When I opened my eyes on the world, I opened them to Faith kneeling over me, her hands pressed against my cheeks, squeezing and shaking and whispering frantically for me to open my eyes.
“What did you do?” she asked. “What did you do?”
“Saved you,” I said.
She pulled me into her arms and held me so tight, I could feel her heart beating. She was alive and whole and she had a long, hard road ahead. But she had a chance. She had a choice.
A voice—Jess’s voice—cut through Faith’s and my embrace. The words carried the kind of power and authority that demanded they be heeded.
“It’s not over,” she said.
Damn right, it wasn’t.
I pulled away from Faith in the dim light, bracing a hand on the rubber mat beneath me and pushing myself upright. My legs took a minute to decide whether they’d hold, but in the end I stood on my own two feet in the place that had become my home.
The overhead lights buzzed and flickered brighter, illuminating the stairs that led to the front door and the floor of the gym with the jigsaw puzzle of the mats on the floor, the barbells and plates, the climbing ropes, and the scuffed, concrete walls—all of it. I breathed in the scents of rubber and sweat—and the grass green and earth and tea tree shampoo cologne of Red, whose footsteps I heard approach from behind. His message was clear without words: he had my back.
The whoosh of tires on wet pavement outside and the patter of rain against the windows could be heard in the heart of the gym, and the chill outside seeped in, turning the skin on my arms to gooseflesh.
The world still existed outside these walls. People walked their dogs and rode their bikes and curled up on sofas with the ones they loved. They huddled on the streets and in bars. They lived and they died. I’d do everything in my power to keep them safe.
Inside, the tension was thick enough to cut. Ben and Corey stood at the back of the gym, holding hands, staying out of the line of fire because danger still lurked in our midst. Not danger from the Angel of Death, or from the Awakened—not yet—but from the Watchers.
Addie’s silver-framed glasses hung askew on her face. She adjusted them with a wince. Blood flecked her nostrils, though her nose didn’t look broken. Chances were, she’d have a shiner come morning. Her Darth Vader holiday sweatshirt was smeared with mud and blood. She shook in her brown boots with barely contained fury. Easy to guess why—none of this had gone the way she’d hoped.
I wasn’t dead. Faith wasn’t hers to use. She’d been kidnapped from her own home by the Angel of Death, the most important and powerful of her ancestors, zip-tied, and helpless to influence the endgame.
She’d lost control of the situation, if she’d ever really had any to begin with. The Angel had been calling the shots from the beginning. But if she raised a hand or spoke a word out of line, she’d be eternally sorry.
I didn’t need to speak the threat out loud. Sunday loomed beside her. Sunday had lost her slicker and the sleeve of her shirt was torn at the elbow, half the buttons on her brocade vest popped off. Her lip was split and still seeping blood. She’d have a new battle scar, but then, Sunday considered those badges of honor.
I looked at Jess. Her chocolate brown sweater-duster brushed the floor, the hem picking up powdered white chalk from the white plastic bucket someone had knocked over in their struggle with the Angel. Her hair had come loose from the knot on the crown of her head, and tumbled in a waterfall of dark curls to her shoulders. She met my gaze with a solemn cast in her brown eyes.
It’s not over, she’d said.
Faith took a step forward, placing herself between the Watchers and me. “What do you mean, it’s not over?”
“We need something from your mom,” Jess said. “We need the Angel of Death.”
“What? What about him?” Sunday asked. “Speak sense.”
“Night trapped him,” Jess said.
Sunday narrowed her eyes, looking from Jess to me. “Where?”
“Inside of me,” I said.
Sunday stared. “Trapped. Inside of you. You’re holding him prisoner with your magic?”
I nodded.
“Jesus Christ, Night. How?”
“Not now.” But later, definitely later.
Faith curled her hands into fists. “You don’t get to ask for anything, Jess. I love you. You know that. But your people want her dead. I won’t let that happen.”
Addie folded her arms across her chest. “You have enough problems of your own, young lady. Don’t borrow trouble.”
“The Awakened,” Faith said. “I know. Whatever that is, we’ll deal with it later. Don’t change the subject.”
Addie opened her mouth to reply, but Sunday interrupted, clearing her throat. “Shut it. I don’t want to hear a word from you. Your kid has something to say, she should spit it out.”
Jess’s cheeks flushed. She waited a long minute to speak, and when she did, it was with a measured tone that reflected more control than her years ought to allow. “My aunt was wrong, even if she can’t see it, but that doesn’t make it okay to talk to her like that. We’re all in this together from here on out, so we’d better get used to disagreeing.”
“Long as you understand that disagreeing means holding different opinions, not putting out hits on people we’re afraid of,” Sunday said. “Long as we understand each other, no one gets hurt.”
Jess paled a little, but she held her ground. “I can swear that I have no intention of harming either Faith or Night. I make that promise on behalf of all Watchers.”
Addie flinched. “You can’t do that.”
