by C. R. Jane
Chapter 13
There’s a cold fury in my heart once I reach the compound. The rest of my brothers are sleeping, and I wake them up calmly, simply telling them that it’s time. I somehow know where Torin is as we take off, loaded down with weapons for war. Our favorite meadow by the river seems like the perfect place for the pompous Judas to plan my demise right under my nose. I haven’t been back there since I found out about his betrayal.
The council follows me grimly as we sail through the sky. Soon my premonition proves right when we see a litany of tents peppering the landscape ahead. It looks like Torin has assembled an army of at least a few thousand Fallen. I marvel at first that he was able to do such a thing, but then I remember I don’t really know him at all.
The sun is just making an appearance as we begin our attack. Torin may have been able to assemble an army, but his pompousness obviously prevented him from making sure there were enough guards awake while his army slumbered. The few guards he left are easily handled before they can make a sound. We begin making our way through the camp, slaughtering the Fallen we encounter as we search for Torin.
A scream pierces the dawn as one of the Fallen finally is able to sound the alarm before he is killed. Fallen rush from their tents, wiping the sleep from their eyes as they mount their attacks. I see Heinrich kick a burning log from a dying fire into a tent, immediately setting the tent on fire. I give a wicked grin as I watch the fire spread quickly into surrounding tents. The air is filled with smoke, ash, and blood.
I finally see Torin’s tent. It’s obviously his because it’s the largest and most lavish of them all. I quickly dispose of the guards standing outside and watch a disheveled, confused looking Torin make his way out of the entrance of the tent. A barely dressed river nymph following behind him. He sees me one second too late as I attack him from the side, sending him tumbling to the ground.
I use one hand to hold him down on the ground, while the other one rips off his wing as he screams in agony, tears rolling down his face. I can faintly hear his little friend screaming in the background.
“Why?” is all I can ask him as I stare in my old friend’s eyes.
“You were always better than me,” he says simply, a look of crushing defeat in his eyes as he realizes this is the end. I recognize that there’s nothing else to say. Jealousy has motivated every action that has led to this moment. This was never going to be a fair fight. Torin may have faked many things, but he couldn’t fake how poor of a warrior he is. Hiding from me is the only way that he’s lasted this long.
“Goodbye brother,” I tell him solemnly before tearing Torin’s heart from his chest, just as I promised him I would. The battle comes to a halt. Torin’s wing lays beneath me. His feathers litter the ground everywhere I look. His blood has made small pools all around me and my hands and arms are stained red from where I pulled out his heart. I thought that killing him so savagely would make me feel better, would help to absolve the guilt I feel over Camilla’s death, but I feel nothing. It’s like I’ve become numb to any emotion. I stare around at my surroundings. The air is smokier than before as the fire Heinrich set ravages the tents. I can taste the iron tang of blood from the slaughtered Fallen. I expect there to be screams, but everything seems absolutely quiet. My hands are shaking, the adrenaline of the battle coursing through my veins.
The other Fallen scatter after seeing Torin’s fate. The cowards didn’t want to risk their own lives after seeing their leader so brutally murdered. I don’t expect there will be much trouble for awhile beyond the usual eternal wrestle for human souls that’s we’ve always had to deal with.
I guess I can’t say we anymore.
Looking at my hands I know that there isn’t a place for me with my brothers anymore. I don’t even know if they would actually kick me off the council considering the circumstances, but I know I don’t belong there. My brothers look exhausted, many of them covered in bruises and blood. Some are looking at me shocked after witnessing me tearing out Torin’s heart. I look at Heinrich, standing nearby, and give him a nod. He understands that I’m leaving and he is to tell the rest of the council what I’ve done so they don’t come after me. I kneel and close Torin’s eyes, hoping against my will that angels don’t cease to exist after they die and that he will find the peace after death that he couldn’t in life. I then push off from the ground and ascend through the air.
I’ve fallen.
Time passes slowly. The centuries drip by, the memories never fading. At times I see my brothers in the distance, most likely on some mission. They pass by without a glance. I’m nothing but a cautionary tale to them, a story told at midnight about their fallen comrade who flew too close to the sun and got burned.
Mason and Beckham have become my new brothers. Their continued loyalty despite my tendencies to try and push them away at every turn has helped ease the bitterness that Torin left in me. Despite my best intentions, sometimes I still think of him and mourn the loss of our friendship, and who he ended up becoming. I try not to think about Camilla, and specifically make it a life rule never to fuck or fraternize with red heads.
If there’s anything that I gained by becoming “fallen” so to speak, it’s the freedom to do whatever I want. As long as I’m not going after souls, something which I have no desire to do, I’m left alone, free to pursue my own devices. I’ve chosen sports and sex. Sports have evolved in every century. I’ve dabbled in them all until finally humans came up with something that I fell in love with…football. Sex, well it is what it is. I gorge myself in it, perhaps a part of me hoping that the small amount of intimacy that comes with every encounter can fill the hole inside of me.
An excess of sex, fame, and football is all that fills my shallow life until the night I first dream of her.
Chapter 14
After
“You’re an angel,” says Eva suddenly. We’re laying on a mattress I pulled up to the rooftop garden. The lights of the city are so bright that it’s almost impossible to see the stars. Eva wanted to try though, so here we are.
“I think we’ve already established that,” I reply with a slow grin, turning my body so that I’m facing her instead of the sky. Her face has a dreamy look upon it as she stares at the firmament above us. Clouds float across the black expanse laid out like a tapestry. The moon is full tonight. I put a note on the mental list I keep, to take Eva out to the Hamptons so she can see what a real full moon looks like. I get the feeling that she hasn’t seen very much in her life.
“Have you met God?” she asks me in a soft, vulnerable tone that makes me want to pull her close and reminds me of a conversation I had long, long ago.
