The Angel turned her head slightly in order to look at him, her glowing eyes brushing over him from head to toe in a quick assessing look.
“You are human, so I don’t expect you to understand,” she said dismissively. “Suffice it to say, there are stages of the life of a soul far beyond your limited understanding.”
Well. Shit. He’d just been snobbily slapped down by an angel. Were angels allowed to do that? Then again, were angels allowed to be naked as jaybirds? Or were Night Angels something completely different than, say, your run-of-the-mill angels? She certainly didn’t look like the angels his very Catholic mother had had nailed to every wall and flat surface in her house…except those that had been occupied by Jesus.
Rosarita Alvarez would have been shocked to shit to see an angel like this one.
The Angel turned back to look at Marissa. “Since you are barely Blended, you are very likely unable to access all of what Hatshepsut knows about my breed. But if you turn yourself inward she will assure you that no one can care for your mate’s soul better than someone of my breed can. At least, in the short run.”
Marissa nodded as tears trembled on the curves of her lashes. “I can feel that.”
“Then you must believe me when I tell you there is very little time for us to repair the damage done to Menes and his host.”
“Jackson,” Leo bit out. “His name is Jackson and he’s worth ten of your Menses…or whatever his name is.”
“Menes,” the Angel corrected him, somehow making him feel like navel lint with just the dismissive tone in her voice. It was very clear what she thought of him. “Menes, the most powerful unifier in all Egyptian history. Menes, the leader of this vast race of very extraordinary peoples. Have you any idea what it takes for two souls to inhabit the same corporeal body like this? If you would look with eyes other than those filled with anger and contempt you might come to appreciate that.”
Damn. Two slap downs in as many minutes. Leo felt a sudden urge to smile, but he fought it back. This was hardly the time for amusement. Still, it was a little nice to know he could find appreciation and humor in things again, no matter how small or fleeting.
“All I appreciate is that something I don’t understand just tried to kill my best friend,” he said sharply. “You said you could help? So help.”
“I can temporarily trap his souls within his body,” she said, clearly ignoring his tone and the threat that bracketed it. “The power the imp used has severed his spinal cord at the midpoint of his neck, effectively paralyzing him. But more importantly, it has rent a hole in his aura…a hole through which his souls might escape. Our souls are tethered to our bodies quite tightly. This is necessary because every injury the body suffers opens a hole, however temporary, in the fabric of the aura that contains that soul. Think of the aura as an embryonic sack and your soul is the baby within it. Any injury causes a small tear in that sack. The greater the injury the larger the hole, and the larger the opportunity for an untethered soul to escape prematurely. This injury and the power that was used to create the rent have also severed the tethers to his souls and left an enormous tear in the aura containing them. I’m amazed he is still harboring both of his souls. It is a testament to his strength of spirit and will that his souls didn’t burst free of him at the moment of injury.
“I can close the hole in his aura, keeping his souls from exiting, but I cannot regenerate the tethers and neither can he. Not spontaneously. And until those tethers are repaired he will not wake, he will not sleep, and he will not be able to recover from the injury. And, after enough time has passed with him in that kind of state, his aura will disintegrate in entirety and he will die. This is a state similar to when a human is comatose. Eventually the body withers and the person dies. In this case, the aura will wither and the souls will move on.”
It sounded utterly nightmarish to Leo. He knew Jackson. What she was describing was a fate worse than death for men of action like Jackson and himself. The idea of becoming a burden on others, of tormenting loved ones instead of allowing them to grieve and then move on with their lives, was intolerable. And that was to say nothing about what it might feel like from Jackson’s perspective. What if he could feel the brokenness of his body? What if he was aware of every single excruciating moment that he remained trapped in that painful sort of limbo?
“Is he aware?” Leo asked softly.
“Not as you might desire,” the Night Angel said with obvious gentility. But she didn’t direct the answer to him, instead aiming it at Marissa. “But there is awareness on a soulful level. He will sense your nearness. He will sense the state of your emotions. Also, it won’t do you any good to cover them up. He will sense it’s a façade.”
“So you put this Band-Aid on him. Repair the hole in his aura. How do you repair the severing of a soul’s tether?” Marissa wanted to know, her knuckles white as she subconsciously gripped Jackson’s hand with all the strength she could muster, as though loosening that hold in any way would allow him to slip away.
“Let me do this first. Then we will discuss the rest,” the Night Angel said softly, meeting Marissa’s eyes and holding her gaze with a compassion that clearly comforted Jackson’s beloved. Marissa finally let tears fall, let herself feel just how dangerous this was and just how close Jackson might be to death.
“He is everything,” she said. Then as if it were something different she said, “He is everything to me.”
Leo supposed both were true. Jackson/Menes was everything to their people, the strongest of his kind and the focal point of their political structure. Although Marissa/Hatshepsut was pharaoh in her own right, it was very clear that she had no interest in ruling without Jackson by her side.
