by C. L. Coffey
“How come I can’t see yours?”
Turning my hand over, Gabriel’s other hand traced at the tattoo on my wrist. He didn’t like it. Not because it was a tattoo, but because the words, Abandoned by the Angels was a lyric from a song by Lucifer. Or the teenage pop star who had been possessed by Lucifer.
“It is a gift that only archangels can have. Seeing everyone’s aura can be overwhelming.”
“Is it for you?”
“It can be.” Gabriel nodded. “If I were to look in here, with all the bright lights of a casino, it would be. Even with my experience with crowds. But it’s a gift I can control, and right now, I choose not to use it.”
“But the Fallen don’t have them.”
Gabriel sucked in a deep breath, making me rise and fall against him as he did. “That depends. If a fallen angel remains in their original vessel, no. If they change the vessel, and that human is still alive, then they will take on the aura of the human for a while.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “A while?”
“A human soul cannot survive in the body with a fallen angel for long. The stronger the person is, the longer they will survive, but it’s nowhere near as long as a normal human lifespan.” His fingers stopped tracing my tattoo. “And nephilim take on the human half and have an aura. It’s why we can’t see who is human and who is nephilim.”
“What about the shadow?” I asked, suddenly remembering what Harrison had said.
It was Gabriel’s turn to shift his weight to peer around at me. “Everything has a shadow provided there’s light. What do you mean?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I admitted. “Harrison said there was a shadow.”
“Harrison can’t see auras. Few humans can; not in the way an archangel can. I’m not sure what he means by a shadow, but I assure you . . .” He frowned, tilting his head. “Unless he’s referring to the color. Sometimes humans can have gray auras, where their subconscious is in a constant state of flux.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “I guess that could be an option.”
“I think he might have been mistaken,” I told him, trying to recall exactly what Harrison said. “He implied it was a shadow and mentioned nothing about any other auras.”
Before I could consider telling him about the apparent cartoon outline that Harrison thought I had, Gabriel let go of my hand and patted my thigh. “It is eight. I’ll go wait over there so you and your mom can have some time together.”
Gabriel stood and walked off, just as my mom got to the table. She sat down beside me, putting her purse by her feet. “Why are you with that man? He’s evil.”
I glanced behind my mom at Gabriel as he sat down at a table on the far side of the room, before looking back at her, confused. “Gabriel? Evil?”
“You went missing and then he turned up on my doorstep, threatening me not to look for you.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Gabriel?” I said again, hoping doing so would clear up my utter confusion.
It didn’t.
“What do you mean?”
“He told me you were going to college, and I should stay away if I knew what was best for both of us.”
My heart broke. My mom looked like the mom I used to know when I was a kid. Back when we had mom and daughter days in the mall instead of picking the next city to run away to. That glimmer of familiarity of a better time had led me to believe things were better for her.
Somehow, I’d forgotten how ill she was. Maybe my presence was exacerbating her symptoms, but my mom was still ill.
She was so sincere and believing of her words, that had I not known who Gabriel was, I would have believed her.
“Gabriel’s a friend,” I told her. “I think you may have misunderstood what he was saying, Mom.” I gave her the best reassuring smile I could. “I’m at a college in Colorado. It’s a special college, and Gabriel’s been helping me. He’s been helping me look for you too.”
My mom’s stare had never left Gabriel. “You shouldn’t trust him, Dora, baby. You shouldn’t trust anyone. You’re special, and everyone wants you. He’s no different.”
Shifting my weight, I moved slightly so I was blocking her view. Her dark eyes finally focused on me. “How long have you been back in Las Vegas?”
“A couple of weeks. I was looking for you.” She glanced down at her lap, picking at the hangnail on her thumb. “I had to come off the meds and wait for everything to clear, and then I realized you weren’t there.”
I thought my heart was already aching, but that felt like someone had squeezed it. My mom knew I was in college because Gabriel told her. Somehow, she still forgot.
Not long ago, I would have panicked knowing she wasn’t on the meds she’d been prescribed, but if that’s what made her realize I wasn’t there, I wasn’t going to complain.
Maybe she hadn’t been ill and being around me had made her what she was. Maybe me being this close was enough to send her closer to that edge of insanity again.
“Dora, it’s not safe. We should move on. Find another city.”
I sucked in a deep breath and reached for my mom’s hand, stopping the compulsive picking before she made her hands bleed. “Mom, did you feel safe here this morning?”
“Yes, but you’re here now. And he’ll be coming for you. We can’t stay.”
That was another twist to my heart. “My father?”
Like everyone in the casino was trying to listen in on the conversation, over the constant background noise of slot machines, my mom leaned in. “He wants you. He’s always wanted you.”
“Who is he, mom?”
My mom shook her head making her earrings jangle. “I can’t say his name. You never know who’s listening. He has legions of devoted followers.”
“Don’t I have a right to know who he is? You’ve never once told me.” My gaze dropped to the tattoo on my wrist before looking back at Mom. “Is my father Lucifer?”
