Alice's Insurrection (Alice Clark Series)

by Andrea DiGiglio

  “Sorry we didn’t mean to wake you,” Jake offered.

  “Could have fooled me,” she joked. “I would have asked for help getting dressed, but you know I like to suffer through the pain. It’s like a battle scar,” she said with a grin. “Though figuring out this tank top was a trial with these damn wings. Besides, I wouldn’t dare interrupt the intervention,” she teased.

  “Har har,” Cole said, lifting her up cautiously in his arms. She chuckled and kissed the top of his head. He set her down, angled sideways in a chair at the table, remaining conscious of her injured wings. As his fingers slid off of her shoulder, he took a hard look around. He hated to admit it but this was his family and he loved them too.

  ALICE

  INTERESTING GROUP OF FALLEN, INTERESTING family you have here. Briathos thought to Alice from his new room.

  Yes they are, and I love every one of them. He could feel the smile in her voice when she answered, all while watching her family who were already in a new conversation and looking as if they were enjoying themselves thoroughly. A part of her remembered their conversation earlier and wanted to bring up the Four Horseman and the seals, but she felt she had had enough pain and darkness in one day and that she would wait to bring it up. That wouldn’t stop it from plaguing her mind.

  It has been a long time since I have witnessed such love. I think I will try to get some rest now.

  Sweet dreams. She said with a smile, wondering if angels dream.

  We do. Better than the alternative, which I have a feeling Fallen do more of. Who knows? I may be about to find out.

  Cole studied her curiously, knowing she was speaking to someone. He didn’t ask but she eased his discomfort and nodded her head toward the angel’s room. He sighed in response as she glanced at Jake and back to Cole looking for an opening where she could interrupt. “Jake?” She asked reaching one hand out, watching Cole’s eyes. Cole nodded to her with a newfound calmness that washed over her and eased her worry. She felt Jake’s arm slide up hers to support her as she lifted herself from the chair. She looked to Kokabiel who patted his son on the back, pulling him over to the conversation that included her father.

  “Outside?”

  “You got it,” Jake said slipping out the door with her. Once outside he scooped her into his arms, careful not to disturb her injuries more than he had to, knowing part of her strength was a front. “Where to, Your Highness?” he said, smiling wickedly at her in his arms. She swatted at him in response. He made a ‘who me’ face at her, sending her into an uncontrolled chuckle that hurt almost as much as it was worth it.

  “Sometimes you really are terrible. Under those trees in the back, since I don’t have to walk.” He set her down softly on the bright green grass near the tree line and sat beside her. She was grateful for that; she felt safer knowing that if she could no longer hold herself up, she could lean on him. She often found comfort on his shoulders when things were tough for her, physically or emotionally. He had, after all, seen her at her darkest moment, that was until she met Purah. The truth was that she was moments away from having no strength at all. She felt the brave face was necessary, not only to help herself through these tough times, but to ease her family’s worries as well. She didn’t have to do any of those things with him, for which she was grateful.

  “What’s on your mind?” he stared quizzically.

  “Feels like a dream. Of all the ways that this could have played out, this one feels like a dream.” Her fingers grew fidgety until she realized this was the second time she had gone to talk to Jake in Cole’s boxers. Obviously thinking it loudly, they both chuckled together.

  “That was the day I learned you don’t take no for an answer.”

  “You also learned I could hold you down in the shower.” The laughter stopped when the thought of where they had been going that day arose. Camille’s funeral entered their minds with a cruel force.

  “I wish I could tell you it’s not always going to be like that, but I promised I would never lie to you. Being a Nephilim or a Fallen, you have to fight and struggle through so much bad shit to get a moment of good. I suppose that’s true for some humans too, but we are programed to feel everything to higher degree,” Jake said, almost in a monotone, and he stared with angry eyes at the sky ahead.

  “Something’s coming, isn’t it?” she said glancing at the sky and knowing what he envisioned wasn’t the sky at all but more likely a place he once called home. He didn’t answer; he only grabbed her hand and wrapped his fingers through hers. Ever since she had discovered what she was, she had known that her heritage was how she had earned her gifts. She had always felt it was a curse, and now while she felt Jake’s pain, she was having difficulty believing otherwise.

  “Yes. Something is coming, but it was set in motion long before you were created.” He sighed, wanting to change the subject. He didn’t want to subject her to the other enemies that would arise in their future or the ones that had come before her. “Let’s enjoy our moment; there is plenty of time to worry, I promise,” he said.

  She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he leaned his head against hers. They sat there silently for a long while, staring at the clouds as they rushed across the sky. She breathed in deeply, slowing the space around her so that she could remember this calm moment when everything went wrong in the not so distant future. She exhaled and as she did, everything resumed its normal, steady pace.

  Jake ignored the shift, knowing by the smell in the air what she had done. “What did you want to talk about, Alice?”

  “I wanted to thank you for saving me, for making peace with Cole, most of all for trusting me and allowing me to see the dark in you. I never would have seen the light we shared if you hadn’t.” Alice sat up and looked into his eyes with such love, she felt his darkness thaw slightly.

  “You don’t know the things I’ve done since the Fall, even before the Fall. You only know the version of me that I am now.”

