Angelfire (20 page)

I shut my eyes tightly and tried to focus my energy, remembering what Will had told me: “
Don't stop fighting
.”

With a cry, I let my power erupt, lashing into Geir. The impact surprised him and threw him off me. As he flew, I slung my fist back and pounded him in the face. He hit the ground hard, flat on his back. His wings shuddered and curled with pain.

“You little bitch!” he roared, covering his face in his hands.

I grabbed a sword off the ground and raised it to shove it into his heart, but he rolled out of the way and leaped to
his feet. He evaded each stroke as I swung left and right, but something raged through me, a fury spinning with madness. As I fought the reaper, I felt my control slipping, and something dark throbbed in my skull until I could barely breathe. The world around me went black, until all I could see was Geir's horrible face as I swung my sword, unable to think coherent thoughts. I wanted to throw my weapon to the ground and grab at his throat with my bare hands.

Will appeared like a flash between us, shoving me back and swinging his arm out and smashing it into Geir's face. Geir growled and spat in rage.

“Ellie, go!” Will shouted, looking back at me. “Get out of here!”

His voice brought my senses back to me. I blinked and the rest of the world came back, but Will blocked my view of the demonic reaper. “I can beat him!” I cried. “Let me try!”

He took a firm hold of my arm. “You're losing yourself. If I let you continue to fight him, it'll get bad. Now run!”

“What about you?” I cried. “I'm not going to leave you here!”

“You are the only thing I care about,” he said. “You must survive!”

Even if I had wanted to, I couldn't move. My pulse pounded inside my head like tribal drums, drowning out Will's pleas. I couldn't force myself to turn and run. Not when he was wounded. I couldn't abandon him.

Geir stood up and vanished for a moment, reappearing in the air above Will. He came down hard, fist swinging. Will jumped behind a statue of a woman and Geir's fist pounded through her abdomen, spraying chunks of marble. Will leaped around the statue and hit Geir over and over again. Geir flew straight back and halted abruptly, gagging, blood dribbling from his lips. He looked down at his chest and found himself skewered on the lance of a stone knight. Blood oozed thickly from his wound and ran down the length of the lance. He snarled up at Will, his yellow eyes flashing, his shark's teeth gnashing like a piranha's. He grabbed the stone and started to pull himself free.

“Ellie!” Will shouted, rushing back to me. “We have to go,
now
! I'll grab the sarcophagus.”

I nodded, let my swords disappear, and darted back inside the house, Will right behind me. He bent down over the box and lifted it—almost
effortlessly
, to my amazement—and took off at a run.

“No!”
Geir shrieked. “You can't! Damn you,
no
!”

As I ran after Will, I looked back at Geir, who was still trying to free himself. I saw him pound his fist into the stone lance and snap it in half. His dark wings beat the air violently. He shrieked like some demon bird spawned in Hell and his eyes glowed brightly with rage. In the failing light, his face appeared to change, his teeth growing longer and sharper, his eyes narrowing to slits. I stopped watching and ran faster.

We finally reached the truck, and I threw open the back doors so Will could set the sarcophagus inside. We climbed in front as fast as we could, with Will in the driver's seat, and we sped off.

“YOU'RE HURT,” I SAID, LIFTING UP WHAT WAS LEFT of his tattered sleeve to examine the deep gouges in his arm. Though we were free of the Grim, Will's attitude sure wasn't.

He shrugged away from me, his good hand maintaining a death grip on the steering wheel while he cradled his wounded arm against his chest. “I'm fine. You worry too much about me.”

“What about your shoulder?”

“I'm
fine
.”

“You were
impaled
.”

“Geir was worse off than I was when we got the hell out of there, and he'll be back to his old self in minutes.”

“But you're not Geir.”

He glanced at me. His eyes had returned to their normal soft green. “Our powers are not all that different.”

“Did you see what he did with his hands?” I asked, holding up my own. “He practically transformed right before our eyes.”

