Enlightened: The Ascension of Meghan May

by Jaya Moon

  I woke swamped by nausea and a pain in the back of my head like my skull had been split open, then remembered what had happened and sat up fast. My vision swirled and my stomach twisted. I squeezed my eyes closed and then opened them to try and focus.

  “Abriel?”

  I wasn’t in a bathroom. I wasn’t even in the motel room. Where had I been taken?

  The furniture looked like something out of the early nineteen hundreds. I sat on a four-poster bed. To one side was a dressing table with three long ovular mirrors side by side, the middle one larger than the other two. In another part of the room a chaise lounge stretched out next to a small side table with a deco lamp of a naked woman holding a full moon. The light hanging from the ceiling had been fashioned to look like a candle chandelier and added a soft yellow warmth to the windowless leaf-green walls.

  This wasn’t what I’d imagined as a holding room on the floor at Heaven’s Gate where they tortured shifters and people like me. So where was I? And where had Lucien or any of the Fallen who’d stood at the motel room door gone?

  I got up, smarted in pain, and reached up to find a damp patch with a large bump on the back of my head. As I brought down my hand I felt stickiness and saw blood on my fingers, then noticed a blue sleeve and realized I wore a shirt that wasn’t mine. A blue shirt and nothing else. Who did it belong to and why the hell was I wearing it?

  On the end of the bed, folded neatly, were a pair of gray track pants. I pulled them on and had to tie them tightly with the drawstring because they were too big and obviously made for a man. I crossed over to the closest door, made of rich brown timber and with a doorknob as ornate as the other things in the room, and opened it slowly. I found a bathroom with the same old-world feel to it. I went to the other door—which I gathered might be my way out—and found it locked. There was a keyhole. I squatted down and put my eye to it but couldn’t see out because a key sat in the lock on the other side.

  What chances did I have of opening an ornate door with some prehistoric lock on it, unless I found a way to push the key out from the lock? The gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet seemed big enough to pull the key through if I dislodged it. If I could find something for the key to drop onto, like a piece of paper, I might have a way to escape wherever I was.

  Only the dresser had drawers. Glancing around to see if there was anything that looked remotely like a security camera and finding nothing, I went to the dresser and pulled out the long slim draw at the center. It contained a clutter of things. I took them out one by one. A ticket stub from cinemas in the 1920s to see an orchestra. Newspaper clippings from various decades—some so brittle I thought they’d turn to dust in my hands—of social gatherings with photos of people dressed up to the nines from long-forgotten eras. A piece of weathered brown paper turned out to be a flyer for a speakeasy in San Francisco during prohibition. That might do to slip under the door.

  Beneath it was more clippings. I pulled them out and placed them on top of the dresser as I started to search for something long and thin enough to push the key out of the lock, when my eye caught one of the newspaper articles. Staring out from it was a photo of Abriel. He wore a suit with his blonde hair slicked back, a cigarette in his mouth. He had his arms around two women, one on either side, who were unmistakably flappers, thin as sticks and wearing tasselled dresses.

  The date on the top of the clipping read 1926. It wasn’t possible.

  I picked up a few of the other old articles and inspected each one more carefully. I saw Abriel again, and someone else who looked familiar—Lucien. Beneath the articles lay photos. The first, in sepia tones, didn’t feature Abriel. It portrayed Lucien, in soft focus, gazing off into the distance in a World War I uniform. How old was he there? Thirty? The same age he looked when I met him only days before. I pulled out another photo, this time in color. There was no mistaking Abriel and Lucien, arms around each other, Abriel with hair coiffed like Elvis used to wear it. I huffed a laugh of humor and confusion.

  “Do you know how old I am?”

  I dropped the photo as I spun, knowing who had entered the room before I even saw him—I’d never forgotten the voice that had become like a hot blade in my mind and turned me to flame.

