He didn’t consider attempting a permanent move to Azevin. Duke was glad to see him for each short visit, so Asher never tried to prolong his stay. He was determined to ensure that he would never see Tara’s weary and martyred expression set into his grandfather’s features. There was no one to talk with back home, and there were no reasons to look towards the sky. It made Azevin that much more precious. Keeping that place sacred was the only reason left to stay in the town where he was born, until he discovered an Angel in a tree.
“It’ll get infected.” That was the first time he heard her voice, calling out to him somewhere behind the tangle of branches. There was both disapproval and concern in the melodic laugh that descended like falling leaves.
He stopped at the sound while the other boys continued forward, dragging their skateboards behind them, too close to the empty parking lot to pay attention to some voice spouting random warnings. “What will?” he asked, moving closer to the tree.
“Your foot.” The foliage above him rustled, but he couldn’t see who spoke to him.
“Huh?” Asher dropped his skateboard and started to climb.
“You’re not wearing any shoes. You’re just asking to step on something you’ll regret.”
He pulled himself up onto a branch with an abrupt movement, anger silently pulling his brows together. The boy was tired of this lecture from Tara, his friends’ parents, teachers, and even strangers. He wouldn’t take it from this disembodied voice, whether the source was a tree sprite or some perverted stalker. As he propelled upward, a bare foot was suddenly in his sights, dangling just inches from his nose. Asher grabbed the slender ankle and yanked hard. “What about you?” he called out triumphantly.
She slid down against the bark, twigs catching her with stinging flicks along the way, one of them scraping a red line down her leg. She barely caught herself from falling, but her tawny eyes held no rancor, watching him only with curiosity. “Well, I can’t climb trees if I’m wearing my sandals,” the girl said simply, gesturing to the flip flops discarded at the base of the trunk.
Asher stared at the girl, her long, dark hair hanging over her pale arms, her shorts and tank top smeared with marks from her fall through the branches. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Before his breathless surprise could cause him to lose his balanced position, he stared down at her dirty feet. “Aren’t you too grown-up for climbing trees?” he mumbled.
“I’m only seventeen!” she cried before sighing. “I guess to a sixth-grader, I must look really old.”
He raised his head hastily. “No! I mean, it’s not that. Shouldn’t you be…out? I dunno. I don’t think I’d be hanging around here if I could drive.” His eyes drifted to the delicate curves that composed her knees. “Hey! How did you know what grade I’m in?”
“You look it,” she replied plainly, watching as some struggle darkened his features. “Where would you drive to, Asher? You’ll always be underneath the sky, and you’ll always be inside your head. Love what you have here. Eventually, everything changes. And you’ll miss even the worst of it when it’s gone.”
“What, this place?” He frowned. It was something he always understood, but never put into words. He could tie that emotion to Azevin, but he never wanted to admit that vague feeling could apply here. “Wait! How did you know my name?” He turned his head away from her in his confusion, and it was then he could hear his friends calling out to him. They must have been yelling for a while now.
When he looked back up at her, she was smiling. “I gotta go,” he said quietly. She nodded, but he didn’t move. Asher was sure this rare and fragile creature would just disappear, never to be seen again, if he let her out of his sight. He blinked hard against the jumbled thoughts that filled his brain. He was distracted by the mental image of a night-blooming flower.
“My name is Kiera. I’ll see you again. I’m not so ready to leave my home as you are, Asher.” She looked down at his filthy feet and grinned. “Be careful out there.”
He left her regretfully that afternoon, but came to see her every day after. She was always around when he needed to see smiling eyes or to hear a genuine laugh. She was there to interpret the stars and read his fortune, to both tell and listen to stories with equal wonder. But things changed when Sebastian started coming around.
Asher had to admit that she shined brighter in those days. Maybe it was because he spent so much time alone among the branches, waiting for her return, that when she would climb up to him, satisfied and weary, she seemed that much more luminous. But it wasn’t only that. She had new stories and new hope, and she had acquired an air of peace that came from a tenuous hold on secret knowledge. She wasn’t standing still anymore with him; it was as if she finally was discovering her own wings. He had tried to tell himself that it didn’t hurt, that this was just a natural progression, but he could never fully swallow down the burning pressure below his throat that always appeared as he watched her walk away, smiling up at her new teacher, who was most often flanked by a red-haired boy and a quiet, well-dressed man.
Just a few years later, when the world came crashing down, he felt honored to care for her. Those days saw many horrors, but Asher was unmoved. There were things to be done, and there wasn’t any time for mourning or longing or fear. He finally understood the emotion behind the gaze Kiera had devoted to her mentor, as he now looked to Michael as a symbol of strength.
“Wake up! Hey kid, wake the fuck up!” Asher’s eyes had opened on the first morning of a new world to those words, paired with some dizzying blows to the head. He looked up into the tempered wrath in Michael’s eyes. “You’re alive,” the man growled quietly. “Why’s that?”
Slowed with pain, Asher sat up from the tile floor and looked around the room, darkened by barricaded doors and windows. He remembered the flash of light. “Kiera!” He tried to stand, but he stumbled before he could reach her huddled form in the bed.