  “No, Jake, I know who you are on a core level. You may be filled with darkness, showing only a single light filled with the ability to love, to care and to fight for what is right. Your past is your past, it’s time to move forward. The entire point of being saved is to get another chance to start over.” She had waited a long time to explain to Jake that what he was going through was his own battle to fight all feeling, that it was himself feeling unworthy of redemption for all the wrong reasons. Not all of the Fallen, for example Purah, chose to feel, and some hung in the balance, like Jake.

  “I feel so much love in my life, I can actually feel it deep within me. It’s like a warm blanket that soothes the sadness within, and it helps me get through the dark times in my life. What I feel more than love, is anger and pain. I am angry with Paul for putting me in this position. I am angry with God for turning His back on His children and damning us all because He is angry. I feel pain that I am hated by so many, including the One I have spent my whole life believing loved me because of what I am. I have been psychically tortured and beaten because of what I am and somehow, through all this, I am supposed to, in some magical way, save all of you Fallen, all of my fellow Nephilim and all of mankind. Yet I am accepting it all willingly, to feel love, even if it’s only for a single minute and is taken away from me at any moment. Do you get my point, Jake?”

  “I guess, but you don’t understand what I have done; I do not deserve salvation.” Jake’s voice grew agitated. She could sense she was close to whatever was holding him back.

  “I do understand.”

  “No, you don’t!” he said, leaping up from where he sat.

  “I have seen it! I have seen who you really are and who you used to be,” Alice yelled louder than she had meant to. She pulled at his arm, “Sit down, please.”

  “I’m sorry, we should go back inside.”

  “No, Jake, you need to deal with this so you don’t get us both killed. We are linked now, and I won’t have you getting us all killed because you allow your guilt to consume you. You
can be an asset or a weakness; trust me as I trust you. Sit.”

  Jake sat down in front of her, hesitantly, as she looked into his eyes and watched, looking for the light inside of him to draw out toward her. “No matter what happens, do not look away.”

  “It’s too dangerous and you are too weak.”

  “I know who you are, Jake, and I know who you were, even if it hurts you that I do. It’s time to let it go. I need you to be strong here, now, for us all. What is coming is what we have all been fearing and maybe even worse, and we need to be at our best.” She smiled softly, “I’m okay, I promise.”

  “Okay, then. I think you are more stubborn than I am, and I’m ignoring the fact that you promised not to lie to me, just this once.”

  Alice stared deep into his eyes. She wasn’t sure what to do, but she allowed her soul to guide her. Her heart reminded her soul of the single kiss they had shared when he had shared everything with her. The light within her soul instantly reached out to him and she followed as it grasped the bright light that had grown more intense since their last meeting. Her soul smiled and redirected to the dark smog within him, grasping at a memory that seemed preserved there. Alice felt Jake struggle and grabbed his hands, reminding him that she was right there. He was talking to someone who was giving him orders to destroy a human village; he quickly fulfilled the orders, but the toll of the assignment took hold of him and had never released that hold. It was still hard for Alice to get used to the winding images, filled with emotional attachments, reaching out to her, playing out the moments like a film in her head. Except that in this film she could feel what he felt. A few similar assignments were carried out, each one filling him with darkness until the last assignment which had been to kill a ward filled with babies. They were all Nephilim but to him they looked like helpless babies. When he returned without completing his job, the angel who had assigned him the duty, showed him that another angel had carried out their orders, finishing his assignment. Alice read the angel’s lips as he spoke of the other angel being, “a true devote to God.” She felt Jake break into a thousand pieces and saw the darkness as it began to fill the spaces in between each piece, while he watched a replay of that devoted angel take care of his last assignment, just as he had been forced to do so long ago.

  The Fall had begun and Jake had been on strike for some time. An angel she recognized approached him and gave him a choice to do God’s will and stay with them, or to fall from grace and be with those he wanted to spare.

  “Procel?” Rogziel’s voice boomed.

  “That’s not my name anymore,” Jake said, as he leaped off of the edge of grace.

  It looked like years after the Fall, Jake was still filled with anger, so much so that it made Alice’s skin crawl being trapped in the memory. He grew vicious and began to terrorize those he had sacrificed himself for in order for them to live. Images of savagery flooded through her mind as he tried to kill the love and the compassion that he had for humans and Nephilims. They finally rested on a medieval time period where a Fallen had taken him in, being impressed with his talents. Purah. Alice thought.

  She felt Jake’s hands squeezing hers and she knew he wanted her to stop. She felt his panic and, though she didn’t want to witness what was to come next, something in her felt that this was the road which would show her how she would save him.

