“Why?”
“Perhaps she remembered more than just your name.” Apollyon sat beside him on the cold tiles and leaned his back against the low white wall that ran at a ninety degree angle to the iron railing, joining it to the wall beside the French doors. “You must have said something that triggered the return of some of her memories.”
“I doubt that… I told her to stay away from me… and that I wanted to die.”
“Death is certainly convenient in its own strange way. You wanted to forget her. Perhaps that is why she remembered you.” Apollyon smiled but it didn’t reach his blue eyes. He swept a hand over his long black hair, pushing it back into his ponytail, and then loosed a long sigh.
He touched Marcus’s shoulder again, regaining his attention that had started to wander back to Amelia and where Lysander had taken her. “We will not allow anything to happen to her. She declared us her knights, remember?”
Marcus nodded and then looked skyward. “Heaven has sent me orders to stay away. They are investigating my actions and will not allow me to see Amelia until they call me. Why would they do such a thing?”
Apollyon’s power shifted, darkening again. “Who knows… but I do know one thing… they have a reason for everything they have made us do and we must find out what that reason is. Come inside and we’ll discuss it with the others.”
Apollyon stood and offered Marcus his hand. Marcus took it and hauled himself onto his feet, and then rubbed the heel of his hands across his eyes to clear away his tears so the others didn’t see them. Serenity and Annelie cast a fearful glance his way when he entered the living room. He hadn’t meant to lose control of his power and scare them. It had been impossible to contain it all and he had done his best to keep his wrath away from them so he wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Taylor didn’t look at all bothered. She was talking to Einar and Lukas about something and just smiled at him when he stopped next to Serenity and Apollyon.
“What do we do now?” Lukas no longer looked as though he was going to keep insisting they file a report with Heaven about what had happened. He looked as though he was ready to fight them instead. He still wore his white and gold armour, his white wings furled against his back, and there was a hard edge to his green eyes.
“There’s a Hell’s angel named Veiron who said that he witnessed it all. We need to find him,” Marcus said and Taylor stepped forwards.
“I can do that… I know some of his old haunts in the underworld. We’ll find him and find out what’s happening, Marcus.” She offered him another warm smile full of reassurance.
Apollyon frowned. “We need to go to Hell then. There is a chance that the pool there might show details of the event too and what is yet to happen in your mission. Lukas, I need you to remain here and look after Annelie and Serenity for me again.”
Lukas looked irritated and then started to nod, but Serenity shook her head, causing her long fair hair to sway against her slender shoulders.
“I can take care of Annelie alone. You need Lukas with you,” she said, her French accent laced with determination. Marcus looked away, unable to bear the affection in her gaze as she stared into Apollyon’s eyes, silently conveying her desire for him to be safe.
“If Taylor is going down there with you, then I’m coming too,” Einar said and Apollyon sized him up.
“I suppose I can carry you if one of the others carries Taylor.” Apollyon didn’t look pleased at the prospect.
Lukas smiled. “It’s like old times.”
Apollyon’s look soured further. “Only he looks heavier than you were.”
Both Einar and Lukas frowned at him.
Marcus looked back through the kitchen to the world outside. It was settled. As soon as they were ready, they would depart for Hell. He would uncover the truth about Amelia and why Heaven had wanted her dead, and then he would go after her.
He curled his fingers into fists.
Amelia.
She had remembered something about herself, about himself, and she had gone with Lysander in order to protect him and his friends.
She had to hang on and wait for him.
He would find her.
He wouldn’t fail her again.
CHAPTER 20
The bright light receded but rather than the ground being puffy white clouds and a golden sun shining down on her, Amelia found herself surrounded by a large entrance hall. The pale marble caused everything to blend into each other, until she could barely distinguish the elaborate twin staircase that swept upwards following the curved walls that it hugged. In front of her, a wide arch filled the space below the balcony at the top of the staircase. Beyond it was a long corridor in equally eye-numbing white marble.
As she stood there with the angel called Lysander gripping her arm, everything began to dull to a more reasonable level, as though her eyes were finally adjusting to the obscene brightness of it all. It had only taken a few seconds of exposure to the light to give her a headache.
Another memory of Marcus popped into her head and replayed, revealing a moment with him that caused a blush to burn her cheeks.
Perhaps it was the returning memories that were giving her the headache. Since remembering their moment together in that other world where Taylor had sent them to keep them hidden, she had recalled at least six other memories of being with him. There had been a fight against two Hell’s angels on a rooftop overlooking a city, a meeting with another Hell’s angel who had been far more handsome than his predecessors and had seemed familiar to Taylor, a time when she had been high above the world in Marcus’s arms, their flight around the Eiffel Tower, the memory that had just come back to her, and then there was the one that had woken her today.
It had felt like a nightmare at first and had left her heart beating painfully fast against her chest.