  Lucien stood in the open doorway, white shirt with the top buttons undone, a pair of blue pinstriped suit pants, shoeless. For one second I remembered the angel I’d known from my time at High Jinx. The one who was different from the rest, often caught in thought looking out over the city, at other times flirting with me but with a degree of respect I was unfamiliar with, whose short hair blazed like fields of straw caught in the setting sun and whose eyes…

  Those eyes had roiled when he’d tried to enrapture me and caused me a world of pain.

  I pushed the drawer closed with my backside and said sharply, “Where am I? Where’s Abriel?” I surprised myself at how confrontational I was, like we were best friends and I could afford to argue with him.

  “You’re at Heaven’s Gate. Abriel is too. He’s safe.”

  Safe? I didn’t believe him. I’d believe that as much as I’d believe I was safe. How much did he know? Did he know about my clutch with the concealed listening devices, who I was, and how he’d had my family killed? That, like Abriel, I considered myself an ally of the kin? Did he know I had discovered the truth behind who and what Savannah was? If he knew only half of it, I wasn’t safe. I was as good as dead.

  “You’re in my penthouse. I understand the confusion. This room—” he waved his hand in the air, “—is my most private. A step back into the past. A reminder of times that were…” The corner of his mouth lifted forming a crooked smile, and he glanced wistfully at me. “Times that were better.”

  I didn’t know how to interpret his gaze or the strange way he spoke to me—soft and with familiarity, with what sounded like sincerity and genuine sadness. Our first encounter had been strange too. Before he’d tried to enrapture me there’d been an ease between us, a part of him I strangely liked despite what I’d heard he’d done. Or, at least, not him but the Fallen he commanded. I vividly remembered those moments and how it seemed he liked me and, though I didn’t want to admit it, I kind of liked him. That had changed. Now I hated him. I hated all his kind, except Abriel.

  Despite the pain in my head, I had enough clarity to realize if he still thought we had a connection perhaps that could help me get out of the mess I’d gotten myself into. If I played things right, I might even be able to achieve what Dore wanted me to. I was, after all, in the place I needed to be—in Lucien’s penthouse where I hoped he still held Savannah. If I pretended to give a damn and found some common ground maybe he’d trust me. And with trust would come opportunity. Up until that point I’d had luck, and at least I wasn’t locked up in some holding cell or torture chamber. I had to be grateful for that.

  “You asked if I knew how old you were.” I made a show of looking him up and down. “I would have said thirty, but I have a strange feeling you’re going to tell me you’re a lot older than you look.” I hoped I hadn’t piled on my interest too thick. I didn’t care how old he was.

  He grimaced and walked over to me. My heart pounded at his closeness, wondering what he intended to do, but he merely reached toward the drawer I’d been looking through that had ended up hidden behind my backside. I moved to one side and he pulled it open.

  “I would call you a snoop, but if I were you I’d probably do the same thing if I woke up and found myself in a strange place—trying to gather information to work out where you are, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He let out a long sigh, picked out one of the photos from the drawer, took it with him to the chaise lounge, and sat down.

  “We can talk freely here. I’ve sent all security from the penthouse, and because it’s so hard to get up here I’ve never had any cameras installed. No one can see or hear what you’re doing. Or what I’m doing. We’re completely alone.”

  Was he threatening me? If we were th
e only ones in the penthouse and we had no one watching us, he could do whatever he wanted. I expected the pounding of my heart to quicken even more, thud so hard he’d be able to see it beneath my shirt, but it didn’t. After his initial closeness it had slowed. Like the first time we’d met, he had an ease about him that made me feel like he wasn’t a threat. I had to keep my wits about me. Last time his pleasantries had ended when he’d tried to enrapture me.

  “No, I’m not thirty. I’m not even forty. I’m one hundred and twenty-nine.”

  Even though the photos I’d seen seemed to support what he said, I found it hard to believe. That meant Abriel had to be over one hundred years old too.

