Chapter TWENTY
My hair blew into my face, tickling my nose, pulling me from my dreams that were recapping the previous twelve hours. I opened one eye, squinting in the brilliant morning light. The sun reflected on the ocean water, the scent of sand heavy in my nose. Lying on my stomach, tangled in an oversized white towel, I propped myself up on my elbows.
After a swim in the water long after the sun had gone down, Alex and I had lain out on oversized beach towels to dry off and apparently I had fallen asleep. As I shifted to sit up, a piece of paper floated off of my bare back. Grabbing it off the sand, I recognized Alex’s handwriting.
Went for a run, be back in a bit.
Smiling in nothing but happiness, I climbed to my feet and went back in the house to shower. Dressing in a breezy white sun dress, I pulled a brush through my tangled curls, and lotioned my dried out skin. With the dryer weather, the ocean water and sand, I felt like a lizard.
When I walked back out into the living area, I found Alex sitting on the couch, flipping through a familiar book.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked, my voice coming out tighter sounding than I meant it to.
“Are these what I think they are?” he asked, not even looking up.
I sank onto the couch next to him, my eyes scanning down the lists. “The names of the dead,” I replied.
“The ones you stood trial for?”
“Most of them,” I answered, my previous happiness sinking slightly. “I didn’t realize they were real people for a long time, I started recording the names afterward. And toward the end there I was too out of it to even recall the names.”
“There’s hundreds of names here, Jessica,” he breathed, his face looking horrified.
I didn’t say anything, just read down the list.
Isabel Isaacs.
Tamara Bishop.
Matthew Barnes.
George Vasquez.
“Do you mind if I ask why you brought it?” he asked.
I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I guess I just feel like maybe there will be some answers in here.” Opening up to the back of the book, I pulled out a few sheets of folded paper. Opening them up, I showed Alex my drawings. “We’re running out of time. Maybe there’s something here.”
He took the pages from my hands. I had only brought four of them. One of the chairs the council sat in, the ones mounted directly into the wall. One of the endless angels who sat on the spiral staircase that wound around the cylinder. There was one of Cole, leaning forward, his greedy eyes boring into me even through the page. The last was of myself, being pulled by one exalted angel and one condemned.
“These people,” Alex said, looking back toward the list of names. “They owe you everything for standing their trial. I mean, just from when I was there, it was terrifying. And they didn’t have to go through it because you did it for them.”
All the trials, all the scrolls with the deeds of the dead upon them, all the brandings, everything flashed through my head. I squeezed my eyes closed as I thought of Alex possibly having to go through that soon.
“You okay?” Alex asked, his fingers intertwining with mine.
“You can’t leave me,” I breathed, slowly opening my eyes to meet his grey ones. “You can’t leave me.” Before I let any coherent thoughts form, I leaned forward, my lips meeting his, my hand coming to the back of his neck.
The book of names and the drawings fell to the floor.
The sound of music started to fade away as Alex and I walked hand in hand back from the small coastal town. Managing to drag ourselves out of the massive white bed for just a few hours, we wandered down the dirt road that eventually led to small shops and restaurants.
I had gotten a small lunch and then we wandered through the street market. I laughed as I pulled on an enormous hat with an even bigger pink flower on the brim while Alex snapped pictures. Browsing through the tables and rickety racks, we found matching necklaces for Amber, Emily, Sal, and Caroline.
Everywhere we went people stared.
I sighed in relief when the sun started to set and Alex and I slowly walked back to the house.
“Did you hear those kids that were staring and pointing at you?” I asked as I leaned my head on Alex shoulder as we walked hand in hand.
“Angel! Angel!” he did a perfect mimic. I felt him shake his head. “Just look at you. You’d think more people would guess it.”
“Even though I’m not,” I tried to sound joking. It seemed like we couldn’t ever just have a normal day. It always came back to angels.
“Not quite,” he said as Alex kissed the top of my head.
He was quiet again as we continued down the dirt road. The long breezy dress I wore wrapped around my legs as a breeze picked up off the water. I felt the wheels in Alex’s head turning.
“What?” I asked, knowing there was something.
“Explain how the trial works to me,” Alex said after a moment of hesitation.
I lifted my head from his shoulder, looking him briefly in the eye. Everything in me didn’t want to talk about the trials at that moment. But I knew we didn’t have much time left.
