A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series)

by Lisa M Basso

  I yanked Ray off me, pressing down on her shoulders to secure her feet to the floor. “Ray, stop, you have to stop. You’re attracting attention—”

  She lifted her knee into my gut and slammed her entire body into the bone cage, rattling and snapping more of the femurs.

  I covered her mouth with my hand. She bit it and screamed louder, continuing to thrash, hurting herself to get around me. Cuts and bruises formed on her face, her hands.

  I shoved her hard into the back wall of the cage and pinned her there with my body. Her screams only got fiercer.

  There was no other choice. I had to shut her up.

  It was easier than I thought it would be after my feeding frenzy to call to that part of myself again. I blinked, and shades of black and white lightened the elevator. I stared into Ray’s eyes, grabbed her shoulders, and commanded her to …

  I blinked again, and she was quiet. Problem was I didn’t know what I’d said. It could have been anything. The last time I’d used my influence on her, Azriel found her in her dream and nearly killed her.

  She remained anchored on her feet. Her eyes were blank. Not a sound escaped her except for her quiet breath. She was a slate wiped clean by the darkness inside me. My cursed heart had put her under some kind of spell of which I might never know the consequences for.

  “Ray?” I whispered, giving her shoulders a soft shake.

  Nothing roused in her, not her body, and definitely not her eyes.

  Black eyes still improving my vision, I checked the demon. Tall, hunched forward into the ceiling. Muscular. Not the kind of creature you pissed off and lived to tell about it.

  I blinked the black away, returning my sight to normal. “I think I’ve just fucked up again,” I said to him conversationally. “If I help you with that wheel, would it get us to the surface faster?”

  The demon nodded his wide head once, a slow, purposeful motion.

  I watched Ray while I put my hands opposite his on the wheel and focused my attention on nothing but getting us up as fast as we could.

  Sweat poured down my face for the next six circles. The demon stopped once we cleared the first circle. It took me a while to catch on that we were no longer moving, the crank spinning with no catches. The demon unlatched the gate and shoved it open.

  “Let’s go,” I told Ray, grabbing her hand.

  She remained in place. Not even blinking.

  What the hell had I done to her?

  “We have to go.”

  Still not so much as a hint of life in her face.

  I turned to the demon, who really could have been worse—though I didn’t dare leave Ray alone with him. “Tell me you know how to get her out of here in once piece.”

  The creature shoved Ray out of the elevator. She landed on her face. “That is more than I owe you, Fallen.” I lunged for her while he closed the gate and began squeaking down the track.

  I pulled Ray up, but she kept falling, unable to hold herself up. Finally, I left her on the ground.

  I couldn’t just sit here worrying about what irreversible curse I’d put on her. Right now, I had to get her out.

  This level was empty, except for the gateway made up entirely of skulls—this place sure had a thing about human bones. No Fallen or other demons waited for us. News of our escape must not have reached up the circles yet. Our head start was our only advantage.

  I had none of Lucien’s special powers, and there was no way I’d use my influence on Ray again to try and make her do it. With my luck she’d probably blow herself up in the process.

  That left only one option. A risky one.

  With one more glance at a very vacant Rayna, I shouted to the ceiling, “I command you open the portal. For it, I have a sacrifice.” I sucked in a few deep breaths, preparing myself, hoping my adrenaline would kick in with the extra strength I needed.

  Reaching my right hand around my left shoulder, I grabbed the bend of my left wing in a vice grip, growled, and yanked for everything I was worth. I kept my back to Ray, hoping the pain on my face wouldn’t somehow penetrate her zen and horrify her. As I pulled, feathers flew, and I had to readjust my grip and try again. Flesh tore, very nearly bringing me to my knees. My fingers were slick with either sweat or blood. I didn’t bother to check. I tightened my grip and pulled again, freeing my body of one of its wings.

  When the dead, discarded wing flopped to the ground, so did I. My nerves hummed with pain, every cell screaming for me to stop, but I had one more to go.

  “This had better work.”

  I grunted, reached around for the other wing, and pulled again. This time it took five tries before it even began pulling away from my skin, which was already raw from losing the other side. Another six tries and I was free of my wings, and more lightheaded than I’d ever been before.

  And nothing happened.

  Beside me, the wings lay dead. As useless as the last time I’d tried to use them to fly. Useless or not they had still been a part of me. Wings, white or black, had always been a part of who I was. Now they were gone.

  I screamed, “I sacrifice these wings to open the portal to Earth!” Collapsing on my hands, I beat my head against the wall that led to the ceiling. “Open the hell up!”

  The ground began to shake. Earth shifted above us.

  Abandoning my wings, I grabbed Ray’s hand and tugged her to her feet. Elation should have showed on her face. Instead, she was empty. Soulless.

  I carried her to the wall, stepped onto it, and stumbled us right out of Hell.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rayna

  The fire still burned my flesh. Each time the green demon touched me with the torch, my skin shed off, then grew back. My blisters disappeared. Flesh regrew. And it would stick me again in my gut, just as Azriel had. It had become impossible to keep from screaming.

