Enlightened: The Ascension of Meghan May

by Jaya Moon

  I wasn’t getting in a car. No way. At Heaven’s Gate I still had hope Abriel would save me, or Tallow and the other birds would find a safe way in. Or Mox, who had been waiting to collect Savannah, maybe he hadn’t left yet and right at that moment was trying to work out how to rescue me. I didn’t have a chance if I let Michael and the others put me in a car and drive me to some location where no one knew where I was except them.

  My eyes searched frantically. Off to my left I saw light. That had to be the way outside. It was my only chance.

  As one of the Fallen shoved me out of the elevator, I bolted.

  “For the love of God, someone get her.” Michael’s voice remained calm and measured.

  I ran toward the light, tearing the duct tape off my mouth, the rip of the skin on my lips only giving more power to my screams. “Help! Help me!”

  Tallow, Mox, Abriel—one of them always came. One of them always saved me. Where were they?

  I didn’t get far before someone crash-tackled me to the ground. Every part of me exploded in pain as I hit the concrete and the body of the Fallen who had stopped me collapsed on top of me. All the air I had burst out of my lungs, leaving me with no breath to scream, but I didn’t stop fighting. I tried to wiggle out from under the Fallen, and when that didn’t work I fought to get onto my back. If I could do that I’d punch and kick him, try to push him off. I’d fight until I had no fight left. And I did. It was easier than I thought it would be to get on my back. That gave me hope, until I realized why it had been so easy. He’d let me turn over; his fist rose. Everything suddenly slowed so I knew what was coming before it hit me.

  For a moment the impact of the Fallen’s fist didn’t hurt as a rainbow of color burst across my vision. Maybe adrenaline had pumped through me before his punch connected. Strange how it didn’t hurt, but that only lasted a second. Pain I’d never known before exploded across my face. I’d have lifted my hands to cover it, as if that would help, or to protect myself from another blow, if I could do anything at all. As the Fallen climbed off me I lay there. When another joined him they hauled me off the ground by the arms and I let them.

  I couldn’t walk. I could barely keep my eyes open.

  They dragged me to a black van with blackened windows and hauled my dead weight in, dropped me to the floor before they sat on either side of me on bench seats running the length of the van.

  The engine roared to life.

  When we left the parking lot, I gazed up through one of the dark windows, hoping to see birds—an owl high above.

  There was nothing.

  23

  One hour. Two. I don’t know how many hours we traveled.

  My face had started to swell, and the few times I opened my eyes I could only see the world through slits, a world comprised of nothing but the back of a van and two Fallen silhouetted by sunlight, their searing eyes watching me.

  At some stage the car turned onto an unsealed road. I listened to the pop of stones beneath the wheels and experienced every bump. After half an hour, maybe a little more, the van stopped. The sound of its sliding door made my heart beat fast. I thought about putting up a fight but couldn’t do anything as they pulled me out.

  The daylight was brighter than in the back of the van, and I had to blink my swollen eyes several times before I could see.

  In front of us loomed a brown two-story barn.

  Abriel said Lucien took him to a barn.

  “No.” They hadn’t duct taped my mouth again, but what came out was barely a whisper.

  Eloise had been in a barn. This barn?

  “No.” I wasn’t going in there. I struggled. The Fallens’ hold on me tightened. I struggled again. “No. Fucking let me go. I’m not going in there. I’m not.”

  If I went in I knew I’d never come out.

  The Fallen laughed.

  Michael strolled to the barn door. “Let’s not make this more unpleasant than it has to be.” It creaked loudly on its hinges as he pushed it open.

  “No. No. No.”

  Shards of light fell this way and that, and Michael raised dust from the barn floor as he walked. The Fallen dragged me to a spot where something dark lay on the floor, dry and cracked, once pooled. Blood. It had to be dried blood.

  Eloise’s?

  “Meghan.”

  The faint voice sounded like a song to me. I looked in the direction it had come from. Strung up, arms outstretched like wings, hung a man, his face battered, bruised and bloody. His upper body was naked and lacerated. Perhaps I wouldn’t have known who it was if he didn’t glow.

