Chapter Forty-one
IT had been two days since Gabe had dumped her. Aurora sat on the edge of her bed and stared sightlessly at the half-packed case at her feet.
This afternoon she was returning to London. To her post-graduate studies and the house she shared with three others. She’d stayed on in Ireland an extra day in the pathetic hope that Gabe might change his mind and come back for her. Or at least visit her.
But there had been nothing. The previous week might just as well have been a fantastical dream. The only proof she had that it had been real was the constant ache in her chest, reminding her that despite her good intentions she’d given Gabe her heart. And allowed him to trample all over it.
Her dad had wanted to know all about the psychic fayre she had supposedly gone to, and because she felt so awful about lying she’d been deliberately vague. But for some reason her dad had honed in on her single mention of Gabe and now appeared to think she was in the middle of some great love affair. If only.
She heard her mother at her bedroom door and futile guilt washed through her. Far from remembering their email exchange her mother didn’t appear to realize Aurora had gone missing at all. It was as if the last few days had been gently airbrushed from her consciousness.
And that was that. She’d failed in her dearly cherished hope of helping her mum regain her memories. And after everything she’d learned during the last week there was no way she’d risk trying to cross dimensions again.
Her mother leaned against the dressing table that had been passed down through countless generations and idly fingered Aurora’s bag.
“It’s been nice having you home,” she said.
“Mm.” Aurora pushed herself to her feet. Her packing wouldn’t do itself. From the corner of her eye she saw her mum begin to poke through the contents of her bag and she sighed. She’d long ago stopped keeping anything too personal in her bag when she came to visit. Her mum didn’t seem to comprehend that what she was doing was an invasion of privacy.
“Well, that’s strange.” Her mum sounded surprised. “Why aren’t you wearing your necklace? You always wear it.”
Instinctively her fingers went to her bare throat. She hadn’t put her necklace back on after returning to her parents. The urgency to have it next to her skin had died. Somehow, after touching the real archangelic token of devotion, she couldn’t bear the thought of an inferior, human-crafted imitation.
On her knees she glanced over at her mother as she pulled the glittering chain from her bag. Her mum frowned and peered at the pendant cradled in the palm of her hand as if she had never seen it before. Oh, god. Was her mother’s condition worsening further?
“What is this?” There was an odd note in her voice and Aurora dug her nails into the palms of her hands. There was no point getting upset. There was nothing she could do about it.
“You know what it is.” She forced herself up and went over to her mum, who was now looking at the necklace like it was a rattlesnake readying to attack. “Here, do you want to put it on me?”
“No, I don’t know what this is.” Her mother’s voice was firm. She sounded as lucid as she had in that recent email. “I know what it looks like, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Aurora pulled her mum’s hand down so she could see. And her heart jackknifed.
She didn’t need to touch it to feel the ethereal pulse. Didn’t need to open the wings to see the magical rainbows or gold dust from a long-destroyed City of Angels.
Gabe had given her his beloved’s necklace. And kept hers for himself.
She clutched her mother’s arm before she collapsed onto the floor. There was no way in hell this was a mistake. Gabe had deliberately given her his treasured necklace.
Why would he do that?
“Give it to me.” Her voice sounded reedy, as if it didn’t belong to her. Her mother ignored her and opened the pendant, and Aurora’s breath escaped in a silent sigh.
There was only one reason why Gabe would have given her something so precious. But why hadn’t he said anything? Stupid, stubborn man. Archangel. How was she supposed to contact him? How was she supposed to tell him how much she loved him and wanted them to spend whatever time they had together?
Why hadn’t she told him back in his kitchen, when she’d wanted to?
“This isn’t yours.”
Aurora unhooked her nails from her mum’s arm. “No, it—it belongs to a friend of mine.”
“A friend?” Her mother looked up at her and silence spun between them. “You mean that man who came here and collected all your clothes?”
“What?” Her mother remembered? “Uh, yes. That’s the one.” Did her mum remember that Gabe had teleported in front of her? She hoped not.
“He vanished right in front of my eyes.” Her mum sounded accusing. “I don’t mean he jumped out of the window. I mean he vanished. People don’t vanish like that in this world, Aurora.”
In this world?
“No,” Aurora said, her voice so faint she wondered if her mum would hear it. “He—he isn’t from these parts.” That was putting it mildly.
Her mum tilted her hand so that the rainbows and gold dust glittered, as if they were illuminated by their own tiny sun.
“I spoke to him.” There was a faraway quality in her mother’s voice. “Why did I forget I could do that, Aurora? I’ve missed you so much.”
Aurora’s heart twisted. Her mum was sliding away from her again.
“But I’m right here,” she said. “And I’ll—” Belated comprehension slammed into her and she stared, slack jawed, at her mother. “Mum?” Tentatively she asked the question in her mind. “Can you hear me?”
Her mother’s eyes were glazed. But not as if she was slipping back into her own safe world. She looked as if she was trying to remember . . .
