Angelfire (32 page)

“That's not what this is about.”

“It's not?” I snapped in challenge. “You look at me and I know you want to touch me, but you hold back. How does knowing what I am change things?”

“Michael gave me a warning. I don't know how to explain it to you.”

“That's because you can't. I accepted what you are when you told me. Why can't you do the same for me?” The color of his eyes flashed, and I could tell he was getting angry, but it felt like he was angry with himself and not me.

“Ellie, it's not about what I want and think. You are an archangel.”

“Do I look anything like Michael?” I asked. “Look at me. No wings, no glow, no anything.” I took both his hands and set them on my hips. “This body is human, Will, solid and warm, and I know you can feel that.” I squeezed his hands when he tried to withdraw. I stepped up close to him and tilted my head back as our bodies touched. “I'm just a girl with a few weird things about me, but all you can see is
a girl—the same girl you've known for centuries. The same girl you fight for. The same girl you've kissed. I'm no different. In another world I may be who Michael said I am, but right now, right here, with you, I'm just Ellie. I don't care what he said to you—I just care about right now.”

He gazed down at me, his lips parted as if he wanted to say something, but he remained silent. Then he took his hands away and stepped back, his gaze falling away.

“You're acting like a dumbass,” I said.

He stopped and stared at me, and ran his hand through his hair. He seemed shocked. I almost laughed. I'd give him something to be really shocked about.

In a single long stride, I swept up to him, stretched to the tips of my toes, cupped his face with both of my hands, and kissed him fiercely. He stiffened at first, and as soon as he melted into me and his fingers wrapped around my waist and tugged at the band of my jeans, I let him go and continued past him, refusing to look back.

I'd let him think about that for a little while.

LAUREN MET US AT THE DETROIT METRO AIRPORT. She seemed especially overjoyed that Nathaniel had made it home in one piece. She dropped Will and me off at my house on her way home. Will wished me luck before disappearing to my roof, and I went inside to face my parents. My mom was cheerful and eager to hear my stories from the trip. Of course, I fed her sugarcoated lies with a cherry on top. I accomplished this more easily than I'd thought I would, but telling my parents the truth would have gotten me locked up in a psych ward. It was all just too terrible and strange—I was doing them a favor by keeping them in the dark. I prayed my parents would never find out how much I'd lied to them in the past couple of months, but in my heart I knew that I had bigger things to worry about in my life
than household rules and curfews.

I called Kate to thank her for covering for me and, consequently, had to explain to her many times over that nothing had happened…at least not what she
thought
had happened, anyway. I'd have to do this all over again when I saw her in class on Monday.

I felt too restless to change into my pajamas and go to sleep. Instead, I tugged on a sweater over a pair of jeans, climbed out my window, and scaled the roof to where Will was sitting. He watched the sky serenely, his arms folded over his knees. He peeked over at me as I crawled up to sit beside him.

“So—is this what you do when you're sitting up here by yourself?” I asked, playfully nudging his shoulder. “Stare at nothing?”

“Among other things,” he answered. “I don't usually think this much. Keeping a lookout keeps me preoccupied.”

I studied his face for clues, but his gaze was soft and without worry. “What are you thinking about?”

“Too much.”

A chilly breeze rushed through my hair. “Care to elaborate?”

He took in a slow breath. “I don't know how to handle this.”

“We both learned a lot about each other last night. What do you say we just call it even?”

He almost smiled, but he caught himself. “I suppose that's true.”

“Why didn't you tell me you had wings?”

“I was afraid of scaring you,” he confessed.

I frowned. “You know, for someone who believes in me so much, you really have no faith in me at all.”

“That's not what I've meant to make you feel,” he said. “I guess I'm a walking contradiction. I'm not perfect.”

“You told me that you're my servant, yet you decide what I ought to know. You can't control me like that, Will.”

“I don't want to control you, Ellie. I just want to do the right thing and what's best for you.”

“How would you know what's best for me?” I asked sharply. “You're not me. You have no right to make decisions for me.”

“Ellie—”

“Why couldn't you have been up front with me in the beginning? I'm a big girl. I can handle it.”

“Right.” He almost laughed. “Tell you everything the first day: ‘So, my name's Will. You don't remember me, but we've known each other for five hundred years. You hunt monsters and I'm one of them, but I'm also your friend. Oh, I can fly, too.'”

