Wings of the Wicked

18


THE TV VOLUME WAS SET LOW, AND I DIDN’T KNOW what show we were watching or even what channel it was on. I only stared blankly at the screen. My eyes drifted out of focus and I was hypnotized by the flashes of light and color, the dull roar of voices and music filling my head with white noise. My name was mixed in there somehow, and it took me a moment to realize Lauren was trying to get my attention.

“Ell,” she said. “Earth to Ellie. You there?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, but I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. “Where were you guys this morning?”

Her smile faded. “Nathaniel and I met my parents for Sunday brunch. We do it every week.”

I looked at her, happy to turn away from the TV. “Is he your boyfriend then?”

Her gaze fell away. “Yes. For four years now.”

“Wow,” I said, my eyes widening. “Does your family know what he is?”

“No. Not yet, at least.”

I would never be able to tell my parents about Will’s true nature either. “Do they know what you are?”

“My mom does,” she said. “Her grandmother was a psychic also, so she knows all about reapers but can’t see into the Grim like us. I’ll have to tell my family the truth about Nathaniel someday. They’ll eventually notice that he doesn’t age. My family hates all reapers, even the angelic. Honestly, I can’t blame my mother for hating them. If I had to watch my child go through what I did when I was young, I’d hate them all too.”

Since she didn’t elaborate, I wouldn’t ask. I didn’t like talking about the horrors I saw either. “You must love him.”

“I do, so I understand everything, Ellie.”

“Do you think you two will have kids someday?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Humans and reapers can’t have children together. Something in the genetics, I believe.”

“That’s sad,” I murmured, thinking of more than just Nathaniel and Lauren.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Who knows what will happen in the future, anyway?” She gave me a small, reassuring smile. “Nathaniel isn’t going to kill him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

My doubt sat heavily in my stomach. “He looked furious.”

“Not so much angry,” she assured me. “He’s worried about what both of you have been going through. He knows Will has been in love with you for a very long time. He understands, so don’t think that he doesn’t.” She took my hand and squeezed it. “I understand, too. I’m here if you need me.”

The sound of angry shouts made us both jump. We stared at each other.

“You don’t think I know that?” Will’s voice hammered through the walls.

Lauren’s hand tightened around mine. The shouts died down, the rest of the argument audible from this distance, and Lauren and I sat in silence for a few minutes as she held my hand securely.

“Everything will be okay,” she said, and released my hand. “Will needs to talk to Nathaniel. He’s been very troubled lately. He needs help, and Nathaniel has been there for him forever.”

I nodded. “They’re practically brothers.”

She paused thoughtfully. “Nathaniel’s taken care of Will. It’s always been the hardest when he doesn’t have you around to give him focus. But Will was so young when his mother died, and Nathaniel has been his only family. Nathaniel is always here when you can’t be, and he offers Will guidance, which is what he needs most right now. He needs to be told that it’ll all be okay.”

I knew what it was like to need to be told that. Even now I forgot that Will needed someone to help keep him standing sometimes, too. “It will be. Everything will be okay.”

Lauren smiled at me. “It will.”

Sometime later, the door to the garage opened and I heard the boys’ footsteps on the hardwood floor. Nathaniel walked into the living room with an even expression and sat down on the loveseat opposite the couch Lauren and I sat on. Will appeared at the edge of the carpet and the wood floor, and his cool green eyes met mine gently. The look he gave me was one I knew well—and feared. He wanted to talk.

I stood and followed him through the house to the staircase, each of my steps wobbly and weak, my heart fearing the worst. Will led me into his room and shut the door behind us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice childlike and quiet.

He smiled, and relief washed over me. “Nothing. Nathaniel and I had a good conversation.”

“That’s good.” I couldn’t keep the suspicious edge from my voice, as if I expected everything to come crashing down any second.

“I want to try it,” he said. “Us. I want to give us a try.”

My mouth parted in surprise. “You do?”

“You were right. You’ve been right all along. I’ve been a coward running from this. I don’t want to run anymore. I’ve tried so hard not to feel what I feel for you, because it’s dangerous.” He squeezed his eyes shut painfully. “You’ll die again, we both know it’s true, and Nathaniel helped me realize that I’m more afraid of the pain of losing you than of what Michael could do to me for loving you. I am devoted to you, not to Michael, and I am bound to obey you, not him. I’ve tried not to love you, but I’ve failed. It’s easier to love you than to pretend I don’t.”

