Unnatural Souls (8 page)

Then I realized something else. I had
been searching for answers, looking for information on the creature
my brother had made the deal with. And Michael had to know how that
worked. In fact, he was making a similar agreement with me now.
He’d promised to let me back into Heaven, and was making deals to
let demons have their souls back. I gasped, my mind reeling. Did he
have the power to save Ash’s soul as well?

“
What about my brother?” I
whispered.

“
I have no use for your
brother in my group,” Michael replied with a frown.

“
I want you to help him,”
I told him slowly, because clearly he didn’t understand my request.
“He only has three months before the demon comes to take his soul.
I have to save him. He doesn’t deserve to go to Hell.”

He shook his head firmly. “I’m not
sure I can do that. The Archangels are already wary of the ones
I’ve helped. And Ash would be of no use in the war. He’d still be
human if I saved his soul. Besides, he would have to earn his
redemption like the others. His soul is still tainted and marked
for Hell.”

“
Then give him a chance to
earn his redemption!” I exclaimed, more than a little irritated
that this was even a question. If he could help, why wouldn’t he?
It was the right thing to do. I didn’t care that there was nothing
in it for him.

But this confirmed what
I’d discovered earlier: Angels really were nothing like I’d
thought. It was clear now that he had an agenda, and only cared
about what was best for
him
.

I was going to have to give him some
incentive.

“
My brother and I are a
package deal,” I told him, squaring my shoulders. “Save him or I
won’t help you.”

“
An ultimatum?” Michael
asked, his cold eyes narrowing. Inside I was shaking, but I tried
to keep that fear from reaching my expression. “No human or angel
makes demands from me like that. You are either very stupid or you
love your brother very much. Without me, you are still stuck on
Earth, a half-angel who can’t control her powers. At the mercy of
the demon assassins, as you call them.”

He paused, crossing his arms over his
chest, and I raised my chin and met his gaze, refusing to back down
from my request. My heart was going a mile a minute, but all I
cared about was saving Ash.

“
Please,” I said steadily,
keeping my head up. I was desperate. “I have to help
him.”

“
You would do anything for
him, wouldn’t you?” he asked, eyeing me.

I nodded, a tear running down my
check. I quickly wiped it away.

“
Fine,” he snapped, and my
heart filled with happiness. “But only if you can show me your
dedication. That you are truly putting everything you have into
helping me in my mission.”

“
How do I do that?” I
asked, feeling that hope quickly draining away. There just had to
be a catch, didn’t there? Nothing could ever be easy.

“
You could be the turning
point in our war,” he told me. “Your powers are unlike anything
I’ve ever seen, and it is obvious that you’re important. The demons
believe you are, if they’re trying to kill you. With your help, my
mission might succeed—and we would be safe again. But you must
master your powers. And you must prove to me that you’ll be able to
do it. Three months should be sufficient time if you really want
this badly enough. If you can do that, I can trust that you are
dedicated to my cause and I promise you that I will help your
brother.”

My heart leapt back up into my
throat.

“
When do we start?” I
asked without hesitation, a feeling of panic and joy overwhelming
me. I could finally save us both. We could survive this horrific
ordeal. He wasn’t giving me a long time, but I was determined to do
it. Besides, I would have a teacher—a demonic one, but a teacher
nonetheless. I wasn’t exactly ready for this, but it was happening.
My brother’s year was quickly coming to a close, and there was no
time to waste. I would save him. I just had to master my freaky
angel powers. How hard could it be?

Three months. That was plenty of time.
Right?

JOURNAL ENTRY—MAY 10

IF KALI DOESN’T
kill me, I just might kill her. I have less than
one day left to master my powers so that Michael will save Ash from
his fate. I’m failing, and I fear my panic is not helping. Kali
certainly isn’t. Please don’t let my brother die…

“
Arg.” I mentally slammed
the door to my bedroom, clenching my fists as I paced the small
room. I was glad that neither my parents nor Ash were home to hear
me slamming doors at five in the morning, or to see me doing it
without using my hands. My parents had taken a trip to visit my
grandparents, and Ash had spent the night at his friend Jason’s
house.

“
Someone’s in a bad mood.”
Kali’s voice was flat. “And I don’t blame you, little Miss Clipped
Wings.”

I glared at her, and she ran her
fingers through her long, black hair—which somehow had the most
beautiful copper highlights—and turned to stare at me. For a moment
her bright green eyes flashed demonic red, and then she smiled
coldly and turned back to the mirror. She enjoyed irritating me.
She knew I hated the nicknames. And she had an endless supply of
them for me. Clipped Wings, Flightless Angel, Angel Reject—they
were all insults, insinuating that I had more in common with the
demons in Hell than I did with an angel. After all, the only angels
without wings were the ones who’d been thrown out of
Heaven.

I kept the sting of her words from my
face. Any human being would have been able to tell I wasn’t in the
mood for snide comments right now, but of course Kali wasn’t human.
She was a demon, and one of Hell’s original seven. One of the first
to fall with Adrian from Heaven. And according to Michael, a good
girl, deep down. Seemed contradictory to me.

At the moment, she was simply a pain
in my butt.

“
What?” I growled, trying
not to throw something at her. Still, the lights in my room began
to flicker, and then one of the bulbs popped.

Kali ignored it.

