Chapter Fifteen
Two angels battling over the same body. Grif grounded himself in the reality of Jeannie Holmes’s blood and bone, and thought, This is bound to get ugly.
Lying on the cold hospital floor beneath Jeannie’s bed, the first thing Grif did to prepare for entry into Jeannie’s body was force his own blood to thicken, gel, and cease circulation. His angelic nature allowed his flesh to easily go malleable and light. Like atoms, his cells could disperse and travel through the cold and unyielding wilds of the Universe, as long as he kept a clear picture in his mind of where he was going. That’s how he delivered souls into the Everlast, and that’s how he entered Jeannie Holmes’s body.
But Jeannie was having none of it. He’d been careful to line up his energies with hers, felt their chakras click into place, but fumbled blindly for her precariously tethered soul. She was hiding. Thus the darkness.
Don’t let go yet, he thought, just as her pulse points flashed, and a jolt of lava-hot electricity shot through his etheric form. Her energy lit like a landing strip, but her body temperature immediately dropped twenty degrees. Scratch had arrived.
Grif looked around at the reality illuminated by the fallen angel’s presence, unsurprised to find an exact replica of the cubicle where Jeannie’s mortal body rested. The curtains, the bed, the sounds of the ER were all the same, and Grif approached the bed, surprised at the thoroughness, though he shouldn’t have been. Even on the Surface, even fully conscious, people always created their own individual realities.
So while Jeannie might’ve been wearing a hospital gown back on the Surface, in this reality she wore a cotton shirt, jeans, and lace-up boots, all black. Her skin was unmarred by open sores, her eyes alert and clear, and she was a slightly older version of the Jeannie who’d stared back at him from Jann’s well-worn photo. It was how she really saw herself.
Yet even here, her plasmic outline was a violent ring of red flame. It seared the space around her like a solar flare, and sent heat radiating throughout her body. Jann Holmes, Grif thought, was going to have her heart broken one last time.
Worse yet, this Jeannie lay bound to the bed by thick, winding coils of enormous tree roots and dead branches. Grif didn’t know enough about possession to know if this was how she felt, or if Scratch had placed her there once it’d entered her body, but she was trapped, and clearly unable to free herself.
Grif rounded the bed, flexing his shoulders so that his wings flared. “He’s after me,” Jeannie whispered, as he leaned over her.
He paused, the onyx blades of his wingtips glinting in the light. They could appear softer, like dew-tipped smoke, if he willed it. Sometimes he did, depending on the skittishness of the Take, but there was a reason God gave angels wings like weaponry. Sometimes the rise and fall of a waterfall of spears was the tool needed to navigate through the silky Universe. Like now.
“It,” he corrected softly, then began sawing at the deadened roots, ears pricked to Kit’s and Scratch’s voices rumbling, and setting the surrounding curtains to sway as he worked.
But after a minute, Jeannie whispered. “It’s after you, too.”
Grif looked at her and she nodded. So this was Scratch’s handiwork, and probably the reason Jeannie had not yet died. It’d tethered her soul to her decaying flesh. It was using her as bait. Grif worked faster. “Just hang on. I’m going to get you out of here.”
So they fell silent, listening to Jeannie’s vocal box rumble in her throat, and Kit’s replies, tinny and farther away. Jeannie listened intently, the conversation beginning to relax her into interjecting her own intermittent answers about Jeap and Bella, and the krokodil that had wrapped itself so violently around her life.
Meanwhile, Grif labored, cutting through the deadened bark until his shoulders screamed, and branches and bramble lay in jagged mounds around his feet. Another minute at most, he thought. And then he could scoop up Jeannie’s soul and have her in the Everlast before Scratch even knew he’d been here. The thought had him smiling up at her. She half-smiled back.
“I like your wings,” she said.
“Yeah? Play your cards right and you could have a pair just like ’em.”
Yet the words were barely uttered when her smile suddenly froze, and the blood in her veins roared to life. Adrenaline rushed around them, so loudly and rapidly that Grif hunched low, feeling like a stone at the bottom of a hot river.
The taste of metal flooded the back of Grif’s throat, so fast and full that he almost choked. Fear, he thought, recognizing its slide beneath his tongue. The heartbeat fueling Jeannie’s body sped up. The ceiling throbbed in a rapid, unsteady beat. The curtain hemming the cubicle began a misty fade to black, which was her vision narrowing. Suddenly they were someplace that was nowhere, back in a body that no longer worked.