Marcus had been before her with his silver-blue wings bloodied and torn, and his armour decimated. There had been pain in him and in her heart, a feeling that had ripped her apart from the inside out and still lingered deep in her chest. She hadn’t been able to bear seeing him suffering for her at the hands of a man he had called friend. She hadn’t wanted him to die because of her but she had hesitated, afraid of taking that pain and that death upon herself instead. When the power that had been blasting against him, aimed for her, had started to shred his flesh, she had reacted on instinct and had found the courage to take responsibility and face her destiny.
She had leapt in front of him, desperate to shield him so he wouldn’t die. She had sacrificed herself.
Her death had jolted her awake and she had panicked when Marcus hadn’t been there with her and there had been raised voices in the other room.
She had sat in the middle of the bed, clutching the covers to her chest and struggling with the two sides of her soul. The one that Marcus had loved had returned, bringing with it a flood of emotions that had threatened to render her unconscious. It had been difficult to battle them and find a sense of balance again, to assimilate them and the memories into herself. There were times when she still felt like two people in one body.
It wasn’t just memories of her life as Amelia that were returning. She had seen things in her slumber that she knew were flickers of her previous life. She had been through this before. The scenario was becoming familiar and a sense of foreboding was growing inside her.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a reason she believed angels were only fit for destruction and were cruel beings.
“This way,” Lysander said, jolting her back to reality.
She had almost forgotten where she was. How could she have? She had come to the place that had ordered her death at Apollyon’s hands and she wasn’t sure what she was going to do now. Leaving with Lysander had spared Marcus but it had hurt him, and part of her wanted to go back and change the past. If she could do it again, she would have left without letting him know that she had remembered him. She would have spared him that pain too.
He had suffer
ed enough because of her. It was time that she took her fate on her own shoulders and bore the weight of it. It was time that she faced Heaven and found out why they had killed her.
The growing sliver of fear in her heart questioned her every move and sent doubts into her head, threatening to steal what little strength and courage she had found.
The longer she spent in the white fortress surrounding her, the stronger the sense of foreboding became, until she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been here before.
Several times.
Amelia walked forwards with Lysander and looked around, taking in the hallways that led off the long columned corridor and disappeared into the distance, their ends so far away that they were impossible to see. Opened doors led off those corridors, some of them revealing another hallway. The place was like a maze. She couldn’t keep track when Lysander turned down one hallway and then onto another, and then took her up several flights of white marble steps. They were cold beneath her bare feet.
She glanced across at her guard. He seemed so out of place in this stark white environment. The brightness of it caused his black armour to seem even darker than it was, and the gold detailing shone so fiercely that it hurt her eyes. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, his blue ones meeting hers only long enough for her to realise that she wasn’t the only one with doubts about why she was here, and then faced forwards again.
Amelia looked there too.
They were coming to another junction in the featureless labyrinth of corridors. There were no windows. What did the outside of this fortress look like and where were all the other angels? She hadn’t seen anyone other than the man escorting her. Even the angels who had appeared when he had threatened to fight Apollyon and Marcus were nowhere to be seen.
She shivered as a blast of cold air chased over her and then paused as she stepped out into another corridor.
A double row of arches lined the wall opposite her, one set stacked on top of the other, revealing a large pale courtyard. Tall white trees rose up in the middle of it to tower beyond the reach of her vision. The whole image seemed false to her. Trees had green leaves, not silver-white ones that glittered and shone in the golden sunlight flooding the courtyard. The brilliant white trunks of the trees and the grass surrounding their roots twinkled like diamonds as the light filtered through the branches and caught them. It was beautiful, yet the sight of it filled her with sadness and left her with a sense of finality. Why? Lysander tugged on her arm and she continued to walk with him, her gaze fixed on the arches. There were other angels on the opposite side of the courtyard, walking along the corridor on the same level as her. They wore blue armour like Marcus’s. Would they know him if she broke free of Lysander’s grip and crossed the courtyard to them to ask? There were probably thousands of his kind, and the three angels he was closest to were all of a different class to him.
A mediator, a hunter, a destroyer, and a guardian.
Why did she know them? It wasn’t only her memories as Amelia that contained them. She had known them in her past life too, was aware they were always there at the start but never there at the end. Did they die? At the end, there was only ever a guardian.
Marcus.
A memory glimmered in the corner of her mind, just out of reach, and she struggled with it, wanting to bring it into focus so she could know its contents. A flash of colour and brightness that faded into red as deep as blood filled her vision and she stopped and closed her eyes against it. She couldn’t close her heart to the pain that rushed through her though. It blazed in her chest, burned in her veins, and sent her trembling.
She knew Marcus.
Not in this life.
But in her last one.
Why?
Had she met all of them before, in her previous life?
Lysander tugged on her arm and led her down another corridor and she lost sight of the other angels. She looked back, hoping to catch a glimpse of others, but no one was there. Time lost meaning as she walked with him. She wasn’t sure where they were heading but her feet were freezing now and her legs were tiring, trembling beneath her.
