Dark Angel Box Set

by Hanna Peach

  “I can’t just pick when I want my birthday.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just…can’t.”

  “Okay then, I’ll pick for you. Your birthday will now be…the thirty-first of October.”

  “But that’s tomorrow!”

  “Is it?” Israel grinned. “What a coincidence.”

  Sparrow went all quiet, his hands folding into fists at his sides.

  “Do you want me to show you anything else before we go in?” Israel asked.

  Sparrow shrugged.

  Israel was losing him. He had to think of something cool to show Sparrow before he lost this tender connection with him completely. He lifted up his fingers. “I have Air magic. Wanna see?”

  Sparrow’s eyes widened, and if Israel didn’t know any better, he would have said that he saw fear in the boy’s eyes. “No, that’s okay.”

  Israel raised an eyebrow. “Scared?” he said teasingly.

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you.” Israel started to draw a small wind out from his palms, ruffling the boy’s hair.

  Sparrow began to back away, his eyes wide like saucers. “Don’t.”

  Israel frowned. The boy was actually scared. “It’s okay Sparrow, it won’t−”

  “I said don’t!” Sparrow yelled.

  Suddenly, like a battery draining of power, Israel felt his magic being sucked out of him. The wind stopped and Sparrow’s hair stopped ruffling. Israel stared at his fingers. He couldn’t pull at his magic. It was like it didn’t exist. What the hell?

  He turned to look at Sparrow. The boy let out a small sob. “I told you not to.” Sparrow turned and ran away across the field towards the forest.

  Sparrow? Oh my God, Israel realized. Sparrow was doing this. Sparrow was taking the magic away. It made sense. The magic started going haywire when he arrived. Exactly when he arrived. Israel thought back to the incident on the training fields when Tebo’s power had drained, just as he and Sparrow walked past him.

  Holy hell. Sparrow was coming into his powers.

  “Sparrow, wait.” Israel sprinted after him.

  The boy didn’t stop even as Israel called out after him. Sparrow didn’t even turn around to look at him. He just ran.

  Israel caught up to him meters away from the forest. He grabbed Sparrow by the arm to try and stop him.

  “No,” Sparrow cried, “leave me alone.”

  “I just want to talk.”

  “I don’t mean to do it. I’m sorry. Please,” Sparrow sobbed as he flung himself to the ground and curled himself into a ball. “Don’t hurt me. I’m sorry. I’ll go away, I promise. I won’t come back.”

  “What?” Israel kneeled down beside the shivering child. “Sparrow, I’m not going to hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you. I’m not mad.”

  “B-But I’m taking everyone’s power away. I don’t mean to.”

  “Sparrow, you don’t have to be upset. It’s your magic. You’re coming of age.”

  “I don’t want to come of age.”

  “It’ll be fine. You just need some training on how to control it, that’s all.”

  “You’re lying. I knew I was born a devil. I knew it.”

  “Sparrow, you’re not a devil.”

  “What kind of evil magic steals from others?”

  “That’s not what your magic is.”

  “What is it then? You’ve seen it. All it does is destroy other magic.”

  “Your magic is the ability to manipulate magic. One of those manipulations is to take it away, to borrow it.”

  “So I’m destined to be a thief.”

  “Your magic is vital to the Seraphim community. You are the way that Seraphim can share pure magic through making bloodink. You’re a GiftKeeper.”

  Sparrow sniffed and peeked out from under his skinny arms. “A GiftKeeper?”

  Israel smiled at him. “It’s the rarest gift of them all. This makes you special.”

  More of Sparrow’s face appeared. “Really?”

  “Truly.”

  Sparrow lowered his arms. He sniffed again, wiping the sleeve of his shirt across his pink nose. “How rare?”

  Israel held him gently by the shoulders and stared right at him. “Sparrow, you are the only GiftKeeper.”

