"Welcome back," the woman closest to the water said to Eve.
"Thank you, Alma. How is our guest?" she asked, walking into the foliage. Max and I exchanged glances, and I turned to Frankie.
"Where are we going? I'm kind of over lush jungles right now, you know?"
"Trust me, so am I," Frankie answered. “It can’t be too much farther.”
She was right. Another twenty feet or so and the foliage opened up to a large, circular pool holding several neon green, striped fish. Three kinds of seahorses also wove in and out of bushy green plants that reached toward the surface of the water, which was dotted by a scatter of white-flowering lily pads.
"Wow," I gasped, transfixed.
Black, iron benches surrounded the white-stone pool, and vines with fuchsia flowers were climbing the arbors over each one. The lights in the stone path reflected dancing water patterns over the cottage, which I’d thought was just a stone wall until the white-haired man opened a slate door for us.
Inside, I audibly gasped to see the stretch of oak floors that led to a giant window overlooking a nearby waterfall. Small, white lights danced around the differently colored flowers that lined the pool at the base of the rock, where more water lilies floated on the surface.
We passed simple, clean-lined furniture as we walked through the open room and made our way down a very long, winding hallway that went behind the kitchen. After several minutes, the walls and ceiling tapered to the outdoors. We walked out to find ourselves at the top of a wide cliff that overlooked the ocean, and the sky was full of stars.
"Holy. Shit.” Max whispered next to me.
“It’s quite a view,” Eve said, looking out on the moonlit horizon as she led us down a few steps to a seating area with chairs that were carved directly out of the stone cliffside. Several poured glasses of what looked like tea, and trays of fruit, small sandwiches, and vegetables also sat on a carved, stone table.
“Are you kidding me?” Max said, marveling.
“How did you do all this?” Frankie asked, scanning the ground. “Some of these plant species are tropical—this is Portland, Maine,” she added, turning to Eve.
“We’ve not left the area. Not really,” Eve said with a little smile.
“There’s another tear here?” I asked. “Besides the one in the woods. The boat brought us through another one?”
“A what?” Jack asked. I started to answer him, but Eve held up her hands like a teacher trying to settle a class.
“I know you have many questions, and I apologize for not being able to give you any context so far,” she said. “It was important to arrive here safely before sharing any other information. May I introduce you to Alma, Silo, Petra, and Tirius? They are Elementals, and have been my friends for centuries. Alma is a Gnome, Silo is a Sylph, Petra is an Undine, and Tirius is a Salamander Elemental,” she added, gesturing to each person in turn. “They’ve created the microclimate that sustains the beautiful gardens all around you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Tirius, the darker-complected movie star man said, bowing slightly to us all.
“Especially you, Halsey,” Petra, the fair, silver-haired woman said. “We’ve heard much about you.”
“You have?” I asked, a little too abruptly. The four traded smiles with Eve.
“You must be hungry,” Silo, the white-haired man said. “Please sit and make yourselves comfortable.”
He passed each of us a small plate and a glass of tea, and invited us to start eating while Eve explained to everyone about what I already knew about the tears in the veil, the Elemental queens, and the fallout in Eden. But then she started talking about something I didn’t know already.
“Silo and Tirius were not banned from The Garden with the rest of us,” she gestured to Petra and Alma. “But they stayed with us. For centuries, we have been working with other Elemental allies to keep Ghob from inflicting mass genocide.”
“Which isn’t in her nature,” Alma added, her voice rich and melodic. “She is bitter because she felt wronged, and it is our goal to help mend the bridges between humans and the Elementals.”
“The First Bloods,” Eve nodded. “But first, we must stop Ghob’s destruction, and this is why I sought you out, Halsey. You and Knox Ryder are two of the new generation of First Bloods,” she added, nodding to Silo. He rose, his white hair like a torch in the night air, and returned with a younger, athletic man whose angular features and haunted dark eyes sent a shiver through me even at a distance. I tried not to look startled, but it was suddenly as if even the air around him rushed in different directions just to get out of his way.
He seemed restless, pushing a hand through his dark hair as he walked out of the shadows, and I flinched when I saw the flash of glowing red light silhouetting ghostly white fangs behind his lips. The deep red glow spread out around him with interspersed rays of golden light appearing and disappearing, until it all faded away.
He stopped walking and met my eyes. “It’s all right,” he said. “I know what you see, and I won’t hurt you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“You’re the one who can lift the veil…” I said with the last of a breath. Knox glanced at Eve.
“He’s like you? Um…all of you?” Max asked me, then looked around at the other First Bloods.
“Not quite,” Frankie said. “We’ve only had about a week to research since we had our own run-in with Mama Luz—Ghob, I guess, is her real name.” She shrugged. “Eve said you’d been infected with Red Fever because someone who’d taken a drug bit you. That drug came from Wu Fong Pharmaceuticals, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said anxiously, darting a glance at Max. “I mean, I think so.”
“Knox was injected with a drug we think they produced, but instead of it only activating some long-dormant Elemental DNA like it did for you, it activated something else, too…” she trailed off, and a tense silence fell over the group as she crossed to Knox, interlacing her fingers with his.
