Broken Wings (An Angel Eyes Novel)

42

Brielle

There’s a new nightmare now. I’m looking through my mom’s eyes. I know they’re her eyes because I’m sick and dying, but Virtue is there. He’s holding me tight, his wings singing, his chest warm. My eyes are closed, but I think we’re flying. I feel the wind on my face, pressing against us. I wonder where we’re going, but I haven’t the energy to ask.

And then Virtue sets us down, and I open my eyes. The building around us crumbles, flames licking the walls, charring them, turning them black. The smoke makes me gag, my legs weak from the disease ravaging it. But at my feet is a woman, dead already. Her nurse’s scrubs are stained with smoke, her left side burnt.

Mom groans at the sight. She knows her. I know her.

“One more thing,” Virtue says. “One more thing before you go.”

And then I hear a voice crying, panicked. It screams and screams.

“Mother! Mama! Where are you? Please, Mom, please!”

I recognize the voice. More than that, my mom recognizes it. With energy she doesn’t possess, she runs out the open door and into the hall. It’s full of smoke, classrooms on either side. Ten-year-old Olivia runs down the hall, limping, injured. She opens one door after another, screaming for her mom.

My heart breaks at her agony, but she shouldn’t see this. She needn’t see her mother burnt and dead. Seeing won’t change a thing. So I run—Mom runs—down the hall. She grabs Olivia by the hand, spinning her toward the exit.

“Hannah?” Olivia asks, tears streaking the smoke on her face. “What are you doing here? Where’s my mom?”

Mom doesn’t answer. There’s not enough energy for that, just enough to pull the screaming, flailing girl through a corner classroom and shove her out an emergency exit door.

The door swings shut, closing Olivia out. Hannah slams her fist against the knob, locking it, keeping the girl from the flames that killed her mother. And then she stumbles to the center of the room, sucking raspy breaths of smoke-saturated air.

Virtue steps through the flames and takes her hand. He rubs his wings together, releasing wave after wave of worship.

“You could have done that,” Mom says, swaying on dying legs. “You could have saved her. Why bring me here?”

“Because you asked. You wanted to be useful to the Father, Hannah, and you have been. Your saving her now will pave the way for your daughter to save her later. And one day Olivia will need saving.”

The idea is confusing, but there’s peace in it for Mom. Peace that her last minutes have made a difference. They’re the last words she hears—the last words I hear before Mom takes one last breath. Before Virtue wraps her in his arms and spreads his wings wide, shattering the classroom windows and lifting her into the heavens.