The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 (15 page)

The idea brought the magic to me immediately. That had never happened like that before where I was consciously able to pull that thread. Riley’s eyes lit up as if he could actually see the invisible energy pulsating through me now.

“Are you threatening me?” A cruel smile twisted his lips, and then something else happened that I never expected.

Two pitch black wings unfurled behind him and stood erect in the air. All thoughts flew from my mind save one. It was so clear now that I couldn’t deny it even though I didn’t understand it. My necromancer had become an angel.

CHAPTER SEVEN –
RILEY

When I was younger, I thought about death a lot. Maybe that was a precursor for the destiny that awaited me. I don’t know. Either way, I felt like my whole life, since I started to see dead people when I was thirteen, was nothing but riding down the highway of life with death as the passenger in the sidecar of my motorcycle. It was always there with me. Ever present.

So I thought that I’d have a lot more to stay about it when I actually experienced death for myself. I had no idea how long I had been gone. It could have been seconds, or it could have been hours or days. It didn’t matter. Wherever I went, I knew one thing for certain. To be brought abruptly back to this plane of existence from it felt harsh and unreal. There was an anger that sprung up out of nowhere I could understand. It railed at the idea that I had found some kind of peace and then had it ripped away from me.

I felt the click of the return of rationality inside of my mind when I saw Paige’s face. It was beautiful and lovely. Somewhere in that dream space after death I felt certain that Paige had been with me. When I thought about my happiest place for eternity, I found that she had created a spot inside of that bubble just for her. It just looked different than what I had imagined. I had been somewhere safe and happy without a care in the world. So while there was a big part of me that felt comforted by the fact she looked so relieved and joyous to see me, there was another part that was pissed off as all get out at her.

Death had taken me away. I put up a fight, but in the end death won like it frequently seemed to. I’d seen enough death in my life to know that betting against it usually meant you’d lose. I had tried. It had won. When I slipped out of this world, I had accepted that.

Now I was back, and for some reason, I believed that Paige had a hand in doing that. Could I really blame her? Maybe. I would have done the same for her. On that point, I had no doubt. But our situations were different because I was the one that had been willing to go whole hog into it. Paige had put up the caution flag. Somehow we had gone down two separate paths when it came to our relationship when I wasn’t looking.

Jesus Christ.
My head felt as if it was clearer than it had been in days, and I saw something with stark clarity. I was the fucking chick in our relationship. I was the one who clung to her and kept coming back for her. How many times had she tried to push me away? More than once. Even though she told me that she loved me, I sensed that she still was holding back on me. If I was in something, I was in it. I needed Paige to be the same way. Otherwise the whole thing didn’t sit right with me at all.

Those thoughts were top of mind as all of the memories of my former life came back and filled the void that they had so recently exited. When I moved away from Paige, it was more out of an act of self-preservation. I was disoriented and unsettled about my feelings about being brought back to life. Her attempt to try to calm me only made me aware of the fact that I didn’t belong in this realm any longer.

When you grew up in the human realm, there were really only two places in the afterlife that were talked about. Those were Heaven and Hell. Some catechism classes might talk about Purgatory, but when it came to the afterlife that was pretty much it, in a nutshell. You went to one of two places, and if you really fucked up and they didn’t know what to do with you, you went to Purgatory until they figured it out.

Neat. Tidy. A system that seemingly made perfect logical sense.

But now, having had the benefit of spending some time on the other side of the veil, I understood things far better than I ever had before. Heaven and Hell were just the beginning. Purgatory was a gateway to be sure, but it wasn’t always just a gateway to Heaven and Hell. There were other places out there. Those places were like the ether. Somewhere out there, Eva’s essence waited for the time when her vessel was ready to receive her. I had a completely different experience myself. I had an awareness that I was somewhere else, but I felt nothing that caused me concern or worry. I had no sense of needing or wanting to come back.

Unbelievably, I had found something that resembled peace, and I was completely okay with that. I don’t remember worrying about what I left behind. Perhaps that was something that happened automatically. I remembered thinking with fondness about Paige and the time we shared together. I felt lucky to have experienced it, but there was no sense of loss or anxiety about it. I had a different purpose in that place.

