by L. C. Davis
“Hey, at least I’m not Cam.”
He snorted. “They’re afraid to leave me alone. Think I’m gonna go feral now that my mate’s up in the clouds or some shit.”
“Is that a possibility?” I wasn’t even entirely sure what going feral entailed, but it didn’t sound good.
He didn’t reply at first. “I don’t know.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah, for starters, you can stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you and everyone else looked at me after that night,” he muttered, peeling off his shirt and tossing it in the hamper. He missed, but it was the first time I’d actually seen him try.
“There are a lot of people who care about you, and they’re worried. Can you blame them?”
“Blame? No,” he said, opening the balcony door before he started undoing his belt. “Does it piss me off? Yeah.”
“Er, can I ask why you’re stripping?”
“Cuz I didn’t pay twelve-k to walk around in a shirt all the time,” he said dryly, his mouth twisting into a lopsided smirk as he looked back at me over his shoulder. “And because I don’t feel like tearing my clothes apart.”
“You’re going to shift?” I asked warily.
“Is that a problem?”
“No, I just...is that really a good idea right now?”
“Staying human doesn’t guarantee you won’t go feral, Daniel. Holden is gone and every cell in my fucking body is screaming at me to go after him, but he’s not even in this goddamn dimension anymore. You have any idea what that feels like?”
“No. I don’t.”
“It’s like fire, burning rage under your skin that feels like it’s gonna explode any second if you don’t take it out on something. A punching bag isn’t gonna cut it, but if I don’t do something to let it out, I could end up hurting someone. Hurting you.”
I swallowed hard, not because I was scared, which would have made perfect sense, but because I was a twisted fucking pervert and I would have happily volunteered to be the kindling in that fire even if it consumed me. “Yeah, okay, I get it. At least let me come with you.”
He hesitated. “It’s not safe for you to be around me when I’m like this.”
“I promised your uncle I wouldn’t leave you alone.” It was a decent cop-out. He knew Lucas scared the shit out of me. He scared the shit out of a lot of people, including Nick.
“Fine. Just keep a distance,” he warned before stripping out of his jeans and shifting into a huge brown wolf. It was normal looking, at least compared to his Alpha shift. I barely had time to process what had just happened before he darted out onto the balcony and down the fire escape. By the time I followed him out into the yard behind his building, he was already on the edge of the woods. I took off after him and while I was faster than I had been when I was dead, I felt newly vulnerable in my mortal skin.
I lost sight of Nick and found myself alone in the woods, looking around in search of him. The trees rustled up ahead so I ran in that direction only to realize I was chasing after a rabbit. It darted into a briar patch and disappeared, leaving me alone. I waited, realizing I had no hope of catching up to Nick on foot or stopping him if I somehow managed. Whatever Holden had done to me was still taking a toll, so I slumped against a tree and waited, closing my eyes as I let the sounds of the forest calm me down. Hopefully it would have the same effect on Nick.
When I was a zombie, it was easy to lose track of time. Sometimes it felt like my brain went on autopilot, only responding to direct stimuli to conserve energy. I’d never realized how noisy my mind had been before, but now that the constant thoughts were back, I almost missed the silence.
Holden was gone. Nick might have been safe from Locke, but going feral presented a new threat and despite what Lucas seemed to think, I doubted there was anything I could do to help him. Then there was the fact that I was now keeping secrets for Lucas Whitaker, of all people.
I must have drifted off at some point, because the next time I opened my eyes, I was on the ground, still propped against the tree. A familiar golden gaze was on me, Nick’s snout an inch away from my face. It would have been easy for those jagged fangs to tear my throat out, but instead, I got a face full of dog breath as he licked my cheek.
Not exactly the kiss I’d always dreamed of. “Gross.”
He snorted and flopped down, resting his paws and his head in my lap. I hesitantly reached down, stroking his ear. It flickered and flattened, but he didn’t seem to mind so I kept on. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep or how long he’d been gone, but at least he’d come back. I doubted I would ever get used to seeing his Alpha shift, but this form I didn’t mind.
I felt like I should say something. I knew I should say something, but I didn’t trust myself not to ruin the moment, as strange and unexpected as it was, so I just sat there, stroking Nick’s fur and listening to the steady sound of his breathing. Soon, the breaths turned to a rumble but my fears were allayed when I realized he was purring instead of growling. It was a pleasant sound, even if I hadn’t been aware it was one that wolves could make. As the sky turned from pale blue to dark navy and finally to black, I thought of suggesting that we go back inside, but I decided against it. Under normal circumstances, I would have been wary of staying out in the middle of the woods so late, but it was impossible to be afraid of whatever the darkness might be shielding when the scariest thing that lurked in the forest was purring contentedly in my lap.
Twenty
HOLDEN
Heaven had been a fixture of my childhood, a carrot to dangle in front of me and when that failed, Hell was always waiting to swallow me up from behind. The thing about putting so much emphasis on something like Heaven was that it created expectations. Reality rarely lived up to the fantasy. I knew that when I agreed to go with Remiel, and yet I still found myself shocked by just how earthly Heaven really was.
