“That’s completely ridiculous, Mephistopheles.” Camael sighed.
Mephis eyed the seams of his coat. “Not worth it?”
The Fallen leader shook his head. “Not the point. She wanted to know where your top hat went.”
Mephis pursed his lips. “Well, they’re on my hat rack. Would it please her more if I wore one?”
“Maybe.” Camael laughed.
“Well then, I’ll start tomorrow,” Mephis announced, both of them falling into silence for a moment before laughing.
“What am I going to do, Meph?” he asked.
“You’re going to have to find her, and quickly. Something tells me that you don’t have as much time as you think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“A little birdy told me she went to pay Enoch a visit.”
“What?”
“You might want to suit up while you still can. You’ve got two realms with a bounty on your head.” Mephis clasped him by the shoulder before standing back up, leaving Camael alone with his thoughts.
Camael had inadvertently put Amelia in the middle of a war he had hoped she could avoid.
A war he, too, hoped he could stay out of.
But he was wrong. His past was coming back around at full swing with both their blood in mind.
They were both involved now, and his only choice was to see this through.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Emily, wake up,” a female voice shouted into my ear. “Damn it, wake up! You’re going to be late.”
It only took a few dozen shakes of my shoulder for me to open my eyes, metal bars suddenly flooding my vision as I shot up in a bunkbed I didn’t remember lying down in. The back of my head seared with pain the moment I did, forcing me to clutch it as I tottered back toward the mattress.
“What’s going on?” I blinked rapidly, adjusting my eyes to the bright lights pooling in from above me.
“You’re going to be late for the Bar exam,” Jenna, my college roommate, snapped. “It’s almost nine a.m.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly. Something seemed wrong. Off, even. I was never late. Why didn’t my alarm go off?
“What’s there to understand?” she said, thrusting my messenger bag and my hoodie at me. “Brush your teeth and get out of here. You can still make it if you can get to Smith Street in under three minutes.”
Three minutes? What was she talking about? I was never pressed for time. I purposely always left extra early just so that I wouldn’t be late.
There had to have been some reason that my schedule was so off, but nothing I could remember.
“Did we go out last night, Jenna?”
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. Brilliant, but not a lot of compassion for explanation.
“And where did we go?” I asked as I slid off the bed and just looked around.
Everything in the dorm room looked exactly like it should, but a haze clouded my mind, leaving me feeling worse than any hangover I’d ever experienced.
“We went to that club down off Main Street.”
Since when did we do clubs?
“Emily!” she shrieked, shaking me out of my reverie. “Two minutes, now! Come on. Forget the teeth. Pass the Bar, and you can buy new ones.” This time she grabbed me by the hand and shoved me toward the front door, my eyes catching the angel statue on the bookshelf.
An angel.
The simple decoration was actually a Christmas ornament, a blond angel holding a puppy that my mother had given to me years before, but something about it made my stomach suddenly churn with an unsettled feeling.
It wasn't my mother; I knew she was safe. She and my stepfather were making the final arrangements on their upcoming trip to some remote island off the Philippines. “Business,” she had called it. She was an herbalist who was doing her doctoral thesis on native plants of the Philippines and their medical uses within indigenous tribes. They were going to be gone for twelve weeks, the two of them schlepping through the wilderness in search of some new medicine, I was sure.
They would be leaving the Saturday following my exam. Enough time that I would be able to share my results with them. The results normally took longer, but with my father tenured and my mother on her way there, the exam’s office was going to speed along the results. In the electronic age, it was the least they could do. It didn’t really take six weeks to grade one exam.
“This isn’t real,” I suddenly blurted out, though what made me say it, I had no idea.
Jenna’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? Are you sick?”
“Sick?” I repeated, shoving the sleeves of my shirt up as I scanned my arms for any sign of needle marks or incisions. “What day is today?”
She shook her head, flabbergasted, as she pointed to the calendar on our wall. “It’s Tuesday, the eighteenth of September, a day you’ve been planning for over four years.”
The eighteenth of September.
I looked around the dorm room; everything remained where it was supposed to be. My desk. My Presario. The ruby cuff I had received as a present on my eighteenth birthday.
I reached down and took it off the desk. I remembered getting the bracelet but from whom? I had been sick with the flu and had missed my own surprise party, a rather uneventful turn of events as I lay holed up in bed watching reruns of whatever was on TV.
“Emily, what’s going on with you?” she asked as her motherly scowl weighed down on me.
The cuff was gold, not silver. I never wore silver, but I couldn't remember why. Just something about it, I guess. I ran my fingers over the oval-cut rubies embedded into the white gold, and it made my throat tighten with anxiety as I spun around to face her.
“Something’s not right,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes again as she threw her hands in the air. “You’ve just missed your exam. Now it’s going to be six weeks for the retake. How are you supposed to get into Barnes and Cohen without a law degree?”
A law degree? Why was I getting a law degree? I had quit school months ago, closer to a year in fact.
Then why was I here?
The front door to our dorm room was ajar slightly, the sounds of a normally bustling dormitory starkly silent.
“Amelia?” she called me by my actual name this time as I ignored her.
