Authors: Laura Kreitzer
“
The what?” I was utterly bewildered. She was really starting to freak me out. I had no idea what was going on, but she obviously knew something I did not.
“
Not what—who.”
“
Karen,” I said tentatively. “You’re beginning to, well, scare me a little. What does Tenebre whatever you said mean?”
Again her eyes met mine. They were full of benevolence and oddly enough her face suddenly appeared ancient. “Darkness, I cast you out.”
A dreadful blast of realization hit. My legs moved without conscious thought as I backed into the wall. A framed photo above my head almost fell before I reached up and steadied it. I was reliving the feeling of the velvety darkness wrapping itself around my body, swallowing me whole. I shivered.
She knew.
Karen placed the chest down and rushed toward me, her face full of concern and worry. “You’ve seen it?” she said, delicately taking my hand. She must have seen the look of fear in my eyes. “There goes protecting you,” she muttered to herself.
I yanked my hand away. Words just exploded out of me. “What are you talking about? Protect me? Shadow of the Sun? Speaking Italian. Who are you?” The words came out in a rush. It was all a practical joke. It had to be. April fools, Gabriella. Except it was October.
“
Gabriella.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry. I was supposed to be here earlier. Weeks ago, truthfully.” Karen’s fingers traced my face, looking me over like a mother tending to their kid who’s just fallen off a bicycle. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
I couldn’t help it when I exhaled in relief. Her touch brought warmth—a calming force I so desperately needed. Inside this office, people didn’t really know who I was, but I struggled more than anyone around here could understand. It was hard to make friends when everyone my age was just beginning their lives, and I was already living mine. The only person who has never held my intelligence against me was my sister, Jenna. Work was my life. Whenever I tried to live outside the bubble I had created, I failed miserably. And here was Karen, taking this giant weight off my shoulders just by her touch, as if she were healing me. And honestly, I trusted her.
Why did I trust her?
“
I guess we need to talk,” I mumbled.
“
No time now.” She looked over her shoulder. The chest sat on my desk. Tension rolled through my body. “It can’t hurt you. Not anymore,” she soothed, as if reading my mind.
I nodded.
Karen moved back to my desk. Her fingertips fluttered over the chest again. “
Rivelano
.” The chest flew open.
I wanted to fall back, to run and hide from whatever was within. I waited for an explosion or for the room to turn into a dark mist or for the apocalypse. I waited and waited.
Nothing happened.
My vexation was far from gone, but it had lowered from a boil to a simmer. My heart beat steadier as I moved towards the open chest. Karen loomed over the box, looking into the depths. Her hand reached out and met resistance.
“
What did you say?” I barely whispered.
“
Reveal.”
“
Oh,” I said. My anxiety grew as I approached the small chest. It seemed such a mundane object to cause such a stir in my brain. The area associated with fear and panic was hit hardest. Inside the box lay two tarnished silver keys, each with a symbol I hadn’t seen before: two spearheads crossing inside a golden circle. The circle looked familiar. It was the one I had seen on the necklaces. The braided motif was intricate, the design flawless.
I don’t know why I did it, but I reached out and seized them both. Just like with the necklace, I needed to hold them. To touch them.
Karen gasped, a look of dawning wonder replacing her careful composure. “I thought the necklace was a fluke, but now, the keys.” She stared at me with a new light feeding her blue eyes.
“
Listen, Karen. If that’s your real name . . . Karen. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m clueless about everything that’s exited your mouth since we entered my office. Who are you?”
“
I’m an angel,” she stated simply, like it was obvious.
Did Sally drug my coffee this morning? Be right back while I go fire her.
“
My kind are known as The Light of Heaven.”
“
Heaven?” I asked with as much nonchalance as I could muster.
“
Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m immortal. Haven’t died.”
Her words fell oddly upon my ears. I was lost in frantic speculation about how to best approach the subject. Instead of wording it in my head, I just gave in and blurted out, “An angel? Like God’s creation?”
“
An angel, yes. That’s true. God? I’ve never met His holiness. The angel stories in the Bible are mostly myths anyway.”
“
Myths?” I interjected. “You don’t know God? You have to understand that’s hard to believe.”
She sighed, exasperated, as if she had explained this a million times before. “No. We aren’t some mythical creature sent from some almighty God. That was just some of my kind being full of themselves, so to speak. Ours is an ancient people who were deeply involved in magic.”
I scoffed, disbelieving.
“
We were called
Senza Tempo
. Translated, it means timeless.” She ignored my pursed lips of incredulity. “When my people were taken by a king and turned into slaves, they came together and decided to combine their magic to become truly timeless, just as their name foreshadowed. Immortals, as you know them.”
“
So,” I said, “let me get this straight. No God? Just a bunch of really old people turning into immortals?” I needed to lie down.
She nodded. “To sum it up, yes.”
This was all too much to take in. One day I’m plucking feathers from a dead man—who had sewn them into his skin to make people believe he could fly—and the next I was speaking to an actual, live angel. I must be dreaming. Or I was going crazy. And why the hell would she just come right out and tell me?
“
How did the angel thing come about?” I asked, skeptical. This had to be a practical joke. It had to be.
