Embrace

by Jessica Shirvington

  ‘I can’t ignore you when you’re flashing your emotions around like that,’ he snapped. He wasn’t happy, but I was guessing my cheerfulness wasn’t the key motivator for his angst.

  I was losing patience with his foul mood. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ve made my choice. If you really care about me, you’ll respect it. Unless, of course, you only wanted to be around me because you thought I was going to be some kind of super-powerful Grigori.’

  I was joking, but his eyes darted away. I moved towards him, standing in his line of sight. ‘That isn’t it, is it, Phoenix?’

  He walked towards me and took my hand. The senses started to hum around me.

  ‘It would certainly help in preventing your death – so yes, but…’ He lifted his head to meet my eyes and I saw the conflict that raged within him. ‘It’s not why I’m here. Not any more.’ He leaned in to kiss me.

  He stopped at my lips and whispered, ‘Tell me to kiss you.’

  In that moment I almost craved it, but I also remembered my kiss with Lincoln. I stayed where I was and whispered back, ‘I…I don’t want to hurt you.’

  Something overcame him; he let out a small cry and hung his head, resting his forehead on mine. We stood like that for a minute. I felt the weight of aeons of pain pass through him.

  Then, rather than waiting for me, he kissed me. I could feel the sense of resolve in his action. I tried to ignore the senses, but as I opened myself up to him, they all merged into one sparking energy. Like little fireworks crackling between us. He felt the change and drew me closer. Then he stopped, pulling back just enough to speak. ‘Can I do something?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  He half laughed. ‘Trust me?’

  It was a bigger question than he realised. ‘OK,’ I said softly.

  He slid his arm from around my waist and took hold of one of my hands. I felt the sparks of energy flare between us just as before and then he kissed me again, but this time he really kissed me. He pulled me tight, his arm still wrapped around my body. His other hand slowly crept up my arm, fingers trailing lightly. As his tongue moved into my mouth the flavour of apple was pushed aside as he brought something else: the taste of pure…seduction.

  The sparks of energy flickered and then stopped. I could feel them building, like millions of tiny water balloons filling up. He felt me tense. ‘Let go,’ he whispered into my lips.

  I wasn’t sure what to do and I considered pulling away, but he drew me closer and then it exploded. Millions of bubbles of emotion washed over me. Incredible desire, lust, love poured through my body. Every part of me was completely aware of every part of him, and as he kissed me it was as if he opened a portal to himself. I knew he wanted me, knew he wanted all of me. I felt his jealousy and possessiveness, it was all-consuming and…scary. But there was no denying, as he bled into me, that I wanted it too, wanted him, completely seduced by his emotions. In that moment I would have done anything he commanded of me.

  I tugged at his T-shirt and he complied, pulling it off in a microsecond. I was barely separated from his lips. I ran both hands down his sculpted back. He lifted me, hoisting me onto the kitchen bench, never breaking contact with my lips. Everywhere I touched it was like tasting a new flavour of emotion, but always there, lingering, was the taste of seduction…jasmine and vanilla.

  Somewhere, far away, part of me was screaming for control, but I didn’t care. The part of me that was under Phoenix’s influence was relishing the freedom. He scrunched the back of my top in his hands. He was pulling at it, tugging and tightening it around me, but not taking it off. I could feel how much he wanted to, could feel his struggle. I wanted him to take it off – rip it off if he had to. The wave of desire rolling through me empowered me. I knew it wasn’t all my emotion but what was me was intensified and without boundaries. It was…bliss.

  I grabbed at my shirt, to take it off for him. He gripped my hands, holding them down by my side. I felt him shaking as he fought for self-control. He made a deep growl, and then, defiantly, he took a breath and I felt the emotion slide away. He slammed the barriers up between us. All my other emotions – guilt, self-consciousness – rushed back. It was a nasty comedown. A big part of me just wanted him to turn on the tap again and take me back to bliss. But then there was the other part.

