Wings of the Wicked (26 page)

I gave her an unintelligible grumble in response to that.

“Are you okay, Ell? Really?”

I let out a long breath and sat on the edge of her bed. “I think so. I think everything is going to be okay.” I gave her a vague recap of how Will drove me an hour and a half back to his house, how I had thrown myself at him and he’d told me no, what had happened at breakfast, and then what he told me about wanting to give us a try. Telling that part to Kate didn’t make it feel any more real, but I got the familiar spins in my stomach when I thought about how fiercely Will had kissed me only hours ago. Remembering all he’d said to me made me dizzy, and I chewed on my lip to bring myself back down to earth.

“You two were made for each other,” Kate said.

He was a piece of me and when he wasn’t around, I never felt whole. “What did you say to him as we were leaving? I saw you yell at him from the porch.”

“Oh. Well, I had no idea what Brian had tried to do, and if I had I probably would haven’t yelled so much at Will. I feel bad about some of it now. I was just pissed at him for storming in there acting like your boyfriend, so I told him it wasn’t fair to you.”

It was impossible for me to explain the depth of my relationship with Will to Kate. “Thanks, girl. I’ve got to get home. Do you have my stuff?”

“Of course,” she said in a gentle voice, and handed me my purse and duffel bag. “Call me if you need to talk. I’m sorry I left you alone with that jerk. It’ll never happen again, I swear. I’ve got your back, girl.”

“I know. It’s okay. We all made bad decisions last night.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” We said good-bye and I went outside to my car.

When I got home, the garage was open, so I went through the door leading into the kitchen. I shut the door quietly behind me and heard the shuffle of footsteps on the stone tiles of the foyer. I slowly made my way through the kitchen, fearing the consequences of coming home so late.

“Mom?” I called. “I’m home.”

I rounded the staircase and saw my mom and dad together. Their bodies were so close I wondered if they were hugging—and
why
they were hugging, since they despised each other. When I saw my mom, I froze solid in my tracks. Ice flowed through my veins and the blood washed from my face as something kicked in my stomach, and my heart launched into hyperspeed. Blood caked her swollen and bruised face, her hair a rat’s nest. My dad held a tight fistful of hair, and his other hand was clamped around her throat. He wrenched her around to look at me, his face twisted with violence and a look so savage it took me a moment to recognize him. My mom’s eyes were wide and wild with terror and pain.

“Dad?” I choked, my eyes shifting from his to my mom’s and back. “What are you doing?”

“Your daddy’s been dead a long time, sweetheart.” He jerked my mother to get a better grip on her. His lips curled into a smile too sinister to be human, and then he began to change. His fingernails grew into talons that dug into my mom’s tender skin until more blood popped and she squirmed. Four pairs of fangs slid from his smile, and spikes tore through the back of his shirt, casting monstrous shadows across the floor in the porch light pouring in from behind him. “I should know. I tore out his rib cage myself.”

“Who are you?” I breathed, the words struggling to escape as if claws were around my own throat. Will’s words echoed in my mind:
“If you come across a vir, you may not know what he is until it’s too late. They’ll shape-shift to take the form of a human in order to infiltrate.”

“That’s not very important. But it’s been fun. Good times, kid. Sorry for calling you a slut.” He looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Actually, no. I meant that.”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I could only stare at the reaper, at the terror and disorientation on my mother’s face. I couldn’t move.

“What? How? Why?” he gasped in a mocking tone. “Speechless, are we,
Ellie
?”

The way he said my name felt so invasive. The demonic only called me the Preliator. But this one knew me. Lived with me. With my mother.

He took his hand off my mother’s throat and pulled the collar of his shirt down to reveal a strange tattoo over his heart, a circle with an Enochian symbol within it. “This is what you’re wondering. The magic is old, so ancient, that only Bastian could have learned of it. It lets me walk in the sun without harm. You know, all those little complications that would have given me away. The spell was difficult, but he pulled it off. You never knew a thing, did you? I was good, so good.”

He jerked my mother’s head back and met her wild, frightened eyes. “By the way, I didn’t get that tattoo at your cousin’s bachelor party. I didn’t even go to that. You’re a moron, Diane.”

She whimpered and turned her face away from his. He looked back at me and grinned a mouthful of fangs.

“Anyway, Bastian sends his affection,” the reaper crooned in a malicious voice, his face no longer anything like my father’s, but belonging to an entirely different creature. “And he told me to leave a little something for you. Let’s say it’s a belated seventeenth birthday gift.”

He snapped my mother’s neck. She hit the floor with a dry, cold thud. Dead.

My pulse flooded my ears, drowning out the reaper’s next words. I stared at my mother—her body—at his feet. Fire crackled from my fingers and toes, devouring my body to my core, burning away like the wick of a stick of dynamite. The edges of my eyes spun and filled with white, and my power throbbed. Visions came to me, the missing pieces belonging to thousands of years of memories, as Gabriel’s presence and power overwhelmed me. The darkness churned and exploded, taking me with it. I was gone, and all that was left of me was rage.

