Angelfire (23 page)

Will held me against his chest, cradling me gently. He pulled the torn bodice of my dress apart to examine the wound. I stared into his face as he saw the extent of the damage and clenched his eyes shut, sucking in his upper lip and setting his jaw tight. He took a deep breath and looked up into my face, tucking my tangled hair behind my ear and thumbing my cheek tenderly. He opened his mouth to say something but
closed it again. He wouldn't lie to me and tell me I'd be all right. He never lied to me. He leaned over me and pressed his forehead to mine, his body shuddering with a pain different from my own.

“Will,” I breathed. It hurt to speak and I could barely look at him, but I had to do both. For him. I studied his face, the jewel-like color of his eyes, the curve in his lips, memorizing every part of him. “I'm sorry.”

He pulled back and shook his head. His thumb traced my bottom lip gently. “Don't be sorry for anything. Ever.”

“I'll come back to you,” I promised.

He nodded, tears budding in his own eyes. “I know. And I'll be waiting. I'll wait for you forever.”

I woke with a death grip on the sheets. I released them and sat up, furiously trying to remember the nightmare I had just had. I touched my belly and was relieved to find it smooth and uninjured. It felt almost as if Will were still touching me, and it tingled where I remembered that he had. In my dream he'd thought I was going to die, but I wasn't sure if I did in the end.

Was it a memory or just a nightmare? I couldn't even tell the difference anymore.

In the real world, Will stood with his back to me, looking out the window. When the blankets rustled, he turned toward me. I blushed for no reason at all when I saw his face. The Will from my dream stared back at me with his beautiful,
kind smile, and it took another moment for me to distinguish reality from my memory. He felt so far away, and he'd been so close to me moments before in my dream.

“How'd you sleep?” he asked. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest.

I stretched my arms wide. “I had a dream about you.”

“I hope it wasn't an embarrassing one.”

“No,” I said. “But it wasn't a good dream, either.”

His eyes fluttered to the side for a moment and he said nothing.

“Do you think it was a memory?” I asked.

“It could have been,” he said. “What happened in it?”

I explained it to him: the battle with the reapers, and me lying in the street, but I left out the more intimate parts. He kept his expression blank and he nodded a couple of times. “Was it real?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It was in New York, just before the Civil War broke out. I'm happy your memory is coming back to you, but I wish you had remembered something else.”

“Did I die?” I whispered.

His gaze was strong on mine and he said nothing. He didn't need to. His face told me the answer he didn't say aloud.

“At least you're remembering,” he said softly. “We can be thankful for that.”

“I am,” I said, but I wasn't so sure. As much as I hungered
to learn more about my past, I was afraid of learning other things too—mostly about death and despair, and dark corners of the globe. I prayed that those memories wouldn't come back to me, because I felt in my bones that some things were too frightening to remember.

NOVEMBER WAS DULL. KATE AND LANDON NEVER mentioned the bathroom incident on Halloween, and there was no way I was going to ask. If they didn't want to talk about it, then it was fine with me. At least Landon seemed to be uninterested in me, finally, so I didn't have to worry about leading him on or hurting his feelings.

One night after a tough training session, I sat at a rickety desk in one of the old offices in our warehouse, scrambling through a pile of homework while Will sat serenely in a broken chair across from the desk. Trying not to flunk out of school while hunting reapers was becoming increasingly difficult. This wasn't the first time I'd had to bring my homework to our sparring sessions. We'd spar, I'd do a vocab sheet or something, and then we'd spar again. I was about to lose my mind.

“You know, if you're going to be looking over my shoulder, you might as well help me out with this,” I grumbled. “I
am
telling everyone you're my tutor. Make yourself useful and tutor me.”

“I'm being useful,” he retorted. “I'm listening. And besides, I have no idea what any of this even means.”

I huffed. “This isn't even advanced. I'm in the dumb-kid physics class.”

“You're not dumb.”

“I'm dumb at physics.”

He blinked. “I don't know this stuff and I'm not dumb.”

“Okay, well, we're both
uneducated
in physics,” I said. “Happy?”

“But you're learning.”

“Yeah, that's because I'm uneducated.”

“That doesn't mean you're dumb.”

I felt a powerful urge to smack him. The genuine look of confusion on his face prevented me from doing so, although I was still sorely tempted. Maybe if I just flicked him between the eyes or something…

“I'm sorry,” he said, and stood. “I'm crowding you. I'll just wait outside.”

“You don't have to go.”

“No, I should. I won't be far.” He left the office and me in silence.

As soon as he'd gone, I wanted him to come back. I found myself staring at his empty seat and feeling his absence. I
had solved—or so I hoped—a handful more homework problems when I thought I heard music. It was very soft, but loud enough to make me wonder. Where was it coming from?

