Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One

by Aimee Agresti

“You can’t. Here’s the problem: there’s a small window when you’re able to do this. You can’t go after them until they come after you first.”

  “Who made up that rule?” I shot back, angry.

  “No one made it up, it’s just how it works. It’s like the sky being blue. You could go right now and stick a knife in the hearts of every one of those photos and nothing would happen.”

  “Okay, so after I get attacked or whatever, then I slice these photos, but what about mine or Lance’s or Dante’s? What if someone does the same thing to ours?”

  “Unless they’ve sold their souls to us, they—and you—can still only be killed the old-fashioned way.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring.”

  “All three of you will get tougher to kill as your powers set in, but we don’t really know how strong you are yet. Do you?”

  I didn’t want to give anything away, so I simply said, noncommittally, “I’m not sure,” which was true.

  “Well, you’ll find out soon enough, I’m afraid,” he said, sincerely sorry.

  “So then all these people die?” I didn’t want this on me. I didn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of anyone, no matter what monsters they were.

  “They were dead the minute they sold their souls. When you kill members of the Outfit or one of . . . us.” He stumbled on the us. “We don’t die, per se, we just get turned over to the underworld. Everyone here is part of the upper class of the underworld—that’s why we’re allowed to be here at all, in this transition realm of Metamorfosi. It’s a privilege. But if we fail here and are ‘killed’ then we get banished to the underworld and must do our time moving through the circles of punishment below. Then the Prince—you know the Prince? He is who you think he is—”

  “I know.”

  “He determines whether we get another chance to continue our work up here.”

  He stopped for a moment. I had thought I heard my name being called out, but figured I had to be imagining things. But then the scratch of sneakers against the boards of the passageway made us both jump, and I couldn’t ignore the sound of someone else breathing the same stale air.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  He glanced at his watch: “Five after ten, why?”

  I rose to my feet. “Lance,” I whispered.

  “Will he just go away?” Lucian asked.

  “No, and I won’t let him,” I whispered back. “Give me a minute.”

  I crept back through the darkness to where the ladder emptied out.

  “Lance? It’s me,” I called out. In what little light filtered all the way down from my room, I could see his form getting nearer. And then it halted.

  “Haven?” The beam of a flashlight zapped in my direction.

  “Hi,” I said, squinting into the musty air.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  He started moving again, flashlight still on, dangling from his wrist now. “I knocked and there was no answer, so I—” He reached the last plank and I gave him space. “I thought I’d better come looking. You know your door was unlocked?”

  “Sorry!” Lucian called out from the opposite end of our room in near darkness. “My fault.”

  The flashlight shined at me again, like an interrogation lamp.

  “Are you okay?” Lance mouthed the words this time, whispering with practically no sound at all, his eyes registering the shock.

  “I’m fine,” I whispered back calmly.

  “Should I ask you hostage questions?”

  “No, I’m good. Promise. But maybe a rain check for tonight?” I kept my voice as soft as possible. “I’m doing recon.”

  He looked skeptical, straightening his glasses. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

  “I’m serious,” I said, a little bit miffed. He eased up.

  “You’re sure everything’s okay?”

  “I swear.”

  “Come by afterward, just so I know, okay? I don’t care how late it is. Not like I’m sleeping much these days anyway, you know?”

  “I will, promise. See you later?”

  He nodded back and with one last look in Lucian’s direction, began his ascent.

  Lucian was on his feet, pulling something from his jacket pocket when I got back. He looked up and tossed his jacket back on the ground, holding the small item toward me.

  “Sorry, I forgot I wanted to get rid of this. I took it back when I was upstairs.” In his hand was that single black flower that had never shown any sign of withering since he gave it to me in February. “It’s poison,” he said sheepishly, tossing it in one easy motion out into the tunnel.

  “I know.”

  “You never got rid of it though?”

  “I figured whatever it was, it wasn’t working.”

  “Yeah, your immunity set in earlier than anyone expected.” He gestured back toward where Lance and I had been talking. “He’s a good guy, a lot like you.”

  “I know.” And I did. He felt like a part of me.

  “I asked him today, you know, about joining the Outfit.” He settled back down, lounging on the floor now. I returned to my spot on his jacket.

  “What did he say?” I asked, though I didn’t need to.

  “What do you think? He thanked me and said he would think about it and get back to me, but he didn’t really mean it. He’s smart; he’s trying to buy himself time.”

  Lucian and I sat there talking until nearly dawn, barely noticing as the quiet hours passed. It was as if the clock had stopped and the night had gone elastic, stretching to accommodate however much time we needed for me to learn everything I possibly could.

  True to his word, Lucian answered all my questions. And I had many. How had we ended up here in the first place? One of them, a representative of the underworld, sat on the state’s Board of Education. Each county had a program like this, and we had been recruited first because we had something that they wanted, that could be used for their purposes—all three of us had powers on the verge of taking shape. What’s this revolution that they’re recruiting for? It’s a movement underground to gain a foothold here. They wanted to take over, be free to create chaos—that’s when they’re at their most joyous and exalted. Death, destruction, war, madness, they thirsted for it, that’s all they wanted. “Now that I’m starting to feel again,” he said, “I can see how this must sound, but you get rewired when you become part of the underworld, and the things that make you happy aren’t things you would ever have expected. You crave these things, you need them.”

