A Beautiful Dark (17 page)

“Whoa,” I breathed.

“Yeah. I say ‘they,’ because this was long before my time. Our new powers came over hundreds of thousands of years,” he explained.

“Are you guys immortal?” I asked.

“No,” Devin said. “Though our aging process works in an entirely different way from yours.”

“Angels aren’t gods,” added Asher. “We’re born, we grow old, and we die. We just do it all kind of . . .” He paused, searching. “Differently. Like Devin said.”

“So you’re not really my age? Or is it some weird trick of the light that you look seventeen?”

“I haven’t been seventeen for a long time,” Asher said, almost, if I interpreted right, a little wistfully. It made me want to rush over and hold him. What would it be like to live so long, to see so many changes occur?

“We do share many of the same properties as humans, it’s true. We look like you, for one. We understand and speak your many languages.” Devin was ticking things off on his fingers as though he was going through a memorized list. “But it’s important to remember that we’re not human, Skye.”

“But . . . okay,” I said. “Here’s the thing. If I have—what you said—if I have, like, powers. What kind will
I
have? Will I become one of you, completely? Will I be an angel?” I paused, not sure I wanted to know the answer to the question that came next. “Will I no longer be human?”

Asher shook his head. “Well, you’re already different from other people in ways you may or may not have noticed. Think about it. You’re a little bit faster. A little bit stronger. Haven’t you won every single one of your races this season?”

“Because I practice my ass off,” I said defiantly. The sportswoman in me couldn’t accept that I’d had an unfair advantage. My conscience would compel me to return all my trophies and medals. And how would I explain it? I had performance-enhancing angel genes?

“It’s more than that, Skye. And didn’t you just survive an avalanche—with your worst injury a broken ankle?”

“But I couldn’t heal it myself,” I protested. “Devin did.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Asher said. “Just the fact that you survived is amazing. Devin, he’s sort of influenced everyone into thinking that your fall wasn’t that big a deal, but it was.”

“If you weren’t at least a little bit like us, you might not have made it,” Devin added. His hands were in his pockets, and he looked almost sad.

Asher continued. “Your powers haven’t completely formed yet. We don’t know whether you’ll develop the Guardians’ abilities or the Rebels’. We don’t know what forms the powers brewing inside of you will take. But when they do manifest, you’ll be your own thing. Not all human but not all angel.”

He took a step forward, and I could see the passion and fire in his eyes. He was trying to convey how important all of this was. “This is what you were born for, Skye. To be part of our world, to embrace your destiny,” Asher quietly insisted. “Whatever your powers, being with us is what you were always meant to do.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of the path, Skye,” Devin added. “Because it will lead you to us and to a calm you’ve never known.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “Show me what I can do.”

Chapter 21

O
kay now, pay attention,” Devin said. “I’m going to demonstrate—”

Plumes of fire exploded against the dark sky.

Spinning around, he glared at Asher. “We had agreed that I would give the first lesson.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” But Asher didn’t look sorry at all. He looked rather amused.

Devin turned his attention back to me. “What he just did, ignoring the rules, is not tolerated.”

“By the Order. The Rebellion refers to it as independent thinking. Initiative,” Asher said.

“It creates chaos—as you’ve just proven. Here we are wasting time with your games instead of teaching Skye what she needs to know.”

Bowing deeply, Asher extended his hand. “Continue.”

As much as I hated to admit it, the bickering helped me to relax just a little.

Devin straightened his wings and focused on me again. “You should be able to feel a well deep inside you and just reach in—” He flung his arms out toward the sky, and branches of the trees surrounding the clearing began dancing wildly. The strong wind hadn’t even been a hint of breeze a few minutes earlier.

“Wow,” I said. “Was that a cognitive ability?”

“It’s more than that,” Asher said. “Air is ethereal, of the clouds. Like the Rebellion controls the dark and stormy, earthy elements.” He waved his hand out, and the ground rumbled beneath my feet, causing me to stumble and almost lose my balance.

Suddenly I was so cold that I was surprised I didn’t freeze completely. I whipped around and Devin stood behind me, arms outstretched, smiling.

