"It didn't harm you," he said and this time she shook her head. Azrael murmured something to himself that I couldn't make out. Nicki seemed to, however. She stepped forward and threw her arms around his neck. He stood there, stiffly, but he let her embrace him. Awkward as it was, shocking as it was, I wished I had thought of doing the same.
I made a coughing noise because the entire chamber seemed filled with tension. He swung his gaze to where I stood, nervously wringing my hands together and when he found me he let go a sigh of relief.
"Ayla," he said and there was a throaty, painfully beautiful sound to his voice. "You did it."
I nodded, unable to trust my voice.
Those hadn't been just bite marks on his body. They had been bruises. "Cerberus," I whispered, pulling the name from some archaic residue of memory.
Azrael shook his head. "Not the hound of hell. The Prince of Darkness himself. We had quite a conversation. He was a bit hesitant to let go."
I understood then that was why Nicki had a hard time pulling him through. She had to extract him from Lucifer's grip.
I wanted to rush him, remembering my own easy exit and knowing I'd had to bargain my way out. What did he have except Nicki's arm and a desire to escape? I hung my head, grateful and ashamed and very relieved.
"That was brave of you," I said. "Taking me there."
Azrael shrugged. "Courage is easy when it's the only choice," he said and there was a strange gleam in his eye that I didn't understand.
"But it wasn't the only choice," I said, thinking about those wounds. "You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to help me save Sarah. You could have left her there."
I toed the dirt, nervous, knowing I'd been so mean to him, always assuming the worst. How could I have been so narrow minded? He was an angel, after all, and I understood now just what that meant.
"Thanks," I said. I clutched my chest, not sure what to do with my hands.
He paused to look Sarah up and down as she levitated, almost measuring her. Then he flicked his gaze to Callum in the same way. He stooped to pick his cane handle up from the dust that coated the stone floor and sauntered, almost casually over to where the rest of it lay where it had dropped in those moments we had joined.
Azrael studied both ends for a long moment silently, then he stuffed the top onto the handle and tested its tap against the stone floor. I wasn't fooled at his nonchalance. He seemed different. Maybe resigned, I wasn't sure.
"I was wrong," he said finally, spinning to face me again.
His expression was intense enough to give me the feeling that he had done more to escape hell than merely grip Nicki's hand. I was shaking my head, trying to tell him not to say more. I didn't want to know the full of it. It was more than enough knowing what I'd had to do to get out of there. I shivered, just thinking about the lake of roaches and the floor of hot coals. What might wait for the Angel of Death to terrify him, I couldn't--didn't--want to think about.
Never the less, he strode ever closer, throwing the cane to rest against his shoulder as he advanced and his voice was smooth as salt water taffy as he spoke.
"They are part of you, Ayla," he said. "Each one of those pagans you love. You need them. I see that now."
I was stunned. It took several moments before I realized that the tone beneath the sweet words was ominous. I didn't ask for more. I found my feet were already shuffling backward for every step he took. My gratitude getting eaten up by dread.
"You don't know, do you?" he said.
"Know what?" I said before I could stop myself. I fetched up against the wall and splayed my hands behind me to keep from falling.
His black brow lifted. "You don't remember? Your bargain with Lucifer?"
"I gave him what he wanted. That's all. I gave him the fae mancer."
Azrael chuckled darkly but there was no humor in it; rather, it held a note that said he should have thought as much. "Lucifer is a liar. He would have accepted any bargain so you believed he was loathe to let you go."
This wasn't happening.
"No," I said. "That can't be true." But even as I protested, I knew he was right. It had been too easy. I'd known it. Deep down. I had known.
"What did he really get?" I said.
He didn't answer for a long moment, and it was testament to how sober the situation was.
"He wanted a portal for a legion of demons."
I staggered beneath the weight of the words. I recalled the moment I had landed back in the realm, the wall of flames surrounding me. I had known it was Lucifer's portal but I hadn't guessed he'd used me.
"I just thought he had tricked me," I said, looking over my shoulder to where the fire had left a scorch mark on the stones. I almost laughed. He had tricked me.
"The flame," I said.
"His flame," Azrael said.
Those tendrils of smoke rising to the air and finding cracks in the stone. A legion of demons loose on the world in Dyre for the rescue of one necromancer. Just like my fall from Paradise where I'd believed I could make a difference, I'd unleashed a wake of evil. Sarah could never know the weight of it. I'd carry it. I'd have to. It was my burden, after all.
I stuffed my hand in my mouth, afraid of the words that would escape. Nicki edged closer, seeming to understand something was wrong. She wrung her hands uncertainly until after a long study of my face, Azrael turned to her.
"She needs her friends," he said. "Do you think we can do something?"
Nicki shrugged. "They need time."
Azrael smirked. "Time is fluid; you should know that."
With a quiet node, Nicki lifted a hand absently out in front of her, finger extended, and her owl landed on her forearm. It screeched as it settled.
