Branded (25 page)

Adam’s face was a welcome sight when he started walking down the tunnel toward me. While his face was never friendly, it at least was not frightening. His steely gray eyes held my own and I suddenly wondered why he had yet to go through a trial of his own. Why did he have to wait so long? I couldn’t imagine he would be granted black eyes once he did finally make that closing step.

As he opened my cage and wrapped the golden cord around my wrists the feelings of comfort were erased and replaced by a surge of panic. I couldn’t go out into the cylinder. There was something out there that I could not face, something terrible.

Adam’s face remained expressionless as he pulled me to my feet and started tugging me down the tunnel toward the light. A small whimper slipped from my lips as I tried to plant my feet and refuse to move. It took him only one tug to make me stumble forward and get my feet moving.

“Please,” I begged, my voice sounding muffled through the bag that covered my head. “Please.” This yielded no reaction and no response. Again I tried to stop, to drag us in the opposite direction but Adam pulled again on the golden chain. This time as I was yanked back toward the exit of the tunnel the chain dug painfully into my wrists. I didn’t care though. I couldn’t go out into the cylinder.

My muffled sobs grew louder and more hysterical as we neared the end of the tunnel and I had struggled against Adam’s sure strength so much my skin had turned raw where the chain dug into it. A few small slashes had formed around them; tiny drops of blood smearing on my skin.

I gave one final plea as we erupted from the end of the tunnel onto the catwalk and knew it was too late. I couldn’t go back once I was out here. There was never any going back.

Once he was sure I was in my place in the center of the narrow stone bridge, Adam turned and walked back into the dark safety of the tunnel, leaving me to face what I knew was coming.

I stood frozen, tiny drops of blood dripping down to my feet, my eyes transfixed on one of the elegantly carved stone chairs. I didn’t bother to look around when I heard the rustling of wings and felt the air stir. I could not look away from that one seat.

A few all too short moments later, a glorious and perfect form settled into that seat and eyes blacker than night stared back at me.

I could not force any air in or out of my lungs as I beheld Cole’s glorious form. It was as if I’d had a veil over my eyes every time I had looked at him before and only now was I seeing him clearly. His face was so gloriously beautiful and perfect it brought tears to my eyes and I felt my body go numb. It was difficult to make my brain comprehend it fully, the perfect form of his bare chest, the defined lines of his arms, the strong set of his chin. But the intensity of those black eyes, they burned into me with unstoppable force.

It took me a moment to register the dark smile that spread on his lips as he too seemed unable to look away from my face.

Despite my inability to look at anything other than Cole, I could feel the agitated state that hung in the air.

Something was upsetting the other council members, upsetting them enough to distract them from their one single task of the trials. I had no doubt the reason was the more-than-man staring back at me.

The trial began and only when I heard the heckling laughter from below me rising did I finally snap out of my state of numbness. The full realization of everything that had happened hit me in the gut with incredible force.

Cole was indeed the escaped angel. He was the leader of the condemned. There was no denying this as I now looked upon him, seated in his position of power. The council members held their positions for a reason. The exalted members had lead lives of purity and goodness, far better than the average person could even attempt to lead.

The condemned members had lead lives of murder, deceit, adultery, and every other despicable act one could and could not think of. And Cole was their leader.

“What do you want?!” The scream erupted from my throat with a shrill force that would have surprised me if I hadn’t have been in such a fury. “Leave me alone! Make it stop!”

A look of shock crossed most of the council member’s faces as they watched my erruption. They glanced around at each other, each seeming to wonder exactly what to do.

Twisted laughter ricocheted off the walls and hundreds of fingers pointed at me as I struggled with the golden cord that bound my hands. Blood dripped faster and faster to the floor as I fought against the beautiful but deadly cord.

Two angels landed on either side of me and I barely even noticed one had blue eyes and the other black. They each took hold of one of my arms and forced me to straighten and face the council. I continued to scream and thrash but the leader of the exalted only proceeded with the trial.

The entire council seemed unsure of what exactly to do with themselves as they squirmed in their seats, looking anxiously back and forth occasionally from me to Cole.

When the trial started to come to a close I had no idea of what the outcome was going to be. I didn’t care. I simply wanted to get out of there, to get away from Cole’s smug smile and penetrating eyes.

“Down,” said one council member.

“Up,” said another.

The next few took quite a long time as they considered where whoever it was I stood trial for was to be sent. There were four up’s and four downs. My screams turned to more of a whimper as I considered what would be coming if this person were to be condemned.