But now, I was back here in this dark, dangerous and anxiety-ridden place. And I felt strange like my skin was electrified. I knew even before I took the bandage off my side that my wound was healed. I had been alive, and then I was dead. This was my new life. Those were the thoughts that filled my headspace as I found that I wanted to escape the remnants of that former life.

As I stood up and started to get my bearings, I saw the expression on Paige’s face change. It had gone from concern to fear in a split second. Then she began to glow. I don’t know how I knew it, but she had reached for her magic. It seemed that Paige had grown in more ways than one in the short time that we had been together. And she hadn’t grabbed hold of that magic to use for me. She was prepped to use it against me.

“Are you threatening me?” The idea seemed preposterous. I’m not even sure why I said the words out loud. Paige was the woman that I loved, but she had driven a deep seed of doubt into my mind about our love when she sidestepped my proposal. It was a seed of doubt that had been planted by my mother. Maybe that’s why I had been so eager to make Paige mine. I wanted to lay claim to her and make sure that she never looked at another man for eternity.

My eyes rose to see my mother standing behind Paige. There were parts of her that seemed to light up in tones of red and orange, almost as if she was burning on the inside where it wasn’t visible. I wanted to be angry at her, but she had literally been through hell in the last five years.

In the far back of the room, I saw my sister’s face. She seemed to be trying to disappear into the wall with the way that she was hiding in the shadows. I could see that she had the same fire burning inside of her. There was something else in those flames that scared the shit out of me. It was a face.

The reaction was immediate as my body stiffened against the perceived threat. I heard the sound of air being moved behind me even as I felt the muscles of my back tense to stretch to either side. Paige’s mouth fell open, and I watched my mother stumble as she tried to scurry backward away from me.

They were looking at me. They were scared of me. I looked over my shoulder and felt my jaw slacken. I saw wings. I reached my hand over my shoulder and felt the ridge that told me they were definitely connected to my back.

“What the fuck?” My mind stopped working.

I didn’t hear her approach, but then Paige stood in front of me. I saw her hands shaking as she showed me her empty hands. The glow that had surrounded her before was gone, but I could tell that she was badly shaken. Then she reached out and touched my bare chest just over my heart.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay.”

“I’m the furthest fucking thing from okay,” I said harshly. “What did you do to me?”

Her eyes widened as she shook her head violently back and forth. “No, this wasn’t me. I promise. I was trying to heal you, but it wasn’t working. It was like every part of you was hurting in some way. Then you died before I could save you. I think what I saw happening was a…metamorphosis.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I tried to pull away from her.

“I think you should calm down,” Paige said. She pivoted to move in front of me again. I could see that my mother had joined my sister now in the furthest corner of the room away from me. The fires inside of them seemed to be burning brighter than before, and I could see the red glow of their eyes. I realized that the fire I saw inside of them was their demons. My lips curled, and a noise reached my ears. I realized that it was coming from me. I was growling.

“Riley, hey, focus,” Paige said. She reached up and put her hand on my cheek and turned my face back toward her.

“They’re infected,” I said. I wanted to rip those demons out of their bodies. I had known they were there, but now I could see them, and it tore at my gut.

“Don’t worry about them right now,” Paige said. “You need to calm down.”

“I need to find Bruno Proctor and beat the shit out of him,” I said. I felt the anger rippling through me. “Then I’m going to rip him limb from limb and send his soul to the ether. Let him try and stop me.”

“Later,” Paige said. “We have a few things we have to figure out first, right? Like what time of year we’ll plan the wedding, and where we’re going to live in the meantime since I don’t have anywhere to go back to anymore. Is your place even big enough for the both of us?”

I finally focused on her face. It was white, and I could tell by the way that her mouth was pulled tight that she was on the verge of panicking herself. But she was holding it together. Her words began to sink in.

“What?”

“I was scared,” she said gently. “Things are moving so fast that I got scared. That’s all. I love you, and I thought that I had lost you forever for a few minutes there. It would have killed me to think that you left this world thinking that I didn’t want to be with you forever. Please, forgive me.”