I launched myself at the reaper, pushing off the floor with my toes, my power detonating behind me, demolishing the wall and shattering the tile floor. The reaper was too slow for me. I swung my elbow across my chest and pounded the bone into his skull. He crumpled to his knees. I kicked the back of his head and his palms hit the floor. He tried to rise, but my power erupted into his face, sending him flying across the foyer and crashing into the staircase. Wood splintered and exploded, the cloud of dust almost blinding. The reaper staggered to his feet, stumbling down the steps. I stepped up to him, the torrent of rage swallowing me and releasing everything I’d been afraid of inside of me. I didn’t care what sort of damage I caused. I
wanted
to damage. My hair whipped around my face in the tempest that the white light of my power and the darkness within me had created. He took a swing at me, but my senses were spinning so fast that I sidestepped his blow and smashed my fist into his face. His jaw made a sickening tearing sound and whirled loose, flinging free and out of sight. I threw my power into his body, knocking the wind from his chest and the feet out from under him. His back hit the floor and I leaped on top of him. I beat his face and shredded his skin with my nails. When his body turned to stone, I still tore at him, dragging my nails across rock until they were bloodied and broken. Dust soaked thickly into the blood splattered across my face and clothes, filling my lungs until I was choking on it.

Hands grabbed me and looped around my waist and tried to pull me back. I shrieked and thrashed, fighting off the hands and clawing the air wildly to get back to the reaper’s remains. A horrible, snarling animal noise tore from my throat—a sound that couldn’t possibly have been my own voice.

“Ellie!” the owner of the hands shouted uselessly. “Ellie,
stop
!” The voice was warped and distant, as if I were underwater and he was shouting at me from somewhere above the surface.

The fury cloaked my vision like a whiteout. I swung a wild fist and connected with soft tissue. My attacker grunted and his grip loosened, allowing me to break free and get back to pounding at the pile of stone near my mother’s corpse.

His hands found me again. He grabbed my shoulders roughly and jerked me around with an angry, exhausted groan. I clawed at his face and arms, drawing blood. Another intruder knelt beside my mother and touched her neck. I screeched and launched myself at him to protect her body, but the first set of hands grabbed me again, yanking me back. I hit the cold, broken-up floor, flailing my limbs and power into my attacker’s body. He swore and pushed through the blows, battered and bloody.

“Ellie, please stop fighting me!” His hands gripped my wrists and pinned me to the floor. “It’s me! It’s
me
, Ellie.
Stop!
”

I thrashed against him and let out a bloodcurdling scream until my ears rang.

“Her eyes!” he roared, turning back to the other intruder. “They’re solid white. It’s happened again. Nathaniel! I need you
now
! Put her out before she kills us both!”

I shrieked, and my power erupted again. An explosion of white light filled the house, blinding me and rocketing into my attacker’s body. He flew off me and crashed through the far wall as the light swallowed us all and slammed into the walls around us. The house shook and groaned. He crumpled to the ground and I was on my feet in a blur. A form appeared beside me. I only saw a flash of copper eyes.

“Sleep.”

And I slipped into oblivion.

PART TWO

The Mortal Archangel

19

I WOKE UP SCREAMING.

I sat straight up and threw out my arms in rage. Someone shoved my chest and slammed me back into the bed. He pinned me down, but he couldn’t hold me forever. I broke free and struck him in the face, ripping his lip open. I flew off the bed and made a dash for the door as he screamed my name and grabbed at me, his fingers only tagging my clothes. I was too fast and too wild. Then he screamed someone else’s name, and another attacker appeared in the room. Two pairs of arms took strong hold of me and dragged me across the room.

That word slithered through my brain again:
“Sleep.”

My body went slack against their grip, and I fell into dark memories of lives past and blood spilled upon ancient ground.

Before me lay a valley littered with the dead. Snow settled on the bodies as I walked among them, blood staining the ground black, the stench of carrion flooding my senses. Torn and soiled red cloth lay draped over dull metal and frostbitten skin. The Romans should never have come here to Britain. The massacre was devastating, and the reapers had already descended to feed. Every single man fallen in battle was already burning in Hell. My Guardian and I were too late.

The bitter wind blew my tangled hair around my face streaked with war paint, biting through the wool robes I wore, given to me by a family living in the nearby village that the Romans had attempted to sack. The invaders were most unsuccessful.

A flash of light in the sky made me duck and shield my eyes. When the light dimmed, I looked toward the sky. An angel descended, his golden armor shining, wings spread wide. His face was ethereally beautiful—and vaguely familiar.

“Sister,” he said, his voice musical and elegant.

I stared at him in confusion. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you know me?” His blue eyes studied me curiously and with pity.

“I do know you,” I said, digging deep through my memories. There was something there, far older than my human memories clouding the surface. “Michael. It’s you.”

He nodded. “Yes, Gabriel, my sister. You’re slowly forgetting who you are. You’re becoming more and more human. I hardly recognize you. With all that paint smeared across your face, you look like an animal.”

I lifted my chin in defiance. “It marks me as a warrior.”

“It marks you as human.”

I swallowed and my gaze faltered. I wasn’t human. I was … something else. I was like Michael, an archangel. But I was losing myself. I remembered now that the more times I lived and died, the more like my human vessel I became and the more I left my archangel origins behind.

“Why are you so far north?” Michael asked, his armored boots settling on the frozen ground. He stepped closer to me, the summer warmth of his glory melting the light snow around us.

I was determined not to let his nearness frighten me. “The reapers follow the armies hoping for blood, and every last inch of this island is drenched in it. I’ve come for the reapers harvesting the souls of the fallen soldiers.”

To my surprise, the archangel smiled. “That was a wise tactic. You will need these skills in the future. Many centuries from now, Lucifer’s most powerful servants will be unleashed, and they will attempt to free the ever-expanding armies of Hell. You must stop them.”

“Who are these servants?” I asked. The wind grew stronger, howling in my ears, making it harder to hear anything else.

My vision blurred as the snow fell more heavily, whipping in the air and obscuring Michael’s bright form.