Wings of the Wicked

28





WHEN WE RETURNED TO NATHANIEL’S HOUSE, WILL and I were still numb with shock, battered on the outside and broken on the inside. So much had happened in only a matter of hours, so much that neither of us could ever have been prepared to face. We sat in the living room, on separate couches, staring at the filthy carpet in silence. Marcus and Ava had left. Our clothes were torn and bloody, and the first floor of the house was all but completely destroyed. Nathaniel was dead. The Demon Queen and the Fallen angel of death were now running rampant in the human world. Bastian claimed that Will’s mother still lived, that she was somewhere out there in the world as a relic guardian. Will had seen Cadan kill his father before his eyes and was unsure if he should have interfered instead of letting Cadan do it. For so long, Will had believed that he had no family, that all he had was me. But now everything had changed. And now I held the secret that Cadan was Will’s half-brother, a secret that ate at me from the inside out.

Dawn was creeping over the horizon, casting a glow through the broken windows and breaches in the walls. And finally, after what seemed like a thousand years of sitting in complete silence, Will rose to his feet. He moved past where I sat, looking straight ahead, his body rigid from head to toe. I got up to follow him, keeping a tentative distance.

I followed him out to the deck, where he moved to the edge and stared out onto the destroyed lawn. I was freezing from the icy air and the cold ache in my heart. He descended the stairs slowly, heavily, and headed to where Nathaniel had fallen. He paused there and stared down at the ground. I eased close to him with caution, watching him. His arms hung at his sides and his fists rolled into tight balls, the skin stretching white over his knuckles as his wings grew and slipped through the tears in his shirt. They expanded unhurriedly, solemnly, and the light of the dawn cast a golden glow across the pearlescent feathers. At his feet were Nathaniel’s remains.

“Will,” I whispered, stepping in front of him. “Say something.”

The silence between us was like a void sucking at my brain. He stood there, a statue in the dawn light, his face hardened like the stone Nathaniel had become. I reached for him, a little afraid that he might crumble if I touched him.

“I’m so sorry, Will,” I breathed.

He stared down at me, the green of his eyes dulled to a barren gray, and his lips tightened as if he wanted to say something but refused. His wings stretched away from me and folded to his back. I slid my hands around his head and through his hair, stood on my tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. He exhaled but stayed so stiff that I thought he’d shatter any moment. I kissed his lips, stifling a cry, and his shoulders sagged as a tear ran down his cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and kissed him again.

My hands slid down his neck and chest and up his back, his feathers brushing my skin. I rested my cheek against his chest. He moved at last, leaning over me and wrapping his arms around me. He buried his face in my hair at the bend of my neck and squeezed me tight.

I pulled away and he looked into my face sadly, his arms lingering around me. “You need to rest,” I told him. “Get some sleep.”

He shook his head heavily. “I can’t. Not now.”

“You will once you lie down.” I took his hand and led him back into the house. We stepped through the wreckage and went up what was left of the stairs to his room. The second floor was basically untouched and appeared almost as if nothing had happened at all. In Will’s bedroom, the morning light began to stream through the blinds, making the room feel a little warmer than it was.

I shut the door behind us and turned to him. I pushed his shredded shirt up and over his head. His eyes were glued to mine. His skin was pale from exhaustion and lack of food, making the tattoos covering his right arm, shoulder, and neck contrast even more violently. I turned to drop his shirt on the floor behind me, but when I turned back, he wrapped an arm around my waist and opened his mouth against mine, kissing me much differently than I had kissed him minutes ago outside. He pulled me to his bare chest and his kiss was deep and hot, sending a low ache through my body. I put my hands on his arms, and my grip tightened briefly before I reluctantly pushed him back. He broke his kiss and met my eyes in confusion. I swallowed, hoping my actions told him what I didn’t want to say with words. That kind of closeness wasn’t what either of us needed right now. It was painfully difficult to refuse him then, but it was for the best. This wasn’t the right time.