"We can do better together," he said. "We have to. She'll need them."
He clasped Nicki's outstretched hand and the room grew brighter. Each shadow in the room dispelled and disappeared one by one. Both Sarah and Callum tilted forward as though a lift of some sort was helping them onto their feet. They stood, weaving back and forth and side to side. Entranced? Still sleeping? I couldn't tell. I wanted to rush them both at once but Azrael held me back. His hand lay across my chest and a wash of caramel fragrance wavered in front of me.
He made a slight movement with his head that said, not yet.
He turned his gaze to Nicki. "You should go," he said. "They're waiting for you."
Nicki nodded and with an almost shy look, came toward me. She gave me a quick hug and I clung to her, not sure what was happening and too afraid to ask.
"Thank you, Madre," she whispered and stared into my eyes for a long moment. I thought I could see sparks of shifting colors behind that honeyed gaze.
Before I could answer, she dissolved right in front of me. The owl was left flapping in the air and screeched forlornly before it found a space beside Sarah. It pecked industriously at the floor and I thought it was refusing to look at me. I couldn't blame it. I felt as though Nicki's abandonment was all my fault.
Azrael turned to me. "She's gone to meet the Host," he said. "They will decide her fate."
Host. Angels, I realized. I grabbed for him without thinking and pulled in a handful of T-shirt.
"She's already been through too much," I said, pleading. I felt like I'd be pleading for the rest of my days for the folks I loved. "Tell them not to hurt her."
His hands gripped my elbows. "They aren't going to hurt her," he said. "She's different. Not created by the Divine One. They need to decide how she fits."
All I heard at first was that she wouldn't be hurt and that was enough for me.
"You said she was different. So not an angel." I put my thoughts together carefully, trying to pose the right question. "What is she, then?".
He shrugged and took a deliberate step away from me. "Something new," he said, avoiding meeting my eyes. "Born of two angels and infused with the essence of an ancient but dying goddess."
"Born of two angels," I echoed, recalling the tiny wings we had
seen on her back when we unearthed her. "Which ones?"
He smiled. "Let's see about getting your friends revived. All they're waiting for is for me to wake them," he said.
Sarah came to life first and I rushed her, slamming into her newly revived body without care. She was alive. She was well. That was all that mattered. I didn't know Azrael had done the same for Callum until he hugged me from the back. We laughed. All of us. Relief and stress and the trauma of survival taking everything and turning it into a glorified mush of emotions.
"There," Azrael said. "Buffy and her slayers reunited."
He winked playfully, a strange thing for him to do and it so moved me that I flung myself at him, embracing him fully, squeezing hard and molding my body to his. For a moment, he embraced me back and then he went stiff. I looked up at him. His eyes were shifting again. That prismic gaze lit down on my mouth. He swallowed twice before he spoke.
"Best not do that," he said with a thick, husky quality to his voice. "I know how it ends up."
"What do you mean, how it ends up" I said, aware that both Sarah and Callum were running hands down along their sides, testing I guessed, to see if they were alright.
"Oh Ayla." Azrael chuckled beneath his breath. "Who's child do you think Nicki is anyway?"
CHAPTER 23
The statement left me gaping at the Angel of Death. His black brows drew together as though he wanted to say more, but hoped I would be the one to speak first. No chance of that. I felt as though someone had just sucked all the air out of the room and left me with no oxygen to fuel speech. I was still trying to form a sentence and with a tight, almost sad smile, he tipped the cane to his forehead and wavered out of view.
Madre, Nicki had called me. She had embraced Azrael like a daughter to a distant father.
Born of two angels, he'd said. It didn't take an anvil to fall on my head for me to figure out what that meant. I was a mother. Azrael and I...we had...we were going to...I could barely follow the thought through. The idea of it both thrilled and terrified me.
But at least I knew, finally, why I had fought so hard to save Nicki from being reaped. And no doubt, it was exactly the reason why Azrael had needed so badly to collect her. She wasn't just a fare he needed to send to oblivion; she'd been an anomaly that should never have existed. And that alone would have been enough to put the Host into a tizzy, and put Azrael in an impossible position.
Whatever the circumstances were going to be that put us both in a position where we became more to each other than reluctant partners, it would have to be powerful. Compelling enough to make the great Angel of Death stoop to a human level of affection. That meant one thing, and it was a disturbing thing for an angel to contemplate, and no doubt he was scrambling to fix something that could not be fixed.
He was going to fall.
I didn't want to imagine what might happen to the world with no angel of death to collect the deceased souls and send them back to the ether to await rebirth or to ferry them on to Paradise. I just had to hope that by merging the goddess to the angelic creature I'd put to rest in my backyard had somehow negated whatever he'd done. I prayed it would be enough, and as I contemplated the rest of his words: that he best not embrace me because he knew how it ended. That had to mean that it was still all up in the air. Time was fluid, he was fond of saying.
