by S. L. Naeole
A sudden jerk and a sharp pulling of the car to the left happened moments before my body slammed to the right, crashing into the door.
“Hold on, Grace,” Stacy shrieked, the jerky push pull movement of the car following what I could only assume followed her turning of the wheel, the frantic sound of the engine revving, speed a physical thing that I felt in my sinking into the seat.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my hand desperate in its search of something to hold on to even as my eyes struggled against the gray haze that still blocked my sight.
“We’re being chased—God!” The screeching of tires, and my body being thrown forward and then back, Stacy’s firm hand pressing down on my chest, followed her outcry.
“I’m beginning to really hate these angels,” I heard her mutter before I heard the tires fire up against the asphalt, the smell of rubber turning to carbon filling up the interior and stirring a wave of nausea within me. We were flung forward by the release of the brake, and Stacy’s whoops and hollers of glee as we sped along the road seemed to echo around us, past us.
I could see blues. Deep, midnight blues as slowly, fraction by minute fraction, spots of gray disappeared. In my head, I could hear wicked laughter. It seemed to exist behind me, and then beside me, and finally above me.
“Stacy, look out!” I shouted, my hand reaching out and grabbing her, pulling her even as the sound of tearing, unbelievable shredding of metal and fabric drowned out my warning.
The car swerved once more, and the gritty, rough surface of something that wasn’t the road rumbled beneath us as we were tossed by the driverless steering. I didn’t need to see to know that the danger had missed Stacy by inches but had not given up.
“I will not be scared away by you,” I heard her growl before she pulled away from me and the car found itself back on the road, and in a spin that sent me crashing into the door once more. “I’m not afraid of some goddamn bird,” Stacy hissed.
“Hold on, Grace,” she ordered, the sound of her foot slamming down onto the gas following her command. I could do nothing but, and as pieces of the picture before me began to form, I was once again thrown forward at the scream of tires grinding to a halt, my body this time prevented from being launched completely out of my seat by the tug-snap of the seatbelt across my chest.
“Hah!” I heard Stacy cheer triumphantly. “Three years of hospital video game duck hunting, you feathered freak!”
There was fire in Stacy’s voice, frustration that she directed onto whoever it was she sneered at, her voice so undeniably angry that I could picture the twist in her mouth, and the slant of her brows as she glared at our attacker.
“Come on! Why are you just standing there? Never thought one of my kind would fight back, did you? I’m not afraid of you—I’ve seen the worst of your kind and I’ve lived to tell about it so come on!” She was slamming her hand on the steering wheel, the hollow sound of the each blow pinging in my head. How strange this sounded.
A ticking, clicking, growling sound, like the bubbly effervescent warning of a crocodile floated towards us. The blues now included greens and white, and I stared ahead through the spider web crack through the windshield that distorted but did not hide the figure that stood in front of us, white wings extended outward, honey colored hair draping smoothly over a feminine shoulder.
“Isis,” I whispered.
“Who?”
“The angel—her name is Isis.”
“Strange name for an ugly little vulture,” Stacy cackled.
Isis heard this, heard the insult, and charged, her feet leaving the ground while her body sailed towards us, her wings razor sharp with their intent.
“Oh God,” I breathed. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
I saw the red fury in her eyes, and felt my body pulled, yanked with such a force that I was sure I’d left my soul behind as the car—Robert’s car—was torn, bit by bit, sliced with the angry tossing of Isis’ wings. A strong arm was gathered beneath mine, and my feet hung above the dirt below. I looked up, and saw Lark’s eyes staring straight ahead, her wings shaking with emotion. I turned my head and saw Stacy emerge from the ground across from the car, her hands embracing the dirt beneath her, her body hunched over, ready to spring into motion with just the slightest provocation.
Stacy!
The thought shot out like a bullet. But it wasn’t mine—I hadn’t fired.
Stacy’s head ticked up, her focus distracted for just a second to acknowledge us, to see that I was alright.
Ice filled me and my blood turned to slush when the white-winged figure emerged from the car, the vehicle flying away from her in feeble pieces. Stacy leapt. Her body was lithe, her face grotesque with dogged determination. She swung her arm and it landed solidly, like a steel beam to a wooden dowel, against the angel’s wing, snapping it.
I bit back my foul cry of horror. Stacy had discovered the angel’s weak point, and the cry of pain that left Isis aimed itself directly for my already sensitive ears, roaring past them and into my head like a cannon of acid. I writhed in Lark’s arms, believing that I’d surely go mad if the sound, the audible torture did not stop. But it didn’t. On and on, it continued, leeching from me every ounce of energy, and when all of it had gone, it borrowed from some unseen source, taking everything until surely there was nothing left.
“Stay with me, Grace,” I heard Lark plead. “Fight it, fight the pain.”
With what? How did one fight the endless battle without a single weapon at her disposal? And this…this was more than pain. This was beyond what even pain could cause. I felt like a flower being torn from its stem, the violent pluck of each petal a stabbing to my mind.
Outside my suffering, the conception of an argument made itself known.
