I overlooked the crude reference to my underwear. Hunting was tempting, I had to admit, but I could not do it. “I cannot just leave, Grim. If Fate, or the Lesser Demons, are snooping around, it places the girl in certain danger.”
“I’ve taken that into consideration, Brother. I have, very helpfully, placed guards to watch over your pet human. Just for a little while; long enough for you to get your head out of your ass.”
I felt outward, with my other senses, and found four mid-level Reapers in the area. “Thank you, Grim, but I cannot let things stand as they are. Isabel has to accept her changes. She has to listen to reason. Time may be running out.” I ran my hand through my hair as I paced in front of the stairs. “The girl’s stubborn nature is enough to drive me mad.”
Grim shook his head, a tiny smile wanting to show. “I always wondered what you’d be like without all the icy self-control. Honestly, I thought I’d enjoy this more, but you’ve made yourself perfectly miserable. I find myself feeling somewhat sorry for you, Ashrael.”
I started to tell him where he could stuff his pity when he shifted himself out of the house.
***
Isabel came out of her bathroom wearing a tiny, pink tank top and pajama bottoms covered in glittery pink stars. She brushed her teeth and a little bit of white drool escaped the corner of her mouth. She looked positively adorable.
Her face was newly scrubbed and her hair was piled high, on top of her head. She smelled faintly of vanilla, or maybe it was coconut. I found myself smiling in spite of my agitation; being near her had a calming effect on me. Then she saw me and let loose a blood-curdling scream. She looked remarkably like a rabid dog when toothpaste came flying out of her mouth and sprayed everywhere. I smirked as I took a seat on her bed. Apparently, I did not have the same calming effect on her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?” It came out in an angry hiss. She looked irritated, and I found that incredibly amusing, if I were being totally honest. She spun on her heel and went back into the bathroom. I made myself comfortable, propping up against the headboard while I waited for her to spit the foam out.
The damned cat merely glared at me, too haughty to be startled into moving over. I glared back at it; cats are entirely too self-important for their own good. Dogs live to please their people. Cats live to please themselves. I always thought it had something to do with the ancient Egyptians worshipping them as gods. As a species, they have never forgotten.
I heard Isabel gargling and spitting in the other room, and a few muffled curse words. It sounded like someone strangling a duck. I detected the faintest hint of mint from the mouthwash. Just as well, a serious conversation is hard to have when the other person is drooling toothpaste.
Isabel came back, stomping mad, and scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ok, now, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Continuing our conversation.” I was the picture of calm politeness. We could get through this, if she would only close her lovely mouth and listen.
Her hands fisted on her hips, and her eyes snapped with green fire; she looked ready for a fight. She was beautiful. Somewhere deep inside, the greedy monster that is my essence smiled, and wanted. “I think the conversations done, Asher. Now, get off my bed, and go away.” She made a shooing motion with her hands, like that would do her any good. If the cat would not move, neither would I.
I sighed, deeply. I tried to do this the easy way. The girl was too stubborn by far. “We need to talk, remember?”
A look of doubt flashed through the green of her eyes. It was clear that she did not trust me. “You already told me plenty. I’ve had a rough night. I need sleep.”
“And your friend, Gwen, have you checked on her lately?”
Dark brows drew together in a straight line, confused and wary. “She’s fine. I just called her. She’s about to go to bed. I called Alex, too, by the way. He’s fine, thanks for asking.” Her eyes narrowed on me, suddenly suspicious. “Why did you ask about Gwen?”
“Because she will not be fine for long, if you do not listen to me. Neither will your father, your friends, or anyone else you come in contact with.”
That got her attention. Heat spread up her throat and bloomed in her cheeks. “Are you threatening my family?” Her lips pressed together so hard they turned into a thin, white line. Temper, temper…
I sat up suddenly, finally at the end of my patience. “Me? No. I am not the threat to them; you are.”
