Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (18 page)

Black wings meant a lot of things in Clark’s world. So he waited until the figure was closer. Shaved head. Dark irises with sharp filaments of gold flaring inside them. Simple, worn jeans and hiking boots. Practical white button-up below a peacoat with slits in the back to allow for his wings.

“Gabriel,” Clark said in greeting. “Long time no see.”

“Clark.”

Clark nodded at the angel Michaela loved so dearly. He’d spent some time with Gabriel. Sure, the guy had sacrificed his soul for Michaela, but Clark still found him oddly obnoxious. Like, come on. Did he have to be so knight in shining armor? Clark could be a knight. If he didn’t think chivalry was so overrated.

“I take it I’m still dreaming?” Clark asked. The entire cave was gone. Just an endless stretch of white.

“You are,” Gabriel said simply. He was never one to overexplain—another annoying quality.

“So, is this Heaven or something? All the white?”

“I’m not allowed in Heaven anymore.”

Clark grimaced, feeling like a total asshole. Of course, Gabriel couldn’t go to Heaven anymore. When he’d signed his soul over to Lucifer, it hadn’t mattered that the soul in question was still just as pure—possibly purer—than any other holy angels’. All that mattered was Gabriel’s bloody signature. Michaela’s life had meant more than everything to Gabriel, and he’d proved it. What had Clark done?

“Right, well…how’s it going in Hell?”

Gabriel cocked a thick brow, which, of course, made him look devastatingly handsome with his strong jaw and sharp nose. Clark rolled his eyes at the angel.

“Fine,” Clark said. “Why are you here then?”

“I’ve heard you’re having some trouble up here.”

“Hey! Speaking of…” Clark abruptly straightened and looked around. “Dude, you gave the slip to my demon.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, yeah.” Clark looked back at Gabriel, gesturing with his hands like this was old news. “I’m possessed.”

“By a demon?”

“No, by Rapunzel. She lets down her hair for me whenever I want to hang out.”

“Who?”

Clark sighed and scuffed his bare toe against the white ground. It felt pliable and smooth, neither hot nor cold, beneath his touch. “You guys really make this no fun at all for me.”

“So you’re really possessed? By a demon? Does Michaela know?” Clark finally had Gabriel’s full attention, it seemed. All it took was a demon. Clark should be taking notes.

“I doubt it. I haven’t seen her since before I was arrested.”

“You’re arrested?” Gabriel’s smooth baritone lifted with alarm.

“It really scares me,” Clark said evenly, “that you angels literally have no clue what’s going on with Earth. Like, uh, no wonder the end of the world almost happened.”

Gabriel scrubbed his jaw with a large, tanned hand. It didn’t look weathered in the slightest, more like he’d spent a week or two on a nice beach. “Can we not do this,” he gestured toward Clark, “right now? I can only handle you in small doses, and this sounds like it’s going to be a long conversation.”

“That sounds like a personal problem,” Clark snapped, offended. He looked around once again for the demon. The little asshole really was gone. “So where is my demon?”

“I only channeled your subconscious. It’s likely still with you, wherever you are. It just can’t be here with us.” Gabriel glanced around, his brows furrowing together and digging out deep lines on his forehead. He focused intently for a moment and nodded to a spot over Clark’s shoulder. “Let’s have a seat.”

Clark turned around. There were two leather wingback chairs facing each other. In the middle, on a little round ottoman, was a handle of whiskey and some tumblers. Gabriel brushed by him, feathers whispering, and settled into a chair before pouring two drinks.

“Michaela told me about your messenger angel dream abilities, but this is pretty cool. You should come see me more often. As long as you bring whiskey,” Clark said, making his way over to the chairs. He plopped down and took the drink Gabriel offered him. The whiskey was bright and warm, like a sun inside his mouth, as it went down his throat. Clark closed his eyes in bliss. The liquid settled deep in his empty stomach.

“Let’s start from the beginning. Why are you possessed and in jail?”

