Wings of the Wicked

PART TWO 


The Mortal Archangel


19



I WOKE UP SCREAMING.

I sat straight up and threw out my arms in rage. Someone shoved my chest and slammed me back into the bed. He pinned me down, but he couldn’t hold me forever. I broke free and struck him in the face, ripping his lip open. I flew off the bed and made a dash for the door as he screamed my name and grabbed at me, his fingers only tagging my clothes. I was too fast and too wild. Then he screamed someone else’s name, and another attacker appeared in the room. Two pairs of arms took strong hold of me and dragged me across the room.

That word slithered through my brain again: “Sleep.”

My body went slack against their grip, and I fell into dark memories of lives past and blood spilled upon ancient ground.

Before me lay a valley littered with the dead. Snow settled on the bodies as I walked among them, blood staining the ground black, the stench of carrion flooding my senses. Torn and soiled red cloth lay draped over dull metal and frostbitten skin. The Romans should never have come here to Britain. The massacre was devastating, and the reapers had already descended to feed. Every single man fallen in battle was already burning in Hell. My Guardian and I were too late.

The bitter wind blew my tangled hair around my face streaked with war paint, biting through the wool robes I wore, given to me by a family living in the nearby village that the Romans had attempted to sack. The invaders were most unsuccessful.

A flash of light in the sky made me duck and shield my eyes. When the light dimmed, I looked toward the sky. An angel descended, his golden armor shining, wings spread wide. His face was ethereally beautiful—and vaguely familiar.

“Sister,” he said, his voice musical and elegant.

I stared at him in confusion. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you know me?” His blue eyes studied me curiously and with pity.

“I do know you,” I said, digging deep through my memories. There was something there, far older than my human memories clouding the surface. “Michael. It’s you.”

He nodded. “Yes, Gabriel, my sister. You’re slowly forgetting who you are. You’re becoming more and more human. I hardly recognize you. With all that paint smeared across your face, you look like an animal.”

I lifted my chin in defiance. “It marks me as a warrior.”

“It marks you as human.”

I swallowed and my gaze faltered. I wasn’t human. I was … something else. I was like Michael, an archangel. But I was losing myself. I remembered now that the more times I lived and died, the more like my human vessel I became and the more I left my archangel origins behind.

“Why are you so far north?” Michael asked, his armored boots settling on the frozen ground. He stepped closer to me, the summer warmth of his glory melting the light snow around us.

I was determined not to let his nearness frighten me. “The reapers follow the armies hoping for blood, and every last inch of this island is drenched in it. I’ve come for the reapers harvesting the souls of the fallen soldiers.”

To my surprise, the archangel smiled. “That was a wise tactic. You will need these skills in the future. Many centuries from now, Lucifer’s most powerful servants will be unleashed, and they will attempt to free the ever-expanding armies of Hell. You must stop them.”

“Who are these servants?” I asked. The wind grew stronger, howling in my ears, making it harder to hear anything else.

My vision blurred as the snow fell more heavily, whipping in the air and obscuring Michael’s bright form.

“You know them,” Michael said, but I could barely make out his words. “They are …”

But the wind was too loud, the snow too thick. I couldn’t hear anything. All I heard was a dull roar; I felt the stinging bite of winter, and then someone else’s voice tore me from my memories.

“Wake up, Ellie, and relax,” a voice whispered in my head. It was so gentle and soothing that I took a long, deep breath and melted into the bed. I had every reason to relax. I would be happy if I relaxed. “You’re safe. Relax.” As soon as I obeyed, warmth spread through me and pushed away the dark. I settled deeper into the rumpled blankets, not smiling, but not angry. Just content.

“Ellie?” The second voice, a voice I knew and ached for, I heard with my ears and not my mind. I opened my eyes and looked up into Will’s face. He leaned over me, his warm hand brushing my hair back, his eyes so bright I had to squint when I looked into them. His face was pale and raw as if he was frightened and tired. I wanted to speak to him, tell him that we were safe, but my lips wouldn’t work.

“You’re going to break your necklace if you keep lashing out,” he said gently.

