A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series) (11 page)

Which was good. All of it was great. She’d be safe and out of my life. That was all I’d ever wanted. It was what brought me to her in the first place. To make sure Kay’s daughter—her entire family—wasn’t crumbling. Kay would never have wanted that.

So then why did I feel so shitty?

Not long after I’d worn a line in the dirt from pacing, Cam rounded the side of the cabin.

I was making a mistake. All it took was one look in Cam’s eyes to see I’d just gift-wrapped everything
he’d
ever wanted. I had to get out of here.

“I’m trusting you with her,” I called across the distance.

Cam nodded his agreement as he approached.

“If you screw her, in any way, I’ll come back here and rip your head off with my bare hands.”

He didn’t look surprised.

Now was my chance. She would be safe here. My guilt could be lifted.

My legs refused to move. The thought of her alone in that cabin, waking up to Cam and all his angelness goaded me to stay.

“Tell me you understand,” I barked to stretch out the conversation.

“I
have
been threatened before. I get the gist.”

I turned to avoid knocking my fist into his chin. “Exile doesn’t agree with you,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s turned you into even more of dick.”

“I’ll protect her as if she were still under my charge. Does that ease your worries?”

It didn’t. Not one bit. “It’ll have to do.”

“What really happened?”

“It’s a story that would span years.”

The seven or eight years that had passed in Hell had amounted to less than ten months up here. Coming to grips with that was hard—no telling how Ray would react once she was better.

“She doesn’t have time for it,” I said. “Just fix her.”

Dirt floated up from the lawn chair beside me when Farmer Cam lowered himself into it.

“Have a seat,” he said.

My fists clenched by my sides.

“I don’t need to know it all. I don’t
want
to know it all, just what happened to her. Why you think she’s … the way she is.”

Blank. Cold. A stone with air in her lungs and blood pumping through her veins.

“I wouldn’t leave her with you if I thought there was anything else I could do for her. If there was any other way.”

“I understand. You can trust me.”

“No, I can’t, but she can. She would, if she were here.”

He cast a sidelong glance at me. “You’ve changed.”

His words were simple. They shouldn’t have almost brought me to my knees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I noticed it when we met at Muir Woods. The way you acted when Ray was close to you, when she was close to me. The way you talked to her. Now it’s even clearer.”

I shook my head, not understanding why.

“Don’t be ashamed. You’ve made the transition no other Fallen has. It’s unprecedented.”

I looked past the house toward a thicket of trees. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but that kind of thing tends to happen around Ray, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

Snapping myself out of a pointless memory, I said, “Then stop analyzing me and go bring her back to life.”

“It won’t be easy. I’m afraid I’ll have to wipe her entire memory, then help her piece it back together. It’s a big job and could take a long time. Have you seen any of the news since you’ve been back?”

“None of that matters.”

Cam pushed out of his chair. “Tell me you’re joking. The human race is running out of time. You have to have seen the chaos—”

“Nothing takes priority over Ray. You’re fixing her, not becoming her moral compass.”

“Not even if the world as we know it crumbles around us?”

I whirled on him, voice low. “The world can burn as far as I’m concerned. She doesn’t need to know what’s happening out there. All she needs to worry about is getting better.”

I wanted Ray to tuck in close beside me, to feel her little angel breaths on my chest, and whisper that everything would be all right, that we would be fine, that we’d make it.

“She has a job to do. She was created to—”

“She was made to kill your kind. You really want her out there blasting angels away?”

“She hasn’t killed anyone.”

I surveyed his relaxed stance, used my imagination to guess where his wings would be from end to end, trying to curb the jealousy, the reminder that I no longer had what he would no doubt give up easily. “No angels, you mean. Not yet. But we can only hope.”

Cam frowned. “She has a responsibility. At the very least she should be given the information and allowed to make her own choice.”

“She hears none of it,” I snarled. “If the radio so much as announces the news while she’s here and you do nothing to stop it, I’ll do worse than end you. I’ll march you into Hell myself and hand-deliver you to Lucifer.”

