Addie’s breath hitched. Her lips were pale, the color leached from her face.
Jess wasn’t yet a full-grown Watcher. Her power had not yet filled out. She was losing the battle. There was too much blood and not enough magic to get the job done.
Red slid out of my way as I knelt beside Jess. He waved the others back. None of them moved an inch. Red saw me—and the Angel free within me. He gazed into my eyes with a trust that was total.
That trust settled into me, a cord of strength.
I focused on Jess. “I can lend you what power I have.”
She looked at me, eyes going wide as Sunday’s had done. “Please,” she said.
I laid my hands on her back, magic flowing through my palms and into her, filling her with not only the power she needed, but the detailed knowledge of how to use it. How to weave a wound back together. How to set the healing. How to firmly reattach a soul on the edge of flight.
Addie didn’t wake as we finished. Her deep color returned. Her breath evened to the deep, steady rhythm of sleep.
Thank God, or the throne of creation. Thank the Angel.
“She’ll be like this for a while,” I said. “One night, maybe two.”
Jess let out a shaky breath she’d been holding. She reached for Ben’s hand. Behind me, Corey scrambled to her feet and ran for Faith. I turned to look at my daughter—or the Awakened, a spike of fear piercing my heart.
But my girl’s brow was furrowed, the corners of her mouth turned down, her eyes full of confusion. Her brown eyes.
Corey threw her arms around Faith, and Faith hugged her back just as hard.
I sat back on my haunches, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands. Red placed a palm in the center of my back, offering strength. Offering to take whatever I could lay onto him. Offering love.
I wanted what he had to give. I wanted nothing more than to be able to turn around and look at the man. But there was something happening inside of me, something that shook me to the core.
The Angel of Death surrendered the tattered remains of the magic I’d loaned him, letting it fall to pool in my heart once more. He walked back through the corridors of my mind into the cage I’d once forced him into, and drew the door closed behind him until it nicked shut. There was no bolt to be thrown, no lock to turn. There was only the Angel’s inexplicable willingness to stay.
I cleared my throat. My voice was my own. Only my own.
“I need some air,” I said.
Red rose behind me and hauled me to my feet. “Sunday?”
“I’ll stay,” she said.
I made my way out of the house, tottering a little underneath the Christmas lights that hung above the front door. The snow fell in a torrent, wind gusting. The whole world shimmered.
Miguel had pulled himself toward the porch steps and perched on the lowest one, head in his hands. He’d let go of my reflection, my essence—whatever he would call it. He was himself again, in too-small clothes so tight, they cut off his circulation. Snowflakes stuck to his hair.
“Did we win?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re all still here. Barely.”
He gave us a thumbs-up. “I’m calling that a win.”
I glanced past him at the fallen Watchers, the ones trapped in their own nightmares and the blind ones, all of them on their way to frostbite. What the hell were we going to do with that many incapacitated, magical freaks? The shields would have to come down eventually, and the sun would come up. And I didn’t think Sunday had packed any extra zip ties.
A flash of light in the near distance caught my attention. I didn’t believe my eyes at first, so I blinked, but when I looked again, nothing had changed.
Someone—or something—stood across the street. His hair was made of fire, writhing flames of orange, yellow, red, and blue. He had three eyes, two where I expected them to be and one in the center of his forehead. He wore golden armor that glittered like diamonds, and a sword with a golden hilt sheathed on his back.
He stood on the snow-dusted grass in front of us as if he’d come to view a curiosity.
A second later, he ceased to look all that interesting, at least on the surface. He was just a regular guy, if a regular guy could emanate enough power to bend the air around his body. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a black T-shirt with the name of some heavy metal band I should remember but for the life of me couldn’t. He had black hair, short and thick, and eyes the color of the sun.
I became afraid to blink, wondering whether something had broken in my brain and I’d started to see things, worrying that if I closed my eyes even for a second, my imaginary man with fiery eyes would vanish. But then he disappeared anyway, winking into nothing as I watched.
Miguel whistled. “Anyone else see that?”
“What the hell was it?” Red asked.
“Archangel,” Miguel said.
I’d called one. He’d finally decided to show. “Michael.”
Miguel glanced over his shoulder at me. “Michael.”
Fiery sword of protection. Showed up to take a gander, but not when I’d actually needed him.
“Asshole,” I said.
Miguel raised a brow.
“He’s late.” I turned on my heel, straight into Red.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and started to say something, but whatever he’d been about to utter faded. He looked past me, finally managing a word. “Jesus.”
The downed Watchers were gone. Poof. Vanished. No more muss, no more fuss. No more enemy at the gates.
“I guess we won’t have to worry about how to clean all that up,” Red said. “Think they’re gone for good? Or should we expect them again sometime soon?”
“They were Shadow’s people. Shadow’s gone,” I said. “And now so are they.”
“I think the asshole gets points for that,” Miguel said.
