SHATTERED: SECRET SOCIETY OF SOULS, BOOK 1

by K. C. RILEY

  “Lots of things. Nothing.” Jake stayed perched on the ledge without a care in the world of slipping or falling to his death.

  “All right. I’m done.” I was tired of working for scraps.

  I was almost back at the door when I felt a gust of wind and Jake’s body behind me.

  His hands braced my shoulders as he whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. But you don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “I’m not trying to get myself into anything,” I said as my kneecaps melted like butter.

  Jake pulled me closer into him. My heart sped up and my throat went dry. The soothing energy of him being that close had wrapped itself around me.

  “Do you still trust me?” He said.

  I couldn’t think. Jake’s breath at my ear, his body, it was all intoxicating. I wanted more of it. And more of him. I wanted to say yes. But how? There were so many secrets.

  The doorknob creaked. Someone was coming.

  “There’s no time.” Jake grabbed my hand. And crap…in the blink of an eye, we were both standing on the ledge. “Do you trust me or not?”

  Was he out of his freaking mind? My voice froze as I looked down at the ground below. Fear seized my legs. I was too scared to do or say anything.

  “I can’t make you jump. But there’s only one way you’ll ever know the truth. That I will never let you fall.”

  Whoever was at the door, their footsteps clucked closer. “Who’s there?” An older woman’s voice called. “You’re not supposed to be up here. You’re in big trouble.”

  Trouble was not what I needed. Jake looked into my eyes. He then jumped off the ledge. The woman was almost there.

  And, well, shit. I jumped too.

  16

  My breath seized. The weight and speed of my body falling came to a complete stop in Jake’s arms. The adrenaline rush to my brain flooded my senses. The air was electrical against my skin. And my ears hummed to the overwhelming sound of feathered wings that flapped and glistened black as midnight. Jake was an angel.

  He descended into the forest as light as a feather while still holding me close to his body. With my arm locked around his neck and my hand against the warmth of his bare chest, I stared at the symbols that glowed in a blue-white light from underneath his skin. They were as beautiful and as ancient as the first time I had seen them. So was the black fire that flickered in his eyes.

  Jake gently landed me onto my feet. “I’m a Fallen.”

  “What’s a—”

  Before I could finish, Jake pressed his lips into mine.

  A sensation rushed over me, like a tsunami of warmth that unraveled me from my head to my toes, and back up again. All I could think and feel was how much I wanted him. How he quaked and unearthed every fiber of my being. And how for the first time in my life, I felt...real, alive.

  Jake’s lips gently parted from mine with a smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first day I met you.”

  “You mean in Zander’s tub?” I laughed out loud at the craziness of it. I had imagined kissing Jake a hundred times since that night. But none of it compared to the real thing. Let alone, kissing a freaking angel.

  “You still want answers?” Jake asked.

  My body buzzed all over. Especially, my head and my nose. Sure, I wanted answers, but there were other things I had in mind as well.

  I nodded.

  Jake took my hand and placed it over his heart. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said still trying to coordinate my words and make sense of it all.

  Jake was about to kiss me again. And I might have been as high as a kite, but this time my lips met his first.

  My mom’s death, the guilt, the whispers, and the months of fear and paranoia of going insane bubbled to the surface. But then it all melted away. Every last bit of it. With my hand at his heart and my lips locked onto his, I could no longer feel where I ended, and Jake began. I had become not only his heart, but the very blood that pumped through it.

  Jake’s energy, feeling one with him, shattered my body into a thousand pieces. The only thing left was me as pure light speeding through the ages of time.

  Before my eyes, decades turned to centuries and centuries to millennia. And millennia turned to one point of ecstatic bliss, one big bang and explosion of desire and love I could never put into words, universes, planets, stars, and galaxies all unfolding at the same time. Including Jake, the moment he was born. He was the first being of light, the first...angel.

