“Stop it, please. I’ve only come to find my mother. Gabriel said you could help.” I thrust the bag of bones forward and shake them. Dust clouds away from the bag and the bones clank hollowly against each other. He stops, focuses on the bag in my hand. “He said you could help me,” I whisper.
Lucifer stands straight, his wings tucked behind him so they are barely visible. “Take out the bones,” he demands.
Crouching, I untie the sack and pour the dry bones out onto the aged tile floor.
“Clea,” Lucifer whispers. He inhales a deep breath and blows a steady stream of air over the bones. A great wind whips about the room. I shield my eyes, step back, feel my clothes pull in every direction. The bones rattle, clank, dust fills the air like a tornado in the room. I can taste the salt, the grit on my lips from the cave. The wind whips so hard I can’t take a breath.
Stumbling backwards, a pair of large hands grip my upper arms to stop me from falling. What feels like rock presses against my back, keeping me in place as I struggle to get free. The wind dies down. I get my footing and pull my shoulders away from whoever is holding me. There is hot breath in my ear, my hair tickles the side of my face, and a voice says, “I have not forgiven you for trying to kill my son.”
“Let her go, Vine,” Lucifer bellows. “I forbid you from laying a hand on my own flesh and blood.”
The hands push me forward, towards the new figure in the room. She turns. I pull the picture from my pocket and hold it up, they are the same. Her hair is dark as night, her eyes too. But her skin is ghostly porcelain white like I’ve never seen before. She stands just a few inches taller than me, slender and fine boned. She could be my twin, my dark twin.
“Oh, child,” the figure whispers.
“Mom...”
She reaches out a hand, touches my face. She’s cold. “You’re not alive,” I whisper to myself, reminding myself.
“I have enough life left in me to be able to appreciate seeing you.” She smiles, her red lips tipping up.
A hot tear I didn’t know I was holding in slides down my face and over her hand.
She frowns, moves her free hand to the other side of my face. “Don’t cry.”
I wish I could stop, but the tears stream out of my eyes, down my face, soaking the neck of my shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I killed you.” I take a shuddering breath and move to wipe my face.
“Oh,” her cold arms surround me, “you didn’t kill me, child.”
“Yes, John… John Lewis told me so.” I release a hard shudder and swallow down the remaining tears that are threatening to stream down my face. “He said I killed you on the day I was born. It was my fault, all my fault. If I were never born, you’d still be alive.”
She turns and gives Lucifer a look before she says, “John Lewis’ words are no better than the pond of scum he was formed from. Don’t listen to him.”
“He’s going to die,” I tell her flatly. “The Legion is going to kill him.”
The warmth of the burning caves surrounds me as she pulls away. She gives a sharp nod. “Good.”
“But, you’re dead.”
“We don’t really ever die. Creatures like us. Just… our souls go where they belong.”
“But you can’t belong down here.”
She shrugs, her image wavering. “I did things, broke rules, birthed an ethereal child in a realm where she didn’t belong. You could stay here with me. We have all the time we need now.”
I catch Jim’s half-melted face out of the corner of my eye, watching me intensely. He still wants my blood. I will never be safe down here. “I don’t think I can stay here.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure.”
She smiles. “It’s what I wanted for you, the ability to make the choice freely.” She glances towards Lucifer before taking my hand. “Come, I’ll walk you out of this place.
I would like to try and poof out of there, but after the fight with the Hellions and Jim I’m too weak. “Will you let me leave?” I ask Lucifer.
He gives a nod. “You returned my daughter to me. And for this I will allow you safe passage and one favor.”
“One favor?”
“You never know when you might need a favor from the King of Hell.”
He holds out a weapon, similar to the one Sparrow carries, but smaller. It hums and glows as I wrap my fingers around it. “What’s this?” I ask.
“Your weapon. Forged in the fires of Hell. It will only come alive for you. It will protect you. Give you safe passage to the portal.”
