by Hanna Peach
“You signed the contract. I never forced your hand. Until you fulfill your side of the bargain you’re mine, little sparrow.” He returned to his chaise and fell dramatically across the leather. “Alzeke,” he yelled.
The door opened and Alzeke’s face appeared. “Yes, Master?”
“Take him to his room. I’m sick of the stench of him.”
The door slammed behind Passar. He stood alone in his large room in Samyara’s mansion. The great poster bed covered in plain bone-white linen also stood alone, making the room look even larger and even barer.
Alone. Alone in a house full of Darkened. It was this cold realization that caused the last of the rage to slip away from him. How did he get here? If he could just turn things back... No. He couldn’t go back. It was too late to go back.
Maybe he could still make this work? Maybe Alyx didn’t have to die. Maybe, even if he did have to kill her, he could then also bring her back. She would forgive him, wouldn’t she? When she saw the new and better world he had helped to create, would she forgive him?
He was doing the right thing. Doing it for love. For peace. To end this war.
Passar remembered Samyara’s impassioned speech about his plan to end the war, to stop the fighting, stop the killing once he was ruler. How many people had to die before there could be peace?
Passar tried to push away the feeling growing inside of him that perhaps Samyara had been lying. A sob tore forth from the depths of his lungs. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
“I just wanted you back,” he cried to the empty room. “I just wanted you back.” Passar sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands, his already broken heart tearing further into pieces. “Forgive me, Elijah.”
Chapter 47
Alyx watched the girl open her eyes. She squinted and cowered away from the soft sunlight drifting in through the open window. It wasn’t all that bright in this room on the second floor of Tara, but it would be bright compared to the thick, viscose darkness of the Hollows. How long had it been since this girl had seen sunlight?
Sitting at the edge of the bed, Alyx raised her hands in a show of placation. “It’s okay, you’re safe here.”
The girl made a little gasp and drew her knees up to her chest, clutching at the bedcovers with her little fingers. She looked so tiny in that bed, like a little doll. The girl’s head twitched about, her gaze darting around the room.
“You must be starving. Let me get you something.” Alyx stood to leave. She heard whimpering behind her.
When she turned the girl was staring at her. “I’ll be back, mini one. I promise.”
Alyx returned to the room carrying a bowl of spiced cubes of beef and potatoes, a piece of flat bread and a glass of water on a tray. But the bed was empty.
“Mini?”
Alyx was alerted by a small noise. The girl had tucked herself into the far corner of the room.
“What are you doing there?” Alyx moved towards her. “You prefer being on the floor, do you? Alright then. We shall have a picnic right here.”
Alyx lowered herself into a seated position on the floorboards, placing the tray down between them.
“Min-nee,” came from the girl’s lips.
“What’s that?”
“Min-nee.”
“Yes. Mini.” Alyx pushed the bowl and the spoon towards her. “Are you hungry, Mini?”
Mini snatched the bowl. She grabbed a fistful of beef and potatoes and shoveled it into her mouth, barely chewing before the next mouthful was pushed in. All the while she was grunting like a swine. The bowl was scraped clean in minutes. She grabbed the bread and began tearing hunks off with her teeth.
Alyx watched in stunned silence. “Who are you, Mini?” she whispered.
Mini did not answer.
* * *
Alyx sat on the edge of the bed by Israel’s side. His bedroom was a simple rustic room on the second floor of Tara. The sun flooded through the window. She had never seen Israel look so pale. She wanted to touch his face, but her hands stayed folded in her lap.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Almost a whole day.”
Israel moved different parts of his body and groaned. “Why does everyone feel the need to knock me out all the time? Am I such bad company?”
This drew a clipped laugh from Alyx. “You mustn’t be feeling too bad if you’re making jokes. You should feel stiff until your body gets rid of the last of the Cerberus venom. It may take a couple days.”
“Cerberus? As in the Greek mythology three-headed Cerberus?”
Alyx nodded. “Most of your mortal myths are rooted in truth. The Cerberus is a demon pet.”
Israel shook his head, then looked around. “Where are we?”
“It’s a farmhouse in the country outside of Saint Joseph. It’s a Rogue safehouse. They saved us.”
“You saved me. Thank you.” Israel took one of her hands in his, brought it to his face. He trailed his lips across her fingers, her skin lighting up at his touch. “My angel.”
My angel. Her body spread with fire. It brought back the memories of the night that they shared together. Angel. My dark angel. He had whispered these words, growled them, called them out to her over and over again.
Israel smiled. “Next time I go after Adere, I’m not doing it without you.”
Adere. The name was a kris to her heart. Fire turned to ice, sharp and jagged.
“Israel, you need to call off this quest for Adere.”
“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”
Alyx pulled her hand away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me why.”
“Because...”
Because you still love her. You want me but you love her.
His face twisted as if he was in pain. “Because I need to. I can’t just leave her like that.”
“It’s not over between you two, is it?”
“I...” Israel rubbed his hands over his face, “I can’t just stop caring about her, Alyx. For so long, she was all I had.”