  Occasionally he would dunk me in a cold vat of ice water. The relief in my bones faded quickly when I realized he had sealed the top of the tank. The water running down the outside streaked the glass. I pushed through the icicles accumulating at the top. I beat my fists against the lid, kicked up, searching for a single breath. Running out of air, struggling, drowning, only to be reanimated again. To face the same fate.

  When the demon pulled me from the drink, he started with the fire pokers again.

  There was no end to his ruthlessness. No break for me. No hope for help.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kade

  Rayna had almost lucid moments where I swore she was coming around. I tried talking to her, reasoning with her, everything I could think of to get her back. In those short moments, hope welled inside me and I would start to believe maybe she wasn’t lost. Then she would start screaming.

  It was like I’d left her mind in Hell when I brought her body to Earth. After trying to hide her for a week, I knew there was nothing else I could do for her. With her constant screaming, there was nowhere I could take her to keep her safe. Either the Fallen would catch wind of where we were, or the human authorities would step in.

  I had no other choice but to seek out the one person I could trust with Ray’s life. The one person I trusted her with both completely and not at all. Camael.

  I couldn’t very well stroll into San Francisco with Ray in my arms, especially with the rising tension in San Francisco when we left. He might not even be on Earth anymore.

  But if he was here, I had a good idea where he’d be.

  I pushed Ray’s hair back from her face. The yellow tint from the small tent we’d hunkered down in for the night discolored her skin in an awful way. “Do you remember Cam?”

  She blinked, eventually, out of necessity, but nothing in her face changed.

  “He was a friend of yours. More than a friend at one point. Any of that ring a bell? No, of course not.”

  At least she was quiet.

  “Another set of lifetimes ago, he and I had come across each other. As a Warrior with no demons left to vanquish, I’d been on my own and did wha
t I wanted, to a point. I was still an angel then.”

  Two more slow blinks. No recognition. As stupid as it was, I swore somewhere inside she could hear me, like how doctors said coma patients could sometimes hear when their loved ones talked to them.

  “Cam was on a mission. Protecting some Middle Eastern foreign dignitary that had traveled to rural France. He was my brother at the time. Imagine that, he and I not trying to kill each other.”

  If it was possible, her face looked more blank. I was losing her.

  “Stay with me. You hear me, Ray, it’s about to get good. Cam and I spent the night in a barn, at the base of the Alps. Both of us spouting philosophical nonsense. Later he told me about this place, in the new world, that reminded him of the beauty of the Alps. It was surrounded by mountains, an area few men had been to. A place where he said he could see himself happy. That place was the Colorado Mountains.”

  I forced a smile, my fingertips brushing her cheek. “How do you feel about a road trip?”

  The glazed-over look to her eyes dissipated. She blinked again. Her pupils dilated, contracting, taking notice of her surroundings. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. She wriggled in her sleeping bag. Her lips parted. I held my breath. She took a breath, and screamed.

  ***

  A lonely cabin that looked to have been standing for centuries was nestled in a hollowed-out clearing in the trees, butted up to the base of the Colorado Mountains. It was a familiar scene.

  Camael stood and wiped his forehead with the back of a bandana tied to his wrist.

  “To say this is a surprise is an understatement.” The plow in his hand dug into the ground as he leaned his arm over the handle.

  “I need your help.” The words burned coming up.

  Cam watched us, then raced to Ray, dangling in my arms, and took her from me before the handle of the plow reached the ground. “What happened?”

  I followed him into the depilated cabin. “Haven’t you heard yet?” It had been over a week since our escape; this news should have been all over angel radar.

  “I’m not exactly in the loop anymore.” He laid her down on the twin bed jammed into the corner.

  “We were in Hell. I got her out. But I got the feeling not all of her made it.”

  Cam spared me a glance. “Hell. That’s why we couldn’t find her.”

  “Help her.” I gathered a handful of my jeans in my fist. Released. Repeated. Then, because I couldn’t stand the way I knew he was looking at her, I walked outside.

  The clean country air would be good for her. Cam would help her get back to normal—as normal as she ever was. Then she’d forget about what we might have had and drive Cam as crazy as she’d driven me.

  Which was good. All of it was great. She’d be safe and out of my life. That was all I’d ever wanted. It was what brought me to her in the first place. To make sure Kay’s daughter—her entire family—wasn’t crumbling. Kay would never have wanted that.

  So then why did I feel so shitty?

  Not long after I’d worn a line in the dirt from pacing, Cam rounded the side of the cabin.

  I was making a mistake. All it took was one look in Cam’s eyes to see I’d just gift-wrapped everything he’d ever wanted. I had to get out of here.

  “I’m trusting you with her,” I called across the distance.

  Cam nodded his agreement as he approached.

  “If you screw her, in any way, I’ll come back here and rip your head off with my bare hands.”

  He didn’t look surprised.

  Now was my chance. She would be safe here. My guilt could be lifted.

  My legs refused to move. The thought of her alone in that cabin, waking up to Cam and all his angelness goaded me to stay.

  “Tell me you understand,” I barked to stretch out the conversation.

