Hellsbane 02 - Heaven and Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

  “It knows who destroyed Maion and how,” Fred said to Eli. “It must reveal this information. It must know the consequences if it does not.”

  “Did ya try asking her?” I said.

  Eli glanced at me, but every other creature in the room totally ignored me. “They can’t—”

  “Yeah—yeah, icky illorum, I know,” I said.

  Fred pointed in my direction, his finger long and elegant. “Tell it to ask the other. Make it reveal what it knows.”

  “Bite me, Ginger. You wanna know so badly, ask her yourself. Nicely.”

  I didn’t have a second to enjoy my retort before white-hot pain exploded through my right hand and steamrolled up my arm. My scream was guttural, raw, and unrestrained. I couldn’t breathe for the excruciating sensation, like every bone in my right hand had been crushed. My knees buckled and I dropped, clutching my swelling black and blue palm to my chest. Somewhere in the blind frenzy of my mind I knew Eli had rushed to my side.

  “Elizal!” Fred’s voice boomed with the single word and Eli stopped, hand mid-stretch for my shoulder. “You will not interfere.”

  “Then stop this, Fraciel. You go too far. This cruelty is unnecessary,” Eli said.

  Fred paused a moment, studying Eli. Finally, he sighed, shaking his head. “You value these nephilim too highly, Elizal. Did you learn nothing from the mistakes of our brothers? They are not to be loved or prized. They are suffered to live only in so far as they are impotent or put into duty to serve us.”

  “Not us, Fraciel. They serve the Father. They fight to do what we find too distasteful to do ourselves. They labor to cleanse their souls. Which of those undertakings do you find indecorous and unworthy of your deference?”

  “I neither condemn nor forgive. My thoughts are for my brothers and the fate that has befallen them, as should yours be,” Fred said.

  “Your concern is no greater than mine,” Eli said. “But not at the expense of my compassion. Stop this, Fraciel. Or I will.”

  The tall angel sighed. “It is only pain. The body’s reaction is psychosomatic.”

  “Fraciel, please.”

  The pain stopped and my body collapsed, relief like a tsunami crashing over me, liquefying my muscles. Suddenly I could breathe, I could think…and I wanted run.

  Eli helped me to my feet, his hands finding mine. Tenderly he felt the bones in my right hand. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Note to self, Fred’s got a bitch of a temper.”

  “A bit.” His smile flickered without the strength of his conviction to hold it on his lips. He raised a hand, brushed a blond strand of hair from my eyes. His finger traced around my ear, but the chin-length strand didn’t stay. A warm shiver shook across my shoulders with his feather-light touch.

  “Your buddies don’t like us much,” I said.

  “They’re shaken by the attack, that’s all,” he said. “We’re immortal. Invulnerable but for one impossible weakness. This shouldn’t have happened—it couldn’t have. Talk to the girl, Emma Jane. Try. If someone has discovered a way to end magisters, seraphim will only grow more desperate for answers until they discover how it was done and by whom.”

  “Yeah. I got that.”

  “What’re you doing in here?” Eli and I both looked back to the nurse standing in the now open doorway. “What have you done to that poor girl?”

  She stared across the room to the hospital bed, her round face etched with worry. I followed her gaze and saw for the first time the bed and the girl cowering under the covers. The room was empty expect for Eli and me. The angels were gone. Or were they?

  The nurse stormed into the room, making a beeline for the hospital bed. “What’s wrong, honey? Have they done something to scare you?”

  The kid sat with her back pressed against the high stack of pillows, clutching the sheet and blanket under her chin. Her wide, dark eyes darted from one point in the room to another, occasionally settling on a point high above the foot of her bed. Was she still seeing angels crowding around her, Fred towering above?

  “Are you family?” the nurse asked, turning to face us, a protective hand on the girl’s leg.

  Eli stepped forward, his hands slipping into the pockets of his slacks as he narrowed his eyes, reading her name tag. “Hello…Teresa. We’re here to help the girl. Our presence will ease her fear.”

  The pudgy, fortysomething nurse looked Eli over from head to toe, then glared my way for half a heartbeat and huffed. “I see. Well…okay.”

