by Cynthia Hand
“I’m fine. We agreed not to pull our punches, and I left you an opening, so you should go for it.” I rotate my arm in its socket, wince, then roll my head from side to side, stretching. “Can we take a break for a minute? I could use a breather.”
Dad frowns. “We don’t have time for that. You must practice.”
This is our fifth training session together—me, Dad, and Christian—and every time Dad seems more tense, like we’re not making enough progress. He’s been working us like crazy all week, but winter break is almost over, and we won’t have as much free time to train once we go back to school. We should have moved on from brooms and mops by now. We should be wielding the real deal.
“I thought there’s no such thing as time for you.” I’m trying not to whine. “Come on. I need hot chocolate. My feet are freezing.”
Dad sighs, then strides across the yard to stand between Christian and me. He puts a hand on the back of my neck right under the hairline, then does the same to Christian. I don’t have time to ask what he’s doing before I feel a jolt in my stomach and the world dissolves into a bright white light, and when it fades we’re standing on a beach. It looks like the set of a deserted-island movie, all perfect white sand and blue water, nobody around but a few curious seagulls.
“Holy crap, Dad,” I gasp. “Try warning us next time.”
“Now,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Again.”
We take off our boots and socks, strip off our jackets, and toss them down on the sand. Dad stands on the water’s edge a ways off and crosses his arms to watch us. I lift my broom and approach Christian, who drops into a defensive posture. Sand squishes between my toes.
“So,” Christian says, like we’re having a laid-back conversation instead of trying to beat each other to a pulp. “How’s Angela?”
“She’s all right. She’s speaking to me again, at least.” I thrust. He parries. “I had dinner at her house a couple nights ago, and we talked some. At least she gave me the version of the story she wants everyone to believe.” He swings; I block. “She’s going to be in my lit class this quarter—did I tell you? We’re reading Dante. That should be a barrel of laughs.”
“I saw her in the square yesterday, eating a double-decker ice cream cone in twenty-degree weather,” Christian says. “She gave me guff just like her normal old self. Only … bigger.”
“Oh, come on, she’s not that big. You can hardly tell.”
“What is she now, like six months along?”
I see an opening and take a whack at his leg, but he moves too fast. I stumble past him and whip around barely in time to deflect a blow meant for my hip. I push him away.
“That depends on which story you believe.” I wipe at a strand of hair that’s sticking to my face. “If Pierce is the father, that would make her like four months, tops. But she told me that she’s due in March, which would make her six. The math doesn’t add up. Six months means she got pregnant in Italy. So the baby has to be Phen’s.”
“But she won’t admit that Phen’s the father, not even to you?” Christian asks.
“No way—she says it’s Pierce. She even told Pierce that he’s the father, which means that he is now completely freaked out. He’s offered to help, but Angela won’t let him do anything for her. He’s a decent guy. Too bad he’s not the father.”
Christian frowns. “So Angela’s going to stick it out through winter quarter?”
I brush his ribs with the broom, and he jumps back. “Yep. But then she’s going on a leave of absence, or something,” I tell him. “Indefinitely.”
“But what about her purpose? That takes place at Stanford, doesn’t it?”
“She doesn’t want to talk about her purpose. It’s like she’s stopped believing in it, or she’s decided not to care, or she’s too busy focusing on this baby thing right now.” I stumble, and Christian gets a solid hit to my thigh. “Ow! Hey, not so freaking hard!”
He pauses, lowers his broom. “But I thought we agreed—”
I charge him, taking advantage of his lowered weapon. “Back, back, you fiend!” I scream, and he laughs as I disarm him, his broom flying into the water. He sinks to his knees, the end of my broom at his throat. He grins, lifts his hands in the air.
It’s good to see him smiling. It’s been a rough couple weeks for him, being home in his empty house, constantly reminded of Walter and the stuff they used to do together.
“Surrender,” I intone gravely.
