t healing. “I don’t understand why this isn’t working,” he says before looking over at me. “Cal, tell me exactly what happened. Who did this to her?”
“I don’t know who he was,” I answer shakily. “He just grabbed me and took me to that beach for some reason. He seemed to know Mom though.”
My mom gently grabs the arms I have around her waist, pulls me back slightly, and bends down to look me in the eyes.
“What makes you think he knew me?” she asks.
“He said you told him that I was dead,” I tell her. “He called you a bad name too.”
“Did he say what his name was?” she asks.
“No,” I answer with a shake of my head. “But he had a weird looking black sword. I’m not even sure where he got it. It was like it just appeared in his hand out of nowhere.”
“What did it look like?” my dad asks, looking even more worried.
“It looked like it had three blades twisted together,” I answer. “And it had some white smoke coming off it like steam.”
“It was Abaddon,” my father says out loud. I have no idea who that is, but my mother seems to know who he’s talking about, which isn’t surprising since this man seemed to know her too. “This wound can’t be healed with a healing wand. It has to heal naturally.”
“What about Will?” my mom asks. “If she dies, can he come here to save her?”
My dad shakes his head. “No. He isn’t her guardian anymore. He’s Liana’s.”
With Liana, Liam, and Lucas all surrounding Aunt Anna, I feel as if I should try to do something to help. A vision of my hands glowing gold when I touched the injured girl resurfaces in my memories.
“Mom,” I say, looking up at her, “what happened to the girl Liana and I saved?”
“Saved?” my mom asks, looking puzzled by my words. “I assume you’re talking about that girl over there?”
I follow my mother’s gaze and see the girl from the rubble sitting at one of the tables in the room talking to Rayden and Keelan.
“Why isn’t she with a doctor?” I ask my mom, because I need her to confirm what I already suspect.
“She isn’t hurt anywhere,” my mother replies. “When Liana came to get her mother, she said the girl was badly injured, but when she brought her back here, we couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her. Do you know why?”
“Yes,” I reply as I make my way over to Aunt Anna, “and I think I know what needs to be done now too.”
When I’m standing beside the table where my aunt lies dying, I don’t hesitate for a second as I place both my hands over her open wound.
“Cal, what are you doing?” I hear my dad ask urgently.
I shut everyone’s voices out of my head and concentrate on my aunt’s injury. Without much effort or thought, my hands begin to glow golden again, and I feel the same tingling sensation I did earlier when I was touching the injured girl’s hand. I know now without having to have someone explain it to me that somehow I healed the girl we saved from the rubble. I just hope I’ll be able to heal my Aunt Anna too.
“What’s happening?” I hear Liana ask from beside me as she watches with everyone else in the room as her mom’s wound begins to heal right before our eyes. “How are you doing that, Cal?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just am.”
“Anna!” I hear Uncle Malcolm yell in despair.
I look up and watch him run across the room from where he phased in with Zane and Desmond. From the look on his face, you would have thought the world was about to come to an end, and maybe facing the possibility of losing his wife makes him feel that way. I can only compare how he’s feeling to how I would feel if I lost my mom. It’s not the same kind of love, but love is love. I can’t imagine my life without my mom in it, and I don’t think my uncle Malcolm can imagine his life without Aunt Anna.
After he reaches us, I know I’ve done all I can, so I remove my hands from Aunt Anna and wait to see if she wakes up. Uncle Malcolm rests his hands on either side of her head and leans over until his face is only inches away from hers.
“Anna,” he whispers, “don’t you dare leave me alone. I need you to stay, my love.”
Desmond walks up and reaches out to touch one of Aunt Anna’s wrists to check her pulse. I see his gaze travel to the site where the wound was. Her dress is still torn and bloodied there, but the skin covering her belly looks completely normal. If it wasn’t for the state of her clothing, there wouldn’t be any visible signs that she had been stabbed there.
When Aunt Anna’s eyelids flutter open, there’s a collective gasp of relief that can be heard inside the room.
“There you are,” Uncle Malcolm says with a slight catch in his voice. “You had us scared there for a moment.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, sounding tired from her ordeal. “I didn’t do it on purpose. To be honest, I’m not even sure what happened. All I remember is searching for Cal through a phase trail I found over by the copper mine. It led to Cade’s old house on the beach. I saw Cal, felt a sharp pain in my back, and then passed out. What happened, Malcolm?”
Uncle Malcolm looks over at me and my parents.
“What happened?” he asks me directly. “How did you even get to Earth?”
“It was me,” a sobbing Liana confesses. “It was all my fault, Dad. Mom almost died because of me!”
“Help me up, Malcolm,” Aunt Anna practically orders.
Uncle Malcolm helps her sit up on the table’s top. Aunt Anna closes her eyes and holds the tips of her fingers to her forehead like the movement made her dizzy. She takes a few seconds to compose herself before slowly swinging her legs off the edge of the table.
“Come here, Liana,” she says, holding out her arms to her daughter.
Still crying her heart out, Liana goes to her mother and accepts her comfort.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” she sobs while hugging her tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Everything will be all right,” Aunt Anna says reassuringly as she continues to comfort Liana.
“Cal, can you tell me what happened?” Uncle Malcolm asks. “Who attacked Anna?”
I look up at my
dad for help to answer his questions.
“It was Abaddon,” my dad answers for me. “Apparently, he kidnapped Cal and took him to the beach where Anna found him.”
“Abaddon?” Uncle Malcolm says, looking shocked by this news. “We haven’t seen him since he ditched the Lorcan Halloran bodysuit. How do you know it was him?”
“Cal described the weapon he used on Anna. It had to be Phantom because the wound wouldn’t heal when I tried to use a healing wand on her.”
“Then how did you heal my wound?” Aunt Anna asks my dad.
“I didn’t,” he replies hesitantly. “Cal did.”
When all eyes turn on me, I decide to step a little closer to my mom’s side.
“Cal?” Uncle Malcolm asks, looking puzzled by my father’s answer. “I don’t understand. How did he heal her?”
“I’m not sure,” my dad admits as he looks down at me, just as mystified as everyone else in the room. “I think we’ve finally seen one of his powers show itself.”
“One of my powers?” I ask, feeling confused by my father’s words. “Why did you expect me to have powers?”
“Because you’re special, sweetie,” my mom says, hugging me closer to her side with one arm. “We’ve known that since the day you were born and we first saw your wings.”
What did that mean? Did my wings give me the ability to heal? From the way my father talked about it, it sounded like I might get even more powers in the future. I know I should be happy that I was able to save Aunt Anna’s life, but knowing that I have a supernatural gift just makes me feel even more like a freak. Why do I have to be so different? Why can’t I just be a normal boy?
Chapter 10
(Helena’s Point of View)
Once a fool, always a fool.
I can feel Abaddon trying to phase into my domain, but he should know better than to try such a thing today. No one is allowed in Hell on Cal’s birthday, except for Liana. To be honest, I’m not really sure why I keep allowing her to come on this day, but I do. For some strange reason, it lessens my heartache over the loss of my son. I just wish his father was allowed to come to me, so we could mourn the loss of our son together. Cade must feel the same pain I do right now, but I suppose God doesn’t deem me worthy enough to have such comfort.
