Pretty Faces and Dark Places (18 page)

“You’re an angel, you’re my enemy. I can’t trust you. You’ll hurt me,” she insisted.

“I would never do that. Never. Plus, this is only my spirit that you can see. My spirit has no powers, only my body, and it’s not here at all,” I tried to reassure her, even without knowing where I’d gotten that knowledge from.

“How come you’re an angel? I saw your converting process with my own eyes!” she questioned, disbelieving.

“It’s not important right now, Sophie. What is important is that we need to save humans. How many girls have lost their human lives just to come here and become demons, leaving their loved ones living in worry forever because they don’t know where they are? How many boys? We need to stop this. Please, help me to help them,” I begged.

Sophie stared at me for a long moment, and then she let out a sarcastic laugh that sounded so not like the Sophie I’d known all of my life. “Really? Don’t worry about it, my friend; they won’t worry about them. They’ll bury them mere days after they disappear. They won’t care – not even their best friends.” I could hear the hurt and pain very easily in her voice, and it pained me.

“Sophie, you’ve got it all wrong, that wasn’t what happened at all,” I tried. “Time here is not like human time. This one goes fast, while it’s slower on earth. Your parents spent six months doing nothing but searching for you; I did nothing but cry over you. But after six months and no evidence about anything related to you, they had to let go. They
had
to let
you
go. Even if it killed them a thousand times. Please, believe me.”

Silence filled the room we were in. Sophie was staring at me with questioning eyes, and I was looking back at hers with pleading ones, until finally she stated, “Angels can’t lie.”

“Yes, Sophie, we can’t lie. Please believe me, I’m telling the truth. Stop hating your parents, stop being angry with me. We tried our best, but we never found you. And looking at where you are; can you really blame us for not finding you?” I tried.

“Whatever you say, May, I’ll never forgive them. You should never give up on your kids, even if you spend your whole life waiting for them, searching for them. If the chance came, you would die for them. I was pregnant and my baby died inside of me, but I never forgot my baby. I remember him all day long, everyday.” Her voice cracked. “And my own parents gave up on me. So soon. Six months is
still
too soon.”

I was shocked by the news of her lost pregnancy, but then I wondered about how she’d lost it –, and just like that, the answer was known to me.

“You’re right, it was a boy. But he didn’t die. He was killed,” I said, hoping that this would make her able to finally delineate the good from bad, because it seemed like she had no idea anymore. I had to tell her myself, I had to guide her. “When they did the ultrasound to see the baby, they found out it was going to be a pure human. Your mother-in-law gave you pills as vitamins for you and the baby, but it was really poison that only affected the human in you. The poison even killed a part of your human self,” I explained.

“Oh, no! What are you saying? No, this can’t be true. She killed my baby? How was he even a human?” Sophie asked in disbelief.

“You had sex with William before the converting was completed. For them, it’s a shame to do that, and an even greater shame to give birth to a human baby – they didn’t want it. Only your mother-in-law and Kathrin know about this,” I told her.

“No way! How could she kill her own grandson?” Sophie wondered in an angry-yet-hurt voice.

“It’s the truth, Sophie. Can’t you see? She killed her own blood and flesh. They don’t deserve to live and bring more humans to the underworld,” I said.

“No!” she choked out before getting down on her knees, holding her arms to her body, looking completely destroyed. It hurt me to see her this way, but it needed to be done.

I kneeled in front of her. “We need to save humans, Sophie.”

She looked up at me with the saddest expression on her face, and then she said, “I’ll do it, May. I’ll help you save them.” And on cue, I saw her wings turn slowly into white ones – one feather, then another and another, until there was a big chuck of white feathers on the inside of her wing.

I sighed in relief and smiled softly before I got back to where my body was, hoping that Andrew was already there.

Convincing Matthew was much easier than convincing Sophie. But I had a pretty good feeling that it was because I’d mentioned his girlfriend back home. The one he’d spent all of his human life with – Wendy. The information and knowledge of his human life came to me as if I was reading from a book. I just knew everything about him without even having to ask a question.

Wendy had been his best friend since the first day they met at the daycare in our town. She became his girlfriend in high school, and in their first year of college, he proposed and she said yes.