I didn’t look away from Will. I wanted to reach up and touch him, but my arms felt like they were filled with sandbags and sewn together with thread. He leaned over me, and his hands fumbled at something around my neck and then lifted an object off my skin. It was so bright, so blinding white that I couldn’t even make out its shape. I slit my eyes against the brightness, but it seemed that I was the only one who was affected. Will set the blazing object down behind him and brought his hand back to stroke my face.

“Are her eyes back?” Nathaniel asked from somewhere near me.

“She’s back,” Will said.

A shadow fell over my face, but my gaze was still locked on my Guardian. I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to.

“Not for long,” Nathaniel murmured. “I don’t know how long I can hold her mind. She’s pounding at the wall with everything she’s got. I’ve never seen her this bad. Those other times, all I had to do was put her to sleep and she was back to normal when she woke up. But this …”

Will smoothed a hand over my hair, brushing it away from my face. “She’s still in there. She’ll come back.”

“We can’t let her lose it again,” Nathaniel said. “She can kill us, Will. You know this. You saw what she did to that demonic vir, and she almost killed you back at the house. I know you love her, but you have to remember that we must protect ourselves as well as her. Lauren is downstairs, terrified. We must be prepared to do anything—”

“I’ve told you what I’m willing and not willing to do,” Will said through gritted teeth.

“Sometimes there is no choice.”

“I can’t …” he breathed, trailing off. “She’s just a—”

“She’s just a what?” Nathaniel asked, cutting him off. “Just a girl? She’s not just a girl, Will. She’s an archangel. In human form. Every emotion she feels risks overloading, and then she loses herself to it. Gabriel knows and understands that if she becomes dangerous—”

“She’s not Gabriel!” Will roared, but his booming voice didn’t make me even flinch. I was too perplexed by the lines of fury on his face, the rigidness of his muscles, to really be listening to his words. I ached to hold and soothe him, but I still couldn’t move. Then he deflated, and his voice became low and faint. “She’s not Gabriel. She’s just … Ellie.”

When he said my name, I melted deeper into the bed as if his voice were a lullaby. Nathaniel was silent and Will relaxed after a few moments, his eyes returning to mine. His hand touched my face again, thumb brushing along my jaw. My eyes fluttered shut for a moment.

“We’ve got to go back and clean it up,” Nathaniel said. “We’ve got some time before anyone notices the damage in the house or the humans missing.”

“How?” Will snapped. “We can’t leave her alone. What if she wakes up while we’re not here? While Lauren’s here? We can’t leave her alone until she’s lucid.”

“That could take days. You stay with her and I’ll clean up.”

He shook his head, and I weakly shook my own, in a daze, to mimic him. “No. I won’t be able to stop her if she breaks free. You can put her under, I can’t, and I refuse to strike her. I will never hit her, Nathaniel, and I will never kill her to stop her from killing me. Not even when she loses control. You can’t ask me to do that. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I’d give my own life before I’d ever take hers for any reason.”

A long moment passed, and I was still hypnotized by Will’s jeweled eyes. I wanted to touch him so badly, to feel him, and finally my hand twitched, fingers reaching up. His gaze fell to my hand and he swallowed hard. I was confused. There was fear in his beautiful eyes now. Why would he be afraid of me?

“She’s coming out of it,” Nathaniel said. “I’ll stay. You go clean up the scene. There is a book in my office, second shelf from the bottom. I believe page six hundred four will tell you what spell you’ll need to use. Get rid of any of the reaper blood. That includes ours. Leave only her mother’s. The scene has to look like a typical homicide. Do you understand?”

Will glared. “Yes,” he hissed. “I get it. Just keep her asleep until I return. We can try again later to bring her back. Don’t try it on your own. She will kill you.”

“Don’t worry about me. Now go.”

Will paused before he looked back down at me. The backs of his fingers brushed my temple gently, and he leaned over me, the mattress shifting beneath us. He kissed my cheek, letting his lips linger. “I love you,” he whispered as he touched his forehead to mine. “Please don’t hate me when you come back to me. I’m doing the best I can.”

Then he was gone.

My eyes snapped open. I turned my head to look around, but the beating of my pulse on the inside of my skull made me squeeze my eyes shut in pain. The pressure was so strong that I groaned and pressed my palms to my forehead.

“Ellie,” called a voice.

I opened my eyes to see Nathaniel crossing the room. He knelt by the bed. Will’s bed. I was in Will’s room, but Will wasn’t there.