Clark started from the beginning and found that recounting recent events really wasn’t that easy of a story to tell. Actually, it kind of sucked. His chest clenched with anxiety when he drew to the end and explained his coming trial.

“They’re going to find me guilty,” he finished. He refilled both their glasses.

Gabriel took the glass and sipped. “And are you guilty?” he finally asked.

“The real Liam was already dead when I killed him again because the demon had possessed him. Lucifer set me up. He wants my magic.” Clark lifted an arm and waved it, like Gabriel didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Michaela mentioned that. I just didn’t know it was this bad.”

Clark smiled sadly. “It wasn’t this bad when I talked to her last.”

Gabriel’s attention caught on what Clark said. Or maybe it was how he said it. The angel paused, his finger still on his lower lip where he’d been stroking it in thought. Slowly, he lowered his hand and turned fully toward Clark, putting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. Suddenly, Clark felt like they were finally having a serious conversation. As if possession and incarceration wasn’t as serious as Michaela.

“You miss her.”

Taking the handle of whiskey and ditching his glass, Clark leaned back in his chair. Didn’t work. Gabriel’s eyes still seared into him. “Not like you would know,” Clark said, his tone icier than he’d meant. “You see her all the time.”

“That’s what you think?”

“I know she goes to you more. That you two shack up at the safe house. I’m not an idiot.” Clark took a long drink from the bottle. He was warm all the way down to his toes, and it felt amazing after days of unending cold. Even talking about Michaela with Gabriel, like it was the old days, had his stomach dancing with nostalgia.

Gabriel didn’t speak, and Clark shifted under his quiet gaze. The Archangel was reading a lot into Clark’s comment, finding answers to deep, probing, unspoken questions, and it really freaked out Clark.

“She goes to you a lot more than she comes to me,” he added, needing to fill the silence. Needing Gabriel to stop staring like that. “Time doesn’t exist for her anymore, yet she can’t spare a second on me.”

Gabriel reached forward, and for a horrible moment Clark thought the angel was going to try to console him. Clark recoiled, but Gabriel was only asking for the whiskey. Clark took a quick drink and handed it back. Only after Gabriel had taken a long pull did he set the bottle back on the ottoman and slouch into his seat. His wings spread along the floor on either side of him, catching the odd lighting that seemed to ooze from within the plane of whiteness.

“I’m not surprised that’s what you think. The ways of the Angel of Death aren’t known to many.”

Clark frowned. “What are you saying?”

“She is Death now, Clark. She carries it in her wings, her soul, her heart. Those souls latch onto her and cling to her, shivering and hopeless on their way to Judgment. Death feeds her now, nourishes her. It’s her whole infinite, immortal world. Yes, time is a flat, traversable plane for her, but it’s just as caging as the cell you most likely sit in now.”

A cold hollowness crept out of Clark’s bones, chilling the whiskey fire he’d felt just a few seconds before. “But she seemed so happy and alive when I saw her last.”

The corner of Gabriel’s mouth pressed into his cheek, dimpling, but sad nevertheless. “After what happened in Heaven, don’t you think Michaela would grasp onto anything that felt right and good again? She needs a duty; she was made for it. And she has it once again.”

Clark could picture Michaela flitting from one soul to the next. There weren’t many on Earth left to die, but it was surely enough to keep her busy. Not to mention the souls that had spilled over from Purgatory during the war. He imagined her just the way Gabriel said. She would love it. She would lose herself in that purpose, just to feel whole again. Maybe it should make Clark happy to know that everything felt right in her angel world again, but honestly, it just broke his heart.

He’d assumed she was free of the chains from the holy and fallen, right and wrong. But she was just as immersed as when he found her in the cave, wingless and shattered. He hadn’t fixed her. Nothing was fixed at all.

Clark cursed and dropped his head into his hands. “Is she okay?” The question was muffled and too quiet for anyone other than an angel to hear.

“She has to be.”

“You don’t see her that often either, do you?”

“Just enough that the memory of her smile only fades a little in my mind between her visits.” Gabriel sounded as bottomless as Clark felt.

