Revelation (Blood of Angels Book 1)

by Paula Arwen Owen

  “Don’t forget breakfast,” she said.

  Des grimaced and grabbed a bagel and some candy off the counter, stuffing it in a side pocket of her bag.

  “Have a good day at school.”

  Des snorted as if that was a ridiculous statement and stalked to the door. She paused and Shirley watched her shoulders slouch just a little more as she yanked the door open and slammed it behind her.

  Shirly sighed and stared down at her mug. Sometimes she felt as if she was watching a stranger -- a bleak, cynical girl where her daughter had once been. It wasn’t the clothes, the all black layers with strange patterns and dangling chains, or that tattoo she desperately wanted to get. Her friends weren’t a bad bunch either, although she sometimes disliked that Rachel girl. It was the dark cloud Des carried above her head, the worldly bitterness, the penchant for solitude, the hint of despair that seemed to hang behind her words.

  She had failed her. Somehow she had failed her daughter. She wondered how it would be if James hadn’t left, and if she had tried harder to work things out. Bringing up Sabbath dinner may have been a bad idea, but she needed to try something to connect with Des.

  Shirley looked over at the Bible sitting on the table and the pamphlet Father Tate had given her. It wouldn’t hurt to go see him, would it? There was still the mystery of what her husband had been doing there, and those dystopian Bible passages he was studying. Maybe after work she would stop by.

  Misery brushed against her leg and she reached down to pet the cat, who responded by biting her fingers.

  “You’re definitely her cat,” she said as she pulled her hand away. “She named you well.”

  Shirley finished her coffee and began to get ready for her work day. She wasn’t looking forward to work much more than Des looked forward to school. Typing numbers in a room full of overly chatty co-workers wasn’t very fulfilling, but it paid the bills. At least most of the bills.

  She hoped to send Des to college to give her more choices in her life than she herself had, but Des didn’t seem to care either way. At least her grades were good enough that if she worked at it, she could probably get a scholarship somewhere, but getting her to do something she didn’t want to was nearly impossible. She smirked as she thought of James voicing a similar complaint about her years ago. Maybe her daughter was more like her than she would admit.

  “See you later cat, don’t destroy anything,” she called as she walked towards the door, doubling back to the counter to grab the yellow church pamphlet. Misery gave her an innocent look as she left, his tail swishing back and forth.

  Chicken Bones and Lies

  Despite the bright morning light, the day had turned grey and miserable, heavy with the clouds of an approaching storm. The chill wind dragged tears from her eyes as Des stared up at the brick towers with a growing sensation of dread. She contemplated turning around, but two days of missed classes would probably mean a call to her mom.

  She only noticed the graffiti in the hallway as she reached her first class. Her name was written on the wall in marker, Desdemona, with the middle part circled to spell Demon. Someone thinks they’re hilarious, she thought, as she went in and slumped down into a chair, trying to ignore all her classmates.

  She slapped her notebook onto her desk, the pages flopping open to a half-finished poem intended to be lyrics for a song. She frowned at it and turned the page. They had started a band once, her and Rachel and Kyle, but their ambitions never got very far. Des should have paid more attention when Rachel kept changing her song lyrics, slyly undermining her as she always took the lead, belting out off-key tunes and turning down the old amp Des had connected to her bass guitar. She claimed too much feedback interfered with her singing. Rachel’s mother made it even worse, making snide remarks about their talent being inferior to her daughter’s. Unfortunately, her house was where they always practiced.

  Maybe Adrian was right. Rachel couldn’t handle anyone who didn’t conform to her needs, even her supposed best friend.

  Mr. Patterson started reading from Crime & Punishment in his droning monotone.

  “I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for my own sake, for no one but myself… what I needed to know, and know quickly, was whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a man. Whether I could take the step across, or whether I couldn’t.”

  He paused. “Do we know what Raskolnikov means by taking a step across?”

  “Murder,” came a barely audible whisper from across the room. Des looked over at May to see a faint grin visible behind her curtain of hair. When the teacher glanced her way she hunched forward again, as if she could make herself small enough to disappear.

  “Yes, murder. He meant to test his own boundaries, to see if he could do this forbidden thing. He thought it would give him power and freedom, freedom from himself, from his wretched state of living. But he was terribly wrong.”

  Maybe Raskolnikov had a Rachel in his life, Des thought. Or maybe he knew what most people are really like. Beneath their moral facades lurked the urge to hate, to control, to belittle those who were different than them. Enough to drive someone to insanity, or to murder. As Des absently doodled in her notebook, she watched May again, wondering what she was thinking. When her pen ripped through the paper, she looked down at her drawing. There was a rough rendering of the seven-headed dragon from her dream, surrounded by jagged flames.

  She jumped as Mr. Patterson suddenly cried out and backed away from his desk, sending his chair banging into the wall. The room became silent as everyone watched him gingerly reach into his desk drawer and pull out a dried chicken foot, its toes curled stiffly together. A piece of rawhide tied around it held some scraggly feathers and beads. He held it up and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  “This,” he said, “is not funny.”

