Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4)) (60 page)

“No,
I’m good.
I’d like to
be alone with my
aspire
,” I reply
i
n a firm tone, still feeling awkward with him.

“Then
,
I’
ll meet
you later tonight
,” he says
with a small smile.

“Okay,” I reply
,
shy
ly
.
I try not to stiffen when he leans forward and places
a kiss on my brow.
“You’re taki
ng him with you, right?” I ask
Tau, shifting my gaze to Xavier.

Tau says something to Xavier, which makes
Xavier’s smile turn into a grim line.

Shak
ing his head slowly, Xavier says
in a determined voice
, “I’
m
stay
ing
with her
.”

Reed sounds calm as he says
, “I’ll be
with her. She will have my protection.”

“Brennus was able to get to her under yo
ur protection,” Xavier counters
Reed with
elegant
disdain.

“Everything was able to get to h
er when you withdrew yours
,” Reed respon
d
s
.

As
Xavier
lose
s
his calm look of disd
ain and
step
s
aggressively forward
in anger
,
R
eed slips
me behind him.
Tau moves
faster than Xavier, holding him back from Reed with b
oth hands on his chest. Reed’s
dark
wings match
the
menacing
width of Xavier’s crimson ones
at full extension
.

Still holding Xavier, Tau says
over his shoulder,
“Take Evie to see her friends
, she has been worried about
them.
”

Frozen where I am, I stare
at Xavier. Breathing heavily, like he’s trying to gain cont
rol of himself, his eyes slip
to mine.
He speaks to me in Angel: it sounds
painful and unmusical
,
falling from his lips to hang
in the air between us.

Reed has
to tug gently on my hand to get me to move away toward the corridor le
ad
ing toward the West Tower. I walk
midway down the h
allway next to Reed before I kno
w it.

Glancing at Reed
’s severe expression, I ask
, “What did Xavier say?”

Reed instantly changes
direction and
ushers
me into an adjacent alcove, pinning me to the
stone
wal
l
with
the cage
of his arms flanking me
.
“Who
is he to you, Evie?” Reed asks
me, while searching my eyes for answers.

A guilty panic hit
s me then, and I try
to explain,
“I knew Xavier in high school—we were friends
. Well,
maybe we were a little more than friends at times
,
but then he’d get weird and moody and act like he didn’t like me…I don’t know
. Xavier
said…
he said we knew each other
before I was sent here
—t
hat we were
a lot
more than friends,
but I don’t remember him,
I swear!
I
don’t remember Paradise at all—”

Reed pulls
me in h
i
s arms, kissing me passionately.
“I
’m
sorry—
of course you
don’t
know,” Reed says
a
gainst my lips. His hand presses
to my heart as it beat
s
hard
in fear
.

“What did he say to me?” I ask
again.

Reed does
n’t answer right away, and
then he murmurs
,
“He said
,
‘What has been, will be agai
n
.
’
”
S
eeing my confusion
, Reed
adds, “It’s our mantra—i
t means that one day, the war of Heaven will end and we will be united once again under God
in Paradise
.”

“Oh,”
I exhale
, lowering my eyes from Reed’s in relief
that
Xavier hadn’t
been
saying something about me.

“But,” Reed says
softly, causing my eyes
to
lift to his
again
, “I don’t think that’s what he meant when he said it. I think he was speaking of you
and him
:
what has been, will be again.
”

I lift
my arms to him, hugging him and saying, “You know
that I lo
ve you. I
t’s you and me—i
t will always be you and me.”

“I thought he must be dead,” R
eed says
in a low tone, “your guardian angel. When you showed up at Crestwood and you wer
e alone…and I began to know you—
I
was certain that you would ha
ve had one. The only conclusion that I could come to was that he had been killed.”

“He said he was called
back to Heaven. H
e said
he couldn’t refuse them,” I murmur
, not fully understanding what that means.

“You we
re present when a soul ascended, Evie, you know the pull of it
,
and should he h
ave tried to resist, he would’
ve be
en taken by force,” Reed replies
grimly.

“Then…Heaven
could
take you back—
m
ake you leave me?” I ask with
a chill of dread filling me at the thoug
ht of them taking Reed from me.

“They could take you from me
,
and
then
make you forget that you were
ever loved by me…or wanted me
,” Reed r
eplies
sadly. “It would seem that they’ve already done that to Xavier.”