“This is what I was afraid of.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “That you’d find someone the same way I found someone. That one day you’d leave this world the way I left mine. I couldn’t face that, Aurora. I tried to forget, so none of it was real.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” It had never occurred to her that her dad’s greatest fear was also her mother’s. By trying to help her mum regain her memories, she had attempted to do the one thing her mother had feared above all else.
“You were too young. And then . . . it was too late.” Her mother’s fingers closed over the angel wings. “You’re going to leave with him, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re going back to his dimension.”
“Listen to me.” Aurora held her mother’s hands. “He’s from this dimension, mum. Just not from this world. I won’t ever leave you, but I need to be with him. If I can find him again.”
Her mum pulled free and once again gazed at the necklace. Then she straightened her spine, seeming to come to a decision.
“You’ll need this.” She fastened the clasp around Aurora’s neck and then cradled her face between her palms. “You know where to find him, Aurora. The same way you did before.” And then she whispered, mind to mind. “He’s in your heart.”
—
AURORA RETURNED TO the same place Gabe had made his unorthodox entry into her life. Seventeen steps east of the ancient oak, three steps north. Logic told her it made no difference where she was. Gabe would either hear her or not. But her heart knew differently.
This was how she would reach him.
She sank to the ground, heart thudding against her ribs. She wasn’t going into trance. She wasn’t going to enter the astral planes. She was going to try and connect her mind to Gabe’s.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing now?” Mephisto’s infuriated voice suddenly sliced through her concentration and she glared up at him. He towered over her, his midnight wings fully extended like an avenging angel of death. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”
She pushed herself up. Mephisto still loomed over her but at least she didn’t feel quite as vulnerable as she had while sitting
at his feet.
“I wasn’t trying to cross dimensions.” She hated the defensive note in her voice. “I was just trying to contact Gabe.”
Mephisto took one step toward her. Oddly, she didn’t find it threatening despite the wild gleam in his eyes.
“If you love him, E,” he said, “set him free. Don’t let him find out who you really are.”
E?
“He knows who I am.” A trans-dimensional child. An anomaly of nature. “And he doesn’t care about that. If he loves me what’s it got to do with you?”
For a moment the archangel stared at her as though she’d just said something unbelievably stupid. And then a strange expression crossed his face. A combination of disbelief and incredulity. As if her words had suddenly taken on another meaning.
“You really don’t know, do you?” He folded his wings and raked a condemning glance over her. “You’re as in the dark as Gabe.”
An eerie shiver trickled along her spine and she curled her fingers around the necklace, drawing comfort from the ethereal sensation of life that pulsed within. And for the second time she had the strangest sensation that she and Mephisto had confronted each other numerous times in the past.
Had her fragile hope been true? Mephisto had called her E. Did that stand for Eleni?
The earth rumbled and as she staggered a violet streak of lightning appeared and a dozen foul Guardians emerged.
Mephisto gripped her arm and slung her behind him. She gasped and terror snaked through her. What were the Guardians doing here?
“Explain.” Mephisto’s voice was low. Deadly. He did not speak in English. He spoke the language of the ancients.
And she could understand him.
A horrific screeching hiss scraped through her nerves but deep in her brain she could feel dormant synapses reconnecting, primal pathways reactivating. And then the hisses and shrieks formed substance and cohesion and ancient words clawed through her mind.
It belongs to us—
Anomaly of nature—
Outside your jurisdiction—
“No matter what the parentage,” Mephisto said. “You touch the beloved of an archangel and you risk war against all Immortals.”
Shock slammed through her. It was one thing to guess Gabe had fallen in love with her. It was something else to learn that he had elevated her to the status of a beloved. That was why the Guardians had backed away in Kala’s suite.
That was why he had given her his precious archangelic necklace.
Section 188, Sub-Section 52, paragraph nine point three hundred of the—
“Don’t quote the protocols at me.”
We have the right to take all anomalies in order to maintain the integrity of the universe—
Such abominations cannot be allowed to survive—
The anomaly must be given to us for neutralization—
Slowly he turned and looked at her, his wings outstretched, as if protecting her from the Guardians’ sight.
“I don’t believe it. Nothing’s straightforward with you, is it? Not only did you come back but you had to be the one thing outside of an Immortal’s protection.”
Fear stabbed through her. “What do you mean?” And instantly she remembered how she’d torn her arms, left traces of her blood in the Voids when they’d rescued Evalyne. Was that how the Guardians had discovered her dual heritage? “Because of my parentage?”
Mephisto’s eyes turned scarlet with rage. But for once the rage was not directed at her.
“Isn’t it fucking always?”
—
AS GABE PULLED on a fresh shirt in his dressing room a sudden, disconnected image of Aurora flashed through his brain. He froze. That image didn’t come from him. Had Aurora created a telepathic link with him? But even as the thought formed he discarded it. No matter how strong her telepathic ability, no one could forge such a link with an archangel. The link always had to be initiated from their end.
And then he remembered her mother and his conviction crumbled.
He picked up her necklace and slipped it into his shirt pocket and vertigo slammed through him. So sudden, so violent, he staggered against the wall and doubled over, panting as if he had just had the oxygen vacuumed from his lungs.
