by V J J Dunn
The wind rushed out of Allie’s lungs at that. Seriously, it felt so much longer! She was thrilled it hadn’t been as long as she thought, but it was just so weird to think it hadn’t even been two weeks.
She’d been in the Remnant mansion for half a day and she hadn’t seen anyone other than Serene. Once Metatron had transferred her, he’d kissed her forehead and left. Allie didn’t even know if Nick was aware she was back.
Serene said Metatron had given strict instructions to keep Allie in the back room, away from others. Serene didn’t know why, but just told Allie to trust the angel, who’d been “out of his mind with worry” after she’d been kidnapped. Serene had laughed at that.
Allie didn’t think it was funny; she thought it was sweet.
While she still didn’t know what all had gone on behind the scenes, Metatron would always — for eternity — the one who saved her. Well, he and Charo.
Speaking of the cat, she sauntered into the back room of the Healing Quarters just then and leapt up on the bed with Allie. She laughed as she scratched her behind the ears and nuzzled into the soft fur at her neck.
“Thank you for coming for me,” she told her feline friend.
“She wasn’t the only one, you know,” Zad said from the doorway. Allie looked up at him and smiled.
He pushed off the doorframe where he’d been leaning. “I sent beetles throughout the Circle and Zone to find you. Before then, we didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
She cocked her head at him. “How did a beetle tell you I was alive?”
Zad’s eyebrow rose. “I have the ability to communicate with the animals, remember?”
Oh yeah. She’d forgotten about that part, since it wasn’t something she’d ever seen him use before.
“Abba wasn’t giving us any information,” Zad added. “We were going out of our minds.” He smiled down at her.
“I had to physically stop Metatron from tearing Lucifer apart when we went to confront him.” He paused and glanced at the ceiling.
“Well, it took Thundiel’s help to hold him back,” he admitted with a laugh and Allie could swear the angel blushed.
Allie laughed with him; Metatron was the largest of the angels and probably one of the strongest.
“He was a bit… incensed, that you’d been taken right under his nose. And knowing that you were still blinded… well, that’s on me, kiddo. I’m so sorry.” His voice had a sorrowful edge to it that caught at Allie’s heart.
She shook her head. “No, it’s no one’s fault. There was no way of knowing that an invisible demon was going to nab me and freaking paralyze me.” She shrugged then.
“It sucked, mostly the part about being in The Pit and literally thinking I’d been there for a very long time—”
“That’s Abba’s fault,” Zad interrupted. He cringed at his word choice. “Well, not His fault, but the slowing of time is His doing. He wanted to make sure that Lucifer’s thousand-year sentence felt like an eternity, so The Pit is… constructed to do that to you.”
Allie’s eyebrows rose at that. Well, that certainly explained it. But she shook her head and waved his explanation away.
“But anyway, I was gonna say that I learned some things and figured out some things that are really helpful. But worrisome too. We need to change up our practices.”
She then told him about the demons’ new ability to share powers, how the powers last until released — which Zad told her was thanks to the fallen angels, who still had that capability — and she let him know what she’d figured out about the huge lack in the Remnant’s training, that the angels they’d been fighting were predictable.
She also told him that she figured out Lucifer’s plan of attack, that he was going to surround The City.
Zad sat with her all afternoon while they discussed different strategies and whatnot. He also told her why Metatron had insisted that she stay out of sight:
It seemed the Remnants had a traitor.
Chapter 15
M ETATRON WAS seriously paranoid, to the point it was making Allie a little crazy. At his insistence, Allie was under “house arrest.” She’d traded a dark, dank, soundless prison for a well-furnished, light and airy, cozy one.
But it was still a prison.
From the Healing Quarters, the angel had transferred them directly to her apartment. Not Nick’s, hers. Metatron didn’t even trust her husband, who’d been ordered back to his own apartment.
“Everyone is suspect,” he’d told her. Everyone but him and Zad, apparently.
When she’d been taken, Zad told her that Metatron and Nick had both “lost it.” Metatron had gone directly to Abba for answers. No one was supposed to know of the Remnant’s return to their old arena. It was in such an isolated spot in the Inner Circle, leagues away from any other civilization, that it was impossible that anyone, demon or otherwise, would just stumble upon the place.
Abba told His Celestial Scribe that no one else knew they’d returned to the arena, only the small handful of trusted angels… and, of course, the Remnants.
Which meant someone had to have told them. It was why Metatron was being so cautious.
Abba had also told Metatron that Serariel discovered Lucifer had upped his bounty on Allie’s head. He was now offering command of his army, plus the slaughter of the entire Remnant team. That obviously did not sit well with Allie; it made her want to gather the team up like a hen with its chicks and hide them all somewhere safe.
None of the Remnants knew where she was. Allie thought it was really awful of the angels to keep them in the dark like that, but Zad said they’d told the team that she was alive and well, had been rescued and was being held in an undisclosed location.
He’d even had Abba reiterate that to them, that Allie was “just fine and needed to stay where she was at… for now.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t sit well with her. Especially not the fact that they were withholding the information from Nick.
