My dead heart ached to follow her and make sure she fell asleep without a nightmare, but now was not the time.
“Sleep tight,” I called after her from between my parents’ arms, and listened to her footsteps as they ascended the stairs, down the hallway, and stopped in our guest room.
It was Jaden who noticed my longing gaze first and raised his eyebrows, indicating I had lost my mind if I believed I could join her up there.
“I’ll be with her all night,” he muttered as he dropped into a chair, golden hair bouncing, “from the second you leave this room until she wakes up safely in the morning.”
There was no doubt this wasn’t up for discussion. He was the guardian angel, he made the rules.
“Is he always this tight?” I asked, slipping into the conversational tone I had adopted at the demon-lair.
Jenna scolded me with her look as she pulled me to her side to set me straight. “This man has every right to act the way he does,” she informed me, “ not only is he the best guardian angel Claire could ever have, he is so much more than that…”
I froze at her words, thoughts running wild with how much more exactly he might be. Wasn’t Ben the only competition I would have? Had Jaden joined the club?
“He gave up his right to return to heaven so he could continue to protect Claire,” she finished before I could give in to the urge to growl at Jaden. For once, I was humbled by his selflessness. And it gave me something to think about. If he had given up his right to return to heaven, whoever made the decision must have a problem with him being here. Claire’s protector, always so conveniently showing up when she was in need, except for that one time when she had been under a demon attack and I had died for her.
“You make me look better than I am, Jenna,” Jaden objected.
I quietly agreed.
“Don’t say that,” she refused to accept his response. “It was you who picked up the pieces after Adam’s death. If it hadn’t been for you, who knows if she would have still been around to see Adam return.”
Dad glanced at me over their conversation, apologetic.
“I am sorry,” I interrupted and all their eyes turned on me, questioning what I would be sorry for.
“I am sorry I died,” I didn’t know how to phrase it better, “I didn’t mean to disappear from this family so early and leave such a mess. I can’t even begin to imagine what all of you must have gone through.”
Jenna teleported to my side and pulled me into a hug.
“You have no reason to apologize for anything, son,” Dad told me with a smile. “You didn’t plan on dying, you didn’t know who you were, and what was right or wrong when Volpert pushed you to act against your own family. It was his evil nature that made you do things.”
I agreed with the first part. It hadn’t been my plan to die, but it was my responsibility that I had taken lives, whether I had been able to tell right from wrong or not at that time. It had been I who had taken them.
While I let them believe their words had made me feel better about myself, another thought sprang to my mind. One of the questions from my list.
“Dad?”
“Yes, Adam?” He looked at me with glowing eyes.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you were an angel, too?”
His face fell as I voiced what was on my mind. It wasn’t just him, but Jenna and Ben, too. Why hadn’t any of them told me?
“And you, Mom…” I let myself drop onto the couch in frustration. I had always considered my relationship with my parents as a good one. Also with Ben. But it seemed I had been wrong. None of them had trusted me enough to share…and then I had been the same. I hadn’t mentioned my angel-issues one single time to them… the frustration ceased and remorse replaced it in a quick tide. A lot of problems could have been solved, had we known about each other. Maybe I would have never had to die.
“I know,” Jenna sighed, “it wasn’t right to keep you in the dark in order to protect you…both of you. Ben never knew either until after you died.”
It was obvious it was difficult for her to speak about this.
“Why?”
They looked at each other, forgetting that Jaden was still there with us, before they smiled at me, a parental, protective wall, about to crumble after realizing the truth was the best protection there is.
“I am so sorry, son,” Dad apologized as he sat down beside me on the couch. “All I wanted was to protect you. Had I known you had catalyzed and spread your wings, I would have told you everything. We are not only father and son, you are my mark. Part of my soul is in you and part of yours in me.”
My jaw dropped. How didn’t I know this? Wouldn’t I remember if he had spread wings in front of me?
He read my incomprehension. “It was the day you were born. Your mother, Abigail…she had just passed after giving birth, and the doctors were giving us a moment to say goodbye.” His expression went somber, distant, and there was a tiny tear in the corner of his eye. “All my heart had been torn open as she’d died, and when I looked at you, little, helpless Adam, my wings appeared.”
I listened to him as he spoke about the details of my mother’s death for the first time. He had marked me when I’d been a baby.
“After learning everything I could about angels, I decided to never use my powers so I wouldn’t be detected by demons…so you would never be detected.” He took a deep breath and looked up. “You have no idea how much I love you, son. You and this family are everything to me. If I appeared to care more about my library than about you in the past, then that was only so I could learn as much as I could for the day I would need to face our enemy…”
“Demons,” I finished his sentence. “I am one of them now, Dad.”
“Yes,” he nodded and then shook his head with a careless smile. “It doesn’t matter what you are. It matters who you are. And that is my son. An incredibly bright boy who used to want nothing less than to save the world.”
“But I am a demon now. Evil by nature. I crave souls,” I clarified, epitomizing it for him to get him out of his denial.