Twisting my wrist, gripping the weapon harder, I say, “Sparrow has one of these.”
“His was forged in the light of the Heavens. Yours is very different.”
“Thanks,” I reply as my mother pulls me towards the door.
The Hellions and Jim fidget in the shadows as my mother opens the door to a cavern hallway that’s barely lit. Out of the corner of my eye I see Lucifer give a stern shake of his head to the others in the room. I hope it’s an order not to follow me.
As we walk, my footsteps are the only ones making a hollow sound on the stone floor. My mother seems to float as she tugs at my hand, weaving down dimly lit hallways, past closed doors. Every so often the sound of metal squealing breaks the silence; things peek through cracked doors at us. And when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, she finally speaks again.
“You came alone?” my mother asks.
“I wasn’t going to. It’s just… something came up.” I decide not to tell her about finding Sparrow with Teari’s perfect lips pressed to his skin.
She stops at the threshold to the Burning Caves. Turning towards me, I find that I can almost see through her pale skin in the light.
“I can’t be out here in the daytime,” I warn her. “The dead walk, they’ll come after me.”
She shakes her head from side-to-side, her dark hair brushing against her shoulders. “Not while I’m with you, child.” She begins moving, floating over the dusty earth, past the fallen tree that the Hellions knocked me out of, past the scuffle marks from Sparrow and Marcus’ staged fight. We head north on the same road which I came to this place on with Sparrow and Teari and Marcus. It’s not long before the shuffling starts, the moaning, the thud of bodies knocking into each other as they race at a snail’s pace towards us.
“Here they come,” I warn her.
With the flick of her hair over her shoulder, “And there they wait,” she replies.
Turning, I see that they wait behind us, never getting any closer until we are ten more steps ahead of them. Attaching my new weapon to my belt loop, I shove my hands in my pockets, unsure of what else to do with them.
“Tell me,” my mother says, “tell me about your childhood.”
Shaking my head, I reply, “I don’t think the childhood I had was one a mother wishes for her child.”
She stops walking. “Was Sparrow not there?”
“Sparrow was not there.”
“But he was ordered to stay. To protect you, and for more, for your future. I handpicked him. Saw in the stars what you two would become.”
“You chose him for me?”
“Yes. He was… he is-”
“He was banished to Hell for losing us, for your death.”
She paces in a small circle. “Well that’s, that’s unfortunate. But you found him? You met him. How?”
Walking again, I tell her, “I was in a coma. Jim tried to kill me. And I guess, I guess I was here, somehow. Sparrow found me here while my soul was teetering on edge.”
She spins in a circle around me, ruffling my clothes. “So it was fate. I was right.” The feeling of her cold hands on my cheeks stops me in my tracks. “Together, you both, you will be invincible.”
“That’s what he said.”
My mother giggles, a light and beautiful sound emanating from her throat. “Has he told you-”
“Has he told you what a dick he is?” A deep voice interrupts us.
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I turn sharply, searching the forest edge. A dark figure emerges. Olive skin, imposing, dressed in the same dark combat gear that I last saw him in and featherless wings. Marcus.
As he advances towards us, I look to my mother. “I cannot control him. He is not one of the walking dead.”
“What the hell.” Reaching for the weapon on my hip, I grip its handle and hold it in front of me as Marcus gets closer.
“Where is he?” Marcus asks, slowing once his chest nears the tip of my blade.
“Not here. He’s not here,” I reply.
“You came without the Sparrow Man?”
I nod.
“Stupid.” He steps forward, the blade pressing into his chest. I take a step back. “I know what your blood can do. And it’s just what I need to get out of here.”
He takes two steps, one large hand slaps my arms, sending my weapon sliding across the road. Marcus moves so fast, grabbing the front of my shirt in his fist, lifting me off of the ground. I kick my feet, shift my hips, and kick him in the thigh, the groin, the lower part of his stomach.
Marcus drops me, reaches for the blade Lucifer gave me. I scramble to reach it first. Marcus grasps the blade, kicks me in the ribs. As I roll his boot comes down on my chest, the tip of the blade against my neck.