“He’s dangerous. If they knew how evil he is, they would never have let him escape. He grows more powerful every day. Lucifer was never the one we should have been scared of.” My mom’s eyes seemed to focus on me, like she was returning to the present. “You have his eyes. He wants you because you’re as evil and as dangerous as he is. You’ll be worse. You’ll destroy us all.”
Fighting back the lump in my throat and the tears threatening to escape my eyes, I grabbed my mom’s hand and kept the now fake smile on my face. “I’m going to college and there are others like me. Mom, I’m learning to protect people.”
My words seemed to break my mom out of her spell. She sat back, blinking. “You’re helping people?”
“Yes,” I told her, relief hitting me as hope filled her eyes. “I’m learning to protect someone. Like a bodyguard.”
“You are strong. Stronger than anyone realizes.”
I nodded as, once again, a pang of guilt hit me. My mom had known what I was, and I’d written it off as crazy talk. “I am.”
“You shouldn’t protect others. You should protect yourself. Dora, you need to be able to stop yourself if you unleash what’s inside you. You will destroy everything.”
She looked so sincere and so scared, that once again, I had to swallow back the lump in my throat. Getting impaled hurt less than hearing my mother call me dangerous.
“I know what I am, Mom,” I said, not speaking too loudly in case my voice cracked. “But I have a choice, and I’m not going to hurt anyone.”
Mom shook her head. “You won’t have a choice. You are a demon; an abomination.”
Something in me snapped. Not like the strange fire when I’d gone up against Jonah, but something else. I sucked in a breath, straightened my back, and looked my mom in the eyes.
“I am not evil. And I do have a choice. One I’m making every day by being at Greenwood Preparatory College, where I am training to help people. I don’t care who my father is. He’s had no part of my life for the last twenty-one years, and I don’t intend on letting hi
m have any part of it now. I know what he is, but that isn’t going to define me, and I’m not going to keep running from it.”
My mom stared at me like aliens had come and replaced my head with one from a moose. “You can’t fight what you are. And you can’t fight him. He’s too powerful.”
“Mom,” I folded my arms and stared at her. “You said I’d be stronger than him. If I am, if I need to stop him, I will. I won’t let him hurt anyone.”
My mom sat staring back at me, her eyes blinking like she had something stuck in them. “You won’t have a choice.”
“I’ve told you,” I snapped. Sucking in a deep breath, I softened my tone. “Mom. I have a choice, and I’m making it. Why don’t you come visit me at college, and you can see for yourself? We’ll finish for summer soon, and I’ll be staying there to continue training. You can have a tour of the campus and see what I’m doing.”
I could see my mom considering it, which was the first promising thing I’d seen while sitting there. “Do you have a phone?” I asked before she couldn’t suddenly get negative again.
I’d never had a phone before the one Leigh-Ann gave me. We’d never been able to afford one, and I’d never felt truly comfortable with my mom having one. As soon as we’d left my childhood home, the phone she did have, she tossed off a bridge, giggling gleefully when it hit the water.
Her nodding and pulling one out of her bag surprised me, but I took it from her and quickly tapped in my new number. I’d never thought I’d be so grateful for Leigh-Ann replacing it so quickly. I owed her big time.
The phone in my pocket vibrated, and I pulled it out and quickly saved it before saving mine in my mom’s contacts. “If you need me, you call me on that, okay? And when I know what’s happening with summer break, I’ll call you, and we can arrange a time to visit me.”
Mom put her phone back into her bag. “Colorado?”
“It’s safe, Mom,” I assured her. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, and there are wards to protect us.”
“Excuse me, hon?”
Mom and I looked up at the cocktail waitress who appeared beside us. “What’s up, Lucy?”
“Dione is looking for you. You were due back from your break five minutes ago.” She gave us an apologetic smile before hurrying off to deliver a drink to another table.
“I should get back to work,” Mom said, getting to her feet. She picked up her bag and put it on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t come here again, Dora. There are too many people here who can see you. He has spies everywhere.”
The lump came back. “I love you, Mom.”
My mom’s gaze softened. “I love you too, baby.” She walked off like we’d just had the most normal mother-daughter conversation and not as if we hadn’t seen each other in months.
I could sense Gabriel making his way towards me, but the last thing I needed was to see him look at me with pity. The tears were also still threatening to spill, and I didn’t want to blubber on him either.
Rising to my feet, I walked away before he could get to me. With my focus on fresh air, I wound through the maze of slot machines, trying to find an exit. Whoever designed the layout of the casino floor had done a good job at keeping people trapped there for as long as possible.
Eventually, I found myself back on the Strip; the night sky illuminated with so many lights, I may as well still be inside. The temperature wasn’t much cooler than the air-conditioned casino, but outside, there was less cigarette smoke, so even though we were in the city, it made the air feel a little bit fresher.
I walked in a straight line, barely seeing any of the casinos or the crowds of people that still walked the Strip despite the late hour. Vegas was busy twenty-four hours a day, and my dysfunctional family wouldn’t stop it.
Gabriel was just behind me. Although he’d never joined my side, he’d also never let me out of his sight.
After a while, the more famous and lucrative casinos started to die down, and I knew as we walked past the Mandalay Bay Casino, we’d left almost all of the tourist area of Vegas. All that was left down this road was the famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign and the airport.
