“Carmen!” My eyes snapped open.
“Yes?” I asked throatily.
“Stop it. Our visitor is almost here. And he can also see and hear your…thoughts.”
Damn it. I was so close, too. I eased my hands from my panties and sat up.
“Get dressed,” Michael barked. He was cranky. If he’d let me help him with that, he’d be less of a grouch.
“Carmen?” a familiar voice called from downstairs. “I brought you a present.”
Michael’s deep growl reverberated through the floor boards underfoot as I rushed down the steps to see a writhing figure, clad in what used to be a three-thousand-dollar suit. It had been shredded to ribbons. When Gabriel picked the figure up by the back collar and turned him to face me, I almost peed a little. Gabriel had brought me a present, all right. Dimitri’s icy eyes locked onto mine with laser precision before he began spewing Russian words I couldn’t decipher, but understood anyway.
Michael took one look at me and his face contorted with anger. He grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me back up the stairs. I wrenched my arm away.
“What the hell is your problem?” I demanded.
“Pants, Carmen. Put some clothes on before coming back downstairs.”
I looked down at my tan, bare legs and rolled my eyes at him. “I have nice legs, I’ll have you know.”
He stalked toward me, backing me up the stairs faster than I thought my feet could carry me. At the landing, my back hit the wall as he stalked forward. So close.
“I do know.” His fingers slipped up the outside of my thigh and I gasped from the feel of him. Electric. “I know your body. Every curve, every bone, every hair on your head, and every shade in your eyes. I know you have nice legs, Carmen,” he panted. “I just don’t want them to know.” He stabbed a finger toward my bedroom door.
I swallowed. “Fine. I’ll get dressed.”
“Fine,” he growled.
After he slammed the door shut, I yelled, “Fine!” just for good measure. Michael struck me as someone who always had to have the last word, but I showed him.
I tugged the denim over my heels and shimmied it up over my hips, buttoning and then zipping, before making my way downstairs. I grinned at Gabriel, who beamed back at me.
“I trust you like your gift, Carmen?”
“I absolutely love it.”
Dimitri began yelling again, angrily thrashing against Gabriel’s steel grip. I eased toward him. Could I have a lightning leash, or maybe a whip made of the same? I’d teach Dimitri a lesson he’d never forget before frying his pathetic ass all the way to Hell.
Gabriel inclined his head and suddenly Dimitri was sucked across the room, plastered against the wall, held by what I first thought was an invisible force. Then a familiar crackling sound filled my ears. Lightning.
It bolted across the skin of his neck, searing tender flesh and making Dimitri pant, puffs of air inflating and then deflating his cheeks rapidly. Two lightning cuffs forked across his ankles. His wide eyes watched as I approached.
“What do you want?” he panted in defiance of his restraints.
I stepped toward him, fingers clenching in rage. “Your head on a fucking pike would be a good start, Dimitri.”
Michael pushed me aside. “You know Warren Kennedy?”
Dimitri laughed. “You figured it out, then? Your own father paid me to nearly kill you. ‘Put her as close to death as you can, Dimitri, but do not cross that line,’ he said.”
“Why would you take orders from my father?” I spat.
“I am a businessman. He paid me enough to keep me comfortable for years.”
Michael tore the shirt over his head, his tattoos angrily morphing all over him. Gabriel’s eyes flashed dark before he did the same, revealing similar markings that ebbed and flowed, a furious, dangerous tide of dark ichor.
A loud snap came from behind Gabriel as his wings unfurled, hindered by the ceiling above us, each the gray-white color of a dove. They looked as though they emanated light, lit from within their hollows. I imagined Michael’s wings, what they would have looked like; dark as the night and holding every color within. Powerful and menacing.
Dimitri’s smug look disintegrated into terror. “What the hell is this?” he mumbled.