“I just did,” Jess said. She didn’t so much as glance over her shoulder, but spoke to her aunt without looking at her. “You’re bound by that promise. All of us are.”
“Why would you do that?” Addie asked.
“Because we need them. I’m not kidding about us all being in this together. Don’t you understand? It’s the forces of life against the forces of destruction. The ones who are on the side of the people and the ones on the side of fire and death. The games you played before are over. Which side are you on?”
Addie’s head rocked back as if she’d been slapped. She breathed in quick and shallow gasps. “How can you ask me that? How can you not already know?”
Jess’s face softened a little. She turned her body so she could see her aunt’s face, finally. “You have to prove it. Not to me, but to them.”
“I’ve never had to answer to anyone else before,” Addie said.
“You do now,” Jess said. “I do, too.”
Jess was right. What she asked her aunt to do was more than reasonable, and more than Addie deserved, a far cry from revenge or even justice. As long as Addie toed the line, I could live with that.
I meet Jess’s gaze. “What do you want from me?”
She studied my face the way she had at the crack of dawn, this time more sure of herself and, it seemed, more sure of me. “The Angel of Death is the one angel we can’t see coming. We can’t track him. But we know where he is now. I need you to let us mark you so that we don’t lose him again.”
Sunday set her hands on her hips. “And so you can track Night.”
Jess shook her head. “I don’t intend to use it against her.”
“But it could be, by someone else,” Sunday said.
“It’s possible,” Jess said.
To claim anything otherwise would be a lie.
I trusted Jess, but I didn’t trust Addie and I felt the same about the other Watchers in the world, the ones I didn’t know yet but surely would meet. I’d have to watch my back, but that was no different than any day since I’d left the Order, and with what I planned to do next, the Watchers were the least of my problems. Besides, it wasn’t an unreasonable request, not with what was coming.
“All right,” I said.
Jess let go a breath she’d been holding. “Come back to the house with us. We’ll do it there.”
Red’s gravelly voice rose behi
nd me. “No. You do it here and now or not at all. I’ll be watching.”
Sunday grinned at him. “Keeping ’em honest? I like that.”
It turned out the only thing required was for Jess to touch a finger to my heart. I felt a warmth that lingered there, but no other side effects. A look into Red’s green eyes told me that the deed had been done properly, without any add-ons or caveats.
As soon as he gave the nod, Jess threw her arms around me. The gesture took me by surprise. But then, Jess had been as up front with me as she could be. She hadn’t wanted me to be a monster. She hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt. She smelled of chiles and chicken and tomatillos—of her aunt’s cooking—and underneath that, of patchouli incense.
She whispered in my ear, “Thank you.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said. Just because the world had changed—and we had changed—did not mean that her gym teacher with exceptional intuition would let her slack off.
“It’s already tomorrow, and I’m so done,” she said. “How about the day after?”
“Just this once.” I patted her on the back.
She broke away and headed for the door.
Addie stepped in front of me, so close we stood nose to nose. “I don’t understand how you did what you did, but I think I might understand why,” she said.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“I’ve made mistakes, though I’m not sure I’d have done anything differently,” she said. “But that was then, and now I’m seeing there’s more to you than what I thought.”
“Does that have anything to do with realizing you’d become a killer’s target? How did it feel to suddenly have the shoe on the other foot?”
“Like hell,” she said.
“That must hurt to admit,” I said.
She shook her head. “You have no idea.”
She walked away. I watched her go. She and I needed to have some serious conversations, but they could wait a little while.
Sunday tilted her head to follow Addie’s progress up the stairs and around the corner. She kept her attention focused in that direction until the door opened and closed, the chime ringing to announce the Watchers’ departure.
“I don’t like them,” she said.
Who could blame her? “Jess is all right.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You going to tell me the story of what happened between you and the Angel? I was supposed to kill him, remember? I can’t believe you beat me to the punch.”
“He’s not dead.”
“But he’s killable?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
She pushed again. “Tell me.”
I pressed a palm to my brow, brushing my hair away from my face. “Over whiskey. And fried food.”
“Like old times,” she said.
Not entirely. Looking into her eyes, it was easy to admit how much I’d missed her, and easy to admit how different we were. Too different. But we understood each other in ways that no one else ever would. I let all of that show on my face, and saw the same feelings reflected on hers.
“Who hit you?” I asked.
She glanced at Faith. “Same as hit the Watcher.”
“No,” Faith said. “Well. Yes. The Angel did it.”
Now that the tension had ebbed, I noticed Faith’s knuckles were bloody. She’d have bruises, too.
“The Angel has a great left hook,” Sunday said. “Sorry I left the house without you, Night. I meant to trade myself to the Order operative in exchange for the others, like I said. Unfortunately, Faith had the same idea. She got possessed before I could say boo, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”
“Look how that turned out,” I said.
She shrugged. “Win some.”
If we’d lost? I didn’t want to think about it, not with the war still to come. Not in the calm before the storm.