With each word, I felt a sense of logic and rationality return. By the end, I took a deep shuddering breath, and I heard the whoosh of air again behind me. Paige let out a deep sigh that made me wonder if she had been holding her breath.

“They’re gone, aren’t they?” I couldn’t quite form the words yet of what ‘they’ were.

“Yes,” Paige nodded.

“I don’t understand what happened,” I repeated. “What am I? How is this possible?”

“I don’t know,” Paige said. She took one of my hands in hers and squeezed it as she placed our joined hands over her heart. “But we’ll figure it out. Together. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“What question?” I felt the need to move. My skin was feeling itchy again.

“Do you forgive me?” She bit her lower lip as she looked up at me tentatively.

I slipped my hand behind the back of her head even as I crushed her lips with mine. I felt a fierce wave of desire and possessiveness. She opened her lips, and I slid my tongue inside to dance with hers. My fingertips dug into her hair, and I pulled her body closer. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I felt her breasts press against my chest. I wanted her badly, but the timing was all wrong which was the story of my life. I nipped at her bottom lip and then ran my tongue along the soft ridge to take away the brief pain that I had just caused. When she caught my tongue and then slid her teeth across the sensitive surface in response, I almost lost my mind.

I pulled my lips away from hers, but I didn’t release her. Then I stared down into her eyes. “You’re mine.” It wasn’t a question. Whatever happened next, I didn’t care. But there had to be an implicit understanding between the two of us from this point forward. I was someone different than I was before, and I knew that I didn’t understand what all of that meant. But this one point was non-negotiable.

I felt her body soften against me even further. It was as if she was melting against me, and it made me want her even worse. “Yes,” she whispered. I thought that I saw a shadow of something else cross her face, but then it was gone. She smiled up at me. “Yes, Riley. I am yours.”

“Then we’re going to blow this shithole pop stand right now,” I said. If I was an angel, I was sure in the hell going to start acting like one.

CHAPTER EIGHT –
PAIGE

It was all happening so fast. My brain felt as if it was about to go into some kind of crazy overload. For everything that I had been telling Riley about resting to recuperate, I knew that I was operating on little more than adrenaline at this point. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept. Surely it had been days. Still, things felt back on track between me and Riley again, and that was all that mattered.

His words when he claimed me tapped into a part of the deepest part of my soul. Before this, I had felt Riley’s possessiveness when it came to me and our relationship. It had been exciting and hot to have someone so invested in me that he wanted me that badly. But what I just saw on his face now was something different. It went far beyond the boundaries of a normal relationship. He had staked not just my love and my life, but my soul. I was his one hundred percent completely. I had the sense that something else monumental had shifted between us. I was eager for all of this to end so that I could find out what that was.

The only thing that marred the moment for me was the knowledge that Bruno could swoop in and take all of it away from us. He could expose me for a fraudulent, manipulative bitch, and then Riley would be shattered. And I had a feeling that fallout could be epic now that Riley appeared to have been reincarnated from the ashes of his death as an angel. There was no other explanation for his wings.

My mind still reeled at this revelation. I didn’t know much about angel mythology, but I was pretty sure that God was the one that created angels. That’s why there were so fewer angels than demons. God sounded like he was selective that way. And I didn’t think that angels started out as mortals. They were angels from the get go. Lucifer created demons, and he had created a lot of them. But angels were more powerful and much harder to injure than anything that Lucifer created because as much as he might like to act like it, Lucifer wasn’t God. I wasn’t even sure an angel could be killed.

There were too many things to think about, but the sooner that Riley and I were away from Bruno Proctor and Hell the better. That would hopefully give me the time and space that I needed to find a way out of my deal with him. So Riley’s suggestion to get out of Hell was one that I was ready to jump on.

“I’m all for that,” I said. “But how?”

“I pulled you from Hell once before,” Riley said. “That was with the combined energy of two demons with my own and channeling the energy of the bond that was symbolized by the tattoo. Abigail knew the spell.”