“Death first,” he yells, then barrels into me, catching me around the middle and dragging me to the sand.
“No, stop,” I scream, struggling as he throws a leg over mine. “No tickling! There’s no tickling in sword training. Christian!” I laugh helplessly.
“That’s enough,” Dad says suddenly.
Christian and I pause to look at him. I think we both forgot he was there. He is not amused, either. Christian gets off me and pulls me to my feet, brushing sand off his shirt. Dad hands him back his broom.
“Again,” he says.
“Sheesh, you’re such a drill sergeant,” I snicker. “Lighten up.”
Dad’s eyes spark. “This is not gym class,” he says.
“I never was too fond of gym,” I joke.
Which is, of course, the wrong thing to say. “This is life and death, Clara. I expected better from you. I expected you to take it seriously.”
I stare at the sand. I’ve been trying hard not to obsess about the image of myself covered in blood, dull-eyed, that occasionally flashes through Christian’s mind along with a wave of anxiety.
“She deals with tension by making jokes,” Christian says quietly. “She gets that it’s serious.”
The fire leaves Dad’s eyes. He lets out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he says, which shocks the crap out of me. “Let’s take a break.”
We sit in a line on the shore, watching the waves. I look over at Christian and smile, send him a mental hug to assure him I’m okay, because at the moment he’s considering giving the archangel Michael a piece of his mind.
“In some ways,” Dad says to Christian, “I am just her father.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Christian says after a minute. “All my life, since my uncle first told me about Black Wings, he told me to run. He told me it wouldn’t do me any good to try to fight them—they’re too powerful, too fast, too strong. You can’t kill them. Run, he always said.”
“Mom said that, too,” I chime in.
“It’s true,” Dad says. “In a one-on-one battle with an angel, you won’t prevail. It’s not only about the power and the speed and the strength. It’s experience. We’ve been grappling with one another a long, long time.” He seems sad at the idea. “And you’ve only just begun to fight.”
“So what’s the point?” Christian asks. “If we can’t fight a Black Wing and succeed, why did my uncle try to teach me? Why are you teaching us to use the glory sword?” He shakes his head. “I know I see myself wielding one in the vision. But why? Why, if I can’t win?”
“Black Wings are unlikely to harm you directly,” Dad says. “They’re still angels, after all, and to hurt someone on the side of good goes against our design. It would cause even a Black Wing a great deal of pain. That’s why they prefer to use minions to inflict any physical damage.”
“Minions?” I repeat.
“Angel-bloods,” he says. “Black Wings do their evil work through the Nephilim. And the Triplare are the most powerful of the Nephilim.”
“So in the vision we’re fighting other angel-bloods,” Christian concludes.
Dad nods.
I relate what Samjeeza said to me in the cemetery about Asael.
“Yes,” Dad says. “Asael is very dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous and wholly evil of the Black Wings, other than Satan himself. Without pity. Without hesitation. He takes what he wants, and if he sees you, if he knows what you are, he will take you. He has killed or enslaved many, if not most, of the Triplare.”
“Are there a lot of Triplare?” I ask tremulously.
“No,” Dad says. “There are very few of you. In fact there are never more than seven Triplare walking the earth at the same time. And at the moment Asael is in possession of at least three.”
“Seven,” Christian says, almost to himself. “So there’s you, me, and Jeffrey … that only leaves one more.”
Seven Triplare. Seven.
I meet Christian’s eyes. We have the same thought at the same moment.
The seventh is ours.
“Angela’s baby,” I realize. “Because Phen is the father.”
Dad scowls. “Phen.” He says the name like it’s a swear word. “Disgusting, cowardly creatures, the ambivalent. Worse than the fallen, in many ways.” His eyes are so fierce it’s a tad scary. “They have no conviction at all.”
“I’ll tell her on the drive back to California,” I say to Christian when we’re back at my house in Jackson, sitting on the couch in the living room in front of a roaring fire, drinking raspberry tea, which is making me miss my mother. “The sooner she knows, the better.”