  Lucien stared at the photo he’d taken from the drawer. “When angels fall we don’t remember what passed before. We have no idea who we were the first time we roamed the earth, no recall of what it was like in heaven, or of what we did to be banished by God. At least, that’s the experience of all I’ve spoken to. Except me.” Lucien frowned. “I remember I wasn’t banished. Abriel fell and I chose to follow him. When I think of it, I still experience the compulsion that made me go after him, but I have no recollection of why I did, only that I couldn’t let him fall alone. So, unlike all other Fallen, Abriel and I came back to this earth with an old connection; a bond no other angels have.”

  I still stood by the dresser and now leaned against it as I listened, wondering why Lucien had decided to tell me all this. I hoped he’d give me something I could use—a way to play him and successfully rescue Savannah and save myself.

  “It may surprise you to hear I didn’t want this appointment. Becoming High Angel was something I did for Abriel.”

  I fought my desire to scoff and ask if killing the love of Abriel’s life had also been for his brother’s sake.

  “Abriel has never had an interest in the war with the kin. He’s always questioned too much, made enemies among our brethren, and probably would have got himself executed if it weren’t for me. I became High Angel to protect him—it virtually makes him untouchable. I live this life to watch over him.”

  I didn’t believe Lucien. It was a convenient lie to lull me into a false sense of security.

  “Has he mentioned to you Eloise?”

  The way I looked up at him, surprised, revealed I knew who he was referring to. I hadn’t expected him to bring her up. I thought we’d play a game where he’d pretend he knew nothing about me and I’d pretend I knew nothing about the truth of him. Now he’d opened the door to all that, my anger rose at the lies he thought he could make me believe.

  “I know what you did to her.”

  “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  I thought I heard unease in his voice because I’d found out what a monster he was.

  “You took Abriel there. You made him watch.” I bit down on my tongue hard to stop myself saying anything else. Enraging Lucien wasn’t going to help me.

  “I didn’t order her torture and I tried to prevent her execution, but there’s only so much I can do before I compromise the protection I’m trying to give Abriel. Yes, I took him there. If I hadn’t he’d be dead by now too—it needed to look like he’d pay some price for what he’d done.”

  I was disgusted. “You’re lying. You wanted her dead because she was kin and your brother loved her.” He didn’t answer, and that made me so angry I burst. “It doesn’t matter if her death was by your hand; you’re still a murderer. I know you had my family killed.”

  His eyes widened in what appeared like genuine surprise. “No, I didn’t.”

  Liar.

  “And you had the Fallen come get me from the safe house with every intention of bringing me here to Heaven’s Gate to have me tortured. I know what you do to people like me.”

  “People like you.” He put the photo down beside him, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and put his face in his palms.

  If I’d had a weapon right at that moment I’d have used it on him—if I had to kill him to escape I would. But I didn’t have a weapon, and something about his posture, the defenseless position he’d put himself in—not even looking at me—left me confused.

  “Firstly, I don’t know anything about a safe house.” He looked up from his hands. “I came and got you from the motel after the motel desk clerk phoned in a report saying an angel who fit Abriel’s description had turned up covered in blood, booked a room, and then carried the body of an unconscious woman into that room. He’s lucky I got notified about it. You’re lucky. Anybody else and even I might not have been able to help either of you.”

  “Help?”

  “There might have been a time, when the war first gained momentum, I believed in what we were doing. Abriel never fit in here, on this earth, and I guess I wanted a way to help him return. Believe me, I wanted to return. I might not remember heaven as such, but I know it’s a much better place than this. That’s what motivated me, and only that. I wanted him to go home. I wanted to go home. But when I saw his love for Eloise and how her death destroyed him, and how much he hated me for what they did to her, I began to question everything. I’m tired, Meghan. Of all of this. I’ve wished for a long time that I could find a way out. I’ve questioned, for a long time now, the killing of kin, especially since—” He stopped. “I found life bearable and nothing more for the last decade or two. Then I met you.” He pursed his lips and looked down for a moment before returning his eyes to me. “I kept coming to your bar for the sole reason it meant I’d get a glimpse of you, because you made me forget everything for a while. Enabled me to pretend I was nothing more than a man living a life. It felt good.”

