Iron Inheritance (8 page)

Nate tensed his scrawny forearm until a green glove of light enveloped his hand. He reached out and grabbed Josh’s ankle.

Almost instantly, Josh’s eyes burst open, and his body thrashed like it had been lit on fire. He kicked Nate’s hand off and stood, breathing hard.

Nate didn’t move back an inch but continued to stare at Josh, his eyes softening with every passing second. “Come on, change of plans,” he said, turning his back to Josh and grabbing up all of our supplies. “We need to get to L.A. tonight.”

“Why?” I said, unsure about everything right now. My eyes flicked from him to Josh and back.

“Because our newest guest has been hiding how hurt he really is,” Nate said stiffly.

I looked back at Josh. Beside the rip in his shirt and looking a bit tired, he seemed fine. The more closely I looked at him, the more his stormy blue eyes connected with mine, the more butterflies I felt. Nothing to indicate that he was hurt.

“I don’t get it,” said Ria before I could.

Nate sighed. “The dark essence that Kovac used didn’t hurt him physically; it wounded him spiritually. Josh’s essence doesn’t look like it should.” He paused and waited for us. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Josh cocked the right corner of his mouth up in a smirk. “Not many people can see through my shields.” He stopped when he was next to Nate. “You’re a Guardian, aren’t you?”

Nate’s face went blank. “Is that a problem?”

Josh grinned. “Not with me, Bub. Guardians have always been good in my book. Can’t say the Patrons in L.A. will feel the same though.” He took a shaky step forward.

Nate wrapped his arm around Josh’s back and supported him down the steps as I followed, every piece of this puzzle still a hazy color and shape.

We roared down the gravel road and turned onto the highway five minutes later. Dust clouded the sky behind us, and rocks kicked up at the underside as the tires skidded on the turns.

“You can slow down, you know,” Ria yelled from the front seat, her hair whipping out in the warm night air. “No one’s chasing us.”

Nate gripped the steering wheel instead of speaking.

I sat in the tiny backseat with Josh and tried to keep him awake. Nate had dumbed Josh’s condition down for Ria and I to understand. Apparently, it was like a spiritual concussion. Go to sleep, and he could die. As it stood, he should be dead. Nate couldn’t explain how he’d survived at all.

The dirt road made it easy to keep Josh awake since the potholes sent us flying into each other every other second. When the road was smooth, however, his eyes started to droop.

Ria flipped her visor mirror up, turned around, and snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “What, this beautiful girl boring you?” She jerked her thumb at me.

“I—no. I mean—” He ran his hand through his dark brown hair—just a shade lighter than mine.

I narrowed my eyes at Ria so she’d turn back around. She returned my gaze with even more zeal. She was the expert at socializing, after all, and we’d made a pact that she’d be my wing-girl whenever I needed her.

Which was always. I usually tried to stay quiet until I had something really good to say. Not exactly the approach you want when conversation’s the only thing keeping a person alive.

“So, our job is to keep you talking. Your job is to keep talking so you don’t die.
Capiche
?” said Ria.

Josh shook his head, looked dizzy, then nodded once.

“Ok, you first, Evey,” said Ria.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans, caught between wondering how I could even feel emotion right now and how my stomach kept fluttering every time I looked at him. “Where are you from?”

“All over, but for the past few years, Texas.”

“I thought I heard an accent. I love accents,” Ria purred.

“It’s just certain phrases—can’t help it sometimes.” Josh smiled.

“Say, y’all,” said Ria.

“Y’all?” Josh looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

Ria’s giggle cut through the roar of Nate’s gas-guzzling engine.

“So…” I struggled to find something else to say as my throat became sore. Maybe I wasn’t really ready to be talking to him like this right now. He was handsome, but sometimes his blue eyes reminded me so much of Grandpa. Every glimpse was a reminder of the void in my chest.

I faced forward and blinked several times to dissipate the tears already forming.

“The same thing that attacked me, it attacked you, too?” Josh said, straining to focus his eyes on mine again, though seeming to sense what I was thinking about. “That’s why you were running, right? That’s why you were in that church?”