She looked confused now, but she was calming down; more annoyed than angry. The girl’s moods changed faster than the weather. “Look. Either you’re a figment of my imagination or you’re a stalker. Neither option is appealing, frankly. You talk in riddles, I can’t get a straight answer from you, and you make me tired. I’m no danger to anyone. That’s just ridiculous.” Her arms crossed over her chest and her toe tapped, impatiently. She wanted rid of me, in the worst way.
“That is where you are wrong. You are a danger to every living thing around you.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes at me. “You’re full of shit.” Such a delicate little flower. No wonder I found her so compelling.
Well, if she would not believe what I said, maybe a demonstration would convince her. I stood up and beckoned her with my hand. “Come here, Isabel. I need to show you something.”
“Oh, hell no. The last time I got near you, wings popped out. I’ve seen plenty for one night. And I don’t know what you have in mind, but I’m scared of heights. So, no thanks.” She backed away from me with both hands up, panic written clearly across her face.
“We do not need to fly, for this.” I wrapped my arms around her before she had a chance to run, and shifted us away.
Chapter 11…Izzy
Literally, from one blink of the eye to the next, we went from my bedroom to Gwen’s room about a mile down the road from my house. I was left dizzy and disoriented. I wondered what Asher would do if I yakked on his boots. The idea was almost funny. If he didn’t stop bullying me around, I might just find out how he’d like it. Would serve him right, if I did puke on him. He let me go and stepped away from me, as if he sensed my thoughts.
Dazed, I glanced around. How did we get there so fast? How on earth was that even possible? Gwen was asleep, the colorful old quilt her grandma had made her, pulled all the way up to her chin. The bruises under her eyes were dark and livid. She looked bad; much paler than her normal, healthy pink color. “Your friend is not sick; you are taking the life out of her. Her energy is feeding you.” Asher’s voice was harsh and entirely too loud; it grated on my nerves. He grated on my nerves.
“Would you hush? You’ll wake her up.” It came out as a furious whisper.
“She cannot hear us. We are in a different level of reality. Just the fact that you can even exist here tells me that you are no longer human.” Sweet talker. All this talk about me no longer being human was about to hurt my feelings.
I watched Gwen toss and turn in her sleep. She moaned softly. Probably dreaming of being chased by a crazy, homicidal clown. My eyes began to sting a little. Was he right? Was I really hurting Gwen? Like some kind of vampire?
I chose to ignore the part about me no longer being human. I could deal with that later. I figured there were lots of things I would have to deal with later. In the meantime, I had to find a way to fix Gwen, if I could. I sighed, defeated. “What do I have to do, to make her better?”
“Learn to channel your abilities. You have been feeding on her, your father, everyone you have been in contact with. That is how you healed your injuries so quickly. It is why you are so much stronger and faster than you were.” That was horrifying information, but it rang true with me. Would I have to give up my family and friends? Move far away from people and become a hermit?
Suddenly, I wanted to sit down and cry like a six year old. This was all too much. “She was looking better at the haunted house.” That came out in a pitiful, soft whisper. I felt ashamed of myself, but I had
never meant to harm anyone, much less, Gwen. Never her.
“You were surrounded by a crowd of people, all amped up on adrenaline. You had energy coming in from a dozen different sources.” I was thoroughly disgusted with myself, but I knew he was telling the truth. I’d felt a rush at the haunted house, and thought I was simply wired from being startled every few minutes. Instead I’d been feeding from the people around me. This whole situation was just sick and wrong, and I could see no way out of it.
“What did you turn me into, Asher? Some kind of vampire?” I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation.
“I told you; no one has ever seen your like before. You are utterly unique.”
“Cut the shit, Asher.” I rounded on him. “Who, exactly, are you?” I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I really wanted to know. He said he could protect me from the Reaper. Which meant he had to be just as bad, if not worse. Probably much, much worse.