  “Abriel?” I burst out crying. What had they done to him?

  “Ah, now isn’t this a happy reunion,” Michael said in a sickly sweet tone. “Abriel, I remember the last time we were here. Back then you were involved with another lady. I also seem to remember you did nothing to save her when you probably could have if you wanted to. It’s not as though you were bound like you are now.”

  Abriel strained against his restraints.

  “This time I’ll spare you the guilt. There’s nothing you can do from there. The time for penance for what you did with that abomination has arrived. I’m pleased you can be here from the start to see everything. Welcome to your front row seat.”

  “Don’t.” He sounded far away. I knew he was trying desperately to give me hope, kid me into thinking he could command them and change the situation we found ourselves in. I knew he couldn’t.

  “Don’t?” mocked Michael. “You’re not in any position to tell me what to do, are you, Abriel?” Michael turned to me. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, last time Abriel came here we had his girlfriend tied up where he now hangs, after she’d spent a few hours of, shall we say, quality private time with myself and others.”

  One of the Fallen holding me laughed.

  Abriel strained against his restraints again and made a sound more like a beast than an angel.

  Michael grabbed my cheeks with his fingers and squeezed. “You seem to have an equally disgusting lovely relationship with Abriel as that thing did. Because he missed out on so much last time, this time he’s going to watch every single thing we do to you. The beauty of it is his pain will be doubled, watching you suffer and knowing we did the same things to that abomination of his.”

  Outside I’d been frightened. Inside the barn, listening to Michael taunt Abriel and me, something shifted. If I’d been alone I don’t know what I would have done, but I had Abriel with me, and that gave me the strength not to fold in on myself and be paralyzed by the nightmarish things they’d done to Eloise and intended to do to me.

  Michael still had my cheeks between his fingers and continued to squeeze hard, his eyes latched onto my face, looking for a reaction. I knew what he wanted to see. A woman he could break. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

  …fast deaths are kinder…

  I leaned my body forward as though I intended to say something to him before I spat at his face.

  The glob reached its mark, splattering across his eye and cheek. He stared at me, his eyes blazing like the fires of hell. He didn’t wipe the spit away before he backhanded my face.

  I let out a whimpered wail as my whole face exploded with burning as intense as a furnace, and the Fallen shoved me down onto the dirt floor.

  “Meghan. Don’t. Stop. Please?” Abriel begged.

  I knew what he meant, but I chose to interpret his words another way, that he didn’t want me to stop, because he knew what would happen if I did. If I didn’t fight there was nothing left but a drawn-out end. A world of pain I had never known and didn’t want to.

  They hadn’t brought me to the barn solely to break me. Their endgame would always be to kill Abriel and me. In between those two things, every moment I still lived was a second in which they could make me tell them everything. About Tallow and the kin. Savannah. Where to find the Eyrie. About Mox. And betray Abriel, even though he had saved me. Twice. Every moment gave them another moment to torture me.

/>   I didn’t intend to live long enough for that to happen.

  “So.” Michael paced in a circle around me. “I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer every one. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. Which would you prefer?”

  I stared up at Abriel through the slits of my vision. It enhanced his ethereal luminosity. For some reason I found comfort in that.

  He must have sensed my focus on him. He looked at me with an intensity that made me feel both safe and scared, and smiled faintly.

  I wanted him to know how grateful I was he’d be with me in the end. I wanted him to know I was sorry. I’d caused this, been too cocky, thought I’d easily waltz into Lucien’s penthouse and out again like some hero in a movie. Too late I’d come to my senses and acknowledged the magnitude of the dangers I’d put myself and others in. That real-life was a whole lot different from the movies.

  Tallow had warned me. Mox had. I hadn’t listened, and now Abriel and I were going to die because of me.

  But I would die fast and hope that beyond this life my family waited. If they weren’t there, Abriel would take care of me, wouldn’t he? Where did angels go when they died? Where would I go?