“That isn't exactly uncommon among vir,” he said. “Shape-shifting is a trait many of us share.”

“Can you change your hands into claws like that too?”

“No,” he said.

“What can you do, then?”

“I'm nothing like him.”

“Oh.” I wondered about his strange eyes. The colors of his and Geir's eyes seemed to intensify as they got stronger and angrier. They didn't exactly change color, but the hues grew brighter, almost glowing. Maybe that was Will's ability. At least he didn't transform into a monster.

I nodded and stared ahead. “Are we going back to the library?”

“Of course not,” he said, his voice void of worry. “Bastian's vir will expect us to take the sarcophagus to Nathaniel, since he is the only one I know who might be able to read the inscriptions. They'll be trying to locate him next. They'll learn he's working at the library very soon.”

“Nathaniel's not there right now, is he?” I asked, my voice quaking. “What if they find him? He'll be killed!”

“He's fine,” Will said. “Don't worry. He's at the warehouse.”

“
Our
warehouse?”

“Yeah. Bastian can't know about that location yet. We'll
keep the Enshi there too, for now.”

“What if Geir follows us?” I had a terrible vision of him blasting through the wall and killing us all.

“He'll try,” he said without fear. “But we're too far ahead. The trail will be cold by the time he gets free. The vir may be stronger than other reapers, but our tracking abilities aren't as good. We don't have the nose that a lupine has, for instance.”

His words were a small comfort, but I couldn't help thinking about what had happened to me when I'd fought Geir one-on-one. I'd slipped into a state in which I didn't know anything but the fight and nothing else mattered to me. The same thing had threatened to happen during our last fight against Ragnuk. I'd been horribly angry and felt
wrong
. What had happened frightened me more than Geir did, because he was something that could be defeated. The darkness I felt overtaking me wasn't something I could fight. What if I had lost control completely and hurt someone I cared about, like Will? Dark spidery things had appeared on my face on my birthday, after months of awful nightmares, and now this. I didn't know if I was becoming something as demonic as the reapers I battled—if I was becoming one of them.

“Will,” I said, my voice small, “what happened to me back there? Why did you stop me? Did you know something?”

“Your purpose is to fight,” he said. “It's what you were
born for. Sometimes it gets a little intense and you don't think straight.”

“Is that why you stopped me? Because I was going to lose control?”

“You could have. When you reach that level, you aren't able to fight with a clear head, and it makes a battle even more dangerous. We can fight Geir another day.”

“Couldn't it be a good thing?” I offered. “I lost all my fear then. You said that makes me stronger.”

“It does make you stronger, but you also lost
yourself
along with that fear. It's not safe for you to lose your head like that, no matter what advantage it gives you.”

“You mean I can hurt someone I don't mean to.”

“Yes.”

“Have I hurt you?”

When he didn't answer, a heaviness settled on me and I didn't want to know any more. His silence said everything. I had lost control before and hurt him. That sent an unmatched ache through my heart. How could I have let something like that happen?

Will's hand lay on mine in a comforting gesture as if he sensed my unease. I looked up to meet his eyes. “Hey,” he said with a small smile. “It'll be okay.”

We reached the warehouse and Will pulled into the overgrown alley. Nathaniel was standing at the end, his arms crossed over his chest. He let out a low breath when we hopped out of the truck and he saw our torn, bloody clothes.

“I figured you'd run into some trouble,” he said. “Who ambushed you?”

“Geir,” Will said as he pulled open the back of the van. “And a weaker vir, but Ellie took care of him easily. The weaker one must have mentioned his new find to the wrong reaper. Word got back to Bastian, and he sent Geir to retrieve it.”

“If only we had gotten there just five minutes sooner,” I said, frowning. “We could have missed Geir completely.”

“It's fine,” Will said. “We both made it out alive, and we have the Enshi. That was the original plan, wasn't it?”