“Then be with me,” I pleaded.

A small smile curved in his lips. “On one condition.”

I grinned back. “What’s that?”

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the small of my back, tugging me to his chest. I threw my arms around his shoulders, sliding my nails up and down his neck gently. “Stay with me. And with Nathaniel and Lauren. All day. Be happy today.”

“That’s it?”

He bent down and kissed me richly. “Each time I look at you, I want to see a smile on your beautiful face.”

“Will you be looking at me a lot?”

“I’m always stealing glances,” he confessed. “You rarely notice.”

“Ugh, just don’t look at me before I’ve showered.”

“You’re always beautiful. Especially when you smile, so today will be dedicated to making that happen. We will do anything you want to do. We’ll make it up as we go.”

“Can we make root beer floats?” I asked.

He laughed. “Sounds great.”

“Can we make Nathaniel and Lauren dinner tonight? I want to thank them for being so good to us.”

“Awesome idea. I’m a terrible cook, though.”

“The eggs were only a little burned,” I teased and kissed his lips, feeling a low ache at the memory of this morning. “Can we build a snowman today?”

“Definitely.”

“Play video games?”

“As you wish.”

Just as Will promised, I was happy all day. I didn’t realize how late it was until I glanced out the window. The sun was setting and the sky was turning violet. I’d stalled going home long enough. When I’d finally show up back home, my mom would ground me for life this time. Begrudgingly, I passed my video game controller over to Nathaniel, just as someone on the other team shot my player dead.

Will looked up at me. “We can play something else, if you’d like.”

“It’s not that,” I assured him. “I’ve got to get home.”

“All right then.” He set down his controller and stood.

I smiled and waved to Nathaniel. “See you later.”

“Have a good night, Ell.” He respawned my player and continued the game.

Lauren rose and gave me a tight hug. “Drive safely. See you soon. I mean it.”

“Of course.” I waved good-bye and jogged upstairs to grab my clothes from last night. When I came back down, Will was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. I stopped when I reached the third-to-last step, which made me just above being level with his eyes, so that I looked down into his face.

“Got everything?” His expression as he looked up at me was gentle and warm.

“Yep,” I said. “I think I’m going to go home by myself. I was supposed to be home in the morning, so my mom is going to be really mad about my being so late. Can you drive me to Kate’s so I can get my car?”

“If you need me,” he said, “I’ll be there within minutes.”

I smiled and ran my fingers through the front of his hair so that it stuck straight up. “I know I can count on you.”

He smiled back. “You can always count on me.”

I leaned down, one hand on the railing, and I kissed him gently. He tugged on the belt loop of my jeans and pulled me another step down so that I was eye level with him. He grinned, and I laughed and kissed him harder.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asked against my lips in a way that almost made me reconsider.

I drew back and touched his face, smiling. “I’m tired and I’m about to walk into World War Mom. Let’s go for a run tomorrow instead of patrolling, okay? I could use a good run.”

“Okay.” He kissed me sweetly. “Let’s get Lauren’s car again.”

He drove me to Kate’s house, and as we sat in her driveway for a minute, it was hard to say good-bye to him again.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, and opened the door. “I’ll see you soon.”

Kate’s mom answered the door, and I went up to Kate’s room, where she was watching TV. She sprang to her feet when she saw me.

“Where the hell have you been?” she shouted, and yanked me into a tight hug.

“With Will,” I confessed. “He took me back to his place last night.”

“And?” She didn’t even hesitate.

“And … I don’t know. I’m glad he showed up and took me home.”

“We were having such a great time.” She seemed disappointed.

I laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah. Up until Brian started taking my clothes off.”

That made her pause. “Are you serious? Will didn’t say anything about that when he took you.”

I wouldn’t have expected him to. He was more of kick-ass-now-explain-self-later kind of guy. “Well, I’m glad he showed up. I was so gone I didn’t even know what planet I was on.”

“I’m going to freaking gut Brian. And Jay.”

“I can’t believe you left me alone with him,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “You have no idea—”

“God, Ell,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t even thinking when we left the room. It’s all my fault.”

