“Don’t get fresh now, mister,” Rorie joked, sputtering with a choked voice. “Not on the first date.”
I shook my head slightly. “Not now, Rorie.”
I heard a commotion behind me. “What’s going o—” Tabby’s voice died out as she arrived and pushed her way through the angels. I heard her sharp intake of breath as she assessed the situation.
“Oh. Oh, Hope. No, no. You can’t do this.”
“Shhhh,” I whispered. “It’s the only way. Take me, Lucas. You know I’m the one you want. It’s got to be me if you’re going to end the Prophecy. If you’re going to hurt Michael, it can’t be Rorie. It’s got to be me.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“Do you have a choice? To get what you want, you’re going to have to. Fair exchange. My life for hers. Just let her go to Tabby. Tabby, come sit on the edge of the mattress.”
Tabby sidled up next to me. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and nodded, urging her on. Her hands shook as she held them out wide for Lucas to see she was unarmed and cleared her throat.
“Whenever you’re ready, Lucas.”
Rorie began thrashing wildly, kicking blindly at Tabby and bucking away from Lucas’s body.
“No! Hope, you can’t make me. I don’t want you to! Michael, please! Don’t let her do this, Michael! I’m begging you, please!”
Behind me, I could hear Raph make an angry sound deep in his throat. “Aren’t you going to stop this? Put an end to this, Michael. We could take him if we charged now! Why aren’t you giving the order?” he challenged.
I looked over my shoulder at Michael, hoping that he understood what I was trying to do. His face was an unnatural shade of gray, his lips twisted tight with fear. I felt a pang, knowing how much he loved Rorie. Impulsively, he reached out and made as if to rush past me, but he drew himself up short, closing his eyes and forcing himself to take one breath, two.
When he opened his eyes, he answered Raph with a preternatural calmness. “It’s Hope’s command. Until she gives the word, we stand down. It’s got to be her way.”
Raph swore in frustration.
“Thank you,” I whispered, knowing just how difficult this was for Michael. But I could see no choice. I turned back to the hostage scene before me.
“Just give her over to Tabby, Lucas. Nice and easy.”
“You first,” he countered, struggling to contain Rorie as she fought against him. “You come to me first. Turn around and slide back here so I can hold on to you. Then I’ll give up your sister.”
It was surreal. I reflected briefly at the strangeness of the situation—me, negotiating with a prince of the Fallen Angels! But I did as he asked, sidling back to him, keeping my eyes trained on the tense faces of the angels, muscles tensed, their hands poised on the hilts of their swords, until I felt the cold press of sharp metal in my own back.
“Take her,” Lucas said brusquely, shoving Rorie away from his body to wrap his other arm around me. “Take what’s left of her, anyway.”
One last cry, torn from Rorie’s lips, broke the silence as Tabby gathered her into her arms, cooing and rocking her to soothe her tiny, broken body. Rorie, finally free from the need to be strong, dissolved into a heap of tears. My own tired frame sagged with relief. She was safe. At least for now, she was safe.
“You made a bad trade. She won’t live for long,” Lucas taunted.
I let his barb fly past. He couldn’t hurt me. Not anymore.
“Tabby will keep her safe.”
“Your friend can’t protect her from me. After you’re dead, I will just hunt her down all over again.”
“Nobody’s going to die here, unless it’s you. I’m going to unleash a can of Southern minister whoop-ass on you if you don’t shut your damn mouth,” Tabby sniped, placing a protective hand over Rorie’s ears as if shielding her from the conversation. “This child has been through enough without having to listen to you and your threats.”
“You don’t understand,” Lucas sneered. I could feel his hot breath on my neck as he pulled me tightly against his armor, could feel the heat that suffused his skin—the fire of God, pulsing through his veins—and had to stifle the urge to vomit. It was the same golden warmth that surged through Michael’s body, familiar and foreign at the same time.
I shook my head and reminded myself where the cold-hearted viciousness that permeated Lucas came from.