The rejection melted away from his face, and he looked down at me soberly. I pressed a gentle hand to his chest and guided him to the bed. I climbed in, my fingers loosely entwining with his, and he followed me, crawling under the blankets with me. Within moments it was plenty warm, and with the door shut, no icy drafts blew into the room. I could hear the wind picking up outside, whistling by the window, and as Will settled down and I laid my cheek on his chest, his heartbeat became the only thing I could hear. By some miracle, he fell asleep, and I followed him soon after.

When I woke, Will was gone. I found him sitting on the swing bench overlooking the lake. I had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and now lifted it at my feet so the ends didn’t drag in the cold, wet grass peeking through patches of melted snow. He sat in silence, leaning forward on his elbows, his lips brushing his knuckles. Something was clasped between his hands, and a delicate gold chain slipped through his fingers. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. For a moment, I regretted intruding on him, but he didn’t need to be alone. Not right now. Neither of us did.

“Will,” I said gently as I approached him. He didn’t look up. “Can I sit down?”

His hesitation made something ball up in my throat. “Of course.”

I eased into the seat beside him, studying his profile and furrowed brow. I wouldn’t ask him if he was okay. Of course he wasn’t okay. Nathaniel was dead. I gazed at his hands. “What’s that?” I asked, indicating the chain.

He sat back, exhaling, and opened his hands. It was my lost pendant, unharmed except for the broken chain. He held it out to me and I took it.

“You found it.” I clutched it tightly to my chest. It warmed almost on contact. “Thank you.”

He said nothing.

I put the necklace in my pocket for safekeeping. I’d have to get a new chain soon. “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

His expression softened, and I was able to feel better about intruding on his solitude. “Coming up with a plan.”

I sighed. That was the Will I knew, always focused on the future and never the past or present. It was easier for him to focus on something other than Nathaniel’s death.

“At least Bastian is out of the way,” I offered.

He didn’t answer or acknowledge what I’d said. Perhaps now I understood what Will had been feeling all along, the frustration and need to be there for me when he was unwanted. I didn’t want to be unwanted now, and neither did he.

“What should our next move be?” I asked.

“We lie low,” he said, surprising me. I think I expected him to demand that we eat a feast and march off to war at dusk. “Azrael came in at the right time, but Sammael also underestimated us. He will not risk making another mistake and losing you a second time. He has been dormant for thousands of years and could still need time to recover his strength, just as you do each time you’re awakened. Azrael’s glory weakened him, so we may have bought some time.”

I gaped at him. “Why are we letting him get stronger? We should take him out now while he’s weak.”

“Because we can’t beat him,” Will said firmly. “I am just a reaper, and you have a breakable human body. We will never be able to beat him or Lilith. He is one of the Fallen and the Right Hand of Lucifer. There’s no way anything besides an archangel could obliterate him. We need Azrael. We need the Destroyer.”

“But Azrael is an outcast,” I said, perplexed. “He’s not an archangel anymore.”

“He’s defeated Sammael twice already. He can do it again.”

“What if he can’t?” I asked. “He couldn’t kill Sammael last night, only hold him off. What about Michael?”

He shook his head. “Michael can’t engage until there is outright war. It’s not his job. That’s why Azrael was punished in the first place. Absolute obedience, or you are cast out, killed, or forced to fall.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m human,” I said. He gave me a puzzled look and I continued, my temper spinning hot. “Nathaniel told me that angels don’t have free will in Heaven, that they never make a single choice on their own. Everything they do is an order. I’m human now, with a human soul, and I have the free will to choose. And I choose to stop the war before it happens rather than sitting around like Michael and waiting for someone to tell me to make a move.”

Will paused thoughtfully, and his gaze drifted out over the lake. “I won’t let you fight Sammael until I know we can defeat him. With him able to destroy your soul, we can’t afford to make a mistake. We only have one shot, and we cannot lose.”

There was no changing his mind. At this point, not that I wanted Sammael to eat my soul, but I couldn’t rely on someone else to save the world—I couldn’t trust anyone with that responsibility but myself. “So then how do we summon Azrael and give him solid form so he can help us?”

“We’ll have to find the correct relic and spell,” he replied. “If they can do it for Lilith, then we can do the same for Azrael.”

“Okay, well, how do we know which are the right ones?”

