To Kill An Angel

by M. Leighton

  Although I knew I could not yet move, I still strained to move toward Bo. I strained to fall into him, but I made no progress until hands at my shoulders pushed me from behind. And then I was finally in the place I longed to be more than anywhere else on the planet—in Bo’s arms.

  Like I knew he would, Bo caught me and cradled me against his chest before lowering me gently to the ground. I watched his eyes for the emotions I knew I’d find—fear, desperation, devotion and, most of all, love.

  Movement to my left caught my eye and I glanced over in time to see the bloody hole in Sebastian’s chest. Bo had been strong enough to force his feather through me and into Sebastian, piercing his heart with the deadly point. I couldn’t help but smile at the comical look of absolute shock on Sebastian’s face. He’d honestly thought he could beat God. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “It can’t be. The Blood of Perfect Love,” he whispered as he stumbled back.

  Bo and I watched together, along with every other eye in the room, as Sebastian’s golden skin turned black with decay. It seemed he was already tasting the fires of Hell. He dried up and wrinkled, his body slowly turning in on itself, just before he began to disintegrate.

  Large, pieces of ash fell away from the form that was Sebastian, drifting weightlessly this way and that until they melted into the air like ink stains dissipating in water. I watched the spot where he’d stood, watched him disappear, until he had completely dissolved into the air around him. Within minutes, there was nothing left but a hazy cloud of dark smoke that a slight breeze rushed in and carried away.

  As the rush of defeating Sebastian wore off, I began to feel myself fading. I could feel the life draining from me so I looked back to Bo. I wanted his face to be the last thing I saw, not an empty space where evil had once resided.

  It tore at my guts to see the panic and heartbreak in his eyes. Though I heard no sound, I could see his mouth moving as it formed one word over and over again.

  No.

  I let my tired eyes drift over the handsome planes of Bo’s face until I felt the image was burned into my brain. Satisfied that I would leave this world with his picture seared onto my heart like a brand, I let my lids drop, unable to fight the hand of death for a moment longer.

  Little by little, everything faded from my consciousness—thought, feeling, fear. Even Bo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I opened my eyes to a blinding brightness. It was as if I’d blinked and found myself in a solid white room that allowed only sound to enter its hazy walls.

  Immediately, I was overcome with an incredible sense of euphoria and wellbeing. I had the vague feeling that I was missing something, or someone, but I couldn’t manage to really care. I relaxed into the space and, with half an ear, I listened.

  I heard Devon talking to Savannah, encouraging her to drink. I assumed that he was trying to save her life and, in my mind, I smiled at the depth of their love.

  From another side, I could hear Heather screaming. She was begging someone not to take her daughter, bargaining with her own life in return.

  I could hear all of this with crystal clarity, but I saw absolutely nothing until Lilly appeared in the room with me.

  She was smiling and happy and whole. She walked closer to me and I felt her nearness like the warmth of the sun.

  When she spoke, all I could hear was her voice. Everything else was suddenly muted.

  “Don’t worry about me, Ridley. He has explained everything to me. He even gave me a choice. If I want to stay with you, He’ll let me.” Lilly’s face crumpled into a sad expression. “But Ridley, I don’t want to stay. I saw my mother. My real mother. She’s here with Him. I don’t want to go back there. I want to be with her.”

  My heart could feel no disappointment, no worry, no pain or sorrow. It felt only acceptance. And happiness.

  “You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Ridley. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  She turned a dazzling smile on me and I couldn’t help thinking how mature she was for such a young age.

  Lilly turned away, skipping off to the other side of the white room. I saw her reach out with her tiny hand and grasp a larger one. The hand was disembodied, as if someone from another room was reaching in to collect Lilly.

  Just before both the hand and Lilly disappeared, however, I saw a face appear. It was barely more than a brief glimpse, like a camera flash of the familiar. But that was all it took. I knew it instantly and my heart leapt.

