Personal Demons 2 - Original Sin (22 page)

I hear Gabe's sigh, but I don't look up. “I'm sure her goal is you. If she can strip away your support system, you're vulnerable—an easier target.”

The vision of Luc's face…and Matt's…

They would have killed each other.

“What's going to happen to Matt?”

Gabe sits on the bed next to me, and the pain in his voice is unmistakable. “He's fallen. He no longer has a place in Heaven.” He stiffens slightly and adds, “It's my fault. I put him in a position he wasn't ready for. I guess I thought…I don't know…” He leans close. “But the wings thing…it can happen to any of us.” His voice is low—just for me.

I look at Dad. “So, how can you be…here, I guess? How can you be my father? Isn't that how Lucifer became the devil? The first fallen angel?”

“It is. But we all have choices.”

A flicker of hope lights the dark of my despair. “So Matt could be okay? Get his wings back?”

The sadness in Gabe's eyes as he answers snuffs out that hope. “There's nothing that makes Lucifer happier than to collect fallen angels. He thinks of them as defectors—more valuable than Earthly souls.”

“When I fell,” Dad picks up, “I had a choice, as do we all, to join the Grigori and stay on Earth amongst mortals, nearly powerless, or to fall all the way to Hell. He lures us by offering us the ability to keep our power, to travel between planes—all of it.”

My mind is reeling and I can't get a solid grip on my thoughts. I shake my head and pinch my face, trying to concentrate. “The Grigori?”

Dad blows out a sigh and stares into my eyes. “Not every angel that falls chooses evil. The Grigori are leagues of fallen angels who live on the mortal coil to protect humanity. It's our charge. Our penance and our redemption.” He looks away, at Gabe. “And our only hope of earning our wings back.”

Something cold and dark snakes through my insides, making me shiver. “What do you think Matt will do?”

Dad shakes his head. “I don't know, Frannie. I suppose it depends on how angry he is. Being stripped of our wings…it feels like a betrayal. Most who lose their wings are not thinking clearly, obviously, or we wouldn't be in that situation.”

“So he's…gone. They did this to get to me.” I say, firming my responsibility for this in my own head.

Gabe's expression is wounded as he nods.

There's no escaping it. I'm cursed. Everyone around me—everyone I care about—gets hurt.

And it's never gonna end.

I feel like I'm suffocating. I stand from the bed and so does Gabe. He starts to pull me into his arms, but I push him away. “I really need some time alone to think.”

He steps back and gazes down into my eyes. I can tell he's trying to pull thoughts out of my head, and I'm too tired to care.

Finally, he nods. “I'll be outside the door if you need me.”

I hug Dad, then walk to the window and stare out at the branches of the oak tree, swaying in the beginnings of a swirling summer rain shower. I hear the door click shut behind me as I stand listening to the gusting wind shake the windowpane. After pushing the window open, I pull the screen out and lean on the sill, feeling the cool rain sting my cheeks. When I can breathe again, I wipe the rain from my face with my hand, pull myself back through the window, and turn, expecting to be alone in my room. But Grandpa leans against the wall near my door, squinting at me through troubled eyes.

I rush across the room.

He wraps me in a hug. “Your mom called me, told me what happened.” He shakes his head. “So, he turned out to be the devil after all.”

His voice vibrates through me as I melt into his chest, breathing in the sweet smell of pipe smoke that clings to him.

“I shoulda done something,” he says, smoothing my damp hair with a gentle hand. “I thought I saw myself in him, but I shoulda known.”

The tears start…for me, for Matt, for Taylor. I don't want any of them to be for Luc, but they are. The tears stream down my face as the vision of Luc and Lili comes back full force. My chest aches as the memory wraps itself around my heart and squeezes. I breathe against it. “I loved him, Grandpa.” It's barely a whisper, like I can't even admit it out loud.