“No, I haven’t,” I reply just as quietly. It’s always been a sore spot for those in the upper hierarchy of angels. We know that paradise exists since we have been there, but we’re never considered good enough to be in the deity’s presence. That’s something that is reserved for the humans we are forced to protect. My mind veers away from its bitter path when I see the look of shock on her face. I kiss her nose, and she scrunches it up in indignation. I see the way she melts though. I would do anything to keep that look on her face. I lean in to kiss her, but she rolls farther away on the mattress playfully.
“Uh, uh, uh,” she tells me, wagging a finger in front of my face. “You and the others never want to have serious conversations about your past lives or where you’ve come from. Tell me something no-one else knows about you, something that can just be for us,” she begs.
I stare at her for a moment, mulling over what to tell her. Most of my life before her seems to be black and white, a litany of excess, and selfish mistakes. I must take too long, because she flips over on her back again to stare at the night sky.
I try to picture Paradise in my mind. For so long I kept it there, a symbol of everything I had lost. It doesn’t seem so shiny anymore I realize. There’s no sharp pang in my chest, no longing for something I can’t have. I feel…like I’m right where I’m supposed to be
. I know this change is because of Eva. Paradise would be hell without her by my side. She reaches out her hand to grab mine and that sense that I’m home only increases. I mull over what to tell her. She already knows the really big fact that I’m an angel, and there’s a million inconsequential things I could tell her, but a part of me wants her to hear the worst part of me. I want her to know the dark ugliness that sits inside of me so that I know if she really cares about me…if she really loves me. Words she hasn’t said.
“Before I met Mason and Beckham, I had two best friends,” I begin slowly. I can feel her interest and her gaze, but I can’t bring myself to look at her as I continue. “They are both dead because of me. I killed them.” I’ve never uttered those words out loud, not even to Beckham and Mason, and it’s almost a relief to finally get the words out.
The silence is suffocating as my words hang between us. “You killed them?” she finally asks, in a hesitant, quivering voice. “You, personally?”
“I only killed one of them, but the other one, a human girl, she died because of me and my selfishness.” She’s still, weighing her words or options probably. Talk about ruining a date, I’m evidently a pro.
“Tell me about them,” she finally says. I weigh what to say and finally decide that it would be easier to show her. “Give me a moment,” I tell her as I make a call. I’m grateful once again for the fact that my name can get me anything in this city. After I finish my call, I hold out my hand to her. She looks at me curiously but takes it and follows me down to the car. We’re both dressed in lounging clothes, but since we will be the only ones in the museum, I don’t think it matters.
Shelton takes us to a side entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I don’t say anything in the car, my thoughts vibrating with echoes of the past. Eva, sensing my mood, says nothing as well, waiting patiently for me to talk when I’m ready.
We greet the guard who’s waiting at the door and he motions us in, giving us a few rules and telling us we have two hours before we have to leave. I nod and walk quickly to our destination, pulling Eva behind me. I know exactly where to go.
We walk to one of the rooms dedicated to artwork from unknown authors, and I stop in front of a brilliant painting of a sunset. Eva gasps in amazement at it, her eyes widening at its beauty.
“This was painted by a little red head named Camilla,” I begin…
Epilogue
A buzzer sounds, shaking me out of my reverie. I walk over to the door reluctantly and press on the speakerphone. “Who is it?” I ask rudely, not wanting any visitors, but not wanting to ignore it just in case it’s Eva somehow.
“Open the damn door you stupid angel!” comes an annoyingly familiar voice.
“Go away!” I tell Lexi brusquely. I’ve never trusted Eva’s red-headed devil of a friend. She’s tried way too hard to ingratiate herself with Eva, and she’s always lurking around everywhere I look.
“Damnit Damon, let me in!” she screams through the intercom. I mute the sound and stroll over to the couch. There’s a large spreadsheet laying on the coffee table where all of my notes about where Eva could be have been written down. I’m pouring over them when the front door suddenly crashes open. The force of the door knocks some decorative glass vases off of the counter, and they crash to the ground, shattering into a million pieces. I jump up and stare in shock as Lexi strolls through the door. She looks wild and pale, and there’s a faint blue glow coming out of her hands.
“Those were expensive,” I tell her dryly.
She looks at all of the glass laying on the ground and shrugs. “I told you I had something to tell you,” she says nonchalantly, acting like she hadn’t just crashed through my front door uninvited.
“Please, do make yourself comfortable,” I say sarcastically as she takes a seat on my couch, curiously reading over the notes on my spreadsheet. “Well? Are you going to tell me whatever was so important that you had to break into my home to deliver the information?”
She has a triumphant look on her face as she stops perusing the notes and glances up at me. “I know where Eva is.”
To Be Continued in Forbidden Queens …
Definitions
Dura lex, sed lex : The law is harsh, but it is the law.
Author’s Note
Thanks for taking the time to read Damon’s story. When I was first creating the Fated Wings Series, Damon was the first of Eva’s love interests that I came up with. I have always loved stories involving fallen angels. So much so that originally, all of Eva’s men were going to be fallen angels! That changed…as you will see in Forgotten Queens when Eva’s identity is finally revealed…maybe.
If you’ve enjoyed getting to know Damon, please leave a review on Amazon to give me further motivation to keep the story going. As I’ve said before, reviews are the lifeblood of authors, and I read all of them.
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Other Books by C.R. Jane
The Fated Wings Series
First Impressions
Forgotten Specters
The Fallen One (a Fated Wings Novella)
Forbidden Queens (2018)
The Rock God (a Fated Wings Novella, 2018)
Faded Realms (coming soon)
The Timeless Affection Series
Lamented Pasts (coming soon)