“Well, in my nightmares I always started out in this cell. Cormack would walk down this long tunnel and get me. Then he would take me down the tunnel and out onto the catwalk and leave me there. The council would show up and state that the deeds of the person’s life would be made known. And then the other angels would swarm the cylinder. Then the council would produce the scrolls of the person’s life.”
“Scrolls?” Alex questioned, his brow furrowing.
I nodded. “They would have two scrolls. One had all of the good deeds of a person’s life, the other one had all the bad. They’d read aloud those things. Some people have done really horrible things in their lives,” I shook my head, recalling all the things I had heard. My stomach turned. “They read it for everyone to hear. No one ever forgets what you’ve done.
“Then they sentence. All ten of the council members determine where they think you should be placed, up or down. If you’re sentenced below, Cole brands the back of your neck to mark where you belong.” As I spoke, the hairs surrounding my own scar stood on end.
“And then you get your wings,” Alex filled in when my voice faltered.
I nodded again. “Once your judgment has been placed you get your own set of wings. It doesn’t feel too good.”
“I remember,” Alex made an attempt at joking. I just half glared at him. He gave me an apologetic smile. “Then what?”
I thought back to all the trials, thinking what the answer to that question was. “And then… whatever side you’re placed on claims you.”
Alex didn’t say anything for a moment, mulling that over. “So it’s not even the council who claims someone?” Alex questioned. “It’s their minions.”
“I guess you could say that,” I thought. “I mean, the council decides where you go, there’s no question about that. You can fight and scream all you like but they determine that. But yeah, the condemned either drag you down to hell or the exalted escort you into the above.”
Alex’s eyes stared out over the ocean. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "There has to be something there," he said. "With them claiming someone after they are judged."
We neared the end of the dirt road and walked past the hammock that now had a lot of good memories associated with it. My mind kept turning over and over as we walked back into the house. Stepping into the bedroom, Alex flopped down on the bed and I sat on the edge of the mattress.
I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the drawings that had been left there. Shuffling through them, I stopped at the one of me being used in the tug of war between good and evil. "What…?" I started, my brain forming a line of thought in jagged patterns. "What if the dead wouldn't claim someone? What if they refused to take someone judged to join them?"
Alex didn't say anything for a minute, just stared up at the ceiling above him. "If a judged person has nowhere to go, where do they go?"
And it flashed into my mind like a white hot light. "Maybe back," I breathed, hardly brave enough to say it for fear of letting myself dare to hope it.
"It makes sense in a way," Alex said, his voice rising just slightly in excitement. "If there was nowhere for me to go they may as well send me back. If the afterlife stops trying to pull me back to judge me, maybe things can… go back to normal. Has anything like that ever happened before? That the dead didn't claim someone?"
"Not that I ever witnessed. I have a hard time imagining that it ever has."
"But how do we get them to do that?" Alex said, his voice already sounding disheartened. "From what I remember of the afterlife, half its residents don't seem the type to want to do anyone a favor."
I thought about that for a long while, simply staring at a blank spot on the wall. Glancing back over at the nightstand, I grabbed my book of names.
"We simply ask them," I breathed as I started scanning through the pages. My hope and nerves grew at a rate I feared would consume me.
"Ask them?"
"You said so yourself yesterday," I said, my heart starting to pound in my chest. "Those that I stood trial for owe me everything."
"So you would ask them what?" Alex asked, his voice sounding nervous and excited all at the same time.
"To not accept you," I breathed, reading through the pages in a nearly frantic way. "I have to go back and find them."
"Go back," he said. "Back to the afterlife that wants you back so badly?"
"They want you back more, Alex," I said, meeting his fearful looking eyes. "I could go unnoticed."
"That seems unlikely."
"I have an ally there," I said, feeling my stomach knot up.
Alex paused, his expression blank and unreadable for a moment. "Did he really change that much?" he asked, something sad and painful in his voice.
"Cole is still a bad, selfish man," I explained, recalling those final few hours we had together before he went back to the afterlife for good. "But he... he's moved on too, in his own way.
Alex gave the faintest of sighs before he rolled onto his back, folding his arms above his head as he stared up at the ceiling again. "I don't know that I can ask you to do this for me, Jessica. A million things could go wrong."
"But if I do nothing, you won't be here for much longer," I whispered as I set the book and the pages aside and curled into Alex's side. "How much harder is it getting?"
