Airs & Graces (3 page)

“Have you already forgotten who’s trying to kill you and who isn’t?” he asked as he shoved me up against the back of my car. He pinned me there between the unforgiving metal and the equally unforgiving planes of his body as he popped the passenger door, his hand still tight over my mouth. Hot tears of rage began to seep out of the corners of my eyes as he jockeyed for a better hold on me while keeping the door open. It was only a second or two before he had me shoved into the passenger seat of my own car, the door shut firmly in my face. As soon as the door closed, he hit the button on the remote to lock the doors and somehow was at the driver’s side and in the seat before I had so much as the half-second it took to slide the lock up and reach for the handle. “If you’re going to survive the day, it’s going to require you get a lot smarter, very quickly. Personally, I don’t see why Piorre trusted you with this; you don’t even seem capable of recognizing friends from enemies.”

I stared at him as he pressed the clutch pedal to the floor and turned the key in the ignition, the car coming to life. As I put on my seatbelt, he considered me a moment and put the car in reverse, sliding her easily between gears. I closed my eyes and thought to myself,
Thank God he at least knows how to drive a stick.

I reached into the glove box and hit the button on the garage door opener and looked at him. He nodded deftly and steered my car out into traffic and for parts unknown. I asked him again, “Where are we going?” I half expected him not to answer, but he did.

“The University District.” But that was the only information he would volunteer and now that I had a good look at him, I could tell his expression was going to be of no help whatsoever either, as blank and stoic as newly fallen snow. I hugged myself and huddled against my car door, not because I was cold but more so I could hold the spot where I’d been hit because damn if it didn’t still hurt.

“Who are you?” I asked finally after several moments of silence. He turned on the signal to get onto the interstate going north, and for a time his only response was its rhythmic ticking.

Finally he drew a breath and said, “Tab. Who are you?” He hadn’t really answered my question, but I took it and gave a little back.

“My name is Adelaide.” After several moments of silence I added, “But I hate it, so I just have most people call me Addy instead.” I shrugged and watched his profile to see if he would give me anything else. Finally when he did speak what he said was pretty lame.

“Adelaide is a good name.” More silence followed.

We were coming over the Montlake Cut, where Lake Washington emptied into Lake Union, which eventually emptied into the Puget Sound and so on down the line until it hit the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, when I thought to ask him, “Why did you tell that Rahab guy that I was some kind of vessel?” He finally looked at me like I said something interesting while he flipped on the turn signal to take us off the freeway into the heart of the U-District via the 45th Street exit.

“Because that’s what you humans are… vessels.” He turned my car deftly, but now it was my turn to stare at him like he’d done something interesting.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘you humans?’” I looked at him for a span of heartbeats, and when he didn’t immediately say anything, I said, “Look, I get that you and the guy with the bad grill aren’t people like I’m people, otherwise what would be up with the smoke and the lights? But what the hell are we talking about here? I guess a better question isn’t so much ‘who are you,’ but ‘what are you?’”

“Hell is exactly what we are talking about here, more specifically, Heaven and Hell, and the powers of both. Mortals – ” He paused for effect. “ – that’s you – are caught in the crossfire, though usually not so spectacularly. Right now, each side has their plan for you, Adelaide. I’m here to see that mortals have a chance to choose their own destiny.”

“You’re doing a bang up fucking job with me on that one,” I muttered, letting out a breath, trying to wrap my brain around the entire concept that just got laid in my lap, adding belatedly, “…and it’s Addy.”

“You cannot choose a destiny if you’re dead,” he murmured, and it was a sobering thought.

He turned down Greek Row and went midway down the first block, pulling into an empty space at the curb and cutting the engine.

“We’re here,” he said flatly and got out of my car. I stared up at one of the imposing mansions and the lettering above each the door, but yeah… I couldn’t tell you what it said, because it was all Greek to me. I unfastened my seatbelt, and he was just there, opening my car door for me like some kind of old-fashioned gentleman would. I mean did guys even open doors for girls anymore? It’d been forever since I had been out with one, so I couldn’t tell you.