I exhaled. “We’ve got to look out for each other when we go to things like this.”

“I know …”

“Were you okay after I left?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come with us?”

“I was mad, I guess. Will pissed me off, and I wasn’t ready to leave. I don’t even remember crashing. At least Will beat the crap out of Brian and those guys out on the lawn. After you left, it was all anyone could talk about.”

I gave her an unintelligible grumble in response to that.

“Are you okay, Ell? Really?”

I let out a long breath and sat on the edge of her bed. “I think so. I think everything is going to be okay.” I gave her a vague recap of how Will drove me an hour and a half back to his house, how I had thrown myself at him and he’d told me no, what had happened at breakfast, and then what he told me about wanting to give us a try. Telling that part to Kate didn’t make it feel any more real, but I got the familiar spins in my stomach when I thought about how fiercely Will had kissed me only hours ago. Remembering all he’d said to me made me dizzy, and I chewed on my lip to bring myself back down to earth.

“You two were made for each other,” Kate said.

He was a piece of me and when he wasn’t around, I never felt whole. “What did you say to him as we were leaving? I saw you yell at him from the porch.”

“Oh. Well, I had no idea what Brian had tried to do, and if I had I probably would haven’t yelled so much at Will. I feel bad about some of it now. I was just pissed at him for storming in there acting like your boyfriend, so I told him it wasn’t fair to you.”

It was impossible for me to explain the depth of my relationship with Will to Kate. “Thanks, girl. I’ve got to get home. Do you have my stuff?”

“Of course,” she said in a gentle voice, and handed me my purse and duffel bag. “Call me if you need to talk. I’m sorry I left you alone with that jerk. It’ll never happen again, I swear. I’ve got your back, girl.”

“I know. It’s okay. We all made bad decisions last night.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” We said good-bye and I went outside to my car.

When I got home, the garage was open, so I went through the door leading into the kitchen. I shut the door quietly behind me and heard the shuffle of footsteps on the stone tiles of the foyer. I slowly made my way through the kitchen, fearing the consequences of coming home so late.

“Mom?” I called. “I’m home.”

I rounded the staircase and saw my mom and dad together. Their bodies were so close I wondered if they were hugging—and why they were hugging, since they despised each other. When I saw my mom, I froze solid in my tracks. Ice flowed through my veins and the blood washed from my face as something kicked in my stomach, and my heart launched into hyperspeed. Blood caked her swollen and bruised face, her hair a rat’s nest. My dad held a tight fistful of hair, and his other hand was clamped around her throat. He wrenched her around to look at me, his face twisted with violence and a look so savage it took me a moment to recognize him. My mom’s eyes were wide and wild with terror and pain.

“Dad?” I choked, my eyes shifting from his to my mom’s and back. “What are you doing?”

“Your daddy’s been dead a long time, sweetheart.” He jerked my mother to get a better grip on her. His lips curled into a smile too sinister to be human, and then he began to change. His fingernails grew into talons that dug into my mom’s tender skin until more blood popped and she squirmed. Four pairs of fangs slid from his smile, and spikes tore through the back of his shirt, casting monstrous shadows across the floor in the porch light pouring in from behind him. “I should know. I tore out his rib cage myself.”

“Who are you?” I breathed, the words struggling to escape as if claws were around my own throat. Will’s words echoed in my mind: “If you come across a vir, you may not know what he is until it’s too late. They’ll shape-shift to take the form of a human in order to infiltrate.”

“That’s not very important. But it’s been fun. Good times, kid. Sorry for calling you a slut.” He looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Actually, no. I meant that.”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I could only stare at the reaper, at the terror and disorientation on my mother’s face. I couldn’t move.

“What? How? Why?” he gasped in a mocking tone. “Speechless, are we, Ellie?”

The way he said my name felt so invasive. The demonic only called me the Preliator. But this one knew me. Lived with me. With my mother.

He took his hand off my mother’s throat and pulled the collar of his shirt down to reveal a strange tattoo over his heart, a circle with an Enochian symbol within it. “This is what you’re wondering. The magic is old, so ancient, that only Bastian could have learned of it. It lets me walk in the sun without harm. You know, all those little complications that would have given me away. The spell was difficult, but he pulled it off. You never knew a thing, did you? I was good, so good.”

