Angel Star (16 page)

“I don’t know exactly, but something wasn’t right.”

With the heater cranked, I felt myself begin to thaw just a little but I couldn’t stop trembling.

“What?” Garreth asked of me. He had been studying me intently while I was off somewhere in my brain trying to figure all this out.

I let out a sigh. “I really don’t know. Obviously, Hadrian is playing hardball here. I mean, this army of his. There are so many already.” I shook my head as if disbelieving my very own words. “I see them everywhere now, the people who are losing their Guardians. There was a boy in my history class, and just like that, his Guardian was corrupted. It’s happening so quickly, Garreth.”

I let my head fall back against the headrest and I pressed my hands to my eyes. Everything inside me hurt. I realized I hadn’t let myself properly grieve for Claire, and that all this happening in my life was like a fast-forwarded episode of
The Twilight Zone
, starring yours truly.

Hadrian’s war was psychological, his victims affected mentally. Deep inside, I felt like I was going crazy. Maybe I had Hadrian to thank for that? Maybe I wasn’t too far off if I believed that he would soon drive everyone absolutely mad in order to reign. I had been chosen for a reason but, right now, that reason made absolutely no sense to me. I looked at my hand for reassurance.
Everything
happens for a reason.
Nothing
is coincidental.

Gently, Garreth took my hand and placed in it another gift. Only this one was hard and cold and very, very deadly.

The sheer weight of it held me and I couldn’t move, let alone take my eyes off the incredibly scary looking knife Garreth had just placed in my hand. I looked at him and he read the confusion in my eyes.

“It’s a dagger, by the way, not a knife.” He smiled in an attempt to pull me out of my deer-in-the-headlights trance.

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me this is how I’m supposed to destroy him?”

“It might resort to this, yes. I need to know that you’ll be prepared when the time comes. And it is coming. Soon.”

His eyes still held that gentle quality but his words and tone were absolutely serious. I looked down at the knife—excuse me, dagger—and turned it over carefully to admire the beauty of its design.

The gold handle was etched with endless scrolling, very similar in design to the symbol now embedded in my right hand. In fact, I curiously compared them and they matched. Perfectly. When I held the dagger in my right hand, warmth tingled against my skin as though it were teeming with life. The beautiful handle told the well-known tale of the Archangels and the struggle they endured in heaven, the story continuing down onto the shining steel blade. It was obviously very old, priceless in its craftsmanship.

“It just shocks me a little that an angel would be in possession of such a…weapon.”

“Under normal circumstances, we don’t take part in violence. Of any sort. You’re well aware this is not a normal situation. Besides, I’m not holding the weapon.”

I looked at my second gift of the day and sighed. “It looks old.”

“That it is.”

“Is it…yours?”

“It wasn’t made for
me
.”

Garreth’s voice was clear and strong, but it wasn’t his words that spoke so clearly to me; it was the fact that the time had come. The deadly instrument that would destroy a dark angel had just been delivered to me, and at that very moment I realized how very precious the circle of time and life is.

M
y mother never questioned why I had come home early. She simply looked at me now and then with a soft worry in her eyes as we cleared the kitchen table of our silent dinner. Garreth had been right, of course. The assistant principal had called exactly ten minutes after I walked in the door, to make sure I had gotten home safely. Surprisingly, she informed me I was excused from all classes tomorrow to attend Claire’s funeral, which I had decided not to attend precisely five minutes before she called. But I kept that to myself.

I knew it was wrong. I knew full well that my mother, along with every grown-up in my school, would stress to me that it would give me the closure I needed. They were probably right, and deep in my heart I agreed with them. My mother would leave for work right after the funeral, so at least one of us was going to represent our little unit, leaving me several hours to get my bearings and search for a dark angel. If that was even possible. I didn’t know where to begin.

Tracking down Hadrian and following the path I had been led to had become personal—for Claire and for the preservation of my own sanity. There was no telling how much time was left. No telling who would fall next as Hadrian’s victim. No telling how long I had before he came for
me.