Michael immediately moved to block his forward progress. “How did you survive? There’s no Angel in you; I can see that easily. You should be dead like everyone else.” He coldly grasped Asher’s arm and probed his neck, limbs, and chest, carefully examining him with rough impatience. When he discovered nothing unusual, he lightly shoved the boy back with a sigh and sat heavily down on the bed beside Kiera. “You know her,” he said softly, looking down at the sleeping girl.
Asher was swaying a bit, but he was finally on his feet. “She’s my friend.”
“You must be Asher.” He ran his fingers through his hair, taking a deep breath. Michael now regarded the boy with steady eyes. “Thank you for watching out for her. I apologize for treating you suspiciously, but she’s dearer to me than this whole damn world, and even that contributed to what went on this morning. I’ve lost a lot today — we all have — but her safety is my first concern. Do you know what just happened?”
A strange whirring sound quietly clogged his ears when he heard Michael speak his name. He had a hard time concentrating on the rest of his words, wanting only to see Kiera’s face, but she was hidden beneath the blanket. “I know who you are, Michael Steelryn. I’ve seen her go off with you and Sebastian and Gabriel. Whatever happened, Sebastian did this. So what was your part in it?” Asher returned his severe stare.
“My part was that I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t let myself see it. I should have told her to leave, but I wanted this all to work. I…didn’t want to be without her. I wanted to believe that our child could live in the kind of world she deserved.” He followed Asher’s stunned expression back towards Kiera’s cloaked form and gently laid a hand over her belly. “It took all this for me to really see Za’in. He saved my life, but he thought he built me. There’s a difference. I could say that I let this happen. It’s true, but we all did. Angels, Man, Nephilim. All of us. Anyone you had here is dead, Asher. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I intend to discover the extent of the damage. Your survival has given me hope, even if it was only Kiera’s energy that shielded yo
u. But first, I need to find Gabriel. He can’t be far from here. I know I can trust you to protect her while I’m gone.” In the following silence, their eyes remained trained on each other, two fierce expressions crashing against unyielding forces.
Asher couldn’t smile about that now. Not here, in Azevin. How many times had they locked stares, exchanging a vast complexity of information in one look? Some of their gazes were power struggles; others held more comfort than an embrace. The last time their eyes met, in this place, Michael forgave him for his failings and apologized for leaving him to fight alone. Everything they worked for together was shattered in that moment and he couldn’t even mourn, not until he had stumbled down the back stairways and ran out into the streets, finally stopping safely beneath the shelter of an overpass to weep. For seven years, it was Steelryn and Serafin. It was in penance and for the love of an Angel that they began their rebellion, but soon they found their purpose in securing a world for Kayla. Their reality could never return, but they wouldn’t let Za’in’s flourish. Not as long as she lived.
But the next ten years were dark. Michael and Kiera were gone, and Kayla’s whereabouts were unknown. Asher was truly alone. He left the resistance to wage his war in solitude. Although Za’in was the name he repeated with every vengeful step forward, Tregenne was the ghost that followed him. Asher didn’t realize until it was too late that the gentle, pensive professor was acting as a double agent, with not even Za’in’s agenda in mind, but his own. Tregenne’s physical changes should have been a clue to his true motivations, but it was hard to see his intentions after receiving his aid for so many years without betrayal. It made his final treachery that much more excruciating and effective.
Asher stood in the shadow of Tregenne’s citadel, as it cut a black swath through the surrounding pavement, the deep darkness it created threatening even the light of the moon. Whatever happened tonight, it wouldn’t end with him cowering beneath the lifeless freeway. This wasn’t just an opportunity for his own atonement, but possibly his final chance to shield the last Steelryn from this world and the embodiment of its viciousness.
32
There were no traps laid to prevent a siege of Tregenne’s fortress. There was no need. No one in Azevin knew he was Za’in’s first Arch, and if they did, they wouldn’t care. If any poor resident of the city ventured close to the building, moved by desperate thoughts of theft or shelter, the ominous aura surrounding the place would drive them from beneath its shadow and force them back out into the resurrected area of town. Gabriel lived and worked in self-imposed exile, secluded in the heart of one of the last persevering cities, safe in his brazen secrecy. Whatever weakened force of rebellion remained after Asher left it leaderless had never attempted coming back to this place. No one had. Only in his panicked dreams had he returned, endlessly walking the narrow, checkered hallways, chancing the unreliable elevators, and struggling for breath in every windowless room.
Asher banished those fearful memories from his mind with the steady motion of his eyes following the horizontal ribbing that separated each of the building’s stories. When he counted all nine, he turned around to face the vacant structure across the narrow street. Instead of forcing a door — passing by the formerly fashionable glass entranceway and the rusted roller shutters — he decided to find a more discreet and familiar path. As he easily slid the wood panel from a window of the decaying building that faced Tregenne’s, he found that the structure still wasn’t in use. It wasn’t a surprise to see all the desks and computers untouched and useless. In the darkness, he felt his way to the far wall and reached for a doorknob. As he made his way up the stairwell, he tried to walk softly on the steel tread plate steps, but every movement upward sent a booming vibration crashing against the wall. Asher ignored the ominous sound and continued his swift climb.
