The Watcher

Chapter Twenty-Two



From the front walk, my house seemed gloomy in the darkness, as old houses do when nobody’s home. I’d been so preoccupied before we went flying that I forgot to turn on the porch light. The solar-powered lanterns lining the front walk hadn’t seen enough sunlight to charge them today, so they gave off only a dim glow. Although Michael was silent on the drive home, he walked me to my front door. But when I invited him in he declined, saying he was going to check the area and keep watch.

Still shaky from everything I’d been through, I decided to take a shower—nothing like almost being demon food to make me feel I needed one. I hadn’t realized how much fear Michael’s presence kept at bay until I was alone. It didn’t help that every time I closed my eyes I recalled Azazel’s red ones watching me—and that horrible laugh. Once I got in the shower, a chill ran to the core of me, made my knees shake. Washing my hair and conditioning the tangles gave me something else to focus on, but as far as distractions went they were short-lived. I showered longer than I’d planned to and turned up the hot water more and more until it almost burned my skin, but the cold feeling didn’t leave.

Realizing that having clean hair and skin was about as comfortable as I was going to get, I got out of the shower and into plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I was exhausted, my bed more comfortable than I expected. Once my head hit the pillow, it didn’t take long to fall asleep. Dreams came quickly, too.

***

I was at the beach again at night; the tide rolled in lazily and moonlight glimmered on the water’s surface. The cold, damp night air cut right through my skin. I was waiting for Michael, and it seemed I’d been waiting a long time but there was no sign of him. Then the sky blackened and Azazel crawled from the sea. I could smell that horrible stench of its breath as it loomed its many heads over me, waiting to strike. I screamed, but no sound came out of my mouth, so I gasped and screamed again, hoping Michael would hear me and come to the beach, but he didn’t. The third time I screamed, I broke into a run, but something gripped my wrist. At first I thought it was Azazel and I tried to pull free. Then I heard a voice say my name, a calm, musical voice. My arm shook gently.

“You’re having a bad dream,” Michael said. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see how concerned he was. “You were screaming.”

Pulse racing, I sat up and mumbled unintelligibly, “Azazel…beach…”

“You’re safe now,” he reassured me, straightening my tangled duvet.

“How did you get in?”

“You left your door unlocked.” He frowned. “Anyone could have come in.”

Looking at him, I could see golden-orange flames inside the huge black circles of his irises. There was nothing in my room that could have made that light except for him. It was beautiful, inhumanly so.

“Stay with me?” I asked.

“You know I can’t.”

“Until I fall asleep. It won’t take me long. Please?” Maybe I couldn’t face the thought that he had hurt me. If he had, he was doing everything in his power to make sure it didn’t happen again.

His body drew tight. I must have asked for too much. But slowly he relaxed, and the strain in the air was released. “Let me lock the door.”

He was gone only a minute, and yet as soon as I shut my eyes, the horrifying dream about Azazel returned. It pulled me in quickly and was so disturbing that when Michael touched my hand on his return, I screamed again and practically jumped out of bed.

“Sorry,” he said. “I forget how terror can be sometimes.”

Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I squeezed his hand. “I’m glad you’re here. My nightmares will go away now.”

“Oh, so you just want someone to keep the monsters at bay,” he joked, but he sounded nervous. “What makes you so sure I’m not one of them?”

“Because I can see.”

His long body was all angles and limbs as he eased himself onto the bed beside me, outside the covers, and tension pulsed through him like a live wire. But eventually he settled, as though through a great act of will, and stretched out to hang his legs over the end of my double bed, his arms tight to his sides.

His cotton shirt was soft against my cheek as I leaned my head against his shoulder, afraid to breathe in case I frightened him away. It seemed he wasn’t breathing either. The electric hum of my alarm clock blared even louder than normal, and I marveled at how I could ever sleep through it. A faucet had been opened inside me, the current flowing. I buzzed with it. Now wide awake, I struggled to stay still. At least the horrifying images of Azazel were gone, replaced by other memories of the night, like kissing Michael. And while lying in his arms, unable to sleep, seemed to be the perfect place to think about that, believe me, it wasn’t. I needed to distract myself.

“You know, there’s this sound your wings make when the wind hits them,” I babbled. “It’s a beautiful sound.”

He touched my hand, intertwined his warm fingers with mine. Even that touch was electric between us. “Really?”

I swallowed. My throat was dry and tight, but I wasn’t about to get out of bed for water. “Then there’s the sound of your voice.”

“My voice?”

I held my breath, hoping to regain control. “Sometimes it takes on a completely different sound. Like a choir.”

“You can hear that?” He broke into a laugh. “I should have known.”

“Is that when you’re working?”