“
Well, some of my people became arrogant,” she admitted. “When Christianity was on the rise, they took advantage of many souls. Because of our magical abilities, one could seem god-like to a mortal. But flaunting power in front of those without it is dangerous. You see, while each of us has our own special abilities, we also share many of the same. You can blame some of my brothers for the tall tales of angels and God. The name sort of stuck, though.”
“
Okay.” I paused, reeling in the information she had freely poured for me. “All the knowledge we have about angels is a fib that your brothers made up?”
“
Sadly, yes. We pre-date Christianity, and even Jesus. In the time when I was only a mortal, people prayed to the Olympians.”
I sat, my mind soaking up the information like a flower soaking up the rays of the sun. My thoughts were too unwieldy to form any kind of coherent response. I believed her, and yet I barely knew her. Was this the divine intervention I had fiercely begged for? Remind me to ask for a refund.
“
Should I even ask where the cameras are hidden?”
“
You saw the dark one.” She knelt before me, taking my hands in hers, completely ignoring my camera joke. “Yet you survived.”
My heart skipped a beat. “People usually don’t?” I choked.
“
Not humans. And no one, human or angel, has ever been able to break the bindings of the Shadow of the Sun. Yet you . . .”
“
Did?” I offered.
“
Precisely.”
“
So the ‘dark one’ is a member of this Shadow of the Sun?”
“
Not exactly.” She stared at the keys in my hands longingly. “It’s not like a club. There is no membership. They are what they are. Part of the sun, the light, cast out to forever to be shadows of blazing light.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You know, that’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”
Karen giggled. The sound was like tinkling bells. “Yes, I’d say it is. But you saw one. They are dark as charcoal, yet their eyes blaze like the sun. They can play with fire, but it remains contained inside of them, no longer part of the sun. They’re doomed to be held in shadow.”
“
Oh,” I said, as if I totally understood. I didn’t. Not really. But I had always wished for the supernatural and now I had it. In my office. Talking to me. Fabulous.
Karen rubbed my arm, her eyes boring into mine. The blue intensified until I was calm, as if I had drunk some extraordinary tonic and was tingling with a secret magic.
“
Did you do that?” I asked, shuddering.
“
How do you feel?”
“
Strangely enough, I feel peaceful.”
“
Yes,” she admitted. “That was me. I’m an empath. It’s one of my many magical abilities. Empathy is a more precious gift than most.”
“
But that’s ficti—” I cut myself off. I had to remember this was what I had wanted, and it was in my life now. The supernatural, the weird and strange and unexplained. Get used to it, I ordered myself.
Her hand patted mine gently. “I wanted to reassure you, send you the feelings I thought you should be feeling, but I didn’t want to intrude. It seems I can only change your moods when you wish for me to. I’ve already tried to steer you in other directions during our conversation, but you deflected all of them.”
“
I did?”
She smiled and nodded, and her long gold-brown hair bounced lightly. “It’s rare that I’m sent to protect someone, but I show up and you already have three angels in your care. Then I find out you lived through a meeting with a Shadow and that you’re able to penetrate their barriers and shield yourself from me. I have to say, I’m highly impressed and a little speechless.”
My mind did a little spin as I took it all in. Why would someone be here to protect me?
Oh! The thought hit me suddenly, and if I were a comic book character, you would have seen the light bulb above my head. Duh, I must be in danger.
“
Why are you here?” I pondered aloud, feeling more stupid by the minute—a feeling I wasn’t used to but continued to come across today.
“
I’m your guardian angel, of course.”
CHAPTER 6: SUMMONING
To say that I was bewildered would be illuminating the obvious. I was bordering on overwhelming incredulity. Angels. All my preconceived notions about the mythical creature went up in a puff of smoke. I thought they were fairytales. My mind was in a whirlwind, and I couldn’t seem to turn off the insane wind that was causing the uproar. Life would be so much easier if some things, including facets of my brain, came with an off button.
Karen had left me in my office to give me some time alone to adjust to everything she had told me. It felt like she had dropped the equivalent of an atomic bomb on my head and left me to sift through the debris. I took several deep breaths and made a list in my head.
One: I’ve lost my mind.
Two: there are now four angels in this building. That I know of.
Three: I’ve completely and utterly lost my mind.
Four: a Shadow of the Sun tracked me down, yet I survived. According to Karen this was perplexing, to say the least.
And five: I have a guardian angel, sworn to protect me, probably because I was in some life-threatening danger.
Fantastic.
My head fell into my hands. I was overwhelmed. Why me? Of all the people on this planet, why was I picked to be guarded? My life as I knew it was slipping through my fingers like water. This meant more secrets and lies. Didn’t I already have to keep a majority of my life a mystery to those I met?
Men came and went in my life, realizing I would never divulge the secrets I learned about in the lab and feeling my secrets created an emotional barrier. Of course, they also felt an “emotional barrier” when I wouldn’t sleep with them on the first date. I didn’t have time for them anyway.
Someone tapped on my door, and I jumped so high out of my chair that it nearly rolled out from under me. My fingers clutched onto the arm rests.