“Just a little blood,” he whispers. “Just enough to get me out of here.”
He pushes, I feel the tip next to the pulse in my neck, he pushes harder, but nothing happens.
“What the fuck!” His livid eyes zero in on the weapon.
Unable to stop the laugh that escapes my throat, I tell him, “It doesn’t like you, Marcus.”
The blade clangs to the pavement. Marcus reaches for me. “Don’t need it anyway. I have other methods of making you bleed.”
Reaching down, I grasp the hilt of the weapon at the same time as Marcus grips the front of my shirt and pulls me to my feet. Marcus lifts me into the air, my feet dangling. He pulls back his free arm, forms a fist. I wrap my fingers around the grip; catch my mother’s face behind his shoulder. She nods. Lifting my arm with one swift movement, I aim for his neck and slice.
Marcus drops me. The taut muscles that kept him so tall and intimidating go limp. His head slides off of his shoulders and lands on the pavement with a wet thwacking sound.
It concerns me, the ease as to what I just did, and how little I feel about it. Yes, something dark must loom in my soul to do that and feel nothing.
“Very good, child.” My mother snaps her fingers and Marcus’ body goes up in flames. “Now, where was I before he interrupted me? Oh, yes, has Sparrow told you about his wings?”
I shake my head. “They were featherless when I first met him. And, well, he’s never brought it up.”
She rubs her cold hand across my shoulder. “He’ll tell you. I’m sure. Now, we have a flight to catch.”
A wisp of smoke and a strong wind blows over us as she transforms into a giant bird. Some mix between a vulture and a crow and as massive as a dinosaur.
“Argentavis,” she says, answering my unasked question of what the hell she is.
“What?”
“Argentavis,” she says again, “largest bird to fly.”
“Sparrow would be so jealous right now.”
She blinks her beady eyes at me. “Damn right he would be. Get on.”
She lowers her large body to the ground, allowing me to climb on her back. Bouncing a few times on her nimble feet, she jumps, spreads her giant wings and lifts us into the air.
“I have someone that you need to meet,” she says.
She turns, flying faster, just above the tree tops. If I reached out, I could fill my hands with leaves. Instead, I grip the feathers on the back of her neck and tighten my knees against her sides as she flies faster. I close my eyes as the wind whooshes by my ears. A blast of air hits my face. She slows, glides, tilts her body and lands.
Opening my eyes, looking around in the pale moonlight, I recognize the field, the nearby forest, the old barn in front of us. I slide off of her back and she resumes the form of my mother again. We are at the barn, on Route 37, the barn with the snowy owl. Sparrow’s snowy owl.
My mother speaks. “I could tell by the sadness in your soul that you have lost a child.”
I nod.
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“Girl.” I swallow the lump in my throat.
“And did you have a name for her?”
Jim didn’t know, but I had a name ready, picked out weeks before he tried to kill me. The lump grows, becomes too hard to hold down as I choke out the name, “Elise.”
Movement at the top window of the barn causes me to look up. There is a white head, a white body speckled with brown. Before I can comprehend what is happening the owl flaps its wings, takes off into the air, circles once over my head and descends. I hold my arm out like I did when Sparrow was last here with me. The owl lands, tips its head to the side and looks into my eyes. Staring into the golden pools of the snowy owl’s eyes, I exhale as it blinks twice, leans forward, and presses the front of its forehead to mine.
We stand like this, bird and human, in the moonlight, for far too long until the owl straightens herself and lifts into the night sky, disappearing into the forest treetops.
Finding my mother watching, I ask, “What was that?”
She smiles, shrugs her shoulders.
“Her name is Elise?” I ask. “The owl… she… she’s my… what is she doing here?”
“She is two-thirds darkness, one-third light. She is where she belongs. The brightest light in the darkest of places. But you’ve met her already, haven’t you?”
