03 Saints (45 page)

The electric touch I had felt in the darkness had come through to the world of light. The touch came complete with a person. Not really a person an…angel. It sounded ridiculous, but there was no other way to explain the woman holding my arm. She had a blindfold over her eyes and large, black wings coming out of her back. Her black hair went to her feet. She took her hand off my arm and took my sword from my hand in the same fluid motion. My necklace stopped glowing when she dropped her hand.

Anna saw the woman and Lorian at the same time. The shock of seeing the woman made Anna’s reaction slower, even though she was aware of Lorian. It was only a second’s difference, but it was enough. Lorian’s sword cut deep in to her neck. He pulled the sword out, and she dropped to the floor.

Even as Anna fell, the angel was moving. My sword in her hand, she swung at Lorian. Lorian ducked under the blow and the fight took a more serious turn. Lorian, his eyes wide with fear and recognition, made fire come from his hand. The fire whirled around the angel, but it did not harm her. He followed the fire with ice, wind, even the building rocked with the power he generated. He might as well have been trying to stop the tides for the good it did him. It was like his fight with Anna, only the shoe was on the other foot. The angel was a tide that could not be stopped.

I crouched down at Anna’s side as the pair tore up the room. I didn’t like her, but I couldn’t let her just bleed out on to the floor. I pressed my hands against her wound without thinking. My hands looked tiny against the size of the injury. I thought she was dead, but when she felt me, she moved. She opened her eyes and turned to look at me. Her dark eyes were penetrating.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I felt the life slipping out of her body. I knew she was dying. There was nothing I could do. Nothing, beyond forgiving her and letting the past go.

It was like swallowing sand, but I said, “I forgive you.”

And I meant it. I didn’t want the pain of hating her in my heart any more. It was too a heavy burden.

Had the angel and Lorian not come dangerously close – and forced me away from Anna – I would have taken stock of the electrical feeling in the hand pressing against her wound. I would have realized what it meant.

A surge of energy rippled the ground near me as Lorian threw yet another talent at the angel. I rolled away from the blast and ran for the door. The Saints had moved to the house, and I heard the other bodyguards downstairs fighting with people on the stairs. Help was close. I just had to get to it.

My hand on the door knob, the whole house shook with an explosion. I hit the ground hard, my face slamming in to the wood. The shaking lasted for a long time. I groaned and looked around to see if the world had ended, or if it was okay to get up. The world hadn’t ended, but I wasn’t sure about the getting up part. Half of the house had fallen away. I had landed at the edge of the boards, inches from falling. Further down, along the edge of the boards, was a scene straight out of a movie.

The angel had finally won the fight. Lorian had fallen to one knee, the explosion rattling even him. The angel stood over him, the sword in her hand.

“By order of a sacred pact made in the holiest of places, I fulfill my duties. Lorian, son of Michael, I banish you to hell.”

Her voice was the same choral voice I had been hearing in the darkness. She raised her sword over his head.

Lorian looked past her and connected eyes with me. The chocolately brown spoke of a secret. “Farrah,” he said.

The angel struck him in the neck and his head flew off and hit his desk. His body toppled to the ground.

The angel turned to face me, her sword dripping red blood on to the ground. Her face was uplifted into an expression of grim accomplishment.

I trembled at the sight. For the first time in my life I had no sarcasm, no words to cover my fear. I was terrified. Was my head next?

Chapter 19

The angel lowered her sword.

“Clare…” she said.

The way she said my name was less like a person saying a name and more like she was defining me. In a word, she knew. She knew everything there was to know about me. It was as terrifying as the scene I had just witnessed.

I was tongue-tied. It wasn’t just the idea of her killing me – her whole being radiated with a power that went beyond my comprehension. She seemed to understand my inability to speak.

“I am in your debt for your help in releasing me from that prison,” she said. “When I have finished my duties, I will fulfill whatever command you have of me.”

Her words released my tongue.

“Um…that’s okay…” I said. Her kind of ‘debts’ looked rather deadly from where I was sitting. “I was glad to help.”

“A debt must be repaid,” she said, ignoring my refusal.

“If you say so…” I said.

“I do,” she confirmed.

“How did you know my name?” I blurted out. “How come you wanted me to get you out? Why not Sara or Shawn? They’re in your world all the time…”

“Only you or one of your kin could have pulled me out. It was the curse that bound me when Lorian and Darian put me in that purgatory.”

I was intrigued beyond my terror. “I don’t understand,” I said. “My kin? What does my family have to do with it?”

“I have no time for explanations,” she said. “Darian will have felt his brother’s death. I must move quickly, before he takes to ground and my task is made harder.”

“But…”

“Call my name…Nemesis, when you have need of me,” she said. “I will come. My debt binds us.”

The sword still in her hand, she turned to the broken wall and stretched out her black wings. They were twice as tall as Lorian had been while standing. She flapped them once, sending a shockwave through my body. She flapped them again, and she lifted in to the air. Another flap and she was gone.

I heard the sounds of fighting temporarily pause as the others watched her fly off. The silence was eerie after the explosion and yells that had been ripping through the night. When she was gone, the fighting resumed. The sight of her lingered in my mind. I had never seen something so terrifying, yet so devastatingly beautiful. Despite the bandage over her eyes, she was the most beautiful person…creature I had ever seen. The power of her voice lingered longer than the vision of her. It was a voice I would not forget soon.

I set my head against the broken boards and let out a long sigh of relief. For the first time in my entire life, things had gone right. Lorian was dead – my mission was accomplished. I had taken my revenge. There would be no more people captured in Lorian’s name. And if Nemesis wasn’t lying – which I didn’t think she was – there wouldn’t be any more people captured in Darian’s name either. Did that mean the war was over?