  He was impressed that I had witnessed an induction. He did explain a few mysteries: the tattoo was infused with the blood of the Prince, and it corrupted the bodies of the Outfit and changed them to devils from within. The necklaces and cuffs were given later after members had established themselves and signified greater responsibility while also giving Aurelia and the Prince greater control over the wearers, the ability to track them wherever they roamed and also maim them when necessary. “These precautions are necessary when our members are in the realm of Metamorfosi but not when they’re returned to us below.”

  “Then what happened with Calliope?”

  “She escaped at exactly the moment when her necklace lost its hold over her, when she was supposed to return to the underworld. But she ran. That had never happened, hard as it is to believe. The necklace generally keeps a balance regulating the flow of the devil’s blood from her tattoo, keeping it from destroying her instantly. But when Beckett cut that off, then she withered fast. And she knew that would happen—she must have planned to die on the front steps of the hotel like that. To send a message.” He shook his head, like he really did mourn her loss. “Beware of Beckett. He’s gunning for my job now and I suspect it will be his . . .” He trailed off.

  I didn’t need him to finish that sentence. I understood that with each word he was sealing his own fate more securely. My greatest confusion was how a soul was actually bought and sold. He chuckled wh
en I asked, which I took to mean he was making fun of my naiveté—it must be some highly sordid or prurient act, things I knew precious little about.

  “I don’t really appreciate the laughter,” I said, scowling.

  “No, it’s only because it’s so much easier than anyone would ever imagine. No two are acquired the same way, but it can honestly be set in motion simply with a verbal agreement.”

  “Oh,” I said, embarrassed now.

  “Yeah, so you’re the one who needs to get their mind out of the gutter,” he joked. “It just requires the expression of a deep wish, whatever it is, and then the willingness to give up everything in order to have it. It’s that simple. We can’t seize a soul by force. A person has to give it willingly. You must go of your own volition to the dark side. And once you do, once you say you would do anything, give anything for something to come true, it’s mostly done. There’s a process called coding that proves to us the soul is ready to be taken over and then it’s all sealed with the blood and the tattoo. Then you’re fully controlled.

  “No two are seized the same way, each is a new deal. Now, there are ways that we entice. As you found, judging from your supplies upstairs,” he said, his voice heavy with regret, “all the food and drink is infused with certain enhancers to impair judgment. Even the flowers in the lobby have powers to help influence and break down defenses. And”—he looked away now—“I would be lying if I said there wasn’t, at times, some sort of show of . . . affection that went along with these proceedings. But that’s not all the time and when it is, it’s more just added color, not any requirement necessary for the transaction of the sale.”

  “So I wasn’t so off base after all,” I said coldly.

  “But nothing is final until they sign their contracts. That seals their fate.”

  “Well, isn’t that just so . . . civilized.”

  He could sense my patience waning again and the anger creeping back in, I could just tell. And it’s true, I felt stuck in this cycle, wanting to hear all of this and yet unable to listen to it without these emotions flaring up, much as I tried to bat them down.

  “I have a question for you,” he said soothingly, breaking me out of my simmering fury. “Do you know what you are?”

  “I think I might. But it seems too unbelievable.”

  “It’s true, Haven.” He leaned in, watching my eyes, in the hazy light. “You are still learning, but you are an angel, in every sense of the word.” He was quiet for a moment. When spoken out loud, those words had such certainty to them. In my head, they made no sense at all, but to have this said to me now, I could accept it. I could take it in as the truth, as the missing piece that would unite all the disparate bits of my life that hadn’t made sense. “That’s what those markings mean on your back. And then the one above your heart too.”

  “How do you know about those?” I knew that one had been visible in that photo of me, but I thought the ones on my back had been covered the whole time I’d been here.

  “I know, because I had them too.” It would’ve been enough to just hear that we shared this, but his use of past tense struck me and he must’ve read it on my face. “A few years ago, I was just like you. I was marked for good, and I could have gone that way but I wasn’t strong enough. Aurelia got me. So here I am. When you make the choices I’ve made, those markings go away. Everything that’s the least bit imperfect on the outside goes away, but inside, you just rot, you begin to resemble those photos. Aurelia had the markings too, you know.”

  “She told me that.” So it had been true.

  “That’s why we rose through the ranks. When you have those you are marked for power, to lead. You’re far beyond the level of the Outfit. But you determine whether you become angel or devil. The Prince got to Aurelia years and years ago. And then she came for me. Two years ago, I was graduating high school in Des Moines,” he said, clearly amazed at all that had gone on since that time.

  “So what happened?”

  “I just fell into this. I was kind of a prodigy, I guess. I graduated early and by the time I did, I was already taking a bunch of classes at the university. With AP credits and stuff, I entered college with the status of a midyear junior.”

