The Human Side (The Demon Side Series) (12 page)

“I planned on asking her tonight, but every time I worked up the nerve, one of our phones would interrupt us. Do you think she’ll like it? It’s not much, but for what I have from student loans, it’s all I’m able to afford.” Gabriel opened the box, revealing a thin silver engagement band.

“Maybe, if I knew who’s offering it?” Amy poked her head through the attic access. Startled, Gabriel jumped up, shoving the box in back into his pocket and rushed to help her up.

“That’s one way to pop the question.” John let out a stifled chuckle. I had forgotten about him once I saw my discarded trophies. Hopefully he hadn’t seen the magazine Gabriel found. I already had a hard enough time getting him to be okay with me in Etta’s life. Though I no longer took pleasure in it, if he’d seen what I used to enjoy viewing, he would never allow me near her.

“Amy…I…I….”

“We’ll talk later. Let me look at him first.” Amy knelt down, examining John’s back. “We need to get him downstairs where I can get a better look.”

“I can move,” John said as he attempted to steady his elbow on a box. The box gave way, dropping John to the plywood flooring. We raced to hold him up, but our grasps only sent John screaming.

“We can’t move him without further injuring him,” I said.

“I can’t treat him here. It’s too dark and not very sanitary.”

“Just move me and get it over with. I can handle it,” John commanded.

I shared a look of concern with Gabriel as he lifted John by the waist. I jumped down into the closet. John groaned as Gabriel carried him to the access. I assumed my grasp around him had been firm enough to hold on as Gabriel gingerly lowered him to me, but my grip slipped. John slid through my arms, scraping his wound against my chest. The agony proved too much for him, and John passed out in my arms as I dragged him toward the bed in his room. Lifting him by the ankles and wrists, Gabriel and I set him softly down onto his stomach on the mattress.

“Out of my way,” Amy demanded as she pushed between us. Stepping back, we watched as she removed John’s shirt to further inspect his injuries.

“What can we do to help?” Gabriel anxiously asked.

“I need hot water, clean towels, and the alcohol and cotton balls. They’re under the sink in the bathroom.”

Gabriel ran into the bathroom as I ran downstairs to the kitchen sink and turned on the hot water. As I waited it to heat up, I ransacked the cupboards for a pot. All I seemed to find were dishes and canned foods.

“Amy, where are the pots?” I yelled, hoping she’d hear me. Gabriel entered the kitchen and pulled a copper pot down from a rack above my head.

“She said it needs to boil for a few minutes.”

After filling the pot, we stood waiting. My mind drifted off to the first time I saw Etta’s radiant smile, the night we spent playing sleepover. As she painted my fingernails, her sweet laugh echoed in my ears while I did my impression of the neighbor gossip at the hair salon. I hadn’t seen her smile like that since that night. What reason would she have to smile though? I’d been nothing but a jerk. Deal or no deal, that would have to change. First, I’d have to find and kill the person responsible for hurting her.

“So what did you tell Amy happened?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“I kept it basic. I told her John had been hurt and, and I would explain everything when she got here. It’s boiled long enough.” Gabriel pointed to the pot.

Like a dummy, I grabbed the handles, burning my palms and nearly dumping the boiling hot water all over myself. After slamming it back onto the stove, I jumped back, flapping my hands in an attempt to cool the burn.

“You should try using pot holders. They hurt less.” Gabriel carried the pot out with pot holders.

“How is it I’m always the one getting hit or hurt?” I complained as I followed Gabriel gingerly up the stairs.

“Because you act first and think later, Brother.”

“Anything else we can do to help?”

“Yeah, you can get him to the hospital,” Amy retorted.

“You are our hospital. That’s not debatable. Can we do anything else to help?”

“Since you’re leaving me no choice, it’s best you just stay out of my way,” Amy said, pushing us out of the room.

“What now?” Gabriel squatted down, leaning against the wall.

“Now we go through every box in that attic, every drawer in Etta’s room, any little hiding spot we can think of and we burn whatever we find.”