I laughed, mostly because if I didn’t find the humor, I might cry. I could cry all night, in fact. “That’s because you’re grading on a curve,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”
Chapter 9
IT TOOK A WEEK for the sound and fury to die down, for the foot of snow that had fallen to melt, and for some semblance of normalcy to return. Wounds healed. Bloody carpets were cleaned. I got used to the idea that I’d been torn apart and knitted back together by an archangel whose blood ran in my veins. Just another day in the neighborhood.
I woke on a Tuesday morning and drove my Honda down to the gym, as if it were any normal hour before dawn. I stood under the awning and turned my key in the lock. The December chill sliced through my black fleece hoodie. The mist in the air coated my hair and snuck in through the open spaces at the neck, sending a shiver all the way down to the soles of my feet.
The traffic light at the corner to my left flipped from red to green, the hum of engines and the slick of tires on wet concrete a comfort to my still-exhausted nerves. I paused a moment, listening for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing stood out other than the most dependable sound in the world.
Down the way to my right, materializing from between the rows of parallel-parked cars on either side of the street, the man I’d dubbed the Orange Warrior rode by in his neon-orange rain suit, bike tires splashing through the puddled light of the street lamps. He flashed the peace sign, just like he did every morning.
“Hey! Night!”
“Morning, Charlie!” I called, and gave him the usual thumbs-up to carry with him on his way to work. His golden halo flashed as he sped around the corner.
Footfalls sounded behind me. Red, carrying a tray filled with the largest coffees the diner across the street offered, along with two bagel sandwiches wrapped in parchment paper.
“Extra bacon?” I asked.
“Questioning my integrity this early in the day?” He rolled his eyes. “A promise is a promise, Night.”
I flashed a half grin and pushed open the door for him. I got the lights, too, turned off the alarm, and followed him down the steps to h
is office.
He shared out the breakfast and sat heavily on one of the two blue and silver visitor chairs on the near side of the desk, pushing the other out with one foot as an invitation for me to settle beside him. His hair was still wet from the shower, the ends curling from the humidity outside. He’d shrugged on a dark green down jacket over his hoodie as an extra layer against the cold.
He took a sip of coffee, watching me lower myself slowly into the seat.
“Still hurting?” he asked.
I frowned. “I guess I’m not hiding it that well.”
“No need to,” he said.
“I don’t like to be that person.”
He raised both brows. “The one who needs help and has to ask for it?”
I toasted him with my cup of joe. “That’s the one.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
I set down my cup, sliding it back and forth on the desktop. “It’s the kind of thing that would get you dead in the Order—admitting weakness.”
“That’s inhuman, Night. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.” I met his gaze.
He searched mine. “How’s the Angel of Death? Still playing hermit?”
I nodded. “I don’t know why he hasn’t broken free. And before you pose the question, yeah, I’ve tried talking to him. He doesn’t answer. It’s disconcerting.”
“There’s a whole lot about it that’s disconcerting.” Red brushed his hair back from his forehead.
“The lock on the door is reconstituting itself, I guess because my blood is doing the same as I recover. It may take a while to fully reform, and I don’t know whether it will ever be the same again.”
I might take a while, too. Whether I’d be the same again, I had no way to know.
“You’re worried,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m afraid.”
He grinned. “How hard was that to say?”
I deadpanned. “You have no idea.”
His smile faded. “What are you thinking?”
Thoughts that no one should ever think. “I need to hunt down an archangel.”
He mulled that over. “You think you’ll get answers that way?”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But it’s a place to start.”
There was one other place I could go for information, but the odds were high that I’d die in the attempt. “The Order will have archives to rifle through.”
“Or archivists to torture,” he said. “Sunday could probably get down with that.”
“Not funny.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. What about the Watchers? With Shadow destroyed, they might be in a place to renegotiate their aims.”
I bit my lip. “You know, I get the feeling that Shadow’s not dead.”
“The feeling?”
I nodded. “It’s visceral.”
“In your gut?” he asked. “Or in your blood?”
“Good question.” More mysteries to unravel.
“Lots of questions,” he said. “Including what’s going on with Faith and what we’re gonna do about that.”
Of all the things I feared, losing Faith was the worst. She was holding it together for now, and her friends were helping her. But they couldn’t stop the god inside of her from waking completely, or handle what might happen on their own.
The bunch of them had stuck to our pact not to keep secrets. They were looking for another hideout in case we needed one. They kept me in the loop. Still, choices had consequences, and my choosing to help the Angel of Death was a problem for them—even we were all alive and whole because of it. I could see it in the speculative glances Jess shot my way, and the way Corey listened too carefully when I spoke, as if she still heard the Angel’s voice woven with mine.
Every single one of them understood that I’d die before I allowed the Angel to harm them. That made all the difference.
I didn’t yet know what to do about the Angel, and I’d have to live with that until I figured it out.
