by S. L. Naeole
I love Graham as much, if not more than you do. He’s my best friend; I’ve known him longer than you have. But I also know that I’m not supposed to know him for the rest of his life, only for the rest of mine. Your call says that you have to keep me alive but that’s only until I die.
And I’m going to die. Sam’s not going to stop trying to kill me—he’s even more determined than he ever was before. I’m not worth one life, let alone two, Lark; I’m giving myself to Sam.
Though she had displayed vehemence and utter dislike for me just moments earlier, the face that I saw in that moment spoke of something entirely different; it was one of hopelessness and regret.
“Grace, I didn’t mean…you don’t have to-”
I shook my head as Lark’s words came softly to me, her voice hugging my mind both gently and fiercely—almost painfully—the way it always did. “I have to do this. I can’t let the people I love die because Sam screwed up and left me alive. If it’s not Graham or Robert it’ll be someone else…my dad, or Matthew…even Janice. I can’t live with that.”
I walked over to the crib and placed my hand on Matthew’s head, the soft, downy hair tickled my palm, and I felt the hot anger mixing with the even more fiery sadness, turning them into liquid emotion that fell down my cheeks and landed beside him.
“I’m sorry I’m not going to be here to see you grow up, kiddo. I wish you’d been born with a normal big sister, but you got me instead. I only hope that when you do grow up, you realize that sometimes, being normal simply means being uninteresting. There won’t be many kids out there on the playground with genuine guardian angels watching over them—you’re going to be okay, Matthew. I promise.”
I bent down and pressed a soft kiss to his warm cheek, and then turned away quickly, not wanting to see him stir again. “I’ve got to speak to my dad.”
With grave expressions on their faces, Ameila and Lark both nodded silently as I headed towards the door and into the hallway. The crowd of people that stood outside of my room had diminished somewhat, although there was still a significant amount of activity inside. I crept down the stairs and headed back into the kitchen where a blotchy, red-eyed Janice stood in front of the kitchen sink, a broken coffee mug in her hands, a puddle of brown liquid at her feet, dad standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, Grace? How’s your brother? How’s Graham?”
My mouth stopped working for a moment—not long enough for him to realize anything was wrong, of course, but long enough to quickly throw together a reasonable response.
“Matthew’s asleep and Graham’s quite a…changed person—he’s really taken to Matthew.”
“Well, that’s good. Listen kiddo, I think it would be much better if you go on back to Stacy’s, or perhaps even head up to Robert’s. Things here are going to be crazy for a while and Janice and I still have to go to the police station and answer some questions. With finals and prom coming up, the last thing you need to be thinking about is sleeping in a crime scene.”
“What about Matthew?”
“Janice needs him right now, honey. And I…I need him, too.”
It bothered me to an infinite degree that this was going to be much easier than I thought, that he was making it easy for me to go. I wanted him to ask me to stick around, to stay because he needed me, too. I wanted to tell him that I was going to stay with him forever, that I wasn’t going to leave him or Matthew or Janice, but that lie would have been harder to tell than any other lie I’d told over these past few months.
Instead, I walked up to him and hugged him. I hugged him like a little girl scared of the monsters underneath her bed. I hugged him like the young lady who had watched him embarrassingly explain the inner workings of the female body so that I wouldn’t be frightened when puberty set in. I hugged him like the teenager who’d had her heart broken by her best friend. And I hugged him like the woman I’d never become, the woman he’d never know because I knew that I’d probably never see him again.
“I love you, Dad,” I whispered against his ear, and squeezed my eyes shut as I felt his arms grow tighter and tighter, his grip growing stronger and stronger around me, and I didn’t care because I needed every ounce of it to give me the strength I needed to finally let go.
Just before our embrace grew slack, just before self-preservation took a hold of me and erased any plans I had made, Dad pulled his head back to look at me and whispered, “I love you, kiddo.” And then I saw his eyes flash with an unbearable sorrow that I knew stemmed from the death of Katie, but I couldn't help but feel like it was meant for me. I couldn’t stay there any longer. I pulled away from him and turned around, only one person left to say goodbye to.
I patted Janice on her arm, a silent farewell because there were no words I could say to lessen her grief... or prepare her for the grief that was yet to come. She lifted her head to look at me, her eyes red and tortured by loss. Her hand closed around my fingers and she patted them in return, a weak smile just barely forming on her lips—it took everything in her to give me that small gift, and I held it close to me as I walked away.
And then I was gone, out the back door and down the street again, away from the flashing lights and the curious neighbors, away from my family, before Lark swooped in and carried me off into the now early morning sky, the sun beginning to rise, the hint of dawn scaring away the darkness that had enveloped Heath, if only temporarily.
“Where are we going?” I asked when the streets were no longer familiar to me and the silence was just too much to endure any more.
“I’m taking you back to my house. If you’re going to do this, if you're going to hand your life over to Sam in order to play the damn hero then you’re going to have to be the one to tell Robert.”
“But he’s going to try and stop me,” I protested. “He’s not going to let me anywhere near Sam, and he’s definitely not going to let me sacrifice myself to protect Graham!”