Gabriel looked menacing, despite having seemed so nice when I first met him. Michael would have been even more terrifying with wings. Maybe that was why he didn’t have them anymore. I couldn’t help but take a step back from the furious angels. Rage rippled through their muscles, and for a fraction of a second, I was afraid, afraid for myself and afraid for Dimitri. However, the worry for him faded as quickly as it began when I thought of the dark car pulling up in front of the gate after the taillights from the cab I rode home in faded in the distance. Of the deeply tinted window rolling down, and the feeling of knowing what would come next. Dimitri didn’t visit people in the hospital—or rehab—out of the goodness of his heart. Get in the car…
Something passed between the two angels, and then Michael turned to Gabriel. “Show me.”
Gabriel sneered at Dimitri and grabbed Michael’s temples before lowering his head. Michael stared, unfocused, at the wall above his friend’s curly hair. He was seeing something, his eyes darting back and forth angrily as he took in the scene Gabriel laid out. A low growl began deep in the hollow of his chest, and soon Michael couldn’t contain it anymore. He let out a howl that was so loud, I had to cover my ears. And then the archangel unleashed all hell on Dimitri.
Bones cracked. Skin split and tore. Bruises blossomed. Blood oozed.
“Let him down,” he panted to Gabriel when he finished his initial assault.
Dimitri fell into a bloody heap on the floor, his face unrecognizable. He tried to push himself up, but Michael kicked him to the floor. Blood drizzled from Dimitri’s mouth and nose.
“I saw what you did to her – what you let them do to her. You will spend an eternity regretting every second of it. Do you hear me?”
A groan fell from Dimitri’s mouth as he collapsed, blood falling in threads to the floor below. Michael turned to Gabriel, looking as if he’d just gone for a light jog instead of having beat a man to a pulp. “Make him a triple.”
“A triple? Do you have authority for that?” Gabriel asked, confused.
“I just said make him a triple.”
With one last glance at Michael, Gabriel knelt by Dimitri, rolling his body over. Only the subtle rise and fall of Dimitri’s chest indicated he was alive. Gabriel covered Dimitri’s eyes, speaking in the language Michael used, and then he covered Dimitri’s ears. Black tar filled both sets of cavities. He laid a hand over Dimitri’s mouth and it sealed, a thin layer of skin immediately growing over his lips.
See no evil.
Hear no evil.
Speak no evil.
A triple.
I just hoped it prevented him from doing evil.
Dimitri deserved to be a triple, but my heart ached for Michael. Would he get in trouble for doing what he did? He did it to avenge me.
“I did it because that man,” he angrily pointed to Dimitri, “deserves to burn, but I want him to suffer first.” Michael just did the same thing he hated the demons for doing, and he did it for me. I just hoped this wouldn’t eat away at him and somehow turn him against me. But whatever he saw, it was worse than what I remembered. The kicks and punches, I felt them, saw them coming and had no way to defend myself against them – but what else was there?
“What did you see?” I asked, brows knitted together.
Michael shook his head, a crystalline tear falling from one of his eyes. “You have so many things working against you, Carmen. That is one burden I will bear for you.” He was crying. For me. The archangel wept with a silent strength I didn’t understand.
Gabriel eased Dimitri from the floor and carried him outside, but I couldn’t look away from the clear, wet streaks running down Michael’s cheek.
Did angels often cry?
“Sometimes,” he answered, a matching tear falling on the other side.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stepping to him and wiping his face.
“You have no reason to be,” he whispered back. And then I did something monumentally stupid. I stepped up on my tippy toes and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
His eyes darkened to a rich toffee and then he smashed his lips onto mine, claiming them with the same intensity that he radiated from morning to night. Nipping and tugging, licking and breathing into me an intoxicating flavor I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to stop tasting. My fingers pulled him closer and closer until there was too much space between us and my lips were left aching and swollen from the sweet assault.
With a shove, he pushed me away from him and began pacing.
He pointed his finger at me. “You’re not supposed to kiss me,” his voice broke as he pinched his bottom lip.