“Hand her to me.”
“I can’t. She’s my responsibility.”
“Your responsibility? Where have you been besides mating with your human lover? You’ve ignored your call for earthly pleasures Lark—you have not changed at all from the girl who fumbled through the sky with that disreputable Luca.” There was contempt there, in that voice that I knew.
“Do not compare me to that girl I was so long ago, Llehmai—she knew not what was important.”
“And you know now, do you? Your brother fights to keep this child alive, at the risk of his own life, and you in turn spend your nights lying in your human’s arms without care or concern as to what happens to either of them.”
“I care!”
“Then prove it! Hand her to me and help your friend—Isis will destroy her if you do not.”
Uncertainty caused tension, and tension caused stiffness that turned strength into weakness. There was a weakness in me for my friends, and this same weakness existed in Lark, who could hear just as I could the shift in the battle that took place within hearing distance. Stacy was strong, but she did not have an unlimited amount of energy—she required to feed; Isis did not.
“Stacy needs you,” I moaned. The sound of my words filled the jelly in my head. Isis’ shrieks of pain had died down, her attention now focused not on her injured wing but on the noticeable slowing of Stacy’s movements. I didn’t need to see this to know it, to feel it.
“Take her,” Lark finally relented, passing me into welcoming arms before leaving, the swirl of air that followed her tickling my nostrils and reminding me of her goodness, despite what Lem had said.
“I’ll keep you safe, Grace,” I heard said to me. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
We were floating—surely we were floating—when I felt soft lips press against my forehead.
“You…promised.”
A laugh that was barely a sound pushed past my consciousness and into my mind. “I promised to keep things platonic in the yard and in the house. You said nothing about in the sky.”
I groaned inwardly at my own naiveté, but there was nothing for it. It was a chaste kiss, after all, and I had done nothing to encourage it, but that did nothing to ease my guilt
. It must have been noticeable because a sigh passed over my head, brushing aside the hair on my face that had not been swept away by the air as we traveled.
“It wasn’t your fault. I just like being near you—allow me that for these precious few moments, please.”
What choice did I have? Besides, I had much more important things to worry about—like my friends.
And Robert.
“Where is he?”
“N’Uriel is with his mother—there is much to be done now that their sanctuary has been breached.”
Of course. The bright white light, the sucking in of everything around it, the explosion of it all; something—or someone—had violated Robert’s room. Entered it without his permission.
“What’s going to happen?”
“The fire department and the police are already at the ruins of the house. They’ve begun a search for you.”
My blood, still thick and slow in my veins, simply stopped flowing at his words. “They think I’m dead, don’t they?”
I didn’t need to see the nod to know that it existed. “My dad—will you tell him the truth? Will Robert tell him the truth, that I’m okay and with you?”
“Ameila is there-”
That wasn’t an answer. I frowned and turned my head up to look at him. “Will my dad know that I’m okay? Will they tell him that I’m fine?”
He again repeated his three word reply, “Ameila is there.”
Ameila was there, and I wasn’t. The police and fire department were looking for me in the rubble of the once beautiful Bellegarde home that sat, guarded by two ironic angel statues. They were searching for me but wouldn’t find me because I was here, with Lem. I was here, and they were there, and so was Ameila.
Ameila…
“Oh God, no!” I cried when the hammer of comprehension finally struck. “She can’t!”
Ameila was there. But she wasn’t there as herself. She was there as me, taking on my form—probably battered, destroyed utterly by the ravages of heat and weight. The police would see—the fire department would see.
My dad…would see.
“Take me back! You can’t do that to my dad! You can’t do that to him—please!” I sobbed. I writhed and twisted to have him let me go. I begged him to turn around, made promises I shouldn’t have in exchange for it, but he held firm and repeated his remorse over the entire affair and maintained that it was for the best.
How could I do this to him? How could any of them do this to him? We had time. We had time and now it was gone, and my dad would be left to mourn when I was still here. He would be left to grieve, and I could not comfort him. I could not tell him that everything was okay, that I wasn’t dead—not yet.
“It is already too late,” Lem said solemnly, his arms bringing me to him even closer, pinning my arms down at my sides and imprisoning me as my body shook with grief.
Grace Anne Shelley died tonight.
AT ODDS
I’m dead.
Grace doesn’t exist anymore. Who she was, what she did, what she learned, who her friends were—everything that made her who she is was now inconsequential.
Lem had found a place for me to rest, leaning me up against a tree near a fenced-in community garden that was lit up with Christmas lights. The smell of soil and fertilizer burned my nose, and I blamed that for the blurry view my eyes afforded me.
“Grace, can I get you something? Something to eat? Water?”
Eat? Drink? What was that? Why did I need to do that? What would it accomplish? Would eating comfort my father? Would it console my brother, whose tiny cries I could still hear in my head? Would it somehow dull the pain that continued to roll through my mind, tainting every cell with guilt and grief and anger? Of course not. There was nothing that would ease my suffering. I didn’t want it to.
