A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series)

by Lisa M Basso

A huge boom shook the ground. It reminded me of the mine thingy going off at the apartment building.

  All at once, the feet of the Fallen left the ground, stirring up dust and ash. I held my breath, resisting the urge to cough. When it could no longer be stopped, I buried my face in the crook of my arm and closed my eyes. A second boom came. I dragged myself to the broken window and surveyed the sky. No Fallen. Unless one was perched on a roof somewhere. With the third boom, I threw caution to the wind and crawled out of the car toward the nearest building.

  The front of what had once been a bank had been blown wide open, weeks ago from the sight of it. On my hands and knees I weaved through the rubble and up a set of crumbling stairs. There I took shelter in a dark hallway. I breathed and coughed and listened. Seven more booms fired in the distance before the city fell silent.

  The phone in my back pocket vibrated. I could have jumped out of my skin. I answered the call without thinking. When I opened my mouth to say speak, I found my voice had fled.

  “Ray?” Hearing Kade’s voice made my eyes flutter closed.

  “Yeah.” I whispered back, even quieter than him.

  “Where are you?”

  “Some blown up bank across the street from where I was. Second-floor hallway.”

  “Great. I’ll be right there.”

  I rushed to say something before he hung up, to hear his voice for even one more second. “Kade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful. There were a lot of explosions out there.”

  “Yeah, a tank will do that.”

  “A tank? Oh, never mind, just get here.”

  “Done. See you soon.”

  I waited for Kade, but expected the worst, just like he’d taught me. I couldn’t bear to risk looking at my leg. The pain had intensified since I moved into the bank, throbbing and burning. I tried to shield myself from the pain without losing consciousness by retreating to my happy place. A compromise between the two could not be met. Instead, I focused on my surroundings, hiding the knife he and Cam gave me the day we embarked for the city up my sleeve.

  I kept the handle in my hand when the footsteps came. They closed in on the second floor then kept going. I had told Kade exactly where I was, so why did the footsteps continue up to the third floor?

  Because it wasn’t Kade.

  The flap of wings stirred up debris in the small portion of hallway I could see connected to the landing.

  I waited, watched, but no one else came.

  I thought about calling Kade to warn him, but he knew enough to be on alert. A call from me could throw him off enough to get caught. I wouldn’t risk that.

  After what felt like hours, another set of footsteps sounded, these softer than the last. I held my breath, fingers curled tightly around the base of the knife. The silhouette that turned the corner lacked wings. A flashlight clicked on.

  “How are you?” Kade asked, voice soft, every inch of him covered in a lighter dust than I’d packed my leg with.

  “Someone with wings came by, but they blew past. I think we’re good.”

  “The rest of them might be busy picking up the pieces for a while. I don’t think they’ll bother us here. I made sure to blast the ones that had been in this area. They have bigger problems now. Some angels showed up. They were so busy fighting they didn’t notice me slip away.”

  “How did you get hold of a tank?”

  “Luck. Pure stinking—” He shone the flashlight on my leg.

  I followed the beam of light down to my thigh. My pants were still wet with blood, but my skin beneath was pink and whole. The pain must have been the start of the healing.

  I swallowed and climbed to my feet.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  “I must still have some of Lucien’s essence in me,” I said, hoping to brush off his concern, but not brave enough to meet his eyes.

  “He didn’t transfer that much into you that night in the graveyard. I won’t pretend to know how this crap works, but that wound … you should be bleeding out right now.” His gaze dipped low as if realizing I could—should—be on my way to the grave.

  Confessing how much of Lucien’s essence I had in me would only freak Kade out more. It would also intensify the hatred I felt for myself at not being rid of him completely. That was the worst part, knowing Lucien wasn’t completely dead because part of him still lived inside me. “I … don’t know how it works.”

  “Bullshit. What’s there not to know, Ray? You healed from that, and it didn’t surprise you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest awkwardly so I didn’t stab myself with the knife in my hand. “Just drop it.”

