Part 24 (2/2)
”But I thought Reapers collected the evil souls and the Angels collected the innocent.”
”That's how it's used to work,” he says, reaching for me, like he wants to touch me, but withdraws his hand back. ”But the rules were broken and a bet was made. Now whoever wins, wins all the souls.”
”But if Reapers could collect any soul,” I glance at the tombstones, ”then it would be bad.”
”It would probably be worse than you can even imagine.” His voice weighs heavily in the air.
”How many are left?” I ask, gripping the gra.s.s, fearing the answer. ”How many Grim Angels still roam the earth?”
”I'm not exactly sure. There used to be a lot, but the Reapers have been singling them out and the many have died of old age. The longer they exist, the scarcer the Grim Angels bloodline is.” He winces as he adjusts his weight. ”And the Reapers must know how few there are, because over the last couple years, they've been really determined to hunt them down, even though they're not supposed to.”
”That's what I don't get,” I say. ”If they're not supposed to, then why doesn't someone stop them?”
”It's up to their leader to punish them. Or we could go into battle,” he says. ”But Michael, my father and the ruler of the Angels of Death, won't allow us to bend any rules under any circ.u.mstances.”
”You said your dad was bad. And dead.” I frown. ”And that you moved from New York to get away from him.”
”We did,” he says, holding back something with a fire in his eyes. He swiftly changes the subject. ”You look beautiful like that.” He strokes the tip of my fake wing. ”When I saw you, I almost had a heart attack. For a second, I thought somehow... you became one of us.”
The wind howls a violent storm, flipping my wings in front me and my body off balance. Asher slides his fingers over my hips and hugs me against his chest. I sense the impending goodbye like a death omen waiting for me at his lips. My black hair flaps in thin wisps around our faces. We stare at each other, hearts beating, eyes connected, never desiring to move. The moment is fleeting, like the sound of a weightless laugh, the flash of a lightning bolt, the last breath of the dying.
”You're leaving me, aren't you,” I say quietly.
”I broke the rules and now I can't stay. I wasn't supposed to get involved with you-no one is. It's all supposed to be of your own free will, to prove a point.” He kisses my lips and I grip onto his shoulders. ”But I couldn't help it. When I saw you that night at the party, standing there by yourself, so sad and lost, I knew I had to get to know you. You were the first Grim Angel I met that's ever done that too me.”
I hook my arms around his neck and breathe in his comforting scent. ”Why were you there at the party?”
”I was collecting someone's soul for Michael.” His hands travel down my spine and reside on my lower back. ”But I messed up. I let the person live and took someone else's soul instead.”
”You were supposed to take Raven's, weren't you?” I arch into his hands. ”You let her live and took Laden's soul instead.”
”I could see in your eyes when you were talking about her that night that you need her.”
”And you killed Laden, because he was trying to rape her.”
”I wasn't supposed to take his soul or kill him. I just got carried away,” he says, and I'm reminded of what I read in the book: pa.s.sionate in battle. ”And the Anamotti used it to their advantage. They took his body and made it look like your dad's crime scene to mess with your head.”
”And you got in trouble for it,” I say. ”What are they going to do to you?”
”I'm in trouble for a lot of things.” He lures my chest against his and kisses me with such heat my skin nearly ignites. I rake my fingers through his soft hair and his hands grip my thighs, his fingertips pressing into my skin, wanting everything, but knowing he can't take anything.
But I need him, like I need air. ”Don't go,” I plead. ”Please stay with me. You're the only one who's made me feel at peace. ”
The sky rumbles and his eyes travel upward to the dark clouds. His face is masked with pain as the sky begins to drizzle. His long eyelashes flutter against the raindrops. ”I have to. Michael doesn't ever let any angel go unpunished. And besides, you have to do this on your own.”
They sky booms again like the snap of an elastic band. I feel it break, my freedom.
He guides my ear toward his mouth and drops his voice to a low whisper. ”Find out everything you can about Grim Angels and the Battle of Death. Find out what happens with the last Grim Angel standing... There's a part I can't tell you. And Ember, don't trust anyone. Ever.” His hand slides down my neck, searing hot against my damp skin. ”Shut your eyes.”
Reluctantly, I close them and cling to him. I hear his wings snap wide and then a delicate flutter as he flaps them. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, my lips, and then like a feather in the wind, he flies away.
When I open my eyes, I'm alone, kneeling in the mud, rain soaking my hair and clothes. I refuse to move; I'll stay here forever in the cemetery with the only peace I have left.
”Oh my G.o.d!” Raven screams and I turn around. She's staggering through the mud toward me. ”What the h.e.l.l happened? How did I get here? Em, I'm... I have no idea what's going on and why I'm in a cemetery.” She stops just short of me and glances down at her white dress, tattered and marked red with tonight's torture. Her artificial wings are ripped to pieces and her neck is still bleeding a little.
I pick up a piece of Asher's s.h.i.+rt, stand up, and press it to her neck. ”We need to get you to a hospital.” I drape her arm around her shoulder and lead her toward the gate.
Her death is back; standing on the ledge and someone begs her to jump, so she does. Different, but still painful.
”Em, why are there feathers all over the gra.s.s?” she asks. ”Was it from your costume?”
I make the decision, the thing my dad tried to engrave in my mind since I was young, and what Asher warned me to do-don't trust anyone. ”Yeah, Raven, they are from my costume.”
We walk together across the cemetery, yet I'm in this alone. A p.a.w.n in a game between the Angels of Death and the Grim Reapers-between good and evil.
But which one am I?
As if giving me an answer, sirens sing through the night and blue and red flashes vibrantly across the dark cemetery. Doors shove open and cops hop out of the vehicles.
”Alright,” one of them yells with his gun out in front of him as he glides through the gates. ”Put your hands up where we can see them.”
I obey, knowing I'm in trouble this time. Mackenzie's body is in a grave and the only proof that I didn't kill her flew away with the wind.
Raven sobs in my s.h.i.+rt and clutches onto me. ”I want this to all be over. Please make it stop. It's driving me crazy.”
I raise my hands in the air, renouncing. ”Don't worry. It's almost over.”
A swarm of cops bustle through the gates, spotting their flashlights across the gra.s.s and tombs, guns and batons in their hands. The one that shouted at me approaches with caution, step by step, never looking away from us. When he reaches me, I let Raven stand on her own.
”Ember Edwards, I should have known,” Officer McKinley's expression instantly turns bias as he remembers the night he picked me up from my house, after my car was found in the lake. ”There was an anonymous tip that the body of Mackenzie Baker could be found at the Hollows Grove Cemetery.”
With my hands up, I shake my head. ”I don't know anything about that.”
He spotlights the flashlight in Raven's eyes. ”What's she on? And why is there blood on her neck? Were you two doing some kind of ritual out here or something?”
”Like a vampire ritual,” I joke unenthusiastically.
He narrows his eyes. ”You don't need to get smart. This is Halloween-all the crazies are out tonight.”
Raven blinks and s.h.i.+elds her face with her hand. ”We were taking a shortcut to our houses through the woods and I tripped and cut my neck on a branch.”
Internally, I sigh. ”That's what we were doing, just barely-heading to go find a phone and call the hospital, because neither of us have our phones.”
The cop checks underneath the piece of s.h.i.+rt Raven has pressed to her neck and then pulls a revolted face. ”That's going to need a few st.i.tches.” He sighs. ”Come on, follow me.”
As we walk for the gates, the cops search the cemetery, by the trees, behind headstones. A female officer, with her hair braided in the back, wanders toward the hole in the ground where Mackenzie's body lays.
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