Coming home to an empty house had been a blessing, allowing me to safely hide the ornate dagger under my bed. I wrapped it in a thick towel and covered it with magazines. It terrified me to think that thing was under my bed. I felt as if I had stolen a priceless piece of art from a museum. Every time I thought of its gleaming gold handle and silver blade nestled safely in the towel, I felt lightheaded and sweaty, which added another crease to my mother’s forehead by evening.

“Honey, are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I answered hastily, my mind occupied with thoughts I couldn’t share.

“Maybe we should have gone to the doctor after you fainted yesterday. I’m worried you might have a concussion.”

“Really, Mom, I’m okay.”

I said it with more feeling this time, hoping she would be satisfied, but she didn’t take the bait, not that I truly expected her to. My mother is a notorious worrywart. Actually, the more I thought about it, I saw the possibilities that this could work to my advantage.

“You know, Mom, I am feeling tired. I think I’ll go on up to bed.”

“Sure, sweetie.”

Bull’s-eye. She shot another look of concern in my direction. Her maternal instincts would go into overdrive soon. Thankfully, I was genuinely tired, so her checking on me once or twice during the night most likely wouldn’t bother me.

She went back to paying close attention to the television, watching the news and shaking her head. “It’s sad, Teagan. Everywhere you look there’s destruction and misery. It’s so scary to think our number could be up at any given moment.”

I thought of Claire and how destruction and misery had hit so close to home, and then I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. Who had any idea Claire’s number would be up when she and I joked about Madame Woo, or when I let her finish my bag of chips? Unexpected or not, she certainly didn’t deserve to have her sweet young life taken by a malicious dark beast with huge wings and an emblem carved into his hand.

My poor mother. It was her job to protect me from the world. She had no clue as to what was about to transpire over the next day or two. If she only knew what was lying hidden beneath my bed…

I stared at the television. Floods, fires, murder, hatred…the list went on and on. Lucifer’s Hell. As I climbed the steps to my room, I was eager to say good-bye to this day. I was exhausted but wasn’t sure if I could sleep, knowing a sharp weapon had been stowed under my bed, and even more frightening, what I was going to do with that weapon. But, as my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep almost instantly…dreaming of the funeral I would not be going to in the morning.

I opened my eyes to darkness, lying still and staring at my ceiling. A faint rustling sound had woken me, I was sure of it. My mind drifted, going back to the funeral in my dream, and I saw myself standing above an open grave. I was the only one left in the cemetery, all the others had gone. I was left alone to think of the gloomy hole Claire would soon be lowered into after I left. I regretted not following her into the rave. I missed her terribly.

A rippling noise filled the air and I felt the hair on my neck rise in a split second of white-hot fear.

Hadrian.
It was as if even my bones screamed his name.

Behind me, a crow balanced on a branch, keeping a close watch on me. I reached into my pocket, letting my fingers clutch the coolness of the stones and wire. The rosary that had hung in Garreth’s car was now at the bottom of my coat pocket. It was
my
rosary and my last gift to my friend, an everlasting symbol that she would always be in my prayers. I turned around to drop the chain onto the casket but was nearly knocked over by the force of a startled scream lodged in my throat.

“I knew you would come.” Claire smiled at me.

Her breath smelled rank, of old decaying wood. I hastily grasped for composure. It was difficult to keep from screaming into the gray-blue face of my friend, a face that was just inches from my own.

She hovered there, an eerie specter guarding her own grave. I looked down into the pit before me, which appeared endless and much, much deeper than the required six feet needed for a proper burial. My feet inched back from the edge ever so slightly as I blinked back hot tears. This wasn’t the way I wanted to remember her.

Her voice changed suddenly. “Why, Teagan? Why did you leave me with him?” She hissed at me from her moldy mouth.

I could only stare and wonder why she looked so decomposed so quickly after her death. In reality, she wasn’t even buried yet.

“You walked off with Ryan and Brynn and the others.” I tried to explain, but I knew who she meant.

A stench rose up from the hole, bringing with it a blast of icy air. The Claire floating before me writhed with agony, resembling a hideous combination of Brynn and all of the other breathless faces I had seen.
His
victims
. His
army.

