by Peach, Hanna
Angelstone (Dark Angel #2)
By Hanna Peach
The sequel to Angelfire (Dark Angel #1)
After escaping from the Hollows, Jordan takes Alyx and Israel to Aradale, a secret Rogue community, where they appear to be safe − for now. But did they bring the enemy with them? “Mini”, the strange and speechless young girl they rescued from the Hollows, is not as she seems. Why was Elder Michael keeping her locked up? What is she hiding?
Out in the mortal cities, pieces of Black Stone, the only material that can disrupt the angels’ healing abilities, continue to be stolen to make weapons for Samyara’s dark army. Alyx and her friends must stop them, but this means infiltrating holy and guarded places to steal the Black Stone − a monastery in remote China, a mosque in Saudi Arabia, an art gallery in Florence and a cathedral in Peru.
Can they win this deadly race against the Darkened?
Chapter 1
Alyx had evaded him. For now.
She struggled to contain her breath, jagged from all the running, as she crouched behind a crumbling stone pillar. Here the grass struggled to grow between the uneven slate paving stones.
She was back in the DreamScape. Except this time, she was not surrounded by brick walls of the gray maze. No. This time the DreamScape was wide and bare except for the pillars that remained of these ruins. Bone-gray and broken.
Alyx felt naked. Exposed. She wished, almost, for the walls back.
She remembered the last time she was here – the sweaty palms, the panic, the claustrophobia of the brick maze – and a shudder ran through her. She remembered how Michael’s form had pushed its way through the skin of the Scape and how his stony arms had held her. She remembered his promise to her.
“I will find you.”
Alyx stopped wishing for the walls to come back.
Stone scratched on stone, the sound grating against her spine. Alyx peered around the corner of her hiding place. A short distance away, whole pillars were being tossed across the ground as if they were but empty hollow things. Something was moving. Something powerful.
He was coming for her.
Fight, something in her whispered, soft like the voice of bloodink. Instead Alyx placed her hands on the slate beneath her feet. No. Escape was a better option.
She ran through Jordan’s instructions in her mind again. “Remember that the DreamScape is pliable. Imagine it like water around you. Push through it with your mind and it will move out of your way. Imagine there is a way out and there will be. But you must believe it.”
Alyx pressed down on the slate with her hands. It was unyielding. But she could do it. This time, surely. A doorway, a way out…a way out. She had to make her way out. She couldn’t keep running.
All the while the noise of the sliding pillars grew louder and closer.
But the slate remained unchanged. “Come on,” Alyx cried out in frustration.
Stop. Breathe, she told herself. She closed her eyes and forced the noises around her to fade. Breathe. Believe.
Believe.
Under her palms, Alyx felt the slate shifting. The smooth coolness turned to the grain of untreated wood. Her eyes flew open. Under her hands was a door, wooden and simple. The sides were uneven but she didn’t care. She had created a door.
Her fingers moved over it. Wait. Where was the handle? The lock? Alyx’s fingernails scratched at the edges of the door. It sat too flush against its frame for her to get her fingertips in there.
The noise of moving pillars was getting closer. Alyx felt her panic start to close its fingers around her throat. She stood and kicked down at the door. It’s only wood. It should break. Break, damn you, break.
“Come on, Alyx,” his voice carried through the panic-buzz in her brain, taunting her.
The pillar behind her flew to the side. Alyx spun. Her heart felt like it wanted to leap from her throat. She was exposed.
He faced her, still some meters away, but he didn’t need to get any closer. He tilted his head at her. “Maybe some incentive?” He stretched his right hand out and a broken pillar to his right lifted from the ground. Alyx stomped frantically at the door at her feet. He pointed his hand at her and the pillar flew towards her.
Fight, fight. The voice was unbearable now. Fight. Something in her snapped. Enough.
From within her bubbled forth a fury, a rage that tore away the fist-like panic at her throat. It ripped at the magic of the Scape around her. Alyx could feel it gathering in her arms like yards of fabric. She heard a gasp. Did it come from her? Or him?
Like a giant soundless scream, she projected all this energy from her. The pillar that was about to crush her blew back against the force. It flew back through the air and crashed into the ground, a cloud of gray dust billowing and spitting chips of stone around its resting place.
Her mind seemed to clear with the dust. Only then did Alyx realize what she had done.
Jordan.
Alyx ran to where Jordan had been standing. The pillar lay cracked in multiple places. But he was gone.
Chapter 2
The swallow flew down from his height, down from above the peak of the mountains, the trees below dropping away into a sea of wild grasses. On the breath of a soft wind the swallow circled over a farmhouse, a farmhouse named Tara, where, through a window, the swallow could see a young man gazing out with an expression of sadness across his human face. The young man frowned, eyed the swallow for a moment, then looked past him to the sky beyond. Almost as if the young man was watching for something... or someone.
The swallow pulled up over the farmhouse. The current of air took the swallow along where the land naturally climbed up, up past the ridge and up past a water tower, where two Seraphim, a young female lightwarrior and a Rogue, were lying side by side.