“Thank you for the lesson on obviousness, Grace, I was a little behind there,” she said sarcastically. “No, you’re going to tell him because he won’t accept it coming from anyone else but you. He’s going to need to see that you’re doing this because you want to, that you came to this conclusion, this decision all on your own. He needs to be convinced that you weren’t coerced.”
"And what if he doesn't care? What if he tries to stop me anyway?"
Lark's face grew far more shadowed and mournful than I thought possible, even for an angel as she spoke the words that neither of us wanted to hear.
"Then I stop him."
HUMAN NATURE
The closer we came to that white house surrounded by the white wall and its guardian angel statues, the more nervous I became. I could feel my heart’s erratic beat, almost hear the blood shooting through my veins with each wild thump. How was I going to explain this to Robert? How was I going to be able to make him see reason when I knew that the darkness that had already begun to take over him would block out anything save the fact that I was making his sacrifice pointless.
As we passed over the wall and shrubbery, the yard and the house came into view. Lark slowed down her flight and we came to a gentle landing right in front of the rear door—the door closest to Robert’s room.
“I’m leaving you here, Grace. You have to do this on your own”
I wanted to ask her where she was going, as well as thousands of other questions that needed to be answered, but she was gone, her departure too swift and silent for me to do anything but groan in disapproval at the suddenness of it.
I stared at the emptiness she left behind, and silently fumed as I breathed words that would have gotten me grounded only a few months ago had Dad heard me say them. Lark was supposed to protect me, and yet at the first sign of trouble she was gone. But…this was how it’s supposed to be. This was my inevitable path. It had been for the past eleven years and I had cheated death long enough.
It didn’t matter anymore what
angels thought. My decision to give Sam what he wanted in exchange for Graham’s life, and to protect Robert and Lark from the cruel ironies of their calls negated whatever it was they could say about me because I would soon no longer exist.
Accepting this, I turned around to face the house.
With great reluctance, I opened the back door and let myself in, walking through the dark hall that led to the kitchen and Robert’s room. I tried to keep my head clear, and keep my heart from jumping out of my chest with nervousness so that he wouldn’t come to the conclusion that something was wrong. But, I also knew that this was Robert—he wasn’t going to believe that simply because I wasn’t rattled in some way that I was okay. If my thoughts didn’t give me away, the way my hands shook, or the way my skin suddenly became clammy would.
I stopped in front of his door, barely able to control the shaking that had now begun to spread up my arms. I knew that behind the wooden panel was the only person whose life I valued above all others, as selfish as that sounds, and who valued mine so much so that he was risking not only his life but also his soul to keep me alive; I felt overwhelmingly unworthy of such sacrifice. There was no denying it now, no matter how I might have doubted it before. Robert loved me. That knowledge, the acceptance of that was enough to get me through anything.
But now I had the herculean task of trying to somehow convince him that there was no sense in putting off the inevitable anymore. He wasn’t going to let me go that easily, no more than I was willing to let him. But when the cost of either of us living was the death of the other, there was no question that between the two of us, the world wouldn’t end if I were to die. I was merely one of billions, an insignificant blip. But the world couldn’t lose him; his contribution, his calling was far too great. He was what gave life meaning—him continuing to live would give my death meaning.
And as committed as I was to this, I couldn’t deny the part of me that screamed foul. I was being cheated out of the life I had always wanted. I had a family; a father who felt whole again after losing my mother, a little brother who would need someone to protect him from the bullies who would tease him for being related to me. I had a stepmother who tried to be what I needed, rather than what she thought I wanted. My best friend and I were closer than ever, and I had new friends who were just as much a part of my family as they could be.
And, more importantly, I had someone who wanted to be with me forever. It felt wholly unfair and I couldn’t appreciate what lesson this was meant to teach me because all I was feeling was complete and utter despair.
And so I stood in front of Robert’s room with this weighing down on me like the world itself, trying to hide it with a determination that was waning with each passing moment. My weary eyes stared at his door; it was closed, no light peeking in from underneath—it was like a reminder that there was no hope for me now.
I steeled myself, silently promising to keep my emotions from taking over, to allow common sense and logic to win out any argument that he would throw at me because I knew, down to my bones, that it wouldn’t take much for him to convince me to stay with him forever…
I took a deep breath, filling up my lungs to full capacity to prevent any excited utterances from escaping my lips, and I raised my hand to knock on the solid, wooden surface…only to find that the door had opened, Robert’s chest now pressing up against my fist.
I looked at him, the words, the argument I had quickly put together in my head disappearing the instant I took in the haggard and forlorn expression that marred the beauty of his face. The lines that formed in the pucker between his brows and the downward turn of his mouth were just mere glimpses of the turmoil that churned within him. He grabbed my wrist in his firm hand and yanked me inside, the door slamming shut behind me with an almost eerie finality.
“Do not do this,” he whispered to me, his voice gravelly.
“There’s nothing left to do, Robert,” I replied with false stubbornness, biting my lip to keep it from quivering.
“There’s everything left to do – I can get Graham back. I can keep your family safe.”
