“No, of course, of course, I’ll leave right away,” I said. Gavin was vigorously shaking his head in the negative direction, but I ignored him.
“Thank you.” Hunter sounded like she wanted to start crying again, but discovered she was too tired. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Wait!” I said before I lost her to the empty battery. “Where are you?”
“St. Paul’s,” she answered. “Hurry!”
The line clicked and went dead.
I turned to Gavin, panicked. “St. Paul’s? That’s all we’ve got to go on? St. Paul’s? There must be a million St. Paul’s churches!”
“Actually,” Gavin answered, “when it comes to London, there’s only one.”
St. Paul’s, it turns out, is the largest cathedral in London. I should have recognized the name, because it’s where Princess Diana married Prince Charles. My mom wasn’t sentimental about things, except when it came to Princess Diana. My mom told me that when Diana died, she called in sick to work and lay on the couch in front of the live television coverage, crying for two straight days. When I was born, she gave me the middle name Diana in tribute to the real-life princess who had to navigate a not-so-fairy-tale world.
Now Hunter was hiding there. Five minutes after she hung up, I got a single text from her. She must have tried to send it out before she called, but it had been delayed. It was ominously short, just five words: “STUCK IN ST PAULS. PLEASE HELP!” I was glad I had gotten to speak to her, because the message alone would have freaked me out, but it did underscore the urgency. I had to get to her quickly.
“How long is a plane ride down to London?” I asked Gavin, already moving around my room and throwing things into a small backpack.
“With heightened security at the airports, the train is faster,” he answered. “Only four hours from Glasgow to London. But for you, it’s zero.”
“What do you mean, ‘zero’? Are we going to drive there or something?”
“No, I mean there’s zero chance that you’re going,” he answered. “Why would you?”
I stopped packing and studied his face to see if he was joking, but he looked pretty serious. Which made me pretty furious.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I said.
“It’s too dangerous,” he answered.
“Well, I don’t care.” The words tumbled out of my mouth. “She’s my friend, and she’s in trouble, and it’s all my fault, and she doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Well, I do care, Maren,” he answered. “And it’s not happening.” I loved when Gavin said my name in his thick accent. My heart melted like summer snow. Until he ruined it with the whole telling me what to do part.
“‘Not happening’?” I said. “You’re not the boss of me. It is happening.” Did I really just say, “You’re not the boss of me”? Now I was acting like the kindergartener who teased the boy she liked. Ridiculous. He made me act like this. He made me crazy.
“What exactly is your plan?” he asked, far too smugly. “You’re going to race down to London, go to St. Paul’s, and then what?”
“We’ll find Magnificat,” I said. “I’ll turn in my mom’s stuff, get the antidote, and we’ll all be safe.”
“How are you two going to leave the church when there are demons outside who’ve surely recorded Hunter’s heartbeat?”
“I don’t know.” I threw up my hands, anger rushing through me. “I honestly have no freaking idea about anything!” I hissed, wanting to holler but not wanting to wake up my grandparents any further. To my extreme frustration and embarrassment, my eyes brimmed with tears. But there was no holding them back. There was no holding anything back. “Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know! All I know is I lost my mom—who apparently kept her entire life a secret from me—and I’m alone in the middle of nowhere. My only two friends in the whole world are either on their deathbed or trapped in a church. All because of me. And I have to try to do something about it. I don’t know what, I don’t know how, but I have to try.” Tears rolled down my face, but I didn’t care.
Gavin, however, did. He inhaled sharply, like he didn’t know what to do with my burst of emotion. “I’m sorry,” he said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just . . . I just don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. I’ll take care of it. I was waiting for you to wake up to tell you that I was going to go to Magnificat anyway.”
“What you mean?” I asked, wiping at my cheeks. My fury dissipated like clouds in the sun. Gavin somehow had the ability to make me instantly happy no matter what the circumstance.
“The village decided I should go to Magnificat to see if there’s an antidote,” he replied.
