FALL FROM PARADISE

by Blair, M. Dylan

  Is this what the Damned were condemned to? My senses were dulled but at the same time flaring with life, like an irregular cycle that ebbed and flowed. “Enoch?” I rasped, my sudden awareness of his name forcing his gaze on me.

  He was silent for a minute, his jaw steeling before he straightened his shoulders. “I’ve given you and your lover a little present. Now go before I change my mind.”

  “Wha—” I blinked, my eyes struggling to focus on the newly white room with the blond man in it.

  Unlike teleporting, this was something else altogether. I didn’t have to be immortal or human to tell the difference. This was slow and painful.

  This was Death.

  “And so, child, into the eye of the storm you go.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Fatigue dragged me down like shackles and threatened to cripple me before I could figure out whether I was dead or not. It was a strange notion, wondering if you were lucky enough to be dead. Sad, but true.

  The relief of being dead outweighed the reality of being alive. I didn’t know if I should move or just lay there. Perhaps if I lay there long enough, everything would disappear. All of this would, in fact, be a dream, one that I could fully escape from, but I knew better.

  Time and time again, I had woken up in different places, different memories, and yet it was never real. The only truth was now. By visiting Enoch, I had forsaken a piece of myself.

  It wasn’t my heart because it was still beating. It wasn’t my life because I was still alive.

  It was something else.

  It was my soul.

  I was a hollow shell, barely able to move and even less able to stand.

  Wherever I was, trees and bramble surrounded me in every direction; the air, cool and wet on my skin as I crawled to my feet. The humidity was so thick that it felt like I had ended up in the jungle, but I had started in Washington, tens of thousands of miles away from any tropical hells.

  But my time in Gehenna and Araboth had taught me not to trust my senses any more than any other piece of information. It was just that: information. Neurons firing to be processed by my brain. I didn’t know what was real anymore and what was illusion. In a place where everything could be fake and nothing real, it made it hard not to be on guard all the time. I dragged myself along as best I could, my boots catching in the rocks and pebbles beneath me.

  Fog clung to nearly everything in sight as I scoured the environs for any sign of life other than me. Even with the dull lighting steadily decreasing, I could still make out the jungle behind me and a cliff in front of me.

  How and why I had teleported here, I did not know. More importantly, was it my doing, or was it Enoch’s? And if it was him, what purpose did it serve? Yet again, it seemed that I was nothing more than a pawn to be played.

  “Amelia?” a familiar voice called.

  I spun around to find Mammon drenched in blood, his black wife-beater shredded beneath his worn leather jacket.

  “Mammon!” I gasped, not sure whether to be relieved or not. “What are you doing here?”

  An attestation to my ignorance, he drove the sword he was carrying into the chest of a White Wing gasping for breath. The shock rattled my lungs, as it was only a few feet away from me yet I hadn’t noticed the dying angel.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he said, yanking the sword out of the corpse’s chest.

  “Silver?” I nodded to the now-deceased immortal.

  “A little more than that,” he said, licking his lips.

  I knew what that meant. They had resorted to using liquid silver infused into the blade. But instead of coating the blade with the substance, an entire vein ran the length of each weapon, its poison drawing to the surface at the point of contact with flesh. It was like an irreversible injection of death, immortal-style.

  “Is Camael with you?”

  Without warning, another White Wing charged in his direction from seemingly out of nowhere, and before the fool could know what was coming, Hell’s weapons master had already dispelled of him with a blade across the throat.

  “He’s around here somewhere, Amelia. I’ll tell him you’re looking for him should I see him. You armed?” he asked, already rifling over my person to check for weapons and injuries.

  Much to both our dismay and relief, there was none of either variety.

  “Here.” He reached over his shoulder and pulled down a spare scabbard and belt he had been carrying.

  “Mammon, it’s not safe here anymore,” I told him, taking the short sword he handed me from the arsenal at his waist. Turns out, it was the same blade I had been training with the entire six months in Hell. “How’d you know?”

  “Call it a hunch.” He shrugged and wiped his brow with his forearm.

  “You’re so good to me.” I laughed breathlessly.

  In a war, people died, but this was different. Everyone knew this was going to be a massacre. At first I had assumed that Gehenna and Sheol would be the victors, but that wasn’t the reason I had taken Camael’s hand that day. In fact, knowing that I had sided with demons only made it worse.

  All for Adam’s sake.

  Even now, I wondered if it was the right thing to do, in the most warped sense of the word. I was becoming exactly like the White Wings, killing just because their beliefs differed from mine. Righteousness without justice. Living above the law of the universe. If there even was such a thing.

  “Amelia?” Mammon called, waking me from my reverie.

  “Yeah?” I looked over at him.

  “No place is safe,” he said, “not anymore.”

  “What are we going to do?” The sword in my hand felt foreign, unfamiliar. Like it had belonged to someone else in a different lifetime, as if the flow of that energy overpowered my own.

  He wiped his blade on the side of his shirt, freeing it of blood and grime before shoving it back into the scabbard at his waist. “What do you mean?” he asked, starting toward the jungle behind me.