“Do you want to talk?” He took a hold of my hand and held it against his heart, the strong, steady rhythm of it an attempt to calm me. All it did was remind me that someone I loved more than my own life believed that my own heart no longer beat.
“Would it make you feel better if I talked? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know—ask me anything.”
Why? He wouldn’t give me the answer I wanted. It was a waste of time to ask. It was a waste of time to breathe.
The sun had risen and was hanging high above us when Robert finally arrived to our location, the onlookers who had come to work in the garden unable to stop staring at the two beautiful creatures who dared to stand and console the woeful lump of a person still curled up against the tree. The silver rings that circled dark centers in Robert’s eyes turned from cold and numb to warm and fluid as soon as he saw me. There was no pause, no moment of hesitation on his part—he just took my hand from Lem and held me close to his heart.
His motionless heart.
“I never want to feel like that again,” he breathed against my ear. “I never want to see that image again.”
His body was shaking, and I wrapped my arms around him to still him, to comfort him, to comfort myself. We were two lone figures surrounded by guilt and loss and blame and endless questions that found no room to separate us. I wasn’t letting him go for a second—I wasn’t parting from him ever again.
“I’m never—never leaving your side,” he whispered harshly, squeezing me even tighter, my breath forced out of my body by his embrace.
“Why? Why did you have to tell my dad that I was dead?” I cried softly.
“They came to our home, Grace,” he replied with equal softness. “They dared to come there in search of you. If your father believes you’re dead, the safer it’ll be for him as well as for you. Doing this bought us time. The whispers of your death have already filled Heath with enough gossip to last for years.”
He looked up at Lem and his nostrils flared. “They are also looking for you—they believe you have something to do with Melanie’s death. You will have to leave here as well.”
“Let me take her, then. You cannot just leave here—it would look suspicious and cast a dark shadow over Grace’s life.”
Robert shook his head, his hand closing over the back of my head possessively. “She and I will never be apart again.”
“How can you fulfill your call if she’s always with you? Do you intend on bringing her with you? Do you intend on exposing her to the sights and sounds of the worst kind of human depravity? Is that what you want for her in her last days?”
“Her days are few and I would rather the world suffer at the hands of evil for a few more days than be without her for another minute.”
This was something I couldn’t accept. I had already caused way too much hurt and damage, death and…destruction. Hurricane Grace—that should be on my headstone.
I pulled away from him; my head tilting back to look up at his serious face. “Robert, you cannot do that to people. They need you-”
“I need you,” he hissed, cutting me off. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you with me for as long as possible.”
“Yes, but at what cost?” I said to him, my voice a pitiful sound. “Look at what being together has already taken from us, from other people. If you give up on everything then they win. They win, don’t you see that?”
“I can’t be away from you anymore,” he said, his voice a plea that cracked at my heart, even as it hardened with resolve.
“I don’t want to be away from you either—but as much as I say you’re mine, you also belong to the world.”
Lem’s calm, cool voice broke in. “I hate to interrupt, but Grace is right. You cannot put on hold what you’re meant to do. The living must die, and their souls must meet their fate. You’re the gate keeper and the deliverer of fates, N’Uriel—lives cannot linger when they’re not meant to, and souls cannot fester without judgment.”
Robert was angry, the truth in Lem’s words shattering what hope he’d saved for himself, the hope that we could indeed be with each other without separation. He was always filled with hope, but I had remained cynica
l and it did not fail me this time. There was no disappointment when he finally nodded in acquiescence. We would part again.
But not now.
Now I would not let him go for anything. Now was when I needed him the most. “I’m not leaving,” he said to me, his thoughts echoing his voice.
“Then don’t,” I said, my voice challenging, wanting him to prove it. Needing him to prove it. My very life depended on it.
“Well, when it is time for you to go, let me know,” Lem said with a bored sigh. “But do stay out of trouble—I might not be around the next time your lives are in danger.”
“Thank you,” Robert ground out, his teeth gnashed together, his lips barely parted.
“Thank you, Lem. For everything,” I said to him.
“Anytime,” he returned. “I mean that.”
“I know.”
“Goodbye, Llehmai,” Robert said coldly at the departing shadow.
And we were alone. “What happens now?” I asked, wanting to hear from his own lips the truth.
“We have to prepare to leave. When the truth that you survived the implosion spreads, there will be no rest for us. It will be constant, our moving about.”
“I can’t leave! I can’t leave my dad thinking that I’m dead. I sat through a fake funeral—I saw what Stacy’s death did to her parents. She did, too! I can’t do that to my dad, Robert! I won’t!”
“Grace, we have no choice—it’s already done.”
There were things happening to me, angry, violent things that shook me at the finality in his tone. “No! I’m going—I’m going to tell him myself.”
“And then what? What do you think that will accomplish? He knew this time was coming, Grace. Whether it happened now or later, he knew. Telling him that you’re not dead will only make the reality of your death much more difficult for him to accept when it finally happens. How will he be able to grieve for you? How will he be able to move on and care for Matthew and Janice if he’s filled with some false notion that you’ll come back? Do you really want to set him up for that? Give him a false sense of hope?”