A Slither of Hope

by Lisa M Basso

  All around us camera phones were flashing, the humans paying more attention to the man that just flew—or glided—across the room. Yeah, that would definitely get them noticed. Them. What was I talking about? I was as much a part of this as they were.

  “It’s her,” the Fallen said to Kade. “Azriel told us, but I wasn’t sure I believed until…”

  Kade lunged at the Fallen before he could finish. The two of them toppled, Kade keeping leverage by staying on top, in the power position he’d taught me.

  The Fallen twisted, freeing a tree-trunk of an arm. His fist cracked on Kade’s jaw, sending him to the drink-littered floor. An echo of “aahs” and “ooohs” carried over the still-playing band. The attendees behind our section of the aisle ignored the concert, and those in the front row of the balcony leaned over to watch the fight.

  With Kade out of his way, the Fallen climbed to his feet, his hands and legs looking so much larger as he started toward me. The crowd whistled and cried “Uh oh”, as if they thought this was some dramatic performance installation hired by the band’s PR team. The storming in his black eyes made me beyond glad that the music was too loud for me to hear whatever he was trying to influence me to do.

  Kade popped up and kicked his foot out, nailing the Fallen behind one of his knees. Before he was fully down Kade grasped the light-haired Fallen’s head in his hands. With Kade’s eyes laser-focused on my own, he twisted the Fallen’s head to the left, then snapped it to the right. The black wisped out of the Fallen’s eyes and he went limp in Kade’s hands.

  No. Oh, God, no. The crowd cheered. I backed up into the railing I desperately needed earlier. Even the bass rocking the building competed with the beat of my heart. He… killed him—Kade killed someone, right in front of me. Weakness, in my knees, my chest, my head. Dead. Just like that, with two moves. And no remorse.

  The blank sheen in the unknown Fallen’s eyes seared into me, the sight of death. So much like the death of Cassie. I’d been there, felt the life leave her body, felt her blood pour over me. But this… this was so much quicker. Instant.

  White lights flashed from the stage, recapturing most of the crowd’s attention. But not mine. Kade had mine. A killer. His face, not quite blank, not quite unfeeling, not quite human.

  My knees finally gave out. I welcomed the cold slosh of ground, the predictability of it, feeling as gross as it looked.

  Climbing up the handrail proved more difficult than I’d hoped, but I managed without falling, and I stumbled toward Kade. He dropped the Fallen—the body. It crumpled in a heap at his feet.

  “We need to go.” I didn’t think he could hear me over the music considering I couldn’t even hear myself, but he nodded, still somewhere between here and somewhere very far away. I reached for his hand, held it there when he didn’t take it. “Kade?” His image swam in my vision. Stupid tears. For the love of everything holy, not now. I blinked them away. Now was the worst time to think about who—or what—the Fallen had once been.

  Kade dropped his chin, staring down at the body. Time seemed to stop. The crowd in front of us froze in mid-cheer, the people leaning over the balcony still trying to decide what they just witnessed. The small section of people behind us were satisfied enough with the show to converse with their neighbors and return to watching the band’s performance. My Fallen angel blinked and scooped up the body, throwing it over his shoulder and heading for the exit doors to the hallway.

  Baffled, I hurried to catch up with him, but he was through the doors too quickly and they closed behind him. Several people stepped in my way; walls of drunk “congratulations” and “great show”. Arms patting my back and shoulders, hands pushing drinks at me, dozens of bodies, all lips and words and smiles. I didn’t have time for this. Don’t you people know those things are dangerous and more are probably on their way? I shoved my way up the aisle. Kade could have been anywhere. He’d been trying to separate from me. He’d taken his chance. I burst through the doors, expecting him to be gone.

  “Time to go,” he said, approaching from the end of the hallway farthest from the front doors. Without the body.

  Despite my curiosity, I didn’t ask what he’d done with it. Really didn’t want to know. It was gone and we needed to get the hell out. That was all I needed to know. Kade never stopped walking for the door. Neither did I.