I nodded, still unable to say anything.

“Did you lose someone?”

Ria sniffed and slumped back down in the front seat, the fun now over.

My voice finally found its way out. “My grandpa. Kovac tried to kill me, and my grandpa jumped in front—sacrificed himself.” The last two words formed a lump in my throat.

Don’t start crying again. Don’t start.

“The white essence in the sky.” Josh shook his head like he should have known. “I’m sorry.”

Tears threatened to flood past my eyelids. One minute I was devastated, the next I wanted to kill someone, then I was thinking about boys, and now I was back to square one—crying because the only family I had left had been murdered right in front of me. Peachy. If I wasn’t already a nutcase, I sure would be now.

“I should have put it together. I’m so sorry.” Josh pushed his fingers through his thick hair again. “He must’ve been a great Patron to have done that. Probably the only one in a decade.”

“Try seven,” Nate croaked, his voice gravely.

I wiped my eyes when Josh looked away.

Josh stretched out his thick hand and put it on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

I turned to look at him, but he had his eyes closed as if he was concentrating. His hand was warm and covered my whole shoulder easily. Part of me felt like such a touch should be awkward, should make my muscles tense with unease and embarrassment, but instead, an overwhelming calm flowed through my limbs. I’d only just met him, and yet something about the weight of his hand, the way his rough calluses scratched against my shirt, all felt natural.

I closed my eyes too, and Josh’s fingers squeezed into my skin. As if on command, an electric tingle crawled across my shoulder and into the base of my head.

Twinkles of starry light blinked across my vision like a camera’s flash. I saw something—an image like a blurry painting from behind fogged glass.

“Patrons are pretty touchy feely.” Ria’s head appeared like a Cheshire cat, floating in mid-air inches from Josh and me.

We opened our eyes at the same time. Josh didn’t pull his hand away.

“I mean, I don’t mind, it’s just that Evey here usually squirms away or makes some awkward comment when people shake her hand too long. Especially when their shirts are ripped and exposing a six pack.”

Josh yanked his hand back before I could say anything even remotely embarrassing. I’d felt my cheeks burn red before, analyzed the way a boy’s first touch on my skin began, endured, and ended, but this was different.

I turned and glared at Ria. Why’d she have to interrupt like that?

But then I remembered all the times I’d been thankful she’d interrupted. Ned Billings’ breath as he tried to ask me out, for instance.

I shuddered slightly to flick the memory out of my mind. Josh’s touch was different, and it wasn’t just a touch. He’d been trying to make me see something. Was this something to do with essence again? Something only Josh could see? I could almost still feel the electric tingle at the back of my neck.

“Sorry. It’s just tradition for Patrons.” Josh turned back to me, his blue eyes darting up and down from my face. “What they do at funerals. It allows us to transfer positive emotions.”

I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the blurry picture again, not wanting to analyze how this was even possible, or the fact that I didn’t believe it.

“I was picturing the stars.” He leaned his head back and stared up at the pinpricks of light shining through the sky’s black velvet blanket. They were so clear this time of night that it was easy to pick out the constellations.

“They remind me that there’s more to aspire to.” He smiled and closed his eyes serenely.

Ria’s voice cut through the moment in an instant. “We wouldn’t know tradition yet. We just found out she’s a Graced. Personally, I’m hoping all this means she can fly, but that’s just me.”

Josh tilted his head forward and looked through the rear view mirror at Nate, then straight at Ria, then me. “You just lost your grandpa and found out you’re a Graced on the same day? You must be fixin’ to go crazy right now.”

I looked out at the dark landscape rushing past us to keep from thinking about it so much.

“Hey.” Josh reached out and squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back and wondered if it felt the same for him—the way our skin met, the way it felt so effortless to have his fingers next to mine.

“Your job’s to keep me talking, right?”

“Right.” I nodded and sniffed, looking back at him. “Next topic: favorite books.”

“Comic or regular?” he asked instantly.

I raised my eyebrows, intrigued. “Both,” I said like it was a challenge.

