I spoke the first words that came to mind. I used to be you.
She held my gaze, her eyes narrowing, peering more deeply into mine. You’re not anymore.
No, I said.
Why are you here? she asked.
I gave her the obvious answer. The Angel of Death brought me.
She didn’t react the way a small child should. She showed no fear. No hesitation. But then, she wasn’t really a child, no matter how she appeared.
Red had described what he saw when he looked into me, back when he’d been sixteen and I’d been twelve, back when I’d been Rosa, when I’d still possessed the sweetness and innocence that were my birthright as one so young, learning the ways of the world. He’d described, too, the utter emptiness he’d seen in me after my parents had died, on the night he hid me, trying to keep me safe.
I’d had a soul before the events of that night. I had lost it.
The girl who stood in front of me now, the one trapped in the recesses of my mind, was the echo of that soul.
The Angel thinks he can break you by forcing you to face me, the girl said. By forcing you to remember.
There was a reason I’d never been able to recall what had happened that night, and the reason was because I agreed with the Angel. I felt terrified that if I knew what had happened, I wouldn’t be able to go on living. Forgetting had meant survival. Survival had meant everything.
The Angel had brought me here to destroy me. He’d tried other ways, but they hadn’t worked. This way was a sure thing.
So why hadn’t he just gone this route in the first place? Why bother trying anything else? Maybe because the sure thing wasn’t so sure after all. It was a last resort. A long shot. What happened if it didn’t work out the way the Angel planned?
Only one way to find out.
I tilted my head, motioning for the little girl to step aside. She backpedaled, opening the threshold.
I stepped into the room.
The stone floor shifted, becoming the smooth concrete floor of my childhood bedroom, painted with a riot of scuffed red roses. The walls were white, as was the ceiling, though in the dark the ceiling glowed as if it contained all the stars in the night sky. My father had done that as a gift for my sixth birthday. He’d let me help him, even though it meant standing tiptoe on the top rung of a stepladder and reaching as high as I could stretch. He’d stood behind me in paint-splattered, holey jeans, making sure I didn’t fall. He’d smelled, as always, of Old Spice.
That same year, my mother had made my favorite birthday cake, white with white frosting, covered with a mountain of shredded coconut. She’d sat me on the tall, black counter stool that she sat on when she cooked and her legs grew tired, braiding pink sweetheart roses from the garden into my hair, scattering wayward petals on her denim dress and on the yellow linoleum of the kitchen floor.
Sweet memories.
But the bedroom itself right now stood empty, and night had swallowed it whole—the top half of the single window looking out on the front lawn showed only darkness, and the air was thick with the rhythmic singing of toads. A window air conditioner, precariously balanced and held in place with rusted bolts, ate up the bottom half of the window, its motor kicking on with a shudder and a whir.
The ceiling light had been turned off, but a single lamp on the nightstand lit the space, throwing shadows in the corners. A low bookcase hugged the wall beneath the sill, my small collection of books—most about horses—huddled inside. My bed crouched in the corner under a white cotton comforter.
Underneath the bed, a small dish containing an egg, the better to rid me of illness—and evil—as I slept. Under my pillow, sprigs of rosemary and lavender tied together with a slip of twine, to protect me and to draw evil from me. Above the bed, a print of Our Lady of Guadalupe, surrounded by golden rays of light, cloaked in starlit robes of blue, lifted by the archangel Gabriel—the better to watch over me, to keep more evil from touching me.
Over the print, my mother had hung a crucifix that I tried not to look at. I think it was meant as a symbol of hope and protection, but I couldn’t look at Jesus’s face as he hung on the cross, the crown of thorns on his head, and not feel his pain and despair.
The tear-stained pillow called my name.
The exorcism had been yesterday, not that it had done any good. Evil held me in its terrible grasp and refused to let go. By the time the priest had left, he’d rendered me unconscious, heart fluttering in my chest, fever baking me from the inside out.