“How are you feeling?”

I was puzzled by the worried look he gave me. He also looked exhausted. “Hey, Nathaniel. I feel terrible, like I’m hung over. Was I drinking?”

He shook his head, and that worry spun into sadness. “No. I’m glad to see you’re awake.”

I frowned up at him. “Yeah, I guess. I’m fine. My head just hurts. What am I doing here? I thought I left to go home.”

“Ellie …” His gaze drifted away.

Then I saw the blood and dust caked across my clothes and skin as if I’d bathed in it. Seeing it, I remembered why I was there, and my veins filled with ice. Images flashed through my head, each stabbing like cold metal as it hit me. My past human incarnations, feathered wings splashed with blood, winds blowing the dust of ancient cities over barren landscapes, silver blades clashing with silver blades and ripping flesh. My mother. My father. The thing that killed her killed them both. Will tried to stop me and I hurt him. He tried to pull me away from my mother’s body, and I’d nearly killed him.

“No,” I breathed.

“Ellie.” Nathaniel’s voice was calm and cool.

I shook my head, weakly at first, then furiously. “No. No!” More images flashed in my mind, but I couldn’t handle them all at once. They were tearing my brain apart. I sat up, scrambling off the bed, and my feet touched the carpet. Nathaniel moved with me, keeping himself between me and the door.

“Ellie, relax.” His voice was in my head, warm and comforting, but no. No!

“My mother!” I shrieked. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” My entire body shook and I covered my mouth with my hands. I dry-heaved agonizingly.

“Ellie, please!” Nathaniel cried. “Sleep, sleep!”

I ignored the voice in my head, his mind tricks. “Where’s Will?” I cried, knocking Nathaniel’s hands away when he reached for me. “Where is he? Where’s Will?”

“Stop! Ellie, stop now!” He was shouting now, giving up on controlling my mind. I was too strong for him in every way.

I shoved my hands into his chest with a burst of power, and his back hit the far wall. Bones cracked and he moaned in pain, but I didn’t watch him hit the ground. Making a dash for the bedroom door, I slid on the carpet and into the hallway wall. I screamed Will’s name as I ran down the hall, knocking over an end table and a vase and smacking into the balcony railing overlooking the living room. I screamed wordlessly as I flung myself down the stairs, slipping again at the bottom. Pushing through the pain shooting up my legs, I dragged myself to my feet and scrambled for the kitchen.

The front door burst open and I felt the warm rush of Will’s presence. “Ellie!”

I doubled back and flung around the corner toward the foyer. He was there in the open front door, his white wings spread wide as if he’d just landed, his chest heaving, out of breath. I threw myself into his arms, the only place I felt safe, the only thing I had left, and we sank to the floor as I sobbed and wailed. He whispered something to me, stroking my hair and holding me close, but I couldn’t hear him. I screamed for my mother, screamed for my family over and over until my throat and lungs burned and became useless.

I pulled away from him and struggled to my feet, wiping at my face, my legs trembling as I backed away. My tears streaked through someone else’s blood on my face. “I have to go back,” I sobbed. “I have to take care of her.”

“It’s done,” Will said, standing and reaching for me, his own hand and voice shaking. His wings lifted and spread as much as they could in the house. “Come to me. Please, Ellie. Come to me.”

“I have to take care of her!” I was so hysterical that I wasn’t sure if any of my words were even comprehensible. He grabbed my arm as I twisted away from him. I pounded my fist on his arm and he cried out but kept his grip firm. “Let me go! Let me go to her!”

He yanked me around and threw me back onto the floor as I screamed and flailed against him. He leaped over me, straddling me, pinning both my arms over my head, and the shadow of his wings blanketed us both in darkness. His power shoved me deeper into the floor, so strongly I could barely move, the countless rivulets of inky smoke spreading over me and on the floor around me until I felt like I was falling into shadows, suffocating in them. I screamed and swung my head side to side, yanking my arms down and kicking my legs, but he wouldn’t give an inch.

“Let me go!” I shrieked the words over and over until I stopped thrashing. I shuddered and lay still, breathless and voiceless from exhaustion. My lips moved, but nothing came out except for tiny whimpers.