I looked at him sadly. I'd already told him what was bothering me, so it was meaningless to repeat myself to him. I hated how badly he got hurt every time we ran into a reaper, and I hated anyone to shed any blood for me. It made knowing that all my previous Guardians were dead all too real.

“Let's get the sarcophagus inside before anyone sees us,” Nathaniel said.

He and Will lifted the box and carried it inside, setting it gently down in the middle of the main room. They had some trouble finding a spot free of the rubble our training had created.

“What do we have here?” Nathaniel asked no one in particular as he ran his fingers down the top of the box. “The seal of Azrael, as I'd thought. There's something in Enochian around the seal. But I can't read the divine language. No one can. What else do we have? Cuneiform.”

“Can you read that?” I asked, looking at the strange markings. “Cuneiform is Sumerian, right?”

“They developed it, yes,” he answered, picking a bit of dirt off a glyph. “But cuneiform evolved greatly over thousands of years, and this is different from the Old Assyrian script I know best.”

“So you can't read it?” I asked, disappointed.

“Not accurately right now, but I will. I just need some time. I'm guessing that it's from the nineteenth century
B.C
., based on some of the most frequently occurring glyphs.”

My jaw dropped. “That old?”

“How long do you think it will take you to translate the glyphs?” Will asked.

“Couple days,” Nathaniel answered with a shrug. “I have an idea of where to start. I'll let you know.”

I looked at the sarcophagus. Something ancient and evil was sleeping within. I almost didn't want to speak too loud, lest it wake up. It needed to be destroyed before that happened.

Something prickled along my skin like tiny spiderlings. I could feel the Enshi's presence beneath the stone lid, its power rolling across the floor like a thick fog, clouding my vision and my thoughts. A voice whispered to me, the echoes of some phantom whispering from deep inside my mind, drowning my senses. I lifted my hand and my fingers traced the lid.

Will grabbed my wrist, and I snapped my eyes up to his.
The concentration with which he studied my face made me wonder if he was trying to see through my skin straight to the bone.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can feel it in there.”

“I know,” Will said, his expression dark. “I can sense your fear.” He pulled me close to him in a move that felt utterly natural. “I don't think you should touch it.”

I didn't object. Whatever was inside that box wanted me. I could feel its lulling voice still creeping inside my skull, so hard to resist. There was a frightening urge inside me to lie across the top, to climb in, to get as close as possible. I shuddered and forced myself to look away. I held my winged necklace in my hand, concentrating on the warmth of the pendant as if it would protect me.

“How do we open it?” Will asked.

Nathaniel knelt to examine the lid more closely. He scratched at the seal before standing. He pushed the lid as hard as he could, but it didn't budge. He shoved again, even harder. Still, nothing.

“We should just burn it,” Will said.

“We can't burn it.” Nathaniel sighed. “It's made of stone. Let me figure out what the inscriptions say before we do anything. Sit tight. I'll figure this out.”

I wanted to believe him, I wanted to trust him, but as I gazed upon the sarcophagus, I watched the beautiful Enochian symbols vibrate and sway while nothing else
moved. Between my fingers my necklace pulsed. I didn't think the others could see what I saw or hear the humming inside my head. The gentle voice became more insistent by the second, until I could just make out the alien, childlike voice in the back of my mind.

“Pre-e-eliator…”

I FILLED MY HANDS WITH COLD, SLIMY INNARDS and dumped them into the kitchen sink. My unfortunate pumpkin had finally been gutted and now sat waiting for me to carve him some eyes. Kate was already carving her own pumpkin's fangs, and Rachel was even slower than I was, still scraping away at the gooey guts. I watched with unease as Landon scooped as much of the pumpkin mess out of the sink as he could and put it in a popcorn bowl.

“What are you planning to do with that?” I asked warily. If he threw them at me, I'd kill him.

