Wings of the Wicked (42 page)

“We’ll have to find the correct relic and spell,” he replied. “If they can do it for Lilith, then we can do the same for Azrael.”

“Okay, well, how do we know which are the right ones?”

“The spell will be different to give corporeal form to an angel, but that information will still be in the grimoire.”

“The book that Sammael has?”

“Yes.”

“Well, life just keeps getting easier and easier.” I slumped back into the bench and folded my arms over my chest. “If we can’t get Azrael to fight Sammael, then we need an archangel.”

His lips formed a tight line of frustration. “That’d be you.”

I blinked at him. “Come again?”

“Our last resort would be figuring out a way for you to ascend and become Gabriel again,” he said.

“In this world?” I asked, unable to hide the incredulity in my voice. “On Earth, in the human world?”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” he admitted. “But we’ve got to find a way to make it happen if worse comes to worst. I just don’t know if the transformation would destroy you or what would happen to your soul if you were killed as Gabriel. You might not come back as a human again, or even at all.”

I frowned. “If me becoming an archangel in this world is even possible, then we have to figure out how to do it.”

“We will,” he said gently. “Everything will be okay.”

But I wasn’t so sure. It would be difficult enough to summon Azrael and get him to fight for us, but on the minuscule chance that I was able to ascend to my archangel form … I didn’t know what that really meant. In the last few months I’d come to understand who I really was, something far beyond what I was now. I remembered my past lives and uncovered secrets as they came, but I remembered nothing of being Gabriel. I felt small things, recognized Sammael and Lilith, but those were all memories from Earth. I knew my true name, but I didn’t know who I truly was. I didn’t know what I was like as Gabriel. I didn’t know how much I would change.

“I’m terrified of myself, Will,” I admitted. The icy wind flowing off the half-frozen lake whipped my hair around my face. “Of becoming Gabriel. The angels don’t feel anything. I don’t want to lose myself when I become an archangel. I’m afraid that I’ll forget you, that I won’t love you anymore because I won’t be able to.”

His jaw tightened and he looked at me sadly. “That doesn’t matter. It’s not as important as—”

“It’s important to
me
,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ve had enough of that self-deprecating crap from you.
You’re
important to me. I’m terrified of losing what I feel inside once I become Gabriel.”

“We have to be willing to give up things to do what’s right, sometimes,” he said, eerily mirroring to me what Nathaniel had said about war. About sacrifice. In order to win this war, I had to be willing to sacrifice who I was. If it came down to becoming someone else and protecting the people I loved and the rest of the world, then I had to do it. I had to be brave, even though I couldn’t be fearless.

“If I do this,” I said, “if I become Gabriel, I refuse to forget you. I may become an archangel, but I’ll still have my human soul.”

He let his head drop and ran his hands through his hair. Something more was troubling him so much that for a second I thought I saw him shaking. He chewed on his upper lip and exhaled heavily.

“What Bastian said about you isn’t true,” I said, touching his cheek. I turned his face to mine as I brushed the backs of my fingers along the line of his jaw. He closed his eyes so tightly that his brow furled and darkened with pain. I heard his teeth grind together.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, Will,” I pleaded. “How could you even think that?”

“Because I am full of hate and rage.” He pulled away from my hand and looked out at the gray lake. “I want you to promise me one thing, for when this all goes down.”

I swallowed hard. “What is it?”

“Save Merodach for me,” he said, his voice cold and deadly as thin ice. “He’s mine.”

I shivered at a chill slicing through my veins. “Okay.”

“Si vis pacem, para bellum,”
he said very quietly. His hands balled into fists and he drew a long, shaky breath.

If you want peace, prepare for war
. If we wanted to win and to be safe, we had to be strong and fight this evil that threatened to tear us apart and steal everything we loved.

We sat in silence until he stood up. “I have work to do on the house.”

I nodded, pushing back the wildfire of tears building in my eyes. Within minutes, the pounding of nails and ripping up of shattered floorboards filled my head and numbed my thoughts. But I had work to do as well. I had to call Lauren.

I sat on the floor in the kitchen with my cell phone in my hands. I leaned against the cabinet doors, the metal handles digging into my back. I’d dialed and redialed her number a hundred times and still hadn’t found the courage to call her. I squeezed my eyes shut and called at last. On the first ring, she answered.

“Ellie.” Her voice was broken, hoarse, as if she’d been crying or screaming, or both.

“Lauren,” I said, forcing the word from my lips. “I … I don’t know how to …”

“I know.”

She hung up, and I let the phone slip from my fingers onto the tile and just sat there with my back against the wall. Sometime later, I heard a car drive up and its door open and shut. I stumbled to my feet and headed toward the front of the house. As soon as I saw Lauren’s quietly smiling face and red, puffy eyes, I let out a choking sob and collapsed at her feet as our arms wound around each other.

We sat in the living room with cups of coffee in our hands, both of us cried out for the moment. The last time she was in this house, she was in Nathaniel’s arms and he was telling her he loved her. Minutes later, he was dead.

“I never thought I’d outlive him,” Lauren said weakly. “That wasn’t the way we were supposed to end. I knew the things he and Will did were dangerous and would kill him eventually, but …”

She leaned over the end table beside her, resting on her elbow, and buried her face in her hands, her fingers threading through her dark hair, and she started crying again.

My lips trembled as I fought my own tears. “I’m so sorry, Lauren.”

She wiped at her face with the sleeves of her sweater and forced a small laugh. “It’s okay. I’m really going to miss him and his stupid jokes.”

I laughed with her, letting out an ugly, half-sobbing noise. “Yeah. His jokes were so bad.”

