A Shimmer of Angels (26 page)

I wobbled outside to find Kade half inside a black car, fiddling with the wires under the steering wheel. I stood over him, blocking out his light. When he looked over, I jangled the keys.

He wriggled out from the car and stood, brushing himself off. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” He tried to snatch them from my hand.

I jerked them back. “We’re borrowing. This is only until we get into the city. Then you’ll call the police and leave an anonymous tip about a stolen car.”

He grunted, but didn’t argue. I handed over the keys. When he clicked the button, the car in the driveway’s headlights popped on. It was a two-door, lowered, purple Acura with a spoiler and shiny rims.

Wonderful.

Kade started the car. It vroomed to life when he pulled up to me and threw the door open. I sighed and climbed in. Getting caught in a stolen car would not be awesome, but I couldn’t hide in the party house forever.

Three hours was a long drive, and I’d never been a patient road-tripper, so I unlocked the cell phone I took off the first partier and punched in Lee’s number. I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to my best friend. I had no idea what to tell him. Maybe I could dance around some of his questions. The phone rang and rang. His voicemail came on. “Lee, it’s Ray. Call me at this number when you get this. Sorry I’ve been … away. Hope you’re doing well, and—well, just call me.”

Kade darted sidelong glances at me every few seconds. I squirmed, not wanting to give any thought to this new shift happening between Kade and me. It was scary and uncomfortable, and this was going to be a long ride.

I pulled up the web browser app on the smartphone, checked my e-mail, then I checked Lee’s social network pages. The last post on each one of them was a picture. A black-winged angel with a dark-blue background.

Chapter Thirty-Five

I sat back in the leather seat, bouncing my heel out of my borrowed stilettos. Lee was drawing the same angel Allison and Tony had before their deaths. Tucking my elbows in tight to my sides, I focused on my breathing.

“Ray? Ray, you okay?” Kade watched the road, keeping one hand on the wheel, and felt around for my hand, eventually settling for my arm.

“I think my friend’s in trouble.”

He didn’t answer, just removed his hand to shift, pushing the car faster. The stolen car handled well on the tight mountain turns, but we were so screwed if party-boy woke up and reported it. The bright purple paint would give us up instantly.

“Kade, I need to know everything about Az. Anything that might help me save Lee.”

“I haven’t seen my brother in decades.”

Brother. He’d called Cam brother, too, the day they were both at the diner. I frowned. He glanced over at me, but I checked the phone again, still staring at Lee’s drawing.

“Not the same way as humans. Brother in the sense we have the same maker, grew up together, and fought together.”

“Oh.” I sent Lee a text and waited for a response. “So do you all know each other?”

“Of course not. There aren’t many of us left these days, but newer wings are still made, and, though it isn’t common, angels still Fall. One side can’t see the other’s wings. Good thing too, otherwise we’d all be annihilated by now.”

Complete angel annihilation wouldn’t be so bad for me.

“Look, I don’t know how or why you’re involved in all this, but—”

I cut him off. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. I’ve made my peace with it.” Sort of. “I just need to know about Az.”

“Gotcha. Cliff’s Notes version. When an angel Falls, those still in good standing are forbidden to interact with the Fallen, unless their paths cross while an angel is on a mission. Then it usually breaks down to last man standing. Az fell decades before I did, so there’s no way to know how powerful he’s become.”

“How did he Fall?”

“Harm. He turned cold, calculated, and he took a human life.”

I imagined someone with white wings as beautiful and pure as Cam’s being splattered with human blood. “At the diner, you said succumbing to human emotion was the way your kind Falls.”

“I said a lot of things.”

I drew my gaze over to Kade. He’d been lying to me. Probably this entire time. What else had he been lying about? This morning maybe, when I woke up in his arms. Last night, when he said there was someone on the SS Crazy’s roof with us to scare me, to get instant payback for the way I dragged him up the California coast to break me out. And before, about Mom. He had to be lying about that too. I’d struggled with myself, pushing harder than I thought I could stand to put the slightest inkling of trust in him, and he’d played me. I didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to be in the same car with him.