The only mistake he’d made was joining that Halloween party in the woods. He’d had sex with Kathrin, and regretted it for the whole year. He’d told Wendy about it and asked for her forgiveness, but she wouldn’t give it to him.

Eventually, she decided they needed time apart, and when his new habit of getting drunk led him to the party again the following year, he never came back.

Matthew grew black wings so fast; he gained his powers from hate – he hated. A lot. But sadly, all of the hate was towards himself.

His wings didn’t change to white, but I knew they would start to do so soon. I’d given him a reason to miss his human life, but I also gave him a reason why he needed to help me. He wouldn’t be able to stop it if Wendy was chosen to be some demon’s mate for one reason or another. He needed to protect all humans with Sophie and me. He was hesitant at first, but when he heard from me about how the love of his life still searched for him in every way possible after more than three years, he choked out his words, “I will help, Maya.”

I met a girl while I was secretly roaming the place, and from the tattoo on her neck, I knew she’d been born human. Ashley was a beautiful girl in her early twenties; her hair was golden colored, and her eyes were light brown. Her mother had died when she was only three, and she’d grown up with her drunken father.  He had abused her almost every day, hitting her and sometimes even burning her with cigarettes. It was a seriously awful life, and I couldn’t find a reason to make her want to help, since she had no memory of goodness in her human life to remember.

Strangely, I didn’t need to do any convincing. Ashley almost begged me to let her help without any effort from me other than a few words. So I told her of my plan; time moved so fast in the underworld, and I needed to finish them all off before the next Halloween.

She nodded and thanked me for giving her the chance to do something good. And I told her the same thing I’d told Sophie and Mathew: “Find others who might be willing to help.”

This time when I opened my eyes, I felt a thrill in my heart just at the thought of really making this work. I’d never thought in my whole life that someday I might kill someone, and the fact that soon I would be killing many almost made me uneasy.

I quickly shrugged the thought away. These were not someone, they were demons. I couldn’t live one more day with the knowledge that I’d never helped and never done anything to save the lives of people we would think had been kidnapped, when in truth it was worse than kidnapping. It was killing for the soul, as well. It was changing who you are and becoming something else that pleased them. It wasn’t fair, and I was determined to fix it.

The swooshing sound of the wind made me look up at the sky. I saw Andrew as he flew toward where I was sitting, landing when he was closer to the ground. I smiled as I looked at him, not saying anything, and I saw in his eyes that kind of sadness that had been with him for what felt like too long. He smiled softly, and I grinned. “Andrew,” I said as I stood up, seeing him take a step back and away from me. My smile dropped.

Realization came to me when I wondered why he’d done that. I understood that was his first instinct – he was seeing the enemy, after all. The same enemy that he was in love with.

My hand on its own reacted for me. I reached out to touch his shoulder, intending to hug him, but once my fingers connected with his skin, he yelped in pain and shrugged his shoulder away from my touch.

It hurt. To know that Andrew didn’t want my touch hurt. But at the same second, I figured it all out. I realized why I had all of those answers without looking for them. I realized why I knew all of that information without any effort from me to find it. And I realized why Andrew had winced in pain; because when he shrugged himself away from my touch, I saw the spots where my fingertips had touched him turn extremely reddish. I’d burned him with my touch. And that meant one thing: I’d grown a halo.

Gut-wrenching.
Not being able to touch him, it was gut-wrenching.

It felt so awful to have him right in front of me, knowing I couldn’t touch him ever again. It
broke
me. How could I live this way? How would I survive without his closeness and warmth? How could I accept the fact that my touch would hurt him? How could I accept the fact that my touch would hurt him, though I was the one who loved him the most? How could I accept that I’d never be able to hug him, kiss him … make love with him?

It was too much, the worst torture anyone could go through – not to be able to touch your soulmate, not even a small, tiny touch. It was even more painful than when they’d cut my wings off, and
that
was pure agony.

Andrew tried to hide his pain – not the pain I’d caused with my touch, but the pain I’d caused by just being me. An angel. An angel in love with a demon.

I could see it in his eyes very clearly. I could see it in his eyes brighter than anything – he was sad. So sad. He was just as broken as me. But he kept trying to show me that he was
only
upset, not extremely depressed. I knew better, though.

Heartwarming.
For him to keep smiling at me while he was burning from the inside, it was heartwarming.