The way Mom described me. The Assyrian tablet.
“I don’t understand,” I say, feeling like it’s suddenly hard to breathe again. “How do you know all this? What’s happening?”
“I’ve been watching over you.” He bows his head a little, like he’s trying to look submissive. “My name is Azri’el. I’m one of The Brethren.” I open my mouth, but he quickly answers the first question that pops in my head. “The Brethren are within the order of angels. We watch over earth and Creation. At times we’re charged with watching over a soul’s life here.”
“You’re an angel.”
“Not as you’re thinking of them right now. I’m a type of angel. My kind don’t fight against the demons, we only exist on this plane within humanity. In the past, you’ve called us many things: the faire folk, Sleagh Maith, or sometimes elves.”
I release a nervous laugh. “You’re a little tall to be an elf.”
“The legends have changed much over the passing of time, until my Brethren were all but forgotten. Now demons fill the tales of old. Most humans don’t realize The Brethren exist at all, choosing only to recognize the messengers of the Lord, or the archangels.”
I’ve only seen regular angels before, when I’ve seen the side of good. And now I barely see them at all.
“You have seen us,” he says, again hearing my thoughts, “but you don’t recognize us, because we live as you do, on the physical plane, and we have ways of hiding ourselves from certain kinds of humans, like you. Those angels you’ve seen exist on the same plane as the demons, warring and keeping the balance, and at times carrying the Spirit of God.”
“But they don’t keep a balance,” I say. “I’ve only seen a handful of them in my entire life. And I see demons almost every day.”
“Because angels are much more powerful than demons, and recently the soldiers have begun slipping away, going to the higher realms to prepare for the next Cycle. In this hour, in this world, it is only me and my Brethren left here to hold the front lines. And we are only keepers of Creation, not warriors.”
I shake my head, amazed and frustrated by what he’s saying. “But why? We need them!” Now more than ever.
“You were born, and it changed the balance. Demons rule here in this Cycle, so the angels had to leave as you grew and became more powerful. Now that you’ve come into your true self, they will have gone almost entirely.”
“What?” The angels are gone. How is that possible? It’s true I never see them. I always thought they were keeping a low profile. Apparently they were keeping no profile at all.
“It is the agreement. For now. You’ve been born, and the scales have shifted. Still, your birth was as HaShem willed it. You represent a formidable force on this plane with your strong connection to the Ruach Elohim. Only human, yet full of more power than the highest angel—if you can allow yourself to tap into it. This is why He sent me to you, among others.”
“God sent you?” Why would God choose me?
“He chooses the willing,” Eric says.
“What’ve you done with Kara?”
Eric moves to the side and motions to the bed behind him.
Kara is there, twisted in the sheet, sleeping. With her arms around me.
Me.
I stare at myself, at Kara, her arm draped over my chest, my chin resting on her head. I look at my bare skin, so pale against hers, violet in spots, like I’ve lost oxygen. There are dark circles around my eyes. It looks like . . .
“Am I dead?” I ask, nearly choking on the question.
“Yes,” Eric says. “In a way.”
I stare at my body and see that it’s only my shell.
I’ve heard people tell stories about after they die, how it’s like they’re outside of their bodies, looking down at themselves—
“No.” This can’t be happening. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.
“It is. You must die before you can come back again. Your body must be re-created. That was the fire you felt—your soul and your spirit and your flesh being made new.”
“What the hell does that even mean? None of this is possible.”
Eric, or Azri’el, or whoever, steps over to stand at the window and gazes out at the city lights. “Your soul and spirit are with me, outside of time, while your body is being healed and brought back.”
“But Kara and I didn’t have sex!”
“Kara merely needed to touch your soul. She didn’t need to physically connect—you were all thinking too much like humans. Not all things are flesh. More is spirit than you know. Your intimacy grew over days and became fully recognized in a moment of connection.”
We connected. Intimacy didn’t mean what I assumed it meant—what we all assumed it meant.
“So I can save Ava now,” I say.
Eric tilts his head, looking sympathetic. “It is possible you can destroy the demons sent to collect her, but there is more to it than that. They desire her for a purpose. And she is not a child of Adam.”
“I know.” At least I think I do.
“You know a piece of the story.”
A bitter taste fills my mouth. “My mom was some otherworldly whore.”
“She was in pain,” he says, his brow furrowing, like he’s not happy with how I said that. “It led her to make a deal with a very powerful demon.”
“But why?”
“She wanted to see your father again, desperately. And the demon took advantage of that. It needed something from her and knew a desperate witch was a useful witch. So it told her that it would grant her wish if she would allow five men into her bed whenever they asked, until she became pregnant—this is very common.”
Common? It’s disgusting.
“Witches will often trade sex with the demons they call up for favors. Most often the demon takes on a benign form when it becomes corporeal so the witch doesn’t realize she’s having sex with a hideous beast from her worst nightmare. Instead he or she looks like the loveliest form in the human imagination—whoever the witch wishes to see.”