Pain speared through her. She almost couldn’t breathe. “I can’t do this.”
“This?”
“This. Us. I can’t do us anymore.”
“What?”
“As long as you keep chasing Adere, I can’t be with you.”
“That isn’t fair. I owe it to Adere to free her.”
“That’s fine. You do what you need to. I just can't be with you anymore. I can’t.”
Alyx gathered all the pieces of her that were falling in love with Israel and tucked them away. Tucked them right away into the depths of her heart. She held her face like polished marble. “We’re better off as friends anyway.”
“Friends...” his voice sounded dull and hollow.
Alyx nodded. Her throat was too dry to speak. Was this really happening? Would he really let them end?
Tell me that it’s me that you can’t be without. Fight for me.
“You’re right,” Israel said as he locked his fingers together across his stomach. “We’re better off as friends.”
Alyx smiled, cool and measured, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Inside, her heart was aching.
* * *
At dusk Jordan found Alyx sitting high up in the largest tree on the farmhouse property, an old oak. She had long since run out of tears and the evidence on her cheeks had long since dried. But the hollowness was consuming.
Jordan settled on the branch next to her. “Are you okay?”
Alyx shook her head. How could she explain it to Jordan? Her heart, her body, given so freely, so stupidly. She had been sure that Israel felt the rightness of it too, but she had been wrong. Now she might be carrying his child. A child who could be used to open Hell back up to Earth. A child who would be hunted by everyone if anyone were to find out.
“I understand,” Jordan said.
Alyx inhaled sharply. Was everything written on her face?
He continued, “It must have been
a blow to find out that a long-time friend was betraying you.”
Alyx nodded. Passar. He was another thing that tore at her. “I just can’t believe it. I thought I knew him.”
“Love can make you do stupid things.”
Indeed, it could. “Elijah and Passar... I should have known, should have picked up on it.”
“When you live in a society that tells you that your true self is wrong, when you fear judgment, you learn to hide it.”
“But if I had known, maybe things could have been different.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Even if you knew, you couldn’t have done anything to change the path that Passar was on. That was his journey.”
Was that true? Could she have done anything if she had known?
Alyx let out a sigh, long and heavy. “What now?”
“We’ll stay here until Israel is well enough to be moved,” Jordan said. “Then I’ll bring you to Aradale.”
“Aradale?”
“It’s my home. A FreeThinker sanctuary.”
“A sanctuary? But I thought that Rogues, I mean, FreeThinkers, are...” Alyx searched for a word that wouldn’t be taken as an insult, “...solitary,” she settled on.
“Just because we defected from the Elders and their society doesn’t mean we lost our humanity or need for community. I’ve told them about you at Aradale. They’re waiting for us. It’s safe there.”
Safe for now.
Jordan took a deep breath. “There’s something else I need to tell you. It isn’t good.”
Alyx could feel the ends of her emotions start to fray and twist as if they would snap. If they snapped she wasn’t sure she could put herself back together.
She closed her eyes. I can get through this. I can get through this. I can... she felt Jordan brush her hand with his fingers. We, she realized. We can get through this. She felt herself steady. Even though it felt wrong, she let Jordan lace his fingers into hers.
She opened her eyes and focused on Jordan’s face. Despite the bad news he was about to tell her, his face was composed, calm. She felt herself breathe a little easier. “Okay. I’m okay. What is it?”
“Lukas got a message from our swallow network. A science museum in Germine, about a thousand miles from here, was robbed last night. The thieves took only one thing...”
“Meteors,” she finished for him. He didn’t have to confirm it. She knew she was right. “More Black Stone.”
Her mind flashed over the events of the last few weeks…the stolen piece of the Trinity Amulet, the stolen Black Stone, Michael’s secret army, her Guardian-bond and the Blood Prophecies.
Alyx felt a chill rise up the tiers of her spine as she began to sense how big this was, this wheel that had started turning. “What’s going on, Jordan? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s only just beginning.”
* * *
Angelstone (Dark Angel #2)
Hanna Peach
The sequel to Angelfire (Dark Angel #1)
After escaping from the Hollows, Jordan takes Alyx and Israel to Aradale, a secret Rogue community, where they appear to be safe − for now. But did they bring the enemy with them? “Mini”, the strange and speechless young girl they rescued from the Hollows, is not as she seems. Why was Elder Michael keeping her locked up? What is she hiding?
Out in the mortal cities, pieces of Black Stone, the only material that can disrupt the angels’ healing abilities, continue to be stolen to make weapons for Samyara’s dark army. Alyx and her friends must stop them, but this means infiltrating holy and guarded places to steal the Black Stone − a monastery in remote China, a mosque in Saudi Arabia, an art gallery in Florence and a cathedral in Peru.
Can they win this deadly race against the Darkened?
To Mum – for waiting until I was ready to have a better relationship with you and for being there when I was. I love you.
Chapter 1
Alyx had evaded him. For now.
She struggled to contain her breath, jagged from all the running, as she crouched behind a crumbling stone pillar. Here the grass struggled to grow between the uneven slate paving stones.