“I know,” he says, his voice hitching. He draws me closer and holds me while I cry. When I'm done, I pull back from his shoulder and he wipes away my tears with his thumb, just like he used to do when I was little. “Get some sleep and we'll figure it all out tomorrow.”

At the mention of sleep, I realize I'm exhausted. “'Kay.”

He looks at me a moment longer and I can see the pain in his eyes. “Gettin' over a broken heart takes some time, but you'll be fine, Frannie. I promise.”

I nod as another tear slips over my lashes.

When he steps into the hall and closes the door, I change and get ready for bed. I climb under the sheets and am just dozing off when the first images of the nightmare startle me awake.

Taylor.

In a matter of just a few minutes, I lost both Luc and Matt. I'm
not
gonna lose Taylor.

I reach for my phone and text Trevor. is taylor home? no, is his simple reply.

My heavy heart aches. I clutch my phone to my chest and roll on my side.

And stare out the window.

And pray.

Because it's all I can think to do.

Frannie

I wake up gasping from the nightmare and feel strong arms squeeze me, pulling me tightly into a hard body at my back.

“Luc,” I whisper. But before I've finished, I know it's not Luc—'cause of the nightmare…And it's not cinnamon that I smell. The scent that surrounds me, like a drifting cloud, is Gabe's summer snow.

Same as every other night for the last three weeks.

“It's okay, Frannie. It's me. I'm here.”

As usual, I feel the terror and panic start to evaporate, like fog in a stiff breeze, as I sink into Gabe, but there's nothing he can do about the hollow ache in my chest. “Thanks.”

He brushes the hair off my face with a finger and kisses my ear.

I roll onto my back and look up into his blue eyes, bright in the dark bedroom. “Is it ever gonna stop?”

“It'll get easier.”

I let myself believe the lie, 'cause it can't get much worse, and Gabe doesn't know he's lying.

“I just feel like everything is going to crap. Taylor's with that demon. She won't even talk to me. Matt's gone. And Luc…” I grimace, and a wounded groan erupts from somewhere deep inside me. God, it still hurts that the only thing I see when I think about him is Lili in his bed.

In the pale silver moonlight, I see Gabe's face pull into a frown. “I'm going to find her, Frannie. I won't let her hurt you again.”

I know by “her,” he means Lilith, and I hate that I hear guilt in his voice. What happened wasn't his fault. But I don't want to think about her right now. I stare up at the ceiling. “What can we do about Taylor's tag?”

“We'll figure something out.”

I sink into him and let his peace wash over me, trying to turn off my mind. It's always better in Gabe's arms, and the closer I get to him, the more I feel it—his peace and love. It's like that's what he's made of. My heart rate picks up again as I remember kissing him—the only true peace I've ever known.

He stiffens in my arms and I realize that, once again, my thoughts have given me away.

“Don't worry, you're safe.” I spare him a weak smile.

“Frannie, you know I'd do anything for you, but right now that ‘anything' means that I need my wings. I'm useless to you without them.” He offers a sad smile. “But resisting your Sway is pretty damn hard…mostly because I don't really want to.”

“So you want me to stop wanting you,” I finish for him.

He drops his head onto the pillow. “That would help.”

I push away from him. “Then maybe you shouldn't spend so much time in my bed.”

He chuckles and the moonlight brushes his features, making him appear to glow. Or maybe he really is glowing. Who knows? “But I like it here.”

I can't breathe as a sudden crushing wave of despair hits me at the thought of him leaving. “Good. Stay.”

“Always.” He places a finger on each of my eyelids and draws them closed. “Sleep,” he says. But even in the safety of his arms, it's a long time before I can.

The phone on my nightstand rings, startling me awake. Riley's face smiles at me from the screen.

“I'm picking you up in an hour,” she says when I lift the phone to my ear.

“For what?”

“You're coming into the city with me. I have orientation at State. Taylor was supposed to come, but…”

“She's blowing off orientation?” My heart sinks. She was so excited about college. If she doesn't even care about
that
anymore…

She hesitates and I hear her sigh. “She's blowing off
everything.
So, you'll come?”