  “Do you still…feel one?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I guess that was another thing I didn’t want to know.

  We ran through the lobby and out the doors. Darkness painted the sky. The closest things to stars were the yellow glow of streetlights and Kade’s wings shimmering silver by my side. Cars passed in drones, solidifying the constant thriving pulse of Market Street. To our right, a man with a scruffy beard, his frame bulked up with at least six layers of clothes, gripped his shopping cart with one hand and held out a cup in his other. As one, Kade and I looked to the left. Two or three sets of black wings walked together three-quarters of the way down the long block, their backs to us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rayna

  Kade immediately turned toward them and started walking.

  What was he doing? Did he plan to kill them, too?

  I had to do something. This part of Market Street consisted of long, straight blocks. If the Fallen turned to look behind them at any point they would see Kade’s wings reflecting the stars from nearly a mile away. If their sight was better than human, they might be able to see my wings, too. Not to mention they were probably still on the hunt. They wouldn’t be going very far at all.

  Thinking quickly, I pulled the last bill from my pocket—a five—and placed it in the homeless man’s cup. “This is yours if you get us a cab.” The man nodded and pushed his shopping cart toward the street. I ran forward and jerked Kade back, pulling him around the corner of the building we landed on. Taxis weren’t very abundant in San Francisco, and the best place to catch one was at a busy street, like Market Street.

  “I need to take care of them. We can’t have them chasing us,” Kade barked.

  “They won’t.” I hoped. “I have a plan. Just trust me.” I peered around the corner, but from this angle I couldn’t see past the odd curve of the building we hid behind.

  A yellow cab stopped at the corner. The homeless man opened the door and motioned us over. I yanked Kade forward, shoving him inside while keeping an eye down the street. “Get down,” I growled at him, then thanked the homeless man. Before I slipped in, I looked again. Three Fallen ran toward us. I dropped in, slammed the door, and yelled for the driver to go.

  The tires screeched, spinning on the damp streetcar tracks, and off we went. With my hand still levering Kade’s wing down, I peeked out the rear window, watching as the Fallen got farther and farther away.

  “Where to?” the cab driver asked, not sounding even a smudge angry about being yelled at.

  Kade knocked my arm away and sat up, scooting to the edge of his seat. In the rearview mirror I spotted that familiar blackness leech into his eyes. “Just get us across the Golden Gate Bridge as fast as you can.”

  The driver nodded.

  I sat up straighter in my seat. “I don’t want to leave town.”

  “Right now you don’t have a choice. We have to put as much distance between us and them as we can.”

  I wouldn’t argue with him. Not this time. If leaving town right now would stop him from killing more of his own kind, I was all for it. Murder, even of a Fallen, was still murder. They had been angels once too, put on the Earth to help humans. Maybe not all of them had been as strong as Kade, or as driven to stay off Lucifer’s radar. Did that mean their lives were worth nothing?

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that Fallen’s neck snapping, imagining Kade’s face there between the hands of an enemy.

  I shuddered.

  “You cold?”

  I shook my head.

  He nodded, understanding, the way he usually did. Interesting, how he understood humans so well when Cam knew next to not
hing about our emotions. The difference between living among them for so many years and just visiting, I had to assume.

  “You killed him.” I hadn’t intended to say it, but the words were rotating in my head along with the accompanying gruesome images.

  He fished in my jacket pocket and pulled out a few napkins. Kade had his wings tucked as far away as he could. The lights outside the cab passed quickly, only allowing brief glances as he wiped his hands. We finally stopped at a red light and I noticed he was rubbing blood off his hands. When he was done, he wiped mine too. It must have transferred when he grabbed my hand back at the venue. I numbly let him.

  When he snapped that Fallen’s neck, his hands had been clean. That I remembered clear enough. What had happened when I lost sight of him? “Were there more when we got separated?” A blockbuster-style action scene played over in my head. There had to be more, otherwise where did the blood come from?