“Will,” I said sadly. “Okay, you have a point, but you should have told me these things a little sooner. I shouldn't have had to find out the way I did. It was like a slap in the
face. That shocked me way more than it would have if you had just been more honest.”

“You're right,” he said. “I'm sorry. No more secrets.”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

I smiled and stood. “Show me. Show them to me.”

He watched me curiously. He knew what I meant. “Why?”

“I want to see them.”

He climbed to his feet. “As you wish.” He took off his shirt and his wings appeared, spreading wide, their ivory pearlescence shimmering in the moonlight. I reached out to touch them and he shied away, almost as if in embarrassment. A feather fell and drifted away in the breeze.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “Don't be silly. I'm not going to yank on them.”

He smiled weakly and looked away from my face. “I know. I just…I hate them. I don't want to be anything like Bastian and the others. I try so hard to distance myself from the rest of my kind, but these wings remind me that I'm a monster.”

Sadness washed over me. I couldn't stand seeing that he hated himself so much. “You're not a monster. You are an angel, not me. My guardian angel.”

His eyes lifted to meet mine and he said nothing. I held a hand out to touch one wing, and the softness of the feathers startled me. I'd felt bird wings before; Kate had had a
parrot up until a couple of years before, but its feathers had been stiff and slick and there was a funny, oily smell to them. Will's were soft and delicate, and the scent brought memories of a warm, golden dawn to my mind. I ran my fingers down the length of the feathers, and the wing quivered beneath my touch.

“I missed them,” I said softly. “They're so beautiful.”

“Do you remember them now?” His voice was barely more than a fragile breath.

“Yes.” My gaze returned to his, and he smiled ever so slightly. I wanted to do nothing more than curl up in his arms. “This is why I don't think I'm an angel. If I were, shouldn't I have wings like Michael?”

“You're a mortal angel,” he suggested. “You can't shape-shift like a reaper. Your body isn't an angel's body either, but you have their power. Do you remember how ghostlike Michael was, as if he were only half here, as if he couldn't completely enter the mortal world? Maybe that's also why you're reborn into a human body. Your true form—your archangel form—can't exist here.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I was a mortal angel. Was there a way for me to become who I really was? My true form? Will once had told me that a powerful relic could help angels and the Fallen come to the mortal plane, but what if something like that wasn't really lost to the world? If the Grigori were out there somewhere, the keepers of angelic magic and the gates between worlds, they might know of a relic that could restore
my true form. What if things more terrible than the reapers, wicked or divine, could walk the earth among us, like the extinct Nephilim?

“Will, why do you keep so much from me?” I ran my hand down his arm, tracing the beautiful tattoos with my fingertips. I had a clear memory of myself inking his skin centuries before in a warm candlelit room, whispering a prayer in a language long lost to me, and it brought a smile to my face.

“Because I'm an idiot,” he confessed. “I was wrong to judge you. I didn't think you were strong enough to take in everything at once, but that was stupid. You have more strength in you than I've ever seen in anyone, and I don't mean how hard you can hit. I mean the strength you have to keep doing this without giving up. You might want to, some days, but you never do.”

“What about you?” I asked. “You stay by my side day and night and take the hardest hits of them all. Why, Will? Why have you stayed with me all these centuries? You watch me die again and again, yet you never leave. You keep trying to save me, even though you know I'm doomed. All because some angel told you to? Come on. No more secrets, you said. Tell me.”

He didn't answer me, but his chest rose and fell with quicker breaths.

“Why would you do it?” I asked earnestly. “Why would you risk nothingness after death for me? You can't go to
Heaven, and you'll never know peace because of that. You'll only ever live this awful, wretched life of fighting. You could have so much more.”

“That's not true,” he said. “I don't need to go there to find peace. I've found peace with
you
, Ellie, in between the fighting and the years when you aren't with me. You've brought me peace.”

His words made my heart spin, and I fought hard not to cry. I watched his face carefully before I spoke. “Why did you kiss me?”

His expression froze in place, as if he were determined not to reveal anything in his expression. “I thought all that would have been obvious.”

“That wasn't a straight answer.” His eyes flickered away and back to mine indecisively. “Is it supposed to be something I have to remember on my own?”