“Claire! Please!” I sobbed but it was too late.

I lost my balance and went tumbling into the musty darkness. As I fell, a familiar hand reached out to me, the hand of my father from the picture on my dresser, trying to pull me up from the empty grave. As he reached for me, I saw a scar on the inside of his right palm, a swirly little scar that would have otherwise been unnoticed since it blended with the natural lines of his palm. Barely visible in the photo, it wasn’t significant enough for me to ever question…before now.

I bolted up and knew. My memory flickered back to my computer, to the strange octagram. Still rattled by the disturbing dream, I tiptoed quietly out of my bedroom, down the hallway to the linen closet at the opposite end. The thought of Claire like that…but no, it wasn’t Claire, not the Claire I knew. It was only a dream. She was changed, just like me. I realized that I was no longer the quiet, mousy girl I used to be; that over the course of a few days I had been dramatically transformed. I stepped inside closing myself in as I had done as a child, and pulled the small, thin chain dangling above my head.

I remembered hiding in here but I couldn’t remember why. Hiding from someone, something. I remembered the dreams from my childhood, the ones that caused my mother to come into my room to help me back to sleep, and now I clearly remembered Garreth, my angel, guarding me even then when my mother had long since left to go back to her own room. He was the one who stayed the entire night with me, protecting me from my dreams, keeping me safe from the monsters in the corners of my room.

It had been Hadrian watching all along, sending me running to the closet to hide.

I reached up and took down the dusty cardboard box of family photos and pulled the chain. Darkness hushed in around me. I opened the door, padding softly back to my room where I set the box on my bed and opened it. I rummaged carefully to the bottom where my fingers found the envelopes containing my long-forgotten baby pictures.

There were only two pictures in existence of me with the man my mother told me was my father. One was safely framed in silver on my dresser. The other I looked upon now with new eyes, scouring each and every square inch of the faded picture that had been folded in half, as if saved long ago from being ripped in two. It was of the two of us, our poses nearly identical to the one I had framed, only this particular shot was different.
He
was different.

It looked like him. He had the same handsome features, the same build, but his eyes reflected back strangely. I turned it at various angles but I was positive the color of his eyes appeared changed, they were darker…black…and there, one of his hands half hidden by my tiny knee. The angle of the camera had caught part of his open hand facing just the right way; a strange tattoo made up of intersecting lines that could easily be mistaken for the crease where the picture had been folded. This wasn’t the mark from the dream. It was hard to tell but I was pretty sure I could make it out. Points. Like half of a square.

His
mark.

Hadrian.

I
sat back on my heels, cradling the photo in my hands. How could my father have the same mark as Hadrian? I brought the picture closer. My father’s hand looked red and a little swollen. I wasn’t sure, but if I stared long and hard enough I thought I could make out the scrolling detail just beneath the edges of the fresher line. Did he do that to himself? Did he carve an exact replica of Hadrian’s mark into his own hand? Was it to pay homage to his Guardian, or perhaps Hadrian did it—some sort of torture.

Somewhere along the way, they both must have realized that I would someday learn what this was all about, even if it would be a very long time before I was capable of understanding it. And, although today brought me closer to the truth, it was still far away from making any sense.

I quickly laid the pictures in the box and stashed them under my bed before climbing under the covers. I knew I had to get some sleep if I was to face tomorrow but I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. Then fear seized me like an icy hand. A sensation of heaviness pulled me down at my knees while my upper body went strangely limp. I willed my eyelids to close, to somehow protect me from what I would see in the shadows, but they wouldn’t obey me.

The rustling sound had returned. It began in the corner, growing louder, as if a large bird had taken flight; but, this was too large, too loud; it brought with it the hideous dream of Claire and that awful glaring crow. My body wanted to scream, but a strangled squeak was all I could deliver. I desperately fished around for Garreth’s words about strength and purpose but, sadly, this was what I had been reduced to. Then it happened. It rose from the shadows like a cobra, the wings outstretched, the deep ashen veil cutting the dim of my room…