“Oh, Ry, I'm really not up for it.”

“You need to get out of the house, and I don't want to go alone.”

“What about Trevor?”

“They're doing some family thing,” she says after a pause.

“Family thing?” I pull myself up in bed and twirl a finger into the sheets. “With Taylor?”

She hesitates again. “
For
Taylor, really. Kind of an intervention. They have that counselor coming who they saw after her dad…you know.”

That family has been through so much: her father's suicide attempt, and now this. But my mood improves just thinking about Taylor getting help. Maybe if she comes around, she'll stay away from Marc and I can help her.

“Have you seen her?”

“Only a couple of times. She's almost never home.”

“How does she look?”

This time I hear a sniffle as she hesitates yet again before saying, “Bad. Really bad.” She sniffles once more and clears her throat. “So I'll pick you up in an hour.”

Luc

The balding clerk leans back in his office chair, feet up on the cluttered desk behind the counter, face buried in a comic book. In his other hand, he holds a Big Mac, Special Sauce dripping down the front of his stained button-down shirt. I stand on my side of the counter for a full minute with no acknowledgment before clearing my throat.

He pulls his face out of the book. “Checking out?”

I slap a wad of bills onto the counter. “Room six. Another week.”

He stands, and as I turn to walk away, I see him pocket the cash out of the corner of my eye.

Once out on the street, I wander aimlessly, anonymous in the mix of professionals and tourists. It's the first time in the three weeks I've been here that I've felt drawn to venture farther than the convenience store across the street. Mostly, I've just been lying on the rock-hard bed in my stale hotel room, shaking and staring at the ceiling, feeling like an addict going through withdrawal, and fighting the urge to go back to Haden. To Frannie—my fix.

But I can never go back. It was all a lie—a beautiful illusion. As much as I want it, I can't be what she needs.

At least my Shield still seems to be intact. Last I saw Rhenorian, he was sitting outside the library in his Lincoln. That was three weeks ago, just before I handed Mavis my resignation and slipped out the back door. The day after…

My gut twists painfully with the memory.

But Gabriel is back. I left as soon as I knew it for sure. Frannie's safe, and as long as she stays with Gabriel and away from me, she'll stay that way. If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that he'll pay better attention than Matt did.

I walk in a fog, weaving through throngs of pedestrians crowding the humid summer streets of Boston. I'm not really sure where I'm going and I don't really care. My mind is focused on working out the rest of my plan. I can't go anywhere near Frannie, but I can still help her. With Gabriel watching her, that frees me up to find Lilith—to find a way to stop her. I just have to figure out how.

I stop, finally, for a Polish sausage at a cart near Fenway Park, even though I'm not hungry, and munch it mindlessly as I set off walking again.

Several headlines at a newsstand catch my eye. More violence and casualties in the Middle East; nuclear testing in North Korea. It's escalating faster than we could ever have hoped.

I start at the realization that I just included myself in the collective infernal “we,” and I try to pretend that I didn't just feel a thrill course through me at the prospect of impending death and destruction.

I pull my eyes away from the newspaper captions and turn the corner back toward my hotel.

And stumble.

Frannie and Riley are climbing the stairs out of the Kenmore Square T station.

I lean against a nearby brick building, feeling dizzy, and take a second to get my bearings. When I have my head, I focus my eyes back on the subway station.

They're gone.

A moment of panic roots me to the spot, but I force my feet forward. I walk to the end of the block as quickly as my unsteady legs will carry me, and peer around the corner. A relieved sigh heaves my chest when I see them retreating slowly down the street, Riley with her arm around Frannie, almost as if she needs to support her.

This is stupid—and dangerous. There's a reason I haven't let myself return to Haden.

But my body refuses to defer to reason. At a distance, I follow them. There are enough people on the street that I sometimes lose sight of them in the crowd, and when I do, panic pushes me to move faster—to get closer. And the closer I get, the more I feel it—the play of hot electricity under my skin.