That had been last night. This morning, I’d awakened to the call of crows outside. I’d huddled in my sweat-soaked sheets and listened, imagining I understood what they said and waiting for breakfast to be brought to me. My door, as had been the case for the last three months, two weeks, and five days, was locked from the outside.
My mother had brought me breakfast. She still wore her nightgown, a long black T-shirt that reached the middle of her thighs. Her wavy, black hair curled from the humidity, and her thick lashes hid her eyes. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t say a word. She left me a small bamboo tray with a bowl of oatmeal and an orange.
That had been the last I’d seen of her—hours and hours ago—though she’d be along any minute now.
I climbed into the bed, though my grown body was too long and my feet hung over the bottom edge. Easy remedy: curling up on my left side, hugging my knees. I had a good view of the door. I would see her when she came in.
I heard her first, though—her bare feet moving fast on the creaking floorboards in the hall, the key turning in the locks outside my door, the soft squeal of the hinges as she opened the door and closed it behind her.
Words tumbled like heavy stones from her mouth. “Rosa? Are you awake?”
I pretended to be asleep. I forced my breathing to slow. I glanced through my own thick lashes, watching her like prey would a predator.
“There’s a man here to see us. To see you. Your father called him. I don’t know who he is, but I’m afraid of him.”
I didn’t want to answer. If I answered, then something bad would happen. Something horrible that I would do. I pressed my lips together.
“I know you can hear me,” she said, creeping closer to the bed. “I know I have no right to ask this of you, especially not after yesterday. And I know it’s a sin, because you are what you are, but I’m asking for your help.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around what my mother said. How could she ask for my help? She was big and I was small. She was grown and I was still a child. She held all the power in her strong hands, and I held none.
She knelt beside my bed, taking my hands in hers. “Please, Rosa. I think if you don’t help me, we will all die.”
I opened my eyes, gazing into hers, marking the terror in them.
This was no trick. This was no trap. My mother pleaded with me. She meant every word she’d spoken.
I whispered. “Please don’t make me do this.”
Her head snapped back. “You won’t use your power to save my life?”
Part of me wasn’t sure why I should, not after everything she and my father had done to me. But the rest? The rest only knew that she was my mother. Even if she didn’t love me, I wanted her to.
I slipped out of bed.
She led me by the hand out the door and down the darkened hall, the framed pictures of our family that hung on the walls staring down at us, judging. Low voices floated from the living room—my father’s and one other man’s. The TV was on, too—I heard a clipped female voice going on in Spanish about an actor who’d gotten married—but the sound didn’t hide what my father and the man talked about.
“You take her,” my father said. “I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
The other man sighed. Phlegm bubbled in his throat. “I can’t do that.”
“But you’ve done this with others like her.”
The man paused.
In the space of his hesitation, I peered around the corner to get a look at him. He sa
t on the arm of the floral sofa, his legs hiding the orchids printed on the fabric. He faced my direction, but held a laser-like focus on my father, who sat on the scuffed, brown leather ottoman in front of him, elbows on his knees.
My father’s halo was brassy gold—normal, like most people’s. He wore his grease-stained, light blue mechanic’s shirt with his name, Chris, embroidered on the white name patch. His dark hair was buzzed close to his head. A small gold hoop hung in his left ear. I could smell his Old Spice, along with motor oil and chemical cleaner, from where I stood.
The other man’s halo was a bruised orange, as if someone had bounced a piece of fruit on the sidewalk over and over again until it turned the color of pain. He had big hands with delicate fingers, which made me think of him as soft at first, but the skin was calloused, like my father’s. The corners of his mouth turned down. His eyes looked like beetle carapaces, perched above gaunt cheeks. He was bald, and he wore all black, like the bad guys on TV.
His halo. The bruised orange. It wasn’t normal. If the man wasn’t normal, then that meant he had magic, like me. I couldn’t help staring.
He couldn’t help but feel my gaze on him.