“So they believe my mom’s encryption?”
He nodded. “We knew something was being planned. Now we know what.”
“Why you?” I asked. “Why are you going?”
“Because it’s my assignment. This is my town, my time,” he said, pride illuminating his eyes.
“Well, I’m coming with you,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” he answered.
I wasn’t going to get mad again. I had to stay focused. I turned away and continued filling my backpack. I got my mother’s journal, carefully wrapped it in a scarf, and zipped it inside.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Packing,” I said simply.
“Why?”
“You’ve got your duty, and I’ve got mine. You’re going to London. Great. I’m going to get Hunter. Maybe I’ll see you there, maybe I won’t.”
“You’re serious?” he said. “You’re going to go?”
“I’m sorry, but I have to. I started this by sending Hunter pictures from my mom’s book. I’ve got to go finish it.”
Gavin sat sullenly in the overstuffed chair while I finished getting my things together. Short of locking me in a closet, which I was pretty sure was against his “angel rules,” he knew he couldn’t stop me. And I guessed that since I was going and he was going, he would just go with me. But he wasn’t going to be happy about it.
I peppered him with questions, hoping he would forget to be in a bad mood. “Who’s going to watch over Aviemore while you’re gone? Are they going to send another angel?”
“Aye,” he mumbled.
“Just one?”
“One’s not enough?” he asked, arching one eyebrow in an incredibly sexy way.
“I’m sure it is, I mean, you are . . .” I stammered, trying to regain my composure. “But why does each town only get one angel? It seems like there should be more.”
“For bigger towns, there is,” he said with a shrug. “But there are a lot of areas to cover all at once. We’re spread pretty thin.”
“Are you going straight to Magnificat, or to St. Paul’s first?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“I suppose I’m following you to St. Paul’s,” he sighed.
I stopped packing and perched on the arm of the chair. “I know you’re this huge Warrior and I’m upsetting your mission, but there’s no reason we can’t work together.” I flashed my sweetest smile. “Isn’t that what they do at the Abbey? Angels and humans work together?”
“We don’t work for the Abbey,” he reminded me. “I’m not supposed to be interacting with humans at all, let alone sitting in their bedrooms watching them pack.”
For balance, I rested my right hand on my knee. With his forefinger, he began tracing the outline of it. It tingled so deliciously, my entire being focused on his one finger lightly brushing against my skin. Every nerve ending tickled, and I could feel laughter all the way down to my toes. It was an unexplained but glorious electricity. I could hardly bear it.
Suddenly, he stopped, as if he only just noticed what he was doing; as if he’d lost control of himself and didn’t mean to. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, changing his mind. He yanked his hand away from mine, and stood up quickly, almost knocking me off the chair’s arm as he did.
“All right, let’s go,” he said, abruptly.
So much for this love story.
There was no way I could tell my grandparents I was taking off on an emergency trip to London in order to help a teenage orphan they’d never met battle demons. But I couldn’t just disappear, either. I needed a good cover story.
By the time the sun rose and they woke up, I had it ready. I was headed to London with the after-school choir, I told them. That with all the worry of Jo being in the hospital, I’d completely forgotten to tell them about the London competition. I had my phone, I assured them, Gavin the trustworthy tutor was waiting to drive me to the train station, and I had to run.
I don’t think they bought it, but they didn’t stop me from going. They exchanged a few glances I thought might qualify as worried, but my grandmother set her lips into a thin line, nodded her permission, and I was out the door.
I felt terrible about being so dishonest with them, but what else could I do? I knew lying was a sin, a commandment even. But it wasn’t going to hell after I died that worried me. It was going there beforehand.
CHAPTER 22
My first breaths in England’s capital were heavy with anticipation. The platform at London’s Victoria Station where we disembarked was outdoors, but covered by an arch of twisted steel and glass windows that whispered of a thousand good-byes.