The Angel nodded and leaned forward, resting a palm on Jackson’s forehead, closing her eyes for a minute as though she were seeking for something within herself. The closing of her eyes was eerie. It made her face seem like a void of black with no relief, save for the white of her arching brows and the snowy crescents of her lashes, just as it was eerie when they were opened, a stark glow of yellow in a setting of black.
At first he thought he couldn’t tell if she were pretty or ugly or strangely shaped to match her unusual coloring. But the longer he looked at her the more he began to clearly make out her features. She had full lips, like those of a child pouting with pique. However, there was nothing else childish in her graceful looks. Certainly not when those full breasts and curving hips were taken into consideration. She had an exotic sweep to her cheekbones, the rise of them exaggerated by the tautness of her drawn back hair. Her forehead was gently sloped, the line of her jaw sweeping softly into her chin, throat and neck.
She was pretty, he decided. Very much in her own way, and not just because she was a novelty. There was genuine beauty to her looks.
Otherwise, there was nothing delicate about her. She was athletic and strong and it lent power to the impression of vigor she was exuding. She knew what she was doing and was confident in her ability to do it. Much in the same way that he knew how to kill a man and had utter faith in his getting the job done the way it needed to be done.
In this mixed-up paranormal world he had been thrust into, it was good to know he still had the ability to size one of these people up. And though he had no proof one way or another, he forced himself to have faith he was reading her right, even though he really had no faith in anything at all. How was he truly to judge these things he could not understand? Things he didn’t want to understand. And yet, his lack of understanding frustrated him, made him feel helpless. It was a feeling he didn’t like. After all, what else did they know about her? Hell, did they even know her name?
“Faith,” she said, her chartreuse eyes flicking around to meet his.
He realized she was answering his question, a question he had not asked aloud. His entire body bristled in defense, his fists clenching tightly. “Get out of my head!” he bit off at her.
One white brow arched. “Who says I am in your
head?” she countered.
“How else would you know I wanted to know what your name was?”
“And of course that means I was in your head.” Her head tilted ever so slightly as she ran that assessing gaze over him again, as though she were figuring him into some kind of complicated algorithm.
“How else?” he countered caustically.
“Perhaps,” she said as she turned her attention back to Jackson, “it is you who are intruding in my head. If humans only realized the power of their own thoughts, a great many ills of the world could be rectified, not the least of which is the constant leaping into misreading the acts and intentions of others.”
Leo floundered, at a loss for a moment as he tried to figure out what she meant. “Last I checked I’m not a telepath,” he said sharply. “That’s an ability saved for this freaks and geeks society.”
“I would argue differently. So should you.”
“Why would I?” he snapped.
“Because if you’ve learned nothing from recent experiences, Leo Alvarez, you have learned you don’t know as much as you thought you did. That there is potentially as much unknown as there is known to you. But, like most mortal humans, you persist in thinking you are the be-all and end-all of the universe. That you are the highest form of living. That there couldn’t possibly be anything brighter or more vibrant than you are. And when something happens to shake that arrogance up, you’re left floundering.”
“What do you know about my recent experiences?” he demanded of her with blistering, barely leashed rage. And he was supposed to believe she wasn’t reading his mind? Oh god…what can she see? Which of the cornucopia of traumatic and shameful events that had occurred could she see? One? A few? All of them? The very idea made him violently nauseous, and it was all he could do to swallow it back down.
She sighed shortly, as if he were trying her patience. She turned back to him. “To a Night Angel humanoids radiate a beacon of light, rather like if you had stepped onto a searchlight that streams up around you and on into the vastness of the night sky. Now imagine that there are words being projected onto this light, in all colors, shapes, and sizes. Projected from within the heart of your soul, Leo Alvarez. What is in your heart is there for all to see who are able to. The brighter the word, the more recent it has been stamped into your light. Your rage. Your fear. Your pain. Your light screams words like ‘betrayed,’ ‘helpless,’ ‘disillusioned,’ and ‘violated.’ The brightness of it tells me it has all been created very recently. And that then leads me to believe something happened to you, a traumatic event that showed you the measure of yourself as a man. Since the words ‘Bodywalkers’ and ‘Nightwalkers,’ and such are also clearly new, I can only assume that these are all conjoined aspects of your recent experience. Am I wrong?” It was obvious she did not think she was wrong in the least. “If so, I apologize for my presumption.”
She dismissed him once more, clearly not caring if she were forgiven or not. Very un-angel-like in his opinion.
His limited, human opinion. After all, what did he really know about angels? Pictures of human interpretation and expectation? Fair-haired, white-winged, halo wearers? White-skinned? It brought back a warm memory, something he hadn’t thought of in years.
“Mama, aren’t there any Spanish angels?” he had asked her shortly after he had turned five. He had been staring up at a white angel ornament on the top of their Christmas tree, the most recent in a long line of images of angels he had seen that holiday season.
“Oh mijo, there are many Spanish angels. Why would you think there aren’t?”
“Because they’re all blond and have white skin,” he said, pointing to the ornament. Then he reached to wind a finger thoughtfully into his own black curls.
“Ah. So you think the men and women who make these pictures and ornaments know the true face of the angels?”
“Don’t they?”
