Crystal Tomb (Starfire Angels: Dark Angel Chronicles Book 3) (14 page)

A distant shout broke through the
encroaching night.

"Elis, wake up. Please," she choked.
"We have to go."

Another shout sounded closer. She'd
have to fly.

But she couldn't leave him.

He was dead.

No! She refused to believe it. He
needed her to try harder.

[Fly! Fly now!]
The voice came from within.

Raea leaned down to kiss the cool
cheek, feeling like her heart stayed with him.

[Hurry!]

Reluctant to leave but realizing she
couldn't let his sacrifice mean nothing, she climbed the fence,
spread her wings, and flapped into the night.

The cold night air carried her high
over the scene and chilled her wet cheeks.

Two shadows stopped at Elis's body,
but no one fired on her.

Tears blurred the rest of the
landscape, but she didn't care. She flew just to fly, her tears
cold on her face.

"Why?" She looked up at the sprinkle
of stars to the east. "It's not fair!" If there was a God, why did
he make her suffer? Why did he take Elis away?

Only silence answered.

There wasn't any God. Debbie was
wrong. Josh and Evelyn were wrong. Everyone was wrong. There was
just the unfairness of life and death.

And the Risaal and the
Shirukan, and everyone else deserved far worse. They had taken him
from her, the one person who truly understood her. After all he had
done, he deserved life, not this unfair ending.
Elis…

After some time flying into the
sunset, she recognized an oasis of lights spread upon the open
prairie. One building stood out above the others near the center,
the lights around it illuminating its lonely height in a
magnificent glow. The State Capitol building in Bismarck. McClarron
was about fifty miles northeast, which meant she would be home in
an hour.

How long had she been flying? Time had
seemed to stand still on eternity since she took off. It didn't
matter without him.

She angled her wings and shifted them
minutely to adjust for shifts in air currents, rising with a
cushion of warm air from the south. Summer came, the longest,
loneliest she would ever know. She didn't want to know it without
him.

Tears burned anew in her eyes and the
landscape blurred. Flying came on instinct to carry her away from
the glow of the city to the peace of the countryside. Practice with
Elis had made flying a literal breeze.

All she'd ever wanted was a normal
life, but in the last two months, she'd had only short periods of
that. Elis had been the greatest part of that, and she wouldn't
trade it for anything.

Now he was gone. Dear God. He was
gone, taking that gentle smile and the caring nature of a real
angel. She should have been nicer to him from the beginning. She
had been mean like the others, and he didn't deserve it. He was
better than anyone and better than anyone knew. If only she could
go back and change it all. Had she known how wonderful two months
could be with him, she would have taken the last two years to enjoy
being together, instead of wasting it.

The lights of a town glowed on the
horizon, a cruel reminder of the loneliness of home.

Home.

All she wanted now was to curl up in
her bed and forget everything.

In the distance rose the glowing light
of the tall sign of the Prairie Rose Inn with its pink blossom. Her
stomach churned; Elis had saved her from Pallin at that hotel. If
not for Elis, she would be dead.

The sign distorted in a blur of fresh
tears with the rest of the town. Despite the haze of moisture, she
made out the breadth of the school buildings near the sports field.
The alternating street lamps along the street illuminated spots in
the quiet night and insulted her. It was as if the sleepy town
didn't care that their Dark Angel was gone.

They should care. They would be sorry
when he wasn't there for them.

The sobs choked her on the thought.
Elis had given the town hope.

Through the blur of moisture in her
eyes, she recognized the yellow and blue houses at the edge of
town.

The field where she and Elis usually
landed was across the street, now lined with perfect rows of crop
sprouts. They had avoided damaging the crops by taking off
elsewhere.

She didn't want to walk a long ways
home and didn't care what anyone thought. So what if they saw what
she was? Her life was ruined.

Raea flapped quickly to slow her
descent into Evelyn's backyard. Her feet touched down and she
folded her wings to her back. Amid the pain inside, she found the
back door and entered, letting it slam closed behind
her.

The kitchen was dark, but the light
from the entry foyer slanted across the dining room and through the
doorway of the kitchen to faintly outline the refrigerator and
counters.

She could have navigated the kitchen
blind for as much time as she had spent there with Elis and
Evelyn.

"Hello?" The voice came from somewhere
ahead, probably the recliner next to the window of the front
sitting room, the old woman's favorite place. "Is someone
here?"

The thump of the recliner foot rest
going down confirmed Evelyn's location.

Sniffling and choking on her tears,
Raea made her way around the dining table as Evelyn stepped into
the foyer, her face dropping into a frown and her eyes looking past
Raea.

"Elis?"

"No." Raea could only wish. She
recovered her voice to say, "He's gone." Hearing it stabbed her
with fresh pain, the sobs shaking through her.

"Raea." The steadiness of Evelyn's
embrace did nothing to ease the pain crushing the life from her.
"We were so worried."

"They k—killed him. God, they killed
him."

Evelyn stepped back, her hands tracing
along Raea's face. Gray eyes studied her and glazed over. She
turned up Raea's hands.

Red smeared across her fingers and
palms. She wore Elis's blood on her hands. Oh, God. SHE WORE ELIS'S
BLOOD ON HER HANDS!

"No." Raea turned them over, reached
up to wipe her eyes, and stopped. How bad was her face? She'd been
wiping her eyes all night.

Evelyn's hands trembled over her
mouth, her eyes welling with tears.

Unable to take someone else's tears
and the thought of his blood on her hands, Raea rushed up the
stairs to the bathroom. She had to wash it off.

