by Evans, Misty
On the other side, he motioned me to come. Wondering how deep the stream was or if it really was all an illusion and the water was as solid as the ground I stood on, I hesitated. “God’s playing a joke on me, isn’t He?”
“Forget God,” Luc said. He held out a hand. “Come to me.”
My heart and magic tugged me forward. “Are you an illusion too? Did I dream you up along with the rest of this?”
He didn’t answer, just continued to offer his hand.
Reaching for it, I closed my eyes and gingerly stuck my foot in the water, waiting for it to soak through my shoe.
The ground underfoot remained firm and nothing cold or wet touched my skin. I opened my eyes, saw utopia slowly slide away. The deer vanished; the flowers curled up and dropped to the ground. The stream became a thick line of burnt grass.
The leaves on my mother’s tree turned black and disappeared. The bark split into deep crevices. The devastated forest grew dark and ominous as the stars evaporated behind dark thunderheads.
Double damn. “This is what I get for calling God a traitor.”
Luc quirked an eyebrow but didn’t ask. Drawing me to him, he put one hand around my waist and guided me to the tree.
There, he pressed my hand against the trunk. My palm tingled and itched, making my magic fidget. I jerked away, but Luc commandeered my hand again and forced it back to the bark, pressing the palm against it. “This is the Tree of Knowledge. It’s time you remembered the truth.”
“Truth about what?”
He spooned his body behind mine, wrapping his free arm around my waist and bracing me. “This is going to hurt,” he murmured. “But I’ll be with you all the way.”
His mouth was close to my ear and goose bumps raced down the back of my neck. My nipples tingled and I instinctively leaned into him. “Why is this going to hur—oww!”
A powerful stinger poked my palm, ripping through the skin and prodding the tendons and bones. On its heels, a volt of very strong, very powerful magic rushed up my arm. I lurched backwards but there was nowhere to go. The solid wall known as Luc held firm.
I planted my feet and shoved. “Let go!”
“Open your mind, Amy.” Luc’s voice was liquid heat, filling my head. My legs went weak, my resistance dissolving as I floated for a moment in that heat.
“Remember,” he said again.
The volt of magic wormed its way through my system and stabbed my heart. The pain I’d felt when the Axeman was cutting down the tree exploded in my chest all over again.
It subsided as fast as it came, the volt moving on to stab my magic next. A new type of pain.
I cried out.
The sound drove the magic straight to my brain. A warm rushing sensation flowed through my system. Images flooded my mind.
Luc, with his flame-tipped wings as an angel, stood on a battlefield at the head of an army of angels—hoards of them, all with flaming swords and other weapons I didn’t recognize. From across the expanse, he looked at me for a long moment, his dark eyes seeming to soak me up. Satisfied, he smiled and nodded his head. I returned the smile and the nod and raised the sword in my hand over my head.
Wait, where did that come from?
I felt a fresh rush of warmth in my veins. The rush of knowledge.
This was it. The Great War.
Battle cries pierced the air, stabbing at my eardrums as the armies rushed toward a mountain. The opposing army descended in a flash of light and sound. As the two met, the clash of metal on metal set my teeth on edge. A putrid smell clogged my nose and I realized it was the smell of burning feathers.
Before me, angels dropped to the ground and bled gold.
The scene shifted.
No more cries of defeat or success. The ground under my feet was sticky with the blood of my fellow combatants. Those angels still standing looked at me for direction.
And then some of them fell. Pushed really. Thrown out of Heaven by a powerful force. They tumbled from the battlefield, through the air and down, down, down.
Instinctively I reached for them. “No! Wait!”
But they were gone. I stood on the edge of Heaven, my heart bleeding out as I watched those I loved being cast out from God’s presence.
And then I was falling with them.
Not falling so much as jumped. I jumped from the heavens and joined my brothers and sisters dropping toward the earth, and…
“Amo!” Lucifer’s voice rang out, shaking the air, slowing my fall as if he’d commanded it to pillow me.
