Fire and Shadows (Ashes and Ice #2) (4 page)

8

GIOVANNI

I shifted uncomfortably
when I realized that yet again, I was watching Jade sleep. It was pathetic really... as pathetic as that little human’s affection for her. I furrowed my brow thinking of the note in my pocket. Humans. Fragile creatures who were gone in a blink of an eye, in one short shallow breath. Jade’s pounding heartbeat reminded me that she was still somehow connected to them.

She rolled over and faced the fire. Her face pinched with a pained expression
. She arched her back and I gulped in a breath as I looked away, but when I heard her whimper and shake, I stood up abruptly, all my attention on her. She shuddered under her blanket, her face desperate and afraid. I took a step toward her, reluctant to get too close. I took another step. She started shaking, her head whipping back and forth, tears sliding out of her closed eyes. I closed the distance between us and kneeled beside her. I didn’t want to touch her, but then as I leaned in to shake her awake, she thrashed against me, convulsing. I grabbed at her wrists and hauled her up. I couldn’t watch her have another nightmare, not another night of tears.

“
Jade! Jade! Wake up!” I shook her hard and then noticed the mark on her arm, the mark to ward off inner evil, glowing. I gulped in a breath, just as her body went limp.

I held her in my arms
—her motionless body a dead weight against my chest—and I felt something stutter to life inside me. Panic.

My
body went rigid and my breath hitched before I looked down at her, afraid of dead glassy eyes staring back at me. I had seen those eyes before, but when I looked down, there weren’t dead eyes staring at me. Curled against my chest, Jade looked up at me, her eyes wide, round and full of questions.

I tensed, searching for excuses while also cursing myself for still holding her
, but I still didn’t let go. I didn’t want—

“
Why are you holding me?” Her eyes narrowed, and then glanced at my arms like a vice-grip around her. I blinked and let her go and stood up abruptly, leaving her to pitch forward and brace herself on her palms so she didn’t fall over.

“
I wasn’t holding you,” I said, my voice edging its way back to calm. “You were having a nightmare and started thrashing. I tried to restrain you.”
Force the panic down. She’s fine. Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t let her see me shaking.

I
turned my back to her, waiting for a retort, for an accusation.

She
didn’t say anything for a moment.

Then, with
a voice as quiet as the crackling fire, she murmured, “Thank you.”

My shoulders stiffened, but I
didn’t turn around. Instead, I walked away from the camp, away from her, away from memories, and away from the feel of her soft hair against my cheek.

9

JADE

I watched Giovanni
march off without saying a word. When I woke up against his warm chest, I had almost reached my arms around his neck to pull him closer. For a moment, I had forgotten where I was, and thought that it was Connor’s chest against my cheek, Connor’s arms holding me. I was both surprised and shocked to see Giovanni clutching me close.

I laid back onto my blanket
. It smelled like mildew and grass, my thoughts quickly turning to Connor. He had been stable when we had left the hospital and Giovanni had assured me he would pull through fine. I hoped my note was enough, although I knew it wasn’t. Nothing was a good enough excuse to leave your friend. I almost scoffed at the word. I had no idea what Connor was to me. Somehow, friend didn’t really cover it. We only had moments to kiss each other, and none of them were ones where I spared a breath to say I love you.

I burrowed deeper into my cover. I missed him. I missed him so much.

He would help me laugh about my bruises or comfort me during the lonely nights, or even fend off the stares that the angel gave me when he thought I was long asleep. I was afraid he resented taking me with him to find Lynx, resented his responsibility of training me. Sometimes, I thought that he was planning me to fend for myself.

There
were small moments, though, that I saw a subtle vulnerability about his staunch features and I wondered if he didn’t hate me so much because of who I am, but because I was useless without my memory. I knew that he had protected me once with Lynx a long time ago...

Every now and then, I would sense anger emanating from him. I mulled over his anger, the reasons why. Perhaps,
he was angry that he had to do everything over again? Or maybe, he was angry to be away from his home with a babysitting charge for me—a strange, and new thing.