We laughed and cried for a little while, recalling many of Nathaniel’s silly habits and sayings, but also reminiscing about how wise he was. How good he was. How much he took care of us all. How much he’d made this house a home. The lights were on in here, but outside the skies were dark with rain clouds, and it felt like we were in a cave. Rain beat the windows, and Will clunked something heavy around somewhere in the house and then hammered it.

When it came time for Lauren to go home, she wandered through the house, surveying the damage, running her fingers down the shredded walls, pausing to touch things that had belonged to Nathaniel.

“Anything you want should be yours,” I said, following her through the wreckage. Will had cleaned up so much of it already that the floors were mostly cleared.

Lauren nodded absently. “It’d be strange to take any of it, since it was his. Maybe one day I’ll be able to. It still doesn’t feel like he’s gone—it’s like he’ll come back any day because he’d miss all this old junk of his.”

I looked around the house, purposely avoiding her gaze. “And once Will puts the house back together, it’ll look like nothing even happened here.”

“He’s certainly on a roll, isn’t he?” She gave a small laugh that faded away sadly. “I should get going.”

I pulled her into a tight hug. “Come back soon,” I said. “Anytime, please. We’d love to see you.”

She smiled. “Of course. Let me know if Will needs any help cleaning up the place.”

I shrugged. “I think he’s on a mission to do it all by himself. I’m sorry he didn’t come down to see you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, her smile fading to a tight, pained line. Her lips quivered. “He’s hurting. It’s best to leave him be. He’ll come around when he’s ready.”

“I know.” What she said was true, but every second Will spent in his own world made my heart ache a little more. I walked Lauren outside. “I’m trying not to worry about him. I don’t want to worry about you either, okay?”

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’ll be okay. It’ll just be hard for a while. We’ll all get through this.”

“Thank you, Lauren,” I said. “Call me soon, okay?”

She smiled. “I will. Check in with your grandmother, okay?” Then she climbed into her car and was gone.

For the next several days, Will and I said very little to each other. He had thrown himself fully into restoring Nathaniel’s house. I made sure he ate and slept, but between our brief exchanges of conversation was complete silence, and the loneliness was killing me. My phone was off and no one knew where I was. I didn’t know what to tell Nana and my friends about what had happened or where I’d been.

Kelaeno was dead, but that didn’t mean her prophecy had died with her. In my heart, I feared that it was coming true, bit by bit. For so long I had believed that the scariest thing in the world would be losing my soul, or Will, but now that I had been faced with nearly losing both in one night, I realized that I was more afraid of losing him.

I told Will once that I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to live. And here I was, the living dead, waiting for the inevitable. I felt like I was giving up already, and I couldn’t let myself think that. I had to survive this. I had to live. And locking myself inside this big house to rot was not living. It was existing. I wanted to feel alive again, and in order to do that, I needed my friends and family. I wanted a future. I wanted to get my life back.

29

I TOOK A DEEP BREATH BEFORE I RAISED MY HAND to knock on the door. Nana flung it open before I could knock a second time, so quickly, as if she’d been waiting by the door the entire time.

“Oh, my …” my grandmother murmured, touching her fingers to her mouth in surprise. “Ellie.”

“Hey, Nana,” I said with a weak smile. “I’m so sorry.”

She ushered me in through the door, soaking me with her radiance and relief at seeing me. “Come in, honey. It’s freezing out there. I’ll get you some hot tea.”

A few minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea as Nana fixed me soup at the stove. “You don’t have to do that,” I said, watching her sadly. “I’m not hungry, really. I don’t want you to go through the trouble.” In truth, I was starving, but it felt so wrong to just show up back at her house and have her make me dinner. It made me feel even lower than I already did, and that was saying a lot.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “The least I can do after you’ve been gone for almost two weeks is make you a hot meal.”

“But you don’t owe me anything,” I assured her. “I really don’t deserve it.”

She removed the pot to let it cool. “After what you’ve been through, child, you do.”

I stared at her in surprise and puzzlement. Why wasn’t she yelling at me, scolding me for running off and showing up after weeks of no contact? Why wasn’t she furious?

She came to the table and sat down next to me. She took my hand and held it in both of hers. “You’ve lost your parents and so much more. I was angry when you left, but I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I realize that much of this could have been avoided if I’d done better for you.”

I shook my head. “None of this is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yes, I did,” she corrected me firmly. “I owe you an explanation. I’m angry with myself for making you go through this alone. I had the power to help you, but I was afraid and partially in denial. I was afraid of getting involved.”

I studied her eyes, searching for answers. “What are you talking about?”

She swallowed. “I knew, child. I knew everything. I know who you are.”

“Who I—?”

“I know you are the Preliator.”

She knew? How? I had never revealed who I was to a soul who wasn’t already in my world. “I don’t understand,” I squeaked, my voice quaking. “How can you know?”

“I am a psychic, Ellie,” she said simply. “I have always seen the reapers, but I had no idea that my granddaughter would ever be Gabriel’s vessel. I didn’t believe Frank when he told me until he showed me an old photograph of the two of you and your Guardian.”

“Frank,” I repeated, running names through my head. “Frank Meyer? My teacher?”

She nodded. “There aren’t many of us, and most of us know one another. I kept in contact with him for many years, and when he told me that
you
were the Preliator, I had a hard time believing him. And then these rumors began flying around about you actually being Gabriel….”

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?” I asked, and pulled my hand away from hers, unable to help the bitterness I felt.

“Frank told me it was best not to interfere.” She sounded genuinely penitent. “He promised that your Guardian would care for you. But I knew how hard it was for you, and I regret staying out of it all. And now the reapers have killed Frank, and they’ve killed my daughter and son-in-law. It’s my punishment, I suppose.”