After the events of that morning, she had a better idea of where her reservoir is. Not having to worry about her life had let her pay attention to what she was doing. She found the ball of Light in its corner of her mind and tentatively reached a tendril of intention toward it.
“Now, settle your mind. Picture it as a vast sea of still water, empty of all waves and disturbances.”
Zara fought to envision a sea within her, using the recent memory of the peace Sophie had just gifted her with as her guide. Without the external assistance, emulating the feeling was a struggle. It was difficult to block the knowledge that Reginald wanted her to fail, and that over half the population of the enclave had crept onto their balconies to watch the Dark mage.
“Envision the sea of calm spreading forth from your body and spilling into the courtyard, extending toward Sophie. Picture her body surrounded by the waters, holding her still.”
It was harder than calling light. That was a deep, visceral pull, although she had managed little control over it yet. Wayward thoughts penetrated her sea, and she had to keep fighting them off so the ripples from their intrusion wouldn’t spread. Eventually, she got the sea to surround her friend and only suffered from the occasional disturbance.
“Now, tap into the reservoir and let its Light infuse the sea, lighting the way between you and Sophie, connecting you and imbuing it with the power.”
Sophie’s eyes blinked in slow motion, and a lazy smile grew on her face. “It’s working. You’re doing it, Zara.”
Zara grew excited. She’d gotten something magical on her first try! She was careful not to let the happy thoughts bubble through and disturb her calm sea.
“It’s not a big deal,” Reginald said. “Sophie’s so calm anyway, it’s barely a challenge.”
His comment made Zara clench harder onto the Light in response, and Sophie’s eyes slipped closed. Seconds later, she slouched to the side in her chair, jaw falling open and a soft snore rolling forth.
“Holy crap,” Zara said under her breath and reined in her power and the image of the sea.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Reginald asked, his face turning red. “You jumped ahead of my instruction and could have hurt someone. Never do anything without checking with me first! This is why you’ll make a terrible mage.”
He’d been so critical of her over the past week that it took only a single comment from him to make her blood boil. Her fists clenched and she wished she could hit him.
The sea inside her mind turned into a tempest, the water whipped into a frenzy by the heavy storm of her thoughts. Dark energy crackled between her fingertips and the storm expanded outward in a flash.
“Shut up, or I’ll make you shut up,” Zara said, her voice so low and threatening she couldn’t even recognize it.
Reginald’s chest puffed out, anger flashing in his eyes. He looked ready to hit her.
A shout above them provided a distraction. Two of the spectators shoved at each other, yelling. More fights broke out on the balconies until it looked like everyone around the courtyard was involved in an altercation.
How did everyone start fighting so quickly?
The storm still raged in her mind, making it hard to even form the thought. Sophie had woken up, and in Zara’s mind’s eye, she sat in a hole in the storm, protected from the torrent of anger.
“Zara!” Sophie hissed, looking around.
A countering power knocked on her mind, surrounding it, snuffing out the storm. Zara instinctually fought against it for a moment before letting it happen. The Dark power slipped away from her mind and the peace filled her once more.
Sophie was biting her lip, forehead creased as she looked up to the balconies. The fights were breaking up, mages shaking hands or embracing.
Reginald stared at Zara. His face was white again.
“Angel Killer.” The words barely came out with enough force to be heard.
She didn’t know what that was, but his voice made it sound like the filthiest thing possible.
“I’m sorry,” Zara said, her face burning.
She wished she could turn invisible.
“Let’s go, Zara,” Sophie said. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 10
Sophie dragged her down the hallway to an isolated niche at the end of the south wing. It was cozy, with several overstuffed chairs and a plush couch. A rich rug with deep colors lay over the ancient hardwood.
“What’s going on, Sophie?” Zara asked. “Reginald looked like he saw a ghost. It was just like when I accidentally hit him with the Darkness. What’s an Angel Killer?”
Sophie sat across from Zara and pursed her lips. “You’re familiar with how only the Beacons of Light can use multiple Light abilities?” At Zara’s nod, she continued. “Well, the Darkness mirrors the Light, and that makes two Dark abilities you’ve used now.”
The pieces of the puzzle in her mind clicked into place at her friend’s prompting. “So I must be the Dark equivalent of a Beacon too. And I’m guessing that’s what an Angel Killer is?”
“You got it. It sounds worse than it is, but there is a lot of stigma and horror stories linked to the name. In the same way the Beacons anchored the Light, the Angel Killers anchor the Darkness and work to tip the balance their way.”
A scuffed shoe in the hall behind them preceded a loud curse in barely intelligible English. Grace rolled over the back of the couch and slid into place in such a well-executed move that it looked practiced and professional.
“I heard about the lesson. Wish I were there to see it. It sounded fun. Do you know that Jeremiah slapped Geoffrey? I’d give anything for an excuse to hit that pretentious asshole.”
Sophie laughed. “We’ll let you know the next time we plan on making Zara lose control.”
Make me lose control? Is she crazy?
If it had been anyone else, Zara would have gotten angry at her words, but the twinkle in her friend’s eye let her know there was no harm intended.
