Inescapable (The Premonition Series)

by Bartol, Amy A

  “I left you that brief note because I didn’t want to pressure you,” he says softly. “I know that you must have feelings for Russell—how could you not? He is your soul mate. I am not really sure where I stand with you. But I liked your voice message, and I would not mind if you chose to greet me the way that you did at the field again.”

  “You’re asking me where you stand…with me?” I ask as we ride up the well manicure driveway to his home.

  “Only if you’re ready to talk about it,” he says gently.

  I listen to his even breathing for a moment, trying to collect all of the splintered fragments that make up such a complex being—so that I can try to explain to him what he is to me. A blush creeps over my cheeks as I say in a breathless voice, “You’re what I want. No other angel, or man, will ever stand above you in my esteem, in my regard, or in my love.”

  I don’t think Reed was at all prepared for what I had just said to him. We haven’t quite reached the circular drive in front of his house when he applies the break and the car rolls to a gentle stop. He isn’t looking at me; rather, he’s staring out of the windshield at the darkening sky. “But, I was sure that you and Russell…that it is meant…that you and he—” Reed begins, but I interrupt him.

  “No. I told Russell this weekend that you are what I want,” I explain, attempting to read what he’s thinking.

  Reed, stiffening as if he’s angry, says firmly, “Evie, you don’t have to do this. I will protect you regardless of who you choose to be with. You need not fear that you will lose me as a guardian if you and Russell…”

  My eyes widen as I realize he doesn’t believe me. “Reed,” I explain quickly, “I love Russell. I have a feeling that I’ve always loved Russell, and that I’ll always love Russell. But it doesn’t matter anymore how I feel about him because all of that is obscured now. You outshine everything, and I find that I only want to be with you.”

  In an instant, Reed cuts the engine of the car and disappears from the driver’s seat. A half a second later, I jump, startling as my door opens.

  With an apologetic grimace, he says, “Sorry,” while unbuckling my seatbelt and lifting me out of the car in one fluid motion.

  In less than a second, we’re at the front door of the house; mere fractions after that, I’m in a room I haven’t been in yet. It’s a spacious bedroom, probably the master bedroom by the look of it. Reed sets me on my feet by the door, and I creep forward into his room. Gazing around me avidly, there is an enormous bed centered against the far wall. The other walls are lined with oil paintings in guided frames. There are also polished, gleaming bookshelves with row upon row of leather-bound books—probably works of art in their own right.

  “Your room?” I ask, turning back to him where he stands leaning against the closed bedroom door watching me.

  “Yes,” he replies. “I want to show you something.”

  “You do?” I ask, smiling as I wander over to the bedside table.

  My eyes roam lightly over an intricately carved statue that stands no higher than a foot tall. I pick it up, studying it. Allowing my fingertips to trace over the smooth, ash-white surface, I marvel at the detail and delicate lines of the lissome woman in repose on a Grecian chaise. She looks like a goddess, and there is something really familiar about the piece— the dress the woman wears in particular. As I focus on the statue’s face, recognition dawns me. It’s me! This is a carved statue of me.

  “This is the dress I wore to sit for the portrait Mr. MacKinnon is doing!” I whisper.

  “Do you like it?” Reed asks from just behind me.

  “It’s beautiful. Did you do this?” I ask in awe that he can produce such magic out of a piece of stone.

  “Yes,” he replies softly.

  “I didn’t know that you’re an artist!” I exclaim, studying the delicately carved figure.

  “I haven’t done anything in a while until recently…I was inspired,” he says with a stunning smile that makes my hands feel shaky.

  I gently set the statue down and content myself with just looking at it from where it is on the table. Noticing another one next to it, I can’t help picking it up. This one resembles me as well, but this time in a field hockey uniform. My marble likeness is frozen in an aggressive pose on the brink of smacking the ball with my stick; the likeness is uncanny.

  I study it for a moment, and then I ask, “Those statues, the ones in the library, the one you crushed when I was here before, you did those, too?”

  “Yes,” he says, and I can tell he is remembering the day I had hurt my knee.

