What the hell am I?
‘I’m a weapon,’ I said absently.
He nodded. ‘But for all things in this world, there must be …’
‘Balance,’ I whispered, the gravity of this new understanding gripping at my insides like a determined claw.
‘Balance,’ Sammael echoed. ‘You may be the greatest and most powerful of all warriors for the angels, but in being that, you must also be their greatest and most powerful threat.’
The air left my lungs.
And with that, he vanished.
Like magic.
CHaPteR tHIRty
‘Nature in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theatre of the tragedy of man.’
John Morley
Back on the upper deck, Zoe and Carter had matters under control.
Phoenix carried Spence, who remained unaware of his surroundings, across the deck and then Lincoln helped to lower him onto one of the speedboats. A navy vessel pulled up on the other side of the steamboat, and a bridge was set up for the humans – who were either restrained or unconscious – to be carried over, overseen by the conductors.
The trip had been a broken success and we all felt the weight of what was still to come.
I jumped into the speedboat and Gray took off at a much slower pace. ‘What will happen to the humans?’ I asked Lincoln, who had been on and off his phone sending out orders.
‘One of the boats is heading to the Jacksonville navy base. They’ll take the humans there and navy Grigori will take charge of them until we can figure out what to do. Best case, they’ll all come to their senses with some time,’ Lincoln explained.
‘Worst case?’ I knew I shouldn’t ask.
‘Almost all of them have broken human laws. If we can’t bring them to their senses and work out a way to help defend them, it’s likely they’ll go to jail.’
What is happening to this world?
I felt like screaming but I knew from too much experience that it did jack-all, so instead I considered what I now knew very likely lay ahead.
When we pulled up to the navy Destroyer, I took the hand of the officer who offered it and let him pull me aboard. Even if I hadn’t automatically known he wasn’t Grigori, his look of confusion as he watched what was no doubt a very unusual day unfold pegged him as pure human.
The young officer looked over his shoulder and then back at me as Lincoln and Phoenix grappled with Spence’s uncooperative body.
‘Who are you people?’ he asked quietly, obviously deciding I looked like the one most likely to explain it all. ‘You’re all, what – twenty, twenty-one?’
I kept my eyes on Spence, ready to jump in and help the guys. ‘Actually, I’m nineteen,’ I said.
‘I don’t get it. You’re all young, but you’ve got the resources of the whole US navy at your beck and call, and you lot have got moves I’ve never seen before.’
I noticed the pair of binoculars around his neck before I crouched down to keep the boarding ladder steady.
Someone’s been paying too much attention.
I don’t know why, but I repeated what Griffin had said to me that first day I’d found out what I was: ‘We’re the gardeners. We clear the weeds.’
The guy snorted. ‘Well, if you’re the gardeners, what the hell are we?’
I looked up at him, squinting into the sun and smiled briefly. ‘You’re the wheelbarrow.’
He laughed. ‘Is that your way of calling us a taxi?’
‘Might be,’ I replied, helping Lincoln carefully heave Spence up the last step.
Once Phoenix and Lincoln were on deck and had Spence between them we started to walk towards our cabins – where we knew we were guaranteed privacy. Officer Wide Eyes chased after me a few steps and called out, ‘You have to get some fancy qualifications, or something?’
I looked over my shoulder and called back. ‘It’s more of a birthright kind of thing!’
‘Just my luck,’ he said, defeated.
I paused and turned around, letting Phoenix and Lincoln go on ahead. The officer was young and eager. He reminded me a bit of Spence. ‘It just might be,’ I said.
He watched me closely as I showed him just a touch of the truth, letting a little of the battle, the sacrifice, the loss, and the promise of death fill my eyes until finally he nodded. He saw enough in that moment to understand that this life was not something to be painted in pretty colours. After a small nod, the officer walked back to his post.
Just as I caught up to Phoenix and Lincoln at the doors going inside, Sal and Zoe suddenly came barrelling towards us from the other side of the deck, pulling up quickly when they saw Spence, who was still looking entirely absent. I could see the moment they both registered that we had a serious problem.
Before they started with the questions, Lincoln took charge, handing Spence over to them. ‘Take him down to the infirmary. Tell Chloe to stand guard and Mia to sit with him. Maybe one of them can reach him. Then meet us in the war room.’