Crescendo h-2

by Becca Fitzpatrick

  Promise you’ll remember.

  Tears dripped down my cheeks. I promise, I thought back, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

  An angel of death helped me come here to see you. She’s holding time still for us, Nora. She’s helping me speak to your mind. There’s something important I need to tell you, but I don’t have much time. I have to go back soon, and I need you to listen carefully.

  “No,” I choked, my voice coming out strangled. “I’m going with you. Don’t leave me here. I’m going with you! You can’t leave me again!”

  I can’t stay, baby. I belong somewhere else now.

  “Please don’t go,” I sobbed, clutching my fists against my chest as if I could stop my heart from swelling. A certain desperate panic seized me when I thought of him leaving again. My sheer sense of abandonment outweighed everything else. He was going to leave me here. In the fun house. In the dark, with no one to help me but Rixon. “Why are you leaving me all over again? I need you!”

  Touch Rixon’s scars. The truth is there.

  My dad’s face receded into the darkness. I reached out to stop him, but his face turned into a ribbon of fog at my touch. The silvery white threads dissolved into the darkness.

  “Nora?”

  I started at the sound of Rixon’s voice. “We have to hurry,” he said, as if no more than a ripple of time had passed. “We don’t want to meet up with Scott in the outer ring of the tunnels, where all the entrances feed.”

  My dad was gone. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I knew I’d seen him for the last time. The pain and loss was unbearable. At the moment when I needed him most, when I was heading into the tunnels, scared and lost, he’d left me to face this alone.

  “I can’t see where I’m going,” I gasped, swatting my eyes dry, struggling through the frustrating process of trying to focus my thoughts on one specific goal: getting to the tunnels and meeting Vee on the other side. “I need something to hold.”

  Rixon impatiently thrust the hem of his shirt out to me. “Hold the back of my shirt and follow me. Keep up. We haven’t got a lot of time.”

  I squeezed the worn cotton between my fingers, my heart beating stronger. Inches away was the bare skin of his back. My dad had told me to touch his scars; it would be so easy now. All I had to do was slide my hand …

  Succumb to the dark suction that would swallow me whole …

  I thought back to the times I’d touched Patch’s scars, and how I’d been briefly transported inside his memory. Without a shred of doubt, I knew touching Rixon’s scars would do the same thing.

  I didn’t want to go. I wanted to keep my feet under me, get to the tunnels, and get out of Delphic.

  But my dad had come back to tell me where to find the truth. Whatever I’d see in Rixon’s past, it had to be important. As much as it hurt to know my dad had left me here, I had to trust him. I had to trust he’d risked everything to tell me.

  I slid my hand up the back of Rixon’s shirt. I felt smooth skin … then a bumpy ridge of scar tissue. I splayed my hand against the scar, waiting to be ripped into a strange, foreign world.

  The street was quiet, dark. The houses framing both sides of it were derelict, ramshackle. Yards were small and fenced. Windows were boarded or barred. A heavy frost sank its teeth into my skin.

  Two loud explosions ruptured the silence. I swung to face the house across the street. Gunshots? I thought in a panic. I immediately searched through my pockets for my cell phone, meaning to call 911, when I remembered I was trapped in Rixon’s memory. Everything I was seeing had happened in the past. I couldn’t change anything now.

  The sound of running footsteps rang through the night, and I watched in shock as my dad let himself through the gate of the house across the street and disappeared around the side yard. Without waiting, I took off after him.

  “Dad!” I screamed, unable to help myself. “Don’t go back there!” He was wearing the same clothes he’d gone out in the night he’d been killed. I pushed through the gate and met him at the back corner of the house. Sobbing, I threw my arms around him. “We have to go back. We have to get out of here. Something horrible is going to happen.”

  My dad walked right through my arms, crossing to a small stone wall that ran alongside the property. He inched down the wall in a crouch, eyes trained on the back door of the house. I leaned into the siding, bowed my head against my arms, and cried. I didn’t want to see this. Why had my dad told me to touch Rixon’s scars? I didn’t want this. Didn’t he know how much pain I’d already suffered?

