by D. N. Hoxa
“A?”
He rolled his eyes. “E-a-e. Eae. It just sounds like a.”
“Oh,” I mumbled like I got it. I didn’t. “You’re an Angel.” A fucking angel? “Is this a dream?”
“Nope. I don’t do dreams. That’s his thing.”
“His thing?”
“Yeah. Lucifer’s.” I shivered at the mention of the name and stood up.
“I have to go find her,” I said.
The Jeep seemed to be in good order still. I could drive it back.
“So you can get killed again? I don’t think so,” Eae said. “She already made one deal. She’s not going to be able to save you again. Nobody will.”
“No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. It couldn’t be true. “She wouldn’t make a deal. She…she knows better.”
“Of course she does. Women have always been smarter than us,” Eae said, grinning. “But she saved you. You might as well be thankful and at least try to stay alive.”
My knees shook. He sounded so sure of himself. Like he knew exactly what he was talking about. Like Willow had really made a deal with him.
“I need to find her.”
That was it. If I could find her, I’d know.
“I can’t let you do that,” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. You owe me your life.” He shrugged. “In a way, I own you.”
“Nobody owns me,” I hissed. Nobody but Willow.
“I do. And honestly, you’ll be dead before you even blink, especially now that I’ve broken his hold over you but haven’t yet given you my protection. He’s going to send his best men after you, and they should be here in…” He looked up at the sky and squinted his eyes for a second. “Three minutes, give or take. So I suggest we get going.”
“I’m going after Willow.”
It was a warning. He could either kill me or let me go.
“You will when the time’s right. Come on, do you really think you can stand against anyone at all like this?” He pointed at my body. But I felt fine. “You need to rest. Get some food. Make a plan. Then we can go after her.”
“We?”
“Yes, we,” he said grinning. He patted my shoulder before he turned around and walked away towards a black car I hadn’t noticed before. I hadn’t even heard it. When the headlights went on, I saw the beauty. It was a Mustang Cobra.
“Hey, wait!” I called before he climbed in.
“They’re coming,” he sang.
“Are you really going to help me find Willow?”
“Yes,” he said without missing a beat.
“And you’ll release her from her deal, too?”
He flinched. “We’re going to have to talk about that.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means it will probably depend on you,” he said, grinning.
“Don’t play games with me, Eae!”
“I’m not, I swear. We just really need to get out of here, because I want to keep you alive and breathing until I can better protect you. I need you, Adrian.”
I tried to not freak out when the wings simply disappeared from behind him. They just ceased to exist. There one second, gone the next.
“Well, I need you, too! I need you to release Willow from her deal.”
“Get in the car,” he said, and all of a sudden, he sounded dead serious.
That’s when I heard the car. Or was it cars? I didn’t know, but they were coming, and they were coming fast.
I ran to the Cobra and jumped into the passenger seat. It was hard to miss the feel of sitting on the leather seats, of knowing how the car looked from the outside. Of knowing its power. I drooled internally. It was the best car I’d ever seen. Like a fucking beast.
“Buckle up,” Eae said before he hit the gas, and I almost melted into the chair.
“Willow went that way,” I said when he started to drive to the other side of the road.
“I know. You’re not ready to go after her yet,” he said.
“I’m ready. I’m very ready.”
I felt perfectly fine, though my knees sometimes felt a little weak.
“You haven’t slept. Haven’t eaten. You’ve lost a shitload of blood. And most importantly, you don’t have my protection yet. You are not fine.”
“What if she’s in danger?”
It made me sick to say those words. I pictured her face, her smile, her words. I thought I lost her the day before. She pretended to believe me when I told her the truth, then she ran off. If I hadn’t woken up in time…I didn’t even dare think about that.
“She’s not. She made the deal, remember? She’ll be safe.”
I flinched because I knew Eae was right. She’d made a deal with the Devil, too. He wouldn’t hurt her now. At least I hoped he wouldn’t.
“You’re lucky I found you in time,” Eae said. “He was planning to use you again. That’s why he gave the deal to Willow.”
That much I’d figured. “But I thought he wanted her dead.”
Eae nodded. “At first. But then he saw the opportunity. He took it.”
“The opportunity?”
“Willow was willing to give her life for you. She did,” he said, but he had no idea how that made me feel.
“I’m going to kill that bastard,” I hissed.
Eae started to laugh. “You can’t kill an Angel, Adrian.”
“He’s the Devil.”
“Yes, and he’s an Angel, too. The first Angel.” My head was starting to hurt again, but not the same way it had the past year. No, it was different now. Like it used to be, before. Plain old headache.
“How the hell do you know my name, anyway? How did you know where to find me?”
“I’ve been following you ever since you went against Lucifer,” Eae said. “I have to say, I’m very impressed, Adrian. I haven’t had a human helper in more than a century. Not many can do what you did.”
Probably because they feared their head would explode.
“Wait, a human helper?”
“Yeah, that’s you.”
“What’s me?” I turned to face him, and he looked at me, too, though he never slowed the car down.