  Chapter 15

  Alyx’s vision was hazy and air bubbles rose up from her mouth. Her whole body felt wet and weightless. Across her skin she felt the soft pressure of being underwater. She spun around, trying to figure out where she was. She couldn’t see anything but water around her. Nothing but water. Was she dying?

  No, she wasn’t dead. In her right hand she clutched the Amulet piece until it cut into her palm. It was the one thing that was tethering her to reality. The Amulet piece, Raphael’s chamber, Tii’la, Varian… This, wherever this was, wasn’t reality. So where was she?

  Her feet touched the sandy bottom and she kicked up against it, following her air bubbles until she broke the surface. She gasped, rubbing away the water from her eyes with her free hand. Her feet suddenly hit the bottom again and she found herself standing knee deep in the middle of a lake of some sort. Alyx spun, studying the area around her.

  She gasped. Wherever this place was, the sky was filled with a thick black cloud, lightning casting a fierce shuttering strobe against the hungry clouds. Beyond this lake, the trees along the shore were on fire, spewing noxious, sooty ashes to the sky and raining down black and gray ash. Beyond she could see the outline of a city, a spiked church spire, the teeth of buildings silhouetted in the blaze of a fire. All through the air were the screams of the dying and the rancid curl of burning flesh. Close by she thought she saw a bloated body bob to the surface. Then another.

  Oh God, she drew back in horror. She wanted to run but fear wrapped its hands around her throat like fingers and dug in. Where would she run to? Behind her, past the shore, was nothing but black charred remains of trees like black skeletons, wisps of smoke still rising from them. Did she just get pulled into Hell? Did she choose wrong? Was this to be her prison? Her “destruction”?

  “Hello, Alyx.”

  She spun towards the voice. Standing a few meters from her, also knee deep in water, having appeared from nowhere, was a Seraphim dressed in white. He had golden hair that curled close to his head and his soft boyish features seemed so familiar.

  “Who are you?” Alyx asked.

  “You know who I am.” The Seraphim smiled and Alyx felt warm and safe. She knew it in an instant. This was Raphael. Raphael, the archangel whose Amulet piece she was clutching on to.

  “But you’re dead.”

  “The soul is eternal.”

  “Am I dead?”

  He chuckled. “No.”

  “Am I in Hell? Did I fail the last test?”

  He smiled and it seemed warm and friendly. He wouldn’t be this friendly if she had failed, would he? “No. You passed all my tests. As I knew you would.”

  “So where am I?

  “You are inside a message I left for you.”

  “But this place…all those people dying. Everything on fire. Cities crumbling.” Her voice trailed off as an acrid wind picked up again, ruffling her hair and tickling her nose with death’s scent, causing her to shudder.

  “I’m just showing you what I saw coming, two thousand years ago.”

  Alyx felt her throat closing up. She was scared to ask, but she had to know. “You mean, this is Earth?”

  “If Michael succeeds, yes. If you can’t find a way to stop him.”

  Alyx felt that familiar weight of responsibility again pressing down on her shoulders. “Why me? I’m no hero, I barely have any powers.”

  “Then you are looking in all the wrong places.”

  “Why doesn’t God stop all this?” Alyx asked, her voice suddenly fierce.

  “It’s not His place.”

  She felt her anger rising as the questions and accusations she had been silently nurturing finally burst from their nest. “Not his plac
e? Not. His. Place? So he just let us get locked up on Earth all those centuries ago and he washes his hands of us? He’s just going to forget about all of us on Earth, all of his creations?”

  “Alyx, who do you think closed the gates to Heaven and Hell all those years ago?”

  The legends said that it was Lucifer who had shut the gates and inadvertently shut them on himself too. But the Threads of Dusk, an important Seraphim scroll, had claimed that it hadn’t been Lucifer. In her mind there was only one other person who had the audacity, nay…the insanity to perform a trick like that.

  Her features hardened. “Elder Michael.”

  “Do you really believe that Michael would have the power to perform such an incredible feat?”

  “No... But then who?”