Finally, they slow at a Starbucks. They pause at the door and I slide behind a brick column a few feet away, peering cautiously around the corner.

“I'll meet you back here after the orientation meeting,” Riley says. Frannie's back is to me, and Riley's holding both Frannie's shoulders, talking right into her face as if she's afraid Frannie might not hear her. “Will you be okay?”

Frannie nods.

Riley squeezes Frannie's hand and heads down the street away from me. Frannie just stands there for a long minute and I fight to keep my legs from carrying me to her. A group of business people push past her on their way into the Starbucks, and Frannie follows them through the open door.

I wait for several minutes, struggling with my last shred of common sense. I should turn and walk away. I know that would be the safe thing to do. The smart thing.

But, Satan save me, I need to see her face. To be sure she's all right.

When the next group passes by on their way in, I follow them.

Frannie sits alone at a table in the back, hands wrapped around a forgotten cup of steaming coffee, and it's clear that she's definitely
not
all right. I breathe against the crushing pressure in my chest as my heart tries to collapse in on itself.

Her sunken eyes are blank, staring off into nothing—no animation on that beautiful, tragic face.

It's been three weeks, and she's still haunted by what I did to her. My betrayal.

I'm transfixed with guilt, just trying to stay upright, when I realize, too late, that Frannie has abandoned her coffee cup on the table, and the pungent scent of tar—her despair—precedes her as she walks straight at me.

Has she seen me?

In a panic, I phase into the corridor behind her. She hesitates for just a second, then walks faster on her way out the door.

And then it hits me:
I phased.

The weight of my own despair knocks the breath out of me as I realize what that means—
everything
that it means. I slump into the wall to keep from toppling over, and press my forehead into it as I struggle for air that I don't need.

Frannie truly doesn't want me anymore. If she did, I'd still be human. And I'm clearly not. All the signs I've been denying—trying to ignore or explain away—they're real. I'm a demon again.

Three weeks.
It took only three weeks.

With that knowledge, there's only one thing I can do. I watch Frannie walk away. I shrug off the wall, but just before I phase back to my hotel room, my sixth sense buzzes and I feel the weight of a hand on my shoulder. Then the buzz stops and Gabriel is gone.

I hang the do not disturb sign on the door to my dark, cramped room before throwing the deadbolt. The scent of stale smoke and mildew overlay something ranker, swirling my mood deeper into despair. I crank the cheap radio on the nightstand and leave it on for the noise as I flop onto the rock-hard bed.

I stare at the cottage cheese ceiling for…hours? Days? I have no idea. No one has knocked on my door asking for money, so it probably hasn't been more than a week.

I want to die.
Why can't demons die?

I'm contemplating whether it would be possible to just phase into oblivion—the demon equivalent of committing suicide—when the sharp smell of brimstone assaults my nostrils, bringing me to my feet.

“How long have you been lying here, Lucifer? I've been waiting outside your door for days.” Rhenorian's eyes glow red as he leans against the wall in the corner of the dark room, hands in his jeans pockets, ankles crossed.

I flop back on the bed, staring at the ceiling again. “Then I guess the answer would be days. I thought I shook you. How'd you find me?”

“That ridiculous celestial Shield hides only you, stupid. When you used your power, it was out there for any of us to see. I just happened to be closest.” His smile is sarcastic. “I've gotten to know your patterns. Figured you'd stay close to your human.”

Perfect.
I've got almost no power, and the instant I use it, I'm outed. But the sad truth is, I knew he was here. The thread of Rhenorian's thoughts was in my head, just like the good old days. I was hoping it was my imagination, but no. My nefarious connection is back.

He shrugs away from the wall and stands next to the bed. “Not that it matters anymore, but how did she do it?”

I startle at his use of
she.
He knows. “What?”

“You were human. Now you're not. How does she do it?”

“It's not her.”

He rips me off the bed by my T-shirt and slams me up against the wall. “Don't lie to me.”