I got up and followed the sound through the dilapidated hallways, but as I crept through the failing light, the world faded away.
Not again.
I leaned against the wall, pressing myself into the peeling paint, feeling it scratch my skin—anything to keep my mind from falling away into a darker time. But as the world changed around me, my face tightened, squeezed until I couldn't move; but I didn't feel fear, only determination.

Something flashed in front of me, so blindingly bright I had to look away. The last reaper had gone up in flames. My skin and clothes were splattered with blood, but at least I wore men's trousers instead of the obnoxious thick skirts I was supposed to wear as a young woman among the humans. With no other enemies to face, I descended deeper into the castle, moving within the Grim, through winding stone halls lit only by my angelfire. My shining swords made excellent substitutes for torches.

I paused, questing out with my mind, and located a power nearby. It swelled and died and swelled again. But there was only one signature flaring, not many, so there couldn't be a fight. I followed the signature up a flight of stairs and through a doorway that was taller than most of the others I'd gone through in that place.

Stepping carefully into a large room, I held my swords ready. For a moment I thought I'd been wrong. There were three vir in the room, who all turned around to look at me and all recognized me instantly. They charged at me, wings, talons, and teeth gnashing and striking. I twisted and spun, ducking through the smoky flashes of power and the dizzying smell of brimstone. I dispatched them in seconds, my arms aching from swinging my swords. I looked around the room again to be sure I'd defeated them all.

Instead of meeting another battle, I found a fourth vir reaper in chains. His arms were held out and up, his wrists shackled to the wall. His power swelled and he yanked against the chains, but even from this distance, I could tell that the chains were made of silver and they weakened him. After he made another attempt at freedom, his strength waned and he went slack against his bindings.

I strolled up to him, my chest heaving from the fight as I tried to catch my breath. The imprisoned reaper would be no threat to me—as long as he remained bound.

As I neared him, he looked down at me, and I got a good look at his face for the first time. He was, for lack of a better word, beautiful. His hair was dark, rich like polished walnut wood, and his features were handsome, sharp, and predatory. His lips were sculpted like those of the marble statues in old Rome, and his eyes were bright crystalline green—the unmistakable inhuman eyes of a reaper. But
was he demonic? Or angelic?

He stared down at my flaming swords and then into my face, gaping at me in shock and awe. This reaper was one I'd never come across before, and the surprise on his face proved it. He'd never seen me either, but he knew exactly who I was. He lifted his head in a valiant attempt to appear as if he weren't defeated and weak.

“I know what you are,” he said in English. His voice was weak and strained, broken, but I recognized the Scottish accent. “If they'd taken my eyes, I'd still know what you are. Don't kill me.”

“But I don't know what
you
are,” I said, tilting my head up at him.

His fine white shirt was torn and bloodied, and his breeches had fared no better. He was dressed like a noble, and with his handsome face and clean hair tied back with a ribbon, it would have come as no surprise to me if he were an aristocrat. There were many reapers of hideous wealth taking up positions of power all over Europe.

His expression hardened. “I'm not what you think I am.”

“No?” I asked, and sized him up. “You're a reaper and you've had the Hell beaten out of you. What did you do to deserve it?”

A smile curved in his lips. “The demonic don't like me much since I kill every one of them I find. They've finally caught up to me, as you can see.”

I didn't find his remark amusing. “You're only what? A
century old? You don't have that kind of strength.”

“Call it a gift.”

I studied him for a moment. His eyes went bright as he attempted again to break his chains. “You've been caught, so you can't be that strong.”

“I was ambushed,” he said through a violent cough. “And you're one to talk. You are as well known for your own deaths as you are for your conquests.”

His attitude was beginning to irritate me. “Must I remind you that you are at my mercy right now?”

“You don't destroy the angelic. Killing me would be to your discredit.”

“I have no reason to believe you aren't demonic,” I said. “What if you're a traitor to your master? You may have rebelled against him to stake out your own territory. For that, you would be punished severely. I understand the politics of your kind.”

“I'm a traitor to no one,” he growled. “I'm only doing my duty as the angelic should. If you don't believe me, then put your fire to my flesh. It won't harm me.”

If he was truly demonic, then he was brave. But if he told the truth…I held his gaze for several heartbeats until I finally took up my sword, the silver blade swallowed in angelfire. I used the tip to part the collar of his shirt wider, exposing his bare chest. I looked up into his eyes. He stared firmly back without fear as the light from the angelfire danced off his features. Whoever he was, I admired him. I drew a line of blood
down his chest with the blade as the fire licked at his skin, and his jaw tightened rock hard from pain. I stepped back to examine the wound. As he'd promised, the angelfire did no damage to him at all.

“Told you,” he said with a dark grin. His wound closed, leaving only a trickle of blood behind.