He stares into the flames. “Okay. You want to meet on Tuesday night at the CoHo, since we’re going to miss Saturday?”
“Of course.” I bite my lip. “And I thought, maybe, if you’re up to it, you and I could start jogging in the mornings. I know we’re supposed to be training for the glory sword, but it could be good to brush up on our running, just in case.”
“Just in case,” he echoes. “Yeah, I’d like that. Every morning?”
“Yeah. Let’s say six thirty.” I shudder at the thought of getting up so early, but it’s for a good cause. Like, possibly extending my life expectancy.
“All right,” he says with a smile. “Just remember that it was your idea.”
“I will. So tell me what your schedule this quarter’s like.”
“Nothing too exciting. My craziest class is going to be structural engineering.”
I cock my head at him. “Structural engineering? That sounds serious.” I narrow my eyes at him suspiciously. “Are you picking a major?”
He does his laugh/exhale thing. “I’m thinking about architecture.”
“You want to be an architect? When did this happen?”
“I like building things. I was killer with Lincoln Logs as a kid.” He shrugs. “It makes a kind of sense, so I thought I’d go for it, try it out, tackle all the math and physics and drawing and see if at the end of all that I still like the idea.”
He’s not looking directly at me, but I can tell he’s watching to see how I’ll react. Whether I’ll think it’s silly, to be going toward something so heavy as architecture, whether I’ll laugh picturing him in a suit and a hard hat with a roll of blueprints under his arm.
I think it’s hot. I jostle my shoulder into his. “That’s amazing. It sounds … perfect.”
“What about you?” he asks. “Still going strong on premed?”
“Yep. I’m taking a biochemistry class called Genomics and Medicine, which I’m pretty sure is going to blow my mind.”
“What else?” he asks. “No more happiness?”
I sigh. “No more happiness. Just the normal prereqs and premed and, uh, some PE class.”
He catches my attempt to slide that by him. “Clara, what PE class?” He fishes it out of my mind. “You’re taking fencing? That’s cheating.”
“Hey, nobody ever said that we can’t train on our own time.”
He sits back, looks at me like I’m more devious than he thought. “I’m going to sign up for that class, too. When is it?”
“Monday and Wednesday, one to two p.m.”
He nods like it’s all settled, then. “So we’ll run in the mornings, and spar in the afternoons.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t make plans for next weekend,” he adds.
I look up at him. “Why not?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. He pins me with a gaze that would turn any red-blooded girl’s legs to jelly. “I am taking you out. On a date. Before things get crazy.”
My heart beats faster. “Dinner and a movie,” I remember.
“Friday night,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Seven,” I repeat with a stupid quiver in my voice. “Friday.”
He goes to the door and starts putting on his coat.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I have to prepare,” he says.
“For Friday?”
“For everything,” he replies. “I’ll see you at the Farm.”
“You’re speeding,” Angela says.
I don’t have to check the speedometer to know she’s right. I’m nervous about how she’s going to take the whole “maybe the seventh is your baby” thing. We’ve driven all day, about to find a hotel for the night, and still I haven’t worked up the nerve to broach the subject.
“I didn’t know you had a speeding problem,” she remarks. “You’re usually a decent driver, when you’re not crashing into angels, that is. You’re a rule follower.”
Which of course she makes sound like an insult. “Gee, thanks.”
She returns to the parenting magazine she’s reading. She’s been researching this baby thing with the same kind of passion she usually reserves for angel stuff. What she keeps stashed under her pillow lately is a dog-eared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. And a three-hundred-year-old tome that has a passage about a woman giving birth to a Nephilim. Just a little light reading.
“So, how was your break?” she asks, and smiles suggestively. “Did you get to blow off some steam with Christian?”
I ignore her obvious innuendo. “We spent some time at the beach.”