“Fear.” I whispered it so softly, I thought nobody heard me. But Lucas’s body stiffened.
“What did you say?”
I cleared my throat, conscious of the sharp knife blade against my skin.
“I said fear. Behind anger is fear. The reason you hate me so much—hate all of humanity—is you are afraid of us. You can’t understand how something so flawed can be so loved by God, can you? And that frightens you. Especially you, whose whole role in Heaven was premised on order and logic.”
He tightened his hold on me and a jolt of pain raced up my arm. “I’m not afraid of you. We’ll wipe you off the face of the earth, eventually.”
“Like a bug,” I breathed. “Like a dirty cockroach or a snake. Because you’re afraid. ‘Fear of man will prove to be a snare; but whoever trusts in the Lord will be safe.’”
As I spoke, I moved my hand over his fingers and loosened his grip so that I could turn and face him.
He didn’t stop me.
I stared into his black eyes. The pupils were shrinking, the wild whites of his eyes betraying his desperation. I couldn’t penetrate his thoughts, but the tension around his eyes seemed to be softening. His pain was lessening; every extra moment he let me speak, every time he let my words touch his heart, he was moving closer to God. I plowed on, confident I was on the right path.
“Or maybe it’s not mankind that you’re afraid of. Maybe it’s yourself. Maybe you’re afraid that after all this time, after all the things you’ve done, God couldn’t possibly forgive you. And you couldn’t stand that rejection, could you? Not again. Not after all you’ve been through.”
I was barely whispering now, focusing all of my attention on his face. Tiny beads of sweat had broken out on his brow; his breath was coming in heavy, labored bursts now. But he wasn’t moving. Only the slightest twitch of his eye muscles and his fingers fidgeting on the handle of the knife he still pointed at my chest gave away that he was even listening to me.
“But don’t you see, Lucas? Those things you did—they don’t take away the fire of God within you. I can still feel it. I can.” Impulsively, I reached out and placed my hand gently on his cheek. He pulled away, repulsed and confused. Undeterred, I pressed on.
“You feel it too, don’t you? God’s fire is still in you. Nothing will extinguish it, Lucas—nothing. ‘Let all bitterness, wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another …’”
His lips twisted with nervous sarcasm. “Really. You need to find more interesting reading. Ephesians is so 60 AD.”
I gulped hard, momentarily nonplussed by Lucas’s attempt at humor, before continuing.
“All those things you did? You did them out of anger and out of fear. And from the depths of pain. I can see that now. But those actions aren’t you.”
He sat transfixed, now, my words washing over him.
“Someone once asked me if I thought humans were the only ones of God’s children to deserve forgiveness.” I darted a look over my shoulder to where the angels watched, wondering if they would recognize the words as belonging to their missing comrade, Gabrielle. I turned back to Lucas and let my hands fall in front of me in my lap. “I didn’t know how to answer then. But I do now. I understand, Lucas. And I still see the light of God within you. I can see it and I can feel it.
“I forgive you.”
Lucas froze, his eyes full of shock, as I heard the angels behind me give a collective gasp.
As I said the words, my
heart suddenly felt light, and I realized with a start that I truly meant it.
“I forgive you,” I repeated with more conviction. “It doesn’t have to be this way for you anymore, Lucas. You have a choice.
“I forgive you,” I repeated, looking into Lucas’s eyes, willing him to believe me.
He dropped the knife, his throat constricting over a choked sob.
“You can’t forgive me,” he whispered. “It’s not possible.”
I nodded, a fleeting smile on my lips. “But I do.”
He clutched at his face, disbelieving.
“But … everything I have done.” He looked over at Rorie, her broken body laid across Tabby’s lap like a strange pietà, and choked back a strangled cry.
“It was wrong, but I understand why you did it. You couldn’t help it. And I forgive you.”