Chapter 12
THE CITY AWAKENED in the hour before dawn. The November chill bit through the black fleece of my hoodie, and a wicked wind gusted from the west, spiraling the fine drops of mist in the air. The traffic light at the corner flipped from red to green, the hum of engines and the slick of tires on wet concrete too loud for a woman with a whiskey- and French-fry hangover.
Water dripped from the overhang in front of the gym, splashing onto my head and rolling down the back of my neck. I shivered from the base of my spine to my crown, and couldn’t help but grin. I listened and scanned the neighborhood for anything out of the ordinary. The only thing that resembled that description was Sunday, walking over from the Stump Town Diner, juggling three cups of coffee.
She wore my denim jacket buttoned over a plum sweater that hugged her every curve and brought out the dark blue of her eyes. She’d braided her blond hair wet. A riot of curls escaped to frame her face. I breathed in her amber and vanilla perfume.
She handed me a cup, wrapping my fingers around it. “Drink of the gods.”
I sipped, steam rising to dampen my lashes. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“He coming?” she asked.
She meant Red. He’d gone out drinking with us and had gone home to shower and change, same as we had. “Any minute.”
Twenty yards to the right, around the corner at the neighborhood stop-n-shop on Burnside, a car door slammed. To our left, the street curved and forked, the parallel-parked cars huddled at the curbs. Out of the dark, the Orange Warrior materialized in his neon-orange rain suit, bike tires splashing through the puddled light of the street lamps.
He caught sight of me and flashed the peace sign and called out. “Hey! TGIF!”
I gave him a thumbs-up. Then he whizzed past, the headlamp on the front of his helmet beaming, the red light on the back of his bike blinking, as always, fast enough to give somebody a seizure. His golden halo lit him up like a sunrise.
“Friend of yours?” Sunday asked.
“A normal,” I said. “I see him every day.”
Only that wouldn’t happen anymore because there was no way I could continue to work at the gym. I’d turned the situation over in my mind a thousand times in the last few hours, and I couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t involve the potential for harm to come to a lot of innocent people.
Sunday leaned into me. “Okay if I stick around town?”
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “You didn’t ask last time.”
“I’m not really asking this time. Just trying to be polite. You need me.”
I couldn’t dispute that, nor was I stupid enough to try. The main topic of conversation last night, once we’d gotten through the Angel of Death story, was the Order. They’d sent two operatives. They’d send more. They’d keep coming until they were satisfied that Faith and Sunday and I were dead. In the past, Faith and I would’ve run. In terms of immediate self-preservation, running made the most sense. Get out of sight, stay low, hide, stay out of danger.
We’d tried that. It hadn’t worked.
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, so I figured trying something different was called for.
The operatives the Order sent had been part of the rebellion within the Order. I could confirm that for the one who’d tried to hit us at the house, and Corey could do the same for the one who’d gone up against the Angel of Death—his boss—and come up short. What were the odds that both operatives would fit that bill? What did that mean for the other operatives in the Order’s grasp?
I aimed to find out. I aimed to recruit as many of them as I could to fight in the coming war for humanity’s survival. For the survival of this world and all the others.
It would be tricky, though, considering the high risk of being murdered, not just for me but for Faith and the others. We’d talked about it, and everyone had agreed they preferred to face what was coming head-on. I didn’t think they understood what that meant yet, but they would. It scared the crap out of me, just like the idea of saving the world.
&
nbsp; I’d never been that girl—or that woman. But I was now. I’d chosen.
Just as complicated was how to leverage the one advantage I had: the presence of the Angel inside me. He was the magical head of the Order. What would happen if the higher-ups didn’t hear from him? What would happen if I so much as spoke to him through the door I’d locked him behind?
There were few people in the world I trusted, few I called family. Sunday was one of those people. If at heart she was the monster I’d turned away from? She hadn’t crossed any lines she couldn’t come back from, not yet.
“I need you,” I said. “You’re right.”
She sipped her coffee. “Now that we agree on that, I’ll leave you to deal with Red.”
I raised a brow. “I need to deal with him?”
“He doesn’t seem as excited about our plans as we do.” She handed me the third coffee, meant for Red.
I took it from her. “He won’t back out.”
“Didn’t say he would,” she said. “See you?”
I leaned into her. “Count on it.”
She planted a kiss on the top of my head. Then she turned on her heel and walked back toward the diner, slipping past it, vanishing into the dark.
Footfalls sounded to my left—the whisper of sneakers undone by the crunch of fallen leaves. I glanced in Red’s direction. He wore jeans that fit him like a glove and a black hoodie over a white tee. His silver hair was messy and wet at the ends, and he smelled of soap and shampoo. He carried a grease-stained, brown paper sack in one hand.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Breakfast,” he said.
I raised a brow.
“Tacos,” he said. “Egg, sausage, and potato with jalapeños.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “My hero.”
“At your service.” He smiled at me, the corners of his mouth curving into his mustache. His southeast Texas drawl was like music to my ears. “One of those for me?”
Night Awakens: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 1) Page 16