  ‘What did you do to me?’ I couldn’t control my breath.

  He took a moment, picked up his T-shirt and turned around as he put it on, tugging it down over his pants. I blushed when he turned to look at me.

  ‘It wasn’t all my emotion, you know.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter! You took away my control.’

  I set about making another coffee, trying not to look at him. As soon as I reached for a clean cup, I felt myself launching it across the kitchen. The white ceramic shattered into tiny pieces, ricocheting over the floorboards.

  He was surprised but didn’t avert his gaze. He kept watching me, piercing me with his dark eyes. ‘I know you enjoyed it,’ he said in his familiar seductive tone.

  ‘That’s not the point – I couldn’t stop you!’ Before he could open his mouth I added, ‘It doesn’t matter what you think you know, Phoenix. You don’t know everything about me!’

  I got the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard and started to sweep up the mess.

  Phoenix made no move to help. I don’t think it even occurred to him. He grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and rolled it in his fingers, watching me.

  ‘I’d never let you make a choice on a kiss and then let that lead to more than what had been agreed. It would be…’

  ‘Bad?’ I offered, as he struggled for a word. He didn’t get it, didn’t realise how important it was to me to have control. Only one person ever truly got it.

  He smiled. ‘Violet, I hate to tell you this, but bad?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Bad can be a lot of fun. No, the word I was looking for was…cheating.’

  I blushed and suddenly felt very young and inexperienced. ‘Just don’t do it again.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made.’

  Genesis 7:4

  I holed up in my art studio. It was the one place I could go where I knew Phoenix wouldn’t follow me. After our disastrous kiss – or rather, my disastrous reaction to it – I expected him to just let himself out. So I was surprised to find him still sitting in the living room when I emerged a while later.

  I didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell him to go, so I just ignored him. I really should have been studying – exams were due to start when school went back in a week and I’d barely picked up a book. In the end, the overwhelming need to crawl up on the couch with a fluffy pillow and blanket and watch the movie channel, while gorging myself on salt-and-vinegar chips, won out. Apart from everything else, not having Lincoln around had caused my diet a great disservice.

  I barely had the remote in my hand before Phoenix asked for a play-by-play of last night’s murder scene. I was tempted to just tell him to go away. I wasn’t impressed by how his ‘trust me’ request had worked out, but I could also feel myself starting to calm down. Then I realised Phoenix was probably responsible for that. I made a frustrated sound and buried my head in my pillow. ‘I’ll tell you if you cut the empathy crap!’

  He didn’t say anything, but I started to feel more like myself – angrier – so I knew he had backed off.

  It didn’t seem to matter how much I wanted to move on with my life, everything kept circling back to Grigori and exiles. I was starting to get a bad feeling that no matter what, I wasn’t going to be able to escape it.

  I told Phoenix about the three dead Grigori; that they’d been murdered by exiles, not just light or dark but both. As I told him about Griffin’s theory, he started to shift uncomfortably in his seat, moving cushions around as if distracted by them.

  I lost my patience. ‘What?’

  H
e sighed. ‘The rules have changed, Violet. Your people need to open their eyes.’ He was shaking his head.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be talking about this stuff.’

  ‘Grigori are dead. If you know something, you have to tell me.’

  Phoenix’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I’m sorry, you’re confusing me with someone who gives a damn. Grigori are the enemy of exiles – of all exiles, including me.’

  ‘Then why have you been helping me? Why did you kill that exile the other night?’

  ‘I killed him because he was going to rip your head off if I didn’t.’

  ‘Otherwise, what? You guys would have gone out for beers?’ I was getting angrier by the minute.

  His eyes flashed dangerously. ‘No. I’d never go anywhere with a Cherubim. I told you I don’t like them.’ He clenched his jaw, watching me. ‘I thought you didn’t care anyway. You don’t even want to protect your own. Why would you think that I would, when they’d only plan to kill me later…or worse.’