  “Think about it, Alyx. If it wasn’t Michael and it wasn’t Lucifer…there is only one being that is powerful enough to do it.”

  She gasped when it came to mind. She almost couldn’t bring herself to say it. “God?”

  The Seraphim nodded.

  “God shut us away from himself? Why would he do that? Does he hate us?”

  “No, Alyx. God has watched over this planet like a father for the last two thousand years.”

  “But he hasn’t intervened. How can you say he cares if he hasn’t stepped in?”

  “He has intervened. He chose you to be Israel’s Guardian, so you could help him.”

  “Why me? I’m not qualified to be a Guardian. I have no powers, no magic of my own.”

  “You have more power than you realize.”

  “The power to get people killed,” Alyx muttered.

  Raphael looked almost disappointed in her. “I thought you just solved the riddle of the greatest power on Earth. Don’t you believe it?”

  Love. “I…do…but…”

  “But what?”

  “You’re telling me that I was chosen to guard Israel because I love him?” Alyx shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. I didn’t even know him when I became his Guardian.”

  “You always loved him, Alyx. You just hadn’t met him yet.”

  “So…I was chosen to guard him because I was destined to love him?”

  Raphael nodded, the disappointment turning to a pleased look. “Exactly.”

  “But why is that my power?”

  “Because no one will know him like you, or protect him like you, or force him to change into what he needs to be, apart from you.”

  Alyx let this sink into her bones before she spoke again. “But I’m not enough. What if I’m not enough?”

  “You alone aren’t. But you aren’t alone in this, Alyx. You have never been alone in this.”

  You’re not alone in this. Israel’s voice echoed in her memory. He was always telling her that. He had been telling her that since they first were thrust together. She knew intellectually that she wasn’t alone. Her mind accepted this fact. She had Israel but… Every fiber of her being, her life so far, her upbringing, had forced her into trusting almost no one, into believing that she had to do it alone and reminded her that even though she had Israel now, he would one day be taken from her. His delicate hold on life, his mortality, was just a ticking bomb, a crumbling base that would one day break apart from her to reveal that she was, fundamentally, still alone. Loneliness almost never comes from the outside, but from within.

  “Why doesn’t God just step in and stop all of this? Why work through Israel and me?”

  “Have you ever watched a butterfly struggling to come out from a chrysalis?”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “It has everything to do with it.”

  “How?”

  “Answer my question and you will find your answer.”

  Alyx sighed, still doubting that she would find any answer to any great question in the life cycle of an insect. “Yes, I’ve seen it.”

  “Why do you think God designed the butterfly to struggle? Why not design an easier escape? A cocoon with thinner walls, perhaps? Or one with a door?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Let me put it another way…did you know that if you were to tear open the chrysalis for the butterfly, he would soon die, weak and lost. Why do you think that is?”

  Alyx stayed silent as she let this wash over her. She remembered all the times in Michaelea training when she was fighting against a taller, stronger opponent and being knocked around. All those times Symon could have stepped in and ended the fight but he never did. So she just kept getting knocked around until she learned to use other means of defeating her opponent − her nimbleness, her size, her brains − rather than sheer muscle. Symon could have prevented her struggle and all her pain, but it also would have stunted her growth as a warrior. It was because of Symon that she was now able to take down men twice her size and triple her brute strength, like when she took down Terrapin, one of Mason’s street pirates in a one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat.

  “We must struggle to grow,” she realized.

  “Exactly. Part of the growth of that butterfly is in the struggle. He grows strong because of the struggle and he finds himself within that struggle. Wouldn’t it then be cruel to prevent the butterfly from going through the greatest lesson of his life?”

  “So you’re saying,” Alyx said slowly, “that we on Earth are butterflies?”

  The smile on Raphael beamed and if Alyx wasn’t mistaken, he even looked proud. “And what beautiful butterflies you are.”

  “That’s why God shut away the Seraphim on Earth. This is our cocoon.”