“How?” I asked him desperately. “Even if all of that were possible, eventually the consequences of not answering your call would make things so dangerous for the both of us that Lark would separate us and I might never see you again. That’s worse than either of us dying because we’ll both know that the other is alive, and that we can’t be with each other—I can’t live with that. At least this way, I’ll know that the people I love will be safe, I’ll know that you’ll still be alive, and you’ll know that nothing could hurt me anymore.”
He shook his head at my words, tossing them from his memory like scattering dew from a shaking leaf. “Being alive without you would be no life at all. Existing merely to exist was what I spent the past fifteen hundred years doing—now that I know what living is, what loving you is, fifteen seconds without you would be unendurable.”
“There’s no other way,” I said hopelessly, my entire body starting to shake from the sheer impact of feeling the time I had left with him growing shorter and shorter with each second that ticked by. “I can’t allow you and Lark to grow to hate each other because of me. I can’t allow my family to end up getting picked off one by one just so I can continue to count the days until you’re gone, too. I can’t live with that, Robert.”
Robert gathered me into his arms and held me against him, my stomach twisting and rolling like a disturbed shoreline whose waves were crashing onto the shore as I inhaled his scent of leather and sweetness, never wanting to leave the enclave that kept me safe from everything but myself. He began to rub my back with slow, languid strokes, and the shaking turned to shivers when his breath tickled my ear as he bent his head down to whisper soft words of love and regret, heartbreak and unfulfilled dreams.
I felt my eyes fill with the tears that I had silently promised myself I wouldn’t shed. There was so much left to do, so much left to see and say and the fact that there simply wasn’t enough time in the world for any of it only made things worse.
“There’s time,” he insisted, hearing my fears as though I had shouted them out loud. “There’s time for everything.”
“Time for what? I don’t know when Lark is going to come back, but she will and…I’m afraid that when she does, I won’t want to leave you.”
It was as honest as anything I’ve ever said to him. He knew it and it broke the both of us, knowing that the next time we separated, it would be forever.
“I can’t let you do this,” he said firmly, his arms tightening around me, my heart thudding in my chest so violently, it felt like a desperate animal trying to claw through to his own silent one. I smiled sadly as I thought of the lyrics to the song I associated with him, with how I felt about him. How true it was that my heart beat for only him.
“Grace, don’t do this. Stay with me—be with me.”
I raised my head, the sudden stillness in my breathing taking away any words I might have otherwise been able to say in response.
“Be with me, Grace. Damn the consequences, damn the Seraphim, the rules, damn everything. We may not have been meant to be together, but we’re here together now. We’ve wasted too much time already—I’ve wasted too much time.” He pulled away from me just long enough to swiftly remove his soft grey shirt, the buttons popping off and scattering around our feet as he did so.
“I’ve denied this to the both of us because I didn’t want to do anything that would hurt you. I didn’t want to give anyone else any further reason to harm you, but there’s no purpose, no point in abstaining any longer if you’re not even going to fight to live. I want to be with you, Grace. I want to hold you and love you—please.”
The blood in my body screamed at the sight of him, my hands splayed on his bare chest, gently resting there as he pulled me back against him. His skin was just as perfect, just as smooth and taut as I knew it would be, warm and firm beneath my itching fingertips. I had never taken the time to appreciate wha
t he looked like when he had given his shirt to me at the hospital, and I knew now that had I, I might have never left.
“Should I feel threatened by that?” he chuckled softly as he covered my hands with his own. His smile faded when he noticed that one hand was held directly over his heart, the unmoving flesh beneath my palm contrasting quite pointedly with the soft pulse that echoed down to his. “Does it bother you?”
I shook my head and leaned my face in closer, pressing a warm kiss to the spot that contained the most precious thing this earth held for me. “I only wish mine could beat for you forever.”
I raised my head suddenly and looked at him with a steely determination. There was something I wanted, something that I knew I had to do in order to ensure that my plans weren’t fruitless.
“I want to turn. I want to do it now. If for nothing else, so that you know that I wanted to spend forever with you.”
His hands left my own with startling speed, moving up to embrace my face so lovingly, so gently it nearly broke my heart. He wove his fingers into my hair as he brought my forehead to his, our breathing quickening as our thoughts mingled. I’ve waited a lifetime to hear those words.
I’ve waited a lifetime to say them.
He smiled at me, a slow, lazy, pleased smile that did things to the insides of me, and I fought very hard to keep from changing my mind and telling him that we could wait for that, too. He chuckled at my runaway thoughts and without another word, pulled me into his arms and lifted my feet off of the ground, swinging my legs into the crook of one strong arm while my back rested against the other.
I looped my own arms around his neck, securing them with a knot of my fingers, and watched with the same unyielding awe I always felt. The black plumes swallowed up every color around us, returning it to anything that had the privilege in a dark, rainbow sheen as they unfurled from his naked back, the muscles that strained and tightened as the two massive, feathered limbs pulled away from his flesh, stretching and filling the room. They soon blocked out any light that streamed through the wall of windows that stood directly behind us.