Angel Eyes

by Shannon Dittemore

  “I understand.” And I do. I understand nightmares.

  “Marco doesn’t need to know about Horacio’s phone, okay, but we’re going to have to figure out a way to get him that journal. The Throne Room meant him to have it. Of that, I’m absolutely certain.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” I say, happy to have a task.

  “There’s one more thing you need to know,” Jake says. “About Damien.”

  He has that look of gravity about him, his eyes smoking behind thick sooty lashes, his jaw set and his gaze focused on mine.

  “Okay.”

  “Damien’s a fallen angel, Brielle.”

  It’s terrifying to hear him say it aloud, but I’m not surprised. “I, um, put that together myself.”

  He nods. “Canaan knows him, personally. He’s worse than most because he suffers.”

  “Suffers?”

  “He’s been assigned to earth, like Canaan. But unlike the Shield, the Fallen cannot tolerate the light of the Celestial for extended periods of time. The rush they get from flight is addictive, and while his time in the light slowly destroys him, he doesn’t have the self-control to keep himself from it. His master could recall him from the front lines with just a word and give him time to mend, but some failure on Damien’s behalf has kept him here, out of favor. Canaan thinks his eyes are damaged.”

  “His master?” I’m exasperated.

  “We talked about Lucifer, remember?”

  “Yes, but, you know, some things are . . . figurative.”

  Jake’s half smile returns. “You can’t believe in heaven and not hell, sweetheart. That’s just denial.”

  Did he just call me sweetheart?

  “I don’t know what to do with this information, Jake.”

  “I understand,” he says, “but you need to know. You and Marco need to stay as far away from Damien as possible, and when we get to Canaan, I want you to stay with him at all times.”

  “And you?”

  “If there’s any way possible, my hand will never leave yours, but you’re safer with Canaan.”

  “We’re both safer with Canaan.”

  “No argument there. But knowing Damien, he’ll try to split us up and use us against each other. He’d be wise to do so.”

  “Why?”

  “He saw me heal your ankle, Elle. He knows what my hands can do.”

  The thought makes me light-headed.

  How long has Damien been here? Been watching us?

  “He’ll target me if he can, but he’ll use you—I have no doubt he’ll use you to get to me. You’ve seen what he can do. Look at Marco’s injuries, Elle. It could have been a lot worse. Stay with Canaan. Your capture could be fatal for both of us.”

  I’m confused and terrified, but Jake just said us. And something about the word, about the idea of it, makes me brave. I reach my fingers out and brush them along his cheek. He hasn’t shaved today, and I wonder if his face would be uncomfortable against my skin.

  “What?” Jake says, his eyes searching my face.

  I shake my head, but I don’t drop my hand. “You haven’t shaved.”

  Jake licks his lips. “Is that a problem?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, leaning into him.

  Slowly, carefully, I press my lips against his. My eyes close, and I turn my face right and left, feeling the stubble brush against my chin. The smell of his skin is intoxicating, and like a drug-seeking addict, I press closer. And then his mouth is moving against mine and I’m lost. Jake twists his hands into my hair and pulls me tight against him.

  Us, I think.

  When at last our lips separate, I stare into Jake’s breathless face and find a new kind of courage.

  It’s a courage to fight. And an audacity to believe in a God who may or may not protect us. All this talk about choosing to believe—but if I choose to ignore this world of angels and demons, my disbelief could literally kill me. Kill us. If I don’t acknowledge Damien’s existence, both Jake and I are as good as dead. We have to fight. Evil leaves us no choice.

  “So?” he says, his breath coming fast.

  I blush again, and again. “The stubble’s not a problem.”

  I run home and change. I toss my mud-splattered, bloodstained clothes in the trash can out back. No time for a shower, but I run a brush through my hair and gargle some mouthwash before dashing out the door. I’m not particularly clean, but I feel human again in my favorite skinny jeans and a black hoodie. The halo is tucked under my sleeve.