Grif looked at Jeannie’s face, but her gaze had hollowed out. “He knows you’re here.”
Grif didn’t correct her this time. New vines shot from nowhere to reclaim her body, and the vision Jeannie had so carefully constructed around her gave way to the darkness of the Eternal Forest. A movement caught Grif’s eye as shadow separated from shadow, and a creature emerged from the gnarled stumps and protruding brush.
Grif had never seen anything like it on the Surface or the Everlast. Pure angels could look either human or monstrous, depending on their purpose, but they were never obscene or grotesque, and that was what this was. Made of kindling and thorns, it had the gait of a giant praying mantis, but with arching bramble flaring from its back where wings once grew.
It was exactly what one might think a creature outside of God’s presence looked like: a hollowed-out husk housing withered sentience, a spirit without soul, and a splintering, endless hatred.
“So you really are both angelic and human,” Scratch said, studying Grif’s own sturdy frame and billowing wings, though it cringed from the weak glow of Jeannie’s remaining strength. “How did you manage it? Someone impregnate a mortal? God get bored with the existing species? Or maybe you’re the bastard product of some bi-worldly war?”
Grif didn’t answer because if Scratch knew his name, it knew his story. Besides, Grif’d seen hatred before, shredded resentment behind mortal and immortal gazes, but the way Scratch looked at him now was entirely new. That look was spring-loaded with spikes and teeth, and countless deadly triggers. Of course, there was double reason for this skinny, hunched creature to hate him.
Feeling large and healthy and powerful, Grif stepped forward. “Get out of this body.”
“It is rather crowded in here.” Scratch feigned wiping a hand over its brow. “Toasty, too.”
It turned to Jeannie. “You hot, Jeannie? Cuz you look like you’re burning up.”
Jeannie just began to cry.
“Of course you are,” it said patronizingly. “You’re just one big human bonfire these days, aren’t you?”
“Leave, Scratch,” Grif commanded.
It simply tapped one lean finger against its chin, ignoring Grif. “Say, it’s nice and cool in my neck of the woods. Why don’t you take my hand, little lady? I can show you the way.”
And as it extended that hand toward Jeannie, the vines around her creaked and loosened.
Grif lunged, but roots immediately shot from the floor, impeding his progress and, a second later, his view. He dodged, expecting Scratch to counter again, but the creature just watched Grif from the corner of its shimmering, starry eye.
A smile snapped over its face as Grif pulled up short.
“She’s not goin’ with you.” Grif sidestepped the root, and another shot up. This one began a slow, screeching crawl toward his ankles.
Scratch’s splintered smile widened. “But can’t you feel the heat emanating from her every molecule? I’d be doing her a favor.” Hunching, Scratch propped its bony arms on its hips, and scowled at Jeannie. “Look what you did, you stupid girl! You destroyed the only body and life God gave you!”
Jeannie began crying in earnest.
“Stop it,” Grif ordered.
“You don’t deserve to be in His divine presence,” Scratch continued, with a reptilian leer. “You don’t deserve to be anywhere good!”
“Don’t listen to it, Jeannie, and don’t judge her, you rancid bit of celestial trash. You’ve never lived. You were never born so never had the chance to fail or thrive. You don’t know the hardship of a real choice.”
“Doesn’t make me wrong,” Scratch snapped.
“No, it makes you Fallen.” Grif kept his attention on Scratch, but tried to soothe Jeannie. The fallen angel was too close to her. If its lies swayed her and she accepted its hand of her own free will, then Grif could do little to stop it. And Jeannie would be Lost forever.
“You can’t see it in this light, but there are two open sores on that thing’s back. Its wings were plucked when it betrayed God. They still bleed like a river, and they’ll never stop.”
“Wings are for the weak,” Scratch interjected, circling now.
“You tell the archangels that?” Grif countered, circling as well.
“Those glorified pigeons have no sense of humor,” it scoffed. “The fallen ones get a kick out of it, though.”
“I want to go home,” Jeannie said, blubbering now. Branches snapped in the darkness around them, her mind cracking, and Scratch smiled. “Please, I just want to go—”
“You have no home, you thankless wretch!” Scratch screamed. “You are unwanted and unloved! I am the only one who cares what happens to you now!”
Again, it held out its hand to Jeannie. This time she looked at it.
“No,” Grif told Jeannie, and another vine shot up next to him with a resounding snap. He ignored it. “Scratch is a world-class liar bent on your destruction. But its power is confined to the Eternal Forest. Wingless, it can never ascend again. It certainly can’t overcome anyone bathed in God’s light.”