He puzzled me, and I couldn
’t help but be curious about him. I wondered how long had he been away from home? Did he miss it? Did he brood and sulk because he was just as lonely as me? I sat up straight and looked into the woods. If I closed my eyes, I could smell him. He smelt like wine and ashes... something deep and sweet tinged with smoke. I slowly stood up and made my way towards him. He wasn’t too far... just beyond the first scatter of trees, just beyond what I could see. I tried my best to stay silent. To walk on only the mossy patches of earth so that I could see him without him noticing. I paused for only a brief moment to consider if it would be wrong to invade his privacy. I caught the huff that I almost released when I considered he sat up watching me nearly every night. My foot shifted and there was a stark snap in the darkness. I winced at the sound, knowing there was no chance it would have blended in with the fire crackling.

Strong arms
yanked me back and my own arms were crossed in front of me, immobilizing me. Giovanni’s heat warmed my back and his breath nearly felt like steam against my cheek. “Why are you following me?”

I shifted and tried to loosen his hold on me.
“I wasn’t.”

“
Yes, you were.”

I kept my face blank for a moment and then exhaled loudly.
“Okay, fine. I was following you.” I clawed at his hands around me. “Let go.”

“
Why?”

“
Because you are going to squeeze me to death or burn off my ass.”

His arms remained firmly around me.
“No. Why were you following me?”

“
Why did you just march off?”

He let go of me then and stepped back.
“I had nothing to say. I didn’t think I needed permission from you to take a walk.”

“
No, but have you ever heard the term ‘rude’ because you are practically its poster child.”

“
I know what
rude
is,” he retorted harshly.

“
Then you know that it is rude to just grab hold of someone and then stomp off,” I said, practically hissing at him while still wriggling within his arms.

He lowered his cheek to mine so that I could feel the roughness of it.
“What? Did you want me to keep holding you?”

Color flooded my cheeks
and I stopped moving, shocked. “No, I didn’t want you to keep holding me,” I said, the words spilling out of me. “But I would appreciate not being tossed aside and ignored.”

“
Listen, girl...”

“
You know my name,” I said. “Why don’t you use my name?”

He looked
ready to explode, lash out in fury and I wasn’t sure why. “Jade,” he spat the word out as if it left a sour taste in his mouth, “I am here to do a job. I need to train you and we need to bring Lynx back to Heaven. Everything else is irrelevant. That includes your feelings. That includes...” His voice broke off.

“
But aren’t you—”

Giovanni pressed his hand to my mouth, silencing me. His alert eyes jerked upright and stared up into the sky. In a swift motion, he ducked into the shadows and dragged me with him.
“Be very quiet,” he breathed.

My eyes searched the sky as I held my breath. I could hear the whoosh of something in the
sky. I stared. Massive wings, several pairs of them, flapped against the stars sending a wave of air towards us. I couldn’t make out their bodies. I looked at Giovanni and mouthed “Demons?”

His lips went into a rigid, thin line. He didn
’t look back at me; his eyes stayed trained on the sky. When the wing-beats were far away, he loosened his grip on me. It was then that I realized that the flames of the fire pit were snuffed out. “Did you do that?”

“
Do what?”

“
Turn off the fire.”

“
Of course.”

I forgot how powerful he was over his element of fire and lightning. Sometimes when we fought and he would get especially frustrated, a bolt of
lightning would flash out of the sky and scorch the ground.

“
We have to get going.”

“
What? But we just stopped to rest an hour ago.”

“
Listen, princess—”

“
Don’t ever call me that.” My body went rigid. Weeks ago, Dominic had had his spell on me and would call me princess affectionately. The word only reminded me that part of me was from Hell, and that in some cruel twist of fate, I was its heir.

Giovanni almost rolled his eyes at me, but the expression on my face
must have caught him off guard because he simply nodded and said a flat, “Fine.”

I rolled up my blanket and stuffed it into my bag. As Giovanni knelt down to get one of my things, I saw a glimmer of something in his pocket.

“What’s that?”

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“What’s what?”

“
That shiny thing in your pocket.”

Giovanni dropped my bag and his hand jabbed into his pocket as if to check it was still there, and to make sure it was deep within and unseen.

I stared at him. “Well...what—”

“
You ask way too many questions.” He turned his back to me and finished gathering up our things. Too many questions? Based on all that had happened in the past few months, I felt I was entitled to my questions. The shimmer in his pocket looked like a memory. It was obviously a memory that mattered to him, one that he clung to, one that he wouldn’t share. I exhaled as I followed him a few strides as we left our makeshift camp behind.