  Whispers and giggles erupted throughout the room. Des couldn’t help looking at Rachel, who stared back, one eyebrow slightly raised as if questioning her. Des noticed others following her gaze and looked quickly back to her desk.

  “Someone’s putting a curse on you,” Kyle said loudly. Mr. Patterson frowned at him and dropped the chicken foot into the garbage.

  “There are no such things as curses, Kyle. Only bored teenagers who are going to be in a lot of trouble when we found out whose idea this was.”

  With that, he went on with the lesson. After the buzzer rang, she noticed Rachel having a whispered conversation with the teacher. As Des headed for the door, he called after her. He waited for the others to leave before he spoke.

  “Desdemona,” he said solemnly, “are you the one who put that thing in my desk?”

  “What? No,” she protested, “why would I do that?”

  He sighed. “Your friends are worried about you.”

  “My friends?”

  “I’ve noticed that you’ve been withdrawn, and they’re worried you’re not yourself lately. Is this a cry for attention?”

  “I…” Des was at a loss for words. Of all the sneaky little tricks Rachel had up her sleeve, she hadn’t expected this. “They’re not…”

  “Not your friends?” He was looking at her with compassion, as if he understood what she was going through. As if he could possibly know.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped.

  “Of course not.” He gave her a grim smile and scribbled a note on a piece of paper. “I want you to go see the guidance counselor. You can skip your next class and go now.”

  Des grabbed the note and stalked out of the room with no intention of going to the guidance counselor. Outside the door she collided with Allie and Josh.

  “Watch it witch,” Allie pushed her against the wall where her name was scrawled. “Or should I say demon.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you…” Des trailed off as she looked over at Josh. His face was covered in a nasty red rash, some of the skin peeling off as if he had a sunburn. She couldn’t help thinking of her wish the other day as he laughed at h
er, her vision of his face melting away. He nervously picked at one of his scabs.

  “What are you staring at, whore?” Allie pushed her again. Des felt her skin prickling with heat and narrowed her eyes, focusing on Allie’s face. Could she do the same thing to her?

  They were interrupted by Mr. Patterson coming out of the classroom. Allie immediately let her go and put an arm around Josh, even pretending to wipe a tear from her eye. Des glared at her.

  “Oh, Mr. Patterson! She was making fun of Josh, I can’t believe she would do that. He’s very sensitive about his condition.” Josh looked down at the floor, hiding a tiny smile.

  Mr. Patterson frowned. “All right, let’s move it along here. Des?” He pointed at the note in her hand. She huffed and crumpled the note as she walked off, leaving them both trying to console Josh.

  “A man or a louse,” she muttered, thinking of the conversation in class. “Which one am I?”

  At lunchtime Des went down to the first-floor hallway and peeked through the staircase doors to see May sitting in the same spot. She hesitated for a moment, but when she walked through the doors she was relieved to find May smiling at her. At least she could still count her as a friend.

  “Wanna see something cool?” May asked as she sat down. She pulled a small box out of her book bag, holding it close like a fragile, precious thing. It was made of wood with delicate carved patterns and a silver latch, which she clicked open.

  Des peered inside at an odd jumble of grayish white objects, their sharp but organic shapes slowly becoming recognizable. Her first instinct was to recoil, but a magnetic fascination pulled her back.

  “They’re bones!”

  May grinned as she plucked out a miniature bleached skull no larger than her fingertip and handed it to Des. A thin silver wire was wrapped through its eyes and artfully around its head, ending in a small loop. She turned it over gently in her palm to look at the tiny sharp teeth and miniscule hollow eye sockets.

  “It’s beautiful! But so fragile. Won’t it get broken in there?”

  “I have plenty more.” May paused for a moment. “Would you like one?”

  “Are you sure?” The skull felt as light and graceful as a feather in her hand, but also heavy, the intangible heaviness of death and decay.

  May nodded enthusiastically. “Most people don’t appreciate my work.”

  “Thank you,” Des said, slipping the loop at the end through the chain holding her pentagram necklace, letting the skull rest on top of the silver star. “The wire work is amazing. Where do you get all these?”

  “I collect them and make them into jewelry and stuff. That one’s a mouse. Mice are everywhere, they’re insatiable vermin. Kind of like people.” She giggled.

  “Yeah,” Des agreed. “Kind of like people.”

  “Wouldn’t it be cool though to have human bones?”

  Des looked at her with a raised eyebrow. She began to wonder just how all those mice had ended up in a little wooden box.

  “You would need a bigger box,” she said with a smirk.

  May laughed, not a nervous suppressed giggle, but a real, honest laugh. Des joined her and the laughter felt good. For a moment she forgot about Rachel and Josh and even the monster plaguing her dreams. As their laughter died down, she heard her phone chime in her pocket and pulled it out to check the screen. She continued to smile as she saw a text from Adrian.

  I have to work tonight. Doing anything tomorrow?

  She bit her lip and typed back. I have big plans to sleep late.

  Can I convince you to wake before noon and take a ride with me?

  Her fingers hovered over the screen while she decided how to respond. She would wake at sunrise if it meant spending the day with him.

  I’ll clear my schedule, she typed.