Primal terror struck him, twisting his gut and squeezing his heart. He tried to analyze the terror but it was formless. For a split second he saw the repellent shadows of the Guardians in his mind’s eye. It didn’t make sense, because his love protected her, yet a certainty ground through him that it wasn’t over and it would never be over. Aurora, his beloved, was in deadly danger.
Chapter Forty-two
ARE you telling me there’s nothing you can do?” Aurora took an involuntary step closer to Mephisto as the Guardians began to fan out around him. “You’re the top archangel and you’re powerless against them?” She didn’t question how she knew Mephisto’s rank. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he somehow get her out of this mess.
“If you were Nephilim, but you’re not.”
If she was Nephilim. An ancient certainty unfurled in her mind. Mephisto would find a way if she was Eleni because all Nephilim were loved and protected, no matter what the personal feelings might be between individuals.
If she was Eleni. Gabe was convinced that Nephilim didn’t possess souls. That it was impossible for them to be reborn. But Mephisto had just as good as told her that, in a previous life, she had been Eleni. She gripped his arm, ignored the glare he arrowed her way, and recalled everything Gabe had told her about the Nephilim. She didn’t know for sure she had once been Eleni. But if that was the only way Mephisto might be persuaded to save her skin in this life, she’d do everything she could to touch his conscience.
“Gabe and I were always soul mates. How can you say I’m not Nephilim, if my soul is Eleni’s? What is Nephilim, Mephisto? Flesh and blood only? Or is it something more, something that you’ve never before encountered?”
He glowered at her. But he didn’t pull away. Didn’t tell her she had no idea what she was talking about. Because her words had touched a nerve, and Mephisto never liked not being in full control of any situation.
“It might work.” He ground the words between his teeth, as if it went against everything he was to agree with something she had said. “If I twist enough of the sub-sections, dig deep enough into the ancient protocols. But there’s no guarantee. And if it’s a case of you or the universe, do yourself a favor and slit your own throat.”
He swung around, wings fully extended, to face the enemy. Aurora hitched in a relieved breath and then, from the corner of her eye, saw a lone Guardian beyond Mephisto’s peripheral vision. And it was pointing a lethal-looking weapon directly at her.
—
GABE TELEPORTED TO the exact place where he’d first met Aurora. In the fleeting second it took for his molecules to reconnect he saw the Guardians surrounding her, saw Mephisto turn his back on her . . . and the weapon aimed at her.
He didn’t think. Just reacted. He teleported in front of her to deflect the beam, There was no longer any option. He had to take her back to his island.
As their gazes collided he saw fear, denial and endless love reflected in her eyes. Then, so swiftly he didn’t even feel it coming, she shoved at him with her mind. A psychic punch, trying to push him out of the path of danger, just as she’d physically tried to protect him from the Guardians on the day they’d met.
Time balanced on the precipice; suspended; forgotten. With her barriers gone, their minds linked together, connecting in a way he had never imagined. Vivid images smashed through his mind, memories saturated with Eleni, her eyes, her laughter, her fragrance. Vibrant visions of their life together. Flashes of memory that were familiar, but they weren’t his.
They were Eleni’s.
And instantaneously the memories he’d lost came flooding back. Last week at the club the psychic core that forever bound him to his beloved had reignited because Eleni was in danger—and this time he could
save her.
Heedless of logic or reason, instinct had taken over, following the primal connection. He’d honed in on the pure essence of Eleni—of Aurora—on the astral planes. And against all laws of physics he’d crashed through them, with only one thought thundering through his being.
To protect her from certain death.
And, consistent with the fucked-up humor of the universe, the second he’d arrived in Ireland he’d suffered instant amnesia.
The knowledge shattered through him in less than a second, and as he wrapped his arms around her a cosmic blast smashed into his back and arrowed through his chest. Uncomprehending, he glanced down, saw Aurora’s necklace glow from inside his shirt pocket. And as blackness descended the glow expanded, connecting to an identical white-blue beacon of light that radiated from the angel wings around Aurora’s throat.
Chapter Forty-three
A RED-HOT psychic flame seared through Gabe’s brain and he shot upward, heart pounding, mouth dry, every bone in his body aching. Two things pierced his blurred vision. One, he was attached to a drip. And two, Mephisto, whose primitive psychic prod had slammed through his brain, was glaring down at him as if he’d like to rip his head from his shoulders.
A drip? He curled uncoordinated fingers around the needle and pulled. It hurt like shit and he collapsed back onto the bed with a muffled curse. But then he realized he was in his own bedroom and Aurora was by his side. She was also hooked up not only to a drip but to various human medical monitors.
He shoved himself up once again and leaned over her, fear spiking through his chest. Why was she unconscious? Had the blast from the Guardians gone right through him and injured her?
“Don’t pull out her needles.” Mephisto sounded rabid. “I need to talk to you.”
“Fuck that.” Gabe began to ease the needle from her arm, only to have Zad appear from nowhere and grip his wrist. The fear punched deeper. “What’s the matter with her? Why couldn’t you heal her?”
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