Archangel of Mercy

by Christina Ashcroft

  “What about it?” Gods, he couldn’t understand why he was having this conversation now, when he needed to hunt down miscreants in the Fornax Galaxy. But he couldn’t leave while she looked so tragic.

  “The thing is . . .” She sounded nervous, although he couldn’t think why. He already knew about her greatest crime. “My mother’s slowly been losing her grip on reality. When I was a child she used to tell me stories about her family and home all the time. But then ten years ago she cut off our link—the link we’d shared all my life. It was like she’d cut off, I don’t know, half my brain and one of my limbs. Suddenly she just wasn’t there anymore.”

  He understood that. He and Eleni had been linked telepathically. But he still didn’t get Aurora’s point. What did any of this have to do with her breaching dimensions?

  “You’ve no idea what it was like, Gabe. It was as if she needed to forget about her true heritage just to survive. But by doing that she was shutting everybody out.” Her shoulders slumped as if in defeat. “I wanted something solid to show her that her past really existed. Theoretically I should have entered at the exact same location where the flowers grew. So all I intended to do was take some and bring them back as proof.”

  He could feel the glower on his face, could hear his heart pounding in his chest. And Aurora’s words became a rising echo that hammered through his brain.

  Where the flowers grew. So she could bring some back.

  The flowers.

  The silver frame with its strange, ethereal bloom, and the eerie certainty he’d experienced of something being not quite right with it, slashed through his mind. No. It was impossible. He couldn’t fathom what she was trying to tell him, but it certainly wasn’t that her mother came from another dimension.

  He shoved himself from the support of the bedpost, snatched up the rucksack and pulled out the frame. Again the eerie sense of wrongness shuddered through him and he looked into Aurora’s now bemused face.

  “What are you talking about?” His voice was uncannily calm, considering the erratic state of his thoughts.

  “My mother.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I was trying to find her home, Gabe. To prove to her it really does exist. To try and bring her back to us again.”

  He jabbed the frame at her, denial stabbing through him. What Aurora was saying was impossible. And yet he knew she believed every single word.

  “Are you trying to tell me . . .” The words lodged in his throat. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  The tip of her tongue flicked over her lips and for a second he had the strongest suspicion she wasn’t going to say another word. Then she stiffened her spine and he saw the apprehension in her eyes.

  “My parents are from different dimensions.” The words rushed from her as if she had never spoken them before. Of course she had never spoken them before. Who would she say such a thing to? “My dad’s from Earth—this Earth—but my mum’s . . . not. They met each other in their dreams while they were still children. They grew up together—but only in their dreams. And then they fell in love.”

  He let out a measured breath. Theoretically it was very possible to dream of those who existed in another dimension. The astral planes weren’t confined to one dimension or another. They were potentially accessible to all sentient beings.

  Except for the Guardians.

  But Aurora wasn’t talking about theories. She was telling him her parents had somehow, against everything he had believed possible, succeeded in a trans-dimensional physical union.

  And then the truth slammed through him. Aurora was the result of a trans-dimensional union.

  Something akin to awe shivered through his soul. It had been so long since something had so fundamentally shaken the core of his existence that he didn’t know how to react. Didn’t know what to say.

  He could only stare at her as if he had never truly seen her before.

  But still there was nothing that marked her as such an extraordinary being. Her damp hair curled around her face, the freckles that dusted her nose and cheeks were still ridiculously appealing, and her eyes were the prettiest shade of blue he had ever encountered.

  “What happened?” His voice was hushed but he couldn’t help it. Because despite knowing she told the truth he still couldn’t fathom how it had come to pass.

  “We don’t know.” An oddly guarded note entered her voice, as if his reaction wasn’t quite what she’d expected. “One day my mother simply walked through from her world into this one—straight into my dad’s arms. At the exact same place where you found me the other day.”

  “Just like that?” There had to be more. Maybe her mother’s people had been experimenting with the dynamics of interdimensional travel.

  “Gabe, she didn’t do anything weird. She wouldn’t have had the first clue how to deliberately breach dimensions. They were just doing what they’d done countless times before—communicating with their thoughts. My dad isn’t at all psychic. That telepathic link with her is the sum total of his psychic ability. He couldn’t even link telepathically with me.”

  “Your parents communicated outside of the astral planes? When they weren’t dreaming?” Another eerie shiver inched over his flesh.

  “When they became teenagers they developed the ability to communicate while they were still awake.” Aurora gave him another odd look, as if his reaction still bothered her. “I mean, they could carry on a conversation with each other without having to be asleep or going into trance to enter the astral planes.”

  “What about the Guardians? How did she avoid them?” At least now he knew the reason for Aurora’s extraordinary mental barriers. She had inherited them from a species of human he had never before encountered.

  “They never mentioned anything about the Guardians. No violet lightning, nothing. She walked into this world and whatever gateway had opened for her closed straightaway. Permanently.”

