by Jenny McKane
“Can Death be corrupted? Can it become evil or greedy?”
Metatron considered her question.
“I believe it can, actually,” Metatron said. “Death embodies a being and that being has been said to change over time—to pass down a lineage similar to the one you come from.”
He spoke of her Solomon lineage—the reason she foolishly agreed to serve Michael what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“I’m not much of an expert on my lineage,” she said quietly, thinking about how what she didn’t know about her origins could fill an ocean.
“Of course not,” Metatron replied, a little bitterly. “Michael withheld so much from you and we’ll probably never understand why. In this lifetime, anyway. But there’s a chance Gabriel is or was on to something that might involve you, so there’s hope that you’ll find answers to your past.”
Sunny hadn’t considered that. It’d been so long since she had the luxury to wonder about the past that she’d compartmentalized all of her questions about her parents, their deaths, and the disappearance of her brother Sam way in the back of her mind in her fight to stay alive.
“Maybe,” Sunny said, a little uncertain.
Chapter Thirteen
She was asleep, she knew that much. She remembered drifting to sleep in her room after talking to Metatron. It was relatively easy for her to fall asleep, for the first time in a long time. Sunny should’ve known better. She should’ve known that there would be a price to pay for the relative ease with which she finally got some rest.
It was the nox that tipped her off that she was back inside a dream. That, and her months of dealing with Plaxo and his dream walking, made her aware of what was going on. Hell, by this point she felt a bit of a dream expert.
In this dream, she saw Gabriel lying on the bed, just as he had been before. He was still unconscious, and nothing about him seemed unusual or dreamlike. He still had the same sallow skin and the troubled breathing. And just like before, his hand was still a concrete block. It was closed and grown over and just as infected as a had been when she was awake inside his room with Metatron.
But this time, in her dream, she and Gabriel were not alone. It began with a sensation that she was being watched, which was odd to have in a dream. Dreams never had the same sensations as her waking life did. In a dream, you knew you were out of your own element and you didn’t have the awareness to know that someone, or something, was observing you. But here in the dream world, inside Gabriel’s sick room, she was being watched.
She looked around the room, nothing was out of the ordinary. Every piece of furniture, every piece of medical equipment and first-aid supplies that had been there previously, were still there. But Sunny couldn’t shake the feeling that something was definitely off.
“Of course, something is off,” Sunny said to herself. She had to chuckle at the fact that she was even talking to herself in her dreams. “Why else would I find myself in a lucid dream?”
It’d been months since Sunny found herself in the dream world. The last time she found herself navigating the dream of herself or someone else had been during her time in Hell. It was when she had Plaxo at her side, helping her navigate Azrael’s world in an effort to save Gideon. Plaxo had taught her well, and now she knew that she was not drawn into somebody’s dream world, even her own, without good reason.
Sunny waited. She knew whatever she was supposed to see or do would push the events forward soon enough, all she had to do was to sit and not do anything stupid. Or attempt to wake up too soon.
Moving tentatively around the room while still keeping a wary eye on the shadows, Sunny took in the details, hoping to find some sort of clue. The medical supplies looked the same. The stacks of towels were in the same position. The generic still-life artwork featuring a bowl of fruit were the same, too. The windows still showed the same vista they had when she’d been in the room earlier with Metatron.
What was it? What had pulled her here?
A hissing sound from the darkness was the first sign that things were about to pop off. It was low, almost impossible to hear at first. But it was there, and Sunny froze. Next, she felt the same fear spike the center of her belly that she’d gotten used to since she first started dreaming about the nox. She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.
Without knowing how or why, she knew a nox would be here soon. She could just tell.
Sure enough, the hissing grew louder—coming from a dark corner opposite from where Sunny was inspecting the items in Gabriel’s room. She turned slowly, moving closer to the bed until her thighs brushed the mattress the archangel laid on and she searched the shadow in the distant corner.
It was there, she could tell. But it wasn’t showing itself.
She waited.
The nox waited, unwilling to show itself yet.
“Be done with it already,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt. She was terrified, truth be told, because to this point, she’d never had to be such an active participant in her dreams when it concerned these new death eaters. This dream, however, was different. She was given a role to play and she had choices to make.
“What do you want?”
She fired the question into the silence and got only a longer hiss in response. Moments later, the nox moved forward from the shadows and came into the small amount of light the slice of moonlight afforded through the window.
It was her first chance in all the dreams she’d been having to truly see its face—and she wished she hadn’t been so curious. It was hideous.
The death eater still had the same “shadow skin” that she came to recognize—a darkness that coated it that appeared to be a living entity itself. There were no formed limbs to speak of on this creature, only a hazy, shadowy fog that moved with it as it reached out toward Gabriel. The eyes were large and unhooded—completely blacked out and sunk in on its flat, grey-planed face.
The nox had no mouth, she realized. There was smoothness and nothingness where a mouth would normally be. So how was it making the hissing sound?
She frowned and backed up an involuntary step as it moved forward toward Gabriel.