The dark hairs on his arms began to rise. He raised his head and looked right at me, pinning me to the spot. “They don’t send me to take them away,” he said.
I had a half-second to wonder who they might be. Then my mother laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed as hard as she could, not to stop me from doing or saying anything, but from overwhelming fear.
I sucked in a breath.
“What in Christ’s name do they send you for?” my father asked.
“To kill,” the man said.
“What?” My father pushed to his feet—or tried to.
The man reached out a finger and touched my father’s chest. A spark lit the spot. In the time it took my heart to beat, my father dropped like a bag of bones, the fabric of his shirt burned away and a smoking hole where his heart should be.
A wracking sob crawled up my throat.
My mother screamed.
The man launched himself at us. My mother grabbed my hand and dragged me back down the hall, nearly pulling my shoulder from its socket. She yanked open the door to my room and slammed it shut behind us. But she couldn’t lock it, because it only locked from the outside.
The man was coming. His footfalls sounded on the creaking floorboards of the hall, strong and steady. We had only one blocked window through which to escape.
My mother kicked at the air conditioner, trying to loosen it from the window so we could get out. The unit groaned, but did not fall. She had no time to try again.
The man opened the door, his bruised halo burning brighter and brighter. He marched toward us, a stink of sulfur coming off of him in waves. My mother shoved me behind her. It was the last thing she did, her last living, breathing human act in the world.
The man touched her the way he’d touched my father, and she fell, dead before she hit the floor.
I wanted to fall beside her. To take her face in my hands and squeeze and shake until she opened her eyes, but she wouldn’t. I was twelve years old, and that was old enough to know.
I looked at the man. He froze in his tracks.
I saw a way into him, a path for my magic to take. I slid into his mind and took hold of his power. It was that easy.
Harder was seeing him in the dark, empty, stone room in the recesses of his mind, cold and hungry and clothed only in tatters, his cheekbones more pronounced, his belly distended, that same sulfurous stench flowing off of him.
Anger welled in my heart.
You came to kill me? I asked.
He frowned. I came to kill all of you.
Two weary and broken adults, and one broken child. Why?
Some children can’t be allowed to live, he said.
He’d come to put an end to all of us, but especially me.
Why? I asked.
You’re too powerful, he said.
My magic. The evil inside of me.
He seemed to read the thought on my face, or maybe he could tell what I was thinking because I was in his mind, and he could see mine. It’s not evil, he said. It just is.
If it wasn’t evil, then why had my parents locked me away? If I wasn’t evil, why had the priest tried to exorcise a demon from inside of me? If I wasn’t evil, then why had a killer come after me? Why were my parents dead?
Evil is something you do, the man said. I should know.
Something you do.
I’d never done anything to hurt anyone, not on purpose. That hadn’t mattered. Nothing mattered anymore.
I held the man’s gaze. His halo blazed bright.
I told him what to do. I made him turn the fire on himself. I made him burn up from the inside, and as he did, I slipped out of his mind. I left my mother where she lay and walked past the man. Down the hall and through the living room, the TV flashing pictures of yellow police tape and a woman reporter with a microphone.
The man screamed. The sound pierced me to the core. I covered my ears with my hands, turning right, padding through the kitchen, the tile cool on the soles of my feet.
Behind me, I heard the whoosh of fire catching fabric and furniture. I heard the crackle of flames. I felt heat on my back. I hurried out the back door into the thick night air, beads of sweat springing up on my forehead, and stopped cold.
I stared at the blades of grass. I stared at the hackberry trees near the chain-link fence. The gate between the neighbor’s house and ours was open. I took a halting step toward it. And another. I breathed in smoke, tasting ashes on the back of my tongue. The ashes of my life as I’d known it. The burning taste of my home. Of the assassin. Of my parents.
A wail filled my belly and surged toward my mouth, but it got stuck in my throat and refused to come out. I choked on it.