“Ellie.” His voice was soft and cracked with pain as he pressed his forehead to mine. “Ellie, please. Stop. Please, stop.”

I went limp heavily, sobbing, my lungs and throat shredded. His grip loosened, but even though I stopped struggling against him, he didn’t release me.

“Ellie, please. Please, stop fighting me. Please, stop.”

I stared out at the desolate desert of snow and ice that covered the lake behind Nathaniel’s house. The wind blew cruelly, pitching up clouds of white powder and casting it toward the trees and the porch where I sat. I pulled the blanket wrapping my body tighter and didn’t push my hair out of my face as it whipped around my head. I barely noticed the frigid air, since I was already so cold inside.

“Ellie,” Lauren said as she slid the porch door open. “You’ve been out here long enough today. You’re going to freeze to death.”

I didn’t reply. She hesitated for a few seconds before going back in and shutting the door behind her. It wasn’t long before the door opened again and I sensed Will. I ground my teeth together to keep myself from shouting at him. He stepped slowly across the porch and knelt in front of me, resting both his hands on the sides of my chair. I glared down at him, and he only gave me a gentle gaze in return.

More memories flooded my head, and I buried my face in my hands, whimpering. “Go away,” I snarled hoarsely.

“You need to talk to me.”

I dropped my hands. “I’m telling you to go away.”

His mouth tightened in frustration for a split second. “Please, Ellie, come inside before you freeze to death.”

I snarled and spoke slowly, emphasizing each word so he knew that I was dead serious. “You framed my real father for my mother’s murder. If you don’t get the hell away from me right now, I’m going to punch your head right off your shoulders. You know better than anyone how capable I am of that.”

After a long, painful moment, he stood. Instead of looking up at him, I stared at the snowy porch floorboards.

“I am sorry, Ellie,” he said, his voice cold and formal. “But everything I do is to protect you at any cost, even if it means sacrificing your father’s reputation. I’m sure he was a good man, but for years the thing you knew as your father wasn’t him. It is a tragedy what happened to your family, but you have to understand that we cannot risk exposing our world to the human world. I hope one day you will forgive me.”

I looked up to meet his steady gaze. Our world. My family was my world. This nightmare I fell into the day I turned seventeen could never change that. I wanted to fly to my feet and hit him and scream at him, but it would do me no good. In truth, I was terrified of letting my emotions go. I’d lost control of my power for the first time in a long time, and from what little I could piece together from my memory, I’d hurt Will and Nathaniel. I’d hurt them badly, and I felt terrible for it. But my regret couldn’t make me forgive Will for what he’d done to my father’s name.

His gaze narrowed and darkened at me. “Your mother fought like hell for her life, and here you are ready to throw your own away.”

He turned and walked back into the house.

I didn’t follow him. I pulled out my phone. There were eleven voice mails. All of them were from Kate, one of my only remaining ties to the human world. It was just me and the darkness now.

My mother’s funeral went by in a haze. Fake friends and family I’d forgotten I had all attended, shared their condolences, gave me lifeless hugs. They all looked at me with pity, some with fear. The little girl whose daddy killed her mama and took off. When I stepped up to my mother’s coffin, I saw that they’d cleaned her up. No one could tell how the bones in her neck were shattered to dust, see the cracks in her skull or the bruises and gashes beneath all the makeup. They’d even put lipstick on her. When I touched her face, her skin was hard and cold, nothing like the softness and warmth that I had always known. She looked like a doll, frozen and clothed in a dress suit I knew she hated. She never wore it. That was why it looked brand-new. I think Nana had picked it out. How morbid, I thought, to have to pick out the clothes your daughter would be buried in. Perhaps it was even worse for the poor fool who did her hair and put the lipstick on her mouth. They could all be glad, though. No one saw her die but me.

I felt the strange glances from everyone at the funeral who expected me to be crying. That wasn’t going to happen. Nana had wanted me to say something about my mother to everyone, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand up there and feel all those eyes on me, knowing exactly what was going through their heads. Instead, Nana got up and spoke about how kind and generous my mother was, what a good daughter and mother she had been. Nana said nothing about my father, which was a wise decision. That day the world pretended my father had never existed. No one wanted to think about him, but of course he was on all our minds.