  ‘I never said it was OK for them to be murdered,’ I said defensively. I was getting so angry. I wasn’t the only one – Phoenix looked like he could breeze out on me at any second.

  ‘Look, you’re right, I shouldn’t expect you to care,’ I said, between deep, calming breaths. ‘But you are here and you did save me from the Cherubim. I know you don’t care about other Grigori…yet you want me to become one of them. But what would be the point if the others are all dead? Please, Phoenix.’

  ‘Stop it,’ he growled. I knew he was referring to my emotions, to the fact I could feel that I had him.

  ‘Annoying, isn’t it?’ I said, flashing him a smartass grin.

  He put his hands in his pockets and stalked around the living room for a bit, eventually disappearing down the hall. I let him have time to think. We weren’t arguing over pizza toppings.

  When he took up position again on the couch, he slumped down, leaned his head back to look at the ceiling and gave a weighty sigh.

  ‘OK. You need to understand there was a time when exiles were rulers on earth. A time when they were able to come here and take what they wanted and do as they pleased. They took men for slaves and women to bear them children. They didn’t hesitate to kill any who opposed them and mankind fell under their rule swiftly.’

  ‘They wanted humans to serve them,’ I said, remembering what Griffin had told me.

  Phoenix nodded. ‘I’m sure some of this has been explained to you. The way some angels came here to kill and conquer, while others came for the bodies. You see, the realm can sometimes seem like two opposing countries – filled with propaganda and inevitable war. Unlike here though, it’s not much fun being at war with no corporeal form.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It lacks the dramatic rewards.’

  Aka blood and guts. I shuddered.

  ‘In those days, Grigori were a rank of angels,’ Phoenix continued. ‘They were not so much fighters as sentinels who watched over humanity and reported back to the Seraphim. But they’d been living on earth for thousands of years and had become weakened by their human form, susceptible to temptation and desire.’

  ‘Griffin said exiles can suffer the longer they’re human,’ I said, choosing my words carefully.

  ‘That’s true, though I’ve told you I’m not like other exiles,’ he said, answering my unspoken question. ‘Anyway, the exiles threw women and power at the angel Grigori, who were too weak to resist. They joined forces. Together they were unstoppable. Humans cowered under them and those who didn’t were relegated to hiding in mountain caves.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Clearly we were not living in caves any more.

  Phoenix stood up, and started pacing the room. He kept playing with the buttons on the cuffs, undoing them and doing them up again. He was wearing a navy shirt that highlighted his hair and every time he walked under the downlights it shimmered.

  ‘Eventually, the Seraphim sent a legion of warrior angels – of both light and dark – to earth. For the first time in aeons, light and dark had called a truce in order to give earth back to humans. The warrior angels swarmed over the earth as a great flood, destroying everything they touched. They wiped out the tainted humanity, destroyed exile progeny and seized the exiled angels and all who had broken angel law. As a final message to any angels who considered making a similar choice, they parted the Red Sea, revealing the pits of damnation, and banished them to an eternity of torment and pain.’

  ‘Hell,’ I whispered.

  ‘You can call it that if it keeps things simple for you.’

  ‘Wait – is that where all exiled angels go?’ He knew what I was asking. He didn’t answer. Instead, he refocused on his cuffs.

  ‘The Seraphim agreed that humanity should have a chance to survive without the direct interference of angels. And, of course, the role of angels depended on the continued existence of humanity, so everyone’s survival rested on finding some kind of solution. They knew they couldn’t risk putting more angel Grigori on earth and the same thing happening again.’

  ‘So no more angels on earth,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Angels were never again permitted passage to earth, unless for spiritual visions – dreams, illusions, crap like that. But they couldn’t stop angels who chose to banish themselves permanently from the angel realm in favour of the earthly realm. And they still needed a power that could police these exiles, a power that could carry light and dark strengths in one entity.’ His hand went out to me. ‘Human Grigori.’

  His version was definitely more informed than Griffin’s story. ‘OK, but I still don’t understand what that has to do with these murders.’

