by S. L. Naeole
“Apparently,” I muttered.
When the waiter returned with a bag containing our dinner, Mrs. Deovolente paid for the meal and left a generous tip, and the two of us walked silently outside.
“Over here,” I mumbled, pointing across the dark and empty parking lot towards the white car sitting all alone.
“Let’s go.”
I hurried towards the vehicle, unaware of why, only that whatever it was that this person who had told me to call her Mel, who had given me advice on how to seduce Robert, was, I needed to know more.
Inside the car I fumbled with the keys, finally sticking them inside of the ignition and turning them, hearing the clicking of the starter as it failed to turn the engine over. Twice more I tried, but nothing happened.
“I’m sorry—this is my step-mother’s car and it’s been sitting in the driveway for a while,” I said apologetically.
With one final turn of the key, the engine roared to life, growling at me like a disgruntled lion, angry that I had neglected it. I put the car into gear and began driving, though to where I didn’t know. All I knew was that someone needed to start talking and it wasn’t going to be me.
“Where am I going?” I asked when I came to the parking lot’s exit.
“Turn right and drive,” she instructed.
The roads were empty, nothing unusual in this part of Ohio. My fingers itched to turn the radio on, but I knew better than to create any distractions for Mel, who sat staring straight ahead.
“Turn left here,” she said, and I turned the wheel, the car pulling onto an unpaved road that got lost in the darkness.
“Who are you?” I asked when I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“Just keep going. A little bit further.”
My feet slammed on the brakes when the road disappeared off what I could only guess was a cliff or the top of something that would definitely suck falling off of.
“Well, I guess we’ll stop here,” she said before unbuckling her seatbelt and turning to face me, her expression far more serious than I had ever seen before.
“Grace, you don’t need to know who I am, only what I am. I’m the same thing your father is. I’m a chosen guardian, an Electus Patronus.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She waved my comment away, as if it was inconsequential to what she wanted to say to me. “My charge had me come here to watch over you. Why else would I be teaching your biology class?”
“You said you needed the money,” I pointed out.
“I don’t need money, Grace. I don’t even need that job—I was there for you.”
“Why? Why are there all these people spying on me, watching over me, trying to get at me? What the hell is so damn special about me?” I cried out.
“Your birth is one reason,” Mel answered. “But more than that, it’s what your death will trigger.”
“My death? What do you know of it?”
“Grace, you can’t die. If you die, then everything that the angels have been doing since the beginning of their existence will be for nothing.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m supposed to die. I’m supposed to die. That was the plan. I’m supposed to die, and then Robert will get to live, and everything will be as it’s supposed to be.”
Mel’s head shook violently from side to side. “No, no it won’t. Your death isn’t supposed to happen because you weren’t supposed to happen. But, now that you’re here, we can’t let you die. We can’t let you answer your call.”
My voice grew angry. “If I don’t die then Robert dies, and if he dies then nothing will matter to me anymore—I’ll be just as good as dead.”
“Robert is not important to us, Grace. He’s replaceable. You are not. There will never be another one like you—human and yet not; angel and yet not. You’re the last sign, the last barrier before the beginning of the end.”
“What?”
“Grace, you’re the daughter of Avi. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah, that I deserve the title of freak.”
“No. Ugh—I started this the wrong way. Let me try again. My name is Melanie Deovolente. I come from a long line of guardians who protected secrets so deep, so dark that to even breathe them to anyone else would result in death. When I turned twenty one, I chose to take on the test to prove my allegiance to my birthright, but it was not to those my family served.
“Instead, I chose to serve those who are considered the outcasts, the undesirables, the ones without calls. It was from them that I learned of the death of a former angel, one who had once held a position so high, so great that she had been feared even by those my family served. That position had remained empty since her punishment and a power struggle began for her seat.
“But her position wasn’t one that you could take. It wasn’t one that you could steal. It had to be inherited, and when news came that her child, her son hadn’t inherited her position as was expected, it was confirmed that she must have had another child. An impossible child; one who did not belong to either world, human or angel, and yet lived in it.
“That child is you. You’re the inheritor of her position, Grace.”
There was a strange ticking inside of me, the feeling of it acting like a warning, a warning to what she would say next.
“Your mother, Avi, was the original angel of Death, Grace, the first one, the one created when humanity needed her. She was Death. She was Death. You are supposed to take her place, not Robert. Why he received the call is unknown to us, but if you die, if you do not take your place as your mother’s successor, then you will trigger something that cannot be undone. It will destroy us all, humans, angels, illegitimates.”
“No. No, I don’t believe you,” I said defiantly. “Robert is Death—my death is going to save him. It’s going to keep him alive, and he’s going to keep my father alive, and my brother, and my friends…”
Mel reached forward, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them roughly. “Grace, if you die, the gates to Heaven and Hell will be left unguarded. If you die, the world will end. Do you understand that? If you die, there will be no Robert left, no father, no brother, no friends.”