My awe was short-lived, though, as we needed to catch the quickest subway to St. Paul’s. Following the round, red “Underground” signs that promised to deliver us to the “Tube” meant traversing through endless, dingy passages that reeked of an unhappy mixture of urine and ash. The tunnels were ancient, but not in a charming, historical way—more a depressing, bomb shelter way. The dismal off-white walls lacked any luster at all; in fact, they seemed to absorb what little florescent light there was.
Just when I thought our dank, claustrophobic wandering couldn’t get any worse, we turned a corner and discovered a filthy bum with matted hair on his head and his face hunched on the ground next to an empty coffee cup.
Gavin must not have liked the look of him either, because he stopped, told me to wait where I was, and walked over to the guy. After crouching down and talking for a few moments, Gavin dropped a couple of what he called “quid”—the funniest word for dollars I’d ever heard—into the battered container, grabbed my hand, and ushered me back out of the tunnel, back the way we’d come.
“The Tube isn’t safe,” Gavin said. “We need to catch a taxi.”
“What did that man tell you?” I asked, as I hurried to keep up with Gavin’s long strides.
“That demons regularly ride the rails looking for innocent young girls heading into London,” he answered.
“What does a homeless man know about demons? And how did you know he wasn’t a demon?”
“I can see demons and angels as clearly as if they were wearing signs on their foreheads,” he stated with a shrug.
“They don’t just blend in with the rest of us?”
“Happily, not to me, or I’d have a heck of a time protecting you. They look like humans, but with breath. I can see their breath.”
“Like it’s a cold day?”
“Precisely.”
“And that guy wasn’t a demon?” I persisted.
“No; actually, he was an angel.”
I jerked to a stop, yanking his fingers as I did. “That disgusting homeless man was an angel?”
“Aye. Lots of the homeless are angels. Since most people walk right past and ignore them, it’s the perfect way for us to protect the public while hidden in plain sight.”
Gavin held the battered metal-and-glass door that led to the street open for me. Once we were through, he tightened his grip on my hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s queue up for a taxi.”
The line was long, and full of strange people jostling for room. I was bumped more than once. Every push made me nervous, since I had my mother’s secret journal in my backpack—the journal she possibly was killed for. It wasn’t heavy, but it weighed me down with a thousand pounds of guilt. I had to get to Hunter and then to Jo before it was too late.
Our driver, a rough-looking, very crabby older woman with sagging cheeks and a snarl etched on her face, was named Flora, which struck me as funny since that was the name of one of the nice, grandmotherly fairies in Disney’s cartoon Sleeping Beauty.
I was restless during the thirty-minute trip, anxious to get to St. Paul’s, and worried both about Jo dying in the hospital before I could find her a cure and Hunter being stuck in a church surrounded by demons. The acid bubbling in my stomach from skipping breakfast didn’t help.
I was still wearing my backpack—I’d refused to take it off and let the driver put it in the trunk. It bulged behind my back, adding to my discomfort. The only good thing about being crammed into the back of the small black car was being crammed next to Gavin. His muscular body barely fit in the cab, forcing our legs to rest against one other. As always, he smelled amazing; this time like a combination of musk and fresh grass. I tried not to be obvious that I was inhaling it, loving it, but it was hard.
As we approached Ludgate Hill, the massive dome of St. Paul’s finally appeared, floating above everything like a giant, ethereal slice of architectural heaven. Hunter’s humongous hiding place. I’d read in a guidebook on the train that at 365 feet tall, St. Paul’s was the tallest building in London until 1962. Except for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, there is no bigger church dome on the planet.
We were still a couple of miles away, but as we got closer, I strained in my seat to get a better look. London streets, I discovered, tended to run in large circles rather than neat squares, and as such, we got to see the cathedral from all sides. From one direction, it looked like a massive train station, very long and solemn. From another, it reminded me of the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. And at what I guessed to be the main front entrance, it looked like a giant church with bell towers, clock towers, and Roman columns littered with statues.
We were only a few blocks from the cathedral when a loud thud echoed across the roof of the cab.