I was there, in the memory. Floating, and angry that he would try to stop me, even as his arms felt right as they cradled me to him. Gritting my teeth, I spread my wings and fought against his hold. One of my wings was broken and refused to open. I struggled anyway.
I will not abandon them, Light Bearer.
Luc’s voice snaked into my mind. Then I shall go with you.
A bright reddish-orange light burst around me and I was wrapped in my lover’s fiery wings.
Together we fell from grace.
Chapter Twenty-three – No Witchy Way Boulevard
In purgatory, my magic roared, cutting off the tree’s probe and shoving it away.
My free hand dug into Luc’s arm, still around my waist, and I shook my head to clear the images burned there.
Angel.
Me.
No. Witchy. Way.
Those had to be someone else’s memories. Someone else’s thoughts. Someone else’s broken wing.
Not mine. I shook my head again. Damn, I needed a Dove in a bad way. Hell, I needed a freakin truckload of Dove chocolates at this point.
This was a mistake. A terrible joke.
A definite psychotic break.
But then I felt that warm rush of knowledge and I couldn’t fight it. My knees buckled. My body fell hard and fast. So fast, Luc almost didn’t catch me before my butt hit the ground.
He did, though. Like always, the Devil saved me.
“I’ve got you.” He eased us both down to the ragged ground under the tree. Aging roots buckled the earth. He situated us between two large protruding roots, cradled me in his lap and enclosed me inside his strong arms. “I’ll never let you fall.”
My voice shook. “Too late.”
One of his hands caressed my hair. He tucked my head under his chin. “'The truth will set you free.’”
Truth. Highly overrated. “Seems like you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Too much, I’m afraid. We’ve been together an eternity already. You just don’t remember it. Yet. Everything will come back to you in time, now that you’ve been reunited with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
My body shook. Cold or fear? I glanced up at the towering tree. “Thought it was supposed to be an apple tree.”
“The apple was symbolic. The real thing never bared fruit. Only the truth.”
My teeth chattered. I clamped my jaws together until I could regain my composure. “So the punch line is I’m a…fallen angel? Like you?”
“Your name in Heaven was Amo. It means ‘I love’. You embodied love in all its forms.”
My stomach threatened to revolt. Mostly because it was all starting to make sense. Why the other angels kept calling me Amo. Why God, Gabriel and Cephiel wouldn’t leave me alone. Why Adam had subconsciously chosen me to be his modern-day Eve before the real thing showed up. Why Samson and Delilah had come to me for a weird version of couples counseling.
Oh, jeez. “I’m a cupid?”
Luc chuckled. “More like a goddess of love. The Greek’s and Roman’s deities were based on you.”
Uh-huh. “Keisha’s the matchmaker, not me.”
I shifted to look him in the eye. Was he real? Was anything I’d seen in those visions real? Or was this all part of purgatory? Suddenly, everything seemed suspect. “If I’m all lovey dovey, why was I swinging a sword in those visions?”
“You’re a fierce warrior, Amo. Your two sides are equally balanced.”
Universal balance. Each angel embodied it until the Great War in Heaven.
I shook him off, stood and paced to the place where the stream had been. “We lost the war, but I didn’t fall with the others. Neither did you. We jumped.”
“You jumped. I followed.”
At my exasperated look, he shrugged. “The war wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the one who wanted to be like the Most High or planned to exalt my altar above His. That’s the modern-day fairy tale version of the real story.”
“You’re saying I’m the one who wanted to be above God?”
“You didn’t like the way He ran things.”
Big surprise there.
The weight of all this knowledge hit. This was no joke. A sick coldness stole up my spine even as my insides felt like they were on fire. “Maybe you better start at the beginning.”
Luc patted the ground next to him. “You might want to sit down again.”
O-kay. Pretty sure I didn’t wanted to hear what he had to say.