The idea startled me. No war meant…freedom? We’re we free?

No, that wasn’t right. Marcus was still out there. I couldn’t imagine him simply lying down and giving up his quest for power, with his two biggest rivals out of the way. If anything, Lorian’s death just made his life a whole lot easier. I cringed at the thought. Somehow, I always fell in to his traps.

Almost as if fate, or chance, or whatever, had heard the thought, I realized that not all was well on my right side. Anna wasn’t dead from her wounds – in fact, she was getting better. It was not the sort of ‘better’ I took comfort in.

I turned at the feeling of her shaking. It rocked the whole floor. The shaking grew worse; it moved beyond shaking. I heard snaps and pops as bones started to rearrange themselves under her skin. I recognized the symptoms of the change. She was changing in to a Nightstalker. But how was that possible? How could she turn so close to death?

It was only then I remembered the cut on my hand. I raised a trembling hand and stared at the wound I had gotten while fighting. I had given Anna my blood, even as I had forgiven her for what she had done. I had given her more than forgiveness.

Her pale skin started shifting in to patterns of dark scales. The patterns moved around her body, as the popping and cracking continued. It didn’t take long for her to change over, a minute at the most, but it felt like the longest minute of my life. As soon as she was fully in Nightstalker form, she scrambled to her feet. Her eyes were covered with a white film and her body was full of dark, powerful anger. I didn’t know which was worse – the anger, or the idea that I had just given her an ability I had promised to never share again.

Anna growled at me, her anger finding a home in the person who had cursed her. She took a step closer, to attack, and the rest of the floor gave out under her weight. I fell, pieces of wood and glass grazing my arms and legs as I did. I landed on the grass outside, the hit taking my breath. The world was covered in a haze as wood fell around me. The world was a swirl of debris and muted sounds. As I tried to recover my wind, the ceiling from Lorian’s room fell on top of me.

It was a different world of darkness. It was a world of muffled sounds, strange smells, and the dreadful sense of pressure. While the roof’s fall had been stopped on another part of the house, the sense of weight around me was still impressive. My first thought was of panic. The situation mirrored my stay in a cozy, unwelcome crypt. My second thought was to control the panic and hopefully shift in to the in-between world and reappear somewhere that wasn’t being occupied by a house. If I had done it once, I could do it again. Before I could find the peace of mind to focus on control, light appeared. The light grew brighter and a hand reached down to help me up.

I took the hand and found someone I had not been expecting. Grace, her sunny face marred with dirt and blood, and her blonde hair pulled back in the wind, was my savior. Grace did not immediately let go of my hand. Behind her was Ghost. He looked nervous. Grace just looked pleased. Her coral eyes bored in to mine with a strange intensity.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“I feel a bit like the Wicked Witch of the East, but I’m fine,” I said.

“Oh, good.” She tugged my hand firmly. “Come on, Daniel was looking for you. He’s been worried sick.”

“I…” I started to protest.

She was already pulling me along.

If a house hadn’t just fallen on me, an Angel had just promise me any favor I wanted, after killing Lorian, and Anna hadn’t just turned in to a Nightstalker, I would have realized something was weird. In my befuddled state, I didn’t. The only thing I could really think about was Anna. Was she under the house as well, or had she escaped out in to the chaos? I scanned the fighting as Grace pulled me along, but there were several Nightstalkers running around and none of them were close enough for me to see their eyes.

When we were on the cliff side of the house, away from the fighting, Grace stopped. I came back to reality with our abrupt stop. The spot she had chosen was not only out of the way of the fighting, it was the most hidden spot on the grounds.

“Where’s Daniel?” I asked suspiciously.

“He’s inside the house, fighting his way to your side as we speak,” she said. “Or so he thinks.”

I sighed, accepting her words as proof that nothing would ever be easy, not even falling out of a house.

“And?” I asked.

“And?” she asked back.

“You’re about betray me aren’t you? It figures, I never liked you as much as the others. Ghost, though, he’s a surprise. I thought we were friendly.”

Grace didn’t look happy at my blasé attitude. Ghost looked even more uncertain. He avoided my eyes.

“You’re going to take a little nap,” Grace said. “When you wake up, the Saints will be gone, I will be pretending to be you, and Marcus’ people will have you all safe and sound at their headquarters here in town...they’re on their way here as we speak.”

“That sounds like a lot for one nap,” I said.

“You should watch that mouth of yours,” she said. “It can get you in to all sorts of trouble.”

I rolled my eyes. “Apparently…”

Grace smirked. “You’re going to be so easy to mimic. All I have to do is act like a brat.”

“Mimic?” I asked.

She tilted her head to one side, as if I were a particularly interesting painting, then her face changed. It wasn’t a gradual thing, more like a slap in the face: sudden and shocking. One second I was looking at Grace’s sunny face, the next I was looking at mine. It was alarming, and what she was suggesting was straight out of my nightmares. I tried to maintain my cool. It wasn’t easy.

“Is that how my nose really looks?” I asked her.

“Is that how my nose really looks?” she asked back, mocking me.

Her voice was perfect. It was my voice. I couldn’t tell the difference.

She snapped her fingers and pointed at me. Ghost came forward, his hand outstretched. I pulled my knife out of my boot but, like Lorian, I was too slow. Ghost had the advantage of preparation. He grabbed my wrist and twisted the knife out of my hand. A touch was all he needed.

In the next instant, I felt a wave of exhaustion travel through my body. My knees hit the ground, and I toppled face first in to the grass. Before I lost all sense of consciousness, I saw Grace pick up my knife from the grass and rip my father’s necklace off my neck. She had obviously noticed me playing with it. She didn’t notice my newest addition, however. The ring remained on my hand.