  “You’re lucky I need you on your feet, otherwise I would have knocked you out by now and carried you to the angels.”

  He was right; we should have been focused on the angels, on the endgame. But Kade was too good at pushing my buttons. And I wasn’t above pushing back. If he wanted to unearth truths, that street went two ways.

  “What happened to you down in Hell, Kade?”

  “The same thing that happened to you.” His answer was softer, less angry.

  I pushed harder, desperate to drown in something other than self-hatred. “No, not the same. You never told me anything when we were down below. I at least shared some of my pain. You kept silent.”

  “Because you wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Try me.”

  “They made me torture people. Your turn.”

  “I’m not playing your game.” I walked by him to hide my shock.

  He held his arm out, palm flat against the wall, to stop me. “This is no game. Tell me exactly what happened the last time you healed yourself.”

  As much as I wanted to keep the secret that was eating my alive, Kade was risking everything for me. Again. And he deserved to know. Even if it would disgust him. “I died. Okay? Is that what you want to hear? Azriel rammed a sword through my stomach. Lucien watched me bleed out. I begged him to let me die. He brought me back.”

  A painful silence stretched through the ravaged building. Kade’s flashlight pointed down, but I could still make out every line on his face. Each reminded me of a time when nothing else mattered, when being together was enough. A time when a single touch would give me enough fuel to brave days of torture. Nothing, not even anger, could stop me from reaching for him, from wanting him. The way I still wanted him.

  I was beaten down, tired of the pain. One look at him told me so. I was tired of us keeping each other just far enough away. With the bravest bone in my body, I reached for his hand.

  “Stop.”

  His words made me draw back.

  It was exactly what he wanted. To push me away. The beginnings of tears blurred my vision.

  “You don’t get it,” I bit out. “You don’t even care. With all this going on”—I gestured toward outside—“I need you. The real you.”

  “Rayna … ” Kade started, exhaustion hunching his shoulders.

  Frustration built up in me, exploding out with everything I’d been feeling since we left the Motel in Colorado. The blast I had been afraid to harm him with didn’t come. Instead, my emotions burst free, and they had nothing to do with Lucien’s essence. “Don’t brush me off again. We were honest down there. No lies. No judgments. I can’t lose you. Not to your stupid pride. From now on everything I say to you will be cold, hard truths. And I don’t care what you think, because you know me. And I know you. And you’re such an asshole right now.”

  Kade blinked away his surprise, pinning that hard edge back on his face. “Everything I’ve done up until now has been to help you, to get you where you need to go. This isn’t about us, Ray. It’s about something so much bigger than us.”

  “You think I care—”

  He cut me off. “You do care, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Fine. Yes, I care. But we matter, too. What we were mattered more than anything they did to us.” Wetness trailed down my face.

  “You t
hink I don’t know that? That it isn’t the same for me?”

  “But it’s not!”

  “It is. Ray, it is. I was doing what I thought was right.” He pulled me in for a hug.

  I pushed him away, careful to keep the knife blade down. “Now you’re just playing along, so I’ll cooperate.”

  Like the Dylan Thomas poem I learned in school, I would not go gentle into the night.

  “No. No way. I wouldn’t do that to you.” He tried to cup my face. I slapped his hands away. He tried again, fingers as firm as vices. “Look at me!”

  I did.

  His eyes were swimming with tears. Lines burrowed deep between his brows. His lips quivered. “This, being with you but not being with you, is worse than anything they did in Hell. It’s killing me.” He held me there, both of us finally seeing each other.

  My heart filled beyond capacity and threatened to crack. I didn’t care. Let it heal and crack again and again if I could just have this one moment. Kade and I.

  He pulled me to him. His hands trailed through my hair.

  The knife in my hand clattered to the floor.

  He pulled me back, brushed the tears from my cheeks, and pressed his lips to mine.

  Fireworks exploded behind my eyes. Sparks tingled my fingers and burned in the pit of my stomach. I walked him back until I felt his head hit the wall, and then I smiled. His lips pulled up too.