“I can still leave you chained up.”

“If you cut me down,” he said, “I can help you. We're both hunting the demonic.”

“I don't need your help.”

“You don't want anyone to watch your back?”

“I can watch my own back.”

“Sure you can.” That beautiful grin widened. “Then turn around.”

As soon as he said that, I felt a power flare behind me and I turned and swung my swords, removing the head of a reaper who'd lunged at me from behind. She went up in flames, and I turned back to the angelic reaper.

“See? I'm useful.”

I glared at him. Then I took up my swords again and cut through his chains. He slumped to the ground and sagged against the wall, gasping from pain. “What's your name?” I asked.

“Just call me Will.”

I stared down into his green eyes as he dragged himself to his feet. “I never want to see your face again, Will.”

I turned my back to him and heard the music again. I shut my eyes, focusing hard on the gentle sound until it was all I heard.

When I opened my eyes again, I'd returned to the crumbling old warehouse. I breathed a sigh of relief. A veil of warmth fell over me as I realized I'd just remembered the first time I met Will. I smiled to myself, recalling how annoyed I was with his sharp tongue. Then I remembered he had introduced himself to me in September the exact same way he had when I met him five hundred years before:
“Just call me Will.”

I listened to the music again and followed it back out into the main warehouse storeroom. I pushed the heavy door open just a little, letting the soft music flood my ears and the hall behind me, and I peeked through.

Will sat in a chair against the wall with an acoustic guitar in his hands. I studied the way his hands moved quickly, fluid and precise like ripples on water, the muscles in his arms tight and defined. The way his head bobbed and his foot tapped the floor with the beat captivated me. I recognized the song, though I couldn't quite place it. But the name of the song didn't really matter. I was entranced. It was kind of sexy watching him play. Sexy and beautiful, like every other aspect of him.

As I listened and watched, I knew he was as perfectly aware of me as I was of him, though he kept his infallible rhythm. I knew he could sense every inch of my skin from
across the floor, as I could his, feeling every thread of the powerful centuries-old bond we shared. In that moment my lips grew numb and something spun deliciously warm in my chest. In that precise moment I knew I was undeniably in love with him.

I took in a breath for courage and pushed the door open all the way so I could step through. I folded my arms across my chest as I eased toward him, smiling as if nothing had changed in me. He didn't stop playing as I approached, but he glanced up at me and grinned, turning my stomach to pudding. That knowing smile was the same smile he had given me the night I'd met him five hundred years before.

“I guess I'm lucky, then,” I said, remembering what he'd told me about this side of him.

He never missed a chord. “I guess you are.”

I said nothing more until he finished and I clapped for him. “What was that?”

“Journey,” he said. “One of my favorites. ‘Wheel in the Sky.'”

“It was really good. Where did you get the guitar?”

“I keep some of my things here. Most of my belongings are at Nathaniel's house.”

I imagined what other things he might have kept over the years and longed to see them, just to know a little bit more about him. “Why don't you play more?” I asked.

He shrugged and set the guitar aside. “There are other things on my mind, I guess.”

“Can you sing, too?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No. Singing is not one of my talents.”

“That's too bad,” I said, and chewed on my lip, mustering the bravery to tell him about my flashback. “Will, as I was leaving the office, I remembered something. It was the night I met you, when I cut you down from those chains all those centuries ago. You were a smartass even then.”

“I don't deny it.”

“How did you get captured like that?” I asked.

His gaze lingered on my face for some time. “I was hunting demonic reapers with Nathaniel. We got separated and I was cornered. They tortured and interrogated me to find out what I knew about the other angelic reapers, but I didn't know anything. I was playing vigilante with Nathaniel. We didn't know what we were doing back then. And then you came.”

His expression softened as he gazed at me, the look in his eyes distant and longing. “You were like a warrior angel I'd seen in the stained glass of a cathedral. I knew who you were the moment I saw you, because I'd heard of you. Everyone had. And you freed me.”

“But I told you to leave me alone,” I said. “What made you try again?”

“That very night, an angel came to me,” he confessed. “I don't know his name or why he appeared to me of all people, but he told me that your fate and mine were tied together.
He said that I needed to protect you, because you were the most sacred of all things. My destiny was to become your Guardian, in a long line of Guardians: I was chosen. He gave me my sword and the power to awaken you, so you could become the Preliator in each reincarnation. He gave me purpose, some sort of resolution in my immortality, a focus.
You
gave me purpose.”

I smiled down at him, and he grinned right back. I was very thankful that he had became my Guardian. Remembering that flashback of ancient Egypt made me want never to know life without him ever again. I felt the losses of my previous Guardians, but I trusted no one more with my life than Will. Without him, I didn't think I could fulfill my mission of destroying the demonic reapers.