Cole and the other condemned council member gave their verdicts. It seemed it should have been impossible but the screams came out of me with a new intensity and ferocity as I fought with everything I had to get away from the grasps of my two captors.

With a powerful burst of his wings, Cole launched from his seat toward the catwalk. As he landed, I fought with every ounce of strength I had to fall off the catwalk but to no avail. Surprisingly though, Cole waved my captors away and they flew back to their positions on the stairwell.

Cole’s black eyes locked with my own and my screaming and thrashing ceased. It was nearly impossible to look away. I felt as if my entire soul were being sucked out of my own eyes and drawn into his.

I did not even notice how Cole was standing only inches away from me or how the council squirmed all the more, a few quiet protests coming from their direction.

“This is all going to end soon you know,” Cole whispered, his voice surprisingly gentle. “The number of trials you must stand in for are limited. When it is time for your own branding, I can make sure it isn’t as bad as it could be.”

He raised a hand, reaching under the sack over my head and smoothed his thumb over my cheek, his expression surprisingly gentle and he continued his intense gaze.

I was vaguely aware that another angel had landed next to us and that Cole had reached for the red-hot rod. He placed a hand on my shoulder and with next to no effort, made me bend and get on my hands and knees. My mind seemed to be on a standstill as the hair fell away from my neck.

The breath caught in my throat as the scream tried to escape when the iron was pressed into the back of my neck.

My vision went black for several seconds and my head spun violently as the pain ripped through me. My arms and legs refused to work anymore and I collapsed onto the cold and bloodied stone. The only thought that processed was pain and that I wanted to die right then and there.

A pair of firm but gentle hands raised me to my feet and my vision slowly returned. It remained unfocused however and my head lolled slightly from shoulder to shoulder.

“Judgment has been placed,” I heard a beautiful voice say; though I could not make my eyes find the source of it.

My skin crawled for a moment before I could feel the flesh tearing in my back. The beautiful wings that I loathed erupted forth but this was nothing compared to the pain that was radiating from the back of my neck.

I did not even hear the laughter from the condemned ones, though I knew it was there, but I did see them spring from their seats and launch themselves toward us.

Before they were even halfway there, Cole wrapped his arms around me and tipped us over the side of the walkway.

When I woke it wasn’t just my neck that hurt. My entire body felt as if it had been hit by a semi-truck, pulled through gravel mixed with shards of glass, and then dropped off a ten story building. My head throbbed so fiercely it felt as if a few of those shards of glass had to be protruding into my skull. As my brain sorted out all of the pain, my stomach heaved and I just managed to roll to my side, the contents of my stomach shooting into a bucket that was unexpectedly on the floor.

With a sharp intake of breath, I rolled back onto my back. Every movement sent raw new shots of pain pulsing through my very veins.

It took me a few moments before I realized I didn’t know where I was and I felt sure I was not in the same place I had been when I’d fallen asleep last. Opening my eyes as little as possible, I looked at my surroundings.

There was very little light in the room. There did not appear to be any windows and the only light that did come into the room streamed in from a door that was open on the far wall. The room seemed to be bare of anything besides the bed I was lying on and a simple wooden kitchen chair.

As far as I could tell the walls were plain white, I couldn’t see the floor.

“The time I first saw you,” I heard Cole’s voice at the foot of the bed and watched as he stood, then took a seat on the chair. “I knew I had to have you. It was so strong, the drive, it nearly drove me mad.”

I glared at Cole, sitting so relaxed with one ankle crossed over the other knee. I had never truly hated anyone in my life but hate could not even come close to being the right word for how I felt about Cole.

“It should have been easy to find you, for us to be together. Had you been the person who was on trial I should have simply had to go into the depths of hell and look for you. There wouldn’t have been anywhere for you to hide.

But when I saw you I knew there was something different.

You were so frightened and yet you seemed to know exactly what to expect. None of the other council members seemed to notice you were not who you were supposed to be. But I knew something was wrong as soon as I looked into your beautiful face.”

My body started shaking as hate and disgust flooded through me. I wanted to make him stop. I didn’t want to hear what he was saying, to know the full truth of how he had come after me from a reality that should not have been real.

“It was then that I decided I had to have you for myself. It took me a little while but I figured out a way to follow you back into the world of the living. It was so strange, being back. The world has changed a lot since I last walked it. I suppose a lot should change in a few hundred years.”

My mind was so twisted with fury I could not even make myself comprehend what his last few sentences meant.