Inside the cabin, Rayna’s scream ripped through the trees, scattering birds from their nests. The sound plunged my cursed heart into my gut. I dropped into the free chair.

“You’re under a lot of stress. Why not stay, at least the night? It’ll be getting dark soon. Night comes fast in the mountains.”

I pushed my hair back and shook my head. “Can’t. I have to get back on the road. Lure them away.”

“Lead them to you? Do you really think that’s wise? And what if you’re caught? You might not be as good as you think you are.”

“I know how to fall on a sword, Cam.”

“That’s your grand solution?”

“I’ll do what I have to in order to keep her safe.” I found my footing and stood. “No matter what you think, this is the right decision.”

“For you, maybe. Not for her. Rayna would want to help.”

My feet refused to move. Again, I knew I was making a mistake. Cam wanted Ray in one piece again so she could stop whatever Hell the Fallen were creating here on Earth. Ray would trust him. He could get into her head in a way I couldn’t, help straighten her out.

Time apart would be good for Ray and me. The time we’d spent on the run from Hell, the Fallen, and whoever else might want to hunt her down had been tough. Her current condition made it impossible to stay within a mile of another human soul, and I had been starving, going through feeding withdrawals. All the while she sat beside me, her heart beating and her life force calling to me. No way could I have lasted that way much longer.

Without her, I would be free. Whether I’d be feeding or abstaining, that was a decision my journey would make for me. I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her. I could focus on being singular again. Doing what
I
wanted. Whatever I wanted.

For some reason, the idea left me hollow.

Another scream ripped through the forest. My name came on that back of that scream. Once. I had to have imagined it. Then twice. By the third time I was already halfway to the cabin.

“Ray, I’m here! I’m here.” I dropped to my knees and cradled her face in my hands.

Recognition sparked in her eyes.

“Kade.” A breathless whisper.

“Oh thank God,” I said, pulling her up into a hug.

“Kade?”

I pulled back, searched her eyes. “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Kade?” Her voice a near-frantic call.

“Right here.” I pressed my forehead against hers.

“Kade!” She screamed in my face.

I crumpled beside her. I’d wanted so badly for her to come out of it that I’d seen something that wasn’t there. Until Cam healed her, this was who she was.

I laid her back on the bed, brushing a soft kiss over her forehead before I left.

“Here’s my emergency number. Only make the call if it’s life or death.” I didn’t need to watch him to know he’d be nodding. This time I made my feet move, away from the cabin, away from Cam, and away from Ray.

“She’s in good hands,” Cam called back.

“Don’t forget, Cam, if you fuck this up—”

“I know. You’ll kill me.”

Damn straight I will.

Chapter Fifteen

Rayna

The sun shone high in the sky, the clouds floating by, tucking behind the mountains in the distance. My skin still glowed red from my last few days outside, but nothing could keep me inside. Something told me I’d been somewhere very dark for a very long time before coming here.

“You shouldn’t spend all day in that chair again,” a voice said from behind me.

A smile stretched my lips. “You worry too much,” I fired back, tipping my oversized sunhat to cover my face properly, and leaning back further in the lawn chair.

“So you say.”

He walked in front of me, wings gleaming so gold in the sunlight that I had to shield my eyes with my hand or risk sun blindness for the next hour. He dug up a row of carrots. “I never knew how much you loved the outdoors before.”

I stiffened in my chair. “Before?”

Cam’s hands slowed to a stop.

“Cam, what before?”

He pushed his hair back off his forehead. “Before you came to visit.”

“I … I can’t remember anything before this.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“Are you helping me remember?”

“Sort of. It’s getting warm. Maybe you should go in and take a nap.”

I wasn’t tired, but getting out of the sun, maybe grabbing a glass of juice, sounded good. “Want anything from inside?” I asked.

“No, thanks. I might take a hike around the area, clear the dried brush. Fire season is coming up quick.”