“But—”
His face turned to stone. So did his voice. “Never again, Carmen.”
Gabriel stood at the back door, watching with his mouth agape as Michael stomped around him and disappeared outside.
“Did I hurt him?” I asked Gabriel when I was sure Michael was out of earshot.
“Not physically, no, but you can’t treat him like a human man. He isn’t one. And if he and you were to... Well, he would no longer be an archangel.”
I let out a frustrated noise and threw my hands in the air. “Why is everything so either or, black and white, with no shades of gray in this fucking gray world?” I said, swiping tears of frustration from my eyes.
Gabriel sighed. “I’m not sure.”
14
I didn’t tell Michael about my new nightmare, but since he could read my thoughts, he probably knew about it anyway. Dimitri was in my father’s pocket on Earth. Father paid him to nearly kill me, he’d said. But now that he was a Lesson, Dimitri could be controlled and manipulated by my father here in Purgatory. He was a triple, and that made him a triple threat.
Gabriel stared out the back door, as if waiting for someone or something. It was morning and the manna would fall anytime now. Michael had come back at some point, because I heard him speaking with Gabriel in the language of the angels. Their discussion got heated, and then he left again.
“Why are we here?” I asked him.
Gabriel turned, leaned back against the wall beside the door, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Philosophically?”
I laughed slightly. “I should rephrase. Why are we hiding out in this house? You’re an archangel. Michael is an archangel who controls an entire legion of crows. Why aren’t we storming the city, righting wrongs, and kicking my father’s ass?”
“It isn’t that simple, Carmen.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it that simple? Why make it any more complicated than it has to be?”
He sighed. “We are given orders, and we don’t resort to vigilantism—unless we’re told to.”
Oh, really? I thought. Perhaps he didn’t understand the concept of vigilantism. Vigilantes don’t take orders; they act. Like Michael did when he punished Dimitri.
“What do you call making Dimitri a triple, then?”
Gabriel’s lips thinned into tight lines of flesh.
I had him, and he knew it.
“Are you always this bold in your thoughts? What happened to women being meek?”
“A thousand or so years,” I answered.
“We’ve been told to keep you in the outskirts, but maybe a new safe house is in order.” It might have been the shattered front and balcony doors, or maybe Dimitri’s blood staining the floor beside the tar of the Lessons, but this house certainly didn’t look safe anymore. “You shouldn’t have contact of any kind with Malchazze.”
“I don’t want to have contact with him.”
Gabriel pushed off the wall, dropping his fists to his side. “We will deal with your father when we’re given instructions, or if he attacks first. Believe me, nothing would bring me greater pleasure than to end him slowly and send him to the demons he uses to do his dirty work. They would enjoy his torment, as well.”
“How is he so powerful?”
Gabriel closed his eyes. “Crossers were never supposed to exist. The threshold wasn’t meant to be breached by a soul. When the veil tore and the barrier was compromised, we worked feverishly to mend it and round up those who had escaped into the earthen realm. But there was a problem we never anticipated. Those who breached were endowed with the power to create fissures and cross back and forth along the divide as they pleased. Your father took it one step further. He began to build a following here. His powers to control the Lessons are recently acquired ones, but he is more dangerous now than he ever has been.”
“He’s trying to establish an empire on Earth, too.” I thought of his fake smile, caked-on orange make-up, and his jubilant face as it waved to hungry crowds, starving for his lies.
“Are there more of him? You said those who breached…”
Gabriel blew out a breath. “Malchazze is the only crosser still in existence, but only because he killed the others so they didn’t interfere with his plans to create a kingdom. However, he has infused some souls with the power to cross when fissures naturally occur.”
“The merchants?”
Gabriel nodded. “The only catch is that those he infuses have to wait for naturally-occurring fissures, or for him to make one for them. So far he hasn’t been able to make more crossers, but it may just be a matter of time. Some suspect he is part of the veil, which until you came here, I thought was only a myth.”