  “The one you broke was of an angel. Was she a friend of yours?” I ask, smiling over my shoulder at him.

  “Evie, do you miss anything?” he asks. He embraces me from behind, his arms wrapping around my waist.

  I place his work gently back on the polished table before I twist in his arms. Pressing my ear to his chest, I listen to his heartbeat pulse a driving rhythm in my ear. No,” I say breathlessly.

  Reed gently pushes me away from him as he says softly, “Evie…I brought you here to show you something. Something you need to see before you can make any decisions about what it is you think you want.”

  “What do you want to show me?” I ask with a puzzled expression as he backs a few steps away from me.

  Reed’s eyes are dark and watchful as his hand reaches up to his crisp, white shirt, slowly unthreading a button through the eyelet. Heat creeps into my cheeks as each button exposes more of his perfect chest and torso. When his shirt lies loose, he pauses to gauge my reaction. I didn’t really know that I’d moved closer to him, so it is a surprise to me when my fingertips graze his bare chest. His skin is smooth and perfect, lacking the imperfections of human flesh. With every centimeter of his skin I touch, my heart races a mile. As my hands travels upward under his shirt, I lift it off of his shoulders, sliding it down his arms and letting it fall to the floor.

  This is where some of my courage begins to desert me. Apprehension enters Reed’s eyes as the sound of popping and crunching bone resonates from behind him. My eyes widen, seeing a mass of charcoal-hued feathers rising from behind his broad shoulders and continuing to arch well past his neck to about midway behind his head. The raspy sound of my shallow breathing echoes in my ears while his wings retract into a resting position. He hasn’t unfolded them fully so I have no idea just how far they can expand.

  I am vaguely aware of my fingernails digging into the palms of my hand as I breathe only one word, “Oh!”

  I back away from him a few steps before coming up against the edge of his bed. My knees buckle, and I half fall down on it, catching myself to rest on my elbows. It’s as if time has slowed down or maybe it just doesn’t exist anymore as I focus all of my attention on the creature in front of me. Staring at Reed, I think that maybe it hasn’t been too long since my transition into adulthood—and the subsequent abandoning of a world where things like this are possible—because being thrust over the threshold into this uncanny reality isn’t as terrifying as it should be. Slowly, so as not to break the spell of this moment, I climb off his bed. I creep forward tentatively, feeling his perfect, predatory eyes tracking every nuance of my movement toward him.

  Reaching out, I trace the line of his clavicle to his left shoulder, circling around him and feeling his iron-strong contours play beneath my fingers. My fingertips slip from his shoulder to his charcoal-colored wing; they skim down the strong, downy appendage, feeling its silky texture. His wings nearly reach to the floor and are pointed, like that of a falcon. Lifting my hand, I place it upon his other wing, continuing slowly around the back of Reed like a ring to his Saturn. When I am before him again, my arms reach up, circling behind his neck.

  “You’re magnificent,” I breathe, touching his hair gently. “Can you move them?” I ask, wanting to see the graceful limbs demonstrate their power.

  Reed nods, his eyes never leaving my face. Extending his wings quickly, they make a snapping sound like a sheet being s
haken out. The edges of his wings spread wide, causing the feathers to serrate to sharp points.

  My eyes soften as I ask, “They’re lovely. When do I get mine?”

  Reed’s eyes soften, too. “You’re not frightened of me?” he asks me in a perplexed tone.

  With his dappled, charcoal wings towering around me, I say honestly, “A little, but it’s really more thrilling than frightening. How do they fit inside you? They’re huge! I mean, is it uncomfortable to pack them away…because I don’t get how they go in and out like that…does it hurt? What’s it like to fly? How did you learn to use them…did you just know instinctually, or was there, like, a flight school?” I stop talking when Reed bends down and kisses me.

  He breaks off the kiss soon after beginning it, to my absolute frustration, to ask, “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re a really good kisser,” I reply, rising up on my tiptoes and trying to start up where we left off in the kiss.

  Reed pulls back, just enough to see my face better, and says, “Every human I have ever encountered who has seen my wings is…well…terrified. I have to persuade them that they saw nothing in order to get most of them to stop screaming at me.”