  No Alpha Immortal, so far as Gabe was aware, had given the Guardians the right to patrol dimensional boundaries. They had done so for millennia. The Dark Matter of the universe, where the Guardians existed in ethnocentric isolation, was rumored to hold ancient secrets. Immortals surmised that, when dimensions were breached, it triggered a celestial alarm for the Guardians.

  But the Guardians were of this dimension. Aurora’s mother came from another. Was that how she had avoided detection?

  Aurora took a step toward him. “I honestly had no idea I’d be breaking some kind of cosmic law, Gabe. I just wanted to find a way to prove to her that her world did exist. That she wasn’t losing her mind. She just needed to encompass it all.”

  He understood what had driven her. Could even empathize. But he still couldn’t fathom how she had actually intended to put her theories into practice.

  “I’d already decided to study genetics at university, but then I decided I’d also research every aspect of astral projection I could. I mean, I’d always been able to project ever since I was a child but I’d never actually studied the phenomenon. Because it wasn’t a phenomenon to me, you see? It was normal.”

  Aurora had entered the astral planes in the bathroom back on Eta Hyperium. She’d been trying to escape, even though escape was impossible. Yet her belief in her abilities had been absolute.

  “Go on.” He hoped she couldn’t hear the awe in his voice. It wasn’t dignified that a mere mortal could so unbalance an archangel.

  “Eight years.” There was a dreamlike quality to her voice. “It was my covert mission. Finally I decided there was no point wasting any more time in partial experiments and endless theorizing. I had to put it to the test.”

  Even after she had confessed to him on Eta Hyperium, he’d believed that she’d breached dimensions by some freaky accident. That she’d been dabbling in things she knew next to nothing about. But he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Just as Mephisto had asserted, Aurora had known what she was doing. She had prepared for that moment for eight years. And now he knew why, cou
ld he blame her?

  “Because of my unique DNA, I was sure I could gain access to my mother’s dimension. And I was right.” She hesitated for a second, obviously recalling that fateful moment when she had breached dimensions and caught the Guardians’ wrathful attention. “Assuming I was successful, not only would the breach open in the spiritual realm but also simultaneously in the physical. So all I had to do was maintain that contact on the spiritual plane while I returned to my body and walked through the breach into the other dimension.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  EVEN theoretically he would never have believed it possible. But it had worked. And it had to be down to the combination of her unique psychic abilities and the fact she didn’t belong solely to this dimension.

  Yet something had interrupted her because when he’d arrived she was most certainly not strolling into another dimension.

  Which brought him back to the burning question: How the fuck had he arrived in Ireland?

  “You had it all worked out.”

  “I thought so.” She offered him a small smile that, bizarrely, pierced his chest. “But I hadn’t planned on being knocked off my feet by an avenging archangel.”

  He had no intention of admitting he still didn’t have the first clue how that had happened.

  “Just as well you were, considering the fallout.” But there was no condemnation in his words. Because there was no longer any doubt in his mind that he’d done the right thing by disregarding ancient protocols and rescuing Aurora. The Guardians had taken it upon themselves countless millennia ago to ensure dimensions remained intact. Gabe was damn sure they had no provision for extenuating circumstances. If they had captured Aurora she wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to defend her actions, and with a stab of guilt he remembered his caustic response when she’d asked about a fair trial or court of appeal.

  There’s nothing fair about it. He’d thrown the words at her, not really considering them, but they haunted him now. Because they were true.

  “Gabe.” The smile slid from her lips and there was no mistaking the thread of unease in her voice. “You must have come across this before. I mean, I can’t be the only one whose parents are from different dimensions.”

  The odd compunction possessed him to reassure her that of course she wasn’t the only trans-dimensional being he’d encountered. To somehow soothe her fear of being . . . The words hovered in his brain, loathed yet so apt.

  The fear of being an anomaly of nature.

  Yet he couldn’t lie to her because it wouldn’t change the truth. And as he stared into her eyes an outrageous notion rocked his mind.

  Just because he had never known this to happen before, did not mean it had not.

  Something of that magnitude should be common knowledge among the elite immortals. And like it or not, he was numbered among the elite.

  But no one had known of Aurora.

  “You . . .” He discovered he was at a loss for words and brutally pulled his reeling senses back into line. “You’re the first I’ve encountered.” Admit it. Strangely, it wasn’t as hard as it should have been. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the only one, Aurora.”

  She flinched, as if she’d known what his answer would be and yet had desperately hoped otherwise.

  “Thanks for being honest.” She offered him a wan smile. “Nothing like having it confirmed that you’re a complete freak of creation, is there?”

  “You’re in excellent company. I’ve been called worse.”

  As he’d intended, she stared at him in open astonishment, her own unique status temporarily forgotten. He even grinned back at her, and considering the subject matter that was a first. He didn’t usually find anything amusing when he recalled the origins of his creation and the bitter fallout that followed.

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  He tugged gently on her damp hair and then, because it felt right, wound the chestnut strands around his finger. The overpowering urge to stay with her thundered through his mind. To take her in his arms and ensure that she really was . . . all right.

  But no panicked waves of terror emanated from her. The truth was he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to stay for himself, not simply because Aurora might need his presence.