In fact, as I stood in a white corridor waiting for Remiel to check in at the front desk, I felt more like I had stepped into a high-end computer store than the afterlife.
“Hey there, dollface,” he drawled, leaning on a pristine white desk. The woman--ostensibly an angel--sitting behind it looked up at him over rimless glasses, clearly less than amused. “Got an intake and this one’s a bit of an unusual situation, so I’m gonna need to handle the processing myself.”
“He doesn’t look like anything special,” she said, eying me doubtfully. Coming from an angel, I’d take that as a compliment.
“That there’s the Whore to end all whores, Beverly.”
Beverly leaned over the desk, squinting at me. “You’re serious. This is the one Michael’s been freaking out about?”
“Beverly?” Maybe it was short for Beverlael or something. Angels seemed to feel strongly about their naming conventions.
“I’m not an angel,” she said in answer to my unspoken question. “Ever heard of Purgatory?”
“Uh...yeah.”
“It’s more of a job than a place. Another few decades of answering phones for God’s messengers and I’ll be up for retirement.”
“I mean, to be fair, you did shoot your husband in the face,” said Remiel.
“Worth it,” she said flatly, bringing her finger down on a button sitting atop her desk. I jolted as a door slid open in the white wall behind her and a deafening buzz shook the lobby. “Go on in.”
“Come on, Casanova, D-Day’s this way,” Remiel said, striding into the white light.
Something told me this one didn’t lead to the birth canal.
When I stepped through the door on the other side, the white light faded and I found myself in the middle of a seemingly endless corridor. Spaced evenly on either side of the hall that stretched on further than I could see were plain white doors without any windows. “Let’s see,” Remiel murmured, glancing at each of the doors as they passed. I noticed they were numbered, counting up from 111. 112… 113…
“Shit, this is gonna take too long,” he said, pressing his hand to the wall. With a generous sweep, the doors began to rush toward me like he’d swept aside a touchscreen. I cried out in alarm and staggered, but Remiel caught me, his brown eyes glinting with amusement. “Easily startled, aren’t ya?”
“Give me a break, I just entered the afterlife,” I said, pulling away from him. The door that was now right in front of my face was marked 666 and I gulped. “Is that…?”
“Hell?” he offered. “Nah, just maximum security holding. A little inside joke.”
“Funny.”
“You’re not exactly a typical intake, y’know. There’s protocol for dealing with Biblical figures.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. You don’t live up to your namesake.”
“You’re right, I only work with one demon. He worked with seventy-two.”
The angel rolled his eyes. “In you go,” he said, pushing the door open. I couldn’t see anything other than more white light on the other side, but I was beginning to think that was Heaven’s version of a privacy screen.
“What’s going to happen to me in there?”
“Nothing. Not until Michael gets back, at any rate.”
“But what’s on the other side?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “This is why I let my boys handle the new admissions ever since I got promoted. All the questions give me a migraine.”
“I turned myself in,” I reminded him.
“Which is a good part of the reason this encounter is going so pleasantly. Let’s not change that.”
I sighed, taking a step forward. The fact that Remiel was on one side was the only thing that gave me the guts to step through to the other. As soon as the light receded, I found myself in a room that was all too familiar in all the worst ways. The attic room where my brother and I had been “homeschooled,” which was more like our parents’ way of ensuring that we weren’t corrupted by outside influences than an actual independent education, was exactly the way it had been the last time I’d seen it. The windows were papered over to keep us from getting distracted, but sunlight filtered in here and there, illuminating streams of dust particles in the air. The chalkboard at the head of the room behind my mother’s desk was filled with my hand scrawled lines, gradually devolving in legibility.
If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death…
My hand ached with the memory of writing each of those lines only to have my mother wipe the slate clean and demand that I start over again. My father had gotten particularly carried away while punishing Ezekiel for some minor offense I couldn’t even remember, and when he’d come down with a crippling stomach bug the following morning, they blamed me, of course. I hadn’t knowingly cursed him. I was eight, but I’d never forget the look in my mother’s eyes after that day. My dad never beat either of us that hard again.
For a moment, I stared at the door in the floorboards that only bolted from downstairs, half-expecting my mother to come through it carrying a bucket to wipe the chalkboard clean. When she didn’t, I moved to sit in one of the small wooden desks that faced the front of the room, far enough apart to prevent Ezekiel and I from whispering to each other. We’d always found ways to communicate, though, whether it was passing notes or scrawling between the lines in our notebooks. The desk was made for a much smaller occupant and my knees hit the underside. Something dropped to the floor and when I bent to pick it up, I realized it was a lined piece of paper that had been tightly folded and tucked between the metal bar and the wooden top of the desk.
I unfolded the paper and couldn’t help but smile when I saw the alternating notes that had been scrawled on the lines. Ezekiel’s handwriting was always so neat while mine was barely legible. The top line was his and it read:
I think mom needs to write lines on Proverbs 23:2.
What’s that? I wrote back.
Look it up, dumbass.
Out of curiosity, I picked up the black leather Bible on the other desk and snorted into my hand when I opened it to the right verse. And put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite.
You’re terrible! I’d scolded, even though I had probably laughed at the time.