Stopping just past the sign where tourists were queuing up to take a picture of it lit up at night, I stared through the wire fence at a small airplane. What I wouldn’t have given to hop on one of those private planes and fly anywhere in the world.
“Kennedy?” Gabriel said, gently.
Although I shook my head, I didn’t resist when Gabriel took my hand. He tugged me further down the street and behind a building, and then we weren’t in Las Vegas anymore.
I recognized the room instantly.
It was the one we’d discussed the Watchers with Gabriel’s friend David. In the Vatican City.
Sunlight streamed in through the window, and it took a moment for me to realize it was morning on the other side of the world. “Why are we in Italy?”
“You looked like you weren’t ready to return to school, and while we were unlikely to come to any trouble where we were, I thought you might like to go somewhere you can just sit.” He patted the back of one of the antique chairs.
Yes and no.
Gabriel was right that I didn’t want to go back to Greenwood. I couldn’t face anyone just yet, even if no one needed to know where I’d been.
But I wasn’t sure if sitting was what I needed either.
Walking over to the window, I leaned against the wall as I stared out. The little I knew about Italy was what a few of the famous landmarks looked like. If we were still in St. Peter’s Basilica, the room we were in didn’t overlook St. Peter’s Square where the Pope addressed the population.
The wall which surrounded the Vatican was in front of me, and just beyond it, Rome. Beautiful yellow-and orange-colored buildings with flat roofs with dark shutters.
“Can we go out?” I turned back to Gabriel. “Can we go and explore Rome?”
“I know it’s barely past dawn here, but your body must surely think it’s nighttime. Aren’t you tired?” Gabriel asked as he joined my side.
“If I go to sleep now, I’ll end up replaying another conversation where my mom told me I’m an evil abomination. I want to—I need to—fill my brain with other things before I can sleep. Please?”
I was begging, and possibly pushing my luck, for someone who could easily take me back to the Rocky Mountains, but if I stopped, I was going to cry. I needed a distraction and right then, the other side of the wall seemed like the perfect option.
“I have never left America before.”
“Nothing will be open,” Gabriel muttered.
“I don’t care,” I told him, sensing him beginning to relent. “I would love to see the Colosseum, even if it’s only from across the street.”
Gabriel gazed at me thoughtfully. “I suppose a walk along the Tiber and back would only take a couple of hours.”
The excitement of going to walk through Rome was enough to push the conversation with my mom to the recesses of my mind. Temporarily, at least. If we could walk for long enough, but the time I got to a bed, I might just be able to sleep, and then I could process it all tomorrow.
Gabriel led me through a maze of hallways until we finally reached the outside. “Welcome to Rome,” he told me as he pushed open a heavy wooden door.
Although it was early in the morning, the streets were still quieter than I expected them to be, but just as Gabriel said, the stores we passed were closed.
It didn’t bother me. I had no money to spend anyway, and it didn’t stop me from staring in all the windows anyway. Close to the Vatican, most had religious goods for sale, displayed in their windows. Decorative crosses, rosary beads, paintings of Mary and Jesus. As we started to move away from the Vatican, they started thinning out with designer clothing boutiques and tourist gift shops.
As we moved away, the shops filtered out, and we followed the cobblestone road, my attention caught by the tiny cars parked alongside the street. We rounded a corner, and in front of us was th
e River Tiber.
I darted across the road and over to the white stone walls lining the river. The river itself, a gray-green color, was swollen and moving at a quick pace. “There has been a lot of rain recently, but normally, you can walk along the river edge.” Gabriel pointed at the stone steps that led down and disappeared into the water.
We started to cross the bridge when he pointed upstream. “That’s Castel Sant'Angelo,” Gabriel said with a perfect Italian accent. Ignoring the butterflies that appeared in my stomach out of nowhere, I looked at the cylindrical building towering above the river. “It was actually built as a mausoleum for Hadrian.”
I spared a glance at Gabriel. He was frowning as though recalling a memory, and I had a sudden thought. “How long have you been in Rome?”
Gabriel sighed, his eyes never leaving the mausoleum, although they turned to their moss-green color I was familiar with. “Rome is the closest place on earth I could call home. I remember when all this was nothing more than grass and trees, and the river was infantile,” he told me, almost wistfully.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, causing Gabriel to look at me, his eyes narrowing. “You must have known and lost so many people.”
“One of the greatest things created was man,” Gabriel told me. “It has been an honor and a privilege to know so many.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt any less with everyone you lose.” I leaned against the bridge wall and stared down at the swirling water. It was hard to think that Gabriel was old enough that he would have seen one of the oldest cities in the world being built, especially when he only looked a few years older than me.
“We should continue,” Gabriel announced, breaking my thoughts. “You should see the Colosseum before it gets busy.”
I fell into step alongside him as we followed the path up the river. There were more cars about over here, and I frequently found myself distracted by the number of vehicles with dents in the side of them, but for the most part, my attention was held by the buildings we walked by.
Never had I imagined I’d find buildings interesting. Probably because the places I’d lived in were modern compared to these. Here, they were old and beautiful. It was incredible how these buildings have stood strong for so long.