“Seriously, though,” Grace said. “A Beacon and an Angel Killer? Zara, you’ve got more magic than anyone knows what to do with. I’m a wee bit jealous, actually.”
That caught Zara by surprise. “Jealous? I feel like an abomination. I wish I were just a Light mage. The Darkness is impossible to control, and it’s lurking inside me, waiting for its chance to make me do something horrible.”
To Zara’s relief, Sophie didn’t minimize her feelings. “It’s intense, too. Based on the way you controlled every mage around the courtyard, no matter how experienced or powerful, you might be as strong an Angel Killer as you are a Beacon. The only person you didn’t project to was me.”
It hadn’t even been a conscious decision. Maybe there was hope for her after all. “I doubt it would have worked on you, anyway. You’re so calm. Is there any way to remove the magic from someone?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so. There may be some unexpected benefits to being so balanced, though. After all, the Earth itself and normal people are balanced. It’s really only mages who are fully to one side or the other.”
Sophie’s eyes widened as she looked behind Zara. She kicked Grace’s foot. “Let’s go take a look in the library. Supposedly, they got a new shipment in this morning.”
Zara frowned. “Should I come with you?”
Grace bounced to her feet and did a double-take, then gave Zara a look that surely was supposed to mean something profound. “Oh, no. You stay right here. We’ll catch up later.”
The girls fled, and Zara turned to watch them go only to see Alex standing behind her chair.
“Oh, hi, Alex.”
She hadn’t seen him since before she summoned the Darkness. Since learning that he was an angel. So much had happened in such a short period.
He rounded the chair and sat beside her. “Hi, Zara.”
Zara looked at him with new eyes. Did he look any different now that she knew he was an angel? She couldn’t discover anything that gave him awa
y. Shouldn’t he have wings and a halo?
He stayed quiet, watching her examine him, a small smile on his lips.
“You just look like a normal man,” she said.
The smile grew bigger. “I’m hurt. I was going for ‘extraordinary’.”
“Well, you’re much more attractive than any other man.” The words slipped out before she could filter them. A tingle ran up her back at the way he winked at her.
“I want you to know that I don’t think any differently of you now that we have a better idea what you are. You must be worried about it, and that’s my fault. I knew you had equal parts Light and Dark the first time I saw you. Once you manifested the powers of a Beacon, I should have guessed the rest.”
His words soothed Zara in a way Sophie and Grace hadn’t been able to achieve. A big part of her had been worried how Alex would take the news that she was part Angel Killer. He was a being of pure Light, and she was tainted by a stain of Darkness she couldn’t wash away.
She would do what it took to reject that part of her. For her own good and the good of everyone around her.
“I won’t use the Darkness ever again,” Zara said. “I’ll learn how to keep it locked up inside where it can’t hurt anybody.”
Alex placed his hand on her knee and leaned in, his expression earnest. The contact sent an electric jolt through her that she tried to hide. “The Darkness will never be content shackled in a corner of your mind, Zara. Your only hope of controlling it is to master it and tame it to your will.”
“I can’t. You don’t understand. The thoughts that appear in my mind sometimes and the way it rises when I least expect it… it scares me too much. I can’t bring myself to touch it on purpose.” She needed to change the subject. Even talking about it made her anxious. “Is it okay to ask you about being an angel?”
Zara’s question was entirely expected. He’d spent most of his time since confronting the elders considering what he could and couldn’t say to her when she asked.
“Why did you let the Dark mages beat you up? Was that just a test?”
Alex shook his head. “No, I am currently locked in a mortal form. I don’t have access to my angelic powers, and I won’t until this body dies.”
Her eyes widened. “Why? Is that a common angel thing to do?”
He chuckled. Maybe he could start a new fad among the angels. This mortal life was interesting and diverting, and it would make a good change from the tedious glory of Heaven. “It is not. As far as I know, I am the first. It was a punishment for breaking rules. Revealing my nature is an even worse infraction than what got me here, but I’m not feeling particularly charitable toward the Council’s rules at the moment.”
Zara tilted her head to the side. “Council?”
“The Council of Archangels. Draconel is part of it. They issue the decrees that all of the angels must obey.”
“So which one did you break to make them force you to become a mortal? If it’s the first time ever, it must have been something big.”
The moment of confession was upon him, and he couldn’t put it off any longer.
“The night we met, you saw and ran into me when you shouldn’t have been able to. That made me curious, so I followed you for a while and saw the trap the Dark mages had set for you. When the demons leapt at you and you fell and hit your head, I destroyed them with the Light.”
He hadn’t expected his words to excite her so much. She straightened in her seat and her eyes shone. “I knew it! I knew you must have done something. Demons, though? Is that what those big dog creatures were?”
Alex nodded. “Fear Hounds. Minor demons that prey on mortal fear.”
Zara snorted. “They didn’t seem so minor.”
“The current set of laws governing angels’ behavior dictates that Guardians may not intervene in mortal affairs. Because I stepped in, I received the judgment I did.”