  “Oh, well, maybe it’s because I already knew what you are, you see, so I wasn’t very surprised. Anyway, you’re not the scariest thing I saw this weekend,” I reply as an afterthought, before again attempting a continuation of the kiss.

  “Pardon me, what did you say?” Reed asks politely, frowning.

  My teeth tug at my bottom lip. You idiot! Way to ruin the moment, I think, closing my eyes in a grimace that lends weight to my words.

  “Evie, what did you see this weekend?” Reed asks sharply, grasping both my upper arms and frowning down at me.

  “I was going to tell you, but I forgot because I was so happy to see you—”

  Reed cuts me off by letting go of one of my arms and covering my mouth with his hand. His voice is edgy when he says, “The scariest thing you saw this weekend was…”

  He stops speaking and uncovers my mouth so that I can fill in the blank. I quickly tell Reed about going to Coldwater and seeing the shadow man in the parking lot of the coffee shop. When I finish, Reed’s frown is darker.

  “Evie, that thing, your ‘shadow man,’ is nothing short of a demon from Sheol wrapped in a human host,” Reed says, looking grave.

  My voice is weak as I ask, “A what?”

  “When the Fallen are awarded a soul from a human, they take it to Sheol, to the abyss. It gets changed, mutated by them over time. It grows more corrupt, and if it becomes evil enough, they release it so that it may find a human host, someone vulnerable in some way, to possess. To most normal humans, the possessed person can usually go undetected. They never see what it truly is. There are exceptions, but for the most part they wreak their havoc on the world unchallenged by humans. We can see them easily and dispatch them when we come across them.” He pauses to study my face, before he says, “It sensed you, and yet it did not attack you.”

  His comment strikes me like a veiled accusation. I pale, stammering, “Well, we were at a coffee shop. Maybe he hadn’t had his first cup of coffee yet…I mean, I rarely start working until I get that first cup of coffee.”

  Reed’s lips turn down grimly. “No, Evie, that’s not it…you said his shadow seemed to be looking at you?” he asks me.

  I nod, feeling a lump forming in my throat. “So, are you saying that it probably thought that I was one of them—an evil spawn released on the world to destroy it?”

  Reed’s eyebrows rise. “No, that is not what I’m saying! Evie, what I’m saying is either it did not realize what you are exactly, and it was puzzled, or it was intimidated by you because you are part angel.”

  “You mean, it might’ve thought I could kick its’ butt?” I ask, relaxing a bit.

  “Yes, it’s strong—much stronger than you are, but I’m not sure it knew that. Whatever the case was, whether the demon was confused or intimidated, you were lucky. That thing could have eviscerated you without even spilling your coffee,” Reed says slowly, trying to make me see the gravity of the situation. His eyebrows lower dangerously as he points out, “You should not have even been in Coldwater.”

  My face is ashen as I say, “I know, I know, I know!” Trudging over to his bed, I sit on the edge of it and hug one of his pillows for comfort, the mocha-silk bolster flattens against me as I say, “I know we talked about the rules you want me to follow; we talked about a lot of things…and I know that I’m different. I saw my knee mend itself, and I understand that you’re an angel and that you told me there are scary monsters, but that doesn’t mean I could actually wrap my head around the dangers of my actions.”

  Dropping my eyes from his and worrying the edge of the pillow with my fingers, I continue, “It’s like my brain can’t dwell on the fact that I need to be cautious because there are seriously so many phenomena occurring in my life from day to day that I’m becoming unable to focus on them all. You could say that I was pretty much in denial about scary monsters until I saw the shadow man, but now that I have, I’m totally on board with the rules. You say, ‘no Coldwater,’ and I say, ‘Amen.’”

  Flopping back on the bed with my legs still dangling over the edge, I put the pillow over my face to hide. The bed moves under Reed’s weight as he sits next to me, pulling the pillow from my face to ask, “When?”

  “Saturday mid-morning,” I reply, staring up at him apologetically.

  “Did it follow you?” he asks, staring down at me tensely.