“But Jeannie’s not in God’s light, is she? She’s dirty and vile. A disgrace to the God who made her.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .” Jeannie sobbed, but there was no hydration left in her body, and no tears to be had. She was also becoming more inflamed along with her emotions. Her slipping soul would soon be entirely untethered. Scratch, Grif realized, was just biding its time until it could seize her.
It was also forming a meticulous patch of briars around Grif. Though spaced to give the illusion of randomness, the jagged mounds could easily intertwine to form an impenetrable hedge. Grif’s own personal forest in the wilds of Jeannie’s mind.
“Don’t listen,” Grif told Jeannie, because she was the key. “There’s a place for you in the Everlast. Loved ones wait for you there. You’ll forget your mistakes, you’ll forgive yourself. There is more after this, and it’s all there just waiting for you.”
“What would you know about it, Centurion?” Scratch spat Grif’s title like chewing tobacco. “You’re just as Lost as she is.”
The blades in Grif’s wings scraped as he shrugged. “So leave her be and take your chances with me.”
“Rest easy, old boy. I’ve already carved out a place of honor for you in the Forest. But for now”—it glanced at Jeannie—“I’m going to add to my collection.”
And with a fracturing curve of its spindly spine, it leaped, bridging itself over the girl’s shaking body. Its limbs squeaked as they elongated to form a hovering cage atop her, and leaves bloomed on twisted boughs, dying instantly and falling to the ground.
Grif whirled on bent knees so that the blades on his wings brought down the deadened boughs and briars as easily as if slicing through cheese. He prepared to leap over the short hedge, dead yet already sprouting again, but Scratch turned its head, bared its teeth, and let loose a gusting, glacial howl. The raw wind cut at Grif, and though he could hear Jeannie’s anguished cry, brittle leaves whipped into his face, obscuring his vision.
I need water, Grif thought, wishing he could shed—and somehow cast—at least one defensive tear. I need more blades and time and help.
I, Grif realized, with a panicked start, need God.
Teeth chattering, suddenly freezing, he whirled again so that the leaves fell away, and the hedge was again cut low. Scratch, he saw, had already removed all of Jeannie’s ties, but it hadn’t yet touched her. She lay there, vulnerable and frozen, but she was still God’s child. She had to choose it for herself.
“No, Jeannie!” Grif screamed. Icy air howled back at him, and a branch rose from nowhere to wallop his back. Thrown forward, he barely dodged the shoot that threatened to impale his chest, instead bracing himself against it with one hand. Vines immediately wrapped around his wrist and caught him there.
He screamed into the raw wind. “Don’t accept his hand! Trust me, Jeannie—you’ll only be exchanging one personal hell for another, and there’s no escape in that one. You are not meant for the Forest.”
Gnarled roots slid over the top of Grif’s feet, trapping him in place. That’s when he remembered his piece. It was strapped to his ankle here, just as when he died, and before the roots could recover and trap his right hand, too, he yanked the snub-nose from his ankle holster and shot Scratch right through the chest. The fallen angel was blown from Jeannie’s bedside, rib cage splintering into chips. Grif shot again, skull this time, but a second spear ripped through Grif’s side. They both cried out at the same time, and the shadowed forest shook around them.
That’s when the globe appeared over Jeannie’s bed, a translucent sun spun from the filament of crystals and precious gems. For some reason looking at it made Grif want to cry and laugh at the same time. It made his heart swell like it was engorged with light. Even Scratch fell still, marveling at its beauty. But Jeannie, frozen beneath the floating orb, reacted the most strangely. She stared up at it before giving a slight nod, then closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. Scratch gasped and reached out from where it’d fallen, but it was too late. The sun lowered and slipped into Jeannie’s mouth like a glistening wafer.
Scratch’s body exploded with light, screams shooting in every direction as blinding rays burst through its splintered core. The heat inside Jeannie’s body rose again, but in the instant before it became unbearable, it began to rain. Scratch howled and writhed with the first drop, but there was no escaping the gentle deluge. It curled into itself, and the rain’s effect on the rest of the forest was the same. Vines and trees and shadows and bramble dissolved like vapor, and the illusion of the forest began to disappear.
The charred, sodden thicket that’d been the fallen angel tumbled like a weed, but it managed one last neck-wrenching pulse of its eyes before rolling into oblivion. “You tell her . . . tell her I know her now, too!”