“They
can’t do that to us! I’ll rebel—
I
’ll fight for you,” I say
in a harsh voice befo
re Reed covers
my lips with his
, kissing me almost senseless.

“Don’t say that, Evie,” he whispe
rs
against my mouth.
“You are beloved in their eyes—
whatever they conceal from you has a purpose. You must trust in that purpose.”

“If they took you from me, it would be like they con
cealed my heart from me,” I say
in a hushed voice.

Reed’s eyes soften then, as he says
, “And you have just proved to me how be
loved I am in
your eyes and in
the
eyes
of Paradise
.
I have lived for centuries and never
hoped
to hear my own emotion echo
ed
so passionate
ly by
the lips of
one so fair
.”

Feeling somehow bet
ter after hearing that, I rest
my cheek against his shoulder. “Xavier said he has
been wit
h me since my inception,” I say
in a shallow voice. “Does that mean that
I was always intended for this—
that this
, all my lifetimes with Russell—
everything has been leading to this…it’s all still one single
on-going
mission?”

“Are you asking me if I believe that you were created for j
ust this purpose?” Reed asks
.

“Uh
huh
,” I reply
.

“I think that you have been
given
the freedom to choose your
own
destiny, and that’s
what makes you so supreme
ly
unpredictable—
lethal. You have the perfect poker face because you hardly know what you’ll
do until you do it,” Reed says
with a gentle squeeze.
“You follow your infallible instincts that are ruled by your heart.”

“
I don’t know how infallible my instinct
s are—
I agreed to have dinner with Tau
tonight,” I say quietly
.

“That was
very accommodating of you,
”
Reed says
with a
n encouraging
smile.

“Do you think so?
” I ask with
f
aux
cheeriness
. “Because I was just thinking that it will be a perfect opportunity to rise up and ta
ke back some of the
control the Seraphim have
wrestled away from me.”

“Really?” he asks
sounding amused.

“Uh
huh,” I nod
. “I want
them to know that we are a unit—
unifi
ed. We make the decisions that a
ffect our lives, not them.”

“How do you p
erceive that going?” he asks
.

“Hmm, not well,” I reply
with a quirk of my eyebrow
.

“As long as you have no illus
ions going into it,
” Reed smiles
. “There is almost no rank higher than Tau’s and you’re his daughter. He has only just found you again, a
nd he never meant to leave you.”

“So
,
you’re
saying he’ll try to hold onto
every ounce of
c
ontrol with both fists?” I ask
warily.

“
By a
ny means necessary,” Reed warns
me.

“Great,” I sigh. “I’ll see if anyone has
antacids for this meal.”

“Why don’t you go and try to get to know him
instead
?” Reed asks
while h
e put
s
his arm around my waist
and le
a
d
s
me back into the corridor.

“You mean try to form a rel
ationship with him?” I wrinkle my nose. We turn
down several hallways and I r
ealize
that he’s taking me
toward the North Tower.

“Yes,” Reed says
.

“I don’t trust him,” I reply
softly.

“Maybe, if you allow hi
m to, he can earn it,” Reed says
, stopping in front of the closed doors to the library. “There’s something else you
can do, too, Evie.”

“There
is?” I ask
curiously.

“Anya could use
someone she can trust,” he says
gently. “She’s just seen some things that were less than optimal for a newly arrived angel.”

“Oh, what happened?” I ask
.

A reluctant look crosses
his face, “We had to end s
ome new Gancanagh. T
hey were females
from the h
arem. It was somewhat
gruesome.” For him to say it was gruesome means that it was off the charts disgusting.

“Oh,” I reply as my face loses
some of its
color. “Is she okay?”

“She could use a frien
d,” he admits,
opening the doors to the library.

Looking around the room,
many of the Power angels who ha
d been with us in China mill
around on the brown-leather couches and chairs. Most of the French doors that line this room and overlook the stone t
errace are intact, only a few
ha
ve been boa
rded up
. The e
xposed beams
of the
ceiling
makes the room
appe
ar like the structure of a ship—
very much like the ceiling in the kirk.
At the far end
of t
he room, a cheerful fire snaps
in the grand firepl
ace. I almost do
n’t see Anya
on
one of the chairs facing the fire. She looks so small and unmoving.