Eve stood and moved to his other side. “Ghob was not the only one at odds with our creation. Even angels rebelled, refusing to share anything with us.”
A blinding flash of lightning lit the sky, followed by a crack that reverberated in my bones. A deep, echoing laugh filled the air and somehow even made it hard to breathe as a small, gray storm cloud began to gather. It grew into a black, churning mass of lightning and explosions that were only getting stronger.
“You mean kneel before you,” a male voice boomed from every direction. Seconds later, an angel appeared from the center of the storm cloud wearing a black tunic that was on fire, but not burning. His black wings stretched the length of the entire storm cloud, and it was then that I realized the lightning and explosions were not originating in the cloud. They were coming from him.
Within seconds, Rhea appeared from behind the angel, her blonde hair covered by scaled body armor that matched the color of her long, red and gold wings. Half her face glowed from within, revealing the nostrils and the wide, golden eyes of a snake. Another bolt of lightning shot through the sky behind the angel, followed by an earth-splitting crack as Leo emerged, his black wings nearly as big as the angel’s, and his horns long and twisted at the ends. Behind his eyes, though, a red glow illuminated the long, serrated snout on his right side along with jagged, dagger-like teeth and round, reptilian eyes.
“Leo…” I whispered in disbelief, then shouted up to him. “Don’t do this!”
He glanced at me, but quickly looked toward my left, where a huge, gray wolf and a red fox had just appeared…Bryce and Alita, I thought. My chest tightened as they bared their teeth at me, and Alec climbed over the cliff edge to our right, a white glow surrounding him. I gasped to see two ghostly top layers of needle-like teeth behind his grin and a spiny fin behind his ear.
“You know these freaks?“ Jack shouted to me.
Leo blew a stream of fire into the cliff edge that shot flames in every direction.
“Samael…” E
ve stepped in front of me. “I should have known it was you helping Ghob all this time.“
“Ah, the lovely handmaiden. You’re on borrowed time,” he said, giving her a long, slow smile. “I would watch how I spoke to the Angel of Death, were I you.”
Everyone froze, including my former friends. Alec stopped advancing and turned to the black–winged angel. “Uri?”
Another flash of lightning lit the sky, followed by a roar that shook the ground. When it passed, Alec took several steps back from the edge of the cliff he’d somehow just climbed, and Rhea dove to stand by his side. Even Leo landed not far from Bryce and Alita and stood staring at the angel in disbelief. No one except for Eve and me seemed to have been able to see him as the one she called Samael until now.
“What happened to Uri?“ Rhea shouted into the sky.
Samael laughed, flames flickering in his dark eyes. “At this very moment, he’s sulking on a bench in that ridiculous poisoned garden.”
“No, he was just here with us!” Leo shouted, every muscle in his torso clenched with the effort. “What did you do to him?”
Samael reached out toward him, and without even touching him, lifted him into the air by his throat. Leo clutched at the invisible hand, but it wasn’t any use.
“I was here with you.” Samael growled, the sound registering low in his chest and echoing off the stone surfaces all around us. He threw Leo to the ground, and both Bryce and Alita rushed over to him. “My brother wants nothing more than camaraderie among our kind. It wasn’t any harder to persuade him to orchestrate my masquerade than it was to allow me into The Garden…just for a glimpse.” He turned his gaze on Eve and gave her a lecherous smile.
“What’s he talking about?” I asked.
Eve raised her chin defiantly at the dark angel, still hovering above in flames.
“A small group of angels became obsessed with Lilith, the first of womankind, who was made from the same earth as Adam,” she began. “Samael was fascinated by her, and talked Uriel into allowing him to walk in The Garden to praise and tend Adam as God had instructed all angels and First Bloods to do,” Eve went on, all the while Samael’s fire grew, and the same disgusting grin spread across his face. “He persuaded Lilith to leave Adam. To run away with him, instead. And on the twenty-eighth day of his seduction, that’s exactly what she did.”
“Of course she did!” Samael roared. “Why would she stay bound to a mud-packed mortal when I wielded the very fire of life?” Samael raised his arms to his sides, and the flames grew all around him.
Leo met my eyes, his, tortured and pitiful. Clouded black and purple colors smeared all around him, somehow suffocating me even from several yards away.
“God was furious and commanded Lilith to return to Adam, but she refused to leave Samael,” Eve raised her voice over the angel’s boasts. “He then commanded that any children who left their cave in the desert would be put to death, and any who survived would be turned into the Lilin…incubi and succubi demons condemned to live in eternal darkness,” she shouted, as if to torment Samael. But he shot right back at her.
“How many times did I overhear Adam telling you the story of his lost love?” Samael mused. “How many times did I hear him compare you to her, and like a mindless clay tub of entrails, you did nothing.”
“Samael wanted revenge for the curse laid upon his children,” Eve continued, unflinching. “So he left Lilith to be dragged to Hell by the very three angels who were charged to kill them. Instead of helping her, he blackmailed Uriel to let him into The Garden again, where he then tried to lure me from Adam by charming Djin snakes—the most beautiful and revered of all animals at the time. He tricked them into allowing him to perch on their backs and fly him around like the king of all he surveyed. He finally sneaked Lucifer into The Garden disguised as a Djin snake, claiming he spoke for God…” she trailed off, the light around her dimming.