He jerked my mother’s head back and met her wild, frightened eyes. “By the way, I didn’t get that tattoo at your cousin’s bachelor party. I didn’t even go to that. You’re a moron, Diane.”

She whimpered and turned her face away from his. He looked back at me and grinned a mouthful of fangs.

“Anyway, Bastian sends his affection,” the reaper crooned in a malicious voice, his face no longer anything like my father’s, but belonging to an entirely different creature. “And he told me to leave a little something for you. Let’s say it’s a belated seventeenth birthday gift.”

He snapped my mother’s neck. She hit the floor with a dry, cold thud. Dead.

My pulse flooded my ears, drowning out the reaper’s next words. I stared at my mother—her body—at his feet. Fire crackled from my fingers and toes, devouring my body to my core, burning away like the wick of a stick of dynamite. The edges of my eyes spun and filled with white, and my power throbbed. Visions came to me, the missing pieces belonging to thousands of years of memories, as Gabriel’s presence and power overwhelmed me. The darkness churned and exploded, taking me with it. I was gone, and all that was left of me was rage.

I launched myself at the reaper, pushing off the floor with my toes, my power detonating behind me, demolishing the wall and shattering the tile floor. The reaper was too slow for me. I swung my elbow across my chest and pounded the bone into his skull. He crumpled to his knees. I kicked the back of his head and his palms hit the floor. He tried to rise, but my power erupted into his face, sending him flying across the foyer and crashing into the staircase. Wood splintered and exploded, the cloud of dust almost blinding. The reaper staggered to his feet, stumbling down the steps. I stepped up to him, the torrent of rage swallowing me and releasing everything I’d been afraid of inside of me. I didn’t care what sort of damage I caused. I wanted to damage. My hair whipped around my face in the tempest that the white light of my power and the darkness within me had created. He took a swing at me, but my senses were spinning so fast that I sidestepped his blow and smashed my fist into his face. His jaw made a sickening tearing sound and whirled loose, flinging free and out of sight. I threw my power into his body, knocking the wind from his chest and the feet out from under him. His back hit the floor and I leaped on top of him. I beat his face and shredded his skin with my nails. When his body turned to stone, I still tore at him, dragging my nails across rock until they were bloodied and broken. Dust soaked thickly into the blood splattered across my face and clothes, filling my lungs until I was choking on it.

Hands grabbed me and looped around my waist and tried to pull me back. I shrieked and thrashed, fighting off the hands and clawing the air wildly to get back to the reaper’s remains. A horrible, snarling animal noise tore from my throat—a sound that couldn’t possibly have been my own voice.

“Ellie!” the owner of the hands shouted uselessly. “Ellie, stop!” The voice was warped and distant, as if I were underwater and he was shouting at me from somewhere above the surface.

The fury cloaked my vision like a whiteout. I swung a wild fist and connected with soft tissue. My attacker grunted and his grip loosened, allowing me to break free and get back to pounding at the pile of stone near my mother’s corpse.

His hands found me again. He grabbed my shoulders roughly and jerked me around with an angry, exhausted groan. I clawed at his face and arms, drawing blood. Another intruder knelt beside my mother and touched her neck. I screeched and launched myself at him to protect her body, but the first set of hands grabbed me again, yanking me back. I hit the cold, broken-up floor, flailing my limbs and power into my attacker’s body. He swore and pushed through the blows, battered and bloody.

“Ellie, please stop fighting me!” His hands gripped my wrists and pinned me to the floor. “It’s me! It’s me, Ellie. Stop!”

I thrashed against him and let out a bloodcurdling scream until my ears rang.

“Her eyes!” he roared, turning back to the other intruder. “They’re solid white. It’s happened again. Nathaniel! I need you now! Put her out before she kills us both!”

I shrieked, and my power erupted again. An explosion of white light filled the house, blinding me and rocketing into my attacker’s body. He flew off me and crashed through the far wall as the light swallowed us all and slammed into the walls around us. The house shook and groaned. He crumpled to the ground and I was on my feet in a blur. A form appeared beside me. I only saw a flash of copper eyes.

“Sleep.”

And I slipped into oblivion.