by Abra Ebner
It was true.
I said the first thing that came to mind. “So, you really can read my thoughts.” My cheeks blushed, wondering if he knew all the other thoughts as well—namely the ones involving the level of attraction I’d had for him—still had for him.
Max grabbed me around the waist, his strength suddenly overwhelming, yet soft. His arm caged me, finding my body fit into his like a lock and key. He winked with a knowing smirk, making me feel further mortified. “Some of them,” he whispered. “But that ring I gave you protects you from most of that. Touching you makes it pretty clear, though.” He released me and I leaned away.
He had a sudden air of arrogance around him that he hadn’t before, as though his wings validated confidence. I looked down at the ring. My hand floated in the small space between us, unable to hide my amusement. “From your grandfather, huh?” I lifted my brow. I was surprisingly calm and confident, despite the circumstances—despite the wings.
Max shrugged.
“Was anything you told me before the truth?” First it was the fact that his grandfather is actually his little brother, and now the fact that the ring was a gift from him. Then… the wings? What else was a lie?
“It also protects you from Greg,” he protested. “Most of all him.”
I looked at the wings once more, seeing they moved just like any other limb, with as much ease as any skilled bird. I had to believe him now; there was no other choice. But why wasn’t I more surprised?
“Do you believe me now?” His head was low, but his eyes still watched mine.
I nodded.
Max shook his head. “No. Not good enough, Beautiful. I want to hear you say you believe me.”
I swallowed, my skin drenched in a cold sweat. “You really are a…” I paused, afraid to say it. “An angel.”
He laughed, standing straight and crossing his arms against his chest. “Yes, and?”
I swallowed, taking a brave step forward and around him, my fingertips grazing the down of his feathers. They were dense but soft, layered in scalloped rows with a silky shimmer. It was undeniable, and he knew I had more to say.
“And you’re my angel.” I pinched a feather between my fingers, watching as it fanned back into place as I pulled. “Which means…” It was all so obvious. The face I’d been longing to know and see was suddenly so clear. I came full circle, looking him in the eyes. “You saved me.” It was the first time I could bring myself to say it out loud—it was the first time I’d seen the pieces fall together as one.
Max nodded. “Yes, it means that I saved you,” he replied. His wings dropped, carrying his emotion. “So, you can see that killing you is not what I’m here for. Not even close.”
“I was supposed to die,” I blurted, my hands clenched. Max did this to me. He cursed me.
A flash of guilt washed across his face. “I’m sorry for that. I know what it did to you.”
I didn’t want to be torn away from my father. I’d wanted to go with him. Every day here was like a cage, my soul with my father, but my body left behind.
“Are you sorry that I saved you?” He reached for my hands, seeing they were tense and knowing his answer. He traced my knuckles, coaxing me to relax my grip. I let him. “I know that I shouldn’t have, but I’d finally found you. I wasn’t willing to—” He stopped himself, watching for my reaction.
“Finally found me?” I whispered.
He laced his fingers between mine, ignoring my question. “You shouldn’t have lived, Beautiful. I know what it’s left you with. The thing is… I also knew that it would. I know the decision I made ten years ago was made too fast. If I’d had time to consider the consequences, things would have been different. I’m sorry.”
I tried to pull away, finding myself overwhelmed by the disconnected feelings I held toward life, but then also the things I’d been allowed to stay for—to see. “I know that I seem bitter toward living, Max.” He let go and my fingers slid through his, falling to my sides. “But in truth, that’s not it. Sometimes I wish I’d died, but sometimes I’m happy I’m still alive.” What I didn’t say was that the times I felt happy to be alive all involved him. Though what he was came as a surprise, it didn’t change the tingle I felt. “A part of me is glad you saved me.”
His solemn expression lightened a little, reflecting the same look of relief I’d seen in my dream.
“That was really you in my dreams, wasn’t it, Max?”
He nodded. “It was.” He looked up at me, his blue eyes washing over my body. “I’m sorry to pry, but it’s my job to watch you.”
I swallowed. “So, you saw when Greg kissed me, didn’t you? And that was real, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t move or respond, glancing at the ring on my hand.
I grumbled, angry with myself. “I didn’t want to do that, you know. Something about him tricked me. Greg put me under some sick spell.” I was pacing in small circles. “And it makes sense—you gave me this ring just after that.” I lifted my hand, inspecting it.
His mouth opened, and I waited for anything to come out—staring at his perfect lips, his frosty eyes, his giant shimmery wings that loomed taller than me.
He stood quite still and calm. “It’s not your fault. Greg has that power over people. He can brainwash anyone he wants. You saw Alexis—though I don’t think it took much to get her to do what she did.” Max had a skeptical look on his face. “I’ve been in her head before, and she leaves it rather open.”
My pacing stopped and I giggled, unable to hold it back. I knew what he’d said about Alexis was true. Her foreseen deaths were so vivid and clear. It was as though she’d wanted me to see them.
After allowing myself that moment to relax, I wiped the smirk from my face and concentrated back on what happened in my dream. “He just—Greg did something to me and it was like I couldn’t resist. I actually felt as though I loved him.” Disgust laced my expression.
