Ivory Guard (5 page)

Lillian nodded slowly as understanding dawned.
“The shadow daggers are made out of some of the blackness of that pit.”

“
Exactly. It’s the perfect weapon against us, the princes and sons of light.”

Then Raz surprised her by
swiftly pulling over and stopping at the side of the road before getting out of the car.

Wondering what was going on she
quickly followed him and demanded, “What is it? Why are we stopping?”

“
We just crossed over and for what’s coming now we better stop talking.”

“
Huh? Why?”

The question had barely been voiced as
the pain hit her and clawed at her back so she nearly blacked out from it. Her back arched and felt as if it was about to snap and then she felt the skin of her upper back rip open and heard her shirt tear.

“Oh God!
”

Her legs gave way, suddenly too weak to hold her, and she dropped to the ground, not even noticing the hard gravel cutting her knees and hands. Tears running down her cheeks Lillian tried to understand what the hell was going on with her. She had never felt such pain before and couldn’t hold it all inside of her anymore.

She screamed
.

The worst of the pain was gone as quickly as it ha
d come but a dull, throbbing ache remained. Breathing heavily Lillian opened her eyes and slowly returned to reality.

She was lying on the ground, face down. As she moved to sit up, she noticed two things. First, her shirt was a lot looser than before since it was shredded in the back. And two,
there was a foreign weight beneath her shoulders, messing with her balance.
Oh no
. A bad feeling made her stomach sink like lead.

When
Lillian turned her head to look over her shoulder, she saw the wings.

Raz actually had the guts to smirk,
“That’s why.”

II

SPREADING MY WINGS

“
The wings of angels are often found on the backs of the least likely people.”

- Eric Honeycutt

FIVE

“You
…bastard!” Lillian managed to get out between clenched teeth as she tried to get up and a sharp pain pierced her spine. Her back was a white hot mess that felt as if it had been ripped apart, which apparently wasn’t far from the truth. “You could have warned me.”

“Technically I don’t have parents, so I can’t be a bastard.
” His gray eyes were barely able to hide the smile in them as he squatted next to her. “Regarding the other thing. Believe me, bracing yourself for something you can’t understand only makes the matter worse. It’s better this way.”

“Says you!”
When her aching body once again refused to obey her, she snapped, “Mind giving me a hand here? Jeez, I thought angels were supposed to be compassionate or something.”

Ignoring her swipe Raz pulled her to her feet.
As she stood on trembling legs, the new weight at her back made the muscles in her shoulders and neck tense up, and she realized that she was the only one of the two of them with a pair of wings spreading from her back. He looked still perfectly normal.

“Where the hell are your wings?”

Only a light rustle, barely audible, and suddenly they were there. Magnificent dove gray wings. “I can will them to be there or not. That’s something you’ll learn to control in time.”

Seeing his wings so close to her she turned to have another look at her own.
They were a dirty white, not blinding like Amber’s had been, but a really grayish, dirty white and would spread about as far as her outstretched arms. Raz’s were bigger, reaching well past his hands. “Well, I’m really glad you guys didn’t call us Dirty Whities or some such. Ivory sounds much more dignified.”

He smirked at her. “Just so you know they
are
ivory outside of purgatory.”

Lillian frowned as her eyes were still busy with the comparison
and her hands clutched at her top. “Why is my shirt torn and yours not?”

“Because your
wings just grew for the first time, mine not. Mine are always there and yet…not. It’s hard to explain. Don’t look at it too scientifically, just accept the facts.”

Right.
Since that seemed to be the new mantra.

Something else
finally registered in her brain and her head snapped up. “Wait a damn minute. Did you just say purgatory?”

She got nearly whiplash as she whirled around in a circle to take in their surroundings
, and cried out as her wings got rattled by the motion and the sore muscles in her back screamed at the abuse.

Even in the darkness of the night i
t was so unbelievably in-your-face, she really had to question her cognitive abilities. Everything was black and white. EVERYTHING.  She, Raz and the car, the road, the trees and the utterly black sky. Not a hint of color. How could she not have noticed that?

“Where the hell are we?”

“On our way to Iowa,” he replied with another smirk he didn’t even try to hide.