I got out and almost doubled back over with the pain that lanced through my chest at the act of straightening up. He put his hand on my back and ushered me up the sidewalk and up the steps of a house just down the block from my car. It was brick with a wrought-iron decorative gate out front and the white Greek columns like so many others down either side of the street. He let the gate clang shut behind us and led me up and through the front door like he lived there, and as soon as I crossed the threshold I was assaulted by the booming and gunfire of everyone’s favorite first person shooter emanating from a living room off to my right.

The big-screen TV was split into two screens, and two men sat on a sagging leather couch in front of it, game controllers in hand. One had turned to look at us, his fiery red hair in a loose ponytail, his face tan and handsome with a chiseled jaw line and lovely hazel eyes. He looked like he should be on the football team, with how broad-shouldered and muscled he was.

I couldn’t say what the other looked like, as I just had a view of the back of his head; his hair was shoulder-length and black like Tab’s, and from what I could see of his neck and shoulders he wasn’t as built as the redhead. The redhead was the first to speak, and his voice was deep and rumbled out of his broad chest in a genial way.

“Hello, Tab, who is this?” he asked, but before anyone could respond, the slighter man next to him spoke without turning around.

“Is she hot?” He rolled his shoulders without turning around and continued with, “Because if she’s not hot, it’s not worth turning around. I’m kicking your ass, Urie.”

I looked back at the redhead called ‘Urie’ and raised an eyebrow at him waiting to see what he would say. He had the grace to look embarrassed when he said to the other man, “She’s hot, Gabriel.”

I looked away from them and back to Tab to see what he thought of the exchange. His face gave away nothing. I swung back around at the sound of cloth sliding against leather to see the other man hanging over the back of the couch, his cornflower blue eyes traveling up from my feet in a slow sweep, definitely pausing longer than what was appropriate at my hips and again for even longer at my chest. I already didn’t like him much.

“Tabby Cat! What did you bring us?” he asked, and I turned back to Tab, his mouth definitely turned down in an expression of disapproval.

“Tabby Cat?” I asked him, and he just shook his head.

“There’s no time for this. Where is Michael?” he asked the two on the couch, and it just sort of clicked in my brain.

“You mean to tell me
that’s
Gabriel? The Gabriel? And that he’s Uriel?” I said, gesticulating at the two on the couch. “I mean I suppose I can get my head around him being one of the Archangels, at least he’s built like one,” I said pointing at Uriel, “but this yahoo?” I asked, indicating Gabriel.

“Yeah… bored now,” Gabriel said, turning around and resuming his game with a muttered “Mortals.”

“Michael is upstairs; let me get him for you,” Uriel said, rising to his feet. I expected him to go for the stairwell with the dark wood banister against the wall in front of us but I was sadly mistaken, instead he drew a deep breath and shouted “Michael!” but it wasn’t a normal shout-across-the-house thing. I jumped with the force of it, feeling my bones creak as I clapped my hands over my ears. His voice rolled through the house like thunder. None of the other men–er, Angels?–were even fazed by it, but it brought tears to my eyes. Uriel shrugged apologetically and sat back down, resuming his game against Gabriel.

Expensive wingtip shoes and gray slacks appeared at the top of the stairs, beginning their descent, and my vision wavered. I rubbed my eyes, dashing the tears from them, blinked, and looked up again. He wore the slacks of an expensive tailored suit and a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled back over tanned muscular forearms. He was broad in the chest, and his blond hair was long and loose. He turned to look towards us, and again my vision wavered like the lights were flickering, subtly at first, then stronger, and suddenly, he just wasn’t dressed like he was before. Now he was in silver armor, like medieval armor, and the lights weren’t electric but were burning torches instead. The stairs weren’t carpeted anymore, but made of stone with no railing, and his wings…

I gasped and almost fell to my knees, the breath knocked clean out of me by what I saw. His wings were so
beautiful
, arching high, bright, and white behind him, the long feathers dragging the steps as he came down. But this wasn’t right; I was in a frat house in Seattle. I blinked, and he was standing halfway down the steps in his expensive gray pants and white shirt, wingless but no less lovely, a queer expression painting his features, like I had just done something fascinating, but then the other vision wavered back over everything. I closed my eyes tight, and it was a mistake: the vision became all the more clear.

