Black Halo (Grace Series)

by S. L. Naeole

  My eyes opened, and my mind flashed through every memory I had of that night, both the ones that were my own and those that had been shared with me through Robert. I scrutinized Ameila's face, the pale, gold glow that surrounded her, and then it clicked. "You. You were there. You were the reason I ended up outside of the car."

  Her head bobbed down once in confirmation. "Yes, I was there, but I did not save you, Grace. I couldn’t interfere without it being known and my path did not allow me to do so. How you ended up outside of the car cannot be explained, but why Samael did not kill you outside of the car can.”

  I looked at her, perplexed as she looked past me, her eyes darting between Sam and Robert and finally my father. “Why do you think Samael let you live all those years ago when he’s proven that he’d stop at nothing to hurt you?"

  "Because he's a serial screw-up," I replied, as though the answer were the most obvious thing in the world.

  "No. No, Grace. He’s been fulfilling his call for thousands of years. He would have known if he'd only taken one life. Samael took two lives in that car that night, Grace. Two lives. Do you understand what I’m saying?"

  I shook my head. There was too much information swimming in my head to accept anything else. Especially this.

  “Your mother was pregnant when she died, Grace. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, her body changed, allowing her to conceive a human child, one whose beating heart was wholly indistinguishable from your own, one that Samael would not have expected, could not have expected. He did take two lives that day. He was not wrong in that, but the lives that he took were those of your mother and your little sister.”

  My mind blanked. I had no words, no thoughts. Just empty air.

  "Why'd you tell her?" I heard Dad demand as he pushed his way towards us. Graham followed close behind, his entire demeanor protective as he approached, quickly taking me into his arms and holding me against him while I looked between my father and Ameila, mortified by the avalanche of secrets that seemed to be never ending. "She didn't need to know that," my father shouted angrily.

  "I won't keep the truth from her anymore, James," Ameila said in a defeated tone. "She needs to know while there's still time."

  "Time for what?" Graham demanded.

  "Time to save Robert," I answered.

  We all turned to look at him; he had his back to us, its sinuous lines now just as dark as his wings. He leaned forward, his body tensing, tightening like a spring just before release as Samael waited with an almost merry sort of eagerness that surely looked out of place to everyone else, but to me, I knew exactly where it was coming from, and why.

  "This has to happen, Grace. You see that now. When I first spoke to you about being with N’Uriel, I told you that I feared you’d be hurt. I wasn’t lying."

  "I know," I said softly.

  "Grace," Dad interjected, but I shook my head.

  "Ameila’s right, Dad. I came here so that Sam could finish what he started. If you’re really an EP, then you know what’s wrong with Robert. If I don’t die, he will, and Sam’s going to make sure that he takes everyone I care about with him.”

  I turned away, disgusted by own explanation. The words acted like bile in my throat, and my stomach churned at the vision that formed in my mind if Sam got what he wanted.

  “Grace, please. There’s got to be another way. There’s always another way,” Dad pleaded, but I couldn’t let the strings that tugged at my heart pull me away from what I had come here to do.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry that I had to keep all of this a secret from you—it’s what I thought was the best thing for everyone, what I thought—” it was like a rubber band snapped inside of me, a sharp sting of realization. “Holy crap.”

  “What?” Graham asked.

  I turned to face Dad.

  “You didn’t tell me about you and mom because you wanted to keep me safe. Robert did the same thing when he kept the truth about Sam from me. And then I did it to you. I thought not telling you anything would keep you safe. God, I’m so stupid!”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know that you don’t have to do this,” Janice said out loud, her voice a blending of a half-sob, half-choking sound.

  Graham’s head bobbed in agreement. “Yeah, Grace. We can figure something out. Your dad was right; there’s always another way.”

  My head twisted from the doubt that I knew could never be wiped away with word-laced embraces from those I loved the most, no matter how much I wished it could.

  “I have to do this,” I said firmly. “Dad, you know I do.”