I could feel Will there at the funeral the entire time, hidden within the Grim, but he only let me see him once without me having to follow him into that Hell dimension. I never spoke even a word to him.

I would be moving in with Nana until I left for college in the fall, but I wasn’t ready to yet. I needed Kate. I needed to feel like a teenage girl. I needed to get away from reapers.

That night I curled up in Kate’s bed with my knees tucked to my chin. I hadn’t cried since the night my mother died, and I didn’t want to start again. It hurt too much. Kate’s mom forced me to eat dinner and even made hot cocoa, but I only took it because she was relentless. Now I felt sick to my stomach, and every time I closed my eyes to try and sleep, I was hit by terrible memories in the darkness of my mind.

Kate inched up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed gently. I knew she meant well, so I wouldn’t punish her for being kind to me. She, like everyone else, thought my dad had killed my mom. Thanks to Will and Nathaniel.

“They’ll find him,” Kate whispered.

I said nothing. There was no way I could tell her the truth, and I wasn’t even sure I would want to if I could. Why should I bring her into this horrible world? She didn’t deserve that kind of punishment. But then again, why did I?

At Nana’s house, I was moved into the guest room, a room filled with too much white and nautical blue and maple wood furniture. It had been my mother’s room when she was growing up, but her scent and feel had long since faded. Nana had already gone to my house and packed up certain belongings my mom had kept, things that were special to her, and to Nana and me. All of them were still in boxes on one side of my room that I had only stared at since they’d arrived. My clothes were still in the suitcase or in a pile next to them. The hangers in the closet were empty. To unpack and move in here would be to accept that my old life, my old home—everything—was gone forever.

Returning to my house and walking past where everything happened rebroke my heart with every step. Will had cleaned up all evidence of the reaper like he and Nathaniel had discussed. There was no dark stain in the spot where I’d torn apart the reaper, no dried blood on the walls, no claw marks, nothing. It was as if a tornado had blown through my foyer, and no one had ever died. I don’t know how Will did it, but I had a feeling that book of Nathaniel’s that Will took wasn’t a Martha Stewart home-cleaning guide. Magic had to have been involved. The police had questioned me relentlessly about the inconsistency of the damage, but I had no information for them, and they soon gave up.

A soft knock on the door jarred me from my thoughts. Nana appeared, her white hair pulled into a low ponytail, and her eyes—so much like my mother’s eyes, and nothing like my own—were gentle behind her reading glasses. “Hey, sweetheart. Come down for dinner.”

I forced an apologetic smile. “I’m not hungry.”

She peered over her glasses at me and rested a hand on her hip. “That wasn’t a request. I want you downstairs in two minutes.”

Nana’s enormous dark gray cat, Bluebelle, waltzed through the door and rubbed his wide belly against my leg. Animals always seemed to love me, but Bluebelle couldn’t decide between purring and stretching his ugly, smushed face into a ferocious hiss. I reached down to pet him, but he clawed at me and tried to bite off my fingers. Bluebelle was an a*shole.

“Bluebelle,” Nana called. “Come on, you old grouch. Two minutes, Ellie.” Then she disappeared. She was like my mother in so many ways that I wasn’t, because I wasn’t really related to either of them. When I looked into the mirror, I didn’t see anything of my mom.

My eyes fell to one of the boxes filled with stuff from my room. I dragged myself off the bed and opened the box to unpack a framed picture of me and my mom and my dad from our last vacation together.

Nana made pasta for dinner that night and promised all the carbs would give me energy for tomorrow, my first day back to school. I wasn’t interested in conversation, but she kept pushing.

“Would you like me to drive you to school tomorrow?” she asked. “I know it’s a long commute, and I don’t mind.”

I poked at the leeks and artichokes mixed in with the pasta. “I’ll be fine.”

She frowned. “Don’t be afraid to accept my help. I love you.”

“I know, Nana. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I want to feel normal. I want to go to school by myself like it’s a normal day.”

“That’s a very grown-up decision,” she said. “I’m proud of how well you’re handling this.”

My smile vanished. I had everyone fooled. I was angry, and everything was my fault. I should have known, should have done something, should have protected my parents. Will had been right, and I’d been in denial the whole time. I was too stubborn to stay away from the people I loved in order to protect them, and I had just stood there and let that monster kill my mother. Everything was my fault.