Teacher’s pet.
Am not.
He’d drawn a stick figure of me with a halo over my head along with the words, “Jedidiah Hurlow, the Lord’s Prophet.” I rolled my eyes.
“So much for that,” I mumbled, picking up the pencil. I twirled it in my fingers, brushing over all the teeth marks I’d put in the wood out of boredom. The notes ended abruptly, which probably meant we’d gotten scolded for goofing off. I absently scrawled, I miss you on the next line and dropped my head on the desk with a heavy sigh.
If this was Heaven’s idea of a holding cell, I wasn’t eager to see what they had in store for my eternal punishment.
At least it wasn’t the basement.
I heard a scratching sound and froze. The attic was a perfect replica of the one back home so far, but the mice seemed like an unnecessary detail. When I realized the sound was coming from the desk, I jumped back. On the line beneath the one I had just written, words were starting to appear in Ezekiel’s perfect handwriting.
You have to get out before he comes.
I stared at the paper in disbelief, my hand trembling as I picked up the pencil again and wrote, Who?
Michael. The writing picked up speed. Get out while you can.
I don’t know how. Even if I did, they’ll hurt you to get to me.
No. Hana won’t let them. Go to the board.
I looked up, frowning at the lines that seemed ominous somehow. I grabbed the pencil and the note, slowly walking over to the board. I laid the paper back down on my mother’s desk and wrote, Why?
Wipe the slate clean.
I eyed the eraser on the shelf and picked it up, my hand still trembling as I wiped the white chalk lines away. There were still outlines left from the hundreds of thousands of lines Ezekiel and I had written over the years. He was writing again.
Now, draw this symbol in blood.
My pulse quickened. It wasn’t Ezekiel’s writing anymore. The sigil looked like an inverted triangle with a heart underneath and an equal-armed cross surrounded by a circle and capped off with a long line at the top.
Whose symbol is this?
Hana’s. It was Ezekiel’s writing again. Hurry!
I hesitated only a moment before looking around the room. I found a pair of scissors on my mother’s desk and winced as I dug the dull tip into my palm. I knew there was a damn good chance I was summoning someone I shouldn’t, but if they had gotten to Ezekiel, he was already in danger. I dipped my finger in the blood welling in my palm and painted the sigil as accurately as I could. For a moment, nothing happened and I checked the drawing again to make sure only to find the edges searing away, turning the paper to ash. When I looked back up at the board, the blood was glowing with a bright pink light that grew so intense I had to raise a hand to shield my eyes.The light grew and stretched into a portal and a shadowed figure stepped out through the board.
I fell back against the desk, blinded by the light and only able to make out the faintest silhouette of a woman as she came to stand in front of me and reached out. I flinched, but her hand passed over my eyes and I could see again.
“Be not afraid, Jedidiah,” she said in a soft, vaguely accented voice. I blinked away the spots in my vision to look at her. She was a stout woman around Carla’s age with long, curly brown hair and smooth, olive skin that wrinkled a bit around her smiling eyes. “My name is Hanael, and I will not hurt you.”
“You’re Hana?” I asked warily. “The one who takes care of my brother?”
Her lips parted into a faint but genuine seeming smile. “I care for all of the children who come to Limbo, but yes, your brother is one of them. You don’t remember me, but I was your guardian once.”
&n
bsp; “My guardian?” I tried and failed to hide the doubt in my voice. If this woman really was my guardian, she had way too many charges on her hands.
Hanael looked away, her serene expression falling to sadness. “There are things that happened--things that were arranged long before you entered this world--that I wished very much I had the power to change. I’m afraid there isn’t time to explain it to you. We must leave now, before Michael comes and takes you to Paradise.”
“Paradise?”
“It isn’t as pleasant as it sounds, I assure you. Hurry,” she pleaded, reaching out to drag the portal she had come through down until it stretched to the floor.
I hesitated. “Why are you helping me escape? Don’t you work with Michael?”
Hanael glanced down at the attic door, then back at me. “My brother and I do not always see eye-to-eye. Besides, I am paying a debt to an old friend.”
“Who?”
“To Adam,” she said, her gaze darkening as the room began to tremble.
“What is that?”
“It’s Michael. Please, we must go now.”
I swallowed hard and took a step toward the portal. Hanael grabbed my arm and pulled me through the rest of the way. When the light disappeared, I found myself in the middle of a verdant field surrounded by a beach and a glimmering blue ocean that seemed to stretch on forever. As I got to my feet, I realized Hanael was still with me, looking around as if someone might have followed us through even though the portal was gone.
“Good,” she breathed, pressing a hand to her chest. “We made it.”
“Hanael, where is my brother?”
She watched me, frowning. “It’s safer for him if you don’t know. I have already taken him somewhere he will be safe until this ends.”
“This? You mean the Apocalypse?”
She nodded somberly.
“Why are you helping him? You’re an angel, why do you care what happens to us?”
Her gaze filled with pain. “The fact that you have to ask that is proof that my brother has lost his way. We all have. Ever since Lucifer fell… it changed things. It changed us. This was never the way it was supposed to be.”