  My eyes flicked over to Sam’s, and though they were practically lost in the black void that was his face, I could almost see a slight glimmer of satisfaction there that confirmed for me what I knew I simply couldn’t let happen. Robert had been right. He would not win.

  Quickly, I took in Robert’s movements and knew that my time was up. He could no longer hear the thoughts of anyone else, and this quiet allowed for the darkness inside of him to scream the loudest. He was darkness.

  He lowered himself into a full crouch, one hand, fingers stretched out, touched the ground. The other rested on a bent knee. A low rumbling sound was flowing out of him, like an engine hungry for a taste of its own power.

  I threw my arms around Graham and kissed his cheek. The salt of his tears stung the cut on my lip, but I didn’t care. “Take care of Lark. I love you, Frank,” I whispered against his cheek.

  “I love you, too, Rocky,” he answered me in kind, his voice hoarse.

  I pulled away from his with as much speed as I could manage and turned to face my father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I managed to get out before he pulled me into a suffocating embrace, his wet face pressed against mine.

  “Don’t apologize to me, kiddo. Not after everything that’s happened, after everything that I’ve done.” I could hear his ragged breathing, the silent sobs that shook his body too painful for me to endure any longer.

  “You’re going to have to let me go, Dad,” I whispered as I eased away from him.

  “I love you, Grace.” His voice was weighted down with so much he couldn’t say that it cracked. My own was on the verge of doing the same when he finally let me go.

  “I love you, Dad,” I managed to say before I turned and gave Janice a rueful smile. She had been thrown headfirst into something she hadn’t signed up for, and the shock of it all could be seen in the deep lines that framed her mouth. “Take care of him,” I whispered.

  I looked at Ameila, saw the turmoil she was in, but I felt no sympathy for her right then. “Get them out of here,” was all I could say before the sound I had been dreading filled my ears.

  It had begun. Robert could handle the call’s taunting no longer, and he’d launched himself at his former friend, the target closest to him, the target that beckoned and mocked him all at the same time. They were equal balls of darkness that gravitated towards each other, each fighting to consume the other.

  I had no choice. I knew where my fate would take me, I had accepted it. I gave my family one last look, one last gaze before telling them to run.

  And then I ran after Robert.

  MATE

  “Robert, no!” my terrified voice cried out as he threw himself at Sam’s laughing form. My feet couldn’t push me fast enough, my useless arm acting like an anchor that held me back as my other arm pumped alongside me.

  I turned to throw out a final warning while I still could in case no one had heard my first one. “Go! Get out of here—Ameila, please get them out of here!” I didn’t stop to see if any of them heeded what I said. I had to trust that Ameila wouldn’t let them linger, wouldn’t let Sam get what he wanted after all.

  The sound of metal striking each other, the solid, iron clang filled the night as Robert’s fist collided into the side of Sam’s face. Sam’s head was thrown to the side by the blow, but unlike any movie scene, there was no blood, no lost teeth. Instead, Sam’s hand rubbed his jaw and smiled,
the white teeth shining like tiny tiles against his dark skin.

  “Is that it? You hit like a girl. A human girl.”

  Sam’s hand swung back, the motion slow and lazy, before lurching forward and landing solidly beneath Robert’s chin, forcing him off his feet and soaring into the air. It was a graceful display, despite the macabre image it made, this dark, black-winged angel reeling from such a powerful strike. He flipped back, his wings slowing his descent before landing firmly on the ground.

  With negligent flicks of his feet, he kicked off his shoes, sending them flying somewhere, probably never to be seen again. “And was that your demonstration of how one should properly throw a punch? If so, I think I’d rather take lessons from the human,” he sniped before kicking off of the ground, his bare toes leaving deep gouges in the grass.