After what seemed to be hours tearing apart the house, Gabriel had found Etta’s Angel and Demon books hidden under her bed. In the backyard, I had started a fire using gasoline from the shed, crumpled up pages of the adult magazine and a couple of chairs from the dining room. One by one, Gabriel and I threw each item into the fire, until I came across a book I didn’t recognize.

Compared to the glossy covers of the newer books, its worn and tattered leather wrapping appeared antiquated. The wooden straps across the spine had lost all the sheen and luster. The gold text had faded, making the title illegible. I hadn’t seen a text bound in such a way in centuries. The edges of the parchment pages had yellowed and browned through the years.

Seeing a thin gap between a few pages, I opened the book hoping to find the letters being used to mark a page. Instead, I found a regular bookmark that read:

“1 Samuel 17:47 Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.”

Seeing no relevance, I threw the bookmark in the fire. Just as I readied to toss the book after it, an image caught my eye. A menacing face framed with bloodstained horns, bright green venom dripping from his fangs and piercing red eyes stared up at me from the page. Flames that seemed to come alive decorated the background of the portrait. Below in beautiful script were the Latin words for Rahovart, the Heir.

Chapter Fifteen

“Wow! They captured you perfectly,” Gabriel said as he stared at my portrait over my shoulder. Ignoring his insult, I skimmed the following pages. The book not only had my portraits, but it listed intimate details of my life. Everything from my creation, my capture in hell, the death of Abihail and my fall from grace as if the pages had been ripped from the celestial scrolls.

If Etta read this, she would know every secret I ever kept, every sin I committed and worse—the fate of my wife, whose soul now dwelled in Purgatory because of my jealous rage.

Though I had stepped out of the Divad’s life, I always had a small glimmer of hope that one day I’d show John I was indeed worthy of Etta, and in turn, he would allow me to pursue her. But with the veil open and her knowledge of me limited to me being a wife-slaughtering Demon, all hope had fled. My hands trembled as a void encompassed my heart.

“What are you doing?” Again, Amy startled Gabriel and me as she stood next to us, glancing at the book. “Making it all go away,” I replied.

“My dad gave her that book last year when she had a breakdown. It always pissed John off that he encouraged her interests in Demons, but he didn’t care. He believes even if they are illusions, what would be the harm in indulging them?”

“And he would have this book because?”

“Because he’s a doctor-slash-professor of parapsychology at Duke University. Not to mention a bishop in my church. He has to know about good as well as evil. You can’t burn it.” Amy took the book from my hands and flipped through the pages.

“We have to, for Etta.”

“Etta’s never been one to just accept the first explanation given. She’s been studying this book for weeks, searching for answers. When she came across the chapter about the Demon Rahovart, a light came on and everything changed. She believes he’s her savior. I tried to explain he fights for the wrong team, but she was adamant he holds the key to all of this. So, trying to make sense of what might be going through her head, I started reading it with her. When I came across this, everything came together for me.” She handed the book to Gabriel.

“What does he have to do with Etta?” I asked, peering at a proud Gabriel in a battle stance, ready to jump off the page.

“Gabriel here talks in his sleep. I know what side he fights for. I’m not so sure about you. What side do you fight for, Rahovart?”

“The human side.” If she had asked me a day ago, I would have simply said Etta’s side. Now, I had seen just what damage my actions caused. Something as simple as a note had cracked the partition of our worlds. I had to set aside my feelings for Etta and put what was truly important, the balance of our worlds, in front of me.

“So she does know about us?” Gabriel asked Amy.

“She has a pretty good idea who the players are, but not sure who is in which body. I mean anyone can pop up and say ‘Hey, I’m Ra, baby.’ And that’s what Tristan has been doing.”

“Are you going to tell her now that you know?” I hoped if she hadn’t planned on telling Etta, I might be able to plant the idea in her head. I was growing tired of living a lie. If Etta knew who I was it would make everything so much easier. And though I wanted to tell her many times, a clause in the deal with Father was that the words were forbidden to pass my lips in her presence. But he never said someone else couldn’t tell her.

“I can’t even if I wanted to. Every time I have tried the words literally wouldn’t come out.”

