Entice: An Ignite Novella (8 page)

“I’ve no doubt.” The words are small and do nothing but enrage Azael further. His eyes burn into every inch of Gus.

“Tell me this: did you fight in the war?”

Gus attempts to stand a little taller but ends up caving his shoulders in on himself, as if he’s been hollowed out. His words work their way through his tapping fingers before they reaches his lips.
Taptap. Taptap
. “I did.”

I search his body for scars, but any that remain are too thin and translucent for me to notice. I can’t imagine him holding a weapon, let alone wielding it with any success.

“Then you know what part I played in it?”

“I do.”

“Remind me.”

Silence stretches the three inches between them like static. It shocks Gus first, lighting a boldness in him that surprises me. “I was wondering when that trademark arrogance of yours would arrive.”

Azael steams.

“Don’t forget, Azael, you are my
subordinate
. I do not care what rank you are because I am, and always will be, above you.” His words lose some of their power in his meek delivery. I watch on without interference, too interested in the weird power dynamic they are fighting over to get involved.

Several sentences are crushed in Azael’s jaw before he works out something to say. “Do you know your ending?”

This takes Gus by surprise. Avoiding Azael’s glare, he walks across the room to retrieve his notebook. Unsure how to answer, he bunches it in his hands, twisting it until the papers in it spiral out like petals.

“No, then. How about Pen’s?”

I sit forward carefully, my bed squelching under me. Does he know how my story ends? Do I want to know? I don’t have time to debate it before he answers.

“Your fates are joined.”

“Death?” The word drops from my lips before I can catch it with my tongue. “How? When?”

Gus drags his eyes away from Azael to me. “It’s a dangerous thing to know the future when there’s nothing you can do to change it. Many have been driven mad trying to rewrite the future, an impossible task.” His fingers tap again, as if his nerves need to find a place to escape.
Taptap.
“Knowing one’s fate is enough to cripple some, cut them at the knees and leave them motionless, afraid of moving forward. But the fates will always find you.”

The air tastes thick and I have to suck it down with a conscious effort. If I don’t think about it, I almost forget to breathe. Azael and Gus turn back to each other to continue bickering back and forth, but their argument sounds like a dull buzzing to me.

It feels like cobwebs are growing on my lungs. My heart feels as if it’s working twice as hard to beat half as much. Something feels
wrong
but I can’t find the words to say anything. They’ve abandoned me to find a mouth to live in with more air.

“YOU MUST WORK WITH THEM!” Gus’s voice breaks through the tightness in my chest, distracting me for a moment from the gasp gasp gasp of my lungs.

“Why?” I croak out.

“Because your plan won’t work.” He skirts around Azael to retrieve his notebook, flips to a page, and shoves it in Azael’s face. “You will fail.”

“I don’t trust anything I read,” Azael says, waving away the paper. “Too easily altered, forged.”

I’m out of my bed and on my feet before Gus moves to close the notebook again. A handful of words are scattered across the page.
Disgrace, dishonor. Unnecessary, fallback, useless.

“What does this mean?” I ask. I try to turn to another page, but he pulls the words out of my reach and shoves them deep into his pockets.

“It means the plan you two are about to hatch won’t work.”

“We haven’t hatched it yet...” I shake my head.

“The outcome won’t change.” He gesticulates wildly, suddenly emphatic about getting his point across. “You have to
listen to me
if you want to make anything of yourselves down here. Your path may change, but the destination won’t unless you listen.”

“Even our end?”

Gus rolls his head on his neck, as if working out some knot of muscles. “No. But the minor things. Day-to-day can change. Small events can be altered.”

I find myself nodding along with his words. There’s not a hint of a lie on his face now; he’s emphatic and open, driven forward by the need to be understood. I could ask him anything right now and I’m sure he’d answer me, but I can’t come up with any questions. At least none that I want an answer to.

“Do what you want and fail,” he says with a sigh, “because that is the path you are on now. No matter the plan you come up with, if you are on your own, it will not work. Listen to me—work with Naamah and Botis—and succeed.”

“We’ll take that under consideration,” Azael says, opening the door wide. With a great sweep of his arm, he points Gus into the hallway.