“They think they do. But the only way we’ll ever really know is when we die and meet God in Heaven. But I am very certain that they have Spanish angels who look and speak just like us.”
“But if no one really knows, then how are you so sure?”
“Ah,” she said, sweeping him up into her arms, her familiar oatmeal cookie smell falling like a blanket of comfort over him. “My smart boy. There has to be Spanish angels. When we die we all become angels. Tia Maria is an angel. She is watching over us even now and she most certainly is a Spanish angel.”
That made him smile. He remembered his aunt. It made him happy to know she was an angel.
“Okay, Mama,” he said, hugging her around her neck as hard as he could. “But I don’t want you to be an angel too soon.”
“Oh mijo, don’t worry about that. I’ll be here for a very long time.”
Leo couldn’t have stopped the soft smile touching his lips even if he’d tried. That was from a time when he had been innocent and when he’d thought his mother knew everything there was to know about anything.
Regretfully, neither had lasted past his teenaged years, his mother included.
Leo shook off the tumult of emotions this creature had sent washing through him with just a few sentences.
“Isn’t that a little redundant?” he heard himself asking with a sneer in his tone. Shut up, Leo. Shut up! he argued with himself. “An angel named Faith?”
“No different, I imagine, than a man being named Dick,” she said dryly.
He heard everyone in the room release a startled joint laugh, most of it through tight throats full of tears and tragic emotion. Then once they started laughing, they couldn’t seem to stop. Well, hell. If bearing the brunt of her set downs eased the suffocating tension of fear and anxiety, he was willing to take it on the chin. And he didn’t blame them for their laughter. He’d been out of line and Faith had set him back on his ass. Deservedly so. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t find his footing in this ever-changing dynamic he called his life. It was probably a good thing that she refused to let him get away with it.
As he watched her placid expression, however, he could swear her lips curled ever so slightly at the corners. She was taking pride in her ability to deflect his raging bullshit. And so she should, he thought. There was nothing Leo appreciated more than a smart-ass.
He couldn’t help himself. It made him smile as well. That made twice now in as many minutes. If he kept this up he’d be guffawing any day now. He liked a good guffaw. It’d be a damn shame if he couldn’t find it in himself to guffaw ever again.
Then, as he watched, those beautiful electric wings of hers protracted. It was such a graceful sweep of glowing blue lines of energy, flowing directly toward him. He didn’t step back like the others did in order to give them the breadth they needed for full extension. He should have. After everything he’d been through, he ought to have avoided letting them touch him as if she were a carrier of the bubonic plague. But there was a part of him that was eaten up with curiosity. Were they just light? Would they bump up against him or pass right through him?
Because he didn’t move, they swept against him and then, before he could react with any belated protective reflexes, they passed right through his chest and body.
His first instinct should’ve been to be horrified and appalled at the intrusion, but it never came to fruition. Even though it ought to have been deemed no different than Chatha’s brutal incursions into his body, all possible hostile feelings died a stunning death when breathtaking heat and energy bled into him, quickly followed by a sensation of peace and well-being. It was a feeling he had thought he would never again know in his lifetime, a peace that stole through him literally from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet and toes.
But it wasn’t just well-being he felt. There was something else…something more visceral…something very much like what he had felt the very first time a girl had ever touched him intimately. Although it was many years ago, he could never forget the eagerness of wanting it, the overwhelming excitement of it, and the needful r
eadiness of his erection. There was no denying it was exactly the same overwhelming desire pulsing through him now, as well as the same glory of that first touch, thinking it would bring a measure of relief only to find out it just made things hotter, made things harder.
As he stood there he felt himself react to the memory invoked by the sensation, his body growing hard in response to it and the sensations he was awash in. He wanted to jerk away, to force himself to feel it for the violation it should be, but he couldn’t bring himself to sully it. And when he saw her turn toward him with a startled, soundless gasp, he realized she was not intentionally trying to pull these things out of him. It had been happenstance. But he also knew by the look in her yellow-green eyes that she was one hundred percent cognizant to what he was thinking…what he was feeling. He wanted it to be a private feeling, he wanted to huddle it close in the confines of his mind and soul, not share it with someone he didn’t know the first thing about. But he simply couldn’t make himself hate anything about what he was feeling or her part in having brought it about.
She withdrew her wing and all its energy from him, the jerking movement almost like the too quick removal of a Band-Aid from a healing wound. But like that pain, it flew away in the next instant, and he was left simply stunned, still feeling everything he was feeling, and more than a little overwhelmed.
Seeing how uncomfortable she was, how awkward it was for her to hold that wing away from him, he stepped back at last, the movement alone reminding him he had a hell of an erection. She looked at him, her eyes partly accusing and partly…well, without really knowing her he could only make a guess, but it seemed like she was almost…curious.
But the impression only lasted a moment because she was turning away from him and looking back down at Jackson. Her left wing trembled a little, as if it were tautly ready to draw away again if he came too close. He took another step back, the shift of her eyes telling him she saw the movement. The wing slowly relaxed and he understood that she was trusting him not to come in contact with her again.
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