Shadows in the Silence (31 page)

The light, my glory breaking free from its chains, was growing too bright and I could barely keep my eyes open. Ethan kept chanting even when I could no longer see him. My body seemed to take on a mind of its own; the magic lifted me off the floor as my hair whipped around my face as if I was trapped in a hurricane. I looked down, forcing my eyes open so I could see what was happening. Ethan lit a match and tossed it into the bowl with the Naphil heart, and the red organ sparked and went up in flames. My body lurched as the smoke from the burning heart and fragranced oils engulfed me. It smelled like cooked meat and flowers from a funeral.

“Ellie,” Ethan called up to me, practically yelling over the rushing of wind through the church. “Ellie! Your necklace! Break it and free your grace!”

I yanked on the pendant, snapping the clasp apart, but I didn’t get the chance to chuck it at the stone floor. It shattered on its own in my palm in a flash of light and instead of dispersing, that light—my grace—collected itself like a
sentient thing and clung to me, my clothes, my hair, spreading over my body and sinking into my skin.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Shut your eyes, Ethan. Shut your eyes!”

Something inside of me exploded and the erupting light was bright enough to fry human retinas from their sockets. My glory and grace devoured me, changed me, filled me with a sensation that I’d long forgotten. There was an intense warmth all around me and then it turned to heat, to a blinding heat that seared the edges of my clothing. Pieces burned off and were blown away. My hair was a tornado of fire around my body. My shoulder blades tingled and became numb and I swore I glimpsed a feather fall to the floor.

Then I felt nothing. Saw nothing. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed like that in the whiteness, but that eternity ended in an instant. The fire and light vanished, and the candles blew out, drenching the cathedral in darkness. My toes touched the floor, boots silent on stone, and my hair settled around me. My shoulders were no longer numb, but they felt heavy with the weight of my wings.

“Her eyes,” the human murmured as I passed him. “They’re solid gold. She’s ascended.”

My Guardian stared at me, lips parted, and he took a step forward to follow me. “Ellie?”

I stopped. The feathers from my wings brushed the floor, lucent feathers the color of moonlight with just a breath of
gold, and I picked them up, folding them against my back. “I am not Ellie.”

His mouth clamped shut, his jaw clenching. I saw these things, recognized the pain on his face, but I felt nothing in return.

I continued walking toward the sanctuary doors. “I am Gabriel.”

“ELLIE!” MY GUARDIAN SHOUTED AT ME, BUT I didn’t stop. “Gabriel! Where are you going?”

I ignored him and continued through the crowds celebrating the Festival of Light. Few humans failed to notice me, but I suspected that was because I had not yet withdrawn my wings. I would need to take to the air soon.

Jerusalem had changed since I’d last seen it with my archangel eyes. I remembered passing through here just this evening in my human form—I remembered everything—but experiencing these neon streets now was different. I remembered thinking the displays of light were beautiful, but now I asked myself what had made these lights beautiful? I wasn’t sure I even understood what “beautiful” meant.

My Guardian made an angry sound as he pushed through the crowd to catch up with me. “Ellie, God damn it—”

“I accept your presence, Guardian,” I told him as I watched several women wearing white dresses threaded with tubes of light whirl around us in the street. “But I am in no danger.”

“You accept me?” he hissed. He grabbed my arm and yanked me around and into his chest.

I twisted my arm until his bent the wrong way and he cried out, but I grabbed his wrist with my free hand before he could let go. His knees buckled and hit the ground. “How
dare
you touch me, Earthling?” I snarled, baring teeth.

He gaped up at me. He did not seem to understand that he was only a reaper. I remembered…I remembered that he had touched me before, that I had let him, that I had…But I was an archangel now. I was not to be touched.

“Hey,” said a meek voice to our right. It belonged to a young man who stared at my charred clothing and gigantic wings. He seemed to accept that I was part of the show. “Is there a problem here?”

I released my Guardian and waved a hand, shoving my power into the human’s chest and blowing him away from me. He toppled through the crowd with a cry, taking down a light display with him.

“Ellie!” Will shouted at me in anger. When I looked at my Guardian, I saw the revulsion in his green eyes. “What are you doing?”

I continued on my way. He shouted my human name behind me as he fought to catch up. I scanned the tops of
the buildings around me and spotted the Dome of the Rock. I spread my wings and they carried me into the air. I flew fast, moving as a ball of fire, a falling star, and I settled at the top of the golden dome and spread my wings to help keep my balance. I inhaled the cool night air alive with the heady scents of Jerusalem. I was not supposed to breathe. I had ascended and become an archangel, but this body…I was still partially human.