I sat back on my heels, watching him carefully as, hands shaking, he struggled away from Rorie. “No, no, no,” he muttered to himself, scrambling back to the edge of the mattress, trying to get her as far away from him now as he could—this tiny girl now a threat as his worldview crumbled at its very foundations. I fought back the urge to move to her as she slumped, poised on the edge of consciousness, in Tabby’s lap. Instead, I kept my focus on Lucas as he wrestled with his conscience, shaking his head and pulling at his hair as if wishing away my words.
He lifted his face, wet with tears, a mask of hate and confusion, and looked at me. The dark shadows under his eyes, the way the tendons in his neck stood out, ropey and twisted, the errant twitching of the muscles under his eye—I looked at him full in the face and gave a start of recognition. It was the same hunted look Michael had borne as we’d raced across Europe—a face etched in pain and anguish.
“You forgive me?”
I nodded again. “I look at you, and I see Michael,” I added simply, knowing that I could never begin to describe the torrent of emotions that lay behind my explanation.
He wept, great, silent sobs that wracked his entire body, his jet wings shaking from his attempt at restraint. I looked away, shy now of intruding upon this moment, wanting him to have his privacy as he wrestled with the decision before him, keeping track of his progress through the tremors of the mattress on which we both sat. When the shaking stopped, I raised my eyes. His face was streaked with tears, but there was a new light in his eyes. He stared, wonderingly, at nothing at all. And as I watched, a funny, nearly stunned look crept across his face. The tense wrinkles at the corners of his eyes seemed to loosen just a little, and his eyes grew wide.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The pain,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “It’s stopped.”
He folded over into himself, chuckling low and then collapsing into outright laughter—laughter of disbelief, laughter of irony, laughter—at long last—of sweet release. His body began to twinkle, its edges blurring, this time no sulfur emanating from it as he shifted and whirled.
“A daughter of Eve, full of forgiveness,” he said wonderingly as his form collapsed into a pulsing whorl of pixelated light. His disembodied voice called out from deep inside the light. “She forgives me! After all I have done, after the horrors to which I have subjected her, she forgives. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all. Who am I, then, to reject God’s gift?”
The light grew and grew, swirling ever faster, the room growing as bright as the sun before the entire thing collapsed in upon itself. We stared, dumbfounded, at the empty space he’d left behind.
“He’s gone home,” Enoch whispered from behind me.
A gilded silver feather wafted down to land gently upon the soiled ticking of the mattress—all that was left of the Lucas who had hunted and haunted me for nearly all my life.
I stared at it, suddenly exhausted. I remembered what Enoch had said to me that day in my office: until the highest among the Fallen had accepted God’s grace, the Prophecy would be unfulfilled.
“Is this what you meant, Enoch?” I whispered, barely able to speak.
“Yes,” he responded, letting the gravity of what we’d just witnessed settle in, wrapping itself around our numbed emotions.
“But they won’t all accept it, will they? Even now, the Fallen will resist. Some of them, at least. Evil will never leave the world, will it?”
He nodded. “I am afraid that is true.”
Feeling as if my limbs were made of lead, I settled down on the mattress, holding my head. But I couldn’t afford to rest yet. Wearily, I forced myself to rise and look to Rorie.
She’d fought her way out of Tabby’s arms, overwhelmed by fatigue and confusion. My sister, once so full of life, slumped before me like an empty husk.
“No.” The single word was ripped from my throat, unbidden. I couldn’t accept that this was she. This hollowed-out shell was not my sister.
“Raph.” I turned, beseeching him. “Can you … ?”
He strode over to my side, folding his wings behind him as he kneeled and wiped the corner of his eye. “It would be an honor.”
I placed a hand on his arm. “In Istanbul, in that alley, you told me that the girl we found there could not be healed. That she didn’t want to be.” I let my unspoken question linger between us. He looked at me solemnly.
“I can heal her physical wounds, Hope. But the emotional ones … the only thing I can offer is to make her forget.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Do it.”
He bent down over her. Fearful, she shrank back against the wall, pulling Macey’s lifeless body even tighter against her own broken body.