I slipped on the bracelet and threw my arms into my hoodie as I made my way over to the door only for find Jenna barring my path.
“What are you doing?” Her unnaturally blue eyes gleamed at me, full of questioning.
“I’m going home.”
“Home? You are home, Emily,” she said, reaching into her pocket for her Blackberry. “I’m going to call the Med ward. You aren’t acting like yourself. Maybe something you drank last night messed you up.”
“No,” I said, calmly slipping past her. “I didn’t drink last night, Jenna.”
I didn’t wait for Jenna to respond before my hand was already on the doorknob, opening it up as I stepped into the hallway. A sudden, blinding light filled my vision as I stumbled out of the room and latched onto the far side of the hallway wall. I spun around, using the wall for support while my eyes struggled to catch up. After a few slow breaths, I would be alright.
Wishful thinking it seemed. A piercing ringing overtook my senses, rattling my eardrums as I glanced up to see if it was the fire alarm gone awry. But there weren’t any in sight. In fact, nothing was.
The dormitory hall was gone, and I found myself staring into blackness, unable to move.
The ringing grew louder, like someone turned up the volume. I doubled over, my body struggling to get away from the offensive sound while remaining pinned by some unseen force.
It hurt so much. All I wanted to do was to cover my eardrums, and the distant sound of glass breaking only furthered my wants. The sound started to come and go, distorted as if it were coming from underwater.
Pain raked my ears.
Am—Ame—lia. Like a voice t
rapped within a torrential gale, it repeated my name, louder and louder until it drowned out the ringing and only the disembodied voice remained.
Amelia.
Matt?
No, it wasn't Matt. It was someone or something else.
Amelia, please answer me! Are you there? Where are you?
“Who's there?” I yelled into the darkness.
Am—
The sound distorted again, and the voice was gone.
I looked down at my wristwatch. I was in a hurry for some reason I couldn't remember. Almost as if I had been rufied, everything was a fog. I couldn’t remember the last place I’d been before waking up, and now I was trapped in some nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
Amelia . . .
This time the darkness called my name clear as day.
“Who’s there?”
Oh, dear Amelia, how I've missed you so. I never thought you’d actually return.
“Who are you? Come out and show yourself.”
Two eyes suddenly pierced the darkness, blood-red and burning like smoldering fire.
Oh, dear Amelia, hissed the eyes.
“I want to know where I am,” I said. “Is this a nightmare?”
The eyes laughed, their edges upturning as their fire grew brighter. Oh, no, dear. Not a nightmare. You should be so lucky.
My right hand instinctively shot out to the cuff on my other wrist, rubbing it absentmindedly as if it were a rabbit's foot. “Am I dead?”
Do you want to be? A wide, yellowed grimace filled in the darkness beneath those eyes, eyes that bore into me.
“No. I—I don’t know,” I whispered, shaking my head. “How did I get here? What’s going on? What are you?”
So many questions. You’d think it wouldn’t be this easy. They were wrong to worry about you so much. You’re no threat.
“A threat?” I asked. Why would I be a threat to anyone?
Amelia! the voice from earlier called again. Amelia, dammit, answer me!
“Where are you?” I called out even though those eyes were watching. It was like the voice and I were on two separate currents of time, neither one directly reaching the other.
Yes, answer him, the eyes hissed at me, its body taking shape as features filled in around the burning eyes and mouth. Soon there were fangs and ears, curved vertebrae, and a long tail with barbs at the tip.
The demon crouched down, the darkness filling in around it as variegated lines of gold and orange spread like wildfire across its body. The creature shifted in my direction, embers crackling, and I quickly realized that fireballs weren’t going to help me against a demon made of the stuff. It was the worst possible ability I could have been granted, and I was completely screwed.
“Oh, dear Amelia,” it called from behind my ear, sending shivers down my spine as I spun around in the darkness.
“Enough of this!” I screamed, too pissed and too scared to do anything but clutch onto my dagger that I suddenly remembered was still at my waist. Whoever they were, they were messing with me.
“But I thought we were having so much fun,” it crooned in my ear, and my blood ran cold as I lashed out in its direction.
“Where’s Adam? Where’s Matt?” I yelled at nothing. The eyes were gone and with it, the rest of the creature.
A sudden sharpness overcame my wrists, and I grasped onto them in hopes of ceasing the pain if only for a moment so that I could focus on the foe before me. It became harder for my hands to close, almost as if they were frozen stiff. Like ice. Like silver. Silver?! I only clutched at them harder.
“What have you done?” I breathed.
“Nothing you can’t handle,” the voice cooed from my opposite side this time. “I need you contained and able.”
“What does that mean?” I yelled, my arms jutting out angrily as I struggled to maintain the grasp on my wrists. Between the darkness and the silver, I couldn't tell if my wrists had been cut badly or if it was just the silver once again skewing my senses. I just had to tourniquet my arms and hope that the hold the silver had over me wouldn’t disable me for long. If Camael was lying, if I really could be killed like any other human being, then I was screwed.
The voice chuckled, flitting aloud just out of sight, each time causing me to turn in its direction. It was a childish game, but I was losing.