“You'll see.” He took up the serrated knife and began carving a squinty-eyed face with a large O-shaped mouth on his own pumpkin. He took a handful of guts and let them
glop through the top of the pumpkin, positioning the mass until a good amount spilled out of the mouth and onto the counter.

He stepped back, beaming and grinning wide. “Look! He is
hammered
drunk.”

I looked at the mess in disgust. Now that he spelled it out for me, I could see the sickened expression of the pumpkin and the “vomit” ejected onto my countertop. “Brilliant. Really, Landon.”

Kate glanced over and laughed. “Yes! That is awesome!”

“Oh, hell,” Rachel groaned. “That's so lame.”

“It's
awesome
,” Kate repeated, staring her down. “I think I might do that with mine. We need a couple beer bottles to go with them.”

Landon made a loud, unintelligible sound. “You can't copy me, man. My genius should only ever be appreciated, never duplicated.”

“That's not genius,” Rachel remarked. “That's just sick.”

I carved a happy jack-o'-lantern face into my pumpkin. Despite my nightly extracurricular activities, I didn't really like scary things. The jack-o'-lantern smiled up at me with blank triangle eyes and a blocky-toothed grin. Though he was adorable, he was severely overshadowed by the spooky vampire face on Kate's. Even Rachel's was better. Both of their pumpkins could beat the crap out of mine. In fact, I think they
wanted
to.

Oh, well. I shrugged and pulled my happy jack-o'-lantern into my arms and set him on the front porch. Dark was beginning to settle, and within twenty minutes the streets would be filled with trick-or-treaters. My mom had strewn cotton spiderwebs across the porch and stuck plastic tombstones in the front lawn. She had even replaced the porch lights with black lights; beneath them my white zip-up hoodie glowed a toxic hue.

I headed back to the kitchen. Kate had pumpkin guts on her face, and Landon's fist was filled with even more of the gunk. Rachel was flattened against the wall on the far side, her expression terrified. Landon chucked the gob at Kate, but she squealed and spun away, and the guts smacked into the wall behind her.

“Landon!” I barked, jogging over to grab a handful of paper towels to mop up the mess.

“Sorry,” he said in a not-so-convincing voice. “She started it.”

Kate laughed. “Don't pin it on me! You're the one slinging that nasty stuff around.”

“Where's Will, Ellie?” Rachel asked, daring to venture away from the wall.

“Who cares?” Landon interjected. “My pumpkin's puking his friggin' guts out.” He made a grotesque sloshing face as he plunged his hands into the slimy mess. I grimaced.

“He'll be here when we get ready to leave,” I explained.
Thanks to our wager, Will was coming with us to Josie's party, but until the time came, I assumed he was sitting on my roof keeping watch.

We cleaned up the last of the carving mess and placed the pumpkins out on the porch next to mine. Landon added the finishing touch of vomit to his jack-o'-lantern outside as planned.

Josie's party didn't start until nine, so we had a few hours to kill. Kate had an after party planned at her house, and I had an overnight bag packed to stay there. Chris and Evan arrived just after six. My mom mistook them for her first official trick-or-treaters of the night. They apologized for disappointing her, and we all went up to my room to watch a horror movie before getting into our costumes. I sat on my bed with Rachel and Kate, and the boys sat on the floor with their backs against my bed. We chose the original
Poltergeist
. Slasher movies were never my thing since they just made me sick. Ghost movies I could do.

When the movie ended, we had about an hour and a half to get ready. Kate and I curled each other's hair into big, bouncy updos and put on our costumes. She had lent me a pair of red stilettos that went with my nurse outfit perfectly. I pinned my little cap to my hair in case it decided to fly away. Despite Kate's plan to pin up Rachel's hair, we decided to leave her curls down her shoulders and back. The boys actually took longer to get ready than we did, but I guessed
that was because they were wearing twice as much makeup. My glittery false eyelashes were brutally heavy on my lids, but I stuck it out and finished my face with some cherry red lipstick. Landon came back into my bedroom in full zombie getup, complete with gory prosthetics and tattered, bloody clothes. He was barely recognizable except for his gloriously highlighted hair. Evan came as a ghostbuster, and the state trooper with enormous aviator sunglasses and a bushy faux mustache turned out to be Chris. I eyed him, unable to prevent a smile from bursting through. “You weren't going for creative, were you?”