Metatron had even brought Ariel, one of the other trusted angels, to put some sort of weird block on her apartment, so that others wouldn’t try to enter, nor even want to. Allie had no idea angels had such powers.
Of course, she’d had to poke fun of Ariel. “So, I’m safe here… like under the sea?” she’d asked with a smirk.
The angel had given her a confused look and glanced out her apartment window at the blue sky.
“Under the sea…?” He’d turned to Zad, who apparently hadn’t gotten the joke either, because he just shrugged. Sometimes her angel friend understood her references to Old Age pop culture, but other times he had no clue.
Sometimes it sucked that they didn’t have movies or television in the new age.
Unfortunately, the block on her apartment also kept her from leaving. Anytime she’d get near a door or window, it was like some sort of force moved her away. Not like slamming into glass, but like a redirecting. She’d be halfway back into the room when she’d wonder what she had been doing.
Allie really wanted to go to the garden behind the mansion. It was there that she’d sung to Abba… and gave her ridiculous proposal of marriage to Nick. She wished she could have gone back to that day and redone the proposal. She wouldn’t have blushed and stammered and proclaimed that Abba said if they didn’t marry, they were going to sin.
Instead, she would have told him that she loved him and wanted to be with him.
She missed Nick. There was no denying that. Every day, she wondered what he was doing, how he was doing. If he thought of her, if he wondered how she was holding up during her “captivity.”
What really sucked was knowing the guy was just across the hall and she couldn’t see him.
She’d argued with her angelic captors that she knew Nick, and that Abba Himself had told her to marry him, which obviously meant that he wasn’t a traitor. But Metatron wouldn’t be moved. She was really ticked off at the big guy.
So much so that she’d banned him from the apartment.
Zad was h
er only company now and for some reason, the angel was determined not to leave her side. While she appreciated it, appreciated his dedication, Allie was still a bit irritated with his constant presence.
Which was funny, considering she thought she’d spent hundreds of years all alone.
The angel tried to occupy her mind with stories of his many millennia spent on earth fighting with various earthly armies. He’d told her how he’d helped the ancient humans of the Eurasian Steppes domesticate horses and, eventually, develop the chariot. How he’d introduced a sea-trade route to Egypt, helped the Greeks fight back the Gauls, and led the Lewis and Clark expedition when they’d gotten hopelessly lost before meeting Sacagawea.
He had many funny stories that hadn’t made it into the history books too, such as the queen who’d gotten the king — a known hedonistic sexual pervert — drunk, then bound and gagged him, hid him in a closet, and proceeded to change laws for the betterment of her country.
Or the slave Zad had rescued after his owner had left him for dead after a brutal beating, who then went on to become a very wealthy merchant and eventually bought the slave owner’s property lien and tossed him out on his ear.
The stories were entertaining, but they didn’t help. She still felt like a prisoner.
After six days of confinement, Allie was ready to kill something. Or someone. It was a good thing that angels were immortal.
“We’re going to practice today,” Zad announced when he walked into the bathing room while Allie was in the shower.
She shrieked as she scurried to the corner of the huge stall. “Do you not have any decency, you weirdo?” It was a walk-in shower, so it didn’t have a door or a curtain. There really was no place to hide.
The angel crossed his huge arms over his chest and his eyebrow rose. “Are you ashamed of your body, girl?” he asked as his eyes skimmed over her dispassionately.
Allie scowled at him. “No, but… but, this is not something humans are comfortable with!” It was bad enough that Serariel and Metatron had already seen her naked; she didn’t need to add Zad to the list.
He tilted his head to the side and looked confused. “What? Nudity?”
At her nod, he made a rude sound. “You were born nude,” he said, like that perfectly excused his behavior. “The first Adam was nude, as was his woman. It’s your natural state.”
Allie gave him a look that said You’re a moron. “Yeah, but after they sinned, they knew they were naked and humans have been clothing ourselves ever since.” She waved her hand up and down, indicating his body.
“Even you guys wear clothes!”
Zad grinned and started unlacing his tunic. “Would you like to see me without my clothes?”
“No!” she shrieked again. Her face was flaming as she remembered the one time that she’d seen the angel in nothing more than a loincloth.
“Get out of here, you pervert!”
Zad laughed and started walking out. As she watched his retreating back, Allie thought of something that made her completely forget that she was naked.
“Wait!” she called out and he turned around with his eyebrow cocked once again.
“Did you say we were training today?”
It was almost too much to hope, the idea of not only getting out of the apartment after nearly a week of confinement, but also getting to train, to exercise… he better not be joking, or else I’m going to incapacitate him.
Zad laughed as he turned and left the room, his voice trailing behind. “We leave in ten minutes.”
Zad transferred them… somewhere. Allie wasn’t even sure where they were. All she knew was they weren’t in the same realm, or on the same plane… or whatever.
Heck, for all she knew, they were on another planet.
The angels laughed at her expression as she took in the sights. There were just so many things to look at, she didn’t know where to start. From the moon that was so pink it almost looked like a zinnia to the sharp mountain range with peaks so pointy that they resembled giant steak knives, the landscape was… unusual.