Alex just stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "Sometimes it feels like every single moment is a struggle," he answered, taking in a quivering breath. "Every day gets harder and harder. It's all I can do to keep the wings contained."
"Cole told me that he couldn't keep his hidden, those last few days. His entire body started looking like this," I said as I traced my fingers along the veins that were starting to bulge on his forearms. The skin was already looking tighter. "The skin around his eyes started turning black, almost like he was diseased. His veins rose up. And he was losing a lot of feathers."
"I lost a few this morning while you were in the shower. I had to let them out, just for a bit. Three of them fell to the ground."
"See," I said against the skin of his chest. "We can't afford to wait any longer. It could just get to be too much at any time and I could lose you."
Alex didn't say anything for a minute and I could almost feel the war he was fighting in his head. He knew how dangerous this was going to be. I knew how dangerous this was going to be. Things could go so horribly, terribly wrong. Who knew what they might do to me if I got caught.
"You gave up everything to keep me alive" I said quietly. "Now it’s my turn."
"Okay," he finally breathed. He gave me a tight squeeze, kissing the top of my head.
I lifted my lips to his, running my hands under his shirt and over his chest, feeling every bump and valley of his body. I let my fingers trace down his stomach. Shifting my weight on top of him, I let my lips move with his. Alex's hands fisted in my mane of hair.
"I refuse to let them take this away from me," I growled as I moved my lips down his jawline, to his throat. "I intend to enjoy you, my husband, for a very, very long time." My lips continued to move down to Alex's chest.
Alex gave a little moan, tilting his head back. "I refuse to go!" he half shouted, half growled toward the ceiling.
Later that evening, I sat alone in the hammock, the soft breeze pulling my hair away from my face. Alex was inside, enjoying a long shower. The warm air felt good on my almost completely bare skin, the only thing I wore a breezy, lacy nightgown.
I lay back in the hammock, my eyes staring up at the palm leaves that partially blocked out the perfectly pink evening sky. I felt strange inside. A very big part of me was on the verge of a panic attack. Going back to the afterlife to do what I was going to do was petrifying. I had lived in terror of the afterlife all my life. My world had been ripped apart because of it all. Yet I felt an odd sense of anticipation. I was finally going to be able to fight back. I was not going to let them take him. I was going to take back what was mine. I had earned Alex after all they had done to me. And I was taking a huge step toward saving Alex.
If they decided to keep and punish me, it would be no worse than having Alex ripped away from me anyway.
I thought back to all those trials I had stood, all the names that I had been called. All the times Cole had branded me for someone else.
I had experienced the death of others, over and over again in trade for evading my own.
Something in my stomach hardened. Alex was right. Those people owed me everything for bearing what I had for them. They owed it to me to do what I would ask them.
The sun started to drop below the horizon, the sky turning from pink to a deep purple. I rose from the hammock, my stomach filled with nervous butterflies. Just as I stood, I saw Alex leaning in the doorway, watching me. His face looked almost sad, and yet his eyes were filled with nothing but love, the kind of love that came around only once every hundred lifetimes.
I closed the gap between us, stopping just in front of him, and wrapping my fingers around his lightly.
"I'm scared, Jessica," he whispered.
"Don't be," I breathed. "I'm ready for this."
His eyes searched mine for a long while, the fear so obvious in them. I finally looked away from him. If I thought about Alex’s fear for too long I would scare myself out of this.
And I couldn’t back out now. I wasn't lying when I had said that I was ready for this.
Stepping away from Alex, I walked back into the house. Finding the book of names on the coffee table, I grabbed it and slowly walked back into the bedroom. I faintly heard the sound of Alex following behind me.
I stood at the foot of the bed for a long while, simply staring at it. I ran over everything in my mind again, pictured the hell that I was about to put myself into.
And I recalled the way Alex looked when he said the binding words of "I do" in front of everyone who mattered to me.
Taking a hard swallow, I climbed into the bed and under the thin sheet. Alex slipped into the bed next to me. Clutching the book to my chest, I curled into Alex's side. He wrapped his arms around me protectively, his chin resting on the top of my head.
"Don't let go of me until I wake up," I said, my voice shaking more than I would have liked it to.
"I won't," he breathed, squeezing me all the tighter.
Letting the names flow through my head, I closed my eyes, and started willing myself back into the world of the dead.