  When I skid to a stop in Jake’s driveway, he’s cramming Marco into the Karmann Ghia, ignoring his questions and promising some sort of explanation once we’re on the road. I still have no idea where we’re going, but I trust Jake, and he trusts God. Like standing on the shoulders of someone stronger, I’ll depend on his faith to hold me up. Until I can be sure of my own, his will have to suffice.

  “Would somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Marco moans as we pull onto the road. “Who was on the phone?”

  I look to Jake, as curious as Marco.

  “The phone call was from Canaan, my guardian,” Jake answers.

  “And . . .”

  “He’s familiar with Damien.”

  “He’s familiar with him?”

  “Yes. And Canaan’s been doing some research. He has someone following Damien as we speak.”

  “Following him? Does he have any idea how dangerous that man is?” Marco asks, trying to sit up, groping painfully at his ribs and gasping for air.

  “He knows.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me where we’re going.” Marco settles carefully back onto the pillow I’d crammed behind him.

  “These warehouses of yours—”

  “Not mine. Not anymore.”

  “Canaan’s been checking them out.”

  “Have there been . . . were there . . .”

  “He hasn’t found anything yet, Marco. But there were signs. Evidence that maltreatment had taken place. He . . . he’s under the impression that something is happening tonight. Something that needs to be stopped. He’s got a handful of warehouses still to check, and there’s one just a few hours away, in Portland. He said he’ll meet us there.”

  “In the industrial district?” Marco asks, his voice dripping with anxiety. I don’t imagine he wants to return there.

  “No,” Jake answers. He glances at his hand and reads Marco an address. “Do you know it?”

  “I’ve never been there, but it belonged to my dad. It’s Horacio’s now. It’s near the river, under the Maelstrom Bridge.”

  “You should rest,” Jake tells him. “We have a long drive.”

  Jake turns left and takes the road through town. We’re past both Jelly’s and the high school before the silence is broken.

  “Why are we going to the warehouse, Jake?” Marco asks.

  “You have somewhere more important to be?” Jake answers, glancing at Marco in his broken rearview mirror.

  Marco huffs.

  “Because I trust Canaan,” Jake says. “And he’s asked me to check it out. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, sleep. You’re no good to us exhausted.”

  Marco rambles on, detailing the horrific things he’d like to do to Horacio, but within minutes he’s snoring in the backseat. We drive in silence, my mind working feverishly, struggling to make pieces of the story fit.

  “Do you mind?” Jake pulls his hand from mine and reaches into the backseat. He places it ever so lightly on Marco’s rib cage. Marco moans but does not wake. “If I had known his ribs were broken, I’d have taken care of that while he slept this morning. Firsthand experience has taught me how painful that can be.”

  My phone beeps, and I pull it from my hoodie. It’s a missed call from Dad. I return it, but he doesn’t answer, so I leave a message. I tell him about Marco escaping and then quickly tell him what Deputy Wimby said about their catching him. I feel a little guilty, but it’s not a lie, right? Not a big one anyway. The d
eputy did say they’d apprehended him.

  I tell him I’m fine and ask him to pick up more Cocoa Pebbles before he comes home tomorrow. I try to sound chipper and snarky, but I’m not sure I pulled it off. I hang up and send Kaylee a text. This has to be an acceptable excuse for cancelling our movie plans.

  That done, I stare past the spiderweb cracks spreading from one corner of Jake’s windshield to the other, and I wonder.

  “What do you think we’ll find there, Jake? At the warehouse?”

  “God willing,” he says, slamming his foot down hard on the accelerator, “we’ll find life.”

  25

  Damien

  Knock knock.

  Someone’s been knocking at his motel room door for a good thirty seconds now, but Damien doesn’t answer. Instead, he sends the knife in his hand spinning toward the wall.

  Knock . . . Knock . . . Knock. Knock.

  Damien cracks each knuckle intentionally, listening for the snap. He focuses on the sound, attempting to dispel the anxiety consuming him, and then crosses to the wall to reclaim his knife. His self-control is slipping, and he knows it.