  Just like that she believed him. I don’t know why I was surprised.

  She turned back to the girl, fishing out the call button from where it had fallen next to the mattress and laying it within reach. “Just push this button if you need anything, okay sweetie? I’m sure your mom and dad are on their way.”

  Nurse Teresa patted the girl’s leg, smiling, and then turned that smile toward us. “Not too long. She’s still in shock.”

  Eli nodded, slipping his arm around the nurse’s thick shoulders, escorting her out of the room while I moved in to talk with the kid.

  I scanned her chart for her name. Nenita. “Hey, Nenita. You remember me?”

  “What are they?” Her small voice was barely a whisper, her eyes wide—pupils huge. She was staring at where Fred had perched on the end of her bed. I glanced that way, but there was no one there. Did he think I didn’t know he was still hanging out, terrorizing her?

  “You don’t know?” I asked.

  Nenita tugged the clutch of blanket and sheet up to her nose and shook her head, sinking deeper under the covers. I held out my wrist, turning it so she could see the tattoo-like illorum mark.

  “You know what this is?”

  She hesitated for a moment, as though she didn’t want to tear her eyes from the man I couldn’t see hovering at the end of her bed. Couldn’t say I blamed her. She finally glanced at my wrist and nodded, then showed me her mark. It was still red and raw. I grimaced at sore skin, remembering the pain, then flattened my expression as realization dawned.

  “How long have you been an illorum, Nenita? When were you marked?”

  Her terrified eyes swung to meet mine. “Today.”

  Chapter Four

  She was so new. My chest squeezed, pity weighing heavy, making it hard to breathe. So new, so young. She had no idea that this was just the beginning—and that there was no going back. “What happened to you and your magister, Nenita?”

  The girl didn’t answer. She just stared straight ahead at where the invisible Fred stood balanced on the thin rail of her bed’s footboard.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “He’s…he’s an angel—like your magister.” Only way more bigoted.

  The young girl shook her head. “Ain’t no angel. No wings.”

  “Yes there are. They have wings. Sort of. They just…they just don’t show them.”

  She shook her head again and sunk lower. The nurses had cleaned her up, washed off most of the blood, but there was still some crusted inside her ear and a spot at her temple and more under her nails. Her hair wasn’t as black as it had looked in the alley, more of a dark brown with reddish undertones, tight waves frizzing around her head. With big brown eyes peering from under the edge of her covers, she looked closer to twelve years old instead of the sixteen her chart confirmed.

  “Angels got wings,” she said.

  Eli stepped up behind me, his nearness setting off a quick tingle at the back of my neck. I resisted the urge to look at him.

  “I’m sorry your magister was taken so quickly from you, Nenita,” he said. “There was a lot he didn’t have time to teach you. But you can rest assured he was an angel. As is Fraciel. As am I. Behold.”

  The small hospital room suddenly flooded with light, and I glanced over my shoulder, already knowing what I’d see. An ethereal glow arched over Eli’s shoulders, down his back to his ankles. Translucent feathers shimmered within the golden light, barely there, more air than physical substance, the molecules constantly m
oving so the feathers seemed to flutter in an unfelt wind.

  Then he clasped his hands, lowered his chin, and slowly unfurled his wings. They were enormous, large enough to support his weight if he actually used them to fly. The tips stretched from wall to wall, filling the room, and my breath caught despite having seen it all before. I couldn’t help it. There was no preparing for it, no getting used to the sight.

  Eli peered up at me from beneath his wavy hair, a cocky half smile lifting one corner of his lips. As close as we’d grown over the last year, it was sometimes easy to forget who Eli was—what he was. But staring at him now, the curls of his blue-black hair rustling, his pale blue eyes bright with an unearthly inner glow, and his oh-so-male jaw brushed with a half-day’s growth of stubble, there was no mistaking.

  This man was an angel.

  My heart raced, desire stirring low inside me. The soothing, bright light didn’t produce heat, yet a comforting warmth spread over my skin and sank deep inside me to liquefy my bones. I wanted to play the jaded, too cool for school, experienced illorum for the younger girl. But my eyes closed of their own volition and before I could think to stop myself I relaxed into the warm honey embrace of that light.

