The Innocent

by Michelle K. Pickett

  “I’m sure I’ll see you soon. The Four Brothers or the goblins will be around sooner or later.” When I didn’t leave, he reached around me and opened the door. “Goodbye, Milayna.”

  Biting my bottom lip, I looked at the floor and nodded. There wasn’t anything left for me to say except, “I love you, too, Chay. Always have.”

  I walked out of his room, flinching when the door closed behind me.

  ***

  “Is this everyone?” Muriel asked me with a knowing look.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  I sighed loudly. “You know I did,” I said, trying to convey my frustration that she wouldn’t leave it alone, “and you know he said no, so can we drop it. Please?”

  “Seems to me you know who’d be good for you. The one who’s here with you.” Muriel’s gaze flicked to Xavier, who was waiting in the car.

  “Leave it alone, Muriel. You aren’t helping,” I said quietly.

  She shrugged a shoulder. “I’m just sayin’.”

  I kicked at the ground with the toe of my shoe. “No, you’re just nagging.”

  “Whatever. I just hope when you finally do come to your senses and realize who’s right for you that he hasn’t already moved on.”

  “Muriel, I know you mean well and all, but please, for the love of all that’s holy, shut up.”

  She laughed. She actually had the audacity to laugh at the pitiful excuse of my love life. I glared at her, and she laughed harder. Putting her arm around me, she pulled me into a tight hug. “I just don’t want to see you sitting around, waiting for something that isn’t gonna come when there’s a great guy who loves you and is ready for a relationship now—and who has no outward signs of psychosis.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know and I appreciate that you are trying to help, but it’s not helping.”

  “Okay, okay, I give up.” She held her hands up in surrender. “My matchmaking skills suck. At least where you’re concerned.” She said with a smile. “Let’s get going, huh? I’m hungry.”

  She climbed into the SUV and snapped her buckle in place, giving me a pointed look when I didn’t follow. I threw my hands up in frustration, stringing together a colorful word or two, and climbed behind the wheel.

  Making a stop at a local fast food restaurant, we grabbed some burgers and fries for lunch and then got on the road for the long drive to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

  The drive there was uneventful. We made it to the school in record time, thanks to my speeding. I tended to do that when I was talking to someone. The faster I talked—the faster I drove. And when the four of us got to joking around, I talked fast, real fast. It was a miracle there weren’t any police around. I would’ve gotten one wicked ticket.

  When we got to the school, we all unfolded and fell out of the SUV. We trekked across the campus to the registrar’s office, and I filled out the paperwork to drop my classes. An hour later, I was done and ready to go.

  “Let’s look around,” Muriel said.

  “Yeah, show us around the campus, Milayna,” Drew agreed.

  We walked through the campus. I showed them where my dorm was; I had some things I needed to pick up anyway. I showed them where all my classes were and some other buildings. But I hadn’t been on campus long enough to really know too much about it so my tour guide skills were limited. Mostly we just walked through the grounds, admiring the old buildings’ architecture.

  “I can’t believe you don’t want to go to school here. It’s so beautiful,” Muriel said, looking up at one of the ornate buildings.

  “Who said I didn’t want to go to school here?”

  “Well, you dropped all your classes.”

  “Yeah, because I have four demon brothers and Azazel trying to kill my little brother and me. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to go to school here. I plan on coming back. I liked it here. The downtown area is full of museums and art galleries. It’s just how I always pictured a college town to be—lots of culture.”

  Xavier stretched and patted his tight abdomen. “Is there anywhere good to eat?” he asked. “I’m starving.”

  Muriel nudged my shoulder, waggling her eyebrows. I rolled my eyes. “Really?” I whispered, exasperated by her never-ending matchmaking attempts.

  Her eyes wide, she nodded and mouthed, “Oh, yes.”

  Shaking my head at my best friend, I answered Xavier. “I know this great little bistro.”

  “Let’s go.”

  We ate a quick dinner, and got on the road to go home. That was when the day turned from fun road trip to confrontation with a demon. Go figure.