I smiled and went inside. My eyes adjusted slowly to the inside of the cabin. I tugged the faulty latch on the old fridge and pulled out a jug of apple juice. I brought it and a glass to the table cluttered with paper and Cam’s whittling projects that all looked like various versions of fat bears. The juice splashed over the rim of the cup. While pulling the carton back, I tipped the glass over, soaking the table in sticky juice.

I capped the juice and started laying Cam’s prized wooden bears along the windowsill. When I ran out of room, I used the floor closest to the wall, so they wouldn’t be stepped on. But there were so many. Beneath the blanket of failed woodworking projects were layers of old magazines, discolored by their time in the sun. Some were beyond saving. Even so, I pulled them off the table and laid them out on the floor one by one. A white corner peeked out from under the clutter. I cleared away more of the magazines, ones that hadn’t been touched by the juice. When the table was clear I found myself staring at a map of the United States.

Marker stained several of the cities on the map. Some red, some blue. But the patterns seemed random. Why keep a marked up map? I shook my head. Cam had been out in the wilds for too long. I began blotting the juice-soaked magazines, sorting the salvageable ones, when the cabin door whined open.

“Sorry about the … bears?”

Cam stood there, looking at the table, then back to me, saying nothing, unmoving.

“Okay clearly not bears. I hate to break it to you, but you should try your hand at a new hobby. I don’t think whittling is your hidden talent.”

Still he didn’t move.

“Look, I know you told me not to clean anything. I tried. Really I did. And this isn’t the OCD cleaning it looks like. I spilled juice, like, everywhere. So I had to, otherwise we’d be ankle deep in ants before the sun set.”

“Rayna,” Cam finally said.

“What? What’s up with you?”

“The map.”

“About that. You really should think about thinning out some of your junk.”

I yanked up a pile of dry magazines and plopped them down over the Pacific Northwest. With my hands on my hips, the red and blue splotches drew my gaze down to a massive purple blip over San Francisco. Red and blue made purple. My favorite color. But there was much more red than blue in this blip. In fact, the red bled widely around the blue. I took a closer look. San Francisco: right next to the ocean. San Francisco: tall buildings, cable cars, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

A tidal wave of memories crashed into me. San Francisco was where my friends and family were. The Golden Gate Bridge was where Azriel almost threw me into Hell. Hell was where I had been for so long. The torture. The starvation. The company. Someone had been with me, a friend. More than a friend.

“Cam?” I backed away from the map, my body trembling. “What’s going on? What am I missing?”

He abandoned his post by the door and stood beside me. “You asked before if I was helping you remember. The answer is no, Rayna. I’m helping you to forget.” Cam’s slate gray eyes changed to a bluish-white so bright it rivaled his wings and the sun.

Panic crested, igniting a surge of adrenaline. Fear kept my feet rooted in place. But as soon as my gaze met his, all my worries disappeared.

Chapter Sixteen

Kade

The bedside clock flashed midnight, the green light flickering across the room. I leaned my head back in the stiff chair. Thirteen hours. I was risking a lot by staying so long. But I needed them close. Closer than they’d gotten so far.

Staying in one place hadn’t felt right since leaving Hell. After being locked in one room for so long, nothing felt more right than to keep moving. But I was getting tired. I’d seen more of the world in the last six weeks than I had my entire time as a Fallen.

Even with all this moving, the constant running, I could never get Ray out of my head.

The way she looked when we breached the surface, that dead sheen still coating her eyes, haunted me every time I closed mine.

A crack startled me out of my delirious state. They’d breached the door.

Heavy footsteps thundered into the room. There were two of them; I knew without needing to see them. There were probably more downstairs. It was a good thing I’d checked myself into the room next door. They’d be searching the entire hotel soon though, and after that, the whole city. I grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair and headed for the roof, the one place they probably wouldn’t think to find a wingless Fallen.

With any luck, they wouldn’t catch me tonight. Amsterdam was a big enough city to get lost in. I’d slow down enough so they’d stay hot on my heels, keeping them as far away from Ray as possible. But the risk of underestimating them was always present, a screaming danger in the back of my mind. If I wasn’t fast enough or smart enough, my life would be over.