  “No. Not that I saw, at least. Breaking a Fallen’s neck won’t kill them. I had to drag him around the corner to finish him off.” He avoided looking at his hands again, or at me. No, Kade kept his eyes trained on the road, as if he were the one driving. “In the future, if we ever get backed into a situation like that again, there are only two ways to kill a Fallen. One is by removing the head completely from the spine. The other is a knife through the heart.”

  If he thought I’d ever be capable of plunging a dagger through the heart of anyone, he didn’t know me very well at all. “There’s already been enough death.”

  “And since Elyon is in town,” he added, ignoring me, “you’ll need to know how to kill an angel, too. They can only be taken down by full decapitation. Their spines are stronger than steel. It isn’t an easy task, but it is possible. And before you go getting all righteous on me, just remember, angel or Fallen, they won’t hesitate. If their orders are to bring you to Hell or kill you, that’s what they’ll do. And you know they aren’t above using anyone you know or love to get to you. Don’t ever forget that.” He glanced at the cab driver, whose hands were shaking on the wheel, and whispered, “Oh, and by the way, you won’t remember where you’ve gone or what you’ve heard in here.”

  Blind acceptance crossed the driver’s face. His eyes glossed over, but he kept driving.

  Kade’s words were still barreling into me, finding new puncture wounds to invade and terrify. I thought about asking which method he’d chosen to eliminate the Fallen, heart or head, but quickly realized I didn’t want to know. It killed a little piece of me inside, but he was right. Az hadn’t waited before killing my classmates, threatening my family, or going after Lee. “I get that, but wasn’t it you that told me when you first started teaching me defensive maneuvers that there’s a time to fight and a time to run?”

  He grunted his acceptance. “It was quick thinking, I’ll give you that, but running won’t work forever.”

  “If we can avoid it, how about no more death?”

  Kade shook his head almost imperceptibly. “There’s going to be a lot more death on the way. You haven’t seen what the Fallen army can really do.”

  Speaking of what people can do. Now might be the time to spill the beans about that weird explosion thing. “I—” My voice croaked. I tried to clear it without tasting an acrid tinge of bile, and failed. “Something else happened today. Something you need to know about.” The story came out of my mouth slowly, building up to the explosion that knocked out the guy that grabbed me.

  When I was done Kade said nothing for a long time—which was pretty damn rare for him. Until we turned onto Lombard street. “I don’t feel them anymore.”

  “Good, then we can go home.”

  He looked at me with a strange cursory glint in his eye.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That’s the first time you called it home.”

  A hot blush flooded into my freezing cheeks. “Well, it’s starting to feel that way.”

  “I hate to ruin the moment, but we can’t yet. We have to be careful. And… I need to talk to Cam.”

  My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “Say that again?”

  “Call him.”

  I pulled out my burner phone, tapping my fingers against the sides instead of the numbered buttons. “I don’t know, Kade. Every time you and Cam get together it doesn’t really end well.”

  The stone, I-won’t-be-changing-my-mind-on-this-one face told me there wasn’t room for negotiation.

  Shaking my head, I dialed the number Cam had given me. The instant he picked up, Kade snatched the phone from my hand.

  “Cam, we need to meet. We were chased by Fallen and one tried to attack us. In public. An entire crowd of people saw him fly.”

  Cam spoke on the other line, but his mumbles were all I could hear.

  Kade’s eyes narrowed. “We’re heading to Muir Woods. Meet us there as soon as you can.” He clicked the “end” key and dropped the phone into my waiting hand.

  “Do me a favor and don’t mention anything about Elyon. I want to see if he’ll bring it up or hide it from me. And about your…” He exhaled, a different kind of sigh, one that sounded heavy and complex. “…wing explosion, I wouldn’t tell anyone else about that until we find out what it is and what it does.”