“
So what direction do we head?” I asked, grabbing my things from his hand.

I looked at Giovanni expecting to see his careful, steady expression. Instead, he blinked.

I blinked right back at him. “You do know where we need to go, right?”

“
I haven’t been navigating. I’ve been training.”

“
What?” I nearly yelled at him, but held my calm just in case the flying demons were still within earshot. “All this walking and you don’t know what direction we need to go?”

“
I am an angel. How am I supposed to know where the pit of Hell is?” he said evenly, but it was obvious that he was flustered and unfamiliar with uncertainty. It was also obvious he didn’t like it.

“
I can’t believe it......I—”

“
I am not the child of Hell. Why don’t you figure it out!” he snapped, his nostrils flaring, eyes blazing.

Child of Hell. He had said it. Said it with the disgust and ferocity that it deserved. I couldn
’t respond. The words crept in and slashed through my insides. I stoically controlled my features, forcing them into a blank expression. He couldn’t see how his words were like tiny knives tearing me apart. He couldn’t see my tears chase my shame down my face. I just turned my back on him and walked away, uncaring if he followed or not. I shut off my mind, pushed aside my feelings, and walked in the dark.

10

CONNOR

“What the hell
, man? Are you serious?” Matt looked at me in his strange, scrunched up way.

I sat on the edge of my bed, fiddling with my
shoelace-less sneakers. “Yeah, I’m serious.” I hadn’t expected him to be able to take the news easily. In fact, I was pretty floored he hadn’t run out of the house screaming and flailing his arms around like some crazed chicken, but right after I told him everything, and I mean everything about Jade and I, and well, the world, Matt’s face was a hot mess of freaked out.

“
So, you didn’t just go all Romeo and try to kill yourself when Jade stepped out?” The one thing I did appreciate about Matt was that the whole time I told him the story, even with the nitty-gritty details, he didn’t once roll his eyes or give me a skeptical eyebrow raise. His eyes just got wider, his blinking faster, and his wheezing sound just a bit more hurried. He pulled out an inhaler and took a long drag.

“
So, we’re on the brink of the freakin’ apocalypse? That is what you are telling me?”

I felt stupid when he said it like that. I hadn
’t used the word “apocalypse” but that was exactly what I was saying.

We were silent for a second.

“Well, that blows,” Matt said.

I peered up on him and was surprised that his freaked
-out face had turned into a pissed off one, but I was even more surprised with what he asked next, “So, what do we do?”

“
I—I am not exactly sure.”

Matt
’s exasperated sigh was like a punch to the gut.

I tried to be quick.
“I don’t know, but I do know that if we can translate these, we could get some answers. I do know we can figure it out.”

Matt eyed the stacks of old scrolls precariously balanced on my bed.
“You want us to translate those? All of them? The ones your dad spent months trying to decipher? What if the world blows up tomorrow? I don’t want to waste it being locked up in here with you, reading some Goddamned papers. If we are all about to be splat on the universe’s windshield, I need to convince Denise to put out because there is no freakin’ way I am going to die a virgin.”

The boy was dead serious. I forgot that Matt and Denise had started dating after the winter formal. It was hard to imagine Matt having a girlfriend
, and it really wasn’t on my to-do list to imagine him doing it with anyone. Yet, he was a lot closer to getting it on than I was. “Do you think I want to die a virgin? It wasn’t in my four-year plan. But this,” I pointed to the scrolls, “this could change that. I don’t think the world is about to go up in flames tomorrow. It seemed like there was this process that needed to be gone through before any real hell-raising starts to go down.”

Matt didn
’t look convinced. “Matt, I am going to ask you straight up. Will you help me with this? I need to know how to find Jade. I need to know how to help her. I need to know how we can stop—all this—from happening.”

Matt leaned back and took off his glasses. He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled.
“Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll help you.” His eyes snapped open and pinned me to the seat. “But if the world does implode tomorrow and I get no sweet lovin’ before I am ash, I will hold you accountable and roast your ass in Hell.”

I laughed and extended my hand to him.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”