  I felt like I’d been shanked. The blade ripped through my stomach, and pain ricocheted through my body. I bent forward, one arm around my middle and the other still holding the steering wheel. Just as the pain eased, I was stabbed again. This time, it felt as though the knife was jammed into me and then turned like a key in a lock. Pain seared through me. I sucked in a breath through my teeth.

  “Milayna? Are you okay?” Xavier touched my arm lightly. I flinched. Even his soft touch hurt; it felt like heavy grit sandpaper scraping against my bare skin.

  I shook my head. Flipping on the turn signal, I eased the SUV onto the shoulder of the expressway. “You drive,” I told him through clenched teeth. My stomach was tying itself in knots. The pain had moved from stabbing to constant. I could barely scoot over from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s.

  “You’re going to have a vision now?” Drew didn’t like the visions. Or, rather, he didn’t like seeing others have them. His visions hadn’t started yet.

  “Either that or she ate bad meat at the restaurant,” Muriel answered and sipped on the straw of her drink.

  “Ugh, I ate what she had. Either way, this is gonna suck.” Drew moaned and put his head in his hands.

  I would have laughed at him if my head hadn’t been pounding so hard. It thumped to the rhythm of my heartbeat; the images around me shook with each beat. I held my head in my hands, my fingers digging through my hair, massaging my scalp.

  For a short second, the painful knot in my stomach eased. I took a deep, calming breath. But as fast as it went away, it came back with double the force, and my stomach roiled from the pain. Covering my mouth with one hand, I opened the car door with the other. I barely got my head out before I hurled my dinner.

  “Oh, ick,” Drew moaned. He opened his door and lost his lunch on the gravel shoulder next to mine.

  Muriel laughed so hard that she snorted. I wasn’t quite sure what there was to laugh about, but she was having fun. Xavier kept asking me if I was okay. I kept saying I was, but he kept asking over and over. It was annoying. All I wanted was for the vision to come so we could get back on the road. All of a sudden, I just wanted to go home—even if it wasn’t my house.

  Finally, the images started to swirl in front of my eyes. At first, they were too blurry to make out. I couldn’t see anything except colors as they twirled by, around and around like I was on a merry-go-round. Little by little, the colors morphed into jumbled pictures.

  Cars moving. A bridge. A bent green mile marker that reads 122.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re on Interstate—”

  “No.” I waved Xavier’s words away with a jerk of my hand. “What was the last mile marker we passed?”

  “I’m not sure.” Xavier looked out the window.

  “Drive until you see one and stop.”

  I felt him put the SUV in gear and slowly maneuver into traffic. My head was pounding at a level I’d never felt before. The pain was nearly unbearable. It felt like something was in my head, chiseling at the bone with an icepick. I was so dizzy I was certain the earth was spinning faster on its axis.

  The SUV slowed and pulled over on the shoulder. “Milayna? We’re at mile marker 120.”

  “‘Kay.”

  Cars. The bent mile marker that reads 122. A hole.

  My head pounded faster. My stomach clenched
tighter—the stabbing sensation was so fast it was hard to pick out the individual pains. It felt like one constant stab of the knife, turning in my flesh. The vision was telling me something, but I didn’t understand. I leaned forward and laid my head on my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs. I tried to block out the pain and focus on the unfolding vision.

  “Milayna? Do you want us to do something?” Xavier laid his hand on my back.

  I flinched.

  “Don’t!” Muriel grabbed his hand. “Don’t touch her when she’s having a vision. It hurts her. If she wants you, she’ll reach out to you.”

  Broken pavement. Cars. Mile marker 122. Screaming. Falling.

  I jerked backward and grabbed the seat. It felt like the car was falling. It was like falling in a dream and jerking awake just before you hit bottom, but I couldn’t jerk awake because I wasn’t dreaming. The sensation of falling seemed to last for minutes, but it was more likely just a few seconds and then… the car hit. It threw me backward against the seat, and then I bounced forward toward the dashboard. Had it not been for Xavier’s quick reflexes, I would have hit the dashboard full on.