  Then it was gone, and I resisted the urge to moan at the loss.

  “Are you all right?” Eli asked.

  I licked my lips and nodded, my brain still two beats behind. “Peachy,” I said.

  “What did you do?” Dan’s familiar voice suddenly echoed off the walls. Eli turned and I looked past him to the entrance where Dan stood holding the door, face a bristling mix of confusion and anger.

  A smile lifted across my lips at seeing him and my heart skipped. Like the sun burning away the gray clouds, just seeing him reminded me none of this—the forbidden, unearthly appeal of Eli, the bloody beaten girl in bed, the death and endless demonic attacks—was my real life.

  This was all temporary. As bizarre and terrifying and confusing as it was, it would all be over one day and I’d get my real life back. A human life—like his. “Dan.”

  “We’re trying to determine what the girl knows,” Eli said, his tone curt as though sensing the shift in my thoughts.

  “Are you torturing it out of her?” Dan let the door go and strode across the room toward us and Nenita’s bed.

  “She’s only been marked for a little more than a day. She’s freaked out. Mixed up about angels and fallen angels and demons,” I said as Dan stepped beside me.

  He flashed me a private smile, “Hi,” and pressed a quick kiss to my lips. “You okay?”

  I nodded, but unease rippled through my belly remembering the bloody scene in the alley and the pain Fred had lanced through my body. I wished my safety didn’t have to be his constant, legitimate concern.

  He looked to Eli. “And you figured what…you’d force her to confront another angel and make her trust that this one wasn’t out to kill her?”

  “No,” I said, defending Eli as well as myself. “I mean…well, yeah. I guess if you put it that way…”

  I looked at the girl. Her eyes had practically doubled in size, and she’d scooted to the far side of her bed. Her knees were tucked up to her chest as though she were trying to make herself smaller. Seeing Eli’s wings clearly hadn’t affected her the same way it had me.

  “I have to go,” Eli said. “Dan’s right; I’m not helping. Besides, something’s wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The seraphim are gone,” Eli said.

  I glanced to the end of Nenita’s bed. “Even Fred?”

  Eli’s gaze slid to mine. “All of them.” And with that, he vanished.

  “I hate it when he does that,” Dan said. “Are we supposed to be impressed?”

  “You’re not?”

  Dan shook his head. “Never mind.”

  Tension thickened between us, the conversation tiptoeing too close to a sore spot neither of us wanted to pick at. He was jealous of Eli, jealous of the connection we had. I got that. But I couldn’t seem to make him understand that it didn’t matter how Eli felt about me or what feelings might be bubbling beneath my surface for the angel. Eli and I could never be. Period.

  In my head I knew there was no life with Eli, no hope of normalcy—only punishment and heartache. With Dan the future was full of possibilities and I wanted that…desperately.

  We turned our attention back to the easier problem of helping the traumatized girl. “Okay, Nenita. All the angels are gone. See? Think you can tell me what happened now?” I reached for her hand but she flinched away, pulling the sheet and blanket over her nose, hugging it tight against her chest.

  Dan dug into the back pocket of his slacks. He was still dressed nice from our date—maroon, buttoned shirt snug over his muscled chest, black tie, black suit jacket, and slacks. He looked good.

  “Nenita, my name’s Officer Wysocki.” He opened his wallet, showed her his badge. “I know a lot of weird stuff happened tonight. A lot of scary stuff. We’re going to get the people who hurt you, whoever—or whatever—they are. But I need your help. You think you could be brave just a little while longer and answer a few questions?”

  She stared for several agonizing seconds, then slowly reached out her hand, taking Dan’s badge. She studied it, rubbing her thumb over the raised symbols and letters. Finally, she nodded.

  “Good.” Dan exhaled, smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s good. Uh, let’s start at the beginning. How did you get, you know, marked?” He waggled a finger at her wrist and the illorum mark that was nearly healed.