  It took nearly every tool in his arsenal to wake his men—his brainless, hungover men. In the end, Damien inhaled a mouthful of Celestial air and let it rot in his diseased mouth. When it settled grainy and toxic against his teeth, he spewed it into the atmosphere, where it spiraled invisibly to the nostrils of those slumbering. And then he transferred to the Terrestrial, towering over them as they woke, slobbering, mucous running down their faces.

  Stupid, stupid humans.

  Threatening dismemberment, he sent them into Stratus. Demanded they locate and apprehend Jake and Brielle. But it’s been hours, and his phone remains silent. They could be anywhere, and Damien is out of time.

  The buyers will be arriving tonight. Tonight! And with them, the Fallen. Gathering four such influential brothers again will be difficult. This may be the very last chance he has to impress the Prince.

  “Um, sir?” From outside the motel room door, a whiny voice makes its way inside. “We’ve had complaints about the noise.”

  With a flick of his wrist, Damien sends the knife tumbling across the room again. It lands with a thud in the wall beyond. He crosses the room to retrieve it.

  “Yes, sir,” the whine continues. “That’s just the noise I’m talking about. The lady who shares that wall with you—well, she won’t stop calling the front desk, and—”

  Damien stalks to the door and yanks it open. Before him is a pimply-faced boy with a passion for all things Vulcan, by the looks of his shirt. The boy blanches, his mouth gapes. Damien pulls back his fist and slams it into the kid’s jaw. The kid collapses—all knees and elbows—but Damien finds little delight in the pain he’s inflicted.

  Pain is not nearly as satisfying as fear.

  He turns and aims his knife once more at the wall behind him. End over end it flies, shooting with ease through the wall in question. The resulting shriek of his peace-loving neighbor whets his appetite, and he closes his eyes, imagining how satisfying it will be to hear Jake Shield scream like that.

  A moment is all he allows himself, and then he advances on the wall. It’s a small room, and three strides is all it takes. Eyeing the puncture wound he’s just given it, he abandons himself to rage and smashes first his left fist and then his right through the wall. They cut through with ease, and he repeats the action again and again, until at last the opening is large enough to permit his powerful build to pass through.

  He ignores his neighbor’s quaking, squealing form. She huddles against the queen-sized headboard as he stomps through her room, Sheetrock dust marking each step. Damien pulls his knife from the wall, where it’s sunk to the hilt, pinning the polyester drape to the door frame.

  He flings open the door, now on the far side of the motel, opposite the parking lot, and slides the Green Beret tactical knife into a sheath strapped to his thigh. He took it years ago from a captive, and soon thereafter assassinated, soldier.

  Human weapons are of limited value to the Fallen, useful only in the Terrestrial. But this one he has kept. It reminds him of the violence people inflict upon themselves, of their sheer depravity. It reminds him that sometimes terror triumphs, and even knights on white horses can be defeated.

  Today of all days, he needs these reassurances.

  Because Canaan’s right. Damien’s not free. Not really. Mortal, immortal—all serve one master or the other. He’s free to not worship the Creator, that’s true. The Creator won’t accept halfhearted worship anyway and seemed more than willing to release the malcontent to follow the Deceiver. But that freedom came with a price. It chained them to utter darkness and caused their spirit selves to atrophy.

  It forced them to cling to the Deceiver.

  To the Prince of Darkness.

  Originally they were enamored by him—his beauty, his charisma, his courageous challenge of the only power in the universe. But their preference for the Deceiver soon grew into downright hatred of the Creator and His world of light. Eventually the light itself turned on them and began to eat away at their senses. Darkness and its Prince were their only refuge. The Fallen serve him now because they have no choice, and it’s nothing less than a battle to secure positions away from the light.

  Damien shakes his head clear of recollection. If he’s going to get Jake and Brielle to the warehouse in time, he has to act now. If he doesn’t have something of value to show his brothers when they arrive, they will likely turn on him.