  Tears spilled down my cheeks as I gazed at Abriel one last time. The fear of what I was about to do almost paralyzed me. Wherever I went, I didn’t want to be alone. Find me, Abriel.

  My mouth had gone dry. I swallowed hard.

  Now.

  I held my hand up to Michael. I didn’t have a plan, but once I got on my feet I’d do everything I could to make him put a bullet through my brain before he or any of the Fallen had time to do anything else. Michael had started me on this journey. It seemed fitting he would be the one to end it.

  Michael’s lips twitched into a smile. He reached down and clasped his hand around mine.

  The world spun. In brilliant golden flashes I saw an angel, wings large and unfurled, then in moments I found myself floating among gilded clouds. In front of me hovered Michael as the angel he must have been before he’d fallen.

  His face betrayed his confusion.

  What the hell is this?

  My thoughts echoed his. How am I here? Where is here?

  Who the hell are you?

  I was kin and Guardian. But this made no sense.

  Somewhere in the real world a crack sounded, and another two. At the fourth Michael’s hand must have fallen from mine because I found myself back in the barn. He lay dead in front of me, a bullet through his forehead. I turned to look behind me and find out who had come to rescue Abriel and me and saw the three other Fallen sprawled on the ground also dead. Behind them Lucien stood, a gun raised in his hand, pointed at me.

  “For the love of God.” He lowered the gun, ran to me, and fell on his knees. “What have they done to you? Are you all right?”

  “Lucien?” He killed them?

  “Are you all right?”

  I nodded.

  He pushed himself off the ground, leaving the gun near me and strode quickly to his brother. He untied the knots in the ropes around Abriel’s wrists and caught him before he buckled.

  “Brother,” Abriel murmured.

  “Let him go, asshole,” commanded a voice I knew from the first word.

  Tallow stood in the doorway, Mox beside him. Both held guns. I never imagined them with guns—gentle Tallow and wonderfully lecherous Mox.

  “It’s all right,” I pleaded as I got off the ground as fast as I could. “It’s not what you think.”

  I thought he’d been responsible for me and Abriel being at the barn. But he wasn’t. How could he be when he’d saved us?

  Mox and Tallow didn’t seem to hear a word I said. Their focus was on Lucien, their guns still pointed at him.

  “You need to take her and Abriel and get out of here now,” Lucien said as he began to help Abriel toward Tallow and Mox. “I’m being followed. Get them out of here. Now.”

  Mox glanced at Tallow. I knew he didn’t trust Lucien.

  “I’m serious. Get out of here before it’s too late.”

  Tallow cocked his gun. “First you die.”

  “No, Tallow,” I screamed, and grabbed the gun Lucien had left beside me. I pointed it at Tallow, my hand wavering. I didn’t know how to use a gun, and I had no intention of shooting Tallow, but I needed him to listen.

  “What are you doing?” I heard the hurt of my perceived betrayal in Tallow’s tone.

  “Megs?” Mox asked warily.

  “You need to go. Now,” Lucien urged.

  Tallow lowered his gun, looking at me in disbelief. When Mox did the same, I lowered Lucien’s and hoped Tallow would give me a chance later to explain.

  Mox approached Lucien cautiously, glancing back at me and the gun I still held in my hand, and took Abriel from him before he began to move him toward the door.

  Tallow still stared at me. I knew he couldn’t believe I’d pointed a gun at him to save the life of one of the most powerful Fallen on Earth, a leader of those who killed his kin.

  Maybe he’d forgive me for that after I explained. I wasn’t sure he’d forgive me for what I had to do next.

  “Come with us,” I said to Lucien. If he stayed they’d kill him for betraying his kind.

  “What?” Tallow’s eyes flared.

  “You don’t have time for this.” Lucien turned to Tallow. “Take the road to the farmhouse. You’ll find it continues past there. At the fork, go left and drive. Drive fast. Get them both out of here. I’ll act as a distraction for as long as I can.”