  Ironically, it was the only injury that remained on her body. When I’d checked her chart for her name, I’d noticed she was being held for observation. There was no mention of wounds other than the tattoo on her wrist, which they thought might be infected judging by the redness. But in an hour or so even that would be healed. Being an illorum had its perks. Not many, but a few.

  “Friend of mine was gettin’ jumped and I ran over to help him out,” Nenita said, her inner city accent making her English sound almost foreign. She turned her wrist, glancing at her mark. “Found this sword leaning next to the building, but when I grabbed it, the fuckin’ thing burned me.”

  “Was your friend an illorum? Did he tell you that?” I asked, but the teenager wouldn’t look at me. She shrugged, staring at Dan’s badge. She wasn’t going to talk to me.

  Dan pivoted to sit on the edge of her bed, one knee casually resting on the mattress, the other leg braced on the floor. “How well did you know your friend?”

  Nenita’s dark eyes darted up to Dan. She shrugged again, but added, “Just met him a couple days ago at the center.”

  “The center?” I asked.

  Dan glanced at me. “Youth center.”

  “Axed if I wanted to play some table tennis,” Nenita said. “He’s all right. Cute enough. Crushin’ on me an’at.”

  “If he was an illorum,” I said, “he would’ve sensed she was a nephilim.”

  Nenita’s dark gaze jumped to me for an instant, as though she wasn’t sure what I meant.

  “You know that feeling you get, like when you’re on a roller coaster and your stomach drops?” I said. “You felt it every time he first came near you, right? Well, he felt it too. We can sense each other.”

  Nenita looked away without answering, her thumb stroking over the front of Dan’s badge again.

  “What was his name?” Dan asked.

  “Leon,” she said, gaze fixed on the silver shield. “Never told me his last name.”

  “That’s okay. So a few days after you met Leon you saw him getting mugged?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah. He axed me to meet him under the fire escape at the back of the center. When I gets back there, I seen two dudes and this old chick beatin’ the hell outta him.”

  “Old chick?” I said, but Nenita just glanced at me and away without answering again.

  “How old?” Dan asked.

  The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Old. Fo
rty or somethin’. It was messed up too, ’cause she was kinda fat and was wearin’ blue jean Capris and them white mom sneakers. Look like she shoulda been at the mall shoppin’ or somethin’. Not at the backa some alley beatin’ on Leon.”

  “What about the men?” Dan asked.

  “They were just some dudes,” Nenita said. “One of them was way older. Dressed kinda queer. Shiny purple shirt, more like a dress that reached his knees, and matching pants. Looked like pajamas or somethin’ outta that Slumdog movie.”

  “You mean Indian clothes? Like from India?” Dan said.

  “It’s called a sherwani.” A prickle of foreboding itched under the hairs at the back of my neck. “We’ve seen it before. Last summer.”

  Dan glanced at me. “Rifion. What the hell…?”

  He didn’t finish his thought—he didn’t have to. I was thinking the same thing. Rifion was supposed to be locked in the abyss. Even if he’d escaped, he wouldn’t have the power to command demons the way he had as a Fallen. The abyss changes them, makes them less, makes them demons—if they ever manage to get out. So who was behind this? And what was his endgame?

  “What about the other guy?” Dan asked.

  “He was, I don’t know, maybe twenty. Looked like he ran with a gang, y’know?” Nenita said.

  “And this happened yesterday?” I figured eventually maybe the girl would forget she wasn’t speaking to me.

  She didn’t answer, her big brown eyes shifting to Dan instead. He raised a brow as if to say he was asking too, and Nenita rolled a shoulder. “Yeah. Last night. ’Round nine thirty. The center closes at ten.”

  “So you walked back there, saw Leon getting beaten up…” Dan let his sentence trail off, coaxing her to continue.

  “Yeah. Then I seen the sword leanin’ against the building. Was weird ’cause I didn’t notice it before. But I figured it was better than nothin’ to help scare ’em off. I picked it up and yelled for them to stop. They did, but then…” Her eyes rounded and she lowered her head, chin quivering, fear a visible mask on her young face.

  “It’s okay, Nenita. You’re not in any trouble,” Dan said. “What happened?”