  In the blink of an eye, there were others like him. I could see the beginning of everything not just through Jake’s eyes, but through something bigger. Omniscient. I was there when Jake unwrapped himself as a serpent with three pairs of wings that burned in celestial gold and cosmic fire. He was pure light and consciousness. He was beautiful. He was a seraph.

  I kissed Jake deeper as my body and soul craved more. It was like Jake could feel the hunger and took me further into him.

  Life continued to explode inside of me as his mouth explored deeper into mine.

  Thousands upon thousands of angels swirled in the formation of a tunnel. There was a light at the end of it that shined like the sun. They all sang with pure hearts, The one is the many, and the many is the one. Their minds and thoughts were all connected. I could feel them as myself. It was so beautiful, a tear streamed down my cheek.

  The white sun at the end of the tunnel called out to me, its force gently pulling me toward it. It wanted to show me something, something I needed to know.

  Jake’s kiss grew deeper. Hungry and intense. So did mine.

  I was almost there, close to the source of light and energy, but Jake broke the kiss.

  Out of breath, I managed to say, “Why did you stop?”

  “That was as much as your body could take. As much as I could take.” Jake smiled as he panted.

  Except for the look of being stoned, the fire in his eyes had disappeared. I could still feel him inside of me. Me inside of him. Kissing Jake was like kissing the cosmos and something beyond.

  “You’re an angel,” I said, still breathless and high. “A seraph.”

  Jake’s smile fell flat as he looked toward the ground. “Not anymore.”

  I reached my hand up to his face. Despite the euphoria I had just experienced, there was a pain that roared from Jake’s heart, a darkness that equaled my own.

  Eyes of shame and regret lifted up at me.

  I could feel what had happened and wanted nothing more than to kiss him again to take the pain away. “You were the first created. But you fell from the White Sun.”

  “In more ways than one. Riley was my twin seraph. She was born right after I was. Or I should say she took longer to unravel her wings. When I made the choice to descend, she wouldn’t let me do it alone. The light was stripped from both of us, and we became the Fallen, angels that were either damned or lost. ”

  “I don’t think you’re damned at all. Stubborn, but not damned.”

  Jake laughed, collapsing the weight of guilt, despair, and darkness that sat on his shoulders. “You’re good at that.”

  “Good at what?”

  “Making me laugh.”

  Jake then stared at me in a way that made me feel seen. Like I wasn’t a reject or crazy. And yet, even if those things were true, and at times they were, Jake made me feel like they were perfect as they were, like they were things I didn’t need to hide or runaway from.

  The warmth of his gaze didn’t last long. His brows knitted themselves into something more serious. “I have a lot to tell you. And there’s not much time,” he said. “Riley was looking for something she tracked to All Saints. The amulet in the file you opened, it has the power to return us to the White Sun.”

  The amulet again. I thought about the map in my head and had a bad feeling in my stomach that the map was the way to the amulet. And if that was the case... I didn’t want to think about it. I was bathing in bliss.<
br />
  “If Riley could track it here, so could anyone else,” Jake continued. “The notes in that file, the stone, you need to stay away from all of it. It’s dangerous. It cost Riley her life.”

  “How could Riley die if she was an angel?”

  “Fallen angels can be killed with the right magic. It would take a powerful witch to do so, but it’s possible. There haven’t been any that strong in a long time until now. Promise me you’ll leave this alone. Stay away from what you found, and stay away from the stone.”

  What was I going to say? Too late? He wouldn’t have to worry about me looking for it, especially if there was some crazy powerful witch on the loose protecting it.

  Jake pulled me in closer, “Promise me.”

  Another wave of euphoria flooded over me at the sound of his voice. I was so buzzed I couldn’t think straight, if at all, and barely got the words out, “I promise.”

  Still wobbly, Jake took my hand, and we strolled through the forest in the moonlight. As crazy as it sounded, my senses continued to heighten from his kiss. My first kiss.