My Guardian dropped less gracefully onto the dome. His boots slipped and his wings folded into his back. “Ellie, what the hell? You just bolted. Are you okay? How do you feel?”

He caught my attention and I stared at him, my hair whipping around my head. “I do not understand your questions.”

“Oh no,” he said sorrowfully. “Don’t let this be real.”

“I empathize with your attachment—”

“You
what
?” His body rocked gently in the wind. “Who
are
you?”

“You know who I am.”

He shook his head, his anger clear. “You are not my Ellie.”

“No, I am not,” I said. “Not in the way you knew me.” I slid down the side of the dome and leaped onto the flat roof.

He followed me, jumping down to return to my side. “But she’s in there. She’s a part of you.”

“That is true,” I said. “I am Ellie, but I am also Gabriel. I’m not human. Not anymore.”

He reached for me and I began to pull away, but I stopped
and allowed him to touch my cheek. “Have I lost you?”

His fingers against my skin were warm and not unpleasant. As much as I wanted to push him away, I didn’t. “I’m right here.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” he asked, his tone heavy with sorrow. “You can’t feel anything. You don’t even know me.”

Something instinctive and uncontrollable stirred in my chest, a flutter of heat and longing. “I can feel. I can feel your touch.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. He drew in a short breath and bit his upper lip, a gesture that gave me more unwanted feelings. “It’s more than that. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you know me?”

“I remember you,” I said in a small voice. “Will.”

He backed off and clenched his fists, his lips trembling. “You say my name like you don’t know me.”

It was then that I pulled away and the coldness returned. “I know you. You are my Guardian.”

He stared at me, slack-jawed and pathetic. “That’s it?”

I spread my wings and started to turn away from him. “I am sorry.”

He shook his head. “You don’t even know what sorry means. You’ve let yourself become just another heartless angel.”

Over my shoulder, I narrowed my gaze at him. “And you are just a reaper.”

He said nothing for several long moments, and just as I was about to leave, he drew a deep breath and spoke. “This…this is far more cruel than anything anyone has ever done to me. This is worse for me than if you had died. This is torture.”

I studied, perplexed, as the agony on his face deepened. I knew the extent of his emotions for me and I knew how I had felt about him, but now I felt…nothing. I remembered, but the feelings were only memories, distant, fading things far out of my reach. Perhaps there was nothing after all. When I looked at my Guardian’s face, at the sorrow and pain in his eyes, I felt regret for what I had said to him. That was nothing I had ever felt before in Heaven. Angels had been created to be perfect soldiers. We felt no regret, no mercy, and certainly no compassion. I was an archangel once again, but I had changed.

Something in my pocket vibrated. I slipped out a device, something my human memories recalled was a cell phone. I stared at it and Will took it from my hand. He took an instant to identify the caller on the screen and then pressed the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he answered. “It’s Will. Yeah. Sort of. Just meet us at the hotel.” He recited the address and hung up. “That was Cadan.”

“Ah,” I said. “The demonic reaper.”

“My brother,” Will growled. “And your friend. You’d better not treat him the way you treat me.”

I did not reply to that.

“I’m calling Ethan and telling him to clean up the evidence left behind in the church,” he continued. “He can meet us at our hotel room where we’ll regroup with Cadan. Do you remember where—?”

The rest of his question was lost to my ears. I’d already taken flight and left him.

I had to tuck away my wings when I returned to our hotel. The mortals of today weren’t as welcoming of my presence as they were the last time I visited as an archangel. The times had changed. I’d lived all of them, and I was grateful for maintaining my human memories. I would have had a much harder time navigating this new world without them.

But the memories also made things more complicated. My Guardian…How I had allowed myself to have feelings for him—to
love
him—was beyond me, but I’d been human for so long. I was built to be a soldier, the perfect machine created to seek and destroy. I commanded my own legions of angels that devastated and banished the armies of Lucifer eons ago. When I was first told I would be sent to Earth to destroy the demonic reaper spawn of Lucifer’s Fallen abominations, Sammael and Lilith, I had felt the first flicker of emotion since my creation. I was…uncertain. I’d seen the humans, watched them grow from languageless creatures into a species with ideas and ambitions, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to walk among them. To feel as they do. To
smile the way I’d seen them smile. I carried a dark secret in my heart: I wanted these things. When I become mortal, God gave me a human soul. He told me that His angels weren’t as perfect as He had hoped we would be, that there was something missing in us, something that kept us from reaching our full potential as His creation. He told me that my human soul was a gift, that it would save me—save us all. And then I had felt the second emotion since my creation: doubt.