He raised the right side of his mouth in a charming smirk. “We’re going to need a longer road trip for that conversation.”

We pulled up to the corner of a two-story, Spanish-style building in the middle of a graffitied industrial area. Its white walls were the only ones without a flourish of spray paint. Instead, they towered over little red planters and manicured shrubs that populated the base of the sidewalk. A red tile roof traced the perimeter high above the dark reflective windows of the second story. The street was lined with cars on both sides and seemed to serve as a black moat between the building and the rest of the block. The final touch was a wood and wrought iron plaque on the wall that read: Los Angeles Patronage Community College.

“This is an angel headquarters?” Ria looked up at the building with her mouth open.

“Graced,” said Nate with a tense look around as he stepped onto the sidewalk. “Angels don’t really interact with Patrons or Babylonians anymore.”

“Why the hell not?” I said with a sly grin.

Josh smirked at my wordplay. “Angels have let Patrons down too many times,” said Nate darkly. “Now the only interaction between humans and angels is when angels siphon off some of their essence to create more Graced. It all happens at birth, and most people don’t even find out what they are until they’re teenagers. It’s a sore subject around Patrons, so try not to mention it.”

Ria and I nodded with the same limited amount of motion, our eyes not leaving Nate as he stood there. The boy we grew up with was gone again, and before us stood someone ancient beyond our comprehension…and yet he was here with
us
? He chose to protect
me
?

“What about Guardians? They like you, don’t they?” asked Ria.

Nate shook his head.

“But I thought you said Patrons don’t even consider you an angel because you’re just a little higher than the Graced,” I said before I could stop myself. Part of me wanted to know all this, to explore the secret Grandpa had hidden from me my whole life, while the other part cried to curl up into a ball and go home.

Nate nodded with a slight grimace and started to lead us to the corner of the building. “That’s true, but Guardians have let them down as much as the angels—maybe more.”

“Why?” asked Ria.

“Because we don’t always follow their plans for the greater good. Our job has always been to protect a single person—it’s what Guardians were made to do. We believe that so much that most of us have died off trying to protect our charges. Yes, we can die,” he added when Ria started to say something else.

He stopped at a wrought iron gate at the corner of the building’s white wall and glanced back at me momentarily.

Is that what he wished had happened? That he’d died instead of Grandpa?

Could I really admit that I didn’t wish the same thing sometimes?

“Don’t worry about it too much. I just didn’t want you to be surprised and try to defend me.” He looked at Ria like he was reading her mind. “It’s not worth the effort.”

Josh coughed loudly, and Nate held the gate open, signaling for me to follow Josh with a glance up at the sky.

He was still afraid someone was going to attack us—even here.

Inside the thick castle walls, a rectangular courtyard of grass and decomposed granite walkways crisscrossed beneath tall, green magnolia trees and antique lampposts. Stone benches and tables were scattered around what I guessed would be the shadier areas once the sun rose. As the sky lay now, the stars were out, and the moon was the only light worth having as it washed the courtyard clean of every imperfection.

To the side, a series of thick, white, columned arches sprung into view, each supporting a single-story red roof that traced the buildings’ interior. Under it, rustic brown doors were set every ten feet or so into the two main buildings. None of them were marked. I soaked in every door and wall, wondering if Grandpa knew about this place…why he’d never told me about it.

Josh’s shoulder brushed against mine as I started for one of the doors. Instant warmth spread through my arm.

“Patrons turned their headquarters into colleges about thirty years ago,” he said, the dark circles under his eyes making me more and more concerned as I looked back at him. “All Patrons come to colleges like these after high school now. Whole families end up passing through most of the time since angel essence tends to stay with the same bloodline.”

Whole families of Patrons? Kids and parents and…Why hadn’t Grandpa just told me the truth?

“Why did you want to transfer here?” asked Ria, coming even with Josh and me.

“I want to train for a third year under Denisov—she’s practically in charge of the whole military arm of Patron society. There aren’t too many Patrons who actually go out and fight anymore, but Denisov trains almost all of them.” Josh continued to talk even as his legs started to wobble and he had to lean against a wall to keep himself upright.