Cole sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He stared into my face for what could have been a few intense seconds or several long minutes, I wasn’t sure. His eyes were so severe, I could not look away. They drew me in, called to me like water would to a man who had been stranded in a desert for days without it.

I snapped my eyes closed and turned my head away.

Something was wrong with those eyes. They did strange things to my thinking and I didn’t like it. There was a power behind them that was all the more evidence he was not human anymore.

“You’re dying, Jessica,” Cole said, his voice hard and clear. When he didn’t say anything else I looked back at him, trying to be careful to not lock eyes with him again.

His eyes were hard, his jaw clenched, his fists knotted into balls that rested on his knees.

“I’m sick,” I said with disgust in my voice as I struggled to sit up a bit. “That doesn’t mean I’m dying.”

“Actually it does,” Cole said, his voice low. “You remember that lovely little conversation you had with your father yesterday? Everything he said was the truth. You were dying when you were a child. He made a plea to have more time with you and that plea was heard.

“You’ve been living on borrowed time for the last fifteen years but that time is quickly running out. Do you remember what your father said was wrong with you when you were a child?”

I didn’t want to consider what Cole was saying but I couldn’t help but recall the conversation. My father had said I’d had a horrible fever, chills, headaches, body aches, I couldn’t eat anything without throwing up. Exactly like I was experiencing now.

“The same thing is happening again. Like I said, you’ve been living on borrowed time in exchange for standing trials. Time is up though. You don’t have long left now. You’re already becoming more like me with every passing day.”

I didn’t have to wonder for long what he had meant by that.

“You don’t normally need to sleep for as long as people do. As an angel, I never sleep, nor do I eat. My needs are not the same. I know how everything looks so disorientingly clear to you now, it’s the same with your hearing, but this is how it is for me always. You are making the gradual transformation into what you should have become fifteen years ago.”

I closed my eyes as the room started tilting. I wanted to deny what he was saying, to tell him he was wrong. The most frightening thing was though, everything he was saying made impossible sense. Things like this should never make sense.

“You will be standing your own trial in not too long.

Do you know where you will be judged to go when that time arrives?” Excitement seemed to be rising in his voice as Cole continued.

“You should know as well as any council member that it takes a life of good living to be exalted. Are you sure you’ve done enough?”

He paused a moment as if to let me consider his question. I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head, trying with everything I had to block out what he was saying.

I heard the chair squeak slightly and a moment later felt the bed shake as Cole sat on the edge of it.

“I can guarantee the after-life will not be as horrible as it could be if you agree to one simple thing. Stay with me.

Give yourself to me as I wish to give myself to you. I can even get you into a position of power if that is what you want. A seat on the council is yours if you simply agree to be with me and me alone.”

He picked up my hand that lay limply at my side. He brushed two fingers from my forearm down to my own fingers. A strange tingling sensation shot through my veins though it was not at all the repulsive recoiling sensation I was used to when Cole touched me. It was quite the opposite and before I even allowed myself to do so, I wished he would do it again.

“I can make you a
very
happy woman, Jessica,” he whispered. I could feel his intense eyes burning into my face but I could not look away from the hand that held my own. He traced his fingers up and down again and I shuttered from the pleasant sensation.

“Hell’s not that bad,” I was startled by how close Cole’s whisper was, his lips brushing against my ear.

His last words shook my head clear and I jerked my hand out of his. “I may believe you that I might be dying,” I hissed as I finally met his eyes again but feeling the fire that burned behind them as the hatred poured out of me. “And if I am, so be it. But I will not be your queen of the condemned. I’d rather be a lowly, unimportant damned angel than your lover in hell.”

Cole’s expression was hard for a moment but quickly melted into a smug smile. “We shall see,” he said before he rose and walked toward the door. “I would consider my offer very seriously, Jessica. I am not lying when I say you only have days left. Don’t wait too long.” With that he left and I could hear him lock the door from the outside. I was plunged into darkness, locked in a prison with no windows and the leader of damned angels as my keeper.

There was no way to mark time as it passed other than a general guess from how often I was sleeping. This was happening frighteningly more and more often and I guessed that I was sleeping nearly once a day. The trials were happening all too frequently, though Cole did not return to them again.

Another form of altered consciousness was taking over me as my condition worsened progressively. I did not recognize what it was at first. It started only as a feeling of loss, of feeling like I had lost everything that mattered most in the world to me. It was difficult to tell that this strong, overwhelming feeling of despair was not completely coming from me. While I had no guarantee that those I loved the most were safe, I had given Cole no reason to hurt them. I had to believe that they were safe.