“So the demons trick them.” Just the idea of what these witches were falling into bed with sends shivers through me. I’d seen hundreds of demons. None of them were remotely human looking.
“Just as your mother was tricked. And even after she agreed to what they wished, she was never able to see your father in the flesh as she wanted. The demons manipulated her and only gave her a dream of him. But she still owed her end of the deal.” He comes closer, a pleading look on his face, like he needs me to understand what my mother was going through. Why he cares about her, I have no idea. He’s an angel—aren’t they supposed to despise evil things like witches?
“But then she became pregnant,” he continues. “She knew the child wasn’t normal, and she realized what she’d agreed to—she just didn’t know how to stop it. But there was a light in her life that she hoped would prove her growing child’s salvation.” He nods toward me. “You.
“She made a plan to meet the demon who would come on the third year for her daughter—to meet it and sacrifice herself, creating a blood protection spell over her two children. What she didn’t realize was that it would only work to hide one of her children. For you, as a human, the sacrifice has kept your power invisible to the other side for the most part. It held the demons back from seeing what you truly were. It wasn’t until the night of the full moon when the demon bit you that I realized your power was about to be awakened—it had shown itself to the other side of the Veil. That was also the night your mother’s ghost returned to the beach, perhaps as a counterweight to the darkness beginning to surround her children.”
“You were the one who protected my sister on her sixth birthday, weren’t you?”
He nods. “Yes. I was the one sent to guard you. Both of you. You were both put under the same covenant when your mother sacrificed herself.
”
“But isn’t Ava evil?” Saying it aloud makes me ill.
“Evil surrounds her, and she chooses to delve into its power, but no, she is not herself evil. It is what she does, not who she is.”
“I don’t understand the difference.”
“The difference is her choice.”
Hope sparks again. “So I can still save her.”
“It isn’t that simple, Aidan. She has free will.”
I squint at him, wondering if he knows more than he’s saying. “Has she already chosen darkness?”
“Not yet. That comes at the time of rebirth.”
“Tomorrow.”
“For your sister, yes.” He motions to me. “And soon you will choose as well.”
My head jerks back in surprise. “Me?”
“Yes, we all must choose. Soon you will come to your time of choice.”
“But . . . how?”
He turns to face the bed, looking down at my body. “You will awaken in a moment, a new creature, still human, but with a resurrection form—the form of Origin that was meant for all humans before The Fall. An Adam, if you will. But you will not be finished with your transformation until your power seal is broken and you make your choice. You won’t have to do anything. You’ll know when it’s time. The demon’s energy will be what flips the switch. You’ll feel the breaking, and then you merely let it do what it wants to do. Your heart will grab hold of the path that will decide which side you will finish on in the end.”
“What do you mean the end?”
“The end of all things.”
“I don’t understand.”
He moves closer. “You will. But it’s time to go now.” He reaches out like he’s about to place a finger on my head, but then he pauses. “My spirit will remain with you until you have awakened fully. Remember, you’ll know when it’s time.”
He gives me a sad smile and then touches his finger to my temple, sending white across my vision.
And I catch fire once more.
FORTY-SIX
I rise from the lake of flames retching and gasping for oxygen.
Someone screams, and another voice says, “Holy shit!”
My eyes try to focus as arms grab me, cling to me. Someone is weeping against my shoulder. “Oh, God . . . oh, God, Aidan.” Kara’s clutching me so tight it hurts, kissing my cheek, my neck.
I gulp at the air, confusion twisting inside me.
Shit. I was dead.
I look at the stunned faces around me—all of them. Kara, her body clinging to mine, Connor standing at the foot of the bed looking like he’s seen a ghost, Jax gaping, Holly leaning on the wall beside the window, palm to her forehead. And Sid frowning from the shadows. Even Finger’s here. But how did they all get here so quickly?
“What’s going on?” I ask. My voice sounds like it hasn’t been used for a decade.
Jax plops down, rocking the bed. “We’ve been sitting here staring at your corpse for the last three hours, wondering what to do if you didn’t wake up like Sid said you would. I voted for tossing you off the balcony, but Holly thought you’d prefer drowning in the pool. We were gonna make the story exciting, like you’d been running from the mob and—”
Sid grabs Jax by the arm, stopping his yammering, and yanks him to his feet. “Enough. Give him space.” He pulls Jax to the desk and settles him in the chair.
“I was dead,” I manage to get out of my dry throat. Even saying it aloud doesn’t make it feel any more real.
Kara shivers beside me, not releasing me, like she’s desperate to keep me there. “I woke up and . . . oh, God, Aidan.” Then she moves back and socks me in the arm, sudden rage billowing out to mingle with the sorrow between us. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I shake my head. I wish I knew.
Sid moves forward. “Let me talk to Aidan alone.” He begins shooing the others out. Kara starts to pull herself away from me. She’s wearing her clothes again, and I wonder what she’s been feeling over the last few hours. While I laid here, a corpse.
I grab her wrist and won’t let go. “Kara stays.”