He looked directly into my eyes, and never blinked. “I am Ashrael, and I am the Angel of Death.” It took a moment for that to sink in. The Angel of Death… the freaking Angel of Death! Oh, shit. It dawned on me why he was at the wreck. Oh, I had been so stupid. Trusting, and stupid.
I backed away from him, slowly. “No, you said the other guy was the Grim Reaper. The crazy one? Remember him? Tall, dark, and fangy?”
Asher nodded, looking tired suddenly, and I saw infinite age in his eyes. Those eyes had seen entire civilizations rise and fall. He covered it quickly, but I know what I saw. “There are several embodiments of Death, Isabel. I am the Angel of Death. Samael is the Grim Reaper. Beneath him are many lesser, Reaper angels. Death is everywhere, and it is constant. No single individual could keep up with all of it.”
I backed away from Gwen’s bed. The room spun. He caught me as I started to fall, and smooth as if we were dancing, I felt my own bed come up to meet me. “Neat trick,” I muttered. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you do that.” I closed my eyes and waited for the room to stop moving. I felt sick. My nerves were raw. This was too much information to take in, all at once. I didn’t want to know any of it; not now, maybe not ever.
I heard him cross into the bathroom, then the sound of the tap running. “Drink this. It will help.” He pressed a cool glass of water into my hand. I sat up a little and took a sip. He was right; it helped. It was something normal to hang onto at least, in a world gone crazy.
I found myself taking a shaky breath. “That thing you do is rough, but better than flying, I guess. Why did you fly with me, by the way, if you could do the blinky thing?”
“The ‘blinky’ thing is a shift in space and time. It allows me to move very quickly.” He shrugged again, that non-committal gesture I was quickly growing accustomed to. “Would you have believed any of this if you had not seen my wings?” Soft, dark wings the color of charcoal. The color of nightmares. I was in such seriously deep shit, I thought bleakly.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Yes. No. Maybe. I’m still not sure this isn’t a very strange dream I can wake up from in the morning.” Please be a dream I can wake up from.
The mattress groaned and sagged as Asher sat down next to me. He looked way too big for my little room. “Everything I told you is real. You are not crazy. I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but you need to know the truth. I am not trying to frighten you, but we have gone too far for you to remain ignorant of your gifts.” Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.
I studied his face for long moments in the dim light of my bedside table. He was a beautiful thing. High cheekbones, strong jaw, golden hair, and eyes so dark they were nearly black; everything I imagined an angel should look like. The Angel of Death? Not so much. And yet, those eyes were ancient. He was as old as time itself, it seemed. “So you’re what Death looks like. I always wondered.”
He glanced away, then back at me. He seemed almost shy. “How do I look to you, Isabel?”
I snorted. I couldn’t help it, he continued to surprise me. “Seriously? Are you fishing for compliments?” Um, vain, much?
“No,” the slightest hint of pink colored that smooth skin of his, “it is just that Death appears to everyone differently. Some people refuse to see me at all. They may get a sense that I am there, a feeling, but not much else. Some people find me terrifying. They see the thing that they fear the most. There is a reason I am depicted as a skeleton, more often than not.” His voice grew soft and he smoothed the corner of my comforter down. “I have often wondered how you would see me.” He glanced up at me from under his lashes and I had the distinct feeling that I was drowning.
I blew out a deep breath. I felt much better; the nausea was almost gone. Now, I felt uncomfortable for an entirely different reason, but this seemed important to him. It couldn’t have been easy for him to ask me such a thing.
“I’m only saying this once, so don’t let it go to your head, ok?” He looked suddenly wary, like he was afraid of my answer. I touched his arm so he would look at me. “There is nothing frightening about you, Asher. Your hair is blonde, your eyes are dark, and you have incredible bone structure. There’s nothing hideous about you; no fangs or warts, if that’s what you want to know.” His eyes warmed me as I spoke and I had an unbearable urge to crawl under the bed to hide. His smile was devastating. When he smiled like that, his whole face lit up and he might have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on, but I’d be damned if I would tell him that. A girl has to have some pride, after all.