Gus leaves slowly, his heels dragging on the ice with a scratching sound. Something in me thinks he knew this conversation would lead nowhere.

––––––––

I
KNEW THIS MOMENT WAS
coming. Some small, rational part of my mind didn’t believe it would actually be possible, but the rest of myself has been preparing for it. I have been steeling myself for this exact moment longer than I care to admit. I just never expected it to happen in the middle of the night. Didn’t think it would wake me up.

More than anything, it’s the nothingness that rouses me from my sleep. The sudden stillness. I’m slammed awake, jolting from unconsciousness with a gasp so loud I’m surprised it doesn’t wake Azael. My chest burns, as if a hot poker is searing through my heart, and I panic. Air comes too quickly to my greedy lungs, my confused brain. I need to breathe; I need to hear my heartbeat. Something needs to happen—before before before nothing ever happens again.

But I missed it.

Silence takes residence in my chest, an unwelcome tenant.

There should have been a moment for me to savor the last time it happened. I deserved that much, I think. The last beat that pulsed through my body should have been memorialized or, at the very least, remembered. I shouldn’t have been asleep when my heart stopped. I should have known I needed to be awake for this.

Sleep should have waited.

My body is too quiet without its metronome. I don’t know how to keep time anymore, and I’m afraid I’ll get clumsy without its beat.

For the first time ever, I can hear everything. There are so many more noises than I ever thought there could be. I can hear all of the small noises my heartbeat must have covered up before. There’s a sniffing sound coming from down the hall and raucous laughter a few rooms away from here. I can hear bed sheets being tossed from I’m not sure where and even the quiet creaking sound of ice settling.

Az makes soft wheezing noises in his sleep because of the strange angles he chooses to lie in. He rolls over restlessly, letting his arm splay over the bed and smack the top of his nightstand. Still, he doesn’t wake up.

When I listen even closer, I notice another sound missing. I wait for several minutes before I admit it to myself, marking the seconds by counting every useless breath in and out like the air is rationed and I’m only allowed a few lungfuls an hour. The stillness makes me queasy, and I wonder how I didn’t notice it before, why he didn’t say anything to me.

Azael has no heartbeat either.

––––––––

T
ERROR AND EXCITEMENT ARE LOYAL
companions. One never seems to be apart from the other. They are always at each other’s side, hand in hand, inseparable in a spinning waltz. Jealousy stirs between them, spurring a fight for dominance. One, two, three,
terror.
One, two, three,
excitement
. One, two, three, one, two, three. I’m still waiting for my heartbeat, expecting it to crash back into my ribs furiously. But I’m forced to keep time on my own. One, two, three, terror, excitement.

I’m going to throw up. Maybe. Probably. If I let myself, I’ll throw up. But I won’t allow it, refuse to acknowledge the unpleasantness sitting at the back of my throat, because getting sick would be a sign of weakness—one I can’t afford Azael to see, and one Azael can’t afford for me to show.

It’s been so long since I’ve been anywhere other than a select few corridors of Hell, and I’m excited to stretch my legs and wings across new geography that isn’t masked in uniform ice. I crave greens and browns and oranges and reds and the color of nature alive. I just wish I could be reunited with the seasons under different circumstances.

Azael and I meet Naamah and Botis at the gates of Hell before I have time to second guess myself. It’s so early that I’m not sure it’s tomorrow instead of yesterday. Not that I can separate the days clearly anymore. It may be next week for all I know. I’m not sure how long it’s been since the war ended or if Heaven has had enough time to rebuild their army.

I tap my fingers on my leg, thrumming a false heart beat. I think I understand Gus’s nervous habit now.

Azael grins at me. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in a dress.”

Gus left two packages at our door sometime last night. One for Azael, one for me. Inside the packages, folded carefully around a small page of instructions that must have been torn from his notebook, were our designated uniforms.

“Uniforms are to be worn on all assignments.” Gus’s handwriting was thick and agitated across the page. “Behave. Work as a team.”

I’m envious of Azael’s uniform. It looks comfortable and easy to move around in. He’s dressed in sturdy boots and leather pants so dark a shade of brown that they are almost black. His shirt has short sleeves and a strap that slings from shoulder to waist for easy access to his scythe, one of his new favorite weapons.