“The spell will be different to give corporeal form to an angel, but that information will still be in the grimoire.”

“The book that Sammael has?”

“Yes.”

“Well, life just keeps getting easier and easier.” I slumped back into the bench and folded my arms over my chest. “If we can’t get Azrael to fight Sammael, then we need an archangel.”

His lips formed a tight line of frustration. “That’d be you.”

I blinked at him. “Come again?”

“Our last resort would be figuring out a way for you to ascend and become Gabriel again,” he said.

“In this world?” I asked, unable to hide the incredulity in my voice. “On Earth, in the human world?”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” he admitted. “But we’ve got to find a way to make it happen if worse comes to worst. I just don’t know if the transformation would destroy you or what would happen to your soul if you were killed as Gabriel. You might not come back as a human again, or even at all.”

I frowned. “If me becoming an archangel in this world is even possible, then we have to figure out how to do it.”

“We will,” he said gently. “Everything will be okay.”

But I wasn’t so sure. It would be difficult enough to summon Azrael and get him to fight for us, but on the minuscule chance that I was able to ascend to my archangel form … I didn’t know what that really meant. In the last few months I’d come to understand who I really was, something far beyond what I was now. I remembered my past lives and uncovered secrets as they came, but I remembered nothing of being Gabriel. I felt small things, recognized Sammael and Lilith, but those were all memories from Earth. I knew my true name, but I didn’t know who I truly was. I didn’t know what I was like as Gabriel. I didn’t know how much I would change.

“I’m terrified of myself, Will,” I admitted. The icy wind flowing off the half-frozen lake whipped my hair around my face. “Of becoming Gabriel. The angels don’t feel anything. I don’t want to lose myself when I become an archangel. I’m afraid that I’ll forget you, that I won’t love you anymore because I won’t be able to.”

His jaw tightened and he looked at me sadly. “That doesn’t matter. It’s not as important as—”

“It’s important to me,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ve had enough of that self-deprecating crap from you. You’re important to me. I’m terrified of losing what I feel inside once I become Gabriel.”

“We have to be willing to give up things to do what’s right, sometimes,” he said, eerily mirroring to me what Nathaniel had said about war. About sacrifice. In order to win this war, I had to be willing to sacrifice who I was. If it came down to becoming someone else and protecting the people I loved and the rest of the world, then I had to do it. I had to be brave, even though I couldn’t be fearless.

“If I do this,” I said, “if I become Gabriel, I refuse to forget you. I may become an archangel, but I’ll still have my human soul.”

He let his head drop and ran his hands through his hair. Something more was troubling him so much that for a second I thought I saw him shaking. He chewed on his upper lip and exhaled heavily.

“What Bastian said about you isn’t true,” I said, touching his cheek. I turned his face to mine as I brushed the backs of my fingers along the line of his jaw. He closed his eyes so tightly that his brow furled and darkened with pain. I heard his teeth grind together.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, Will,” I pleaded. “How could you even think that?”

“Because I am full of hate and rage.” He pulled away from my hand and looked out at the gray lake. “I want you to promise me one thing, for when this all goes down.”

I swallowed hard. “What is it?”

“Save Merodach for me,” he said, his voice cold and deadly as thin ice. “He’s mine.”

I shivered at a chill slicing through my veins. “Okay.”

“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” he said very quietly. His hands balled into fists and he drew a long, shaky breath.

If you want peace, prepare for war. If we wanted to win and to be safe, we had to be strong and fight this evil that threatened to tear us apart and steal everything we loved.

We sat in silence until he stood up. “I have work to do on the house.”

I nodded, pushing back the wildfire of tears building in my eyes. Within minutes, the pounding of nails and ripping up of shattered floorboards filled my head and numbed my thoughts. But I had work to do as well. I had to call Lauren.

I sat on the floor in the kitchen with my cell phone in my hands. I leaned against the cabinet doors, the metal handles digging into my back. I’d dialed and redialed her number a hundred times and still hadn’t found the courage to call her. I squeezed my eyes shut and called at last. On the first ring, she answered.

“Ellie.” Her voice was broken, hoarse, as if she’d been crying or screaming, or both.