The loose step creaked, but she didn't
care. At the top, she knobbed her hip on the banister corner in her
hurry around it. Damn, it hurt, but it was nothing compared to her
heart. She hurried to the bathroom door and flicked on the
light.

At the doorway, she stared at the
disheveled reflection of a young woman with brown wings. Streaks of
red smeared her face around tear-swollen eyes with brown smudges
mixed in like some demonic Halloween mask.

Raea turned the hot water on. Although
it started cold, she washed her hands and scrubbed her face before
it came in hot.

Through the steam, she made out a
clean but haggard face with red, swollen eyes tired from grief and
fatigue.

Her clean hands with the dull
aquamarine marks turned the water off, and she stepped back. Brown
wings lifted in the reflection. A weeping angel stood alone with
blood staining the sleeves of her jacket.

On the countertop next to the cracked
porcelain of the sink basin laid a black hairbrush.

Elis…
She picked it up and caught a small laugh through the tears.
Black hairs clumped on the insides of the plastic tines. Didn't he
know he was supposed to clean his brush? She should have told him
sooner. Now she was glad she hadn't. There was one reminder of who
he was.

The rest was in his room.

Raea rushed to the next door, which
opened to the immaculately clean bedroom he had called his the last
two years. She had started her Starfire training there. Later, they
had snuggled together many nights on that bed.

The bed. The comfort and warmth of the
bed. She curled up on the comforter and, with her eyes closed and
her head pressed into the pillow, could almost imagine he was
there. Mmm... His scent lingered on the pillow and sheets. He was
right there with her, sort of.

The sobs lessened but her tears soaked
into the pillowcase.

"Elis. I miss you." She whispered the
words and pulled the second pillow of the queen bed to her as if
she could snuggle close to him. His scent lingered with vivid,
clear memories full of sensations as if she lived in those lost
moments again.

But it wasn't the same. Life would
never be the same again.

A soft knock shattered the memory of
their first kiss only four weeks ago. It calmed her but left her
wishing for one more.

"Raea?"

She recognized the soft, feminine
voice and twisted as Debbie's weight sank the edge of the bed near
her.

"Evelyn said you were back but…that
you were upset."

Raea sat up, the returning lump
dissolving from the concerned expression on Debbie's
face.

"I was so worried about you." Were
those tears in Debbie's eyes? She hoped not. That was the last
thing Raea needed, but the embrace soothed her pain. She clung to
Debbie, pinching her eyes closed to relieve the stinging
tears.

"I'm so glad you're all right," Debbie
said. Although not the same as when Elis held her, the hug was what
Raea needed.

Raea sniffed and clutched her aunt,
someone real who cared. Debbie had trusted Elis too. "He's gone,
Debbie. They killed him." She hiccoughed on a sob and sniffed. "I
couldn't save him."

"I'm sorry."

"I tried. He had…" She took a deep
breath to quiet the trembling. "A hole in his chest. He wasn't
breathing. There was no pulse…He's dead." The last word ignited her
emotions into another storm of sobs, which Debbie soothed as she
had done for Raea many times growing up, but this was different.
Her heart ached as if torn from her chest.

"It hurts," Raea choked
out.

"I know." Debbie sniffed and Raea's
emotions subsided with her tears. Something about hearing Debbie
cry gave her strength to fight her grief and comfort her aunt. "He
was a great person. I wanted you to be happy together."

So did she, but hearing it from Debbie
warmed through her while her aunt trembled with sobs. After a few
minutes of crying, Debbie took a deep breath and sat up to wipe her
eyes now red and glazed with tears. "Who did this to you? What
happened?"

"They called themselves Risaal." Raea
shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. She hated them, even
talking about them. It was like she was calling them to her, and
they scared her—they could show up anywhere and she wouldn't even
know it. "They're chameleons. They can look human or blend into
their surroundings."

"More aliens? What do they
want?"

Raea bit her tongue on the retort of
questioning what Debbie expected.

Debbie sniffed and wiped her eyes with
her fingertips. "The Starfire?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know." All the questions
about them resurfaced, entangling Raea's emotions with the death of
Elis. She hated the Risaal. Hated. Despised. Wanted to burn them
and stomp their ashes into maggot-filled muck.

"Will they be back?"

"I hope not." But if they could find
her and Elis, they could come after her again. If they did, she
wouldn't hesitate to kill them. They wouldn't hurt anyone else. "We
killed a lot of them trying to escape."

"Good."

What? She must have heard wrong.
Debbie believed in giving everyone a chance, but Raea wouldn't
question it. At least her aunt was on her side—no lectures about
the value of life or anything.

"Thanks, Debbie." Her aunt's support
touched her inside, refueling a light threatening to
extinguish.

"You're my girl too, even if we're not
related. I watched you grow up. You're a part of our family, and
that will never change, no matter what David says."

Her aunt was her mother but not. Their
relationship had evolved into something like friendship. Debbie had
never tried to be her mother, and Raea appreciated that but now she
needed a mother and a friend.

A small laugh escaped from Raea and
granted her an oasis of relief from the sorrow overwhelming her.
"Thanks for coming."

"Are you coming home?"

"Not yet." The bed was the closest she
could be to Elis, and Raea wasn't ready to leave it as she had left
him. Her vision blurred with the return of tears. "I need to be
close to him."

"I understand," Debbie quietly said
and sniffed. "Don't stay away too long. All right? Or I might have
to worry about you again."

"I won't…Thanks."

Debbie's weight lifted from the bed
and her feet padded out of the room.