“What should I do?” Clark asked. He looked up at Gabriel. They were both leaning forward in their chairs, bodies collapsing onto their forearms like broken dolls hanging from loose strings.

“They say that love fades,” Gabriel offered, shrugging again like he didn’t believe it either.

Clark stiffened. “What are you talking about?”

“Your love for Michaela?”

“Dude,” Clark groaned. “No. That’s not what I meant. I don’t love Michaela. I never did.”

The ridges between Gabriel’s brows formed again. “You don’t?”

“I don’t know anything anymore, but if I do,” Clark whispered, rolling his eyes heavenward, “it’s a love so great that I didn’t even know it existed. Didn’t even know when it consumed me. If that’s love—a sneaky, black shadow assassin of souls—then I’ve had no clue all along. I know I loved Sophia. But what I feel for Michaela is worlds apart different than that. I thought it was friendship. I’d hoped like hell it was friendship.”

Gabriel let out a small breath between his lips. “You know some of the Archangels were created in pairs. Not all of us, but some. It didn’t make us any stronger than the others without partners. We just had to have someone else to be whole. Only then were we one. That’s what it was like for Michaela and I. And Zarachiel and Uriel. The others…” Gabriel’s voice trailed off, surely he was thinking of his fallen brothers and sisters, those who had died, who had been lost to a war. “That partnership is a love like what you speak of. You don’t notice it because it was always inside you. You can’t track its growth, its movement, because it’s like the beat of your own heart. But it’s certainly love. Love that creates you and recreates you every day after that. Maybe you were created for Michaela too, to love her the way you do.”

The two men met eyes, and suddenly, it was like Michaela was sitting beside them, even though she was likely eons away. Clark could almost hear her breath. Everything Gabriel said made sense. Clark understood that kind of love for Michaela. But from where he sat, Gabriel looked like the unfortunate, wretched bastard. He and Michaela had made their love corporal, bound in human ways that could never be undone, no matter the distance between their bodies. They’d taken that infinite love they’d felt and made it physical. Now Gabriel could account for Michaela’s loss in every absent touch, kiss, stroke. Clark understood all of this in a moment, and he finally found compassion and empathy for the Archangel.

“Gabe,” he breathed, “I’m so sorry.”

Gabriel sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair. “She’s alive. That’s what matters.” He picked up the bottle and took another long drink from the whiskey. “Now we need to figure out your other shit.”

Clark’s eyes nearly crossed. If he started to count his problems, it jumbled up his brain and wires started sparking. Gabriel handed him the whiskey, seemingly sensing that. When Clark felt a new warmth in his core, he said, “I need an exorcism. I’m scared to show the demon my magic.”

“Right. Because it’s watching you…”

“As soon as I go to that place in my mind, it’ll be there and Lucifer will get it all.”

“He’ll only get it if you let the demon take it,” Gabriel said.

“Sure. But I can’t guarantee I can fight off the demon. You know better than anyone how uncertain my magic is. I can’t control it.”

Gabriel nodded. He’d been the one to take Clark to Hell in order to work with Lucifer on learning the magic. Lucifer didn’t know how to use the Watchers’ secrets any more than Clark did, but he’d spent nearly an eternity pouring over anything and everything to do with Watchers’ magic. It’d been his obsession; he’d believe the magic was enough for him to win back Heaven and be able to return home. But if he ever had full control of magic, if it was on his body instead of Clark’s, Clark knew Lucifer would be able to use it much better than Clark ever had.

“It’s because you’re not a full-blooded angel. The magic won’t answer completely to you.”

That was the best explanation Clark had received so far about his fickle powers, but it only confirmed his theory about Lucifer using it better than he had. “So what am I going to do?”

“I can’t help you with the Liam thing, but if Lucifer is after you, you’re safest where you are. Let the Descendants try their exorcism on you. It’s the best chance you’ve got.”

Clark groaned. “Seriously? That’s your advice? Stay in jail and maybe die when that priest gets his holy water-drenched hands on me? That crusty old bastard hates me.”