  “Last chance.” The words were spoken from inside the house, drifting out through the open back door.

  “Go to hell.”

  Another explosion, and I slumped to my knees, pressing myself against the siding, willing the memory to end.

  “Where is she?” The question was asked so quietly, so calmly, I almost couldn’t hear it over my soft crying.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad move. He crept across the yard, moving toward the door. A gun was in his hand, and he raised it, taking aim. I ran at him, grabbing at his hands, trying to wrestle the gun away from him, trying to push him back into the shadows. But it was like moving a ghost—my hands passed right through him.

  My dad pulled the trigger. The shot cut open the night, ripping the silence in half. Again and again he fired. Even though no part of me wanted to, I faced the house, seeing the lean build of the young man my dad was shooting from behind. Just beyond him, another man sat slumped on the floor, his back propped up by the sofa. He was bleeding, and his expression was twisted in agony and fear.

  In a moment muddled with confusion, I realized it was Hank Millar.

  “Run!” Hank shouted at my dad. “Leave me behind! Run and save yourself!”

  My dad didn’t run. He held the gun level, shooting over and over, sending bullets flying at the open door, where the young man in a blue ball cap seemed impervious to them. And then, very slowly, he turned to face my dad.

  CHAPTER 24

  RIXON GRABBED MY WRIST, GIVING IT A FIRM squeeze. “Careful whose business you go sticking your nose in.” His jaw was set in anger, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Maybe that’s the way it is with Patch, but nobody touches my scars.” He arched his eyebrows meaningfully.

  My stomach was cinched with a knot so tight I almost doubled over. “I saw my dad die,” I blurted, stricken with horror.

  “Did you see the killer?” Rixon asked, shaking my wrist to pull me all the way back to the present.

  “I saw Patch from behind,” I gasped. “He was wearing his ball cap.”

  He nodded, as if accepting that what I’d seen couldn’t be undone. “He didn’t want to keep the truth from you, but he knew that if he told you, he’d lose you. It happened before he knew you.”

  “I don’t care when it happened,” I said, my voice shrill and shaking. “He needs to be brought to justice.”

  “You can’t bring him to justice. He’s Patch. If you report him, do you really think he’s going to let the cops haul him off?”

  No, I didn’t. The police meant nothing to Patch. Only the archangels could stop him. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. There were only three people in the memory. My dad, Patch, and Hank Millar. The three of them saw what happened. Then how am I seeing this in your memory?”

  Rixon didn’t say anything, but the lines around his mouth tightened.

  A horrible new thought settled over me. All certainty in regard to my dad’s killer evaporated. I’d seen the killer from the back and assumed it was Patch because of the ball cap. But the longer I dwelled on the memory, the more I was sure the killer was too lanky to be Patch, the cut of his shoulders too angular.

  In fact, the killer looked a lot like …

  “You killed him,” I whispered. “It was you. You were wearing Patch’s hat.” The shock of the moment was quickly being eaten up by abhorrence and ice-cold fear. “You killed my dad.”

  Any trace of kindness or
sympathy vanished from Rixon’s eyes. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “You were wearing Patch’s hat that night. You borrowed it, didn’t you? You couldn’t kill my dad without assuming another identity. You couldn’t do it unless you removed yourself from the situation,” I said, drawing on everything I remembered from the psychology unit in my freshman health class. “No. Wait. That’s not it. You pretended to be Patch because you wish you were him. You’re jealous of him. That’s it, isn’t it? You’d rather be him—”

  Rixon gripped my cheekbones, forcing me to stop. “Shut up.”

  I recoiled, my jaw aching where he’d squeezed me. I wanted to fling myself at him, hitting him with everything I had, but knew I needed to stay calm. I needed to find out what I could. I was beginning to think Rixon hadn’t brought me into the tunnels to help me escape. Worse, I was beginning to think he had no intention of ever taking me back up.