  His arms wound low around my waist, casually pulling me closer, as if we were leaning against the wall of an ice cream shop instead of a crumbling bank in the middle of a war zone.

  His hands crept beneath my shirt, skimming the skin along my lower back. The touch was so intimate my body reacted immediately. I leaned closer, wishing we could be so much closer.

  “Rayna?” a new voice said.

  Kade tugged me behind him before I had time to jump.

  “Rayna Evans?” The voice didn’t sound threatening, not that I’d buy that one bit. I scooped up my forgotten knife as the man said, “You must come with me.”

  The familiar speech pattern drew me out from behind Kade. The flashlight had fallen to the ground somewhere between our fight and makeup. The light bounced off the wall, illuminating the man’s dark complexion and the enormous white wings behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rayna

  Temperance, the angel, had an unusual mix of Asian and African facial features. Almond shaped eyes, glowing dark skin, and thin, fine dark hair. Like any good voyeur, he didn’t bat an eyelash at the compromising position he’d caught Kade and me in. Plus, he was all angel when it came to my demands.

  “Have you heard from Camael?”

  I didn’t miss Kade’s huff at my question.

  “Yes,” Temperance replied, “he is with Elyon.”

  “Good,” I said, happy he was safe but wondering if he’d jumped out of the Fallen war zone only to land in an angel one.

  “It was he who sent us to look for you. We must make haste. The Fallen will return at any moment.”

  “First, there’s a group of humans in the city who need help.”

  Temperance cast a curious glance at me. “Are you joking?”

  Kade answered for me, shaking his head. “Not when it comes to other people.”

  “I can send another unit of angels for them when we return.”

  “No. Now.” I scooped my knife up from the floor, returning it to the sheath inside my boot.

  “Fine. I will make the call on our way to the roof.”

  “Oh, and I’m not going anywhere without him.” I reached back for Kade’s hand, holding my breath to see if things had really changed, or if I had caught him in a moment of weakness. He laced his fingers through mine.

  “Kasade, I assume,” Temperance said, arching a brow.

  I didn’t like his sneer. I opened my mouth to call him on it, but Kade kissed my hand.

  Temperance turned around and made a phone call ripe with very few syllables and a metric ton of judgment. He hung up and said, “We will go on foot until another unit arrives. Our base is near Lafayette Park in Pacific Heights. Do you know it?”

  I nodded. I knew it well since I could see it from my bedroom window at Dad’s house.

  Kade didn’t release my hand. We stayed together, close, even while we ran to keep up with Temperance flying above us. We took every turn he did, several blocks worth.

  “Do you think they’ll honor the deal with the humans?” I huffed, out of shape and out of breath.

  “For their sake, I hope so.” He quickened his pace. “How are you doing? That white light, it must take its toll.”

  Self-consciously, I wiped the corners of my mouth, like he’d somehow found out about the coughing and blood that followed my use of the power. “It’s not so bad. I can keep up.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Ray.”

  I squeezed his hand before we had to let go to climb an almost perfectly placed wall of cars stacked atop each other. Kade crested the mound and reached down to pull me up.

  Temperance circled high above us, flapping his wings above the buildings, looking down around us for trouble instead of watching the skies. A dark streak swooped down on the angel from above. “Watch out!” I warned.

  Kade pulled me up over the wall, steadying me in his arms while I watched a Fallen slam into Temperance. They crashed into a building. Chunks of cement and rebar tumbled down.

  “Move,” Kade said, tugging me forward.

  We ran along the wall of crunched cars. Falling wreckage clattered behind us as we jumped down and kept running. A street sign, the first we’d seen in a long time, dangled off the light post above the next intersection. Pine Street. Pine ran parallel to Lafayette Park.

  More buildings shattered behind us, quaking the earth beneath our feet. We ran toward the next intersection. Above us waves of black clouded the sky. There was no telling how many of them there were.