Asher sent fire rushing past me and my skin prickled with heat, but when the two elements clashed, they erupted with a loud crack—like ice being hit with heat—and died out.

“I’m supposed to be able to do all of that?” I asked.

“We don’t know what you’re capable of,” Devin said. “Just try and see what you can do. Start small.”

“Okay.” I searched for that well that Devin talked about, but all I found was emptiness. “I’m sorry. I’m just not feeling it.”

“Like this,” Asher said. “Watch.”

For the next few hours, the two angels showed me the vast, terrifying extent of what they were able to do—what they thought I might be capable of doing, too. Thunder clapped. Bursts of fire flew toward the gathering dark clouds. Asher broke the ground apart; Devin caused it to reform, erasing all evidence of the destruction. The wind circled around us, but our hair stayed in place. Rain pummeled the earth, but somehow the three of us stayed bone dry. Their powers were so controlled. They could help or hurt. Heal or destroy.

As I watched the fire and wind swirl together, the pieces were finally coming together for me. My destiny. Though I reminded myself as I watched them that I might be able to do all or none of those things, I couldn’t discount that there
were
strange things happening around me lately. The boiler. The thermostat. The bus heater. The avalanche. I could explain all of them rationally. And yet, I couldn’t deny that what Devin and Asher demonstrated could also explain the weirdness a lot better than I wanted to acknowledge.

As they wreaked havoc around us, sometimes I couldn’t tell who was responsible for what. Dark powers, light powers. I imagined if these two groups ever went to war against each other, it would be the end of the world.

Every now and then, they would stop and wait. Wait for me to follow their lead and cause a single spark or tremor. But all I caused was disappointment. The irony wasn’t lost on me that the weird things that had been occurring all around me always seemed to happen when I wasn’t prepared for them. Now that I was actively
trying
to make my powers manifest—they failed me.

“Skye!” Devin shouted. He was hidden by the shadows of the night that had descended around us. “Are you paying attention?”

“Yes!” I shouted back. “It’s freezing and my fingers are numb!” I waved my hands around in front of my face. “No fire. No wind. No healing.
Nada
.”

“I don’t think you get how serious this is,” he said, his white wings growing brighter as he emerged from the dark, bringing with him his own light.

“Look, maybe I don’t have any powers at all. You said I might not.”

Devin sighed. “I thought what happened on the bus . . . with the heater . . . that maybe you caused that.”

“Could have been bad wiring,” Asher said. He blended in so well with inky blackness at the edge of the clearing.

“You don’t believe that,” Devin challenged.

“Doesn’t matter what I believe.”

“Let’s pack it in for the night. We’ll resume tomorrow at three fifteen sharp. On the school roof.”

School. I had school tomorrow. After everything I’d learned that day, I almost laughed. How could I go back there and pretend to be normal when that was anything but how I felt?

“Skye?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

Devin’s wings closed in a rush of movement so fast I felt the wind on my face. Seconds later, he had vanished. Whether he had simply flown away or dissolved into thin air, I couldn’t tell.

I looked down at my hands. Could I create fire? Wind? Would I be able to heal someone else’s pain as Devin could? Did I truly have these powers churning inside?

A few feet away from where I stood, a branch hung from a nearby tree, broken and hanging at an awkward angle. I brought my hands up and pushed the air in front of me, hard. I focused all of my energy through my fingers, trying to channel what Devin had told me about healing.
Visualize the wound. Gather it to you. Feel the life force flow. Correct the balance.

The branch swayed slightly in the wind.

That was it.

“Hey,” came a voice from the darkness.

It was Asher. I hadn’t even noticed he was standing there; his wings bled into the darkness as if they weren’t solid.

“You have to rest.”

“I want to keep trying,” I said as I began to walk toward the tree.

Asher walked behind me, keeping pace. “You have to stop for the night,” he persisted. “This is your first day. You don’t want to burn out.”

I ignored him.

“Did you get that? Just trying some Rebellion humor. . . .”