  Raphael nodded. “The Seraphim have lessons that we needed to learn too.”

  “But weren’t the Elders made to be perfect? What did they have to learn?”

  “There was a feeling growing among the Elders that He was being too kind to the mortals on the planet. We argued and fought. There grew a separation between us all.”

  “So this was some sort of punishment.”

  “Goodness, no. God knew that locked away on Earth the Seraphim would become more and more human as time went by. We were forced to work together, to build a society, rules, order. In our earthly bodies we discovered the deliciousness of sex and learned that we could have children. We began to feel, to laugh, to sing, to cry. We felt jealousy and pride for the first time. We learned to love and we learned to hate. We learned sorrow because these bodies could die. And for the first time for us, we didn’t know what would come next. There were no more instructions. We finally had free will. Free will to make all our own decisions, what to do, how to live, and unfortunately for some, this idea became dangerous. Some believe that control is the only way to maintain order.”

  Some like Michael. “So we were forced to become more human so we would understand what it was like to be human.”

  Raphael nodded. “The first step is understanding.”

  Alyx took a deep breath and let this all sink in. She stared at this divine being before her who had followed the strands of time from the very dawn. It humbled her just to be in his presence.

  “Is there anything you want to ask me before we go back?” he asked.

  “Will I defeat Michael?”

  Raphael laughed out loud but it wasn’t unkind. “Dear girl, I’m not a Magic 8 Ball. I can’t tell the future. That is partially up to you.”

  Alyx smiled, a bit embarrassed. Then fleetingly wondered how he managed to even know what a Magic 8 Ball was. But before she could ask him, an image of Israel floated into her mind that caused her heart to tighten. It was the image of him as an old man, dying in her arms. If she could know where he would be going…

  “Raphael,” her voice was nearly a whisper, “what happens when you die?”

  He smiled. “Oh, Alyx. What you call Death is just another beginning.”

  Chapter 16

  “Try again,” Israel said to Sparrow.

  The boy’s shoulders fell and he blew out a huff of air, ruffling the hair across his forehead. In his palm he held a small glass orb, a soulglobe
, Tobias had called it. It was infused with MemorySong magic and contained a series of simple images that Tobias had implanted into it.

  Israel was standing with Sparrow in the indoor training room, a large space on the first floor of the castle with high windows and long banners that fell down the walls between the windows. He had been relieved to find that the jolt of GiftKeeper magic that Sparrow had worked on him had quickly faded.

  Sparrow was trying to draw the magic out of the orb in a controlled way. They would know it worked when he was able to see the images implanted in the orb. Piki was fluttering around twittering as if he were trying to give pointers too.

  “Just focus on your breath first. Focusing on your breath will give you control. Only then do you slowly draw the magic in.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sparrow said. “Your control is perfect.”

  Israel tilted his head at the boy. He looked so dejected. Israel wondered if that was what he looked like when The Elder had been training him. That wasn’t so long ago.

  “You know, I only started training a few weeks ago.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “No, I swear. And when I started,” Israel said, “I had worse control than you.” He laughed as he remembered his first training session with the Elder. “My teacher tried to get me to move a feather around. The damn thing went every which way except for the way I wanted it to go.”

  Sparrow pressed his lip together with a grim determination on his face. He glared at the orb as if glaring at it might force it to reveal its secrets. Israel could feel the anger and frustration bubbling out of him. The boy was wild just like he had been. Israel felt the change in the air pressure and the hair on his arms rose up. “Sparrow, I think−”

  Too late. The magic crackled out of Sparrow like a dark ebony firework had gone off. Sparrow jumped and dropped the orb. It hit the floor with a loud cracking sound. The magic lashed out at Israel. Out of instinct, Israel raised up his palms in defense and all of his magic pushed out of him. His Air magic met Sparrow’s magic. But instead of exploding, the strangest thing happened. Israel’s Air swept around Sparrow’s magic and held it like one would hold a bird in a fist.