When he reached the top, he pressed his way through the double doors, blindly taking five more steps before releasing his gathered energy in a hard kick that made contact with the boarded-up passageway. This narrow corridor hung high above the street, connecting the two buildings for the ease of some unknown business that took place years ago. Now he made his way forward, his body tense in anticipation of new obstacles, bracing himself against the stale air. Asher found his way more gently through the door on the other side and, as he entered, there were no doubts that he was truly in Tregenne’s domain. The softly glowing emergency lights cast everything in a menacing red tint that seemed appropriate for his reunion with the realm of his nightmares. The silence was oppressive, but he was certain that Tregenne was somewhere in one of the floors below, so he had to make haste. Asher knew his drive for a confrontation, which would end just as satisfactorily in revenge as it would in the unfinished business of his own rightful death, had to be restrained. Although his true terror was leaving this place without finally facing what had been haunting him these ten years, he knew there was a wider goal. He didn’t promise Kayla he would return this time, but that didn’t erase the pledge he made in her name, for every year of her life. This was never fully about vengeance. This was never about the world, for its own sake. He had to locate the spiritual armor they required for victory, and then he had to return to her side. Asher knew what he was. He was just a man, cursed from the moment that he fell in love with an Angel. Nothing would change that. No amount of death, here in this place, would erase that crushing force that held him standing through every disaster. He hurried past the elevators to Tregenne’s stairwell, and descended, counting the floors as he made his way down.
When Asher reached the fourth floor, he immediately ran for the safety of the first visible room to the right. He felt exposed out in the halls, surrounded by the repeating squares of black and white tile on the floor, and the stacked, metal lockers covering the walls. The first room was empty, only a painted, gray floor and a stained sink remained. He hurried to the door on the other side, but found the adjoining room to be almost as bare, the large cabinets lining the walls filled with useless relics of the past. Asher was frustrated by the gutted interiors, but as he counted and recounted the floors in his memory, he was sure that he was in the right place. He ran out into the halls again, his mind already wandering the high-ceilinged rooms of the first floor, and dreading an investigation of the cellar — a failed, mold-ridden experiment in penetrating the limestone that lay just below the city’s sea-level ground. The climate never changed here. Not even the Eclipse could lift the shroud of Azevin’s humidity.
His fragmented musings broke against the wall, as the rest of his body made contact with the concrete. “You call this stealth? I could smell you from the basement. You stink with your desire to die,” Jeremy’s voice hissed out from between his clenched teeth. He waited for Asher to reply, or to struggle, but his enemy was still, understanding that it was useless to fight against his supernatural grip. Asher’s composure only further enraged Jeremy, as he took hold of his poncho again, and slammed him into the steel doors on the opposite side of the hall. “What were you thinking, coming here? This is the third time you’ve left her alone. You lay claim to her and then let her wander in this world? You’ll wish you never touched her.” An overwhelming wave of disgust stirred Jeremy and he seized Asher’s arm and throat, turning his face towards him, moved by the need to see some reaction in his rival’s features.
Just as suddenly, a blistering vision engulfed Jeremy’s awareness, and the tighter his fingers grasped at fragments of the real world, the more it fell away. The profound suffering that pulled everything aside — leaving only raw devastation — was familiar, but this time it wasn’t his own. That ache ran down his insides in warm rivulets, pooling in strange places, but it left his chest open, to be filled with cleansing air. It was then he noticed that he was holding Kayla against his torso. Her tears spilled down over his body, forging clean trails that he could feel reflected within. He wanted to surrender to this dream, but he couldn’t ignore the recognition that this was something he shouldn’t be experiencing, not now.
This wasn’t his. This wasn’t his desperate need to protect her. This wasn’t his only sense of comfort after so many hopeless, lonely years. This wasn’t his fear that he wouldn’t fulfill his goals, his obligations, his retribution, his release… None of this was his. It was Serafin’s.
With a cry, Jeremy loosened his grip and collapsed onto the slick floor. In just one moment, he saw and understood everything about his enemy, but his body rejected that knowledge with every convulsion that kept his trembling form weighted to the ground. “Go. First floor. Tregenne. You won’t succeed…” he gasped, raising his head.
Asher knelt beside him. “You know what I’m looking for?”
“Everyone knows.” Jeremy pulled himself up to stare into the vagabond’s eyes. “God damn you. Why didn’t you just take her and run? The world ends anyways. You could have pretended you had a future and died peacefully, like everyone else…”
“I won’t let her world end. And I won’t pretend with her. With this one exception: she’ll never know the depths of the pain I feel, knowing that it’s not me she loves…but you.”
Jeremy’s jaw was set and the words barely escaped. “Just — fucking go.” He watched him disappear, making sure Asher was out of sight before he let his head drop and allowed his noiseless sobs to leave him shuddering against the linoleum floor.
Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen Book 1) Page 23