  Purah was being honest when he had told her he was taking it easy on her. She now knew why Jake hadn’t wanted to help her enter a room of torture by trading for Cole. Jake had endured his torture first hand, she saw as the first images were revealed. As she felt the emotion, she knew Purah was only breaking him down, until he could force Jake into becoming the torturer, the very thing he had fallen from grace over. After what felt like forever, the images of their torture and cruelty stopped and she noticed something she hadn’t seen during the memory, of which she was now painfully aware. Jake was reliving it all as well, not as a memory, but more as if he were right there in the moment all over again. After each torture Purah kept him in a cage. She gasped at the sight of him being constantly forced into unmentionable acts. Her own wounds began to ache from the memory of the time she spent with Purah. One moment suddenly slowed down by command of the light she felt in him directing the images she was seeing and also the speed at which she was viewing them, as if to mark its importance. Sariel entered the room that held Jake, freeing him. He carried his Fallen brother, bathed in blood and anguish, out and returned him to a farm in Hell, Michigan. Together they spent many lifetimes saving Nephilim from angels like he had been.

  The next series of images and film, a transition of decades and centuries, were of Jake drinking himself into a constant stupor until the day he met Camille. Alice almost pulled her eyes away from his but resisted at the last moment. She may have known one side of the story, but she could swear she felt her heartbeat begin to race as she watched Jake stare into Camille’s eyes. Alice let go, allowing the final memory of her to be one he could cherish rather than mourn, bright eyed with a smile that could warm anyone’s soul.

  “I forgive you,” Alice whispered, catching her breath from the whiplash effect that this particular ability caused her. “Who we are is in direct relation to who we were. Do you think I would have accepted this as my life if I grew up in a loving home and lived a normal happy life?”

  “Actually, yes, you would have. Anyone else, no, I would think not.” Jake wiped his face and tried to shake the weight of what had happened off of him. “I didn’t want you to know about Purah, I didn’t want you to think…”

  “I don’t,” she said, interrupting him. “If you could see yourself from my eyes, you would know Procel and Jake are the same. That is not a bad thing, Jake. You took a stand and you were punished. You are nothing like Rogziel or Purah, but they are not much different from each other. How do you feel?”

  “I feel pretty good, actually.” He smiled a sincere smile. ,His eyes looked as if they may have found some peace for once in his existence and the more he let that settle, the more wonder began to show on his face. “How did you make me feel like this?”

  “I didn’t, I just showed you something that you couldn’t see yourself. You showed me something I’ve never seen, either” ”What’s that?”

  “Rogziel’s had his hand in the cookie jar this entire time. I’m curious as to how much of his plan is actually God’s plan.”

  “What if it is totally God’s plan?”

  “You haven’t seen me back down from a fight yet, have you?”

  Jake laughed, shaking his head, “No and I’m sure I never will. Let’s get you inside, I’m pretty exhausted from your little adventure in my head, and I’m sure you are, too.”

  “Next time let’s just go get a beer,” she said, wrapping her arm around his shoulder.

  “Now that is what I’m talking about,” he said, lifting her up fully into his arms, knowing she had used all her strength to save him. At least that’s what it felt like for them both. “Thank you,” he whispered into her hair

  She smiled against his neck, feeling as if a small amount of weight had been lifted off of her and that made her feel stronger even in her weakened condition.

  ALICE

  IT HAD ONLY BEEN A few days since Alice returned to her home which was filled with her Fallen family. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she felt as if she was back in Purah’s lair, strapped to that horrible chair. She shook off that eerie feeling that was left inside of her, grateful she was already beginning to feel more like herself and less like the beaten Nephilim she had become over the last few weeks. She rubbed her forearm gently, trying to eliminate the horrid tingling sensation that reminded her of how it feels when your foot falls asleep. The feeling was all over her body, just beneath her purple tinted skin. “Ouch,” she grumbled. Not gentle enough.

  “Let me help,” Briathos said as he entered the room. Alice raised an eyebrow at the angel thrown from grace. “It will make me feel more useful,” he added to calm her discom
fort. She nodded allowing him to sit on the couch next to her. He opened the glass jar holding a cream he recognized and began to apply it to her skin. “You’re lucky you survived this.”

  “I’m well aware, though I’m not feeling very lucky at the moment. Ouch!” The pain seemed to increase before it had a chance to get better.

  “Sorry.” His hands felt cool against her skin and after a moment his touch, like Cole’s, began to numb some of the pain. It was as if he used the cream as a conduit to a deeper healing only he could achieve. She sighed from the relief and could swear she almost saw him smile. It was just for a moment but it was beautiful.

  “Can I ask you something?” Briathos asked.

  “Of course, go ahead.”

  “Do you know why He gave you the gift? All of them, I should say,” he spoke softly as he switched from arm to arm and then to her leg.

  “Well, there’s no real way to know why, but I’m not sure, honestly.”

  “Make a guess,” he pushed.

  “Okay. Well, at first I thought it was a punishment, a disadvantage. Now I think it may be to level the playing field. I don’t think He has decided which way He wants this to go, or maybe He’s changed His mind. This could be a chance to show Him that not all those that are damned, should be.”

  “Interesting theories,” he said, finishing her last leg and moving toward her back and torso.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Alice said rubbing her tingling arm. It didn’t feel like her limbs had fallen asleep at all, it was more like a slow humming from a car motor, lightly vibrating her skin.

  “It doesn’t reverse the damage done, though it does promote faster recovery time, but for now it can help ease the suffering. I used to ease the suffering of those of mankind that were deemed worthy, before they moved on in their end days. Rogziel said that the role suited my weak nature,” he said with shame.