“You are not evil, Adam. You were made to believe that you are. Volpert and his clan made you believe that. And your needs, your hunger, you can control it. Your prison is your mind, not your body.” He patted my arm. “It’s not always the physical constraints that cage us. Sometimes their shadow is enough to keep us from moving on.”
As I considered his words, Jenna took the lead. “I am sorry, too, Adam. You should know the truth, about all of us. Ben catalyzed without marking anyone. Just like me. I don’t have a mark, either. His lineage is stronger because both mother and father are part-angels. He catalyzed a while ago.”
A small part in the depths of my demon-being reacted disgruntled. Great. Now Ben was a better supernatural than me. Not only was he safer for Claire, but he was also stronger, better suited to protect her. I ground my teeth and let Jenna continue while I swallowed my thoughts. I was back with my family. That was all that mattered. In no way did I have the right to demand anything or a claim on anyone—especially not Claire, who I had made suffer so much over the past months.
“I myself could be your great-grandmother, that’s how old I am. I even knew Claire’s grandmother in my time.” She grinned and Jaden shifted uncomfortably, reminding us he was still there. “But I have been perfecting the most useful power angels possess, changing age at will, and so I have been able to stay in one place as long as I age and then start out new in a different place as a college freshman. This house belonged to my late husband. We didn’t buy it, it was passed down in the family…it’s a bit complicated…” She frowned. “I will tell you the full story one day. There is no need to burden you with my own personal demons—excuse the expression—tonight.”
“How does Liz tie into all of this?” I asked. When we were already sharing secrets, hers was something I’d been dying to hear. “She is not an angel, I can tell, and yet even you turn to her for advice, Jaden.”
His
disgruntled face told me he didn’t like relying on a human, and yet there was respect for her as he shared.
“Liz is a guard,” he informed me.
I recognized the name from the conversation I had overheard, but it still didn’t ring a bell.
“What exactly is a guard?”
Jaden sighed at my ignorance and laced his fingers as he leaned forward.
“The Guard. An ancient society of humans documenting and preserving angelic history,” he explained and smiled for a second as if to ask if I was happy with the explanation.
“And how do we know Liz?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to strain Jaden’s patience.
“Claire knows Liz,” he corrected. “We just benefit from her knowing Liz.”
I blinked and waited for him to clarify what he meant.
He sighed again. “Liz is Claire’s boss at the public library that used to be run by Lucas Baker, who was killed by demons for his knowledge about angels and demons.”
I swallowed, ignoring my guilty conscience as Jaden spoke of a death I had been directly involved with.
“He had been part of the Guard and Liz took over his position in Aurora. She is a walking, breathing lexicon. Everything documented about our species, if in possession of the Guard, she has seen and knows by heart. She is invaluable.”
“How did she help you, Dad?” I wondered aloud, remembering the words of gratitude.
He leaned back on the couch and reached over his shoulders. “She helped me bring my powers back after your death.”
“You lost your powers?”
“It seems to be what losing one’s mark does to an angel,” he said, apologetic. “It was her who provided the idea of meditation and having Claire in the same room.”
I didn’t understand.
“Claire is your mark, she carries part of your soul. So even when you were dead, part of you was alive in her, and it helped me to focus and bring back my powers when we meditated together.”
There was more than one consoling thing to what he had just said, but the most important was that part of me—the old me—had always stayed with Claire, even when I had turned into a soulless monster.
“She also is the one who told us about the prophecy,” Jenna added, hope in her eyes.
“Prophecy?” I was sure I had never heard of a prophecy.
“Apparently someone made a prophecy that might be connected to you. About a fallen angel and that he will save us,” she explained. “Jaden, do you remember the exact wording?”
Jaden shook his head, but took a deep breath and recited, “He, who fell and was reborn evil, will be awakened, and he will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. His shell will be black, but his heart will be golden and his soul will be light. The reborn’s life will be eternal and his power will be great, but his love will save us.” He looked around and added, “we don’t even know if this is a real prophecy.”
“But we have discussed it,” Dad objected. “It does sound like it refers to Adam. “Adam fell off the roof. He fell. Fallen angel literally and figuratively. Reborn evil—if being a demon means evil.” He eyed me from the side, checking if he had upset me by calling me that.
I wasn’t. Referring to me as evil actually meant they were accepting that I wasn’t the same Adam I used to be.
“He was awakened…both the grave and his black wings could be the black shell. And his heart is golden, or he wouldn’t have spared Claire and all of us. He wouldn’t have turned against his new clan and helped us. His great power, well, we know he is strong. Strong as a demon as he had been as an angel probably.” Dad summed it up all so logically, so eloquently, not even Jaden objected.
“But his love will save us,” Jenna finished the last line of the prophecy.
Love. I looked around, their expectant eyes all gazing back. The emotions in the depth of my demon-being stirred. The love for my family, and the love for Claire. Was that love? The same type of love I had felt before I had turned dark? It seemed there had been a new layer added to it. The layer of impossibility. I loved the very same beings whose souls I craved. Most of all, Claire’s.
24
Sacrifice
As I dragged myself up the stairs, mentally drained, Jaden rushed past me.