And she did that because she knew I’d
come at least far enough to be able to harness my telekinesis. I
could stop this if I wanted to—if I focused. But I wasn’t in the
mood to calm down right now. Inside, I was all nerves. Tomorrow was
the day the demon would come to collect Ash’s soul—the deadline,
the day it would all come down to a finish—and I still hadn’t
mastered my powers. I only had one task left—call a freaking
angelic weapon—and I hadn’t accomplished it yet.

If I couldn’t do it in the next
fourteen hours, Ash’s soul would be going to Hell, and there was no
coming back from that. I was panicked, frustrated, and
terrified.

We’d just gotten back from
killing a demon. Well,
I
had just gotten back from watching
Kali
kill a demon,
honestly, because I couldn’t call my weapon to me. Which meant I
still wasn’t capable of killing them. Defending myself, yes.
Killing them, no.

And therein, good sirs, lay the
problem.

Kali had demonstrated how to do it
about a billion times, showing me how she called her hellfire to
her. As one of the original seven, and therefore one of the most
powerful demons in Hell, she had the ability to harness the fires
of Hell itself and use them in combat. She just sort of willed the
fire to herself, allowed it to encompass her arms and turn them
black, and then shot it from her hands. When she aimed it at her
target, wham—it burned and turned to dust.

It made her nearly
unstoppable.

Kali said it was just a
matter of reaching deep within yourself, calling all your power to
the surface, and having it take form. But that didn’t tell me
anything, and no matter how many times I attempted it, I still
couldn’t
do
it.
Despite the fact that I was trying with every fiber of my being. So
instead, I had watched Kali dispatch demons when I failed. Again
and again.

And now I had one freaking
day left. How was I going to figure out how to call my weapon
within the next twenty-four hours? I had tried for
three months
. Kali had
used her own missions—killing demons, thanks to some sort of pact
she’d made with Michael—to train me in everything else.

Her deal with Michael forced her to do
that. The demon killing. Being one of the original seven meant she
was one of Adrian’s right-hand demons.

Which was, I guessed, part of the
reason Michael picked her as one of his projects.

But she’d also been important in
Heaven, once, according to her stories. And close to Michael. In
fact, she had stopped Adrian’s first attempt to overthrow Heaven,
and had only fallen because Adrian—the king of Hell—had dragged her
down with him.

So even though she didn’t really trust
Michael—for reasons she hadn’t exactly made clear—she’d been
willing to take this chance at redemption to get out of Hell and
away from Adrian. And there were a handful of other demons doing
the same. Making the deal with Michael, I mean, about killing
demons. In order to show him they were serious, and to prove they
were worthy of going back to Heaven, they had to destroy one demon
for every human soul they’d sent to Hell. Balancing the scales, so
to speak.

They were helping Heaven take out
enemies, and making a small dent in Hell’s armies, by taking out
demons who would never want to return to Heaven. Major offenders
who were beyond help. The large-scale plan was that if Kali and the
others succeeded—and kept helping—it would prove to the other
Archangels that demons could be rehabilitated. And if more demons
were given the chance, then it could cut Hell’s current numbers
drastically, and slow down their progress. It was already showing
promise.

And a lot of that was down to Kali. I
didn’t like her, but she had a very large number of souls to
account for, and I had to hand it to the girl, she was working hard
for it. Last time she’d spoken with Michael, the scales had slowed
down, and even inched the tiniest bit in Heaven’s favor.

But the small tip wasn’t enough to win
over the rest of the Archangels yet. Kali and the so-called Chosen
had to complete their missions before the others would put their
faith behind Michael’s proposal and help him carry it out on a
larger scale.

The plan was brilliant, but I still
had reservations about demons being capable of reform. I hadn’t
moved into my part of the scheme yet—I had to master my powers
before I became Keeper of the Demons, or whatever—so Kali was the
only demon I really knew. And she certainly hadn’t shown any
remorse, or behavior that I would consider a change of heart. To be
honest, I thought she was doing this almost entirely for her own
benefit. She wasn’t worried about Heaven winning the war, or
whatever. She just wanted to go home. In her defense, I hadn’t
known her long, and she definitely wasn’t someone who wore their
emotions on their sleeve.

But she wasn’t giving me much faith in
Michael’s theory.

And at the moment, she was only
increasing my disbelief in her worthiness to be welcomed into
Heaven. And pushing every button I had in the process.

“
I’m supposed to be
teaching you to use your angel powers,” Kali sighed.

Oh goodness gracious. I
rolled my eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck up there. Not
this again.
Grace, you’re not really an
angel. You aren’t learning fast enough. I was better than this with
half the training you’ve received, and I’m an excellent teacher.
Michael’s going to be pissed if I can’t get you to learn basic
angel powers.

Blah, blah, blah.

She was finding every reason in the
book to blame me rather than herself, and I knew why. Part of her
mission was to teach me. And my failure meant she was failing,
too.

“
You should have learned
this already,” she scowled. “Michael was very clear with me—I’m
supposed to help you master all your powers. You learned so much so
quickly, but the weapon? Nothing. It’s like you aren’t even
trying
, and I’ll be
damned if Michael doesn’t take this failure as proof that I don’t
deserve to go home. If he cuts me because you can’t call a freaking
weapon, I’m seriously going to kill you myself. What does he even
see in you? How are you supposed to help win this war? I swear he’s
making me do this just to try my patience. I have thousands of
souls left to tally before I can be free of Hell and finally make
it home. And the more time I spend with you, the longer it will
take me. You’re dead weight, Grace. I need to focus on my actual
mission, not babysitting duty.”