“Jordan?” Alyx’s eyes flicked open and her chest arched with a violent inhale. She sat up too quickly, her head spinning.
Jordan was sitting up, hunched over his bent knees, his face in his hands, fingers rubbing his forehead. “Jesus,” came out muffled.
“Did I hurt you?” Alyx clasped her hands on either side of his face, pulling it from the cup of his hands and bringing it closer to hers for inspection. He met her eyes. His green-tea eyes, feline and alert, were nothing like Israel’s soft, hooded, brown ones.
Alyx flinched, then pulled back. It was unsettling to have someone other than Israel look at her like that. There was a slight pinch to Jordan’s lips. Then it was gone.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I managed to pull out of the Scape just before the pillar crushed me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What happened to you in there?”
Alyx shook her head over and over. “I don’t really know. You threw the pillar at me and I couldn’t get that damned door to open. I was so tired of running. I was scared. And so angry. There was a voice inside me telling me to fight. Something in me snapped. I don’t know how, but I pulled at the magic of the Scape around me and... somehow I threw it at you. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
Jordan’s face darkened. “Anger is a powerful but destructive emotion, Alyx. It allows you to access a great amount of power, as you discovered in that DreamScape, but the power that comes from anger is wild, uncontrollable. It takes over and makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like trying to kill you,” Alyx said, her voice low.
“Yes, like trying to kill me,” Jordan said gently. “When you’re in a Scape you’re wrapped in the walls of your own subconscious. If you let fear and anger take control of you like that again… you could tear your own mind apart from the inside.”
Alyx was silent for a mo
ment as the thoughts sank in. She almost killed a friend. She could have torn her own mind apart. She shuddered. “I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“There are several layers of each Seraphim magic. The Elders only teach you the lower levels. But there are higher levels, more sophisticated levels of the magic. We FreeThinkers out here, we share what we know and what we discover about our magic, but we don’t know everything that the Elders are hiding. The DreamScape is a bit different because it is part of your subconscious, hence why you are able to assert control over it even though you aren’t a DreamWalker.”
Alyx rubbed her ribs where her stolen bloodink tattoos were hidden: a full Animale, parts of WaterBearer, AirWhisperer, EarthSifter and FireTwirler, and a sliver of DreamWalker. What secrets did each of these magics hold?
“We should practice your manipulation of the DreamScape again, but without the whole anger and fury thing.” Jordan nudged her good-humoredly. Then his face darkened again. “It may come in handy... Michael won’t stop until he finds you.”
They entered the DreamScape again to continue their practice. By the end of their training, Alyx had been able to create a door with a handle. But she was still taking too long to do it. Dammit. It just wasn’t good enough.
“Don’t worry about it. It takes time,” said Jordan as they rested on the water tower after training. He smiled. “You’re doing really well.”
Alyx leaned against the tower, closed her eyes and let the sun warm her skin. She knew that Jordan was just trying to make her feel better, but for some reason his efforts unsettled her.
“I was wondering…” she heard Jordan say after a few minutes of silence, “there’s nothing going on between you and Israel, is there?”
Alyx had to choke back a gasp as her eyes flew open. Was her heartbreak so obvious? The ache in her chest had been her constant companion since Israel and she had decided to just be friends. It was there under everything, hollow and raw like an abyss. She thought that she had hidden it well enough…
How would Jordan react if he knew how far Alyx and Israel had taken their brief relationship? No, Alyx couldn’t risk Jordan’s disapproval, his judgment, his rejection. She needed his help. That’s why he couldn’t know. No one could.
“No…” she lied. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
Jordan shrugged and looked apologetic. “I just wanted to be sure…”
“Well, there’s nothing going on.”
“Excellent.” Jordan shuffled over next to Alyx and leaned against the tower. He smiled at her, then closed his eyes and tilted his face to the sun, mimicking what Alyx was doing earlier. Alyx felt an uncomfortable coldness settle in her belly at Jordan’s proximity.
“We should head back,” she said standing up so that she could move away from him.
Alyx thought she saw a flash of disappointment cross Jordan’s face. But he nodded and they took off from the water tower back to Tara.
* * *
It was quiet now in Tara. Marin and Lukas had since returned to Aradale. Lukas had family there and Marin… well, Marin just didn’t like sitting still. Jordan had left to speak to a contact of his. Alyx had asked to come along, but Jordan had insisted she stay to watch over Israel and Mini.
Truthfully, Alyx didn’t want to be left in this house alone with Israel. Which is why she was hiding in her room with Mini now curled up next to her, asleep.
Alyx hadn’t seen Israel since they had their “let’s just be friends” talk. He had still been too sick to leave his room, and Jordan had seemed to realize that all was not well between them, offering to take up Israel’s meals so that she didn’t have to.
Friends. The word made her sick.
Alyx tried to push away these thoughts and focused on the glass globe in her hands. When she had first arrived, she had noticed it on her bedside table, sitting placid in its holder. Jordan had called it a soulglobe, a glass orb infused with both MirageWeaver and MemorySong magic. It could hold memories or messages. But thanks to the MirageWeaver magic, only the intended could ever see its true contents. Alyx had never seen anything like it before. Jordan had said that Tobias, the chief of Aradale, had created it.