  “I don’t know. Freddie was driving. I watched the auxiliary mirror to see if it was chasing us, but I didn’t see anything.” I explain, rising up to lean on my elbows.

  “Who is Freddie? What did you tell him?” he wants to know.

  “He’s just a student—my friend—and I didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t seem to notice that anything was sketchy,” I reply quickly.

  “You had better start from the beginning of the weekend and try not to leave anything out.” Reed sighs, lying down on the bed next to me on top of his wings. His arm stretches up to drape across his eyes, like he’s weary of my explanations already.

  I start from the point that I had found his note on my window. I am brief when explaining the party at the Delt house. I tell him Buns and Brownie had invited me to go with them as my reason for being there. I don’t want to explain the plot to swipe the composite because I’m afraid that our plan might fall under the heading of “nothing dangerous.”

  I am very nonspecific about my conversation with Russell as well. It isn’t because I don’t want Reed to know about it—I believe he deserves to know the specifics of what occurred between Russell and me. It’s just that I’m still emotionally raw over what happened and I can’t trust myself not to cry if I tell him everything.

  When I end, I study Reed’s face to see how he’s reacting to what I had told him. He’s in much the same position that he had been in when I had started. His arm shields his eyes from me so that I can’t see what he’s thinking. At his continued silence, my mind races, and I begin to understand what I’ve done. Panic slithers icily through my veins, and I feel sick.

  “I’m dead…aren’t I?” I ask Reed in a near whisper. “All I had going for me was the fact that no one knew I was here. That was my advantage, and now it’s gone.”

  Reed’s arm falls away from his eyes, and he frowns. “No, Evie,” Reed says gently, “it will be okay—there are other advantages.”

  “What else is there?” I ask him bluntly, feeling anxious and scared.

  “There is you and there is me…you are cunning and courageous. Soon you will be strong enough to face your shadow man and defeat him. Until then, you have me,” he says, which makes my throat burn with unshed tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I rasp, feeling guilty and horrible.

  Reed’s hand reaches out to cup my chin, lifting my eyes to his, he says, “I’m sorr
y, too…I should never have left you alone. I should have made you see the importance of what I was saying. You would never have been there without me if I had not made the wrong decision.” His jaw is tight as he adds, “The problem I am facing with you is that you are so unorthodox that it is difficult to predict what you will do next. That is a great asset to protect you against your enemies because it makes you formless, but it also makes protecting you difficult for me as well,” Reed says, his expression pained.

  “Reed, I’m a logistical and tactical nightmare. You can’t be in two places at once. Stop making this about anyone else’s bad judgment but mine,” I say grimly, and as an exclamation point to my statement, my stomach growls loudly.

  Reed’s eyes narrow suspiciously, “When did you last eat?” he asks.

  “Breakfast I think,” I reply, but don’t tell him I barely ate then because the smashed firewall made me lose my appetite.

  “Evie!” Reed says sternly. “You need to eat. You should take better care of yourself,” Reed says, getting up off the bed.

  I replace the pillow I had taken from his bed. Looking up at Reed again, my mouth falls open because his wings are no longer visible. “How did you?” I ask, gazing fixedly at his back while he shrugs into a new t-shirt that I never saw him move to get.

  His smile is heart stopping, making me forget what I am saying. Looking down so that I can try to remember what I’m doing, I realize that I’m still in my grubby hockey uniform and cleats. I smile self-effacingly, saying, “I hope Andre has leftovers in the refrigerator because I’m not dressed for dinner.”

  “I gave Andre the weekend off since I was not here. I’m sure we can manage in the kitchen if that is more appealing than dining out,” Reed says.

  “Whatever you have I’m sure is fine,” I reply.

  At a more sedate pace than when we arrived, Reed leads me out into the hallway. We pass several doors in the corridor leading to the staircase. I want to peek in at each one to see what lies beyond the doors, but my stomach growls again, and I resign myself to asking for a tour of the house later. When we arrive in the kitchen, Reed has to show me where the refrigerator is housed because the sleek cabinetry artfully hides it. I rummage through the refrigerator and freezer until I spot something divine.