“You can see my true face.” He nodded to himself, seemingly pleased. He grinned a slow grin that made my head swim a little.
“Yeah, I guess.” I was incredibly warm. This whole conversation was embarrassing, and I really didn’t have much experience dealing with guys my own age, much less some immortal, all-powerful being, needing his ego stroked.
“I do have to ask one thing, though?”
Abruptly, his face seemed to close off. “Alright. Go ahead.”
“What’s the deal with your wings? Why are they black? Aren’t angel wings supposed to be white?” Unless he was a fallen angel, maybe? Those are supposed to be black, aren’t they? I should’ve paid attention when my grandma was dragging my ass to Sunday school all those years ago.
He looked relieved, like he’d been afraid I would ask something really bad, or hard to answer. “They are actually dark grey. No death is ever black or white; good or evil. There are always shades of grey.” Well, that was a nice, evasive answer.
I sat up and threw my legs off the edge of my bed to sit next to him. “Ok, so let’s say I believe all of this.” I held a hand up to stop him speaking before I finished. “I’m not totally convinced, mind you, but let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe everything. You are Death. What were you doing at my wreck? You said it yourself; it wasn’t my time.”
“I was there for the other driver.” He rubbed his hands slowly together. The gesture reminded me of Lady Macbeth; washing, always washing, the blood from off her hands. I really wanted to start firing questions at him, but I had an idea that he would either shut down or change the subject if I rushed him. So I waited.
“Fate and Time determine a person’s lifespan, normally. I, and others like me, harvest the souls when their time comes due. Then the soul moves on. If they have learned all of the lessons that they needed to learn, they pass on to Judgment. If not, they move on for another life cycle. Reincarnation.”
Sounded reasonable enough, I guessed. I nodded to keep him talking. “Your soul called to me. It was the strangest thing I have ever witnessed. You somehow managed to slip, unaided, from your body. If I had not intervened you might have been lost. Lost souls wander. They find no peace. They become pitiful things that haunt the living. We call them the Immortal Sorrows.” He dragged both hands through his hair and sighed heavily. “I am sorry.”
A lost soul? That didn’t sound promising at all. I patted his shoulder, awkwardly. “You don’t have to be sorry for saving me. Really, it’s ok
.”
“I am not sorry I saved you. I am sorry for the hell that will be rained down upon you, because I saved you.” Yeah, that didn’t sound good.
“Um, should I ask, or do I really want to know?” I tried for a light tone, but inside a cold finger of fear crept slowly down my spine, setting off about a million little goose bumps.
“Fate knows what I did. She does not like being overlooked. She does not like to be second guessed, either. If she is not already, she will be coming for you.” He took my hand in his much larger one and butterflies soared in the pit of my stomach. I really needed to learn to control that. “I can protect you, but we have to prepare you.”
“Sounds bleak. So where do we start?”
“You learn to feed. Then you learn to fight.”
“Feed? Like blood?” I thought I might be sick.
Asher’s smile was rueful. “My blood will make you stronger, yes. You can have my blood when you need it, but you can take nourishment in other ways, I think. To be honest, I really have no idea how your abilities will manifest. You may eventually not need to feed from either blood or energy.” Well, it wasn’t much, but it was something to hope for.
Asher brought my hand up and placed it over his heart. I wasn’t sure, being what he was, that he would even have a heartbeat, but it was there, under my palm, steady and strong: beating an eternal, perfect cadence. I started to pull away, completely embarrassed to be feeling up a relative stranger. “I’m not comfortable with this, Asher.”
“Hush. Listen to the beat of my heart. Feel it call to you.” His eyes held a dreamy, unfocused look. I could feel my own heartbeat speed up to match his, till they were beating in synch. “Feel the bond. Draw from it. Take what you need. Feed from me and you will not need to take from those around you.”
Wings of Darkness: Book 1 of The Immortal Sorrows Series Page 9