“Where is Matt?” I demanded. “What have you done with him?”
Matt?
“You know who I'm talking about.” I didn’t have time for games. “The man I came here with.”
“That Grigorian half-wit?” the monster mused aloud. “He’s still alive if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Give him back,” I hissed. I was fighting the darkness and losing. “He doesn’t belong to you.”
A cackling erupted in the black surrounding me. I was so glad I could amuse the monsters that wanted me dead. He doesn’t belong to you either. He’s safe for the time being. Now, there are far more important things to discuss.
“Like what?” I hissed again before I could stop myself. He was right.
The eyes burned in my direction once again, all of their golden sparks centered on my face. Why have you come here?
“I came for Adam,” I admitted to the demon, monster, whatever it was. “But who are you to demand an answer?”
“Who am I?” the voice chortled. “Oh, now that truly is amusing. I am the person that decides whether you go home or not, so I suggest you stop with that mouth of yours and start showing a little bit of respect.”
My knees slammed into the invisible ground beneath my feet, sending rivets of pain through my kneecaps. It was good to know that wherever we were still had rules. Still had gravity. We weren’t drifting aimlessly in the void as it seemed. I could still win.
“What do you want?” I posed the question.
“What do I want?” it asked, suddenly appearing in front of me as a man with long blond hair. He seemed oddly familiar as more light poured into the room. “Simple. I want your and Camael’s heads on a plate, and if Adam doesn’t do it himself, sooner or later, I’m going to have to do it myself.”
I had known this was coming, but to hear it said aloud seemed crude, vulgar even. “What?”
“I want you dead, Miss Amelia, or should I say Eve,” he said, his grin wide and threatening. “Once and for all. I want you erased from this planet’s memory altogether.”
I couldn’t stand back up; I was pinned in place, unable to move. “I don’t even know what I’ve done to make you hate me so!”
The grin again. “And that’s what makes it all so worthwhile; all the trouble, all the pain you’ve caused, and you haven’t the slightest clue. What was Adam thinking by waking you? Did he think there wouldn’t be consequences?”
“Where is he?”
The blond man walked languidly toward me, like a cheetah stalking its prey, his eyes deadlocked on me the entire time. “Adam?”
“Yes,” I managed to rasp as I glanced down at my watch. Its face said seven-thirty in the morning by human standards. I had lost three hours, Matt was now missing, and this bastard knew exactly where he was.
I had to get out of here. I had to stop this.
Each time I tried to lift myself, my muscles felt like they were tearing. Soon, I would be left with no choice other than to push through it and rip them anyway. Injured I might be, but at least I wouldn’t be a sitting duck.
“Oh, by now, I’m sure he and that little traitor of yours are reacquainting themselves rather nicely.”
“You son of a bitch!” I cursed and tried once more, failing yet again. I wanted to ask him a thousand things, things that only he would have the answer to, but I knew he would never oblige me. He was maleficent, scornful, and driven in his vendetta. “What gives you the right?”
“What gives me the right? Oh, you foolish girl. So naive it hurts.” He was on me in a flash, his hand wrapped around my throat as he held me inches off the ground. “I do not answer to you, nor will I ever. I co
uld kill you in a heartbeat if I wanted. So weak, so lost, like a fledgling lamb astray from its shepherd.”
“Kill me, you heartless sack,” I rasped.
He snorted. “I could, but why would I when I can make Adam do it himself while Camael watches?”
“You bastard—”
“Oh yes, dear Eve,” he cooed at me, a smug expression plastered all over his obnoxious face as he released me. “You thought I wouldn’t see through your little facade? That fool Camael thought he could keep you away from me when all he did was drive you straight into my arms.”
“Please,” I whispered, my eyes deadlocked on the floor. “I’m begging you.”
“You cannot stop that which cannot be stopped. Nor move what cannot be moved.”
“Please,” I asked once more. It couldn't hurt. “How about an arrangement?”
He snorted again. So glad I could amuse the leader of the Seraphim. “No.”
“There has to be something else you want,” I pleaded as he began to pace around me in absentminded circles. I followed him with my eyes as he continued to inch around me. I couldn’t tell if he knew what he was doing or not, but he was so engrossed that I wondered if it even mattered.
And then I realized that it did.
The monstrosity smiled at me once more, wide and threatening like he knew what I was planning. But he couldn’t have.
I hadn’t thought about it once. I knew better than to even try. And if I couldn’t shield against his telepathy, then the best I could do was empty my mind. No thoughts, no images. Just the blank, rushing sea, ebbing and flowing against the shore.
“You truly are a fool,” he said, rushing upon me one final time as pain flooded every inch of my being.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My breath lurched in my throat as my body froze in place. I was suddenly drowning without water.
Something inside me told me to look down. A mistake certainly, because I found his hand wedged into my solar plexus up to his wrists. Before I could collapse to the ground, he ripped his blood-covered hand back out of my chest, causing me to stumble as my breath grew shallow.
“What did you do?” I rasped, each word taking all of the energy I had. Whatever he had done, I was still alive. My pulse still beat, though weakly.
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