The hallucinatory visions soon followed. They were so strong and so vivid it was difficult to believe that they were not real. I wasn’t entirely convinced that they weren’t real in some way.

The first ones were of Alex. After searching for me for so long he had given up hope. His despair was heart wrenching as I watched him cry out my name, watched him sit awake in the dark at night. I wanted to call out to him, to assure him that everything would be alright.

His grief couldn’t last forever though. The visions that came next were of Alex meeting another woman and quickly falling in love. He gave the ring he had bought for me to her.

I saw Sal, alone and scared in the mental institution.

The staff was telling her that she had to leave and go home.

They also told her that I had gone missing and that they presumed that I was dead. When Sal was alone in her room on what was to be the last night of her stay, she took her razor, ripped it apart till she could get the blades out, crawled into the tub, and slit her wrists. The staff found her the next morning.

The phone rang in my parent’s familiar home and my mother answered it. They told her the same thing Sal had been told. My mother did not even look sad. No tears of grief spilled onto her face.

The most horrifying thing about these visions was the very real possibility of them having actually happened. Alex shouldn’t have to grieve over me for forever, no matter how much it shattered my heart into a million pieces to imagine him being with someone else. What was to keep Sal from actually attempting suicide when she heard that her one true friend was gone forever? And as depressing as it sounded, it was not hard to believe that my mother wouldn’t cry over the un-confirmable possibility of my death.

I tried to keep reality separated from what I hoped wasn’t. What would Alex think happened to me? Would he have any reason to suspect kidnapping? It would have been difficult for someone to sneak onto the yacht and take me, without me making any kind of sound. Would Alex think I had left him in the middle of the night? I had no reason to think Cole didn’t leave some sort of note for Alex, telling all kinds of horrific lies.

And Sal? I guessed she had about a week left in the institute before they would make her leave. What would happen to her after that? And when they couldn’t get a hold of me? I could only hope that somehow Alex might be able to help her and possibly take over my role in her life. She seemed to like Alex enough.

Thinking of such devastating reality seemed to make my condition spiral downward all the faster. Pain was a constant companion; my skin burned fiercely with the fever while its polar opposite of chills shook my body uncontrollably. I had not eaten since I had last seen Alex, though I had no desire to do so.

I couldn’t deny what Cole told me. I was dying and I knew it.

My thoughts wandered on their accord, in an attempt to distract myself from the pain, to future possibilities.

What life would become if I truly had lost and would lose everything and everyone important to me. I did not even have the strength of mind to block out the thoughts of Cole’s offer.

Taking everything and everyone else out of the picture, would it really be so horrible to be with Cole? He could be charming and flattering and obviously he had feelings enough for me to go to so much trouble to come after me.

Certainly an eternity of looking into the perfection of his face couldn’t be so terrible.

I considered something else he had said as well. He was right; it took a lifetime of good living to be exalted.

People in general were good but it was so easy to do something to condemn yourself. Had I done enough to gain blue eyes? What true good had I done with my life? I had abandoned my family years ago and lost most care for them.

I had shut everyone out of my life. I had been selfish enough to drag Alex into this mess. I may not have been a criminal but what had I done with my life to better those around me? If I was to receive my own branding, certainly it would be better to be with Cole than to be one among the thousands, tens of thousands?

Cole
had
said that hell wasn’t that bad.

Thoughts of Cole filled my head more and more frequently. I found myself pondering over his perfect features over and over. The strong set of his jaw, the straight line of his nose, those intense eyes. Any athlete would have traded his soul for Cole’s body and build.

The memory of Cole’s touch haunted me in a nearly painful way. I wanted him to touch me like that again. I wanted to feel his skin against mine again, just for the trill it gave me.

Imaginings of what the possibilities could be with Cole consumed me. I thought of lying under a blanket of stars, wrapped in those impossibly strong arms and knowing they would never, ever have to let me go. I pictured how his hands would trace up and down my arms, wrap around my waist. How his lips would feel against my own.

The sound of his voice flooded my ears, telling me over and over how he loved me as no other man could love a woman. He told me of how he would do and had done everything he had to to be with me. He whispered how beautiful I was and that he never wanted to be with another woman in the rest of his existence.

As time continued to pass I did not know what was real anymore and what was not. My state of consciousness was so loose I could not tell if Cole was really there, beside me on the bed, whispering those words to me, touching me in the ways I longed for, or if it was only a figment of my imagination. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. The feelings of unreality were better than the pain that ripped through me.