“You are my human helper.”
“I’m not your human helper.”
“Yes, you are. Remember? I asked you what you’d give for me to free you, and you said you’d give your life.”
“Shit!” I hissed. “I was dying! I didn’t know what the hell I was saying.”
Why did I always let myself fall for these traps?
“Hey, I’m not going to make you do shit like that. I’m not a fallen Angel. I’ll just need you to help me.”
“Help you? How can I help you?”
“We’ll figure it out.” I laughed. “We will. You’re stronger than you think. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to break your deal.”
“I don’t have the time to figure out how to help you. I need to go looking for Willow. She needs me more.”
“I told you, she’ll be fine,” he said, when something else occurred to me.
“My brothers,” I said, but I stopped myself. If Doc and Alan were released from the deal, what would happen to Dad?
“Yes, your brothers,” Eae said. “That’s gotta suck.”
“If you release them, too—”
“Hey, hold on right there. I don’t just go around releasing people from their deals. They make them with their own wills. You made yours with your own free will.”
I bit my tongue and slammed my head to the back of the leather chair.
“Even if you would, my dad…” I shook my head at myself, because I couldn’t even think that far.
“Your dad is a ghost,” Eae said. “Not even Lucifer can bring back the dead.”
“My dad is not a ghost. He’s perfectly healthy.” That much I’d seen myself.
“Don’t be a fool, Adrian. All Lucifer did was bring back the ghost of him. He couldn’t even speak.”
“How the hell do you
know that?” I hissed.
“Because I’ve seen people like him before. Shells. Souls trapped in their bodies with no way of communicating. Stuck in this world after their time passes.”
My eyes filled with tears, and I grabbed his shirt in my fist. I didn’t care that he was driving.
“My dad is not a ghost.”
He pushed me back, just a tiny bit with the back of his hand, but I fell against the door like I was thrown out of a train and hit my head on the window so hard, my ears whistled.
“You need to sleep. We’ve got a long way ahead of us.”
His voice changed. His face changed. His whole posture changed. After that, no matter how many times I asked him, he always said the same thing. Sleep.
It was quiet for a long time, until it wasn’t anymore.
The car that hit us from behind threw both me and Eae forward. If it wasn’t for the seatbelts, we would’ve broken the windshield with our heads.
“What the hell?” I shouted. We hadn’t heard anything. No light. No sound. Where had that car come from?
Eae was laughing. Like really, fully laughing. “You got me, brother!”
“Brother?”
“You might want to hold on tightly,” he said, right before the seatbelt cut into my skin for the second time.
It felt like I was playing video games. The road, lights, and buildings in front of us passed so fast, they were a blur. The road looked like a narrow tunnel, and I kept expecting to crash, but we didn’t.
For however long the mad ride lasted, I barely filled my lungs with air. And when the car finally stopped, my whole body ached from how tightly I held on to whatever I could.
Eae never stopped laughing.
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” I hissed. “You could have killed us.”
“I could have killed you,” he said, grinning. “I don’t die.”
“Oh, right. You’re an Angel. And where the hell did your wings go?”
I’d wanted to ask that since I saw them disappear, but I never got around to it.
“Some place safe. I can’t drive with them on,” Eae said. Some answer.
“Who hit us?”
“It was Lucifer. Or whoever he sent for us.”
He was grinning.
“You said brother.”
“Lucifer is my brother. He was until he got kicked out of Heaven, and God put me in charge of demons, because He knew I knew Lucifer’s mind better than the rest.”
“Shit,” I whispered. And I thought I had it bad with my brothers. “It’s real, isn’t it? All of it.”
“Not even close,” Eae said. “You humans have some fucked up imagination, I’ll tell you. I don’t even know how you make all that stuff up!” He laughed. “But some of it is true.”
“I never…I never believed.” I was inside a car with an Angel with real, feathery wings. Of course I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t believed in God for too long.
“It’s better that way,” Eae said.
“How is that better? Obviously, I was wrong.” The fact that he was there proved it.
“It’s not good for most, but it’s good for you, because you’re my helper. I like my humans smart enough to doubt the things they know. It usually drives them to know more.”
I fell back on the leather seat and looked at the silver sky slowly turning to orange as the sun came up.
“What does a helper do?”
I figured it was time I accepted it. I was his helper. I’d given him my life, and he’d freed me from the Devil in return.
“You need to sleep,” Eae said with a sigh.
“I don’t—”
He grabbed my wrist so fast, I didn’t even see him move his hand.
“Sleep.”
I was gone.
My stomach hurt so much, it woke me up. Bright light fell on my face. I had no idea where the hell I was, or how long I’d slept, but it must’ve been noon. I was lying on a king-size bed with soft, white sheets, in a room probably four times bigger than mine back home.
Where the hell was I?
The hardwood floor was cold when I stepped on it. Barefoot. I was wearing only a pair of black shorts. Black shorts that weren’t mine.