“Lauren,” I said, forcing the word from my lips. “I … I don’t know how to …”

“I know.”

She hung up, and I let the phone slip from my fingers onto the tile and just sat there with my back against the wall. Sometime later, I heard a car drive up and its door open and shut. I stumbled to my feet and headed toward the front of the house. As soon as I saw Lauren’s quietly smiling face and red, puffy eyes, I let out a choking sob and collapsed at her feet as our arms wound around each other.

We sat in the living room with cups of coffee in our hands, both of us cried out for the moment. The last time she was in this house, she was in Nathaniel’s arms and he was telling her he loved her. Minutes later, he was dead.

“I never thought I’d outlive him,” Lauren said weakly. “That wasn’t the way we were supposed to end. I knew the things he and Will did were dangerous and would kill him eventually, but …”

She leaned over the end table beside her, resting on her elbow, and buried her face in her hands, her fingers threading through her dark hair, and she started crying again.

My lips trembled as I fought my own tears. “I’m so sorry, Lauren.”

She wiped at her face with the sleeves of her sweater and forced a small laugh. “It’s okay. I’m really going to miss him and his stupid jokes.”

I laughed with her, letting out an ugly, half-sobbing noise. “Yeah. His jokes were so bad.”

We laughed and cried for a little while, recalling many of Nathaniel’s silly habits and sayings, but also reminiscing about how wise he was. How good he was. How much he took care of us all. How much he’d made this house a home. The lights were on in here, but outside the skies were dark with rain clouds, and it felt like we were in a cave. Rain beat the windows, and Will clunked something heavy around somewhere in the house and then hammered it.

When it came time for Lauren to go home, she wandered through the house, surveying the damage, running her fingers down the shredded walls, pausing to touch things that had belonged to Nathaniel.

“Anything you want should be yours,” I said, following her through the wreckage. Will had cleaned up so much of it already that the floors were mostly cleared.

Lauren nodded absently. “It’d be strange to take any of it, since it was his. Maybe one day I’ll be able to. It still doesn’t feel like he’s gone—it’s like he’ll come back any day because he’d miss all this old junk of his.”

I looked around the house, purposely avoiding her gaze. “And once Will puts the house back together, it’ll look like nothing even happened here.”

“He’s certainly on a roll, isn’t he?” She gave a small laugh that faded away sadly. “I should get going.”

I pulled her into a tight hug. “Come back soon,” I said. “Anytime, please. We’d love to see you.”

She smiled. “Of course. Let me know if Will needs any help cleaning up the place.”

I shrugged. “I think he’s on a mission to do it all by himself. I’m sorry he didn’t come down to see you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, her smile fading to a tight, pained line. Her lips quivered. “He’s hurting. It’s best to leave him be. He’ll come around when he’s ready.”

“I know.” What she said was true, but every second Will spent in his own world made my heart ache a little more. I walked Lauren outside. “I’m trying not to worry about him. I don’t want to worry about you either, okay?”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’ll be okay. It’ll just be hard for a while. We’ll all get through this.”

“Thank you, Lauren,” I said. “Call me soon, okay?”

She smiled. “I will. Check in with your grandmother, okay?” Then she climbed into her car and was gone.

For the next several days, Will and I said very little to each other. He had thrown himself fully into restoring Nathaniel’s house. I made sure he ate and slept, but between our brief exchanges of conversation was complete silence, and the loneliness was killing me. My phone was off and no one knew where I was. I didn’t know what to tell Nana and my friends about what had happened or where I’d been.

Kelaeno was dead, but that didn’t mean her prophecy had died with her. In my heart, I feared that it was coming true, bit by bit. For so long I had believed that the scariest thing in the world would be losing my soul, or Will, but now that I had been faced with nearly losing both in one night, I realized that I was more afraid of losing him.

I told Will once that I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to live. And here I was, the living dead, waiting for the inevitable. I felt like I was giving up already, and I couldn’t let myself think that. I had to survive this. I had to live. And locking myself inside this big house to rot was not living. It was existing. I wanted to feel alive again, and in order to do that, I needed my friends and family. I wanted a future. I wanted to get my life back.