The death eater seemed to be ignoring her for the most part as it slunk low over the length of Gabriel’s body, moving its head around like it was some sort of bloodhound on a scent. It had legs and moved on the floor, much different than Sunny had originally imagined. She’d imagined they hovered, floating, above the ground and pounced on victims using magic and not physicality.
But it seemed she was wrong. This death eater had legs and feet and a corporeal body. At least in this dream, it did, she noted with a wry sense of humor.
The strangest thing about what was happening in front of Sunny was the fact that the death eater was basically ignoring her. All of its attention was focused on the unconscious Gabriel. As it neared the clenched hand that Gabriel held close to his chest, the thing stopped. It brought its arm forward and reached its taloned hand towards the archangel’s fist. Panic bubbled up inside Sunny’s chest, and she looked at Gabriel, hoping he would wake up. When her eyes took in his face, she let out a gasp in surprise. Gabriel’s eyes were wide open, and unblinking.
How long had he been like that? Sunny had no concept of how long he’d been watching what was happening around him. The death eater looked up at Sunny at that moment, also. When their gazes meant, the hissing sound returned. Her eyes darted back to Gabriel, and his eyes went to his hand. He repeated the motion. What was he trying to say?
While his eyes were active and awake, the rest of his body was like a concrete slab. It was a strange state that Gabriel was in, in the midst of this dream. His eyes moved again, from Sunny’s face down to the hand that clutched tightly against his chest. The hissing from the death eater grew louder and more threatening as well.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked Gabriel, her voice shaky. She didn’t understand what he was asking. A third time, he looked from her face to his hand, as though his eyes were
imploring her to understand.
“What is in your hand?” she asked. “You need me to help you? How can I?”
As though the death eater was getting more frustrated, it hissed and lunged across Gabriel’s body at Sunny. She jumped back, her back hitting the wall, though she didn’t feel it. She reminded herself this was a dream, and that it was likely time she needed to wake up. It was still a skill that she was not proficient in, so as the death eater hissed and swiped at her with its claws, she tried to focus and find her way out of this dream.
On the third try, she felt it working, the she promised herself that the next time she had access to Plaxo, she would ask him for another tutorial in dream walking. The death eater hissed violently one last time as Sunny felt herself fading away and out of the dream.
“Not today,” she taunted, a smug smile on her face.
*****
Sunny bolted straight upright as soon as she felt herself awake. She was groggy and a bit disoriented, but she knew she was free from the dream she had just been in. Outside in the house beyond her door, all was quiet. She wasn’t even certain if Gideon and Eli and Sin had returned, as she had been in a particularly deep sleep through that dream.
Pushing herself out of bed, she bent to put on a pair of sneakers and threw a sweatshirt over her head. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was about to do, only that the look in Gabriel’s eyes had pleaded with her to try something. So, she would try something.
The house was dark as she descended the stairs, but she saw a figure seated in one of the easy chairs in the middle of the living room. She hesitated in the middle of the staircase, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness, as she tried to recognize who was waiting in the living room. A few tentative steps down the stairs, and she recognized Metatron’s outline.
“No sleep?”
Metatron shook his head. “Something told me I needed to be ready,” he replied.
Sunny came down the rest of the steps and stopped a few feet from the chair he sat in.
“Ready for what?”
“For whatever you’re about to attempt,” Metatron said with a smile.
Sunny let out a breath that she didn’t realize she had been holding at his words. It wasn’t that she was going to attempt to be sneaky, she hadn’t thought through how she would include Metatron and what she was about to do. The fact that he had some sort of advanced warning and was waiting for her made it all the easier.
“I’m not even sure what I’m about to attempt,” she said. “I just had the strangest dream, and I feel like Gabriel was trying to communicate something to me. Has there been any change in his status? Did he happen to wake up?”
Metatron shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I checked on them just before I sat down.”
Sunny frowned. “He’s still unconscious?”
Metatron nodded.
“Would it be okay if I went in there?” she asked. “I don’t even know what I’m about to do, I just need to see him. Maybe something will come to mind.”
Metatron pushed himself to his feet.
“Of course,” he said. “Anything worth mentioning in that dream of yours?”
Sunny chewed her bottom lip nervously.
“No hard facts,” she said. “But I got closer to a nox than I ever had before. It was an arms-distance away, and it seemed preoccupied with Gabriel’s hand.”
Metatron considered Sunny a moment before speaking.
“Ready?”
Sunny nodded, still forming some sort of plan as she walked behind Metatron, who opened Gabriel’s door and let her pass.
She carefully checked the corners for any signs of a hissing nox and when she saw none, she moved to Gabriel’s side. He was in the same position he’d been earlier when they’d been in the room together—eyes closed, body curled up, hand clenched.
“Where should I start? Should I talk to him?”
Metatron just shrugged, offering no help whatsoever.
As she stood there wondering what to say, Sunny began to feel self-conscious. Without thinking what she was doing, and feeling a little silly at even entertaining the thought, she reached her hand out slowly, just as the death eater had done.