  Unnerved by that flash of insight, he hastily untangled his finger from her hair. Aurora was here so the Guardians couldn’t get their claws in her. It suited him because he wanted her sexually, but that was all. He’d be damned if he started putting that base need before everything else.

  “Hard to believe but true.” He handed her the silver frame and she hugged it to her breasts in a gesture that spoke volumes. He ignored the flicker of sympathy that attempted to ignite. Gods, he hadn’t brought her here for nefarious purposes. If he could ensure her safety outside this island he’d be the first to allow her to go.

  When he’d tired of her.

  He ignored that thought, too.

  “I’ll be back later.” It occurred to him that they could eat together. “I’ll bring food.”

  “Where are you going?” She sounded surprised, as if she’d expected him to stay with her.

  “Out.” He wasn’t in the habit of telling anyone of his movements, and in any case he doubted she’d even heard of the Fornax Galaxy.

  “Out? Doing what?”

  From the corner of his eye he caught a flash of distant wings approaching his villa from the forest. He took a couple of steps toward the balcony doors to get a better look at his unexpected visitor.

  “Stuff.” The figure looked like Azrael.

  “Oh.” There was a tight note in Aurora’s voice. “Well, fine. You go and do your stuff and I’ll see you later then.”

  He stifled the urge to kiss her goodbye, since that evoked an uneasy level of intimacy that caused his ancient scars to burn. And so he jerked his head at her in a gesture of farewell and teleported onto the front terrace.

  —

  AZRAEL’S IRIDESCENT FEATHERS shimmered in the sunlight as he landed next to Gabe. Folding his wings, he rolled his shoulders and squinted up at the villa as if he could sense something was not quite normal.

  Either that or he’d spoken to Mephisto and had come to have a look at the mortal for himself. Gabe folded his arms. Aurora was not an exotic exhibit.

  “Something,” Azrael said, “is screwing with the astral planes.”

  Whatever he’d expected Azrael to say, it hadn’t been that.

  “What?” Unlike most of the archangels who had given up visiting the astral planes at the same time as they’d annihilated the celestial city of their creation, Azrael had become obsessed with that realm and with maintaining its harmonious balance.

  Discounting the time Gabe had followed Aurora yesterday, he had only been in there once since. And even then it hadn’t been willingly.

  Azrael glanced up at the balcony and frowned before looking back at him. “I’ve never come across anything like it. Chaos is the only way to describe it.”

  Gabe recalled the sense of disharmony as he’d entered the astral planes. He knew who’d caused that echo of chaos. It was Aurora, when she had opened the breach between dimensions.

  “The levels were collapsing,” Azrael said, as if he found nothing strange in Gabe’s continued silence. “If you can imagine a physical entity smashing its way through, you have a good idea of the mess that’s left behind.”

  “Except you can’t physically enter that realm.” Aurora was more powerful than he’d imagined. But how could he know of her limitations when she was the child of two dimensions? Unlike anyone else who might’ve tried tampering with the laws of creation, Aurora possessed a unique weapon. Who could say what devastation she might have caused on the astral planes, when two parallel worlds claimed her DNA?

  The astral planes, the ultimate haven of healing and renewal, would recover. But if Az or any immortal guessed Aurora was the one behind the chaos she would be held accountable.

  He’d never le
t them take her to trial.

  “But guess who was there, attempting a cover up?” Clearly Azrael considered Gabe’s last comment too banal to even bother answering. “Mephisto.”

  What the hell was Mephisto doing there? “It could be a natural phenomenon. Mephisto’s probably just poking around trying to find out what happened.” Except Mephisto already knew who was responsible. So why hadn’t he exposed Aurora already? What was he still playing at?

  Azrael grunted and his fingers curled around the hilt of his katana. “If that was a natural phenomenon then the universe is fucked. It was an outside force and Mephisto knows more than he’s telling me.” Again Azrael shot him an odd glance. “So you don’t know anything about it?”

  Alarm stabbed through Gabe’s chest. “Why would I know anything about it?” Had Mephisto said something to Az? Had Az discovered Aurora’s interference on the astral planes and somehow traced her back to Gabe?

  “A couple of hours ago I detected a lingering echo of your presence.” Azrael sounded reluctant to admit it, as if he was as good as accusing Gabe of being the perpetrator of the disruption. “But it was distorted almost beyond recognition.”

  Gabe expelled a silent breath of relief. “I entered the astral planes briefly yesterday.” There was no need to go into detail. “Doubt I’ll be making a return trip any time soon.”

  Azrael didn’t answer right away. Gabe had the uneasy feeling that the other archangel had read far more into Gabe’s answer than he’d intended. “Are the rumors true? Did you really save a human from the Guardians’ clutches?”

  He should have guessed what had happened in Eblis’s club was now common knowledge. Anyone who’d been there could have cobbled a juicy story together and managed to get at least some details right.

  That didn’t mean he had to tell Azrael what had really transpired, even if he was relieved by the change of subject. “I wanted her so I took her.” It was the truth. In a way.

  “Is she the reason you entered the astral planes?”