She gazes at the window wistfully, where outside the sky has darkened to a deep, beguiling blue; her hands rest on the swell of her stomach. I wonder when the last time was, when she did anything but worry.
“Ange, we need to talk.”
“We could talk about why you’re not with Christian,” she suggests.
“How about we not talk about that, but say we did?”
“What’s the holdup, C?” she continues like she didn’t hear me. “He’s hot, he’s hot for you, he’s available, and wait, hold on …” Her golden eyes widen theatrically. “Aren’t you available now?”
I hate that I’m blushing.
“And let’s not forget that he’s your destiny. Your purpose or whatever. Your guy. So make out with him already. Just be, with him. In a horizontal sort of way, like you said.”
“Thank you, Angela,” I say wryly. “This is so illuminating.”
“Sorry,” she says, although she’s clearly not in the least bit sorry. “I get annoyed watching the two of you torture yourselves.”
Here I started out determined to talk about her, and we’re talking about me. I let her change the subject for the moment, but I’m determined to get back around to this whole baby situation.
“We’re not—” I sigh. “It’s complicated. We don’t want to be together because somebody told us that we have to be.”
“And by ‘somebody’ you mean God, right?”
Of course it sounds insanely arrogant of me, insisting on a relationship on my own terms, when she puts it like that.
“It’s not so complicated,” she says. “You want to be together all on your own. It’s obvious, especially for him. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, like he’d kiss the ground you walk on if he thought it would win you over.”
“I know,” I admit softly. “But—”
“But you’re still hung up on the cowboy.”
I check my mirrors. “I don’t want to bounce out of one relationship and right into another. Christian and I have time to become whatever it is that we’re meant—that we decide to be.”
“You don’t want him to be your rebound,” she says thoughtfully. “How very adult of you.”
“Thanks. I’m trying, here.” I change lanes, then sp
eed up to pass a motor home that’s moseying along the freeway.
“But maybe you don’t have time,” she says, the first time she’s acknowledged what I told her about my vision. “And it’s been months since you ended it with Tucker, hasn’t it?” she points out.
Okay, that’s it. Enough discussion about me. “So how come you get to mandate that we don’t talk about your love life and then jump straight into talking about mine? That hardly seems fair,” I say.
Her whole body tenses. “I don’t have anything to say about Pierce. He’s a sweet guy.”
“I’m sure he is. But you’re not in love with him. And he’s not the father of your baby, right?”
She scoffs. “Come on, C. We’ve been over this.”
“I get why you’re saying that he is,” I tell her. “I understand, really, I do. I don’t know if it’s the best thing to do to Pierce, but I get it. You’re protecting your baby. The way my mom tried to protect Jeffrey and me by letting us think my dad was of the regular deadbeat variety.”
She looks into her lap. She’s determined not to admit it. Not to anybody. She made a promise to herself, a commitment to the idea of Pierce as the baby daddy, and she’s not going to break that for anybody. Not even for me. It’s safer that way.
“Okay, fine, be that way,” I say.
I’ll have to let her figure it out herself. But there’s nothing wrong with me helping.
I turn on the radio, and we listen without talking for a while, both of us deep in thought. I come up with a new approach. “Hey, you remember how I kept seeing that bird around campus, and it turned out to be Samjeeza?”
“Yes,” she says lightly, relieved because she thinks I’m changing the subject. “What happened with him, anyway? Is he still stalking you?”
“I threw a rock at him a few weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“You threw a rock at a Black Wing?” she says, impressed. “Whoa, C.”
“I was mad. It was probably a mistake. He knows I’m a Triplare, and maybe I pissed him off enough that he’ll decide to tell Asael about me.”
Angela freezes. “Asael. Who’s that?”
“The big bad Watcher, apparently. He collects the Triplare. Apparently there are only seven of us at any given time, and he wants to own the entire boxed set,” I rattle off like it’s common knowledge.