And that was the key. Because there was something else, too, beneath all that complex tapestry of knowledge, and it had everything to do with the nature of my origin. And that was the anvil that fell on me. I wanted to help, to intervene for good. It had been the reason I had fallen to my disgrace all those eons ago. If I had intervened for Nicki, who was meant to be reaped and collected for oblivion because of her nature, and had altered that path by my actions, then it was possible to do the same for others. I felt giddy. All those eons ago, I had known it was possible, and now, after hundreds of incarnations, I was in a place I could finally do so.
I felt Sarah's hand on my shoulder and it startled me out of my thoughts. I turned to face her, feeling as if a world of possibility had opened up to me. Even looking at her, I could see things differently. She wasn't just family who also happened to be a necromancer. She was an entity with a path, who deserved intervention.
"I need to go home," I said and she nodded. Even Callum fell in behind us as we trod from the chamber. No one spoke. We had all seemed to be of the same mind and herded to Callum's car without saying another word to each other.
I abandoned the scooter where it lay against the parking lot curb without a second though. It was a long, silent drive back to my house. No one, not even Sarah seemed to want to talk.
Thankfully, when I opened the door to my house, with both Sarah and Callum trooping in behind me, it was to a brightly lit living room and the smell of cocoa.
Gramp was home. And as if the night hadn't been strange enough, he was wearing a cloak that had Magic: The Gathering embossed in gold thread across the front of the hood.
I laughed straight out loud and plucked the proffered mug of coffee from his outstretched hand.
"Of all things today," I said. "This is the strangest and most welcome sight I've seen."
He hugged me tight and I held the mug aloft carefully so not to spill.
"Best convention ever," he said. "They're even going to commission a new card in my honor."
I squinted at him. "You knew what the convention was?"
His grin was broad and genuine. "A man only makes that mistake once," he said. "And I made it years ago. This time I went because they had some things wrong and I couldn't in good conscience let it go unaddressed."
He took us in with a wary eye. "What have you been up to?"
I sighed. "It's a long story," I said. "Best explained over cocoa and a side of pancakes."
We settled in the living room, each of us balancing a large plate of syrupy griddlecakes on our laps. He listened attentively, saying nothing until I finished. I told him everything, and then I explained what I hoped to do, the mission I had set for myself all those eons ago. I would finish it if I could. I wanted them to understand that it was important enough for me to disgrace myself over, and that now it actually seemed possible.
I only held back one piece of the puzzle because I needed to make sure he understood all of it--they all did--before I told them.
"So you came back with no memory this time," he said, musing aloud over the explanation of my incarnations.
I nodded. "Every time I returned, it was painful. I remembered everything. I remembered what I had done. I remembered why I couldn't go home. I remembered all of the power and all of the contentment and peace I had as an angel. I could never get it back. It was too painful for me."
Azrael had been right. All along. I was stubborn. I had fallen because I had stubbornly believed I could intercede for good for every creature, not just the divine one's humanly creations. What he knew that I refused to believe was that there were truly evil creatures in the world, creatures like Rory who deserved oblivion. But there were truly good beings too, beings and essences, and creatures the like of which I'd disgraced myself to save. Beings like Callum. Like Sarah and Gramp.
Like Nicki. And there lie the real reason I had put her to rest for myself to find. I had known doing so would be the catalyst that would decide the rest of my path. If I couldn't go home, then at least I could make my time as a Nathelium count for something.
But I couldn't do it alone. Even Azrael had said it. I needed them. Helping me had to be their choice, and to choose, they needed--deserved--the whole truth. Even the things I didn't want to think about.
I pulled in a steadying breath and looked at each of them in turn. "You need to know something," I said and forged on before I could change my mind. "If I don't reap a certain number of essences before I die, I won't see another incarnation."
"What does that mean?" Callum demanded.
"It means she won't see either heaven or hell," Sarah said and she had a faraway look in her eye. I imag
ined she was reliving her time in hell. "She'll find oblivion, like we will."
"Not even oblivion," I said. "A purgatory set aside specifically for the fallen. And it's bad enough that the devil created hell to avoid it. If I don't make it, I want to at least have saved a few good souls before I die."
No one said anything for a long moment.
Gramp heaved himself from his chair and crossed the room to enclose me in an embrace. He held me like that for a long time and I imagined he was trying to swallow down the same kind of lump that was lodged in my throat. The silk of his hood slipped across my fingers as I hugged him back.
"So much like your mother," he said. "So ready to give all of yourself to help others." He thumbed my chin. "But you won't do it alone. You have me."
I smiled at him through a wash of tears.
"And me," Callum said and Sarah echoed it.
I thought I might have heard an echoing whisper from the corners, from an angel I knew would face his own disgrace in the time to come. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I just imagined it. But I was certain of one thing: I was a reluctant reaper no more. I was an angel of virtue, who knew her passion was to intercede for good. No matter what the creature was. Even if it was the Angel of Death himself.
-The End-
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