  It was my sister. She smiled—a brilliant smile, just like the one with which she’d gifted her daughter—and then both she and Lilly were gone.

  Just like that, I was alone in the room again. There was complete silence for a few seconds before a familiar voice penetrated the sterility of the space.

  It cried Please, God! Please! over and over and over. The pain in the voice was so raw, so fresh, it tore at my heart.

  And then I saw Bo.

  He was clad in a short leather skirt cut into strips that reminded me of something a Roman soldier of old might wear. His calves were covered in a sheath of protective leather as well. Other than that, he was nude but for his glorious, silver-white wings.

  He was standing with his legs spread, the bloodied feather still clutched in his hand, looking straight up at the nothingness above. He didn’t seem to even recognize that I was in the room with him. But I could both see him and feel him. His agony touched me like a physical force, reaching me easily from the other side of the white expanse. To me, it felt like a gaping hole in his soul. Although it wasn’t visible to the naked eye, I could perceive it as clearly as if it were.

  “Please don’t take her from me. I’ve done everything you asked. Everything! Please don’t take her.”

  There was silence as he watched the empty, white sky. He seemed to be listening to someone, someone I could neither see nor hear.

  “No!” he cried angrily, his voice cracking with emotion. Bo fell to his knees, his feathery sword falling out of sight. It was as though it dropped through a trap door and disappeared into oblivion.

  “Please,” he said again, this time his tone suggesting that he was ready to try being reasonable since nothing else had worked. “Please don’t. You know how I feel about her. You know I can’t live here without her. God, please! Please don’t take her from me.”

  Bo’s head slumped forward as his voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “Please. She’s like the air to me.”

  He stayed that way for several long, tense seconds before his head snapped up. After a short pause, Bo exhaled as if in great relief and I saw his eyes close.

  “Yes, anything. I’ll do anything.”

  He listened for another minute, nodding occasionally. He didn’t speak again until he said, “What?” and his head jerked around toward me.

  Bo’s eyes met mine from across the colorless space and I felt them like sweet rain on my dry soul. I’d honestly believed that I had looked into them for the last time. But now, seeing them once more, made me feel like I could fly.

  Looking away, Bo bowed his head and murmured, with a wealth of emotion, “Thank you. Thank you.”

  When he rose to his feet, he crossed the space between us. Stopping in front of me, Bo bent to scoop me up into his arms. I felt the skin of my cheek collide with his chest. I knew then, as I’d known for some time, that all I ever needed in life was safely stored in that chest, beneath the skin and bone of an angel.

  Little by little, the white faded to black and I felt the shock of landing back in a body that was alive with feeling. I was lying on my back and my heart was being torn apart by an intolerable pain. It was more than enough to take my breath away, a gasp sticking in my chest like Bo’s feather sword had.

  I fought to open my eyes, but I couldn’t lift my lids. It was as if they were sealed together with a paralyzing glue, as were my lips.

  Inside a body that I couldn’t control, I was trapped in an airless torment that left me blind, deaf, mute and immobile. B
ut before panic could swallow me up, an enormous opaque hand descended from the blackness above me. It reached inside my chest, ripping out the pain and the heartache that crouched there, and then vanished without a trace.

  Although I was confused, I relaxed back into a blissful numbness that held me like a cloud. I dipped and swayed as if I were perched atop gently rolling waves.

  Ambient sounds began to penetrate the haze. One voice in particular was like a ray of sunshine breaking through fog and setting my heart, my soul, and my world on fire.

  “Ridley,” it said, the voice so close to my ear that chills ran down my neck and shoulder. “Ridley, can you hear me?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat was so dry, so painfully dry, that I couldn’t move the words past the tongue that was stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “Ridley, please wake up,” it said again. I felt something warm against my forehead. It was hard, like maybe another forehead. “Please, baby. Please wake up.”

  I tried to shout I’m here, Bo! but the sound didn’t make it out of the confines of my head.