  I latched onto his arm. “I mean, what are we going to do?”

  “You went to visit Enoch,” he said sourly. “You tell me.”

  “You guys knew?” I frowned. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or not. Didn’t they know that I was on their side? On everyone’s side?

  “What do you think?” a knee-bending, masculine voice said from behind me.

  Camael stood there, his clothes tattered, his shoulder and arm braces barely hanging on by their ties as he dropped his chest plate to the ground. The sable-black wings I had come to know so well now flexed behind his back, harrowing and threatening behind Hell’s new leader. I nearly ran to him, relieved to see him. I would have been even more relieved if I was able to touch him, but I would have no such luck.

  Even before I could come within a hair’s breadth of him, his hands staved me off. “You went to visit Enoch without my permission. I didn’t send you home so that you could run into danger at the first chance you got.”

  Not the reaction I was going for. “Who said it was your job to protect me? Who said I need your permission for anything?” I was pissed, offended that he doubted my ability to protect him. I had traveled into Araboth and faced his arch-nemesis for his well-being, and what did I get? An argument?

  He rubbed the sweat from his brow and sighed. “Why are you so insistent on disobeying me?”

  I was furious, eyes wide. “I am not yours to command, Camael!”

  He said nothing for a moment but merely stared at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me or not. Knowing his unstable temperament, it could go either way.

  I eyed him curiously. “Cam—?”

  “You need to leave while you still can,” he said simply, grabbing my arm and pulling me back toward the jungle. “Reinforcements will be here any second. It’s not safe.”

  “I know that,” I snapped, yanking my arm from his grasp. “What do you think Mammon and I were just talking about?”

  “I don’t care what you and Mammon were talking about, A
melia,” he said simply. “It’s my job to keep you safe, and I fully intend to do so.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that,” I didn’t care if I was being petulant; I was too pissed. Who did he think he was to toss me aside when I had risked everything for his sake? I doubted I would ever matter to him.

  “What’s the deal, Camael?” I asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  There was that jaw again. “I heard you,” he whispered so quietly that I had to second-guess whether I had actually heard it or not.

  “Heard me?” I looked around the cliff. If he was anywhere in the vicinity, he probably would have heard me.

  “In Araboth.”

  “Oh,” I admitted. “So that was you.”

  He nodded grimly. “Yes, Amelia, it was. What you did was foolish and reckless. You could have died. He could have killed you.” He reached out to me suddenly, grabbing my arms and steering me in front of him.

  “Could have but didn’t.” I stared down at the sword and scabbard in my hands. I doubted I’d have to use it, but I wanted to be prepared just in case. “Do you realize, Camael, just what exactly is riding on this?”

  “More than you could possibly imagine,” he said. “Enoch is not your friend. He is not giving you a boon. Whatever he does comes with a price, and it’s not one you are prepared to pay.”

  I clutched my chest. He still didn’t know. How could he be so blind? “How do you know what I am and am not prepared to pay?”

  He choked back a growl. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”

  “Why do you?” I shouted.

  He frowned at me, sighing as he eyed me over. “Because I care about you. I just wish you would understand how much.” His eyes suddenly shot into the distance, his wings drawing back like a snake rearing to strike. He nodded to Mammon who acknowledged him and took off in the direction of the sound with his weapons drawn.

  “What is it?” I asked as I was suddenly being ushered in the opposite direction.

  “Leave, now,” Camael commanded, not even looking at me as he did.

  Try as I might to see what he was looking at, I did not have the vision that the Seraphim did.

  “Cam—”

  “I said, leave!”

  “No, goddammit!” I yelled.

  His breath hitched in his throat as the sound of a scuffle broke out somewhere beyond the wood line.

  “You need to stop treating me like a fucking child or your subordinate and let me help.”

  “Amelia, please,” he begged.

  I crossed my arms and stood there as the first crack of thunder echoed overhead. I had drawn a line in the sand. Either he was going to respect my abilities, or I would go my own way. I wasn’t about to risk everything without something in return.

  Anything.

  And he knew it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I don't know what made me turn around, something in the air, the stars maybe.

  It didn’t matter what it was because I turned before I could even help myself.

  A regret I’d be stuck with forever. All of that running, all of that hiding was for nothing.

  Adam appeared less than thirty yards away, his eyes nearly black, almost as if they were a part of the darkness itself.

  I wasn’t a fool; this time I knew he was real.

  Adam was here and had come for blood.

  Adam had come for me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  And then suddenly, we were all just standing there, the three of us frozen beneath a rain-filled sky as dark as our hearts. Camael’s arm was wrapped around my shoulder, a protective gesture to keep me safe against such elements, and, more importantly, Adam. The sinking feeling in my stomach only increased when I realized that Mammon had not returned.

  Adam stood across from us, his wings unveiled, wide and strong. Instead of the black I had been so used to seeing, Adam’s wings were now exactly like a bird’s. Speckled brown and white, golds and tans, all furrowed into the plume of feathers cresting his shoulders. Enoch had taken him back into the fold.

  The downpour drenched his shirtless body. “Give her back, Camael. She belongs with me.”