I plopped down anyway, and he started talking. “In the beginning…”
Realizing this could take a while, I interrupted. “Cliff Notes version, okay?”
He nodded. “Let’s see. How to condense this…God, Heaven, lots of angels. You and I fell in love, and when you fall in love, you don’t mess around. We were overly…passionate. Obsessed might be a better word. We started to exalt each other over God.”
“And He got jealous.”
“God wasn’t the only one. Our love was all-consuming. It caused other angels to feel desire and lust. Greed and jealousy.”
“But those are sins. Sin doesn’t exist in Heaven.”
“It didn’t…” He leaned close, stroked a hair off my cheek. “Until you and I created it.”
Well, well. That explained a lot. “We”—I waved a finger between his chest and mine—”created sin?”
“Our love was so pure, so god-like in its existence, God, Himself, was forced to respond by creating its opposite.”
“But the opposite of love is hate.”
He nodded. “Hate, anger, fear. All of these sins grew out of our love.”
The revelations kept coming and yet they created more questions. My brain ran on a hamster wheel, whirling and whirling.
Intuitively, I knew the answers to all those questions. Or maybe the answers came from my encounter with the Tree. Either way, it was quite a story. One that pissed me off as much as it saddened me. “God separated us. He thought He could kill our love for each other.”
“He put you in purgatory. I broke you out. That rebellion started a war. THE war.”
“Star-crossed lovers.” I snorted softly. “Keisha’s always talking about the various wars and how many of them actually started because of a pair of doomed lovers.”
Doomed maybe wasn’t the best word. “There have been many.”
Silence hung between us. As I stared at the charred forest, I replayed the memories the Tree of Knowledge had coughed up. The image of the angels toppling out of Heaven flashed through my mind and constricted my chest. “What happened to our brothers and sisters? Our friends?”
Luc heaved a tired sigh, stood and brushed ash from his pants. “There’s something you should see.”
Oh, crud. “Do I have to?”
He offered his hand, helped me up. “This won’t hurt like the Tree of Knowledge.”
He was wrong.
On the far side of the charred forest was a wide desert. Scorching wind, blowing sand, and endless mirages. Heads down, we trooped through the sand, the weight of it tiring my legs and wearing me down.
The mirages rose in front of me as we walked. Me, as a baby, in my mother’s arms. Emilia and I playing Barbies. I accidently set one of the doll’s hair on fire with my magic. Running away from my aunt’s home, causing trouble in school, performing magic with Keisha, and finally, meeting Lucifer at the feet of the Venus di Milo statue in Paris.
Luc trudged a foot or two in front of me, seemingly oblivious to the images purgatory was vomiting at me. “God has tried many ways to keep us apart. We always find our way back to each other.”
I stared at the Memorex version of my life rising out of the sand and couldn’t help the self-satisfied grin lifting my lips. “Even as a human, I’ve done nothing but rebel against Him.”
“As the Fallen, we were together. He couldn’t let that stand, so He offered a reward and one of the Fallen kidnapped you and returned you to Heaven. There, He chained you up, knowing Heaven is the one place I cannot enter. Your soul was dying there. Well…” He paused. “You’re an angel and technically you can’t die, but your love, the very essence of your soul, was shriveling up and morphing into the sins of what we had created. I couldn’t bear it, so I struck a deal. I agreed to stay away from you if He allowed your soul to enter a human body.”
“But you couldn’t stay away from me.”
“Keisha cast the spell that brought us back together.” Luc stretched out his arms. “And here we are.”
Keisha was a powerful witch. There was no denying that. But in my heart, I knew Luc and I would have found each other regardless.
Side by side, we climbed a sandy hill and stood at the top. I was breathing heavy even though I didn’t really need to breathe at all. Down below, a marble city sat half buried in sand. Another ghost town.
Nothing moved but the sand. All was silent. And creepy. I glanced around for the monster I expected to come rushing out at us. “Where are we? What is the place?”