  In my vision, I’d just lived through what was going to happen if I didn’t stop the… what? I still didn’t know.

  “What do you see, Milayna?” Muriel asked.

  “Cars. Mile marker 122. A big hole in the pavement.”

  “A sinkhole?”

  I glanced at Xavier and nodded. “It could be that.”

  Xavier looked at Drew in the rearview mirror. “Call 911 and tell them to close the on-ramps because of a possible sinkhole near mile marker 122.”

  Drew called the police and reported the sinkhole.

  “Did the vision go away?” Muriel asked.

  “No. Something’s wrong.” I shook my head to clear it. The icepick was still digging into my skull and it made it hard to concentrate. But if the vision was still playing out, it meant we hadn’t found the source of the problem.

  Xavier floored the engine and took off in the direction of mile marker 122.

  “There it is.” I pointed at the bridge I saw in my vision. A knife sank into my side, and I stifled a scream. I squeezed my side with one hand and massaged my pounding head with the other.

  Broken windows… mangled steel… smashed cars. I look down. Not a knife. A piece of metal protrudes from my side. Blood. Lots of blood. Screaming. I smell… sulfur. Rotting flesh… charred meat. Hell.

  “You didn’t say anything about a bridge,” Drew said.

  “I saw one. It’s just before it.” I nodded toward the window. “See? There’s the mile marker. This is definitely the place,” I gasp around the pain.

  “What do we do now?” Muriel asked quietly.

  “Xavier, turn the SUV sideways and start driving back and forth in front of the cars to make them back up. The farther back they get from the mile marker, the better.” My breathing was labored and my voice barely a whisper.

  “And if some don’t move?”

  “I don’t know.” I met his gaze. “We tried. That’s all we can do.”

  Xavier turned on the shoulder and drove across the lanes of the highway, earning a lot of honks and quite a few fingers along the way. When he reached the median, he’d back up until he reached the other side. Then he’d throw it in drive and start again. It worked. Some cars started backing up, away from the lunatic driver. Others held their ground. Too bad they wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. I could already hear the pavement cracking. Xavier had time for one, maybe two passes. That was it. Whoever was left had to fend for themselves.

  A large crack sounded, and I looked at Xavier. It was time to get out of there. He threw the SUV in reverse and flew across the highway until he reached the shoulder. Swinging around, going toward traffic, he drove on the shoulder away from the impending sinkhole.

  “How’s the vision?” Xavier asked, looking over at me.

  “It’s still there, but not as bad.” The pain in my head had lessened. The sharp icepick had been replaced with a rubber mallet, and the piece of scrap metal in my side had disappeared.

  His eyes darted in front of him for a second before his gaze fell back on me. “I thought when the situation was corrected, the vision would go away?”

  “It will.”

  “Well? How come it hasn’t?” Drew leaned forward, sticking his head in the space between the two front seats.

  “People are still going to die. I didn’t fulfill everything I was supposed to. And Jord is still out there somewhere. Until he’s caught and killed, along with the other three Brothers, I don’t think my visions will go away completely.”

  “So… you… you’ll see those people—”

  “Die?” I interrupted Drew. “No. I don’t see it. I just kinda know. It sounds awful, but I’ve gotten used to it.”

  I don’t see it—I feel it. Too much. Stuff I don’t want to feel. And I’m lying. I haven’t gotten used to it. I won’t ever get used to it.

  “That’s not horrible, Milayna. That’s just your coping mechanism kicking in. You have to have one or you’d go insane from the things you’ve seen and gone through in the last year,” Xavier said softly.

  “Who said I haven’t gone insane already?” I said with a chuckle.

  “That’s true, Xavier. Some of us are taking bets on when her first nervous breakdown will be. Want to wager?” Muriel chewed on the end of the straw in her Coke and grinned.

  “No!” He sounded indignant.