  The flap of wings. The beat of my heart. The pounding of our feet. They all sounded the same.

  Another wall of cars blocked our path two streets ahead. The Fallen would be at our heels by the time we climbed it. I took the initiative at the next intersection and pulled Kade to the right. A concrete barricade like the one that stopped us on the freeway into San Francisco waited. Kade turned us back around, and got taken off his feet by a Fallen. The two of them slammed into the ground. I lunged for the Fallen’s back. Before I got there, two arms wound around my waist and swept me off the ground.

  I screamed for Kade as I was swept higher into the air. The last sight of him I caught before another set of wings blurred by was a look at his eyes, entirely black. He wasn’t giving up yet. And neither was I.

  The Fallen lifted us higher than the surrounding buildings, then swooped forward. The faintest green patch far below could only be Lafayette Park. The angels. The endgame. I was too close to give up now.

  This jerk Fallen had just swept up his last girl. Blasting him wasn’t an option; I’d likely kill everyone else around us, including my angel escort. And Kade. So I had to fight. I shrugged my left shoulder, bringing my wing up with it. The bones in my wings compressed painfully, but I continued to squirm until most of the wing was free. Our path veered. The Fallen released one of his arms from around my waist to brush my gray feathers from his face. I swung my knee up and reached into the military style boots Kade insisted I wore, the ones that had been causing me nothing but pain for days. I finally understood why they were necessary. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the knife tucked into my boot. The look on Kade’s face when he slid it there days ago had chilled me down to my bones. He’d known then it wasn’t just a precaution. He’d known we might not make it out.

  I kicked the heel of the boot hard into the Fallen’s shin. He shifted me, his one-arm hold waning. I drove the blade of the knife into his weak arm, then enjoyed the freefall.

  Air rushed around me as I cut through the sky, watching the Fallen pull the knife from his flesh, trying to make sense of whe
re I’d gone.

  I didn’t scream. I didn’t even look down at what I might be falling into. Anywhere was better than with the Fallen.

  The breath whooshed out of my lungs as my body connected with something that felt like concrete. Explosions of pain soared across my body, flaring out from the tips of my fingers to my toes and everywhere in between. I tried to regain my breath, but like a gas tank with a hole in it, my lungs refused to fill. Warmth cradled my head, pooling down my neck.

  A shadow swooped across the sky, followed by another. I blinked. The sky darkened. Or my vision did. The warmth around my head spread down my shoulders and toward my back.

  Another shadow. This time it stopped and dropped down beside me.

  “Rayna.” The golden figure crouched. He placed his hands on either side of my head and slowly, awkwardly pulled me into a sitting position. Something triggered inside me, jolting my lungs awake. I gasped, taking my first full breath. My vision began to lighten, then clear.

  I swallowed and fought my way out of Temperance’s arms. In the wake of my fall, the closeness with a stranger was too much. My hand landed in a wet spot, still warm. I looked down. I sat beside a massive puddle of my own blood. Liters of it. A metal rod protruded from the roof I’d landed on. I touched the back of my head, jerking at the wet, squishy spot that wasn’t quite healed. The rod must have gone straight through my head. My fingers shook.

  Rebar. In my brain. Great. That wouldn’t have long-term repercussions or anything.

  The angel watched as the wound healed. Blood dripped down my face. I wiped it away, and then remembered.

  “Kade.”

  The angel tilted his head.

  “Kasade,” I clarified. “I need you to find him.”

  “I have other orders. You have to come with me.” He stayed low to the roof, the tall overhang of the facade hiding us from the sounds of all-out war below us.

  “Kade first. Not going anywhere without—”

  A ribbon of black swooped by. In less than a blink of an eye, Temperance was gone.

  My heart thundered, fear firing through me.

  The skies above were almost as gray as my wings. I had to get moving; otherwise I’d be the next thing swept up by a black streak. I crawled to the ladder hung on the back side of the roof and started to climb. Once I reached the first set of stairs, I slid the burner phone from my back pocket and dialed Kade.