She was back in the DreamScape. Except this time, she was not surrounded by brick walls of the gray maze. No. This time the DreamScape was wide and bare except for the pillars that remained of these ruins. Bone-gray and broken.
Alyx felt naked. Exposed. She wished, almost, for the walls back.
She remembered the last time she was here – the sweaty palms, the panic, the claustrophobia of the brick maze – and a shudder ran through her. She remembered how Michael’s form had pushed its way through the skin of the Scape and how his stony arms had held her. She remembered his promise to her.
“I will find you.”
Alyx stopped wishing for the walls to come back.
Stone scratched on stone, the sound grating against her spine. Alyx peered around the corner of her hiding place. A short distance away, whole pillars were being tossed across the ground as if they were but empty, hollow things. Something was moving. Something powerful.
He was coming for her.
Fight, something in her whispered, soft like the voice of bloodink. Instead Alyx placed her hands on the slate beneath her feet. No. Escape was a better option.
She ran through Jordan’s instructions in her mind again. “Remember that the DreamScape is pliable. Imagine it like water around you. Push through it with your mind and it will move out of your way. Imagine there is a way out and there will be. But you must believe it.”
Alyx pressed down on the slate with her hands. It was unyielding. But she could do it. This time, surely. A doorway, a way out…a way out. She had to make her way out. She couldn’t keep running.
All the while the noise of the sliding pillars grew louder and closer.
But the slate remained unchanged. “Come on,” Alyx cried out in frustration.
Stop. Breathe, she told herself. She closed her eyes and forced the noises around her to fade. Breathe. Believe.
Believe.
Under her palms, Alyx felt the slate shifting. The smooth coolness turned to the grain of untreated wood. Her eyes flew open. Under her hands was a door, wooden and simple. The sides were uneven but she didn’t care. She had created a door.
Her fingers moved over it. Wait. Where was the handle? The lock? Alyx’s fingernails scratched at the edges of the door. It sat too flush against its frame for her to get her fingertips in there.
The noise of moving pillars was getting closer. Alyx felt her panic start to close its fingers around her throat. She stood and kicked down at the door. It’s only wood. It should break. Break, damn you, break.
“Come on, Alyx,” his voice carried through the panic-buzz in her brain, taunting her.
The pillar behind her flew to the side. Alyx spun. Her heart felt like it wanted to leap from her throat. She was exposed.
He faced her, still some meters away, but he didn’t need to get any closer. He tilted his head at her. “Maybe some incentive?” He stretched his right hand out and a broken pillar to his right lifted from the ground. Alyx stomped frantically at the door at her feet. He pointed his hand at her and the pillar flew towards her.
Fight, fight. The voice was unbearable now. Fight. Something in her snapped. Enough.
From within her bubbled forth a fury, a rage that tore away the fist-like panic at her throat. It ripped at the magic of the Scape around her. Alyx could feel it gathering in her arms like yards of fabric. She heard a gasp. Did it come from her? Or him?
Like a giant soundless scream, she projected all this energy from her. The pillar that was about to crush her blew back against the force. It flew back through the air and crashed into the ground, a cloud of gray dust billowing and spitting chips of stone around its resting place.
Her mind seemed to clear with the dust. Only then did Alyx realize what she had done.
Jordan.
Alyx ran to where Jord
an had been standing. The pillar lay cracked in multiple places. But he was gone.
Chapter 2
The swallow flew down from his height, down from above the peak of the mountains, the trees below dropping away into a sea of wild grasses. On the breath of a soft wind the swallow circled over a farmhouse, a farmhouse named Tara, where, through a window, the swallow could see a young man gazing out with an expression of sadness across his human face. The young man frowned, eyed the swallow for a moment, then looked past him to the sky beyond. Almost as if the young man was watching for something...or someone.
The swallow pulled up over the farmhouse. The current of air took the swallow along where the land naturally climbed up, up past the ridge and up past a water tower, where two Seraphim, a young female lightwarrior and a Rogue, were lying side by side.
“Jordan?” Alyx’s eyes flicked open and her chest arched with a violent inhale. She sat up too quickly, her head spinning.
Jordan was sitting up, hunched over his bent knees, his face in his hands, fingers rubbing his forehead. “Jesus,” came out muffled.
“Did I hurt you?” Alyx clasped her hands on either side of his face, pulling it from the cup of his hands and bringing it closer to hers for inspection. He met her eyes. His green-tea eyes, feline and alert, were nothing like Israel’s soft, hooded, brown ones.
Alyx flinched, then pulled back. It was unsettling to have someone other than Israel look at her like that. There was a slight pinch to Jordan’s lips. Then it was gone.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I managed to pull out of the Scape just before the pillar crushed me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What happened to you in there?”
Alyx shook her head over and over. “I don’t really know. You threw the pillar at me and I couldn’t get that damned door to open. I was so tired of running. I was scared. And so angry. There was a voice inside me telling me to fight. Something in me snapped. I don’t know how, but I pulled at the magic of the Scape around me and...somehow I threw it at you. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