And then it was gone.
Silence rushed in with a wave of emptiness that would’ve crushed Grif’s eardrums if his breathing hadn’t been so ragged.
Unencumbered, Jeannie sat up in her bed. “How did you do that?”
Grif just looked at her.
“How did you make that light appear over my bed?”
Instead of answering, Grif closed his eyes and slumped. Then, slowly, he licked his lips, tasting the rain as it continued to fall over his face, its sweetness and relief filling him with peace and the warm glow of acceptance and love. He sat there until the deluge lessened, just letting it wash over him, and only when it stopped did he find his feet. He rose, staggering slightly.
“You’re crying,” Jeannie noted, when he reached her side.
“It’s nothing,” he told her, holding out his hand. He needed to deliver her to the Everlast quickly, just in case Scratch recovered and returned. But inside he was crying, much like Jeannie had been earlier. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Inside, he was thinking only of Kit.
Kit paced Jeannie Holmes’s ER cubicle, wiping her cheeks, though they were now dry, and stealing glances at the girl’s still, silent form. What the hell was going on? Grif had been gone only ten minutes, but they were the longest ten of Kit’s life. Each passing second weighed on the previous one, so that before long the heaviness in the cubicle threatened to halt her breath.
But why should I worry? Kit silently reasoned. Grif was an angel and a protector and he had wings that could slice open the strongest foe.
Yet she was worried, because Grif was also alive—maybe only half so, and maybe by default—but alive enough to matter. Alive enough that she would feel his absence if he was suddenly gone.
And that’s why, when Jeannie’s body began writhing in a way that mortal bodies simply didn’t, and the machines failed to register it, Kit coaxed the possessed girl’s mouth open, and poured her tears inside. Though “pouring” wasn’t exactly accurate. One tear had done the trick. The writhing stopped immediately, and Jeannie had been still for so long that Kit felt on the verge of tears again.
So when Grif appeared, rising from beneath the bed on the other side of Jeannie, Kit gave a startled yelp before skirting the rails and rushing him. “Oh, thank God!”
She pulled him to her so that his “Oomph” was muffled against her shoulder, then pulled back just as quickly to study him. “You’re okay? Is Jeannie okay? Did you . . . you know. Take her?”
Face ashen, Grif shook his head, and staggered to the plastic visitor’s chair behind him. Slumping, he sighed. “She’s still here. I have to draw her spirit directly from her body in order to Take her.”
“Oh, right.” And Kit would have to leave the room for that, but that was fine. What mattered was that Jeannie’s soul was safe, Grif was here, and Scratch was gone.
So why was Grif’s face ashen, and his expression pulled so tight that it looked like it would crack if he moved?
“Honey,” he began, and his voice did crack. Like a bad motor, he couldn’t seem to start it up again without turning it over a few times. Finally, he looked up. “What the hell did you do?”
But he knew. She saw that, and just swallowed hard. “So it worked?”
He only managed a mute nod.
“So Jeannie’s not Lost anymore?” She pressed when he still didn’t answer. “Right?”
“It doesn’t matter, Kit—”
“Of course it does! Scratch thinks it can drag the Lost souls into a fate that’s not their own but—”
“Scratch isn’t after the Lost anymore, Kit! It’s after you!”
She drew back. “It can’t touch me. I’m Chosen. And I’m not vulnerable. I’m . . . good.”
Face crumpling, Grif shook his head. “You gave it your tears, Kit! It has your memories. It knows your emotions—”
“That’s right!” she said, because she didn’t need to be attacked by him, too. “I fed my tears to Jeannie, cried them right into her mouth, because her body was convulsing and her head was jerking side to side, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on! I wanted to help! Did I? Did I help?”
It took a while, but Grif finally whispered, “Yes.”
But he looked like he blamed himself for it. Kneeling before him, Kit wondered what exactly had gone on between him and Scratch. She took his hands, icy cold, in hers. “Then it was worth it.”
“Not to me.”
Kit had never seen Grif this way. Though fully clothed, he looked naked somehow, like something had been taken from him. She swallowed hard. “You’re scaring me.”
He opened his mouth but the words didn’t come. That just scared her more.
“I have to go,” he finally said. “I’m her Centurion. I have to . . .”
But he couldn’t seem to voice what he had to do. It was as if he no longer knew.
“I understand,” she said, and straightened as if to stretch, though she really half-pulled him to his feet. “You need to secure her soul safely in the Everlast. I’ll leave and you’ll have your privacy.”