  “I have been threatened before. I get the gist.”

  I turned to avoid knocking my fist into his chin. “Exile doesn’t agree with you,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s turned you into even more of dick.”

  “I’ll protect her as if she were still under my charge. Does that ease your worries?”

  It didn’t. Not one bit. “It’ll have to do.”

  “What really happened?”

  “It’s a story that would span years.”

  The seven or eight years that had passed in Hell had amounted to less than ten months up here. Coming to grips with that was hard—no telling how Ray would react once she was better.

  “She doesn’t have time for it,” I said. “Just fix her.”

  Dirt floated up from the lawn chair beside me when Farmer Cam lowered himself into it.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  My fists clenched by my sides.

  “I don’t need to know it all. I don’t want to know it all, just what happened to her. Why you think she’s … the way she is.”

  Blank. Cold. A stone with air in her lungs and blood pumping through her veins.

  “I wouldn’t leave her with you if I thought there was anything else I could do for her. If there was any other way.”

  “I understand. You can trust me.”

  “No, I can’t, but she can. She would, if she were here.”

  He cast a sidelong glance at me. “You’ve changed.”

  His words were simple. They shouldn’t have almost brought me to my knees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I noticed it when we met at Muir Woods. The way you acted when Ray was close to you, when she was close to me. The way you talked to her. Now it’s even clearer.”

  I shook my head, not understanding why.

  “Don’t be ashamed. You’ve made the transition no other Fallen has. It’s unprecedented.”

  I looked past the house toward a thicket of trees. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but that kind of thing tends to happen around Ray, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  Snapping myself out of a pointless memory, I said, “Then stop analyzing me and go bring her back to life.”

  “It won’t be easy. I’m afraid I’ll have to wipe her entire memory, then help her piece it back together. It’s a big job and could take a long time. Have you seen any of the news since you’ve been back?”

  “None of that matters.”

  Cam pushed out of his chair. “Tell me you’re joking. The human race is running out of time. You have to have seen the chaos—”

  “Nothing takes priority over Ray. You’re fixing her, not becoming her moral compass.”

  “Not even if the world as we know it crumbles around us?”

  I whirled on him, voice low. “The world can burn as far as I’m concerned. She doesn’t need to know what’s happening out there. All she needs to worry about is getting better.”

  I wanted Ray to tuck in close beside me, to feel her little angel breaths on my chest, and whisper that everything would be all right, that we would be fine, that we’d make it.

  “She has a job to do. She was created to—”

  “She was made to kill your kind. You really want her out there blasting angels away?”

  “She hasn’t killed anyone.”

  I surveyed his relaxed stance, used my imagination to guess where his wings would be from end to end, trying to curb the jealousy, the reminder that I no longer had what he would no doubt give up easily. “No angels, you mean. Not yet. But we can only hope.”

  Cam frowned. “She has a responsibility. At the very least she should be given the information and allowed to make her own choice.”

  “She hears none of it,” I snarled. “If the radio so much as announces the news while she’s here and you do nothing to stop it, I’ll do worse than end you. I’ll march you into Hell myself and hand-deliver you to Lucifer.”

  Inside the cabin, Rayna’s scream ripped through the trees, scattering birds from their nests. The sound plunged my cursed heart into my gut. I dropped into the free chair.

  “You’re under a lot of stress. Why not stay, a
t least the night? It’ll be getting dark soon. Night comes fast in the mountains.”

  I pushed my hair back and shook my head. “Can’t. I have to get back on the road. Lure them away.”

  “Lead them to you? Do you really think that’s wise? And what if you’re caught? You might not be as good as you think you are.”

  “I know how to fall on a sword, Cam.”

  “That’s your grand solution?”

  “I’ll do what I have to in order to keep her safe.” I found my footing and stood. “No matter what you think, this is the right decision.”

  “For you, maybe. Not for her. Rayna would want to help.”

  My feet refused to move. Again, I knew I was making a mistake. Cam wanted Ray in one piece again so she could stop whatever Hell the Fallen were creating here on Earth. Ray would trust him. He could get into her head in a way I couldn’t, help straighten her out.

  Time apart would be good for Ray and me. The time we’d spent on the run from Hell, the Fallen, and whoever else might want to hunt her down had been tough. Her current condition made it impossible to stay within a mile of another human soul, and I had been starving, going through feeding withdrawals. All the while she sat beside me, her heart beating and her life force calling to me. No way could I have lasted that way much longer.

  Without her, I would be free. Whether I’d be feeding or abstaining, that was a decision my journey would make for me. I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her. I could focus on being singular again. Doing what I wanted. Whatever I wanted.

  For some reason, the idea left me hollow.

  Another scream ripped through the forest. My name came on that back of that scream. Once. I had to have imagined it. Then twice. By the third time I was already halfway to the cabin.

  “Ray, I’m here! I’m here.” I dropped to my knees and cradled her face in my hands.

  Recognition sparked in her eyes.

  “Kade.” A breathless whisper.

  “Oh thank God,” I said, pulling her up into a hug.