Instead of answering him, I wrapped my hands around the split in the branch, where it hung like an arm from a broken shoulder. That was how Devin had healed my ankle. He’d wrapped his hands around the swelling, his grip intense, and seconds later, the pain was gone.
What if I could make pain disappear?
What a useful power that would be. Could I heal more than physical pain?
I wondered if I could cure emotional pain, too.

The branch broke off in my hand. I cursed under my breath.

I felt hands fall gently on my shoulders.

“Come on,” Asher said. “Let’s go.”

My car was still on the road where we’d left it.

We’d walked back across the field in silence; Asher held a small flame in his hand to help us find our way. I took my keys from my pocket, and before I could even press the unlock button, Asher snatched them from my grasp.

“I’m driving,” he said.

“I can do it,” I told him testily.

“You’re tense and exhausted,” he countered. “Just get in.”

I stared at him, trying to wear him down. He didn’t budge.

“Fine,” I said. “But if you wreck my car, you’re dead.”

I walked around and climbed into the passenger seat. When he settled behind the wheel, I asked, “Do you even know how to drive?”

“I know how to do everything.”

I laughed and settled back against the seat. As my mind worked to process everything I’d learned the past couple of days, Asher’s hand came to rest on mine. How was it that he always seemed to know exactly what I needed right when I needed it?

We pulled into my driveway, and he cut the engine. Without the hum of the motor, the quiet was vast.

“Thanks for driving me home,” I said.

“No problem. You think I’d let you come home alone after a day like this?”

“Devin did.”

“Devin is his own rare species of weird,” Asher muttered. “Don’t let him play mind games with you.”

It was obvious the topic upset him so I let it go. I didn’t stop thinking about it, though.

Are
you
playing mind games with me?
I wondered. It was suddenly so hard to comprehend what was real and what wasn’t. This hidden world, these magical powers—the unbelievable truth about my parents. How could they have never told me? Couldn’t they have left me a journal or something? But then they hadn’t expected to be ripped from my life so soon, either.

“Asher,” I said in the dark. “Do you want to see something?”

He nodded without saying a word. I opened my car door and got out. Seconds later, he did the same. I took his hand and pulled him with me around to the side of the house, looking upward. The ladder crawled up the deep brown shingles, disappearing where the roof ledge dropped off into the velvety black sky. It was tangled in vines that had grown over the years, mistaking it for a trellis.

“Come on,” I said, starting to climb. It was a route I could travel in my sleep.

Asher put his hand on the bottom rung. “I get the feeling I should have asked where we were going.” In the shadows, I couldn’t see his face.
I can trust him
, I thought.
Right?

“Come on,” I challenged. “What are you, afraid of heights?” I kept climbing. My shoulders worked and my legs stepped carefully and it felt good just to move, upward, and think. Or not think.

Soon I crested the roof ledge and crawled several feet across the sloping surface. Asher was right behind me. I pulled my knees to my chest and stared out at the stars. He sat down next to me. Our breath made clouds of steam in the freezing night air.

“Is that where angels are from?” I nodded at the stars.

He chuckled. “Nah. It’s really more of an alternate realm than a city in the sky. I’ve never even been there.” He looked up. “Anyway, the Rebellion camp is somewhere else.”

“Where?”

He looked pensive. “On Earth, actually.”

“Where?” I asked again.

“Far, far away.”

It was so quiet on the roof. I couldn’t even hear any passing cars from the road. The only sound, for miles, was the distant howl of a coyote.

“Maybe you’ll see it, one day,” Asher said.

“So we’re not so different,” I said quietly, almost more to myself than to him. Asher glanced at me sideways, shifting uncomfortably.

“In that way, no.”

“Do you ever regret leaving the Order?”

“I was never in it. Most of us weren’t. Only the very first Rebel Elders were a part of it. And we’re not allowed back there now.” He paused. “So I live here. But based on how bound Devin is to his commands . . . I have to say that I’m very glad not to be part of the Order.”

“Why does he think they’re so important?”

“He’s brainwashed.”

Or was Asher? How could I know which side was the right side—if either was right? How did I know which was where I truly belonged? Maybe I belonged here, exactly where I was. It had been a very long time since I’d missed my parents so desperately. I wished they could be here to guide me.