  I nodded, agreeing to both bait the trap for Cam and to keep my secret, not feeling good about either. But I had my own hopes for the meeting with Cam. After literally staring death in the face tonight, I realized I was sick of everything in my life being up in the air, floating just out of reach. Tonight, one way or another, that had to change. To start, I’d find out everything Cam knew about Elyon. Whatever I couldn’t get from him, I’d read up on, find out on my own. The cherry on top would be to finally try to understand what I felt for Cam, and how that factored into what I was starting to feel for Kade.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rayna

  The air inside the locked gate of Muir Woods wasn’t just cold, it was frost on my skin and ice boring through my bones. By the time Cam arrived I could barely feel my face, fingers, or toes. Watching him swoop in on those white wings with the moonlight glinting off them in the clearing of the trees was a sight to be sure. A sight that did nothing for me, sure, but a sight nonetheless.

  “Took you long enough,” Kade called out before Cam’s feet touched down on the muddy walking path Kade and I had been sloshing around in for nearly an hour.

  “Some of us have purposes here and can’t just pick up whenever we want to.” He breezed by Kade toward me. “Rayna, are you okay?”

  “Cold as hell, but fine.”

  “The attack.” Cam looked from me to Kade. “What happened?”

  “It started with one. We got away. Saw more. Tried to hide. One found us. He flew for everyone to see. His sights were set on Ray. I snapped his neck. End of story.” Kade’s simplicity left a lot to be desired in the storytelling department.

  “You snapped his neck?” Cam asked, brows raised. “So you didn’t finish the job.”

  “I killed one of my own, finished him with a knife. You’d better hope you never have to learn what that feels like, brother.” The last word was saturated with sickness, ending with a bitter finish.

  “So you knew him, the one you…”

  “No.” The usual confidence in Kade’s voice was missing. “But that’s not the point.”

  Cam’s hand absently rubbed the back of my jacket—technically Kade’s jacket since he’d draped it over mine not long after we soared in.

  From the slight twitch in Kade’s upper lip, I think it was safe to say he wasn’t fond of this. “Your turn,” Kade fired back at Cam.

  Cam’s hand dropped away from me and he spun on Kade. “You called me here. What is it you want me to say?”

  “That’s exactly what I thought you’d say. C’mon, Ray.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I planted my feet despite the sloshing, sucking sound. “We came here for a reason. So talk.”

  Cam and Kade exchanged glances. Eventually, Ka
de admitted, “There were more Fallen outside. A group of them.”

  “There are more angels, too.”

  I watched Kade’s face, half shrouded in darkness. This was what he was waiting for: whether he could truly trust Cam or not. He held his tongue and waited, giving Cam ample time to admit just who was among the newest earthbound angels. “How many?”

  “I’m…not sure.” Kade’s eyes narrowed at Cam’s answer, but Cam never would have seen it since he’d turned back to me. “Are you sure you’re okay?” The heat of his eyes barreled down on me, making me squirm almost as much as Kade’s did, because he was watching, too. Like a freaking hawk.

  “I’m fine.” My voice was edged like a sword. The angels and Fallen were descending on San Francisco and these two still couldn’t get passed their stupid growing pains toward each other.

  “There aren’t just angels,” Cam finally admitted, looking over his shoulder at Kade. “A Seraphim is here, too.”

  The muscles around Kade’s eyes twitched. “Who?”

  Cam swallowed and tensed his jaw. “Elyon.”

  To his credit, Kade kept his mask in place, not giving anything away. Silence, thick and biting, wedged between them before Kade said, “It isn’t safe for her in the city.”

  “What?” I interjected.

  “No,” Cam and I answered at the same time.

  Kade clapped his hand on Cam’s shoulder and spun him around. I stepped to the side to avoid being knocked over by his wings. “Why wouldn’t you want her away from Elyon and properly protected? What game are you playing?”

  Cam shucked Kade’s grip off his shoulder and shoved Kade back a good foot, sending a particularly large spray of mud onto the bottom of his jeans. “The only game I’m playing is strategy. If Ray disappears, Elyon will get suspicious. He knows she and I are close now. His orders were to keep an eye on her, to keep her close.”

  “Use your head. Why do think he wants her close?”