  He collided into Sam’s chest, his hands on Sam’s shoulders as he shoved him into the ground. Sam’s hands flung back in a feeble attempt to stop himself from being forced deeper into the soil. Robert’s fist raised and then lowered quickly, once, twice, over and over, each blow sending Sam sinking into the earth, taking Robert with him.

  A muffled growl preceded Robert being kicked backwards. The act caught him by surprise and this time, he barely caught himself in time before landing on the ground, one knee delving into the soil, his feet, pushing the grass behind them into waves of silvery green. Sam emerged from the ground covered in deep brown soil.

  “Trying to bury me so soon? I think you forgot how this is supposed to end, brother,” he snarled before bolting towards Robert like a rocket, the force lifting him off of the ground and sending their two bodies soaring through the air several dozen yards, landing in a ball of feathers and spines.

  My fear for Robert’s safety pushed aside any fear I felt for myself as I continued to run towards them. I fought the urge to call out to him again, knowing that if I distracted him it might give Sam the edge he needed to overtake Robert. As it was, they were evenly matched, though the rage that crept through Robert, coupled with the darkness that had completely taken him over was slowly making him stronger, faster, focused.

  And this is what urged me on. Ameila’s words of destruction, Sam’s desire to see it, Robert’s vow to not live without me; I couldn’t let any of that happen. I fought against the burning in my side to reach them, one completely oblivious to my approach, the other gleefully awaiting it.

  “I think-” I heard Sam say as I reached them, his head turning to me “-I’ll try something different.”

  And then he was gone. Robert’s gaze traveled upwards, and mine followed, but the sky was dark, and Sam was lost in it. My eyes could see nothing though I knew he was there. Robert, however, knew exactly where he was and with a rumbling sound that seemed to pour out of him, amplified by the quiet darkness, threw himself into the black sky above us.

  The sound of feet landing behind me startled me, and a hand clamped over my mouth to muffle my cry of surprise. I tried but could not turn around as the feeling of something sharp buried itself into my sides, locking me in place. I bit out a scream, and the hand pressed even harder against my face, a sharp thumb pressing into the side of my nose, the heel of the hand nearly crushing my jaw as the pain in my sides grew.

  “Such sweet, soft flesh, sister,” a dark whisper brushed across my ear. And then the hand was gone, he was gone.

  I collapsed to the ground and looked at my thighs, horrified by the sight of blood that began to seep through two holes that had been torn in my sweatpants. I rubbed my hand against them and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized they were only superficial, though they burned as though the skin itself had been singed.

  But they weren’t the only injuries that Sam had inflicted; I felt the trickle of something warm and wet run down my sides. With my swollen hand, I eased the hem of my shirt up and saw that there were three more holes, these much larger and deeper, pierced into my hip and side of my abdomen. I didn’t have to look to know that there was a matching set on my other side, and I lowered my shirt, knowing that there was no point in trying to stop the bleeding.

  This was going to end somehow, but I was damned if I was going to let it end the way Sam wanted it. With a grunt, I somehow forced myself up, holding myself steady against the ground with my enlarged hand, biting away the scream that built up inside of me at the pain.

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, you bastard,” I cursed as I stumbled forward on unsteady feet.

  Like a drop of black rain, Robert fell from the sky, landing in front of me with his wings flared out behind him, a black cloak that caused me to step back before I shook my head and forced myself towards him. I was not going to fear him.

  “Robert,” I said in as steady a voice as I could manage, the pain in my sides impeding the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed. “Robert, don’t listen to Sam. Don’t listen to what he tells you. Listen to me, listen to my voice. Listen to me tell you that I love you. I love you. Don’t let anything else get in the way of that.”

  He looked at me but I couldn’t make out his emotions, everything about him was so dark and lost to me. Even his voice was tainted with the hopelessness of the rage that festered inside of him like a raw wound. I felt his gaze on me like a brand, and I knew what he was looking at, knew that he was seeing the growing red stains that stretched down the length of me, knew that I was in pain and fighting it because of him, because I needed to be with him, to keep him safe.