“He’s a Black Angel, Jane. They have different tactics than I do. I would never falsely convince someone they loved me. It’s dark magick.” He raised his brow, half smiling.
I rolled my eyes, knowing that Max had meant that he’d wanted to seduce me with his charm, but chose against it. “But you can,” I interjected.
I watched his wings slowly begin to retract back into his spine. He moaned as though the stretch had felt good. Standing before me now, he looked so ordinary. It was hard to believe the wings had even been there. “I would never trick your thoughts into feeling something toward me…” He paused, his eyes looking at the ground with shame, though the smile on his lips remained. “Besides, I don’t think I have to.”
My mouth fell open, trying to protest. Stop reading my thoughts! I yelled in my head.
“Then stop leaving them so open,” he replied. “Sometimes you’re close to impossible to read, but right now…” He laughed and shook his head, mocking my open mind. “But like I said, I’d never use that power unless it was to protect you. Mind control is dangerous, and addictive, as you’ve seen with Greg. My soul may be dead, but we still have our vices, and our rules. What he’s doing is considered illegal.”
“Illegal? To whom? I guess you’re going to tell me there are supernatural police now too, aren’t you?”
He chuckled, kicking a rock on the ground. “Sort of.” His gaze met mine, showing a noticeable tension over the subject. I didn’t press further.
He changed the focus. “When I saw my brother in your dream, I was mortified. It was my fault he was there. I left myself open when I went there, and Greg followed.” His brows stitched together. “I would be an idiot to say that what my brother did hadn’t bothered me. It infuriated me.” His face relaxed. “It had been my plan, after all.”
I was a little frightened by the possession in his voice. “Your plan—what do you mean?”
Max closed the already small space between us, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Don’t you want to know exactly why I saved you?” His tone hadn’t changed.
“Why?” I mumbled. I’d thought to ask, but was afraid to.
He hooked his finger under my chin, tilting it up until our eyes met. I felt weak against his wishes. “Because there was something about you I couldn’t let go of. I feared that if I let you die, I’d never know what that thing was. We live many lives, Jane, but very rarely do we ever come across the same soul twice.”
I felt my heart surging with fear, but also curiosity. I knew what he was getting at. It wasn’t hard to see it in the glimmer of his eyes, the same glimmer Wes always had. Max had a crush on me, and he’d had it for ten years now. He kept me alive in order to quench that desire. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t quite ready to jump head first into a relationship with a man that was not only something like a stalker—not that it was all that bad—but was also stuck somewhere between alive and dead.
He let go of my chin, looking a little stung.
I felt sorry for thinking it, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, I barely know who you are, Max. I mean, I really don’t know who you are.”
He forced a smile. “I’m not here to force you into something. I’m just here to see what happens. I can wait. I can wait as long as it takes for you to know me. After I saved you, and became a part of your life, the reason why I wanted you to live grew clear to me.”
“But why me? I’m no different than anyone else. I’m just an ordinary girl.”
The pain in his features faded, now alive with a new emotion. “That’s what I’m trying to explain to you—that’s not true.”
“It’s not?” I tried to back away from him, but he advanced until I was backed against the car. His eyes blazed upon me, the hood still warm from the engine.
“Have you ever met someone, and you just know right away that there’s more—like a future?”
I thought of the day Wes and I became friends. I knew right away that he was going to be important to me in some way, though I was young—too young to even understand that.
Max went on. “Everyone has connections. For some it’s family, like my brother and I. For some it’s friendship, like you and Wes. And for others, it’s something much more powerful, something yet to be seen.”
I tried to sidestep away from him, wanting to avoid the fact that I felt this connection with him, though he scared me. His arm lifted to block my way, trapping me between the side mirror and his body.
I swallowed. “Powerful like what?” I asked, still trying to figure a way to escape.
He smirked, his face close to mine. There was no answer, leaving my head swimming with possibilities. He was close enough that I felt his breath, cold and seductive. His nose grazed across my cheek, the touch so unbelievably soft.
“I know you feel it, Jane. You just don’t know what it is yet. You have no way to understand or compare that feeling to anything else in your life.”
I let his breath surround me, enveloping me with an intense feeling of comfort. I still wanted to hear the reason. I wanted to see the words form across his lips.
“How does it feel?” I pressed.
He took a deep breath, his chest rising. “It feels like a veil of safety, a notion that you’re not alone.”
I searched his eyes, listening to his words, envisioning the veil.
“More specifically…” his lips spoke against my cheek “…it feels like…” A cold chill ran down my spine as his words stopped, silenced by a kiss against my skin.
I shut my eyes, the heat of my emotion a direct contrast to his touch. He leaned against me, his hands pressed against the car, holding me there. He kissed my nose, my other cheek. I stopped breathing, and finally, his lips found mine. They were soft like air, the pressure so delicate that it almost didn’t feel like kissing at all.
My body felt weak, the cold tingle in my spine spreading into a feeling I’d never felt before. I pictured the veil surrounding us, holding us together. His body felt powerful, his hands sliding from the car to my sides, grasping my hips as his fingers arched my back.