Before she could take in more sights, she heard the whish of a sword coming at her. Allie immediately ducked and spun, unsheathed her sword and stabbed upward, stopping just before impaling her enemy.
Metatron stood frozen in place, his sword outstretched where he’d swung at her. He was staring down at the tip of her sword that was just poking through his pants… right at his crotch.
“Uh, very good, little warrior,” he said as he carefully pushed her sword away with his. “You have learned to use your senses.”
While yeah, she had, she hadn’t been using them at that moment. But she’d heard the sword as it cut through the air, which was kind of weird. Even with her advanced hearing, she’d never been able to hear that before. The angels’ swords were broad, but very thin, and they sliced through the atmosphere — and their enemies — silently.
But it was something she’d noticed a week ago… that her hearing was now even more acute. She could hear footsteps on the plush carpet in the hallway outside her apartment and could detect the soft click of a door closing from the floor below.
Unfortunately, she could even hear Charo’s near-constant grooming of her privates, even though the cat was down in the garden several stories below… and Allie was enclosed behind thick walls and glass.
Her eyesight, too, seemed to have improved. While she couldn’t get close enough to the window to look down at the garden below thanks to Ariel’s intervention, she could still see the tops of the tall trees. But more than that, she could see through the trees and across the expanse of the Inner Circle. And those trees were so dense that no light passed through them.
For some reason, hanging in The Pit had increased the senses that weren’t needed in that cavern.
Over the past week, she’d been practicing with all her new and improved senses. Including her inner vision, as she’d started calling it.
She could now function with both her normal sight and the inner vision “turned on” at the same time. It wasn’t easy, because her normal sight would see the vibrant colors and distinct shapes, while her inner vision saw a more… atmospheric landscape.
But one thing she had discovered that might turn out to be useful was that with the inner vision tuned in, she could sense the disturbances in the atmosphere before something moved. Almost like she could see the thought behind the movement. It was a seriously cool trick.
That was what she decided to use now with the angels.
She straightened and assumed a fighting stance while both Zad and Metatron started circling her. Allie focused on the atmosphere and before Zad could swing his sword at her torso, she easily countered the attack, her defensive blow meeting his perfectly.
Metatron swung then from behind and she saw it happening in her mind’s eye. She again ducked and spun, striking him in the back of the legs with the flat of her sword, then countered yet another attack from Zad by rolling out of the way and whacking him on his angelic butt cheeks.
This went on for long minutes before Zad started laughing. Metatron shocked her when he started grinning. Allie straightened from her defensive stance and pointed her sword to the ground.
“What?” she asked in confusion.
“You finally get it!” Zad exclaimed.
Metatron’s grin got even wider with his brother’s words. “Yes, little warrior. Now you are fighting like an angel.”
Allie rolled her eyes at them. “All I’m doing is defending myself. Not really fighting, guys.”
Metatron nodded. “Yes, but you know that is a simple change in tactics. Now that you have mastered all your senses, this will be simple for you.”
For the first time in a very long time, Allie was starting to feel a bit of confidence. She could almost see Lucifer’s defeat. While she knew Abba would of course defeat the enemy once and for all, at least she and the Remnants would get to join in on the fight. And maybe they might just stand a chance.
Zad gri
nned. “And the best part is, none of the fallen will know you can fight like them.”
“No, she cannot fight like them,” Metatron corrected as he shook his head. Allie felt her confidence slip a few dozen notches at that.
“She will fight better than them. Much better.”
After another week of practicing on what Allie found out was indeed another planet, her angel friends decided that she was ready to be “outted.”
The day that she’d strolled into the practice arena would stay with Allie for an eternity. Literally. The reunion had been joyful, to say the least. Allie had no idea she was so loved, but the team had been so happy to see her healthy and whole that many of them had cried. Robin had clung to her and bawled like a baby, which had made Allie’s heart clench; the girl had already had a great loss.
Even tough guy Nick had tears in his eyes as he embraced her and buried his face in her neck.
“I missed you, girl,” he murmured against her skin. “That was the longest time of my life.”
Allie laughed. “Mine too.” Well, the last week has been awesome, but the rest of the month royally sucked. These were things she couldn’t say.
The team was shocked to learn she’d been chained in The Pit. She’d made them all cringe when she told them that it had honestly felt like she was there for centuries, rather than days.
She and the angels had decided not to tell the team about how injured she’d been when Metatron had rescued her, nor tell them that she’d been back for far longer than they originally thought. Allie had told the angels that information would just cause hurt feelings and that was something she absolutely did not want.
Especially not with Nick.
They spent a few days back in his apartment, but Allie hadn’t let their “second honeymoon” last too long, because she really wanted to get back to practicing. She had new things to teach them.
Metatron had been telling her for the better part of the Millennium to “use her senses,” but he’d never really told her how to do so. Now that she had a better understanding of how it worked, she wanted to teach the team, but the angels — via Abba — had forbidden it.