“Must ’ave hit a bird,” Flora grunted, flexing her stubby fingers. “Or a squirrel.”
“But it sounded like it was above us,” I said.
“Maybe it bounced off the grill or fell out of a tree,” Gavin suggested.
Flora growled, “Better not ’ave damaged my car.”
We sat in silence at a traffic light, probably all thinking about the poor, most likely blind, creature, when we heard honking. The driver of the car to our right made a terrible face, and then hit the gas as the light turned green, cutting us off and speeding away.
“Piss off!” Flora shouted to his tailpipe. “Honking doesn’t give you permission to drive like a beast!”
A car to our left honked as well. The driver was contorting his face and pointing at the roof of our cab before he too sped off.
“What’s he on about?” Flora asked.
“Maybe there’s still some of the bird or squirrel on the roof . . .” I said, hoping I was wrong.
“Crikey,” she answered. “Wouldn’t that just be a fine how-you-do?”
Her radio crackled: “Lady Cab number 121 . . . do . . . read?”
“This is LC 121,” Flora answered.
As we pulled up to another red light on the quiet neighborhood street, a sickening scraping reverberated above our heads—the sound of metal on metal. I couldn’t imagine a squirrel was trying to hold on with his little paws as we drove along, but since there were no low-hanging branches around, I couldn’t figure what else would make such a noise. I tilted my head to try and see the top of the car. All I saw was a curve of shiny black paint.
“I’m . . . Livery . . . to your left. Do . . . see me?” the male voice on Flora’s radio asked. We all looked over and saw a cab next to us, its driver holding his handset to his mouth. His eyes bulged from their sockets.
“Aye,” Flora answered.
“You . . . something . . . roof,” the radio reported. The scratching and static both got louder.
“What’s that?” Flora hollered into the mic. She held up her radio, pointed to it and shrugged, then motioned for the other driver to roll down his window.
He rolled his eyes, shook his head wildly, and gunned his engine through the still-red light.
“Noo . . . ooo . . . ,” the radio crackled again.
“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Flora said. “Everyone’s gone daft today!”
Gavin squeezed my hand and signaled for me to slide closer. “Climb over me,” he whispered.
“What?”
A tapping on the glass near my face made me turn back toward my window. A hand with wrinkled, reptilian skin and sharp claws was inching down from the roof.
I opened my mouth to scream, but Gavin planted his lips over mine. I was so shocked, I forgot how to breathe, let alone scream. He let go of my hand, and buried his hand in my hair, holding my head to keep our silent lips locked. He climbed over me, and I slid into his seat. We were still kissing as he slowly started to roll down the window. The demon hand slid in the car, Gavin kicked my door open with his foot, and abruptly pulled his face away from mine.
“Run!” he yelled.
I froze just long enough to see him grab the demon’s hand with both of his and yank. I hurled myself out of the car and ran. The cathedral was still several blocks away, peeking out from between the buildings. I glanced back. I couldn’t see Gavin, but a large, scaly creature flipped off the car toward Gavin’s side. The air was pierced by the familiar high-pitch screaming from my dreams, and the sound of glass shattering. I ran faster.
I pushed myself through the alley, emerged into the plaza in front of St. Paul’s, and bolted up the stairs toward the massive wooden doors. A breeze caught my hair just as I approached the entrance, followed by a violent tug on my backpack. I slipped down two shallow stone steps as the supernatural scream rang out again. This time, it was right in my ear.
I was still standing, so I twisted to get a better look at what had caught me. A thin sheet of crimson skin, crisscrossed with veins, obscured my view and beat at my face. Just as my brain registered what it was, a searing pain exploded across my back around the edges of the pack. The demon had a hold of me, and was dragging me backward, away from the church. I couldn’t let them have my mother’s journal, but I was no match for this nightmare creature. I wondered exactly how strong the straps on my backpack were. Would they break, or would I be lifted off the ground until I fell to my death too?
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