  “Jealous of him?” he said cruelly. “Sure I’m jealous. He isn’t the one on the fast track to hell. We were in this together, and now he’s gone and gotten himself his wings back.” His eyes raked over me in disgust. “Because of you.”

  I shook my head, not buying it. “You killed my dad before you even knew who I was.”

  He laughed, but it lacked humor. “I knew you were out there somewhere, and I was looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  Rixon slipped the gun out from under his shirt and used it to motion deeper into the fun house. “Keep walking.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “The police are on their way.”

  “Hang the police,” Rixon said. “I’ll be finished before they get here.”

  Finished?

  Stay calm, I told myself. Stall. “You’re going to kill me now that I know the truth? Now that I know you killed my dad?”

  “Harrison Grey wasn’t your dad.”

  I opened my mouth, but the argument I expected to come flying out didn’t. The one image splayed across the forefront of my mind was of Marcie standing in her front yard, telling me Hank Millar could be my father. I felt my stomach heave. Did this mean Marcie was telling the truth? For sixteen years I’d been kept in the dark about the truth behind my family? I wondered if my dad had known—my real dad. Harrison Grey. The man who’d raised and loved me. Not my biological father, who’d abandoned me. Not Hank Millar, who could go to hell for all I cared.

  “Your dad is a Nephil named Barnabas,” Rixon said. “More recently, he goes by Hank Millar.”

  No.

  I stepped sideways, dizzy with the truth. The dream. Patch’s dream. It was a real memory. He hadn’t been lying. Barnabas— Hank Millar—was Nephilim.

  And he was my father.

  My world threatened to crash down around me, but I forced myself to stay in the moment a little longer. In the far back of my mind, I shook my memory, frantically trying to remember where I’d heard the name Barnabas before. I couldn’t place it, but I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. It was too unusual to forget. Barnabas, Barnabas, Barnabas …

  I grappled to fit two loose ends together. Why was Rixon telling me this? Why did he know about my biological father? Why did he care? And then it hit me. Once, when I’d touched Patch’s scars and gone into his memory, I’d heard him talk about his Nephil vassal, Chauncey Langeais. He’d also talked about Rixon’s vassal, Barnabas….

  “No,” I whispered, the word slipping out.

  “Aye.”

  I desperately wanted to run, but my legs were wooden, stiff as posts.

  “When Hank got your mum pregnant, he’d heard enough rumors about the Book of Enoch to worry that I’d come looking for the baby, especially if it was a girl. So he did the only thing he could. He hid her. You. When Hank told his mate Harrison Grey that your mum was in trouble, he agreed to marry her and pretend you were his.”

  No, no, no. “But I’m descended from Chauncey. On my father’s side. On Harrison Grey’s side. I have a mark on my wrist that proves it.”

  “Aye, you do. Many centuries ago, Chauncey entertained a naive farm girl. She had a son. Nobody thought anything particular about the boy, or his sons, or their sons, and so on through the ages, until one of the sons slept with a woman outside of wedlock. He injected the noble Nephilim blood of his ancestor, the duke of Langeais, into another line. The line that eventually produced Barnabas, or Hank, as he seems to prefer recently.” Rixon gestured impatiently for me to put two and two together. I already had.

  “You’re saying both Harrison and Hank have Chauncey’s Nephilim blood,” I said. And Hank, a purebred first-generation Nephil, was immortal, while my own dad’s Nephilim blood, diluted over centuries just like mine, was not. Hank, a man I hardly knew and respected even less, could live forever.

  While my dad was gone forever.

  “I am, love.”

  “Don’t call me love.”

  “You’d prefer Angel?”

  He was making fun of me. Toying with me, because he had me right where he wanted. I’d been through this once before, with Patch, and I knew what was coming. Hank Millar was my biological father and Rixon’s Nephil vassal. Rixon was going to sacrifice me to kill Hank Millar and get a human body.

  “Do I get any last-minute answers?” I asked, my tone edging toward challenging, in spite of my fear.