My time in Heaven was always so brief in between my mortal deaths and I remembered nothing the instant I returned to my human vessel. That had been frustrating. No matter how much I trained with my brothers and sisters in Heaven, or how much strength I gathered in my archangel power, it all went to waste the moment I returned to Earth.

When Michael had discovered Bastian’s plans to release Sammael and Lilith, my orders were to remain in Heaven. on my next reincarnation, I had to be stronger, faster, and more certain to defeat the Fallen. We’d hoped that the longer I delayed my return to Earth, the likelier chance I’d retain my memories as my true self. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect and I’d had an even more difficult time regaining even my human memories. I’d set myself even farther back and only made myself more human, a mewling little thing—a human teenage girl.

But now my power had returned to me. It surged through me like a torrential river waiting to be unleashed. Now that I
had ascended, everything had proven worthwhile. Yet there was something inside of me that churned and whispered to me, something that had a different and immeasurable power of its own: my soul. It had stayed with me through my ascension, because it had become a part of me. My soul was who I was, the unique individual I had become.

And yet…That human version of me proved to be stronger than any previous incarnation. As a human girl, I had felt insurmountable fear, yet I had surmounted it. I had felt love, and I had fought harder for my friends and family because of it. I had faced enemies that should have defeated me, and yet I walked away alive. There had been strength in my human self that no one could have ever anticipated—or perhaps someone did and He had been right. Perhaps this human soul was a gift after all, just as God had promised me.

But would it save me? Save us all?

I found the key to my hotel room in my pocket. once inside, I tossed my burned clothing in the trash and put on fresh jeans and a shirt. My stomach rumbled, surprising me. I hadn’t expected to feel hunger now that I had ascended. This made me wonder how human I had remained.

The door burst open and my Guardian emerged, his face clenched with anger, and as soon as he saw me, relief poured over him. “Thank God you’re here. Why would you take off like that?”

“You said that we would meet everyone back here,” I said.

“You’re supposed to wait for me!” he shouted. “We’re supposed to stick together!”

I put my palm to my belly. “I’m hungry.”

His eyes bulged. “You’re—? What is wrong with you?”

“This form is strange to me.”

“Strange?”

“I was human only minutes ago,” I said. “Now I am an archangel.” I held out my hands and tightened them into fists, watching tendons and joints move and contract. “There is blood in my veins. I’m not supposed to hunger, or feel tired, or need to breathe. In truth, I don’t know what I’ve become. I am an archangel, but I am more than that.”

He lifted both his hands and touched either sides of my face, letting his fingers spill into my hair. “You know exactly what you are.”

I studied how the hard look on his face softened as he touched me, as if the feel of me did that to him, comforted him. “You are very peculiar.”

“I’m just being me,” he said. “You’re the one acting weird.”

“I remember everything,” I told him, and I didn’t push him away. “You loved me.”

“I still do, even though you don’t love me anymore. I promised you I would.”

I couldn’t look away from his face, no matter how hard I tried. “This is not permitted.”

His gaze fell and he reached for one of my hands. He
drew it close to his lips. “What isn’t?”

“You are not permitted to touch me.”

“Then stop me.” His eyes flashed brightly. His nose and lips brushed my palm, his breath warm on my skin, and that uncompelled sensation returned to me.

“I don’t want to,” I told him. “I’m not supposed to want you to touch me.”

“You smell like jasmine,” he said very softly. “It’s the cream you put on your skin every morning after your shower. You still smell like the human girl you were minutes ago. You still
are
her. I know this body of yours as well as I know my own. You’re still my Ellie.”

His lips found my wrist and he closed his eyes as he kissed the tender skin there. I shivered and drew away from him, afraid of this feeling he gave me that was more than physical. I remembered too well the way he made me feel, but I didn’t understand it. I knew what he felt and that I had felt the same, but those emotions were gone and never should have existed in the first place.

He looked at me with eyes full of a mixture of hurt and determination. “I’ll bring you back to me.”

I started to say something, but the door opened again and another reaper stepped through. This was the demonic reaper, the brother of my Guardian, and behind him, a second demonic reaper appeared.

“Hey, guys,” Cadan greeted. “You remember Ronan, right?”

I recognized the tall vir’s ginger-colored hair and candy-orange eyes. He wore a wary expression and his gaze shifted from Will to me. “Gabriel,” he said, his tone careful.