“Well, your tattoo is gone. It disappeared when you...came back,” I stuttered. What were the implications of the Protector symbol disappearing? I didn’t think we had any way to know. “Also, Abigail is dead,” I pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you banished her to the ether. Unless you’re saying that you have a way to bring her back?”

“I remember the spell,” Riley said with a smile. He tapped his temple. “I remember a lot of things. It’s like they are clear as day in my mind. This must be what it feels like to have a photographic memory. Lucky for us, it appears to work in reverse too. I just have to open the catalog to the right place to see it.”

“I doubt they are going to let us just walk out of here,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. The Dark Wiccan had disappeared from the room. I hadn’t even heard them go. “If Bruno doesn’t already know about what happened here, he will soon.”

“We’re not going alone,” Riley said. He pointed at his mother and sister. I hadn’t noticed that they had retreated to the far end of the room. “You are coming with us.”

Joanna shook her head. “We can’t. We belong here.”

“The hell you do,” Riley growled.

I put my hand on his arm. I wasn’t sure why, but I sensed it was better for all of us, including Riley, if he wasn’t agitated. We had no idea the extent of his powers yet, and I was sure that he had a lot of them.

“If they’re with us, Bruno will be able to trace us,” I reminded him. “And you remember what he said when he told you about them? The demons inside of them are like his right-hand demons. He’ll come after them just like he’ll come after us.”

“They’re coming with us,” Riley said firmly.

I knew that it wouldn’t do any good to argue with him. I didn’t really expect to sway him anyway. Joanna and Gabrielle were his family, and as long as Bruno had them he could use them to hold over Riley’s head. I just wanted him to remember the risks as long as the demons were inside of them. That meant we needed a new strategy that involved getting the demons out even if they were unwilling without causing any harm to the two women.

“We’ll find a way to exorcise the demons without hurting them. Maybe we can have Klein do some research,” I said offering some semblance of a plan. I hadn’t thought about Riley’s sidekick Klein since we left him to return to Calamata Island, but it seemed like as good a plan as any. Klein had proved that he could ferret out things that other people couldn’t. I also figured it couldn’t hurt to continue to talk about things that were normal parts of Riley’s old life. Riley would deny it, but he had a brotherly kind of affection for Klein.

“Fuck that,” Riley said. “We don’t have time for that.”

He stalked toward his mother and sister, and I watched in awe as the wings appeared from his back once again. They were the arm span of at least two people. As they unfurled out behind him, I saw the textured surface of the individual black feathers. They glimmered even in the relative darkness of the room. It made me want to reach out and touch them.

With Riley stripped down and exposed to the waist, I couldn’t help but think that his muscular torso seemed to have been made just for them. He looked strong and powerful, and I felt a crazy wave of dizzy desire as I watched him. He was beautiful, and he was as much mine as I was his. I couldn’t believe it.

The women had started to yelp as they backed away from him, but they quickly ran into the wall at their backs. I saw Riley’s wings flutter even as he descended on them. He knelt down as they tried scratching to the wall desperately to get away. But then the wings covered all of them, and the rest of what happened next was hidden from my view. All I knew was that I heard an ancient language filling the room as Riley chanted strange words, and after a few minutes the sounds of pain and fear abruptly stopped. Then the room was still.

Riley stood up and turned toward me. His wings disappeared a moment later. Sitting at his feet, I saw Joanna holding Gabrielle in her arms. Both women were crying. Riley looked at me with a grim expression. “It is done.”

“What’s done?” I gaped at him.

“The demons that infested them are gone.”

It seemed impossible, but if he said he had done it, then I believed that he had done it.

I took that as the signal that I could approach them. Riley waved his hand toward me and then held his fingers outstretched. I took his hand in a kind of breathless daze. I felt a small shock of energy pass between us, but it wasn’t painful. In fact, it was quite the opposite. A small smile crept onto Riley’s face. He had felt it too. He winked at me as if it was our secret, and then he knelt down again next to his family and pulled me downward so that I joined them. He reached out a hand toward his mother.