“Every second until she wakes up,” he reminded me it would be useless to try and sneak into Claire’s room.
I had to admit, it was a tempting thought, to watch her sleep and see her shimmering light rise and fall with her even breathing, and he was right to warn me. Knowing I would have to get past him if I felt the urge to suck out Claire’s soul put things into perspective. Priorities were to figure out where and how to feed without drawing attention, and how to control my urges around the others better. For now, keeping my emotions as bottled-up as possible was the only way to focus on conversations rather than bright lights when around my family. Jaden was the least of my worries when it came to accidentally harming someone. Even though I had knocked him out before, he was the strongest of them all, and he would be extra-attentive these upcoming weeks until he trusted me enough. And then there was Ben. As I entered my room and grabbed pajama pants from the dresser, I listened to the slow breathing of my brother a couple of rooms up the hall. He was fast asleep.
Without switching the lights on, I stepped into the shower and waited for the water to turn hot. It took half a minute until the temperature was close to the steaming pool in the demon caves. As I closed my eyes, I saw the fiery symbols on the bottom of the pool pulsating with energy—angelic energy, harvested from angels they had tortured in the caves. For a moment, I desired to lay in the warmth of the candle-lit waters and relax. Hadn’t it been easier when I hadn’t known right from wrong? I hadn’t needed to doubt myself, or my intentions, my self-control, or my worthiness. I had simply been Adam, the demon—memory-less, and searching, but, in reality, leading a much easier life.
I shook my head at myself and turned the temperature down to wake myself up. How could I even think my demon-life had been easier, better? I had been a tool in Volpert’s plan, manipulated to kill my soulmate. Blessed are the oblivious.
When the cold didn’t get uncomfortable after another minute, I turned off the water and got out of the shower, put on my pajama pants, and slipped under the blanket without even bothering to dry my hair.
Sleep didn’t find me for a long time. I followed the whispered conversation of my parents in the living room for a long while as they discussed how to handle my presence when Geoffrey returned. They had sent the butler away for a while, but once he was back, he would notice someone was living in my room, and that someone didn’t eat or drink.
Then, Claire’s voice kept me awake as she seemed to speak in her sleep.
“Adam,” she muttered over and over again. And Jaden shh-ed her until her words ceased. As my name was nothing more than a gentle whisper from her lips, my eyelids drooped and I drifted off into the dark dreams of a demon-traitor.
Ben’s tenor woke me, as he reassured our father that he was fine. It brought relief and concern with it. If he was awake and strong enough to argue, it meant he was on the way to full recovery. That was why I was relieved. I was concerned because it also meant he would see Claire and she would see him for the hero he was. With a frown, I opened my eyes and was greeted by bright daylight.
“What time is it?” Claire asked, voice clear as if she was right next to me.
“3 pm,” I whispered with a glance at my watch.
“It’s mid-afternoon,” Jaden gave her an answer she could actually hear. “The others are downstairs.”
When he talked about the others, he meant the ones he saw as suitable company for Claire. To this point that didn’t include me.
“Did I miss anything?” Claire sounded alert. I hated not being able to sense her emotions. This way I had to guess instead of knowing how she felt.
“Not really,” Jaden seemed to be amused about something. “It was a long day yesterday. You needed to rest.”
There was a long silence and just when I thought she’d fallen asleep again, she asked, “do you think the prophecy is real?”
A rustling of fabric and a soft thud made me curious. He seemed to be procrastinating having to respond.
“Would you stay away from Adam if I told you it’s not?” he answered with a question.
“Probably not.”
My dead heart did a tiny leap—just big enough to release my emotions from the bottom of my being.
“Then what difference does it make?”
While Jaden was waiting for an answer, a second conversation called my attention.
“Are they back?” Ben asked our dad. “Both of them? Are they alright?”
“As a matter of fact, Claire has been dying to see you,” he replied.
“She didn’t get hurt, did she?”
Something told me he wasn’t worried about Volpert or Maureen having hurt her, but was just diplomatically phrasing the question if I had hurt her.
“She is in perfect health,” Dad said, “so is Adam.”
There was a warning in his tone I didn’t quite understand.
“Can I see her now?” Ben asked and Dad’s footsteps left his room and headed for the guest room.
“Come in,” Jaden answered his knock as he reached the door.
“Oh good, you’re awake. Ben just woke up and is ready to see you.”
There was a loud noise and a chuckle, then the closing click of the door and Dad’s footsteps heading downstairs. Drawers were pulled and a quick brushing of teeth performed, before Claire’s voice, sounding brilliant with excitement, addressed Jaden one more time.
“Thank you for everything. You deserve to return home—more than anyone. The fact that you are still here, dealing with me after all the mess I have made, proves it.”
“Whether or not I will be allowed back is not for us to decide,” Jaden replied, the humble, gentle creature he usually was around Claire. He would do nothing to upset her. If he had a choice, he'd encourage her to do anything she wanted, as long as he could ensure her safety to some degree. Even allow her to be here with me back in this house.
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