  He doesn’t want to risk another one-on-one with Canaan. Or Helene, for that matter—wretched little angel made him drop the girl last night—but he’s out of options. He throws a rigid glance over each shoulder and then transfers with a groan of release into the Celestial. As he does, his phone vibrates.

  With some exertion he pulls himself back to the Terrestrial and snaps the phone to his ear. “Juan, tell me you’ve found them.”

  “They’re in the city.”

  This news takes him by surprise, and his pulse quickens.

  “Where?”

  Juan’s voice wavers. “We don’t . . . know exactly.”

  “What do you know?” Damien shouts, spit flying.

  “There’s a girl here . . .”

  “Brielle Matthews?”

  “No, a friend of hers.”

  The idiot launches into a story. An excuse. Damien’s chest rumbles with impatience.

  “We got here, to the house, but it was empty. We went door to door for a while, flashing Jake’s picture, pretending to be the Feds, but the only thing the neighbors could tell us was that the kid was new in town. We decided to check the house again and found this sweet little thing sitting on the porch waiting for us.”

  Damien hears muffled cries in the background.

  “She heard we were asking around and wanted to make sure her friend was all right. It seems they had plans and Brielle cancelled. Meeting her boyfriend’s dad in the city, she said. The text message says it’s some sort of an emergency.” Juan doesn’t continue.

  Is he pausing for effect?

  Wrong audience.

  “Is that it?!” Damien roars into the phone.

  “Yes, yes. That’s it. That’s all she knows.”

  Fury tightens Damien’s muscled body. They’re on their way to Canaan. It’s possible, likely even, they’ve already met up. Hours and hours of futile patience, and his prey have driven right by. A cold chill climbs up his spine as he considers the words he’s just heard: some sort of an emergency.

  What kind of emergency?

  Do they know about the trade?

  About tonight?

  The consequences of his own mistakes are piling up, and if Damien doesn’t act quickly they’re sure to crush him.

  “Yo, D. You there?”

  Damien grinds his teeth, forces his temper into submission.

  “Get to the warehouse, Juan. You’re handling the buyers tonight.”

  “Where’s Horacio
?”

  This is exactly why he needs a right hand—all these details, minutiae he despises.

  “The warehouse. Be there.”

  “Sure, Boss, whatever you say. What do you want me to do with the girl?”

  “Bring her with you,” Damien says.

  “No prob. Eddie will like that.”

  Damien wads the phone up, like a mistake, the first draft of a saga he means to rewrite, and he drops the plastic remnants to the floor.

  He couldn’t care less what Eddie will like.

  He transfers to the Celestial and launches into the sky. The sickness in his chest—the panic spreading like wildfire—fuels him. He flies hard and fast away from the motel, away from the taunting little town of Stratus, toward the warehouse by the river.

  Has his nasty little secret been unearthed?

  26

  Brielle

  The warehouse is positioned at an angle under the Maelstrom Bridge. Its crooked position seems accidental, a haphazard mistake. Behind it, the dirty river reflects the city lights. I peer out my window, looking for the moon, but she’s not showing herself tonight. Instead I see heavy black clouds. They close in slowly, bringing the very storm we’ve been hoping to avoid. The silhouettes of several other warehouses line the water, and the whistle of a train sounds overhead. Dust and rubble sprinkle the air as the train pulls in.

  Next to the warehouse is a gravel lot surrounded by a tarnished chain-link fence. A van, ghostly white against the night sky, is parked there. Jake pulls the car into an abandoned gas station across the street, and I glare out my window at a rusted tin sign squeaking back and forth in the wind.

  There’s an old garage bay next to a boarded-up mini-mart. Jake jumps out and tries the rolling door. With a little effort it slides open. The bay is empty, so Jake backs the car into it. The shadows swallow the Karmann Ghia, though I doubt anyone would think twice if it were seen. Jake’s car looks as old and abandoned as the gas station.

  I slide into my green Chucks and stare out the windshield.