After everything she’d been through in not even twenty four hours
, she was a hairbreadth away from throttling him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“
Kinda. Sometimes it’s just funny to watch what will finally make you Ivory think you’ve gone truly insane. Though let me tell you, not a lot of them get this far without a little break down.”

Lillian just stared
at him, utterly speechless. “I don’t know what to say. Whenever I think we might get along and that I will get through this, you open your mouth and everything goes to hell.”

“
Not hell, purgatory. Thought we established that much.” He actually grinned at her. “Come on, bookworm, you’ll get over it. So what do you know about purgatory?”

Since grinding her teeth every time he annoyed the hell out of her would probably end with her having no teeth at all pretty soon, she played along. “It’s a place where souls are purified or temporarily punished.”

“Exactly. To every hellhole, which are places of sin and sex and corruption, there’s a bubble of purgatory. To balance things out, like cyclones and anticyclones. Now, try spreading your wings.”

Lillian was still uncomfortable with the foreign weight. The wings didn’t feel as if a part of her and therefore bringing
them to do anything seemed impossible. Automatically she moved her shoulders, which made the wings only twitch. Frustration and the lingering pain made her impatient.

“
Stop. Don’t force it. Stretch out your arms.”

After taking a deep, calming breath s
he did as he asked. And felt muscles she never had felt before move along her spine as her wings spread. A rush of delight and an intoxicating sense of freedom flooded her. Wide-eyed she stared first at the feathers and then at Raz, a bubble of laughter escaping her – which he, of course, had to burst.

“That
movement always works, since for some inexplicable reason humans always tend to think wings are used like arms. That stupid misconception is so common and ingrained that you Ivorys make the mistake automatically. But even in the beginning you shouldn’t do that trick too often or otherwise your brain will make a connection between your arms and wings. It’s important that you, which means your brain and body, see your wings as another part of you that is nevertheless independent. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

A spark lit his eyes. The spark of challenge, if she wasn’t mistaken. “Then put your arms down, but not the wings. They stay where they are.”

With a nod she started lowering her arms, but jerked them back up the moment she noticed her wings had started to drop as well. Dammit.

A glance at Raz confirmed her suspicions that another of his damned smirks was plastered all over his face. “See, that’s what I was talking about.”

Lillian expelled a
deep breath, as if preparing for some masterly performance and a small, distant part of her felt ridiculous for it but the one part that wanted to wipe the smirk of a certain angel’s face didn’t care. She could do this. Her eyes went to her right hand and then she closed them, trying to concentrate on the muscles in her back that were used by her wings. Then the ones keeping up her arms, which wasn’t that hard since her arms were getting heavy. The muscles along her spine had to stay tense, but not the others, along her arms and down her side, those were the ones she could relax. At least she hoped so.

She did it slowly, not once opening her eyes
and trying to keep that foreign tension along her spine. At first she managed it, but then as her muscles relaxed more and more the ones keeping her wings spread did as well. Shit.

Raz didn’t smirk for once. “You know what the problem is?” he stepped closer. “You want to see your wings as part of your body although you never even touched them. You touch your skin,
your arms, your legs, your hair. You’re conscious of them and they’re a part of you. But not your wings. Your brain, and therefore you, still sees them as some sort of back pack.”

His
gray eyes stayed on hers, their gazes locked, as he reached around her with his arms and touched her new wings.

She gasped.
Lillian hadn’t thought it possible for them to be so sensitive. One could feel a hand in one’s hair, but mostly it was just the pressure and warmth on the skull. This was different. She could sense Raz’s hands running along the feathers and over the bend of her wings, and though the soft pressure hurt the sore roots at her spine it felt like the caress of warm water. He applied some more pressure on the outer tips and her wings folded behind her back. The sensation was as weird and foreign as spreading them had been. And yet…not.

Raz
drew away his hands and stepped back.

“Now you’ll fit
in a little better.” He motioned towards the car. “Get in. We’ve still got a long way ahead of us.”

Right.
Lillian swallowed as she watched him climb behind the wheel. For her his touching her wings had felt more intimate than stroking her hair would have been. Though for all she knew that could be due to the fact that they were new and therefore more sensitive. Shrugging the thoughts away she got into the car.

Inwardly Raz sighed with relief the moment they crossed the border and were out of purgatory. To be honest he didn’t like purgatory that much. It really was a mood killer, even for someone like him who didn’t
feel a lot of emotions to begin with. At a hiss coming from the side he glanced at Lillian whose wings had disappeared and who was now struggling with her shirt, trying to hold it in place – well, what was left of it anyway.