Amelia searched her mind, trying to see why she felt she knew these corridors and that courtyard, and why she knew Marcus and the others. Her head felt fuzzy and heavy, and every time she tried to focus, her thoughts became tangled. Perhaps she didn’t know them or this place at all. Perhaps she was mixing things up in her mind. It was hard to assimilate two sets of memories and make sense of them.
She looked ahead at the end of the corridor and a bright room beyond. Her heart started to pound. Her palms sweated. She slowed her steps as a sense of awareness swept through her and Lysander pulled on her arm again. Her footsteps faltered. Fear crawled through her veins.
She knew this place.
Her gaze tracked up the tall thick white columns that rose into the bright heavens above her, disappearing there. Sunlight streamed down onto her, warming her skin, but it was the flush of panic that heated her through.
This place was familiar.
It pained her.
Why?
She walked forwards, heading towards the wide aisle between the gargantuan columns that speared the dazzling sky.
Her heart missed a beat and she hesitated again, a sudden wave of fear pinning her feet to the floor. A deep sharp ache throbbed in her chest and a desire to turn back filled her trembling body.
“Come along,” Lysander said and Amelia shook her head.
He tugged on her arm but she didn’t move.
She couldn’t.
Whatever memories she had of this place, they were full of pain, as though all of her experiences here had been bad.
She had made a mistake.
A terrible one.
She backed away from Lysander, casting a fearful glance around her. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have stayed with Marcus or asked him to come with her. Lysander might have allowed that. She wanted to go back to Marcus.
“Is something wrong?” Lysander looked genuinely concerned, his blue eyes bright with it.
“Where are you taking me?” she whispered and swallowed hard, gaze darting around the columns and fear that she wasn’t alone here with him creeping down her spine.
Others were watching.
She could feel it.
“I want to know where we’re going and what’s going to happen to me.” She backed away again when he stepped towards her and shot a glance at the door they had entered through. If she was quick, she might reach it before Lysander could catch her. What then? She couldn’t remember the way back to the entrance and even if she could, she didn’t know how to get back to Earth. Could she fly back there?
Her shoulder blades itched and the first feathers broke the surface of her skin, growing out of her in a way that turned her stomach. Lysander took another step towards her and her silver wings burst out of her in response. She cried out in pain and clutched her shoulders. Sharp throbbing waves spread over her skin from her shoulder blades but quickly faded.
“There is no need to panic,” Lysander said in a soothing tone and her gaze darted back to him. He held his hands up, palms facing her, and paused in the same way Marcus had when Einar had been talking to him telepathically. Receiving orders from those watching her? He smiled. “We only need to keep you here for a short while.”
“Why? Until when?” The door was starting to look like a good option. There was something about this place that made her skin crawl and urged her to escape, that called to her instinct to take flight and get the hell away from it. Why couldn’t she remember what had happened to her here?
“Until Marcus comes.”
She stilled and her fear lessened at the sound of that name and the thought that she would see Marcus again.
“Marcus is coming?” she said, her brow furrowing, and steadied her breathing so her panic began to subside. Maybe she was overreacting and being here without Marcus was causing her fear rather than any memory she might have
of the place.
Lysander nodded. “He will be. We shall get you comfortable and then they will call Marcus to you.”
Amelia glanced at the door again. The thought that Marcus was coming soothed away some of her fear but not all of it. The unsettled feeling she had whenever she saw the columns stretching into the distance before her wasn’t going away, and neither was the sense that this was a bad place. No matter what she told herself, no matter what she wanted, she couldn’t deny that she had been here before, just as she couldn’t deny that she had known Marcus in her past life.
Lysander held his hand out to her.
Amelia hesitated and then stepped forwards.
There was no turning back now. She had come here of her own free will, out of desire to discover what was happening to her and to spare Marcus more pain.
Only, Marcus was coming.
She hadn’t spared him at all.
Amelia told herself that it was only fear of those watching her and her surroundings that was unsettling her and forced herself to believe it so she could continue on the path she had chosen to walk. She would go with Lysander and await Marcus’s arrival. Once he was here, she would feel safe again, stronger, and they would face Heaven together and uncover the truth behind her existence.
She could trust Marcus. He would protect her from any danger that lurked in Heaven. He would uphold that promise she had remembered him making.
Her nerves didn’t fade as she walked along the aisle with Lysander. They steadily grew worse as the sense of danger inside her increased. She kept telling herself that Marcus would come for her soon and she would feel foolish for being so scared when he did. He would find it silly of her not to trust the people who he worked for when she trusted him so much.
What was silly about not trusting the people who had ordered her death and forced one of their own to kill her?
Amelia closed her eyes, pulled in another deep breath to calm her nerves, and ignored that question and the memories that threatened to surface in her mind.
Her Angel: Eternal Warriors Romance Series Complete Series Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 23