His expression exploded with shock. “Are you joking? I'm Mac!”

“Mac?”

“
Super Troopers
? Honestly, Ellie, you need to watch better movies instead of those lame Disney flicks.” He slid the sunglasses down his nose and looked me up and down. “And don't talk to me about uncreative. You're a sexy nurse? As much as I appreciate that, you have to realize there are going to be fifty other girls there dressed just like you. Nobody else is going to be Mac.”

I eyed him carefully. “Maybe that's for a reason.”

Chris waved a finger at me. “Just you wait.”

Evan slapped him hard on the back. “So where are the wings?”

Chris shot him a questioning sidelong look. “What are you talking about, man?”

“Well, you know,” Evan said, visibly trying to hold in a laugh. “They'll be perfect for Halloween. Foot fairies need wings, right?”

Chris swore at him and shoved his shoulder hard enough to knock Evan off balance. Most of the soccer players didn't take foot fairy jokes very well. Chris and Landon were no exceptions.

As they wrestled around and bounced against my bed, I scowled at a mess of gory makeup and prosthetics scattered across my dresser. “You're all going to clean up this crap, right?”

“Of course,” Landon assured me, and smiled brightly. He tugged on one of my hair-sprayed curls and released it, letting it bounce back into place.

Right then Will walked into my room wearing no costume except for his sword, strapped into a back scabbard over his T-shirt. The shirt also exposed the Enochian tattoos covering his arm. “Hey,” he said, nodding to everyone. “Your mom let me in, Ellie.”

I was elated to see him. “Hey! Where's your costume?” I poked at his chest. I noticed his eyes widening and his brow flickering as he took in my costume, and a twinge of triumph crossed my heart—
not
that I was wearing this outfit only to get his attention. That was just a bonus.

Chris stepped up to him, eyeing his arm. “That has got to be the
baddest
tattoo I have ever seen. You get that done in L.A. or something?”

“Italy,” Will said.

“Nice. What are you supposed to be?”

“Pirate.”

Chris scoffed. “Dude, your costume sucks. Sword's pretty sweet, though. No way that's plastic. Is that like a Final Fantasy replica or something? You get that on eBay?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Something like that.”

Kate swayed her way up to him and leaned on Chris's shoulder. “What's the matter? Are you too cool for us?” she demanded sarcastically.

Will shrugged. “I don't really dress up for things.”

“Oh, come on,” I pleaded. “You have to wear something.”

He threw up his hands defensively. “I don't think so.”

“You're going to be the only lame person there,” I warned him.

“I've got a Jason hockey mask in my trunk,” Evan offered. “If you want it.”

“No, thanks,” Will said. “I'm not a costume guy.”

“You are such a downer,” I said, and picked my cell off my dresser to glance at the time. “It's after nine. We should probably get going by ten.”

As I applied one last layer of lipstick, one of the boys bumped into me and I dropped the stick onto my white outfit. I swore when I saw the waxy red streak left behind on the neckline of my costume. “Landon!” I growled, and shoved his shoulder.

In the midst of stupid laughter, I caught a “Sorry, Ell!”

I huffed and stomped out of the room and down the hall toward the bathroom. My dad caught me as he was leaving his bedroom, and he gave me the once-over. Awkwardness settled over us both as he stopped, mouth agape, but nothing came out. He shut it and looked up at the ceiling as if he were thinking of what to say.

Embarrassed by the way he looked at me, I said, “Kate looks worse.” That would have worked on my mom, or at least put a smile on her face, but since my dad rarely spoke more than two words to me a week, I wasn't sure what my next move would be.