Michael was saying something to someone, and I turned to my right, but instead of there being the couch with the game system there stood three more Angels, Uriel in copper chainmail, his wings pure white and bathed in a golden glow, and beside him another whom I didn’t recognize, a brunette, and then Gabriel, his hair much longer but with the same bored expression of only moments ago.

I didn’t understand. What was happening to me? I must have said it out loud because a hand closed on my left arm, where Tab was standing, and I turned, and that is when I let out a scream, a short, high-pitched bleat of terror.

There was more than stone flooring this time; a large stone table stood there. It was horrible, the stone drenched in blood and heavier, wetter, things… I fell to the floor and scrambled backwards in a crab walk away from the scene. The man chained to the table at ankles and wrists shouldn’t have been alive, but he was, straining at the chains screaming silently, his eyes wide and angry, his black hair longer than it had been a moment ago, matted with his own fluids to the side of his face as he whipped his head around and stared me straight in the eyes with his own liquid gray ones. I knew him, sort of. It was Tab, and that’s when I started screaming again… only this time I didn’t stop.

I screamed loud and long until the world went black, and I didn’t have to see it anymore.

Chapter Two

Tabbris

“Oh shut up! Did she just pop? She just popped, didn’t she?”

I looked down at Adelaide and made sure her soul was still attached. “Gabriel, this is serious.” More serious than I’d realized. There was something about that scream… and in looking again, I realized that this wasn’t such a good place to take her after all. I had hoped to be quicker, to not let it reach this point. How had it happened so rapidly? I couldn’t understand it, but decades of pain should have kept me mindful of how little I understood Iaoel. After inwardly cursing myself, I schooled my expression and focused on the situation at hand.

“Yeah, ‘cause if she horks, you’re cleaning it up.” Gabriel turned back around and un-paused the game and continued speaking in an annoyed mutter. “I am
not
cleaning that up.”

Michael looked at her crumpled form, then back to me.

I sighed. “Obviously, things have gone wildly wrong in a very short amount of time. I know we’re not friends…” I let the thought trail off. “However, this goes beyond that.” There was a millennia in that pause. Michael was faithful to the hosts of Heaven, faithful to a fault. Lucifer would have to kill him a dozen times over just to get his attention now; he was so steeped in the power of Heaven. Michael was also expressive of his disdain for all but the most pious of Angels.

“I’m not clear on what part you’re playing in this, Tabbris, except that your presence here is not an omen of good fortune. Worse, it appears you’re once again leaning toward the darkness.”

My presence here wasn’t going to help her or the situation. My wings were a dead giveaway. The feathers had gone black-tipped some time ago, and after that, the entire things had taken on a deep crimson hue. It wasn’t a good sign.

I shrugged. “They’ve been darker,” I looked from my wings to Adelaide on the floor. I preferred her unconscious at this point. It made things less difficult. Especially now that I saw my hopes were in vain, and I had to further hope they hadn’t realized it yet. I readdressed Michael. “I’m fulfilling my responsibility. A mortal vessel has been imposed upon. I’m sure you’ll want the resource of the Grace within her. So you simply extract it,” which I was sure was no longer possible, but I was at a loss for the moment.

Michael peered at me from the third step, still insisting on maintaining a height advantage, just in case. My hand never got near my blade. This wasn’t a place to fight. It was a place for subtlety, so much so that I had to distract Uriel and Michael simultaneously. “Uriel can confirm that what I am saying is true, if you still don’t believe me.”

At the mention of his name, Uriel hopped the couch and walked over to stare down at Adelaide. The glances between him and Michael spoke volumes. I’d had a sliver of hope, even realizing that efficiency and her safety could no longer be combined, that maybe they’d be willing to wait, to do it the hard way. Sometimes, however, individual mortal lives didn’t mean a lot to those who only see the big picture. They were definitely looking at her like a puzzle, not a person. I’d saved the young woman’s life only to endanger it by my misjudgment of both Iaoel and the Archangels.