Similar to what she saw the creature doing, she hovered her hand inches above Gabriel’s and paused.
“Who do I think I am?” she whispered to herself with a laugh. “King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone?”
Metatron didn’t say anything and before she could think better of it, she gently wrapped her hand around Gabriel’s tight fist.
Nothing happened. There was no change in air pressure, no hissing death eater screeching from the corner. Her eyes went up to Metatron in hopes that he could give her some sort of hint, but he didn’t look at her. He was watching the spot where their hands were joined instead.
Sunny ran her eyes over Gabriel’s form under the blanket, the pile of skin and bones that he’d become, hoping something would have happened. Moving up past his waist, past where she held his hand in her own, she reached his face and choked on her next breath.
Eyes wide open in shock, she found Gabriel staring right at her.
Chapter Fourteen
“Shit,” Metatron swore and Sunny stumbled back a few steps, releasing Gabriel’s hand. “Nice work, Sunny.”
Sunny wasn’t certain that what she’d just done was nice work at all. Gabriel had a feral look in his eyes and there was a raw, crackling power she saw building beneath them. Would he go full archangel on them and turn her to dust? Would Metatron even be able to help her if he did?
Gabriel began to move just then, and not as an archangel. He moved his legs slowly under his blankets and hissed at the sensation—likely sore from not moving for weeks it seemed. He rolled from his side on to his back and worked his right arm in a large circle as he blinked and adjusted to the room.
Sunny was holding her breath as he did, half ecstatic at the fact that Gabriel was awake and seemingly alive, and half terrified of what might happen next. He still looked confused and shaken, and she wasn’t sure how much of who she was seeing in front of her was the old Gabriel and how much was the archangel setting about its duty.
Even Metatron seem to be holding his breath as he watched his brother Archangel in his slight movements in the bed. In the end, it was Gabriel who spoke first. He looked right at Sunny when he did, and she hardly believed her ears.
“Remember when I said that you were not the rarest of roses?” His voice was gravelly and broken, likely from weeks of silence.
It took Sunny a moment to have her senses about her enough to even nod her head at Gabriel. What was he even talking about at a moment like this? He had used the saying on her back in Canada, just before she was going across the portal into Hell. He had told her that sometimes, maybe it was better not to be a special, chosen one predetermined to fill some sort of prophecy. What he was saying, was that even though Sunny was not “the rarest of roses,” it meant that he had chosen her personally. It had been part of his motivating speech and it had worked.
“I remember,” she said quietly. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Turns out, that I was wrong,” Gabriel scratched out as he still struggled to speak. “In the end, you might be the rarest of all roses.”
*****
Gabriel had fallen back asleep after he had said that, and Metatron ushered her out of the room.
“I’m going to call the healer back here,” he said. His warm hand was on her shoulder and he squeezed it affectionately. “Great job in there, Sunshine. I’m not sure what you did, but it’s nothing short of a miracle.”
“I’m really glad he’s awake,” Sunny said. “But he looks awful. Is he going to be okay?”
“You got him out of whatever prison his body and his Archangel was holding him in,” Metatron said. “I feel like the rest is going to be a cakewalk. Have heart, we just had a bit of good luck, thanks to you.”
At the foot of the steps, Sunny looked back over h
er shoulder at Metatron. He gave her another encouraging smile, as if trying to let her know it would be okay to go upstairs and get some sleep. Not much of a chance of that, Sunny thought, but she gave him a slight nod and walked up the steps to her room.
It turned out she was a lot more tired than she realized, and Sunny was asleep within five minutes. When she woke up much later that day, the sun was high in the sky and pouring through her bedroom window. Her stomach rumbled, letting her know that she had slept through at least two meals. Instead of heading straight downstairs, where she did not hear the telltale rumble of voices, she headed to the bathroom and took a much-needed shower.
Sunny took her time. She knew with the recent developments with Selah and Gabriel, they were about to get much busier than they had been in recent days. She could feel things were changing and that meant they were likely to be on the go nonstop now. Things were accelerating rapidly, and in the back of her mind, Sunny believed that their quiet days in Tammer Park were all but over.
Once she had showered and dressed in fresh clothes, Sunny headed towards the staircase to go downstairs. There were still no voices downstairs and the entire house was quiet. Stopping before she put her foot on the first step, Sunny turned and looked at Gideon’s door. Had they returned? She took the few steps between herself and Gideon’s door, and hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. Was it appropriate for her to open his bedroom door without knocking? Would he even want her knocking on his door right now?
Pushing those thoughts from her mind, she twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. She was rushed with the familiar scent of spice and soap. Gideon. She didn’t need to see his sleeping form in the bed to know he had returned. She missed him and his sent.
She wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing in his room when she found herself all the way in it and closing the door behind her, but she pushed forward anyway. She quietly walked across the carpeting until she stood next to his bed. Gideon slept pushed up against the wall, so Sunny swallowed back any trepidation and sat down on the space that was open on the mattress.