  “My eyes,” I said. Everything in the dark was wrapped in its own halo of light. The trunk and leaves of the trees. Each blade of wild grass that blew and bent in the wind. Even the insects and night creatures that crawled and scurried over the ground. It was like darkness and light were one thing. Beautiful.

  It takes some getting used to. Jake spoke, but not with his mouth.

  You’re not...We’re not... I was dumbfounded.

  Talking with our mouths? Yeah. We melded. My heart to your heart. My mind to your mind, he said. You’re still seeing through my eyes just like I’m seeing through yours.

  I felt like Alice in Wonderland and couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear at the world that unfolded around me, a forest of foliage and trees glowing in neon colors of oranges, purples, blues, greens, and hot pinks. Shades, tones, and textures I had no idea existed.

  Jake smiled, squatted, and pulled me toward him to the ground. Give me your hand. He placed my hand to the earth. Listen. Feel.

  The ground beneath my fingers pulsed with the beat of a heart.

  Jake’s eyes glistened. It’s the earth. She’s the true magic.

  Energy ran up from the ground into my fingers, my hand, and my body. I felt like a Goddess, alive, and full of power.

  Everything around me breathed and pulsed as one living thing.

  Am I dreaming? Is this real?

  More real than the world you live in. Jake’s lips met mine with gentle kisses. He suddenly pulled back. His eyes had ignited into flames of fire again. There was a holy warmth to them, the beautiful shadows that burned and flickered with the aliveness of night.

  I ran my fingers through his hair and pulled him toward me. I then kissed him softly on his upper lip. And then softly at his lower. It’s all beautiful.

  Jake smiled and interlocked his fingers into mine. We continued to stroll through the forest without words or questions. I savored every moment of it, the magic. The simplicity of it all.

  We must have strolled for hours.

  By the time we had gotten back to the girls’ dorms, my super powered vision and Goddess status had almost returned to normal. Talking telepathically was gone. And even though I was still buzzed and flying higher than a kite, glimpses of my world, and all the fears and self-consciousness that went with it, began to creep in.

  “I’ve got to know,” I said. “Are you and Meghan together?”

  “No. We’re not. We never have been. And Meghan is complicated. Dangerous. You should stay away from her.”

  No argument there. I looked up at the sky. The sun was close to coming up.

  “It’s late. I know you have more questions, I promise I’ll answer them, but—”

  “Just one more,” I said, still wrapped in his essence. “Why did you choose to fall from the White Sun?”

  Jake’s eye’s plunged deeper into my soul. “I was in love with a human. A girl.” He reached over and grazed my cheek with his thumb. “In so many ways you remind me of her. Stubborn, beautiful, smart, sexy, but sensitive with a mind of your own.”

  I gushed and snorted at the thought of being sexy. “What happened to her?”

  “I lost her. She died.”

  What was I thinking? Me and my stupid questions. “Sorry.” I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know everything about him.

  “It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

  The tone in the air felt like it was about to take a nose dive. I needed to do something. Quick. “So, what’s an angel doing working in a café, anyway?”

  Jake chuckled. And that was a good sign. “Good point. And I thought you said only one more question.”

  I shrugged.

  “All right,” he said. “Have you ever wanted to feel normal? Feel like there was somewhere you belonged and you weren’t just an outsider looking in?”

  “Yeah. I have.” My entire life. “One more question. I swear.”

  Jake smiled while looking into my eyes. “You’ve got to go to bed.”

  “Oh come on. Just one more.”

  “One more,” he grunted.

  “How old are you?”

  “I was wondering when you would get to that,” he said. “Time is different here. But I would say I’m roughly about 4,000 years old.”

  “Holy...”

  “Shhhh.” Jake giggled and tried to cover my mouth with his hands. “You’ll wake everyone up.”

  A couple of lights flicked on from the windows of the dorm, and we both went dead quiet.