She led him to the bed, telling herself she was saying good-bye to Jeannie, and not showing Grif what he needed to do next. Yet when she turned to leave, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. It was still cold, like he’d just come in from a winter storm, but at least it was now steady.
“It was right, you know.”
Kit didn’t understand. “What?”
“Scratch,” Grif answered, and he frowned and winced at the same time. “It was right when it said that you were a light. Your soul . . .”
“What?” Kit repeated, with more alarm this time. What was wrong with her soul?
Still shaking his head, Grif closed his eyes. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And then your tears began to fall, and I’ve never felt so loved and at peace and . . . pure.”
Stunned, Kit said nothing.
He opened his eyes again, and it was a steadier gaze that found hers. Good. He was coming back around. And yet his face was blank, the expression blasted from it. Grif, she realized, was terrified. “I couldn’t stop it. It would have had Jeannie. And it didn’t even want her, not really. But . . .”
“But it’s fixed on me,” Kit finished for him.
“It craves you like a caged lion, one that’s been malnourished for centuries.” He shook his head. “What were you thinking of when you . . . you know.”
“When I started to cry?” Kit asked, and Grif nodded. “You.”
Grif sighed, also nodding after a moment, before he jerked his head at Jeannie. “I have to take her. Now.”
“Okay.” She turned again.
“Kit.” He spoke her name sharply as she reached the curtain that led back into the bustle of the ER. She turned back around to find him more solemn than she’d ever seen. “Keep your emotions under control. I think that’s how it plans to circle back around.”
Kit swallowed hard. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I need to deliver Jeannie to incubation. I need to talk to Sarge about Scratch and the Lost. I have . . . some other questions while I’m there.”
“But time runs differently in the Everlast, right? I mean, you can arrive anywhere you want back on the Surface?” She meant anywhere in the future. He just couldn’t go back to the past. Join the club, Kit thought, blowing a hard breath as he nodded. “Okay, so meet me right outside the hospital . . .”
“That’s less than five minutes. It’s tight.”
Kit just stared.
“All right.” He finally nodded. “Of course.”
Kit sighed in relief. All she had to do was walk through these curtains and the ER, into the main hospital, then stand right outside the doors where they’d entered. It was safe here, and there were other people around. Then Grif would be there, probably holding his hand out to her before she’d even crossed the threshold. Together they’d figure out what to do about the fallen angel that’d swallowed both of their tears. That’d inexplicably fixed on her.
That craved her like a malnourished lion.
Kit counted her footsteps as she left the ER, just to keep her mind busy. No negative emotions, only steady action, forward motion. A shout and then running feet sounded behind her as she hit the double doors leading to the lobby. Jeannie’s name followed, clattering like a chaotic pinball off the walls of the ER, and she paused for a moment to look back.
She felt sorry for the nurses, because she knew their work would be in vain, and for Jann Holmes, who was getting some well-deserved sleep somewhere in this city but would soon be woken by a peace-shattering call.
And she was surprised to find that she also felt sorry for herself.
Outside, she lit a cigarette as she waited, trying to keep that thought from blossoming into something more. The only way to do that was not to think about it at all. So, shielding her eyes against the sun’s rays, she emptied her mind and searched for Grif.
Kit glanced at her watch; seven minutes had already passed. Where was he?
Then a bounding, boisterous tune burst from her handbag. Kit jumped before she realized it was the ringtone she’d assigned to Marin. The song matched her aunt’s nonstop energy. Digging for her phone, Kit shunted her smoke aside and glanced at her watch. Past eleven on a Sunday. The paper would be silent, the presses cooling between printings. Even her workaholic aunt took the morning off.
Squinting against the unrelieved assault of the sun, Kit scanned the lot as she answered. Still no Grif, and he should already be there. She needed him now, God knew she did, and he was never . . .
“I’m at the paper,” Marin said, without preamble. “In the employee lot. Oh, Kit. Kit—”
“Marin?” Kit froze. She’d never heard her aunt’s voice so panicked before. Not even in the worst throes of her cancer treatments. And never at work. “Are you okay?”
But there was a clatter, and Marin’s voice, more distant, curled into a scream. “Oh, God . . . please, no! Please don’t!”
The connection went dead mid-cry, and Kit was suddenly running. She glanced around the lot one last time as she yanked open her car door, but Grif simply wasn’t there, and she couldn’t wait. Someone had Marin.