  “Whoa.”

  “It’s not as great as it sounds. In high school people didn’t really get me. I kept to myself. In college it was already starting out to be the same. Just me in the library. Speaking of the library, most of those books in the one here are mine.” My eyes bulged at this; he kept going. “So, Aurelia showed up and—” He stopped. “You sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s good for me to hear.” I needed the whole story, no matter how much I would hate hearing it.

  “So she, of course, was assigned to target me. I met her at a party, one of the very few I attended. I had been there twenty minutes, talking to no one and—”

  “How does that happen?” I had to interrupt; he had lost me. “How does someone like you walk into a party and not have anyone to talk to?”

  “That’s the whole thing. It wasn’t this version of me. It was me without the fancy clothes and the confidence and the reputation. All of that stripped away.”

  “Go on.” It was still a stretch to imagine, but I tried.

  “So, she went after me, and that was certainly something new for me, and I got swept up. She seemed to have this inside track on how I could be this awesome and powerful person and build this whole scene here. There was just, you know, this little catch. But by that time, it was too late—I had already tasted enough of this exciting new life to get addicted to the power and the instant gratification of it all. I had felt invisible before. If you go the dark way as Aurelia and I did, you quickly fade away from your former life. You get a new name, a new identity.”

  “But don’t people wonder where you are? Don’t they try to find you?”

  “The groundwork is set long before the induction happens, the gradual pulling away from family. When possible, they prefer to recruit those who might be going off to college or are already on their own. The ultimate goal is to get the city’s richest and most powerful sucked in, but for now, they’re just building numbers any way they can. Often, those remaining behind are led to believe that their loved ones died. But the ‘inductees’ never know any of that—by then they’re too wrapped up in their new lives.”

  “So they’re brainwashed.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Like in a cult.”

  “More or less. That’s how it is for the masses—and over time they just disappear into this new life and are never found. For those of us who are marked—Aurelia, me, Etan—we’re stronger and we aren’t, of course, brainwashed; we don’t turn into drones. We remember where we came from, but for the most part, we didn’t necessarily have much that we were leaving behind.”

  “But that man, Neil, found Aurelia?”

  “He spent decades looking. We still don’t know how he tracked her down.”

  “Decades?”

  “They were together when they were sixteen, seventeen, around there. Some small town, middle of nowhere out west. Aurelia should be in her late forties now,” he explained. I permitted myself a tiny smile that he noticed. “What?”

  “Well, I mean, so she’s like a cougar going after you, sort of.”

  He grinned back at me. “I suppose you’re right; never thought of it that way.”

  For a few silent seconds, I ran through everything he had told me, turning it over and over but still drowning in it. “So what am I supposed to do? Isn’t it kind of impossible for me, just me, to just—” I couldn’t quite say “kill them all” but he knew.

  “You know, you’re stronger than any of them, and stronger than we were. And I can tell you the night we knew: it was the opening, when the lights went out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That moment was a clash of good and evil. That was when your powers first began to take shape and that was like an involuntary warning sign going
out. Whenever someone like you comes up against someone like us, there can be cataclysmic effects.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Why are you telling me all of this, really?” I had to ask again. I had begun our night like this and now I imagined the sun was coming up. We were both lounging, reclining on the floor—which I was too bone-tired to find uncomfortable at this point—as though lying on the grass under a starry sky. It shouldn’t have seemed so peaceful here, but it did. It felt oddly, refreshingly safe. Lucian had long since shed his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and rolled up his sleeves. My eyes had grown weary and I propped my head up on my arm.

  “I want you to win,” he said as he had before. Then he added, with finality, “It’s too late to save myself.”

  This time though, I wasn’t letting him off so easily. “Maybe it’s not. Why can’t you just break free or something?” I grabbed his hand, pushing up his sleeve. “You don’t have one of those cuffs. It’s not like Calliope. You could go.”

  “It’s much more complicated. I don’t have a cuff because I’m bound by more than that. For now, all I can do is help you.”

  “But what will happen to you?”

  He breathed a long sigh. “When the time comes, you’ll have to banish me, Haven. There’s a chance I’ll come back here at some point, but I don’t want this kind of life anymore.”

  “There must be a way to run away, reject it all, to repent.”

  “It would require me fighting against them both, Aurelia and the Prince, and who knows how many others. I don’t think I can survive it. When you’re of the ruling class like me and you try to get out, it’s a whole other level of battle. I don’t think I could do it right now.”

  “I’ll help you. You can. We can get you out.”

  “That’s what I love about you,” he said sweetly, sincerely, but in a flat tone to end this debate. “You think any of this is possible. You can’t worry about me. Save yourself. That’s what’s most important. I just wish I’d met you before I was so . . . so chained to all of this.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what else I could say. We were silent for quite some time. I lay on my back, staring up at the crumbling brick ceiling, sorting through all of what he had told me, letting it settle. Finally he spoke again: “Do you think you could ever truly forgive me? Could you ever look at me again the way you did before you knew all of what I’ve done? All the souls I’ve condemned to the underworld?”