  My mouth had opened. I wanted to say something. I didn’t know what because my mind was too busy scrambling to digest what I’d heard.

  “I wanted it to be a mistake when they brought you to my penthouse the other night. I didn’t want the one thing—the one person—who made this long life suddenly easier to be caught up in all this. But you and I both know what has been said about you is true. I know you can resist enrapturement. I only realized in that last moment, just before I almost killed you, what you were doing.”

  He knew? And he’d let me go?

  “When you left with Abriel, I hoped you’d walk away and I’d never see you again except, maybe, at the bar. For your own safety I wished that, even though I wanted to spend more time with you alone.” He sighed. “I wish you’d walked away, and yet, here you are.”

  “Here I am,” I mumbled confused.

  “So.” He stood and took a step toward me.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “I’m going to leave you to rest. While you do, I’ll try to work out how I get you and my brother out of here alive.”

  21

  He left without another word. I waited for the turn of the key in the lock, but all I heard was the fading sound of his feet on the tiles outside. I tried the door, not trusting my hearing. It was unlocked.

  Could I believe him? He had to be lying. So why did I think he had told the truth? I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for flattering remarks, but even without those, everything he’d said and how he’d said it made me believe. Did I need any more proof than the unlocked door?

  What had my father said about finding allies in unlikely places? Like Berron, maybe Lucien was an ally? But my father had also said foes could be found in unlikely places. Perhaps Lucien only intended to lull me into a false sense of security before he struck.

  Even if Lucien intended to help Abriel and me, it didn’t matter because that didn’t include Savannah. I had no intention of leaving without her. I needed to think fast, come up with a solution to find her, then get out of Lucien’s penthouse with or without his help. If only the initial adrenaline of trying to find out where I was and attempt to escape hadn’t subsided. The nausea I’d woken with from the split in my head returned in a crashing wave. I rushed to the toilet and dry heaved.

  My vision swirling, I barely made it back to the bed. I intended to close my eye
s only for a while. I must have had a concussion and probably shouldn’t sleep, but I could still rest for a moment or two and hope I felt less sick.

  When I opened my eyes again, I knew I’d drifted off. Before I worked out for how long, I noticed a weight at the end of the bed near my feet. I sat up slowly, my head not as bad as it had been, and found curled in a tight ball a mountain lion cub.

  “Savannah!” I said it far too loudly and hoped Lucien hadn’t heard.

  Savannah’s head immediately popped up, her blue eyes wide. She sprang onto her paws and bounded to me, purring hard as she pushed her face into mine. I picked her up and my hand must have touched the place where her heart lay because the world spun, and then images of Savannah in human form flashed before my eyes. The first time I’d met her she’d been in a dark void, frightened and her eyes swollen from crying. This time when I entered her mind I found her high up in the mountains, standing on a boulder, her brindled bob-length hair moving in the breeze, her cheeks flushed with pink and her smile wide. And unfurled behind her were wings I hadn’t noticed the last time I’d seen her. Brilliant white wings, so white they appeared illuminated.

  You came back.

  She jumped off the boulder and threw her arms around me.

  I said I would.

  It might have taken me a long time to agree to rescue her, but I was glad I’d been true to my word, and her reaction made me realize it had been the right thing to do, even if I’d put myself in a situation where I had no idea what the outcome would be.

  How did you get out of your cage?

  Cage? I have a room.

  A room? I assumed Lucien would keep her locked up like the wild animal she was supposed to be.

  Yes.

  And how did you get into this room? The door had been closed when I’d lay down.

  The door was open.

  Then who had? Lucien? Why? Had he wanted Savannah to come into the room? The answers to those questions would have to wait.

  Are you okay?