Nodding, he said, “It’s the Host.”

“The host?”

He squeezed my hand and brought it close to his heart. The light in his eyes glowed faintly orange in the dim of my room. “When any one of us acts on behalf of Heaven, all the angels in the network are with us. So if one of us speaks, all of our voices are heard.”

I took a deep breath and let that sink in. Closing my eyes, I saw an explosion of light erupt through darkness, forging galaxies and filling the sky with stars. Planets formed from colored light. The sound it made was incredible, comprised of many notes and harmonies all playing together at once. It was as though all life stemmed from that one eruption, like a spark that started a fire. Startled by it, I gasped.

“What did you just see?” Michael asked.

I described what I saw as best I could, but I couldn’t begin to explain what I’d heard. “What was it?” I asked.

“You’ve heard ‘In the beginning was the Word,’” he said, “but what people don’t know is that the Word was sung.”

“Were you there?” I asked. I’d never thought how far back his life actually went; it was staggering.

When he answered, his voice was sad. “Everything that lives now, that ever lived, was there. It’s just that nobody remembers it anymore.”

A shiver ran through me and I didn’t know what to say. As we lay there in silence, I realized then that there were so many things I didn’t know. There was an entire lifetime I hardly remembered and it was affecting my present life. I was in a world beyond my imagining, a world of angels and demons, with rules and consequences I hardly understood. But beneath all of it was love, as though it were the basis of everything.

Michael broke the silence first. “The others don’t like what I’m doing—with you.”

“They can see?” Of course they could. Arielle had said as much, but I’d convinced myself she was the only one who saw us.

“All of it. As long as I’m connected, I’m never alone. Which is why sometimes I disconnect so I don’t piss them off.” The shadows cast on his face from the dim light of my room made him look sad. He sighed. “I can’t lose them.”

I squeezed his hands. “I don’t want you to.”

“I can’t lose you either.”

I couldn’t tell if he meant now or if he was thinking of the past, but there was something in his voice that made my heart ache. It hung in the air between us. “You won’t. Even if…I mean, even though we’re just friends, I’ll be there for you. Always. I promise.”

He sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. “I’m tired of kidding myself. You and I could never be just friends, Mia.”

He paused. Could he feel my heart racing as I struggled to figure out what he meant? Surely he wasn’t going to give everything up. He couldn’t!

“But if I lose the others, I’d be useless against Damiel or any of the demons after us. And if you think they’ll just forget about me because I’ve walked away from the fight, you’re wrong. They’d hunt me down.”

“What about Arielle? She’s your friend. Wouldn’t she help?”

“She’s my sponsor. She can’t break our laws either, because she has to answer to them too. But the way I feel is my business, not theirs…” Still holding my hand, he took a deep breath and leaned closer to me, our sides touching. “What I do, on the other hand…”

A tremble ran down the length of his whole body right through me. Both of us froze. “I know,” I said. “I know.”

As I lay there in stillness, listening to his breathing and the quick, steady beat of his heart, I couldn’t help but wonder if the others could see us now. Couldn’t they see how hard he struggled to be what they expected? Didn’t that count for something?

***

I woke to the foreign sensation of movement as Michael gently slid out from under me, replacing himself with pillows. It was still dark out, but the sounds of life outside told me it was morning. Michael hardly looked rumpled.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Your mother will be home soon,” he said. “I should go.”

Stifling a yawn, I smiled at him. “I’m glad you stayed.”

“You should be. You drooled all over my shirt.”

I gasped, my hand covering my mouth, and he grinned at me, pulling on his shoes. I reached a hand up to smack him but was so tired I missed.

Chuckling softly, he kissed my forehead to bid me goodbye. The warmth from his lips shot all the way down to my toes.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Whatever for?” There was a ring of humor in his voice.

“You only stayed ’cos I asked you to.”

“That’s not the only reason. I just…” He hesitated.

“Just what?” I pressed.

“Didn’t know if I could trust myself.”

“What about now?”

He laughed under his breath as if to say Not at all. But his eyes had a different look in them than I’d seen before, as though he were less haunted, more present.

“I trust you,” I said.

“I know,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t have asked me to be here if you didn’t.”

He was right. I didn’t trust easily. But no matter what had happened in our past, I trusted him, and not just because it was so long ago that I didn’t care what he did. There was nothing he could do that I wouldn’t forgive or accept, and the idea of being in love with someone that much freaked me out—mostly because it didn’t feel wrong. It may have been against the rules, but nothing about loving or being with him felt wrong.

He removed his shirt and tucked it around his waist. Golden light glimmered behind the muscles of his shoulders as they prepared for his wings to connect. And then, with incredible grace, he leapt out my window.