“The first few times it can hurt.”

She looked at him, as if ready to murder him. “Thanks for mentioning it.”

“No problem.”

She started to open her mouth but then decided on shutting it again. Shame, since for some reason he liked yanking her chain. Seeing her discomfort and the dark circles under her eyes that showed her exhaustion though, he decided to turn off at the next hotel. He was an angel after all, not some insensitive jerk.

“Why did we switch cars? Don’t get me wrong, I really like this one, though I’m more of a pony car type. But I mean, if you did it to make it more difficult for demons to follow us, then shouldn’t you have gone for a…I don’t know, less obvious car?
A Honda or some such?”

“
I could have. But really would you prefer a long ride in a boring Honda over this fine, rumbling baby?”

“Good point.”

He smiled. “So…pony cars, huh?”

“My Dad,” was all the explanation she gave him.

As he signaled his turn, Lillian asked, “Why are we driving to Iowa anyway? Couldn’t we just fly?”

“I could, you not. Ivorys can’t fly.”

“Heh. Guess that must piss you angels off that that didn’t turn out to be part of the package.”

“Everything has its reasons, Lillian.
You guys don’t have the necessary wings, you can’t get into heaven on your own.”

“So what, we’re good enough to fight your battles but not enough to go into heaven?”

“Ivorys, given what you do, are surrounded by the strongest of temptation and sin on a daily basis. Not everyone, no matter the training, is strong enough to resist that. Evil is like a disease. So if one of you falls prey to it, it’s for the best you can’t get into heaven and spread it.”

She frowned for a moment, going it over in her head before nodding in understanding.
Lillian would have to get used to it. To the grand scheme of things. The greater good.

But she still didn’t seem to like the idea.
“So Ebonys can fly but we can’t? That doesn’t seem fair.”

Raz scoffed,
“When has it ever been?”

He pulled to a stop in front of a small hotel that had seen better days but would have to be enough for the night.
Raz really hoped Lillian wasn’t the nagging, uppity kind of girl that wouldn’t sleep in a hotel that had less than three stars. But he shouldn’t have worried, she didn’t utter a word of complaint as he got them two adjoining rooms, nor when they stepped into hers and switched on the lights. It was simple and worn with use, but at least the maid seemed to try her best concerning basic hygiene. The bath was really fairly acceptable, at least to him; he’d seen much worse.

“I’ll be in the other room. If you need anything, come by. If you need help, scream.”

Lillian stared at him for a moment, before pushing out a weary breath and softly nodded her head. “Yeah, sure.”

The lack of sleep and all that had happened to her in the last hours seemed to have
finally caught up with her. He hesitated in the door, looking at her face again and taking in the bruises. Gesturing towards them he offered, “You need help with that? Ice or something?”

“
Thanks, but I’ll manage.”

“Once you’re a real Ivory, I mean battle proven, your healing will accelerate but until then it’s at the usual rate.”

A corner of her mouth lifted. “Good to know.”

After s
he closed the door behind him, he got into his room, which was absolutely identical to hers.

Usually an angel could do without sleep, but being somewhat close to human form without the wings and in the human world
, he needed some hours of it and so, after taking a quick shower, he fell into bed.

It felt like he had only slept for about half an hour when a
scream woke him up.

Lillian.

In a blink he was in her dark room, his gaze searching for opponents. When he found none his eyes went to Lillian, who was slowly sitting up in bed and breathing heavily. Some strands of her hair clinging to her sweaty skin, her eyes glazed with sleep and yet wide with fear until reality flooded back.

“
A dream,” she mumbled, running a hand over her forehead. “Just a dream. Just a bad dream.”

A nightmare.
Damn. He had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation. Slowly, not quite sure what to do, he approached the bed. He was barefoot but had left his jeans and shirt on before going to sleep for exactly that kind of situation. Well, not exactly this one, he had expected more of the screaming and fighting kind. Lillian hadn’t slept in her clothes, or maybe after all that had happened she had just wanted to surround herself with the comfort of habit by choosing to wear her pajama. As she sat there shoving the covers aside, he saw that dark blue pants and a white top covered her.