His mouth scrunched and then flattened with indecision. “I shouldn't let you go out like that, should I?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Probably not.”

“Well, you look like a—” He cut himself off abruptly.

I didn't want him to finish the thought anyway. “I'm just going to the bathroom.”

“Cover yourself up some,” he suggested, spitting out his words. “Put some pants on or something.”

“Yeah, Dad. Sure thing.”

His body locked up and his face twisted for a brief moment. I was about to ask him what was wrong when I heard footsteps behind me.

“Ellie,” said Will's voice.

I turned around to smile at him. “What's up?”

“Just seeing if you needed help,” he said. Will looked at my dad and held out a hand. “Hi. I'm Will, Ellie's friend.”

My dad stared at Will, the corners of his mouth turning down, but he didn't shake Will's hand. Catching the hint, Will withdrew it and stole a glance at me. I knew my dad didn't like my guy friends much, but that was just beyond rude.

“Okay, well, I'll see you later, Dad.” I brushed him off, and Will followed me into the bathroom to help me scrub the lipstick out of my dress.

“He didn't like you much,” I said, rubbing a wet tissue into the red stain. Most of it had come out, but a remaining dull stripe looked like it would be permanent.

“He smelled like blood.”

I choked back a laugh. “No shit, Sherlock. Yeah, my dad has blood
in
him. You say the weirdest things sometimes.”

“No, I mean it was on his skin. I could smell it from your room and I thought you were hurt.”

“Maybe he had a paper cut,” I said, and looked up at him. “You shouldn't go around sniffing people. Really.”

His lips tightened and his brow furrowed. It was kind of cute when he did that, to be honest.

“The men in my life are the strangest people on the planet,” I grumbled, and proceeded to blow dry my dress. “At least I can tolerate you, out of all of them.”

“You don't like your dad.” It wasn't a question. I imagined my contempt was obvious to him.

“He's a piece of shit. You don't even understand.”

He didn't say anything, but he probably understood a lot better than I gave him credit for. His hearing was as incredible as his sense of smell. He'd probably heard many of my fights with my dad. Something weighed my stomach down when I thought of Will overhearing my crying. It was one thing for him to know that the reapers scared me still, but there was no reason for me to be afraid of my dad. He'd never hurt me physically, but on the inside he'd repeatedly ripped me into pieces.

“Look,” I said. “Just don't worry about it. It's not your problem.”

The rest of the time in the bathroom went by in awkward silence. My dad wasn't a subject I wanted to talk about with Will or anyone. I avoided his gaze until we were back in my room.

We organized who was driving and cleaned up our costume messes. An hour later, we assembled downstairs in the foyer and piled into Kate's and Evan's cars. Will, Landon, and I rode with Kate to Josie Newport's house. We pulled through the iron gates, and Kate flashed an invitation to the man standing there. He let us through, and we passed the carriage house. As we wound up the wooded drive, we could hear—and
feel
—the powerful bass. I'd be damned if Josie hadn't hired a DJ.

The house itself was
sprawling
: high-peaked roofs, creamy stone, marble columns, and dark accents dazzling
beneath ivory lights. We parked at the end of a never-ending line of cars and climbed out. I pulled my excruciatingly short dress as far down as possible as we strolled up to the front door. Behind me, Chris asked if I could handle my short skirt and then mumbled about issuing me a citation for “sexy exposure” or something stupid like that. I ignored him.

The front steps were lined with jack-o'-lanterns, and plastic skeletons climbed the columns. A tall man in a suit answered the door and we walked inside. The grand entrance was dimly lit with multicolored lights dancing across the white marble floor. Kate led us through the mansion to a massive banquet hall lined with tall windows that offered sweeping views overlooking a lake. As soon as we stepped through the archway, I could see that half the school had already arrived. Strobe lights flashed in all directions from high above; the steady, heavy beat of music shook the floor and the walls; people in every costume imaginable danced as if it were their last night alive.