There are multiple places for him to keep weapons—the strap across his chest and back, the holster around his hips, and the band around his leg. He’s glinting with blades of every shape and size, and he even has a cluster of vials tucked into the ankle of his boot and in a large pocket on his pants. He looks like a warrior. I look like...well, like I’m going to a ceremony of Hell.

Gauzy cream fabric falls from my shoulders down to my ankles. It’s soft but crinkly, and I can already tell I’ll be tripping over it before the day is out. The dress is a few sizes too big, as if it was originally made for someone else, and when I first tried it on, I felt like I was drowning in a bed sheet. I briefly consider cutting the hem with my dagger, ripping off the unnecessary fabric.

A wide belt corsets the billowy fabric closer to my body, cinching the dress and crushing my ribs until I’m sure they’ll crack. It makes it difficult to breathe, but now that I have no heart, I find that I can go hours without having to scrabble for air. I can probably go longer, but I’m uncomfortable being still for too long. It’s nice to pretend that I still need to breathe.

There are five blades tucked into my belt. It’s all I could fit with how tight I’ve had to lace the dress to me. I wish I had places to keep more, but I’ll have to make five work. A small paper is folded up into a tiny square and tucked next to where my heart used to beat. I’ve scribbled a few of my favorite words down to teach the man. Adam. I’m still not sure what Azael and I plan to do against Naamah and Botis, but it never hurts to come armed with a strong vocabulary.

I adjust my belt and grimace. “There’s a reason for that. I’m not sure why it’s necessary to go in uniform.”

Azael shrugs, my words bouncing across his indifferent shoulders. “Think of the angels that are guarding Eden. They’ve probably put one of the archangels on it. I’d place my bet on it being Uriel. Maybe Raphael, if they’re really desperate. They’ll be decked out in their finest red armor, wrapped up in gold. We need to make a good impression on man. A less terrifying, more relatable impression. Understated, remember?”

“And you think the weapons will help?” I ask, lifting the curving blade of the scythe from his waist.

He unholsters the weapon and twirls it expertly. I pull away my hand, knotting my fingers in the loose fabric of my skirt. “I think they will make the impression I want them to make,” he hisses. “Besides, who’s to say Adam won’t appreciate a little violence? He’s probably sick and tired of being weak. Time to teach him to fight back.”

“Right.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Botis lean over to Naamah and whisper something that curls her spine with laughter. I scrutinize them carefully. They are dressed in complimenting uniforms, much like Azael and I are, but they look sleeker, more dangerous.

A long sheath dress of black drapes delicately over Naamah, snug and perilously thin against her dark skin. There’s a large tear up the side of her long, tight skirt, allowing her a better range of motion. The hem and collar of her dress are sharp with gold wire that looks like it can be detached and used as a whip. A similar gold chain warps up her arm like a snake. Her hair is pulled tight against her head, sleek and shining as it cascades from the top of her head to the bare skin between her shoulder blades.

Botis is particularly red today, the black brightening the color of his unsettling skin. He wears fitted leather, similar to Azael’s, with several straps for weapons. But each of his holsters sit empty, his weapons left in the training room.

Together, they are nearly unarmed. What plan makes them so confident that they don’t believe they’ll need any weapons? Gus’s warning sings through my head.
Work as a team
.
Work with Naamah and Botis, and succeed
.

I tap out my missing heartbeat faster.

“You two look very formidable,” Naamah says, her voice smoky with derision. Botis smiles next to her, his forked tongue peeking out between his lips for the briefest moment to taste the air.

I see the moment he tastes whatever Azael is feeling—probably arrogance and aggression. Before he can taste my fear about leaving Hell, about what I’m about to do, I think about something else. I conjure up every annoying thing I can think of and let him taste the bitter bite of anger. It seems to amuse him.

“Can’t say the same.” Azael leans over and sizes them up with a scoff. “I have never seen two people so underarmed in my life. Afraid of showing incompetence when wielding a weapon? Wouldn’t want that listed on your permanent record, I suppose.”