“Still bitter after all these millennia?” Samael sighed. “But so is Lilith. That is, until I return to her the blood of our blood.” He turned his gaze on Knox and pulled a flaming scythe from the storm cloud behind him, pointing it at Eve. “Return to the dust.”
“No!” Knox and I shouted at the same time and started running toward Eve, but he and Frankie were cut off by Alec’s snarling wolf. Alita’s fox jumped on Knox’s chest and started snapping at him as he struggled to keep her at bay.
“Stop! Didn’t you hear anything?” Leo called to them, but they ignored him even as he and Alec rushed to intervene. “They were just using us!”
Samael laughed so loudly it shook the ground again. “Ignorant half-bloods. Look at yourselves! I have no qualms about killing all of you.” His voice echoed as he lifted Knox into the air with an invisible hand. “All except the one who will lift the veil, and then return with me to Hell.”
Samael raised his scythe again at Eve, a black bolt of lightning escaping. Time seemed to stop for only a second as Max met my eyes while he ran in front of Eve—a second to say everything we hadn’t had a chance to say, or didn’t know how in the years we’d been friends.
It must have only been a second, but it was enough time for me to decide I couldn’t let his life end this way, here at the beginning of it all. He would go on to become Authorized, or maybe he would manage Mr. Burke’s store. I knew it didn’t matter because he would make life better for others in either place. My purpose was to make sure there was still a world left for him to make better.
I ran as fast as I could. I ran until I flew. And I flew until I soared into the black lightning, moving through it as it moved through me. I felt it burn every centimeter of my body from the inside out, starting in the deepest cavern of my heart, spreading through my chest, and finally searing over my skin in every direction. I wondered if this was what Lauren felt in her last few minutes on this earth. I would never know, but I did know that my last few minutes would be spent freeing Knox Ryder.
I saw the edges of the flames, my own flames, gathering in my peripheral vision and blocking out everything, every distraction until there was only Samael’s dark, incendiary eyes staring directly at me. I screamed and heard the eagle so clear and high it felt like it shattered my own eardrums, the piercing, eternal, and final declaration of who I was and what I was meant to do with my life.
The last thing I saw before the flames engulfed me was Samael’s hands—his empty, cowardly hands as he rose them to brace against our inevitable collision—until only the fire remained.
The silence had returned. The same all-encompassing vacuum between the worlds that existed on the fringes of multiple realities. One in the woods near my house. One off the edge of the cliff in the most remote corner of The Bermuda Triangle, and hundreds if not thousands more in between.
I thought about how many there might be…how many I might have seen if I only had more time.
A sea of stars filled the sky, but then seemed to flare and then burn away. I smiled at the idea of the very suns of the universe, the fires of countless worlds, all alight before my eyes. But soon there were fewer sparks, and then there were none at all. There were only red, shimmering wings streaked in gold and royal blue. They were massive, and I tried to look over my shoulder to see who could be carrying me, but I only saw what must have been hundreds of glowing blue and gold plumes behind me, the tips glowing with the last breaths of a fire. I watched the singed edges fade and the feathers swallow the smoke trails that remained. It was as if the smoke were becoming the plumes themselves. I looked over my other shoulder and saw only more of the same, but more importantly, I didn’t see Samael.
I turned to the cliff edge and found Max standing with Eve, his face awash with awe and hers with something I could feel more than see…certainty.
Alma, Petra, Silo, and Tirius all approached the edge of the cliff and held their hands out, palms down toward the sea. In seconds, a pocket of daylight beamed down around me, and the ocean below calmed, becoming smooth as glass. In the reflection, the royal blue and gold plu
mes stretched farther than I could see, and the crimson, shimmering wings were wider than the entire expanse of the cliff itself. I’d never seen this kind of bird before with its long body and graceful neck, even more colorful and elegant than the birds of paradise at Eden’s Bluff. I turned my head to see the side of its long, golden beak, and the bird’s head also turned.
I expected to be startled, to feel the prickling sensation crawling up my arms, but instead, I only felt warmth radiating through me. The reflection started to glow a soft, golden hue like the rays of sunshine beaming down. I felt myself drifting closer to the rocks where everyone stood, drawn in by Eve’s friends, the ancient First Bloods. They brought me close to them as Alma took off her orange, beaded shawl and draped it over my shoulders.
I wasn’t completely sure what I’d just seen, but I felt such a sense of peace it was almost surreal.
Max moved close to me and touched my hair. “It’s blue…” he whispered, marveling.
“The blue of the hottest fire,” Tirius, the Salamander Elemental said. “In my thousands of years on this earth, I have experienced many things, but I have never witnessed the birth of a Phoenix…until now.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Eve and the First Bloods brought Bryce, Alita, and me the most beautifully woven clothes to wear since our shifts had destroyed the ones we’d been wearing. Once we were all dressed, several minutes of awkward silence filled the air, and I wasn’t sure how to break it. Fortunately, Jack did.
Academy of Magic Collection Page 76