  Four thousand years old? I mouthed. How was I supposed to process that? But then again, after the night I’d had, did I really care?

  “You better go before you get us in trouble.” Jake’s smile was beautiful. Contagious.

  “Right. An angel in trouble?” I didn’t want to leave Jake’s side. But he was right. It was beyond late. I reluctantly let go of his hand and was about to say goodnight.

  He grabbed my pinky and pulled me in for a deep kiss. He moaned. The vibration of it echoed through my heart and chest. “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said.

  “What?” I asked with a stupid grin on my face.

  “Do you have a date?”

  “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  “You heard me,” he grumbled.

  “I’m not sure I did,” I said teasing.

  “Do you have a date for the Homecoming Ball or not?”

  “Hmmm. That depends on whose asking.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “Then no, I don’t,” I finally said.

  “So, you told Christopher no?”

  “How did you know he asked?”

  “Word gets around.” Jake grinned. “Well? Do you want to go with me?”

  I couldn’t help myself. “I’m sorry, could you say that one more time?” I was having too much fun.

  Jake sighed with another smile. “Elizabeth Maverick. Would you like to attend the Homecoming Ball with me?”

  “Why, yes, I would,” I said, almost bursting out of my skin.

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  “Goodnight then,” he said.

  “Goodnight.” I grinned as we finally parted. The sun was about to rise. We had lost all track of time, but who cared?

  I...had a date...with an angel.

  17

  It was 5:02 a.m. by the time I got back to my room. Even my bed felt like it was floating on clouds.

  I woke up later that morning, bright and blissful. I stretched and yawned, ready to take on the world until I looked at my phone.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” It wasn’t still morning, it was 12:00 p.m. And crap. Josie was going to kill me. I was supposed to have met her and Cassie three hours ago.

  Red angry emoticons rolled across my phone with death threats. Yep, today was the day I was going to die. I then thought about Jake’s lips pressed against mine. And sweet baby Jesus, I didn’t care. In spite of a night I w
ould never forget for the rest of my life, I promised the girls I would get things done.

  Before jumping out of bed, I scrolled through all of Josie’s text. They were all relatively simple except for one, a text about an email she sent me a couple of days ago. Something about working out the details with the caterers on food allergies and a special menu request by some of the alumni. Double crap.

  How did I miss that? I was about to burst into hysteria when another text came through, but this time from Kai.

  Stay away from the dance...promise me you’ll stay away...

  I thought Kai was long gone by now. He never returned any of my texts. I wrote him back asking him what he was talking about, and if he was okay. I waited, and nothing. I couldn’t figure out why he was acting so weird. Creepy. Maybe I had him all wrong.

  There was no time. With no response, I texted Josie.

  I’m on it. No worries. All taken care of.

  A total lie. Another slew of steaming red emoticons erupted with Josie’s reply.

  Did you send the new headcount to the caterers? There’s not enough food. We’re short by 15 people.

  New headcount? I rechecked my emails. And damn it. She was right. What was wrong with me? Aside from Jake’s kiss. I texted her back.

  Don’t worry. I’m on it.

  It was weird how fast the words came out. Somehow, I could see all the layers and solutions to the problem at one time. The first thing I did was call Vye. There was a platter of frozen hors d'oeuvres in the freezer Vye had made for a wedding that went south before it ever got started. Something about a runaway bride. I told Vye about the list of food allergies. She jumped on both the opportunity to cater for the school and clear the freezer out. The catch was I had to help her cook. There was no other way. That meant I would be late for wardrobe. I told Vye I could be there in thirty minutes and then texted Josie the plan.

  I heard nothing back from Josie, which was a clear sign she was pissed. I was just about to leave to go shower and opened the door.

  Meghan stood there, grinning. “Oh good, you’re up. Heard you had a late night. Headmaster Wheeler wants to see you immediately. Something about being in the boys’ dorms.” She then held up her phone with pictures of me leaving the boys’ dorms the night of the game.