  “Don’t worry; she’s only joking,” I said and rolled my eyes at Muriel. Xavier was an angel. He’d only lived on earth a few months. He hadn’t gotten used to how humans joked and teased yet, which made him the perfect person to play tricks on. It could be hilarious.

  I jumped when a sharp stab bit into the side of my neck. Warmth spread across my skin. I felt my neck, but I knew nothing was there. Just a sensation of the vision. Another pain radiated up my leg. My leg vibrated with it. The warmth in my neck disappeared, leaving it cold. The person was gone.

  I jerked and felt myself hit the dash. My forehead exploded in pain, and I saw tiny dots of bright lights. Then nothing.

  Something slammed into my chest. Hard. It knocked the breath from my lungs. I reached up, rubbed it, and felt the object embedded there. Funny—I didn’t feel any pain in this person’s vision. Just the stream of warm, thick blood. And then cold. I knew they were gone.

  I bit the inside of my cheek so I didn’t break down and cry. The sensations bombarding me were too much. It was overwhelming knowing—feeling—the deaths of the people lost in the sinkhole. I was the strongest demi-angel in the group because my dad was the highest-ranking angel. So my visions were the strongest. The others didn’t feel what I felt. And they didn’t need to know everything I felt—everything I saw. I didn’t want them to.

  They didn’t need to know I felt death.

  I watched the construction crew begin work on our house. They pulled away the siding to the bare wood and cleaned up the broken supports, beams, and other crap. Actually, I didn’t know half of what they were doing, but there were a couple of men worth watching, so Muriel and I sat in lawn chairs at the end of the driveway, drinking lemonade and keeping watch over the situation. By situation, I meant hot construction guys with no shirts, bulging biceps, and rippled abs.

  “What’s the verdict? How long do you have to suffer through living with your boyfriend?” Chay asked. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked at the house. My momentary fascination with the construction guys was forgotten and all my attention was drawn to him. Yeah, I was a goner for sure.

  “At least a month until it’s livable. More until it’s finished,” I said with a sigh.

  “A month, huh? Well, that ought to give you and lover boy some quality time together.”

  “Whatever. Go away, Chay. You’re interrupting my view.” I leaned to the right to see around him.

  “Your view? Huh, does Xavier know you’re ogling other men?” he asked with a
smirk.

  “We have an open relationship.” I smiled at him.

  Let him think about that for a while.

  “Hmm.” He walked away, whistling.

  “He’s jealous.” Muriel looked between Chay and me. “Majorly jealous. I can’t believe it. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but Chay Roberts is jealous.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “So? What’dya mean—so? That means he still has feelings for you Milayna.”

  “Yeah, he totally has feelings for me,” I grumbled. “Contempt and complete indifference. Just the kind of ooey, gooey feelings every girl wants from the man of her dreams.”

  Muriel was shaking her head before I’d stopped talking. “Nope. You’ve got a major problem.”

  “What do you mean?” I rolled my eyes. In the process, they happened to land on a very sculpted construction worker. I let them linger there. He made my eyes extremely happy.

  “You’ve got two guys.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I don’t have any guys.”

  “Nope. You have two. Xavier who loves you and doesn’t care who knows it, and Chay who loves you but for whatever reason feels the need to fight it.” She turned the straw in her lemonade. The ice cubes clinked against her glass.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like my problem. I don’t love Xavier that way. And Chay’s problem is just that, Chay’s problem. So I still fail to see where my problem lies.”

  “It’s your problem because you love Chay and admit it or not, you also love Xavier—although not romantically.”

  I scooped an ice cube out of my drink and popped it into my mouth, licking the drops of lemonade off my fingers. “Still not my problem, Muriel,” I said around the ice cube.

  She arched a brow and pointed a finger at my face. “Delude yourself all you want. But you have major guy issues.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Oh, I never said I didn’t have guy issues. I just said their problems weren’t mine. Big difference. The only problem I have at the moment is that the one with the butt crack hanging out everywhere is blocking the blond hottie I’ve been eyeing all morning.”