“You asked where our angel warriors went.” Luc pointed at the marble columns, crumbling buildings and eroded statues jutting up from the sand. “This, my love, is the City of Lost Angels.”
Chapter Twenty-four – Fallen City
My heart exploded inside my chest. Pure agony. As if the legion of angels here were calling to me for help.
And there was nothing I could do.
Helplessness ate at my insides. I shoved it back, bent forward at the waist and rubbed my chest. “I feel them, but I can’t see them.”
“I feel them too.” Lucifer’s voice was unusually soft, reverent. “Their souls are locked away inside the stones.”
“Like my mother’s soul inside the Tree of Knowledge?”
Luc frowned. “Why do you believe your mother’s soul is in the Tree?”
“Zayfeer said…”
“Zayfeer?” He shook his head in disgust. “Zayfeer is a traitor to our cause. Don’t believe anything he tells you.”
Great. “Why would he lie about that?”
“He lies about everything. His only goal is to worm his way back into Heaven. If I could, I’d rip his head off. He’s the one who kidnapped you after the fall and forced you back to Heaven and your prison.”
“So that’s why he and Nikita disappeared when you arrived.”
“He was here?”
“Didn’t you see him?”
A muscle twitched in Luc’s jaw. “He did it again. And I helped him.”
“Did what?”
Luc’s hands went to his waist as he looked out over the city. The king looking over his fallen kingdom. “Return you to purgatory.”
He glanced at me, his brows forming a deep V over his eyes. “I knew God would keep trying to separate us, but Gabriel failed to take your soul. Cephiel failed to keep you away from me. Even the Mark of Cain failed at keeping us apart. God freed Zayfeer in exchange for him capturing you and bringing you here. Next stop? Heaven and your prison cell.”
I swallowed hard. Next stop, my ass. “So my mother’s soul is not trapped in the tree? Why could I feel her, then, when the Axeman was trying to cut it down?”
“The Axeman?”
I waved him off. “Did I sell my mother’s soul to you?”
“She was your first. But you must understand. The souls you brokered to me are all fallen angels who’ve been lost to us. Those who were punished with life on Earth and whose souls we’re harvesting from their human forms in order to free
them.”
“My mother is—was—a fallen angel?”
“No, she was human, but because she allowed God to impregnate her with your soul, she became one of the Chosen. Like Mary, the human female who carried Jesus.”
“Holy bananas, Batman.” You’d think by now nothing would surprise me. “My mother had sex with God?”
A grin lifted the corner of Luc’s mouth. “Not in that way. He merely kissed her in order to transfer your soul into her womb. When she and your human father procreated, your soul entered this body.” He pointed at me.
Parent-sex was still eww, so I slammed the mental door shut on that image. “The picture in the church. The painting. It looked like my mother and that angel were doing more than kissing.”
“What painting?”
I explained the painting depicting my mother and the angel. Lucifer eyed me intently. “Was Zayfeer involved in this?”
Zayfeer. The liar who’d betrayed us. Maybe he was a liar and a traitor. Didn’t mean he didn’t speak some truths. “He showed me another painting with you as a dragon in it. Are you saying he lied about that, too? Because I saw you, Luc. Scales and all.”
The dark gaze I loved slid away. He said nothing, just stared at the ruined city.
This was getting me nowhere fast. “What about the souls in the trees you freed when you set the forest on fire? Zayfeer said those were souls I’d brokered for you. Were they human or fallen angels?”
“They were the Fallen. Ones who had been reincarnated like you into human bodies. But their magic is too powerful for the limitations those bodies imposed. Their appetites much too strong. You recognized that in them, recognized Heaven in them, and brought them to me.”
“The humans…they don’t know they’re angels, do they?”
“Most don’t. But when the time comes—when we’ve found all of them—your soul will be healed. Their souls as well. Our family will be together once more.”