  Phoenix nodded and walked back to sit beside me. ‘I know it’s complicated, but try. Exiles know that before the existence of human Grigori, they were unstoppable.’

  ‘Not good for Grigori.’

  ‘No. And exiles have evolved. The group your people are tracking are organised. The reason it looks like they were killed by both light and dark exiles is because they were. They’ve joined forces against a common enemy.’ He leaned forward on the couch and grabbed both of my hands.

  ‘Violet, they’ve called a truce and they have a plan.’

  ‘To kill all Grigori,’ I finished for him.

  He didn’t respond. He just looked right into my eyes.

  F.F.F.F.F.F.F.-recurring!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘From the crevice of the great deep, above, there came a certain female, the spirit of all spirits, and we have already explained that her name was Lilith. And at the very beginning she existed with man.’

  Zohar III, 19a

  Lincoln didn’t answer his phone. I left a message and was already halfway out of the apartment when Phoenix grabbed my arm. ‘What are you doing?’

  I shook him off. ‘I have to find Lincoln,’ I snapped.

  He stood beside me as I waited for the lift. When I raised my eyebrows at him, he shrugged. ‘There’s no way I’m about to let you go out there alone. Especially back to him.’

  He sounded a little childish and I rolled my eyes, but my heart wasn’t in it. The truth was, I was relieved to have company.

  I half walked, half ran to Lincoln’s place, Phoenix trailing behind. I pressed the buzzer for a good five minutes and when I started banging on the door, he put his hand over mine to stop me. Lincoln wasn’t home and I had no idea where else to go. I didn’t know where Griffin lived or where he might be. I silently cursed myself for never getting his number from Lincoln.

  The only other place I could think of was the warehouse from last night. I knew it wasn’t far from Lincoln’s but couldn’t remember in which direction. After a quick explanation to Phoenix, I raced back down Lincoln’s steps and started taking streets at random, getting increasingly disoriented. Even though I was setting a good pace – no doubt thanks to all my long-distance training – Phoenix had no trouble keeping up.

  Finally, he dropped behind. ‘Violet, you obviously have no id
ea where you’re going!’ he called out.

  ‘I know that, Phoenix! Thanks for your help!’ I yelled back, slowing to a walk. Panic and fear were riding me hard and I couldn’t fight the creeping onset of doom.

  ‘If you want my help, all you have to do is ask.’ He had stopped, now resigned to yelling out to me from the other end of the lane.

  I turned to look at him, throwing my arms in the air in frustration. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means, if you stay still for a few minutes, I can try to track the activity that went on last night.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling stupid. ‘I’ll stay still.’

  I waited and watched, trying not to inhale any of the rotted garbage smells that were wafting my way in waves of heat. Phoenix tilted his head every now and then in another direction, as if trying to hear the far-off song of a bird. He started walking in the opposite direction. ‘It’s this way.’

  I had to run to catch up. When we were out of sight of passers-by, Phoenix stopped again.

  ‘Come on, we have to find them!’

  I was panting and jittery and out of patience. I knew he was just trying to help, but right now he was also the only outlet I had for the terror that was raking its claws through me. Something was wrong.

  Phoenix grinned calmly, which only aggravated me more. He wasn’t even breathing fast. ‘I was going to offer a little timely help, since you spent the first half hour running in the wrong direction. I thought you were in a hurry.’

  I glared at him from where I was bent over with my hands on my knees, sucking in air.

  ‘Take my hand.’ He smiled, as if daring me.

  I held out my sweaty hand. He scrunched his face when he saw it.

  ‘What?’ I said exasperated.

  He kept an eye on my hand until I gave an exaggerated huff and wiped it on my jeans.

  ‘I told you that you’d be hot,’ he said with a smirk.

  ‘Yeah, well, have I told you that you can be very cold sometimes?’ I snarled at him. He only seemed amused and took my hand when I held it out again.