  An ephemeral shape appeared in the void above Adam’s hand, shifting in form until it became a blade. Unlike Lamafuere, this blade glistened of sapphire and diamond in the dismal light. Adam clenched the ethereal blade.

  My whole body seized beneath Camael’s protection.

  “She belongs to no one,” the sable winged angel said, slipping past me, his arm still outstretched. “Not to you. Not to me. It’s obvious that you will never understand that. Not in another six thousand years.”

  “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done,” Adam growled, so quiet against the increasing winds that I had to strain to hear him.

  “And that’s where you’d be wrong.” Camael suddenly summoned Lamafuere, its magic not lessened by the pouring rain. “Does she know? Does she even know, Adam?”

  “Know what?” I took a step back as the two eyed each other suspiciously. I had not the time nor the energy to deal with any more surprises. I just wanted this all to be over. “What don’t I know?”

  Silence overcame us for a moment, consuming everything save for the slight hiss Lamafuere made each time a drop of rain touched its surface.

  “Adam?” I asked again.

  “Camael, you unholy bastard,” he seethed, not even bothering to acknowledge me. His wings flapped in ire, the subtle tans and browns of his plumes blending in to the muted environs. “You will pay for what you’ve done!”

  Camael looked back at me briefly, his features crunched as he watched me. “I’m sorry. I truly am.” His brow furrowed even farther, the pain on his face obviously real.

  “Someone, please just tell me what’s going on.” I clutched onto my shoulders, embracing myself when no one else would. I was so confused that I was at the point of tears.

  Camael frowned more. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”

  I got in his face, my hair whipping around me as the winds picked up. “Come to what, Cam?”

  He blinked slowly, his face blank. I was right. Each time I called him by that name, he was suddenly half-cocked and unguarded. Almost like a trigger, he was suddenly a different person, no longer cocksure and confident. Human.

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He simply stared at me, and I could see the muscles in his neck tensing, almost as if he was using every bit of his strength to keep from moving. “I—”

  Suddenly I found myself yanked around, facing an Adam whose pale-green eyes now bordered closer to viridian, so dark it ached in my bones. Even in the open space between us, I could feel the tension in the air, something that only increased as he pulled me roughly against him. And before I could do anything, Adam’s mouth was pressed to mine, his hands clutching either side of my face. I froze for a second, my body unsure of what was happening. But I trusted in its lack of acceptance and shoved him off me, my own hands coming up to guard me as I stepped back toward Camael.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Adam?” I snapped, backing up so that I stood equidistant from them both and ready to fight. Brave or stupid, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. “Tell me now, or so help me God, I will make you regret it.”

  A whimper hitched in his throat. Apparently, I was doing well to hurt both their feelings, a new record for me.

  “Mia, listen to yourself,” he pleaded. “Don’t you see what he’s done? He’s poisoned you, poisoned your mind!”

  “He’s done nothing that I didn’t do myself,” I nearly hissed at him. “So answer my question, and then I’ll decide where I stay and where I go!”

  Camael simply watched, and although Lamafuere was still at his side, it was surprisingly quiet. It was a sword of fire, of will and emotion. It connected to its wielder through their energies and acted accordingly. I had no idea how many others knew this information aside from Michael, Camael, and myself. I expected Michael to come down after his blade
at any moment, but he hadn't. Not yet.

  Camael sighed, his back rigid as stone. Seeing him there standing next to Adam, I had never realized the difference in their strengths. Unlike Adam and his sturdy frame, Camael was leaner but just as muscular. Everything about Camael screamed speed. His body was toned and lean; his frame, tall but agile. His black wings unfurled, supple and deadly. My stomach twisted for a moment, and I knew that if it came down to it, Camael would win. He was too fast, too skilled. Adam could never keep up with him. I couldn’t rightly say that I wanted Adam to die, but it would happen if someone didn’t deter this little tête-à-tête.

  “He lied to you, Amelia,” Camael said plainly.

  “Don’t listen to him, Mia,” Adam commanded. “You know me better than that. I would never be dishonest with you.”

  “Of course he would.”

  It was like a goddamn Ping-Pong match.

  “He’s only using you to further this war of his,” Adam said as he took a step closer to where I stood bowed up and ready to take on whomever touched me next. “I would never do such a thing. Why would you think that I would? War never solved anything.”

  “Enough of this!”

  A loud hiss roared out behind me, Lamafuere coming to life against the backdrop of the thunderstorm. Camael stalked in front of me one last time, except now, he didn’t try and push me out of the way but simply stood inches from my face, his disheveled bangs glued to his angled jawline.

  “You never really loved him. He tricked you, deceived you. Under orders of the Seraphim,” he told me, his gray eyes mercurial, ebbing and flowing as his voice wavered. “You loved me. You loved me, and he couldn’t take it.”

  “Lies! His words are poison, Mia!” Adam screamed, his voice bordering on madness. “Please God, Mia, don’t believe him! He’s a snake in your ear. The Bringer of Lies. The Deceiver of Mankind. You cannot believe a thing he says. Please, God! Mia, listen!”