“But I’m not an angel,” I protested. “I can’t do what an angel does; I can’t do what Robert does. I’m human.”
Her eyes widened then with recognition. “You mean you haven’t yet turned?”
“No! Who’s your angel charge, Mel? Who is it that told you all of this?”
“Oh God. I am…Hell!”
Her eyes widened even further, an almost crazed look spreading across her face before fear finally took over and she lunged towards me. My hands were barely able to protect my face before I felt a violent jolt through my body. The sound of crunching metal and glass shattering all around me was only just a fraction louder than the sound of screaming that could have been mine.
Another rough shake, the feeling of something slamming into me, like a thunderbolt full of steel and iron met me before all of the air escaped me, and things started spinning. In the darkness, all I could see was the occasional hint of a star as over and over, I was flipped, my body still strapped in, but my head lolling about, my hands swinging to and fro, slicing, cutting, crashing. And then I was upside down.
I could taste blood in my mouth, smell it on my skin. Strands of my hair was stuck to my face, the blood there warm and unending as it dripped onto the ceiling which now lay beneath me. I turned my head, groaning at the shooting pain that rose up to my shoulders, and a wail of despair came out, scratchy and pitiful. My hand flattened against my abdomen, feeling the tears in my shirt.
Mel lay to my side, her neck twisted, her face covered in blood drenched hair. She was motionless, and I was glad for it. Her blouse had torn open, revealing a bloodstained bra that covered a thick, heavy scar. As blood dripped from a large wound just below her throat, I focused on the mottled and webbed flesh, my eyes slowly taking in details that I was sure weren’t really there.
As my body slowly grew colder and weaker, my eyes grew weaker as well, and I could have sworn then that the scar started growing more and more defined the longer I stared. It was with a sharp cry of pain and that I recognized the tree shaped markings that extended to her navel. It was the same tree that had been burned onto dad’s wall. This one, this marker had been burned onto her skin.
“What the hell is happening?” I whimpered. “What the hell is going on?”
My hand, still pressed against my belly, fumbled for the seatbelt lock. I pressed it, hearing the telltale click before I slammed onto the ceiling. Dirt and glass rained down around me as I turned over painfully, my head banging on the steering wheel and then the seat before I spied a way out through the shattered windshield. The bent frame of the window demanded that I claw my way through it, and after several tries I huffed out my victory as my burning and stinging hands met soft, cool soil.
I rested there in the dirt for a while, my face lying against leaves and twigs, not caring about how uncomfortable that was because everything else hurt too damn much. When my breathing had slowed a bit, I stood up, carefully, slowly.
Believing that my injuries were not as severe as I’d originally thought, I straightened, barely noticing the sharp pain in my leg that caused me to hunch over. I limped away from the overturned vehicle, my blood dripping down from my face and landing in loud splashes on the leaves beneath my feet.
“Help,” I rasped. “Someone help.”
Someone was always watching me—that’s what I had been told, at least. “Lem? Ameila? Lark?” I called out every name of every angel I could remember meeting. I called out the names of angels that I had looked up online. I even called out the ones that had been on those ceramic figurines that Janice had collected. None replied. None showed.
And when the noises of the trees that I didn’t even know were there began to grow louder than my cries for help, I grew silent. The rustling of leaves and the snapping of branches told me that I was not alone. “Someone is always watching,” I whispered.
A loud crunch behind me forced my head to whip around; the bone-rattling pain the motion caused sent me dropping to the ground like a stone. I lay there, unable to move, my body numbing even as the chill of the ground left its imprint on me, the last memory of feeling before the only thing I had left was sound.
“I told you, never to come into my woods again.”
The voice, the tinny, hollow voice was chillingly familiar. “Bala? Bala is that you?”
“You let N’Uriel die. You let him die and I let you live, and now you are back, dying in my woods, just as you should have done.”
A pair of black orbs floated above me, darker than the sky, but with a fire in them that glowed in a face that was eerily beautiful in its jade green flesh. White teeth gnashed in a cavernous mouth that opened to show me the level of rage that was held precariously in check.
“Robert’s alive, Bala,” I gasped, my breathing shallow and pained. “He’s alive.”
“I don’t believe you. He would have told me. He would have let me know somehow.”
So, I wasn’t the only one that he had neglected. “He couldn’t. He’s been busy—there’s so much killing going on, so much death,” I explained desperately.
“He would be with you then. He would be following you, watching you. He would be here now. If he were alive, he would be here.”
I tried to shake my head, but couldn’t. “He isn’t here. I haven’t seen him in a month.”
Green film dropped down over the orbs, a slow, meticulous blink that told me she was processing what I had just revealed to her. When her eyes opened, she smiled at me, a slow, sly, cruel smile that told me she took pleasure in my obvious pain.
“So he’s stopped loving you. He’s finally realized how wrong you are for him and has given up on trying to pursue you. Have you given up on him? Have you decided to finally let him go?”