I—I blinked. The backyard and the open gate and the sound I’d choked on faded, along with the smell of smoke, burning furniture, and burning flesh and blood and bone.
I stood inside the stone room in my own mind, gazing into the eyes of the ghost of my soul, the soul that had died that night.
I didn’t kill them, I said. At the same time, I understood that in a way I had, because of my magic—only I hadn’t been responsible for what they’d done, or for what the killer had done. He’d been a member of the Order. There was no mistaking that.
My mentor had never told me.
My soul’s ghost spoke softly in the silence. Are you still broken? she asked.
I swallowed hard. I had no answer for that. Part of me would always be broken, and I’d avoided that part with all the strength I possessed for so many years. I’d been wrong to do so—not because my brokenness made me weak, but because the things that were broken in me made me who I was. Because of the cracks inside of me—the places where I was vulnerable—I saw the world in a way that a lot of other people didn’t. I understood what it meant to be broken, and what it took to be whole.
When my soul died that night, I thought I’d lost it forever. I thought I’d never find it. But here I stood, that soul within my grasp. All I had to do was reach.
I held out my hand.
The ghost of my soul twined her fingers with mine—and vanished. But not into time and space. She’d slipped inside of me.
She was a part of me. A part of my magic, coming home at last.
I turned around and looked at the being who guarded the door behind me, the one who’d hoped beyond hope that I’d become trapped in here: the Angel of Death. He’d pinned me still, forcing me to see what lay behind the most tightly locked door of my memory. I was pinned no longer. He had no hold on me. He had nothing.
He shook his black-feathered wings.
It didn’t work, I said. My fear did not destroy me. Neither did the truth.
He turned to run.
I reached out for him, too—not in kindness, and not in gladness. I wrapped my fingers around his neck and trapped him the way he’d tr
apped me.
He struggled in my grip. He was powerful. He was the hand of a god, after all, and I was nobody—just some human with magic who stood in his way.
Except I was more than that. The Order had sent an operative after me, the same way they’d sent one after Faith. Maybe the Watchers had contracted the job, or maybe the job had originated inside the Order itself. I’d bet on door number two, since Addie hadn’t breathed a word about a hit on me, and she would be in a position to know. Just as I was in a position to know the nature of the Order.
It was an organization with a single purpose: death. The people at the top of the Order’s hierarchy might as well be shadows. I’d never seen a single one in all the time I’d been in the ranks. The mentors trained the recruits, and every single one of the recruits had magic powerful enough to shape them into near-perfect killing machines, operational in a very short time frame.
The people at the top might as well be shadows. Or angels, working under the guidance of a very specific, hand-of-God type. Death himself.
You follow all of that? I asked the Angel.
He’d heard every word, seen every image, felt every feeling as I’d pieced the puzzle together. It was just a guess, but it was a damn good one. I thought he might struggle harder to break my grip on him, but instead he ceased fighting altogether. He only looked at me, his gaze hard.
Who put out the hit on me all those years ago? I asked.
I did, he said.
I’d been too powerful to be allowed to live. When the Order operative sent to kill my family and me had failed to take me out, the Order had scooped me up, made me one of their own. Who knows if they’d tried to kill me again over the years? There were ways to try without alerting the target, after all. I should know.
Having that kind of power meant nothing in and of itself. It was what I chose to do with it that mattered.
The Angel of Death spoke. You can’t keep me here, he said.
But I could. He knew it, and I knew it. Maybe not forever. I wasn’t immortal like he was. And I didn’t have millennia of experience on my side.
La Muerte, I said. Keeping you for now is good enough.
I set him in the room in which the ghost of my soul had lived and built a new door, crowned with every magic I’d tasted in all my years, from the fire of the operative sent to kill me to the magic spark in each and every one of the people I’d killed for the Order—for the Angel of Death. I wove the spell with everything I’d been, everything I was, and everything I hoped to be.
Night Awakens: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 1) Page 15