The others file out of the room, but Connor straggles behind. “You scared me, man,” he says, touching a hand to my shoulder. “No breaking Kara’s heart, right?”
“Right,” I say, finding Kara’s hand.
Her fingers slide through mine.
“Good. Stay alive then.”
Once Connor is gone, Sid sits on the bed and sighs with obvious relief. “I knew you’d be in a deep sleep during the awakening, but you seemed very dead, son. It was difficult to convince myself not to call the ambulance and request some sort of medical miracle. You nearly gave me a heart attack being out for so long.”
I try to form a coherent thought. “I was dead, so I didn’t have a whole lot of say in the matter. But next time I decide to keel over I’ll be sure to get it approved by the committee first.” My voice cracks. My throat is a desert. “Is there any water here?”
Sid gets a water bottle from the minifridge and hands it to me. “In the scrolls it implied a sort of coma state. Not death.”
“I guess a death of sorts was supposed to happen. The angel said—”
“An angel!” His eyes grow even wider.
So apparently he doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t appear to know that Eric’s an angel. He’s not even aware there’s an angel involved at all. Somehow the idea of him being somewhat in the dark makes me feel a little better.
“When I was . . . dead, I saw an angel,” I say, deciding not to tell Eric’s secret. “Then, after he talked to me, I woke up here, and all of you were gawking at me.” I take a swig of the water, and my insides soak it in like parched earth.
“Amazing,” Sid mumbles. “And do you feel it? The power?”
I pause, taking stock of how I feel, to see if anything seems different. But I have to say that if it is, I can’t tell. I look over at Kara. At her hands fiddling nervously with her shirt. “Do I seem different?” I ask.
She considers, and then she says, “Maybe a little.”
Sid moves closer, examining me. “What?”
Kara hesitates. “You feel . . . I don’t know. More other. Less real.”
I blink at her, not sure what to make of that—is that good or bad?
Sid frowns at me. “Hmm, yes. I see what you mean,” he agrees. “As if his skin is . . . shiny, maybe—oh!” He points at my chest.
I look down.
Across my chest is the continuation of the marking on my arm. It runs from my hand up to my elbow, curling over my bicep and shoulder muscles and spreading out like thick brown veins over my pecs. And where my heart is there’s a sort of brand: a circle with a symbol inside. A sigil burned into my skin. The flesh around it is puffed red, but it doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel it at all. “What is that?”
Sid squints at it. “It appears to be a sort of seal—perhaps on your powers?”
“I thought you were supposed to know all this,” I say, concerned by how unsure he sounds. “You’re the one who pushed this to happen.”
“I wanted your powers to be awakened because it was what was best. Now they are,” he says. “I only know what the scrolls tell me, son.”
“Well, can you at least tell what it means? I can’t read it upside down.”
Sid shakes his head. “It’s not anything I recognize.”
Wonderful. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.” But I realize as I look around for my shirt that it’s not night anymore. The sun is full in the sky. “What time is it?”
“It’s four thirty.”
“Four in the afternoon?” Shit. I’m running out of time.
“Aidan, what difference does it make?” Sid asks. “This is just the beginning.”
I jump out of the bed, reaching for my shirt on the flo
or. “There’s too much to do.” My legs scream in protest as I stand. I wobble, but manage to stay on my feet.
Sid frowns. “Do?”
“He’s going to try and save her,” Kara says, sounding defeated.
“You mean your sister? Aidan—”
“No use telling me what a horrible idea it is. I already know.” I pull my shirt over my head. “And I’m going anyway.”
“But you barely received your powers,” Sid says. “You don’t know what you can do! And the demons . . . Aidan, this is suicide.”
“I’m really not interested in your thoughts.” I know I’m not less powerful, and I was determined to act before this event, so I’m certainly not letting whatever this is change my mind. “You can either help me or I’ll figure it out on my own. Your call.”
“I’ll help,” Kara says quietly.
Sid opens his mouth to say something to me, but then he closes it and finally says, “Try to see reason!”
I ignore him and turn to Kara. “I need to find some things.”
I’ll need salt to keep them back, cinnamon to throw them off my scent . . . Eric will have a hex box or spirit bowl. I can get him to give them to me—now that he’s my guardian angel and all.
“I’ll drive,” she says. She smells like defeat, but her shoulders are set in determination. “Just let me get my keys. I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten minutes.” She heads out the door, leaving Sid and me alone in the room.
“You need to stop and think about this,” he pleads. “There’s no reason to rush into anything—”
“Yes, there is. Her awakening is tonight.”
Sid’s eyes grow.
“And I think that’s when the darkness will really take root. Unless I stop it. And we still aren’t sure if she’s the key or not.”
“You could die. For sure this time.” He sounds crushed. “After all that I’ve sacrificed to save you.”
“You’re a crazy bastard, but I’m grateful for everything you did for me.” He did try to help me, even if his methods were a bit faulty at times. “Just let it go now, Sid. My future isn’t in your hands anymore. And this was always about saving Ava.”
Darkness Brutal (The Dark Cycle Book 1) Page 33