“Shhh,” Raph soothed, prying her fingers away from Macey. “We’ll take care of Macey, sweetheart. But first let me help you.”
Carefully, he lifted Macey’s body away and held it to the side. Without speaking, Michael took her, cradling her in his arms.
“Take her outside,” Raph directed. “For this to work, Rorie can’t see her again.”
I watched as Michael bore her out of the room, a bloody sheet draped over her. Such a waste, I thought, tears welling up again.
I turned back to Rorie. Raph was placing hands on her, just as once he’d done for me, bringing the seams of all her broken places together again through his angelic powers of healing. I watched, relieved, as the bruises faded; the scabs melted into perfect, smooth skin; the red welts and swelling shrank back into themselves, as if nothing had ever happened.
“There,” I whispered, pointing to the ugly, oozing brand on her arm. My fingers trailed against the Mark on my own neck. As much of it was a part of me now, I remembered all those years as a child, when the Mark was a cipher, a reminder of the past I could not remember, a sinister thing that claimed me, for what I knew not: a brand that separated me from everyone else.
“Get rid of it,” I said.
And so Raph did, the trafficker’s claim upon Rorie’s body melting into her skin, smoothed over like new. Rorie barely registered any of it, except to let a soft sigh of relief escape her lips as her body basked in the first freedom from pain she’d likely had in at least a week.
“Close your eyes, Rorie,” Raph whispered.
She let them flutter closed, her long brown eyelashes resting against her cheek. Gently, he placed his hands on her head and began muttering under his breath.
I recognized his words as prayer, and silently joined him, wishing fervently that this would work, that my sister—my sister, who had been put in such danger because of me—would find peace and comfort under Raph’s healing touch.
“Hope, are you sure about this?” Tabby whispered urgently, pulling at my shoulder. “Are you sure this is what you want for her?”
I pushed away her hand. “Of course it is,” I answered brusquely. “I don’t want her to have to live under the shadow of this.”
But then, as I watched Raph at work, I began to remember.
I remembered what it was like, having my memory stolen away from me, leaving me to box with shadows in the dark. I remembered the pain of bei
ng a girl without a past, and wondering what it might mean for my future. I remembered my anger when the truth was revealed to me, bit by bit, and realizing that my whole life was being directed by influences I couldn’t name, let alone remember; my whole life a lie.
My mind raced. If Rorie couldn’t remember, how would I explain our mother’s absence? And Arthur’s or Macey’s? I would have to lie to her, over and over again. Until the day she found out on her own. And then, she’d never trust me again.
I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t take away her past. She needed it to be whole, just like I had.
“Wait.” I placed a hand over Raph’s. “Don’t. Don’t make her forget.”
Raph tilted his head, examining me quizzically. “You’re certain?”
I nodded once. “I’m sure. Just … just maybe take the edge off of the worst parts, if you can.”
He reached over and squeezed my hand. Then, his face the picture of concentration, he returned his attention to Rorie, lying in his arms. His mouth moving silently, he prayed: ancient words that might not make Rorie forget, but would at least make it easier for her to heal and deal with her pain. When he was finished, he watched her intently, letting his hands sit for just a moment longer on her lank hair. Gently, he eased her down to the mattress, stretching her tiny body out and tucking the clean parts of the sheets around her.
“She’ll sleep more comfortably this way,” he said, his voice gruff. Patting my arm awkwardly, as if to comfort me, too, he rose. “She’ll probably sleep for a full day if you let her. Plenty of time to get her away from here. You can use the time to figure out what comes next. For all of you.”
I stood up with him and turned. Enoch was wiping his face with a hanky, tucking the corners of the dirty rag under his aviators to dab at his tears. Michael had slipped back in while Raph had been at work, and now he slid away from where he leaned against the wall, his face contorted with confusion, frustration, and disbelief. He knelt beside me, next to Rorie, and he drew something out of his armor and pressed it into her hands.
It was her agate.
Dark Before Dawn Page 27