“Does it matter? I’ll be dead soon anyway, right?” I barked, unable to keep up the pretense of civility. Not when I felt so trapped. Not when my head was filled with nothing but confusion. My grip on reality had slowly been slipping, and losing it completely was just a hair’s breath away.
Bala’s keen eyes could see it, and as friendly as she had been to me in the past, knowing that Robert was not here to stop her bolstered the animosity she felt towards me. I would get no help from her, but it wasn’t me I was worried for.
Something wrapped around my arm, something that I only noticed because I watched as it rose above me and then behind my head. And then everything began to move; the shade of trees and the sporadic hint of sky began to pass over me as I was dragged through the brush. I closed my eyes and tried to think of Robert, his name, his face, his voice. He would come. He would hear my thoughts and he would come. I knew it. I had to believe it.
“How many times have you died, Grace?” Bala’s voice asked, the sound of it like the rattle of the branches as her agitation took control.
“Too many to count,” I replied to the dark air, my voice dark with surprising humor.
“Do you think you deserve to live again?”
“I don’t know what I deserve anymore,” I said to her quietly, my chest burning with every breath. “I’m not deserving of a lot of things, and others are exactly what I deserve. I don’t get to choose what happens to me, but it’s not about me anymore.”
A hiss of acceptance seemed to circle my ears. “So you understand what it means to be one of them. You understand when choice is nothing but a dream, and obligation and duty become iron shoes on your feet that remain hot and never let you forget where you are meant to go with every step you put forward.”
I didn’t need to tell her yes. I had understood that from the very beginning…even if I didn’t understand why. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere I can keep you safe until I have proof that N’Uriel is alive.”
“Why do you need proof? Why can’t you just believe me?”
“Because you lied to me before. You lied after I gave you sanctuary, after I gave you shelter. You said you would die so that N’Uriel may live. You would lie to save yourself and that is fatal human flaw that I detest above all others.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” I insisted, though I was certain it would fall on deaf ears. “I wouldn’t do that to someone I called a friend.”
Silence followed, and I simply allowed myself to stew in it, grateful that, if nothing else, the quiet brought no accusations. There were already enough of those in my head.
When at last the sky stopped moving, I turned my head to see where we were. The silver circle that reflected on the still water beside me told me quite clearly that Bala had dragged me back to her tree, the large willow that hung over the water like a paunch. The slender silhouette of a woman appeared before me, her skin a veritable rainbow of vibrant greens and shimmering browns, even in the darkness, and I couldn’t help but smile at her unusual beauty.
Though she would have frightened many away with her appearance, she was in no way grotesque in my eyes. Her figure was divine, and her hair hung around her body like a living blanket of flowers and leaves and moss, moving and floating about her, a curtain of life that clung to her skin, covering her where she needed modesty and revealing areas that reminded me that she had been a human girl once, a very long time ago. Her eyes reminded me of two jet marbles that had been placed into wide sockets that stared at me with deep speculation, and I knew she was trying to gauge whether or not it was safe for her to befriend me again.
Her mouth—two smooth, leaf-like markers on her face—pulled into a pout before straightening, repeating this process several times.
“I have decided. I will send you to N’Uriel.”
“But you don’t know where he is.”
She laughed, the sound like wind blowing through the trees, and then her shoulders arched beautifully, in a shrug that was too divine to have had anything to do with her human past. This was
all the magic of turning.
“I do not need to know where he is. He will know where you are. He will come, and it will be because of me. A gift; that is what you will be—a gift that I shall be rewarded for,” she said before leaving, her departure silent, her absence deafening.
“Some gift,” I muttered.
I lay on the ground for what felt like hours, or it could have been minutes. The quiet that surrounded me was eerie, as though every living thing in the forest had disappeared…or run away. There was no wind, and the water in the lake was as still as glass, no sounds of tiny waves lapping at the shore, no faint ripple or drop to be heard. Without the noise of the woods around me, I had now lost every sense except sight, and in the dark, what I could see was of little consequence.
Bala did not return until I was certain that it was past midnight, when my dad would start to worry, when he’d begin his rounds of calling people to see if they knew where I was. If no one had realized that I was missing, Dad would be the one to inform them. And then, knowing him, he’d begin to blame them all for it.
I groaned at this thought, and tried to imagine him being more sensible but I couldn’t. He was my father, and when it came to me he worried far too much…even when he knew that the time was coming close to when worry would matter very little.
“Grace?”
“Bala?”
“I have returned with your friend.”
“Friend? Which friend?” I called out into the darkness.
“The cold one.”
“It’s me, Stacy.”
The sound of her familiar voice was so welcoming, I didn’t even flinch when she bent down to look at me and I could see the red stains around her mouth. “My God, Grace, what the hell happened to you?”
“Dinner didn’t agree with me,” I joked, but my sense of humor was lost on her, her disapproval coming in the form of a deep rumbling within her, one that caused Bala—who stood beside me with her dark eyes dashing between the two of us—to skitter away with a hiss.