Wes had been my first kiss, and where I guess you could count Greg as a second, this kiss was still far different than both. His lips were sugary as they intertwined with mine, but sweeter than his brother’s had been—kinder. His hands spread across the small of my back, his thumbs pressing against my skin.
Just as quickly as he had leaned in, he let go, backing away and leaving me stunned. My chest tingled, and I remembered that I’d forgotten to breathe. My eyes fluttered opened, meeting his. His cool ocean of blue washed over me, defusing the warmth that had nearly overwhelmed my inhibitions.
“Are you ready to go back now, Beautiful?” He asked, as though he had done nothing more than talk frankly with me for the past ten minutes.
I forced myself to nod, peeling myself off the car. I fumbled for the door handle, clumsily finding it and getting in. He rounded the hood, his expression filled with pride as he got in on his side. His movements were calm and cool, but also more alive than I’d ever seen. I cleared my throat, telling myself to buck up and quit acting like such a wuss.
I swallowed, thinking of something to say. “But if your brother is so evil, why not—” The word was hard to think, let alone say.
“Kill him?” Max said it as though it was no big deal. His car door slammed and I jumped, finding the talk of murder and loud noises hard to handle. He stretched his neck to one side. “Simple. Since we’re twins, if he dies, then so do I. It’s the way we were made. When I chose to stay behind, so did he, but there had to be balance. Something had to be compensated in order to make what had happened in our last living moments fair.”
The answer seemed so obvious once he’d said it, but the thought made me sick. How was it I could even conceive that a world like this could exist! I swallowed. I didn’t want him to die, right? I wanted Max to stay alive, and I wanted Greg to... die?
I chewed on the inside of my lip, rolling everything around in my mind. I was assessing and reassessing the situation. I thought of his brother Erik, trying to forget about murder.
“How old are you?” I ventured, seeing the wrinkles of Erik’s face in my mind, reminding me of their age.
Max grinned. A grin void of such wrinkles.
I laughed. “Come on. I know how old Erik is, so there’s no use hiding it. I’ll find out eventually.”
He nodded as though seeing my point. “Nearly one-hundred years old, but that’s young for an angel.”
I swallowed again, continuing to hope that that simple act would allow me to digest this. I suspected Max added that last part on purpose, as though it leveled our ages. It was like saying that one human year is equal to seven dog years. The car lurched. We were backing up to turn around.
“Do you age then?”
Max nodded, “Actually, Yes. But very slowly.”
“Well, how old were you when you... died?” I ventured.
He tilted his head as though trying to recall. “Seventeen?”
“And how old are you now?” He didn’t look much older than that.
“Seventeen,” he replied freely.
I let out an annoyed breath, rolling my eyes.
He chuckled. “Okay, maybe… seventeen and a quarter then, does that make it better?”
I gawked. “You’ve only aged three months in the last one-hundred years?”
“You mean eighty-one years. You have to subtract the seventeen of that that I was alive, and I’m not quite a hundred yet, mind you.”
I shook my head. “So you’ve been the same teenage, hormone ridden, high school student for the past eighty-one years?”
Max was really laughing at me now. “I don’t know about hormones, or school for that matter. I’m only there for you.”
His remark made my stomach flutter.
His eyes found mine. “You do something to me, Jane. You make all the death disappear—you make my past and my current circumstances bearable.” He released one hand from the wheel, reaching for mine. “You make me feel alive again.”<
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I concentrated on his cold touch as our fingers weaved together, finding that the chill still did not bother me, but rather calmed me. When I was dreaming, I also felt calm—at home and safe. I hadn’t noticed before, but it’s that feeling that had drawn me to Max. I was so confused when he was with me that I hadn’t noticed how the confusion was really peace—something rare to me.
I gazed at him, a warm feeling flooding my chest. My throat tightened and a buzz filled my limbs. It had only been two weeks since I first met him—two weeks, and already I’d fallen for an angel—my angel.
Max adjusted in his seat, hiding a smile as he cleared his throat. “What was all that about?” he asked innocently.
“What do you mean?” I tried to fain ignorance.
He looked at my head.
I swallowed hard, fear washing over me. “I was thinking about... nothing.” I pushed the dreamy thoughts away, quickly thinking of something else. “Do you know other angels other than your brother?” My voice was strained, fearing the emotion inside me had been exposed.
He was looking over his shoulder at the road behind us. “Yes.”
“But your brother is a Black Angel? What is that?”
I saw Max’s jaw tighten. “He’s a Black Angel because of the murders. Like an angel of death and doom.”
I felt a sharp pang in my chest, knowing that by murders, he was also including my father’s. I changed the subject again, knowing the murders also included his parents. “What’s the oldest angel you know of?”
His eyes looked into mine. “Old.”
I snorted. “Yeah, but how old?”
He plumped out his bottom lip in thought. “A couple thousand, maybe?”
My eyes grew wide. “A couple thous—” My mouth fell open. “How would you even remember how old you are anymore?”
Max laughed. “History keeps records, but as far as remembering it on thought alone, it’s impossible I’m sure. They say you keep track for the first century or so, but after that it all gets fuzzy.”