  “Why are you grinning like that, is that your boyfriend?” May nodded at her phone.

  Des tried to suppress her silly grin, but found it unusually persistent.

  “Yeah, I guess he is.”

  May sighed and blew a strand of hair from her face. “I wish I had a boyfriend.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find one.” She nudged May. “I saw Sam looking at you the other day.”

  May blushed. “He’s with Layla, he would never notice me.” She said Layla’s name with reverence, as if her beauty made her a thing of worship. It bothered Des.

  “You’re beautiful too, May, you just have to let people see it.”

  May shook her head, her hair falling forward again as if she didn’t want to be seen.

  “That’s not what my papa says.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  May closed her box of bones, and it seemed as if she closed her soul away with it, hiding all the dark and shining parts of herself that she rarely let out into the world. Des wished she knew how to help her, but she had her own demons to deal with, her own hidden pieces to figure out.

  More Subway Mysteries

  On the subway ride home Des opened her notebook to her last page of random doodles and partial song lyrics, but she kept picturing Josh’s ravaged face instead and imagining what it would be like to have the power to hurt someone. She supposed that would make her a witch, proving everyone right. Not the peace-loving, Wiccan sort of witch. The Hansel and Gretel children-eating kind. She shook her head and sighed. That’s the kind of power Rachel would want, and she didn’t want to be like Rachel.

  “I’d like to think you’re daydreaming about me, but I bet it’s that other guy.”

  Des looked up into a pair of sea-green eyes framed by spiky auburn hair. It was the strange man from the subway the other day.

  “You!” She reached into her bag and pulled out the brass coin he had left behind, brandishing it at him. “What is this thing, and why are you following me?”

  “Hey, calm down sweetheart, don’t wave that thing around.” He sat down next to her and grasped her hand holding the coin, gently lowering it. “Just because I ride the same train doesn’t mean I’m following you.”

  “I am not your sweetheart.” She snatched her hand back and considered what he said. Was she being paranoid? It wasn’t that strange to run into the same people commuting on the subway every day. Even in a city of over eight million people. But he had called her by her name last time, and now…

  “Wait, what do you mean that other guy?”

  “Mr. tall, dark and handsome? Yeah, he’s bad news. Nothing good will come out of that for sure.”

  “You know Adrian?” That might explain how he knew her name, but judging by his reaction, he was not his friend.

  “I know enough,” he winked at her. “You’re too good for him.”

  She laughed. “And who’s better for me? You? I don’t even know you.”

  “Then we must remedy that.” He held out his hand and she looked at it pensively before giving it a brief shake, a slight tingle coursing through her palm. She tried to dispel the odd feeling by flexing her fingers, fidgeting with her rings.

  “Cyrus,” he said, watching her twist her skull ring back and forth. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Like the singer?” Des smirked.

  “Ha. Like the ancient Persian king, my parents are kind of… old world.”

  “From Persia? I mean, like Iran or something.”

  “Irish actually,” he gestured to his reddish hair. “It’s more of a biblical name.”

  Des had started fidgeting with her pentagram necklace instead of her ring, and noticed him watching.

  “I was admiring your necklace,” he said. “Interesting choice.”

  “Oh,” she dropped her hand. “I’m not really…” a witch, she started to say, then bit her lip. But he reached over to touch her dragon necklace instead.

  “But it only has one head.” His fingers clasped the necklace loosely as he held her gaze, searching her eyes for a reaction. She stared at him in shock, her dream coming back to her in a rush and she shivered, recalling the terrifying seven headed
creature.

  How could he possibly know her dreams? Then she remembered doodling the dragon in her notebook and looked down at her lap. Doodles covered almost every page, but the one showing had no dragons on it. When had he seen it?

  “You are following me,” she accused. It was the only thing that made sense.

  He leaned back and smiled. “I’m not a follower. And neither are you.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “You’re not asking the right question.”

  She frowned at him. He was certainly irritating, but he still intrigued her, so she went along with his little game.

  “Ok, so what’s the right question?”

  Cyrus nodded at a tall, stern man standing near the doors. He faced the middle of the train, but she noticed he was looking at her from the corner of his eye. He was grey from his hair to his pressed suit. Even his dress shoes were a drab smoky shade.

  “Why is that man staring at you?”

  She shrugged as if the answer was obvious. “Because he’s a creep?” She raised an eyebrow at Cyrus. “I tend to attract creeps.”

  Cyrus held a hand to his chest as if offended, then whispered, “Look closer.”

  Des narrowed her eyes and glared at the man, but instead of looking away, he turned to face her. He grinned and slowly blinked both eyes, and when they opened they were glowing a bright red. His grin widened to show a mouthful of pointed teeth, and a snakelike tongue flicked in the air.

  Des sucked in a breath and shrank back against her unyielding seat. She remembered the demonic creatures she had seen in the tunnel the first time she met Cyrus. She had convinced herself the vision was just a part of her dream. She turned to him and smacked his shoulder, pushing him halfway off the seat.

  “Stop it,” she hissed. The passenger on her other side raised an eyebrow at them and went back to reading his paper. Cyrus lifted his hands as if proclaiming innocence.