Alyx stared at the globe, willing it to reveal its secrets. But the mist within never cleared, no matter how much she stared or shook it or warmed it up in her hands.
Alyx heard a noise and almost dropped the globe. A thumping. From within the house. Had they been discovered? Alyx leapt to her feet and dashed from the room to the second floor landing.
It was Israel. He was trying to walk down the stairs, hanging on to the handrail, his legs stumbling from one step to the next, still stiff from the remnants of the Cerberus venom.
Watching him struggle with the stairs melted her heart. She forgot that she was avoiding him. Alyx moved instinctively to his side and tucked her arm around his waist. It was only when she was this close to him that she remembered how much taller he was than her. Israel’s eyes fell upon her. Brown eyes rimmed with thick lashes. Even now, cold like ice, these eyes spoke directly to her heart, which thudded in her chest so loudly that she thought he may have heard it. She couldn’t stay trapped in his stare so she dropped her gaze. Without meaning to, her gaze dropped to his lips and that scar.
A memory flashed across her mind of her fingers, her lips, her tongue across that scar. That scar. And across the others on his body. Alyx felt her insides clench so hard she almost doubled over. Joy and bitterness wrapped in one. Fire and ice. Life and death.
“L-let me help you,” Alyx said, trying to explain away her proximity.
Israel tensed beside her. He lurched himself forward, away from her touch, and she felt her fingers grasping after him. The echo of his skin left behind a resounding emptiness.
“I’m fine. I don’t need you.”
They were just words but they may as well have been made from shards of Black Stone for how they cut her.
I don’t need you.
The wounds these words left behind would remain. She tried not to let the pain show on her face. She couldn’t let him know he had hurt her.
“I was just trying to help,” Alyx could hear herself say. She sounded whiney. Pathetic. She had to stop these feelings. Had to make them stop. God, why had she ever allowed herself to feel these things?
Israel recommenced his clumsy descent down the final steps, leaving Alyx standing there, wordless and wrapped in her own self-pity, aching for his skin under her fingers.
On the ground floor, Israel limped across the room and disappeared into the kitchen.
The kitchen. Too many sharp objects. Hot things. He wasn’t completely well yet. Concern overriding everything else, Alyx followed him.
On the kitchen bench, Israel had taken out bread and cheese. Now he was opening the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?” Alyx asked as she moved towards him, although this time keeping her distance. “You shouldn’t be moving around so much.” Israel pulled a plate from a cupboard. Alyx grabbed the other end. “Let me help.”
“Leave me alone, dammit!” Israel yelled. “I’m not completely helpless you know.”
The plate flew out of their fingers and across the room, breaking against the far wall, a shattered heart of white and blue. Alyx gasped. Even Israel looked stunned. The silence that followed was deafening, filled only with the unsaid.
Broken beyond repair. Alyx moved across the floor and began to pick up the pieces. There was nothing else left to do.
Neither of them dared to look at the other.
Chapter 3
In that space between sleep and consciousness, Passar heard Elijah call his name. Elijah. His Elijah. It melted the ice that had built up around his heart.
Passar rolled over towards the presence in bed behind him. He stretched his fingers across the sheets to catch Elijah’s waist... but his fingers kept moving through thin air. The warm presence disintegrated into cold ashes at his empty fingertips. The warmth around his heart shattered unde
r the realization of the truth...
Elijah was... still dead.
Passar opened his eyes. The last of his hope that the past few months had just been a nightmare shattered. If only he could live in those blissful moments between asleep and awake. If only.
Waking up without Elijah – every morning – was the hardest part. No, lying down at night without him was the hardest part. Breathing without him was the hardest part.
Without him was the hardest part. Eternity without him.
Passar’s fingers gripped the sheet so hard it almost tore. He pushed his face into his pillow and let out a sob.
No. No tears. Anger. Anger was good. Anger was better. The only thing that numbed this pain was anger. Under the anger it still hurt, but at least it was bearable.
It was the Elders’ fault, the Elders must pay. All of them must pay.
Whatever it took. Passar would damn well do whatever it took to get Elijah back. Even if it meant that others had to die in his place.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Israel’s legs had lost even more of their stiffness. He tried to make as little noise as possible as he walked through the dry leaves on the ground around Tara. He had gotten out of bed at the first light after a restless night of very little sleep and followed Jordan down here.
In a clearing through the trees ahead, he could see that Jordan was running through a series of katas with a weapon that looked like a short staff with flame-like blades leaping off both ends. Israel paused for a moment, half behind a trunk of rough bark that looked like peeling paper, gray and powdery, which came off on his fingers. He watched Jordan move. Israel had to give it to Jordan − this guy was good. Smooth, confident strokes, clean lines… but he was too “by the book”. He wouldn’t last long on the street. He wouldn’t last long in a scrappy fight. A real fight.