“You have to understand where I’m coming from. Kay, she … things ended badly. I was angry for a long time. You were …”

“The perfect revenge,” I filled in, realizing it was true. Tears pricked my eyes. All this time I was merely a play thing, a toy in a tiger’s cage. A way for him to hurt Mom from beyond the grave. Just another way I lived in Mom’s shadow. First I’d become the burden after her death, the crazy daughter who couldn’t handle her passing without seeing wings. Then when I realized Laylah was growing into Mom, inheriting her long hair and heart-shaped face, looking like her in a way I never would. Now I was a Fallen angel’s crumpled do-over. I held tighter to myself, pressing my arms across my stomach until the corset’s boning dug into my flesh.

Kade jerked the wheel, correcting the car’s path. He glanced from the road back to me several times.

“This isn’t the right time. You had a bad night. The drugs and—”

I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “I’m fine.” But I so wasn’t. My emotions were stitched haphazardly together, and the thread that held them was blowing loose in the breeze. “Let’s just stay on Az. What can he do?”

He said nothing for a long time. Of that, I was grateful. It gave me time to collect myself.

“Az is one angry S.O.B. He’ll be able to influence them.”

“The way you and Cam did at the diner, to my customers?” Up until now I’d avoided saying Cam’s name, for both our sakes, but after what he’d revealed, I didn’t care anymore.

I watched him roll his shoulders back. I would have smiled, if I could.

“The Fallens’ influence is different. It comes from a darker place. Usually that makes it stronger than what the others can do. As far as what else Az can do, I have no idea. Our kind gets stronger with every life taken.”

“So he could have unmatched power.” The thought prickled my skin.

“He could have the ability to compel someone to do almost anything, or, if he’s really pushing himself, he could even amplify whatever emotions are lingering inside the human, however small. Both are dangerous.

“But what about the drawings?”

Kade glanced at me while switching lanes to get around a van with luggage piled high inside. “What drawings?”

I pulled up the web browser again and showed it to him. “Two of my classmates drew this not long before they supposedly killed themselves. And now Lee’s been drawing it.” I closed the browser, unable to look at it again, my stomach turning. “And Caroline. Two nights ago, the girl across from me drank cleaning supplies. When I looked in her room, that picture was on her wall.”

Kade’s eyes cut to me. “At the mental institution?”

Technically it was a mental health clinic, but I couldn’t argue with that association; hell, even I’d called it that before. “Yeah.”

“I … felt something on the roof last night. Just before we jumped.” So Az really had been there. Maybe Kade hadn’t been lying about everything. “I thought—it must have been a fluke, but I think he was there, watching us. I could feel him.”

“
Feel
him?”

Kade ignored my question. “We have a problem. Your friend, your classmates, your family, they could all be in trouble.” He studied me for so long I almost had to warn him he was still driving. When he finally looked back at the road, he clamped his jaw together and shifted again, weaving through the cars in front of us.

I tried calling Lee again. Voicemail.

“Why was he there? And why would he be after Lee? Why
my
family? So the deaths were following me around?” I grabbed his sleeve. “Has anyone else died?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the news. No other deaths at your school.”

But what about my family? The longer he sat in silence, the deeper his warning sank in. Lee, Dad, and Laylah. Weight gathered on my chest. I squeezed my eyes closed, determined to fight the panic attack. Would Az swoop in and force the hand of everyone I cared about?

I tried a different approach since Kade didn’t want to answer my previous questions. “It’s been almost a month, right? Why would he wait so long to kill again? And how likely do you think it is that he’ll go after my family?” I asked the last question almost too quietly.

He flicked me a glance, and his expression softened before he looked back to the road. “I didn’t mean to worry you. Just thought you should know the worst-case scenario. The probability isn’t high. If he’s after your friend and he waited three weeks to take him, my money’s on him having a plan.”

I opened my mouth to demand he tell me everything when he reached over and squeezed my hand. When he looked at me, his eyes were completely black. “Get some rest.”