There was one thing I couldn’t live with any longer, and I’d suggested Red come in with me this morning because I wanted to talk with him away from prying ears and prying eyes. Corey had stayed over last night, talking and giggling with Faith until the wee hours.
“So, we’re back to needing answers.” I said.
Red leaned back in his chair. “Why do I get the feeling we’re changing the subject?”
“Because we are,” I said. “I am.”
“What do you want to know?”
I took a deep breath. “All the things we talked about that night, before the violence?”
He nodded. “I meant every word I said.”
I held up a hand. “I know.”
He tensed. “But?”
“No but. It’s not like that.”
I turned over in my head all the ways I’d avoided saying what I felt, the reasons and the excuses. I’d avoided it because admitting vulnerability would make me less than the perfect machine I’d been trained to be. I’d been afraid of not being enough. Of not being human, able to let go of what I’d been so that I could become someone new. Keeping my feelings close to the vest had felt safe. Secure. And lonely as hell.
Maybe it was all right if what had happened that night changed me permanently. Maybe it was all right if I was never the same.
I was no stranger to chance, clearly. I’d taken every one I’d needed to when the stakes were impossible. Every single one, except the most personal, the one closest to my heart.
I took another breath, not because change that scared me, but because after everything that had happened, I refused to let fear stop me.
“Night? You want to ease up on the suspense?” He studied my face.
I met his gaze and held it, choosing my words with care. “This is about the thing you didn’t say.”
He put his cup down, his hand shaking a little.
“Maybe you didn’t want to say it then,” I said. “I can think of a lot of reasons why that would be. But I’d rather not guess, and I’d rather not play anymore, so I’ll say it now.”
He waited, holding his breath.
“I love you,” I said.
I accepted all the vulnerability that came with loving him. I let that show on my face. I needed him to know. I needed him to understand.
For a long minute, I thought he might stare a hole straight through me. But then his face lit from the inside, his halo glowing as bright as if the sun shone inside of him, and all of my worries fell away.
He leaned forward in his seat. I met him halfway. I memorized the feel of his lips on mine, the taste of him. I shivered as he whispered to me, because of the tenderness in his voice and the feel of his breath on my skin.
“I love you, too,” he said.
A heartbeat later, a knock sounded on the door.
I blinked at Red. “No one else should be here this early. Miguel’s not coming by for like half an hour.”
“No one ever knocks,” Red said.
We got up together and headed for the door. Once we reached the top of the stairs and I caught a glimpse through the glass of the visitor’s tiger-striped halo, I pushed Red behind me.
“What is it?” he asked.
Our visitor didn’t mean to kill us, or we wouldn’t have known what hit us. That didn’t mean I had no reason to worry. “No one good. Stay here.”
He set his jaw. “The hell you say.”
I spoke with all the force I could muster. “Then stay behind me.”
By his silence, he acquiesced to that much.
I marched toward the door and pulled it open. Outside, the mist had given way to rain, and the woman at the door had seen her share of it already.
Her auburn waves were plastered to her head, drowned-rat style. She wore black from head to toe, chic and practical, except for the lack of a hood on her coat. Her hazel eyes took in every detail of my appearance, and of the menace in Red’s posture and expression behind me.
Menace was a one
-hundred-percent appropriate reaction to this woman, although the first time I’d seen her, I’d thought she was my savior. I’d been a child, and she’d pulled me from the hell of my life into a fancy car with fancy words, promising me a place to belong. A place where I’d never have to deny my magic or worry that using it was wrong.
She’d saved my life, and she’d ruined me forever.
Her halo undulated as if muscle moved beneath its surface. She was a predator, no mistake.
“Mentor,” I said. “I’d have heard about it if you’d left the Order, and I haven’t heard a thing.”
She shook her head, once. “I’m here on Order business, Night.”
“What business is that?” I asked. “Picking up some miserable, magical child to bring them into the fold? Infiltration? Murder?”
“We have a sticky situation,” she said. “One that we need your help with. Come find me when you’re ready. You’ll know how.”
The fact that she’d come here at all set off every alarm under my skin. The fact that she’d asked for my help—the Order of the Blood Moon had asked for my help—marked a sea change I didn’t know how to measure.
These people had spent years hunting me down, trying to kill Faith and me. They’d sent operative after operative, and I’d sent them all back in a body bag.
We were never going to be friends. I never wanted to be allies. What the hell had happened to bring her to my door?
I said nothing to my mentor. She knew my thoughts perfectly well. She’d raised me, after all.
“See you later,” she said.
I stared after her as she turned on her heel and walked back into the rain, cutting through the darkness until she became one with it, her steps silent as the grave.
About the Author
Author of The Faery Chronicles and Night Awakens, Leslie Claire Walker grew up among the lush bayous of southeast Texas and now lives in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest with a cast of spectacular characters, including cats, harps, and too many fantasy novels to count. She takes her inspiration from the dark beauty of the city, the power of myth, and music ranging from Celtic harp to heavy metal. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies.
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