“You mean you got in trouble for saving me? They’re okay if I die to some demon, but protecting me is grounds for punishment?” Zara’s voice got high and loud as she grew more indignant. “What the Hell is the point of having Guardian angels if they can’t guard anyone?”
She preached to the choir. Alex let his frustration at the Council be drawn out. “For a committee of wise, ancient beings, the archangels have been incredibly dense over the past two thousand years. Guardians have become glorified babysitters, stepping in now and then to cushion a fall or prevent a car accident—and there are so few Guardians and so many humans that it’s a drop in the bucket. We can only destroy a demon if there are no possible human witnesses. The demons have figured this out and rarely appear on Earth away from humans.”
Zara listened to his rant, nodding. “The main thing I’m hearing from you is that you got thrown out of Heaven for me.”
That brought Alex up short. The petite blonde had her head cocked, smiling at him slyly. She’d been withdrawn the first night they’d met, but the stay at Lighthaven had been good for her so far.
“It felt like a worthwhile cause,” he said.
Her eyes held the universe, and he couldn’t help but want it all. No matter how bad of an idea it was.
If Zara thought she’d been shunned before, it was nothing compared to what she experienced over the next several days.
Not only was she a Dark mage, but she was an Angel Killer.
According to Grace, there had never been a mage like her, not even in the old legends. She was something new.
Being unique sucks.
She couldn’t even imagine how much worse off she’d be if it wasn’t for Grace and Sophie—and Alex. The two girls were her conscience and her bedrock. She’d never had close girlfriends before, and now that she had two of them, she knew how much better her life would have been if she’d had them while growing up.
Alex was… Alex.
They found time to talk at least a couple of times a day. He shared stories from his hundred years as a Guardian and even briefly talked about what it was like to be an Attendant to the Light in Heaven. Her own stories were boring in comparison, but Alex always hungered for more, and sometimes, they stayed awake until far too late in the night talking.
If she had any experience with dating, she would have made a move by now. She kept waiting for him to push the boundaries, to show her the way and take her there, but he had a misplaced sense of honor about their friendship.
Or is it a relationship? If it is, it must be the slowest-moving and most frustrating one of all time!
The only other person who even talked to her was Reginald, who continued her lessons with the Light.
He might be more courageous than I gave him credit for.
She couldn’t figure out why he continued to teach her even though he hated her, and she kept losing control of her temper in response to his snide manner.
Every night, she huddled in her bed, tears streaming down her face as she wished with all her might that she would wake up without the Darkness inside her. She bargained with every deity she could think of, praying to gods who never replied.
Despite her vow to never touch the Darkness again, it kept creeping out whenever she got too emotional. As little control as she had over the Light, she had even less over the Dark.
Maybe that’s the problem. If I could control the Darkness the way Light mages control their abilities, then it wouldn’t be able to assert itself when I don’t want it to.
Ignoring it and hoping it would go away may have been the wrong tack to take. She sat up in bed.
After considerable practice, both with Reginald and on her own, she had gained some form of control over the Light. She could call a faint glow to her fingertip, isolated and using only a sip of power instead of the full-force gale of her earliest efforts.
With trepidation, she reached for the other reservoir inside her, the deeper, Darker one. She’d never touched it on purpose before, and she didn’t know if she was making a mistake, inviting wickedness to take over her soul.
Rem
embering what Alex had said about magic being in balance and the Dark mirroring the Light, she used the same technique when drawing forth a small portion of the reservoir.
A small spear of Darkness sprang forth from her fingertip, rising up in a beam to the ceiling. It was the blackest night, as it always was. There was something unsettling about the Darkness every time Zara saw it. Unlike the Light, which felt joyous and natural, the Darkness had the look of something that shouldn’t exist, a perversion of nature.
She played with the Darkness, looking around it. It could have been an opaque pillar of ebony. No matter how she moved her face around it, she couldn’t see through to the other side. After a moment of hesitation, she moved her face into the spear of Darkness.
Her vision disappeared. Total blackness. It didn’t feel any different to her, although there was an odd thunderous quality to the silence when she tilted her head so that her ears were in the column.
“Huh.” She let the Darkness spring forth from her other fingertips and waved them around. “It’s like a flashlight of black. Kind of cool, actually.”
The Darkness died out. She didn’t feel any different. Her curiosity had been sparked.
Concentrating again, she formed a sheet of Darkness that split the room in half. She put her head on one side, and that half of the room looked normal, but there was a black wall running through the middle. Ducking her head through the Darkness, the other side looked the same.
She let it die again.
That could be useful.
Now she knew how the Dark mages had isolated her and Alex during that fight. Sheets of Darkness the light couldn’t penetrate.
She wanted to try something else.
The Dark version of Farsight wouldn’t work. She knew no Dark mages in order to spy on them. She didn’t want to drain or curse anyone—that wouldn’t gain her any more acceptance among the Light mages. She’d already incited several fights with emotional manipulation, and she didn’t want to push herself into the crooked state of mind needed to use that Dark power.
Fallen: An Angel Romance Page 14