  “You’re hurt.” It was a rough observation, one that was more cut and dry than concerned.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “It’s minor.”

  “You’re lying to me. I can hear your heart; it’s stressed.”

  “I’m not lying, Robert. I checked them, they’re not that deep. And of course it’s stressed—we’re not exactly having a party here,” I cracked, hoping that the sarcasm would cover the strain in my voice that could not hide the lie.

  There was a flicker of something in those dark eyes, and he raised his hand and placed it against my side, squeezing it gently.

  “Aaah,” I cried out before tumbling into his arms.

  “These aren’t minor,” he said to me in a reproachful tone.

  “I’ll live,” I quipped, knowing that this time, I was lying openly and hating myself for it.

  “Let me heal you.” He pressed his hand against the bloody stain but I shook my head.

  “There’s no time.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Sam laughed as he dropped down from above us like a black cloud of bubbling hatred, pulling Robert away from me and flinging him into the air. “She’s going to die, N’Uriel,” he shouted. “The question isn’t a matter of when anymore, but rather how will that happen? Will she bleed to death while we’re playing our little game of cat and mouse, or will I strangle her? Perhaps I’ll simply snap her neck like a twig and be rid of her. What say you, brother? I so want it to be a physical death, though I know you prefer the more instantaneous sort. You always were too soft for your own good.”

  He reached down and grabbed me by my throat, lifting me up, the sickly grin of his having never left his face. “It is a shame that she’s only a human after all. We could have shared her. Or I could have at least spent some time getting to know her as well as you have. She does taste sweet, though, I’ll give you that much. Perhaps it’s because she’s forbidden fruit, but those are always the most succulent kind to pl-”

  A blur of black melting into more darkness silenced Sam’s disgusting taunts as he was torn away from me, the violent separation sending me sprawling onto the ground, landing on my dislocated shoulder. A half-scream, half-grunt of pain rushed out of my mouth as the force pushed everything back into place with a sickening pop.

  I lay there for a minute, taking deep breaths in order to cope with shooting a pain that stretched from my neck to the tips of my fingers. Gingerly, I sat up and raised my arm to inspect it, pleased that, despite the throbbing, I could at least move it; the pain could
be ignored, I told myself, so long as it worked.

  What I saw left me in a state of shock. The purple-black bruising that had begun in my hands now engulfed my entire arm. I looked at my other arm and saw the same necrotic colored flesh stretching past my elbows and up to my shoulders. I couldn’t bring myself to lift up my shirt to see how far the blackness had traveled, and instead focused on the tumbling of bodies in front of me.

  “Robert,” I said in a breathless whisper as I pushed myself off of the ground and rushed towards them, not knowing how I would be able to stop this madness but knowing that I had to try something, anything.

  Robert, Robert, Robert.

  I stilled.

  The voice in my head was my own and yet, it wasn’t.

  Robert.

  I shook my head, as though the thought would fall out like water from plugged ears, but instead the voice continued. I began to run again, faster this time.

  Robert, Robert, Robert. Over and over, Robert’s name filled my mind, the sound of it, every syllable, every nuance to his name becoming its own individual thought. Each thought took on an almost musical like quality, a note on a scale that I soon realized was its own song, and it was playing to the rhythm of the trampling beat of my heart as it raced along with my feet in a desperate need to reach him, help him.

  Save him. Save him. Robert.

  I saw the look of glee, the sickly smile that stretched across Sam’s face, nearly reaching his ears as he had Robert’s face in a blackened grip and was releasing an unending stream of blows with his head, fist, and swipes with the claws that had once been his wings.

  I gathered up what strength I could and threw myself towards him, not caring about the stabbing pain in my sides, or the charred looking limbs that swung beside me as they pumped, pushing me forward. I landed hard against him, my arms wrapping themselves around his chest, the force of my intrusion having no affect on him, but it was enough to cause Sam to hold off on his assault.