Joanna looked at the hand as if it would bite her. But a moment later, she reluctantly put her hand in his.

“I need you to take Gabrielle’s hand,” Riley said to me. “Complete the circle.”

This I remembered from when Benjamin had taken me and Riley off of Calamata Island to go see Sister Alice. I had a feeling that was where we were headed once again. Gabrielle stared at me, but she didn’t pull away when I reached out and took her hand.

“Do you need me to help?” I asked. It was strange. In less than a day, my control of my magic had grown exponentially. And even though I knew that it was technically Eva’s magic, I was growing quite possessive of it. I knew that I could help with any energy required. It had to be a lot if it required two demons before to complete the spell.

“No,” Riley said with a confident smile. “I’ve got this.”

He seemed so assured that it made me smile in return. This was the man that I had fallen in love with. Decisive. Brave. Always ready for action. Taking care of those that mattered to him, despite any dangerous circumstances.

I heard shouts echo into the room from the hallway and the boom of the door to the room being slammed open. But we were already gone. I wasn’t sure that Riley was going to be able to do it so fast, but apparently whatever new abilities he had he was learning quickly.

The next thing I knew, I found that we were sitting on a patch of cool grass inside the confines of a black wrought iron fence. A tall brownstone loomed over our heads. Directly in front of us, a short flight of steps led up to a familiar door. I had guessed right. Riley had brought us to Sister Alice’s convent, which seemed to be his go-to place when he was in trouble. A full moon shone over my head. It took me a minute to remember the last time I had seen the sky. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

The door to the convent flew open, and Sister Alice was framed in the doorway by the light from inside. I saw the shock on her face as she observed the exhausted, terrified party sitting in her front yard.

“Alice!” Joanna was on her feet, and moving toward the other woman.

“Joanna?”

I had forgotten that Alice still thought that her childhood friend had perished five years ago. Alice met Joanna halfway down the stairs, and they embraced. They both laughed, and I saw the tears streaming down both of their faces. Joanna turned and beckoned Gabrielle.

The two women were talking over each other even as Alice hugged Gabrielle.

“How is this possible?” Finally, Alice’s question rose through the din.

Joanna let out a long exhale. “I think we have a lot to talk about, Alice. It was Riley.”

Alice’s eyes found Riley as he stood stiffly beside me. I looked back and forth between them. When I last saw them together, I had seen clear affection between them. But it was different now, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what had changed. Alice’s smile fell from her face.

“What has happened to you?” she asked. Her voice held a note of awe.

“I was really hoping that maybe you could tell me,” Riley said.

Alice released Joanna and made her way to the sidewalk. She slowly made her way to Riley. I stepped back as she closed in on him. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever reunion was about to take place. This was Riley’s family. Joanna, Gabrielle, and Alice. He needed to figure out what the future was going to look like for all of them moving forward, and it wasn’t going to be an easy thing. They did have a lot to talk about.

She stopped a foot short of him and looked him up and down. We all waited in silence for what she was going to say next. If anyone had the answers as to the reason for Riley’s miraculous transition, it would be Alice.

“I don’t understand what I’m seeing,” she said finally. “It is…impossible.”

“What do you see?” Riley asked. His voice dropped to a harsh whisper.

“A myth alive and in the flesh on my doorstep,” she said. She looked back over at her shoulder at Joanna with a questioning glance. Some kind of silent message passed between them. I saw Joanna’s face tighten but a moment later she gave Alice a small nod.

“Joanna and I had hoped that this day would never come. We tried everything in our power to do the right thing for you, Riley. We wanted to change your destiny, and we failed. I’m sorry for that.”

Riley’s face twisted in confusion. I started to move toward him, but he held up his hand to stop me. “Alice, speak English for once in your fucking life. I’m not in the mood for it. Really.”

“Language, Riley!” Alice said, her voice sharp in the air. “Is that the way that you would chose to speak to your mother?”

Riley’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

Alice sighed, but she stood up straighter. “That’s right. I am your mother. Now come inside and have some tea. I won’t have my son standing outside in the chilled night air, even if he is a dark angel.”