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  “I thought only first-generation purebred Nephilim could swear fealty. In order for Hank to be first-generation, he’d have to have a human and a fallen angel parent. But his father wasn’t a fallen angel. He was one of Chauncey’s male descendants.”

  “You’re overlooking the fact that men can have affairs with female fallen angels.”

  I shook my head. “Fallen angels don’t have human bodies. Females can’t give birth. Patch told me.”

  “But a female fallen angel, possessing a female human body during Cheshvan, can produce a baby. The human may give birth to the baby long after Cheshvan, but the baby is tainted. It was conceived by a fallen angel.”

  “That’s revolting.”

  He smiled faintly. “I agree.”

  “Out of morbid curiosity, when you sacrifice me, does your body just become human, or do you possess another human body for good?”

  “I become human.” His mouth curved slightly. “So if you come back to haunt me from the grave, just know you’ll be looking for my same handsome mug.”

  “Patch could show up any minute now and stop you,” I said, trying to be strong, but unable to stop the unbearable shaking in every limb of my body.

  His eyes laughed at me. “I had my work cut out, but I’m confident I drove the wedge between the two of you about as deep as it could go. You got the ball rolling by breaking up with him—I couldn’t have planned it better myself. Then there was the constant fighting, your jealousy over Marcie, and Patch’s card—which I drugged to toss in just one more seed of distrust. When I stole the ring from Barnabas and had it delivered to you at the bakery, I had no doubt Patch was the last person you’d run to. Swallow your pride and ask for his help? When you thought he was hooked up with Marcie? Not a chance. You played right into my hands when you asked me if he was the Black Hand. I made the evidence against him overwhelming when I answered that yes, he was. Then I took advantage of the turn in our conversation to mention the address of one of Barnabas’s Nephilim safe houses as Patch’s, knowing full well you’d go snooping around and probably find memorabilia from the Black Hand. I canceled the movie plans last night, not Patch. I didn’t want to be stuck inside a movie theater while you were all alone in the apartment. I needed to follow you. I planted the dynamite once you were inside, hoping to sacrifice you, but you got away.”

  “I’m touched, Rixon. A bomb. How elaborate. Why didn’t you keep things simple and just march inside my bedroom one night and put a bullet between my eyes?”

  He spread his hands in front of him. “This is a big moment for me, Nora. Can you blame me
for wanting a little flourish? I tried posing as Harrison’s ghost to lure you close, thinking how fantastic it would be to send you to the grave thinking your own father had killed you, but you didn’t trust me. You kept running away.” He frowned a little.

  “You’re a psychopath.”

  “I prefer creative.”

  “What else was a lie? At the beach, did you tell me Patch was still my guardian angel—”

  “To lull you into a false sense of security? Yes.”

  “And the blood oath?”

  “A spur-of-the-moment lie. Just to keep things interesting.”

  “So basically you’re telling me nothing you’ve ever said to me was true.”

  “Except the part about sacrificing you. I was dead serious about that. Enough talking. Let’s get on with this.” Using the gun, he shoved me deeper into the fun house. The rough prod tipped me off balance, and I stepped sideways to catch my footing, landing on a section of floor that began undulating up and down. I felt Rixon grab for my wrist to steady me, only something went wrong. His hand slipped down over mine. I heard the soft thud of his body landing. The sound seemed to come from directly below. A thought brushed my mind—that he’d fallen down one of the many trapdoors rumored to be scattered throughout the fun house—but I didn’t stay around long enough to see if I’d guessed right.

  I bolted back the way we’d come, searching for the clown head. A figure sprang out in front of me, a light flashing overhead to illuminate a blood-soaked ax wedged in a bearded pirate’s head. He leered at me a moment before his eyes rolled back in his head and the light faded.

  I drew several sharp breaths, telling myself it was pretend, but unable to steady myself as the floor quaked and shifted under my shoes. I went down on my knees, crawling over the grime and grit pressing into my palms, trying to calm my head, which seemed to tilt with the floors. I crawled for several feet, not wanting to stop moving long enough to let Rixon find a way out of the trapdoor.