  Hands gently gathered me closer to that bare chest. I inhaled and my nose was pleasantly flooded with the smell that calmed my entire existence.

  “How could you do that to me? How did you think I could live without you?” he whispered, his voice a rumbling in his chest that tickled my ear and reverberated through my jaw.

  I felt his lips brush my hair and I wanted desperately to turn my face up and capture them with my own. Putting every ounce of focus I had toward prompting my muscles to obey, I strained until I felt Bo’s smooth skin shift against my cheek.

  His heart literally skipped a beat when I moved. I heard it in his chest, like a stutter. He pulled away from me and I could almost feel his gaze sweeping over my face, burning through my skin to reach my soul.

  Lifting with all my might, I pried my lids open and was immediately rewarded with the most gloriously handsome face I’d ever seen. I looked it over, appreciating the sharp angles and firm planes, the mouth that tortured me in such a sweet way, the eyes that I could never escape and never wanted to.

  Struggling, I lifted my free hand and touched it to his warm cheek. He turned his face into it, closing his eyes as he pressed his lips to my palm.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  The words sang through my soul like the sweetest song, the chords dancing across my heart like the delicate feet of a ballerina.

  I cleared my throat and managed to croak, “I love you, too.”

  The smile that curved Bo’s mouth was nothing short of stunning. It lit his whole face as if the windows of heaven had opened up and bathed him in loving, angelic perfection.

  Bo swept his lips across mine and then crushed me to his chest. Despite all the stress and activity of the last several hours, I could feel the warmth of his skin beneath my cheek. It should’ve been cooling, like mine undoubtedly was. That could only mean one thing.

  “Mortal?” I asked dryly.

  “We’ll talk later. We need to get out of here.”

  “Wait! What did you see?”

  Bo looked quizzically at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did you see on my skin? Isn’t that why you looked at me like that?”

  Bo pursed his lips.

  “Do we have to talk about this now? It just sort of explained how to find my wings and what to do with them. It didn’t mention your part, though.” Bo closed his eyes and when he continued, his voice was thick with emotion. “If I had known—”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Ridley, how could you—”

  “Shh,” I interrupted again, straining to reach up and press my index finger to his lips. “It’s over.”

  Bo kissed my fingertip and made his way to his feet with me cradled against him.

  I reached up to wind my arms around his neck and found that my muscles were already responding to my commands more quickly.

  I turned my head to survey the room and when I saw the devastation that littered the floor of the barn, I felt guilty for being in Bo’s arms. There was much to do. The only conscionable thing to do was to put my thirst for Bo on hold. We needed feet on the ground.

  Savannah was on her knees, crouched over her dead mother’s body, weeping quietly. A slight shimmer in the moonlight delineated Devon at her back, a silent rock for Savannah in her time of need.

  Annika’s dead and bloodied body was face-down in the dirt, exactly where she’d fallen not so long ago. Lilly lay sprawled on the ground, her limbs perfectly arranged and her hair spread out around her head like the halo. I thought that was particularly apropos.

  Looking at her, a pang of loss—the loss of someone I’d never really known, the loss of someone I’d now never get to know—pinched at my heart, but I sternly reminded myself that she was happy and safe and that was all that mattered. There was no reason to mourn her. She was far better off than any of us.

  “Let me down. I can help,” I said, swinging my head back around to Bo. He opened his mouth to argue, but I preempted him. “No arguments. We need to bury them. Quickly.”

  Reluctantly and with a frustrated sigh, Bo let my legs slide down his body until my feet touched the floor. Pressing a quick kiss to the cleft in his strong chin, I turned my attention back to the victims. Some were living, some were not.

  Savannah looked up at my words and she tried to give me a watery smile.

  “She gave her life to save me,” she claimed, her voice breaking on the last.

  “I’m so sorry, Savannah!”