“None of that matters. What matters is if she knows who I am.” Frustrated, I kicked a clump of sod into the fire. Father had thought of everything. So much so, not even her best friend had the ability to speak of it.

“If she does know, she hasn’t said a word of it to me, but she has been very secretive this past week.”

“What do you mean?” I prodded.

“She’s been sneaking out, not coming home until the next day, ignoring phone calls and texts. Today’s the first time I’ve seen Etta since last Saturday.”

“Where has she been going?”

“My guess is Tristan’s.” Amy crossed her arms. “So, I just gave you an inch, your turn to give me a mile. What’s your story?” she continued.

“Let’s sit down,” I said, as I snatched the book from Gabriel and threw into the fire. Gabriel took a seat on the couch patting the empty spot next to him for Amy. You didn’t need to be a celestial being to see a crack form in Gabriel’s heart as she took the chair across from him.

Starting from the beginning, we explained the whole story to Amy. Occasionally her jaw would drop or she’d rub her forehead as she took in the incredible tale of two Arch Angels coming to Earth for a girl who has been plagued by Demons. Though she showed no outward signs of shock, I knew it was all too much for her to comprehend. Overwhelmed, she took a break from our celestial fall out by checking on John.

Only moments had passed when Amy returned, helping John down the stairs.

“Are you sure about this?” Amy asked John.

“I’ll rest on the way and buck up when we get there,” John replied. He already sounded ten times better than he had in the attic. His color had returned, but it didn’t hide the amount of pain he endured as he cautiously slipped on his leather jacket.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. What if…?”

“Amy, I’ll be fine. I’ll have one of my guys look at it tomorrow, but right now I want to see my daughter. You boys ready?”

We piled into the van. I helped John lie across the middle row of seats before taking the back row to myself. Gabriel sat in front with Amy. A small sign of hope that love can truly conquer all appeared when Amy took Gabriel’s hand and held it on her thigh as she drove. Occasionally she’d flash him a smile, letting him know all would be well between them. For a split second, I wished the rest of the Arches were here to see our dear Gabriel allowing himself to love. But the rising of the morning sun reminded me of why we were here.

“The morning star,” I said under my breath.

“Even his name invites you in,” John whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“The bearer of light, better known as Lucifer. Just goes to show you can’t base an idea off of someone’s title.” His sharp tone added to the insult. The Demon in me rose, wanting nothing more than to cut out his tongue, but attacking a crippled man held no true victory. Though he dared to compare me to Lucifer, the Angel in me shrugged off his jab.

“You got nothing?”

“Your opinion of me isn’t high on my priority list, John.”

“Oh? And what is?”

“Closing the veil.”

“Gabriel and I have tried. Do you know something we don’t?”

“I know what is holding it open.”

“And that would be?”

Once John learned of my existence, I knew he hadn’t been happy that a so-called traitor had won the heart of his daughter. Since my arrival here he had made that very clear. I feared if he found proof of the love Etta and I once shared had been the cause of their world turning upside down, it would anger him further. Tired of fighting with him, I didn’t want to answer.

On the flip side, if he knew what he should look for, he would be of great use in the search for the notes. Maybe he had seen them and shrugged them off as irrelevant. Glancing in the rear view mirror, Gabriel gave me an encouraging stare. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I answered him.

“I threw my belongings in your garbage can when I left. We found the box in the attic tonight and destroyed everything inside, but some items were missing…a note I left for her and a letter she left for me professing our love.”

“Are you flipping kidding me?” Just as I expected, John grimaced in rage, but he didn’t start the tirade I anticipated. His lower lip trembled as he seemed to be fighting back whatever seemed to be rising within him.

“Amy, pull over,” he said through gritted teeth. No sooner had she pulled over, John motioned for Gabriel and me to follow him outside. I prepared myself for John to attempt another round of going fisticuffs with me.

“You’re saying love letters opened the veil? Gabriel, did you know about this?”

“I recently learned of this, John,” Gabriel reluctantly replied.

“And you’re willing to destroy them? All proof that she loves you? Completely removing yourself from her life? Sacrificing everything you’ve fought for? Living the rest of your days here with the possibility of the veil closing on you as well?”