  “No,” I said. I begged. “We’re not leaving you here.” How could we when he’d saved Abriel and me?

  Tallow grasped my arm and pulled. “Come on.”

  I hated him telling me what to do.

  “We can’t leave him here.”

  Lucien smiled. “You have to. Goodbye, Meghan May.”

  He took the gun from my hand, and then Tallow pulled me out into daylight.

  Everything that had happened finally crashed over me like a tidal wave. My legs gave way and Tallow caught me, then took me into his arms and carried me to a blue hatchback parked close by.

  Mox had helped Abriel into the car by the time we reached it. Tallow opened the back door, placed me roughly inside, and slammed it closed. Lightning fast, he jumped into the front passenger seat. Mox revved the engine and planted his foot down.

  As we drove away, I saw through my swollen eyes Lucien walk from the barn and watch us go. I pressed my hands against the glass as he disappeared behind a cloud of dust raised by the car.

  I had saved Savannah. Abriel and I had escaped. I should have been happy. I’d done what Dore wanted of me. This was the path I chose to reach my happily ever after.

  But how could I live with that when in my wake I had once again left someone facing dangers they wouldn’t have to if it weren’t for me?

  24

  Abriel

  Slumped in his seat, Abriel lifted his head in time to see Meghan raise her hands to the glass of the car’s side window and catch a glance of his brother before Lucien was swallowed by dust.

  Scattered like ashes were memories of his time with his brother, long before he transformed into a monster. The brother he’d loved.

  Meghan’s grace and her unwavering unforgiveness pulled him in two directions, the tautness of his opposing emotions threatening to tear him apart like the binds that had held him in the barn. Lucien had saved them, but that didn’t change what he had done. He couldn’t forgive as easily as she did.

  Meghan turned to him. Her eyes were narrowed from the swelling of her face, the skin around them hues of purple and blue like billowing storm clouds.

  “You pointed a gun at me. Would you have shot me to save him?” Tallow’s words were a mixture of anger and disbelief.

  Abriel waited for Meghan’s reply, but her focus was on him and nothing else. She reached out and slipped her hand into his.

  Instantly Abriel’s world twisted and spun. Golden and bright, h
e rose to heavenly heights and found himself among gilded clouds, the wings that had been taken from him decades ago unfurled and brilliant behind his back.

  His heart soared at the return of what he had lost, the feel of the air against his feathers, the exhilaration of the lightness of flight, before confusion clouded it all—where was he?

  Then he saw her. Meghan, suspended in the air in front of him, her face absent of the trauma it had displayed moments before.

  Somewhere in another world, voices reached him.

  “Would you have? Shot me?” Tallow’s anger was palpable.

  “Not now,” Mox snapped. “Not fucking now. I can’t concentrate on driving if you’re yelling at her in my ear.”

  Meghan looked up into the air as though considering a reply before she returned her eyes to Abriel. Even though they weren’t holding hands in this place they were now both in, Abriel sensed her grip far away, felt it squeeze tighter.

  What was this shared vision? It sounded like what Tallow and Mox had told him about, Meghan’s ability to see and place herself in the minds of shifters. But he wasn’t a shifter. Was this because of what he’d done that night in Lucien’s apartment, when he’d seen her floating above him and made the decision to grab hold of her and pull her back instead of—

  What did you do to me in Lucien’s apartment?

  Abriel froze. Meghan’s mouth hadn’t moved but he had heard her thoughts as clear as he could hear his own.

  And I can hear your thoughts as clear as my own, too. Like I can Tallow, or any other shifter whose hand I hold. Why can I do that with you when I couldn’t before? I did it with Michael as well. How is that possible? What do you mean I was floating and you grabbed hold of me? What happened in Lucien’s apartment? Why ever since then have you glowed?

  His answer was another thought, one he immediately wished he could erase because angels should never utter such truths. I stopped you. From ascending.

  What does that mean?

  Abriel thought he knew. That he had bound himself to her. To protect and guide her until his last breath. He had become what humans might have called a guardian angel. But now? What did this mean?