  Making my way to her, I bent to hug her. Even as my arms went around her, Devon didn’t let her go. I couldn’t help but smile. Savannah was hurting now, but she was still one of the luckiest girls in the world. To know a love like what she and Devon shared was priceless. And I could say that with absolute certainty. After all, I knew all about being lucky in love. Even when the time came that I had to bury a very mortal Bo, I knew I would walk the earth alone for all eternity loving him as if he still walked beside me.

  Savannah rallied and, between the four of us, we managed to gather the fallen and make our way into the woods, to a place that Bo had obviously been using to bury those deserving of a resting place of peace and respect. He had disguised the graves so perfectly that I doubted a human eye could detect the slight variation in the lay of the land. But I could. As I counted the graves, four in total, I ticked off people I thought to be buried there—Trinity, Drew, Aisha and Summer.

  Bo kept a short-handled shovel hidden in the trees, so we silently, tearfully, took turns digging until there were three deep holes in the earth, one of them considerably shorter in length than the others.

  Bo and I, plus Savannah with the help of Devon, laid the bodies to rest, each of us burying someone that was uniquely important to us. When the bodies were covered and the ground over the plots replaced and disguised, Bo said a few words over them. They were some of the most poignant I’d ever heard, speaking to his truly angelic nature. I knew as long as I lived I’d probably never attend a more beautiful ceremony, simple as it was.

  As we stood in front of the nearly invisible graves, I felt the icy hot fingers of thirst clawing at my throat and eating away at my tissues. I didn’t have to look to know that I was fading.

  A little niggle of fear and insecurity gnawed at the back of my mind and I glanced over at Savannah. From where I stood, I could smell the tantalizingly sweet scent of her blood. I could plainly pick out her heartbeat from among the others. The delicate vibrations of it tingled across my lips. Although those things did make me more aware of my thirst, I felt clear-headed and in control.

  Mentally, I shook my head. Control. I finally had control. I just never imagined that it would be so hard-won.

  The four of us had seen quite a bit of barbarity and bloodshed in recent months. Our lives, while forever changed by what we’d seen, were also forever linked. I could feel
it in the air between us like a kinship that was so strong it was nearly tangible. I would sooner take my own life than harm them in any way.

  “I know it’s terrible timing, but you need to feed,” Bo said hesitantly.

  I wasn’t going to mention Cade. He was a sensitive subject that I didn’t feel like Bo or I either one needed at that moment.

  “Why don’t you go check on Lucius and see if he can spare a bag until we can regroup. I’ll head back to the house with Savannah and Devon.”

  Bo grinned.

  “You’re so awesome. Have I ever told you that?”

  I smiled in return.

  “Not that I recall, but feel free to repeat yourself as often as you like.”

  With a quick kiss, he was gone, leaving Devon, Savannah and me to make our way back to Sebastian’s.

  About halfway there, Devon scooped Savannah up and carried her the rest of the way. It was bizarre to behold. It appeared that Savannah was floating in midair, her arms wrapped around nothing, her head leaning against nothing.

  “Shut up,” she teased when she caught me studying them.

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “No, but you were thinking it.”

  I chuckled. There was no arguing that.

  “So,” I said, still uncertain whether I should broach the subject of the future or not. “What are you two going to do? I mean, Devon, are you going to stay invisible forever?”

  I could almost hear his shrug.

  “If we’re ever going to have a life together, I can’t. I just- I’m afraid that—” He trailed off because there was no reason to explain. I knew exactly what he was going through, what his fears entailed, what his doubts were. But I also knew what the prize was—Savannah. And that was worth any sacrifice, any compromise.

  “Bo and I can help you. Well, mainly Bo. He’s really—”

  I stopped myself. If Bo was mortal, would he really be much help to Devon? The implications of his mortality fell down over me like a blinding haze of dread.

  Ruthlessly, I pushed through it, reminding myself that Bo had lived a long, long time as a vampire. He’d wanted nothing more than to be normal, to be mortal. The least I could do was be happy for him, to put my own selfish thoughts and desires aside for his benefit. It would only make him feel guilty to know how much it bothered me.