It all felt like a dream. The white door with the golden knob, the large hallway outside it, the living room…there were no walls on my left. Only windows. Floor to ceiling windows. Two sets of furniture, black and white leather, a TV bigger than me, a white bar right across from it with lights inside, and on top of it, half its length, an aquarium attached to the ceiling with all kinds of small fish.
Yeah. It must’ve been a dream, but that didn’t stop me from going to the windows, and when I saw the blue of the ocean almost one with the blue of the sky, I nearly laughed.
The smell was amazing. Salt and water and sun. The building I was in was tall. Very tall, and I seemed to be on the very top of it. It was the most beautiful view I’d seen in my life, and I couldn’t wait to tell Willow all about it…
Willow.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty.”
Eae’s voice came from my left, and when I turned, I saw him sitting on a white hammock with a laptop on his lap, no sign of his wings. Next to him was a glass table with more than ten empty beer bottles on it, and to the sides, there were three armchairs, and two women sat on them. Wearing white.
Everything was white. The floor, the walls, the seats...
“What the hell?” I didn’t even know which question to ask first.
“You take sleeping like the dead to a whole new level,” Eae said.
“Where am I?”
“San Francisco,” Eae said. “Come join us. You need to eat something.” He simply looked at the two blond girls with really long hair, and they stood up, winked at him, and walked inside the house, smiling seductively at me.
“What the hell, Eae? What are we doing in San Francisco?”
“It’s where I live. My favorite place on Earth,” he said, just when one of the girls came back out with a large pizza on an even larger plate. She gave it to me, then disappeared back inside. “Eat. You’ve slept for two days.”
The plate almost slipped from my hands.
“Two days? I’ve lost two days?”
Eae came off the hammock, left the laptop on one armchair, and sat on the other. “You didn’t lose anything. You needed to rest. Get your strength back. You’ll be as good as new when you eat that.”
“This is insane. How the hell did I even get here? Who changed my clothes?” I looked down at my shorts. I didn’t know why that was important, but it came to my mind, and I said it. “We have to go back and find Willow.”
“I brought you here. Carried you on my back like I was your helper,” he said, frowning. “But I didn’t change you. Delilah did. She’s the blonde.”
I raised my brows at him. They were both blondes. He ignored me.
“And I told you, we are going to look for Willow, but not until you’re ready.”
“I’m ready right now.”
But the pizza looked so delicious, and I was practically starving. It called my name until I took a slice and ate it. Eae joined me.
“You’re really not. The first step is to eat that pizza before I eat it for you. Then we’re going downstairs by the pool to relax a little…”
“Oh, no. We don’t need to go for a swim.”
“You sure as hell do.”
I looked back at the other side of the terrace. I thought I saw some blue there, and I was right. “You have a pool right there.” And it was a huge one. On the roof of a building. It still felt like a dream. I’d never seen anything like it.
“I know, but it’s boring to swim alone. There’ll be plenty of people down there.”
“Eae, can we just cut the bullshit and get to it? The only reason I’m here is because of Willow.”
Just the thought of her face made my chest hurt. I didn’t know what I’d do if she was in danger. Suffering in any way.
“
It’s not bullshit, Adrian. You’ll find out soon enough that this is anything but bullshit. It’s the most important thing you’ve done all your life.”
Eae looked more serious than I’d seen him yet.
“What exactly is it that I have to do? What’s so important?”
Eae sighed. I sat down next to him and instinctively kept my hands away from his reach. The last time he’d touched me, I’d fallen asleep.
“What you have to do is easy. You have to help me stop bad people who made a deal with the Devil by releasing them.”
“I’m bad people, too,” I said reluctantly.
“Yes, but you’re going to make it right, aren’t you?”
Eae nudged me playfully with his shoulder. I didn’t get what he was smiling about.
“I did bad things every day for the past year, and nobody has stopped me.”
I hated to remind him—and myself—of that fact, but it was the truth. There was no running away from it.
“That’s because I didn’t have you yet,” he said.
“I don’t get it. Any of it,” I said and put the plate with the pizza on top of the empty beer bottles on the table.
“Listen, Adrian. You need to relax. Take it easy. Take a couple deep breaths. Get it through your head that there’s nothing you can do for Willow now. You saw what you’re up against. He’s going to throw everything he’s got at you, and he’s not going to play the next game with humans.”
“I have you, don’t I? You said you’d help me.”
I just needed him to reassure me that he’d be there. I didn’t know what he could do, but he was an Angel. He had wings. That had to count for something, because I believed everything he said.
“I will, if you help me first. And you’re not helping me by freaking out,” Eae said.
“Then let’s get going! Let’s get me to help you so we can be on our way already.”
I didn’t think he got how important Willow was to me. That’s why I reminded him that we needed to go every few minutes.
Eae stood up and froze in place for a long second. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. Just looked up at the sky.
“Eae?”
He wasn’t moving a muscle. I couldn’t tell you the difference between him and a statue. I stood up, too.
“Eae, what’s wrong?” I looked up like he was doing, but I saw nothing.