With a shaky voice I respond, “Yes, with Sparrow. He wanted two of her feathers.”
“And did he get them?”
“Yes.”
She smiles again. “Lucky man. She doesn’t give her feathers to just anyone.” My mother walks towards me, places her hands on my shoulders. How I wish I could feel them warm, instead of their icy coolness. “Are you ready for me to take you to the portal?”
I shake my head. “No. I can’t go back there. I’m not ready to see him, not yet. I need some time. I need to think about all of this.”
“Very well.”
A shudder runs up my back, a sense that someone or some things are near. “I think the Hellions are close. I can feel them.”
In a wisp of smoke she returns to the figure of the Argentavis. “Let’s go. They can’t harm you for the time that you’re here. This time. But there’s no need to give them any opportunities. Where do you want to go?”
I whisper the place in her ear.
…
Clea lands next to the small castle on Wellesley Island where Sparrow and I spent the night after returning from Canada. She transforms into her human figure.
“Meg, you are strong enough to return on your own.”
I nod my head.
She wraps her cold arms around me, kisses my forehead. And when she pulls away, she’s holding up her fist with three large, black feathers in it.
“What are those?”
“For you, for Sparrow, for Gabriel. Tell him I love him. Could you do that for me, child?”
“Yes.”
She pushes the feathers into my shaking hands. “It’s been so good to finally meet you. You have become so much more than I could have ever hoped for.” She steps back, turns back into the Argentavis, lifts herself into the night and disappears.
…
Sitting on the pier by the lake, far too close to the morning to avoid the walking dead, I hear the plop of seagull poop fall dangerously close to my shoulder. Inching over, I run my fingers over the feathers given to me by my mother. The eerie tremolo of the loon breaks the morning quiet. Looking down at the small pier, I wish I had a steaming cup of coffee to enjoy the loon calls with. The pier moves, I lift my eyes to find a tall figure standing in front of me, dressed in the same combat gear as I last saw him in, his downy, white wings spread wide.
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br /> “Impressive wingspan,” I say. “You know what they say, big wingspan, big-”
He pulls the wings in until they disappear behind his back and I can only see the curve of them peeking over his broad shoulders. “Meg, I didn’t come here to joke.”
I throw a rock, much harder than I need to, into the lake. The loon calls again.
“Want to go pluck some feathers?” I ask him. “Relive the old days?”
“Don’t need to. I know who I am now.”
“Oh yeah, I do too. You’re Teari’s boyfriend.” I stand and turn to leave, but I stop short, finding Teari standing behind me. “I have no words for you.” I walk around her.
“I’m sorry, Meg.” She reaches out and grabs my arm. I pull away from her. “It was wrong of me. I seek forgiveness. From you.”
“Forgiveness?” I scoff.
“I’m serious,” she replies. “What you saw with me and Sparrow. It was nothing. Actually, it was unwanted on his part.”
Sparrow moves his mouth into a thin pressed line and scowls. Seems he doesn’t have fond memories of that moment either.
“Fine. I forgive you.” I cross my arms and glare at her.
“He is special to you, only you. See you at home.” Teari gives Sparrow a quick nod before lifting into the sky and heading in the direction of the portal to cross realms.
Turning, Sparrow advances towards me from the end of the pier where he has been waiting.
“I asked you to wait for me,” he scolds.
“I’m sure you can figure out why I was eager to leave.” I tip my head, and Sparrow shakes his.
“I don’t know what got into her.” Sparrow reaches for me, his hands settling on my arms. “I was injured.” He shakes his head again. “What have you been doing here?”
“I met my mother,” I tell him.
“You did? That’s, well, that’s great.” Sparrow smiles.
“She can turn into a giant fucking bird. An Argentavis.”
Sparrow’s eyes twinkle in the morning light. “Awesome.”
“Here.” I hold out the feather she gave me. “She wanted me to give this to you. Her name was, her name is Clea, daughter of Lucifer, lover of Gabriel, mother to… me.”
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