Against my wishes, I sank into the buttery leather seat, feeling its comfort surround me. He’d used his influence on me. That bastard. I glanced over my shoulder at him, cursing him under my breath. Freaking wonderful. But I couldn’t fight my heavy eyelids any longer, and I found myself relaxing—truly relaxing, my carefully crafted walls melting away for the first time in weeks—and slipping into sleep. With my next deep breath, images came flooding in.

A black-winged creature soared toward me, blocking out the deep-blue sky. The creature stopped, hovering several yards in front of me. I knew he was a Fallen One, yet he looked nothing like Kade. His jaw was too broad for his face, his forehead too narrow. The splash of pale skin and hollow cheeks made him look even more sinister. Blackness coated his eyes, gleaming like a vacuum of hope.

I stepped back, and the fog surrounding him billowed forward.

“I’ve been watching you, human. I know you can see us for who we are.” I recognized his voice as the one from my nightmares.

“What do you want?” I shouted.

“Your gift, seer.”

My gift? What was he talking about? I was no one, nothing. Still, this was a dream. I could control this. I feigned bravery, pulling my shoulders back and raising my chin. “You can’t have it.” He blurred toward me, stopping a foot from me. His icy breath blew against my face. I squeezed my eyes closed and balled my fists to keep my knees from shaking. “You can’t have any more souls, either. Go back to where you came from.”

More wind blew me back as laughter, deeper than his voice, billowed. “And you think you can stop me? Silly girl. You can’t even help yourself.”

His fingers raked my skin. Shards of pain sliced the inside of my forearm. The ache expanded, tearing into the palm of my opposite hand. I looked down. One of his hands rested in my palm, the other draped across my forearm, where the pain emanated from.

The light behind him intensified. “Come with me. Once you sacrifice your pitiful soul to us, we’ll rule this world together—”

Rule the world? I jerked back from him, feeling colder for the experience, the frost of winter on every inch of my exposed skin—which was a lot in this flimsy outfit. “You and I have nothing together!”

“I will have you, one way or another.” His black eyes bore into me. “There are easier ways than this to break you. You’ll see. Very soon.” He flapped his wings and rose high into the air. The force from his take-off knocked me over. His dark, ominous shadow floated like a raincloud over my vision.

Me. He wanted
me
.

Tires screeched. I slammed against my seatbelt, and the pain broke the dream’s spell.

“Rayna!”

I sucked in sharp breaths until the wooziness subsided. The world outside the car was dark and unmoving. We were parked, not on the highway, but on a city street.

Kade’s face beside me was pale, his deep brown eyes rounded. “Rayna, it’s okay,” he soothed, his gaze jumping from my hands to my face and back again, watching warily, like he was afraid to startle me.

I didn’t understand, until I followed the direction of his gaze, to the large shard of glass I clenched in my hand and the three long gashes that ran down the inside of my forearm. Blood oozed from the cuts. My hands shook, and I dropped the shard into my lap.

Kade moved quickly, snatching it up and throwing it out his half-open window. “What were you thinking?” His voice boomed and quaked at the same time. He tore the sleeve from his shirt, grabbed my hand, and wrapped it in the soft cotton, cinching it tighter than I would have liked. He ripped his second sleeve into strips and tied them together for my forearm.

Tiny glass particles lay over me like a glittery blanket. None of the pieces looked one-twentieth as large as the one I’d sliced myself with.

“How … how did I—the glass … did I do this?”

“Please don’t tell me you really are crazy,” he mumbled while my blood soaked through his black t-shirt.

I pushed his hands away, accidentally slamming them into the steering wheel. Pain throbbed in my hands, up my arms. Still, I shoved him away again. “I’m not crazy!” My voice echoed through the broken window and out into the street. Broken window? When did it break, and how did I get a hold of the glass?

“Ray—”

I shook. Every part of me shook. “I’m not! I never was.”

“Okay, okay. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Kade reached for my arm, slowing halfway to make sure I wasn’t going to hit him again. I thought about it, I did. It would have been so satisfying after he’d called me crazy, but my arm hurt so much. He held it above and below my cuts. “Shit. This isn’t good.”

My head felt light, like the injection was still in my system. “I—I saw him.”

He looked up from my arm. “Who did you see?”

“He demanded my gift. Called me a seer.”