My mind flicked back to Gus and Chester. Why would anyone want to give them power to cross the barrier of Purgatory? My father sure did, possibly because they were weak and would follow orders. That had to be it.
“But I’m different. I can’t leave. I can’t cross the divide. The veil won’t let me. So that means he can’t be part of the veil.”
“I’m not sure how it works for him,” Gabriel admitted.
“Do you know why I’m bound here?”
Shaking his head, he pursed his lips. “I honestly don’t know.”
If Gabriel didn’t know and neither did Michael, that meant the only one who did know was my father, and I doubted he would offer up the knowledge out of the kindness of his black heart. If Malchazze was using a body, the body of my natural father, it wasn’t genetic. Maybe it was some sort of karma at work. Maybe I wasn’t able to leave simply because he could.
An electric jolt ran through my body and I grabbed the nearest wall to steady myself. “What was that?” I looked overhead. Could earthquakes happen here? I half expected the second floor to crash down on top of us.
“You felt that?” Gabriel strode to me and grabbed my elbows, forcing me to look at him.
“Of course I did,” I stammered, glancing between his darkening eyes and the ceiling. “What was it?”
“That,” he began, “was a shudder. A crosser—your father—just left or returned to Purgatory.”
A cacophony of crows heralded Michael’s arrival. He ran through the back yard toward us, a dark angel who looked more vengeful than merciful.
I let my eyes unfocus, a scene unfolding in my mind. Would Michael kill me? Would he have to? Was I some sort of evil abomination? Malchazze’s seed might not have made me, but his parenting skills molded me in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Would nature or nurture win out?
I could see him running toward me, manna and feathers falling all around us. He would unsheathe his sword and swing it at me with a precision I could neither escape nor run from. Michael would dispatch me with the same ease as he had with the merchants who dragged me into this hell. My soul would be eaten by his crows and he would blow the ashes of my gray body away with his breath.
Hands were shaking me when the scene vanished. I gasped as Michael shouted, “What’s wrong? Carmen? What’s the matter?”
His eyes were orange, like pumpkins on a fall day.
“I’m okay,”
I rasped, pulling away from him. For now, I thought.
“What happened to her?” he shouted at Gabriel.
Gabriel did not respond right away, only shook his head slowly. “She felt the shudder.”
Michael growled and began pacing the floor. “She feels everything, she knows before I do that a fissure is going to occur, and she can split the veil! She can make them. Did you know that?”
Gabriel’s mouth gaped open. “I did not.”
“She is the veil,” Michael whispered.
But he was wrong. “I’m not. I’m not the veil. I’m a drug addicted rich kid from Beverly Hills who was pulled into this fucking place by two assholes with lightning leashes. I didn’t ask for any of this shit!” I screamed.
“Your father orchestrated it all. I doubt he knew you could or would rip the veil itself, though.”
Gabriel agreed with Michael. “He couldn’t have anticipated that little twist.” His lips curved up in a mixture of amusement and pity. I didn’t need either.
“What do I do? Michael?” He stopped pacing and stared at me, but said nothing, offered no solution. “Gabriel? What am I supposed to do?”
A crow landed on Michael’s shoulder and cawed loudly, and then it flew and perched on my shoulder. My body was stiff as a board. Would the bird peck at my eyes if I moved?
Michael looked quickly to Gabriel and shouted something in the language they shared. I couldn’t understand them, but Gabriel quickly walked away, up the invisible steps and out of Purgatory.
The crow took flight, disappearing along with Gabriel.
“He explained more about your father?” Michael asked.
“Some, but I still don’t understand how he has the power to establish an empire here. Just because he can walk between worlds, how does he have influence over Lessons?”
Michael closed his eyes. “Because he sides with Satan. Carmen, your father isn’t just a crosser or a soul. He is the antichrist.”
Keeper of Crows (The Keeper of Crows Duology Book 1) Page 11