He studied my face intensely, his gaze locked on mine instead of looking away again. “No.”

“Then why—?”

“I hate…,” he started, his shaking voice trailing off. “I hate when you die. It destroys me. I know I have no right to be so upset, because I'm not the one losing my life, but it breaks me apart inside. I'm not very good with words, and I don't know how to explain to you how I feel. I get lonely when you aren't with me. I miss you. And every time you die, a little piece of me dies with you.”

I wasn't sure what to say to him. I couldn't imagine that
I was a source of comfort to him as he was to me. I could see his hands trembling, and he stood so tensely that I thought he might shatter at any moment. I stroked the back of his neck with my hand as I tried to soothe him.

“I wish I could do better,” he confessed. “I wish I could save you, but I can't.”

“You've saved me countless times,” I said. “You saved me on the ship just last night.”

“But I've failed you too,” he said urgently. “I've watched you fall so many times and been unable to do anything to save you. I don't know how many more times I can watch you die, Ellie.” His gaze fell away. “Forgive me. I shouldn't be saying this to you.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I'm sorry I make you believe that you can't tell me how you feel. That's not how I want it to be between us. Please, just be honest with me?”

He leaned forward, touching his cheek to mine, making me completely forget whatever I had just said. I closed my eyes and leaned into him as his skin brushed mine and his hand touched my waist. His other hand cupped my cheek and his thumb stroked my lips. His wings lifted high over both of us, shielding us from the cold air.

“When Ragnuk killed you, I looked for you everywhere,” he said into my cheek. “But you didn't come back. For decades I looked for you, terrified the angels were punishing me for letting you die alone. I thought that you'd never come back to me—that I'd lost you forever.”

The backs of his fingers traced down my arm delicately, as if I were made of glass. His lips softly pressed just below my ear, warming my neck. “And when you came back, when I saw you for the first time in so very long…I'd never been so happy in my life.”

“I'll always come back to you,” I promised as a warm flood rushed through me.

“I love you, Ellie,” he breathed, his words lighting my skin on fire, and something inside me disintegrated, leaving a rushing feeling behind. “God, I've always loved you.”

I turned my face into his, desperate to meet his eyes, and when I did, centuries' worth of memories of his face flashed across my mind, and of everything he had sacrificed for me, of all his blood that had been shed, of all the torment he had endured for me. His expression was so stoic, so hardened, but his eyes told me everything. They always gave him away.

“Will,” I said, unable to form any other words on my lips but his name.

His smile was small and delicate, and his shoulders eased as if a weight had been lifted from them. He leaned further into me, his strong embrace engulfing me. My heartbeat quickened and thrummed stronger. “All this time,” he breathed. “I've always loved you and never said a thing.”

He kissed me hard and folded his arm around the small of my back, pulling me even more closely in to him. I wrapped my own arms around his shoulders and felt his other hand on my waist. I drew a nail down his biceps and the muscle
trembled reflexively beneath my touch. He broke away and his lips grazed my jaw. I shivered and pulled him closer to me.

“Don't forget that I'll
always
love you,” he whispered against my lips, rubbing the tip of his nose to mine. “Don't forget.”

I nodded and reached again for his lips, needing them more than I needed air to breathe. He kissed me again, deeper this time, luxuriously slow. His hands moved up from my back and slid through my hair to cradle my head.

He ended the kiss, folded his wings back, and rested his forehead against mine. Emotion flooded through me and I said nothing, finally understanding what he had just said to me. I knew in that instant that he was saying good-bye to his love for me. He pulled away, and his fingertips trailed along my arm, as if to make the moment last just a little longer.

As he stepped away from me, his eyes were still that striking emerald, and I prayed the color would never fade. It took everything I had not to run to him and hold him close to me, to feel any part of him, to stare at him in wonder. I didn't know what to do—didn't know if I should have said something back.

“But my love for you is wrong,” he whispered. “I can't have you. Not this way.”

Something invisible stabbed me in the gut. “Are you really doing this?”

“You're a holy being. I can't touch you. I can be with you
every day as your Guardian because it's my duty, but I can't touch you the way I ache to. This isn't what Michael intended when he asked me to protect you. It's dangerous for us both if we get too close.”

I shook my head and fought back tears, unable to say anything.

“Other Guardians have died fulfilling their duty to you long before I came along,” he said, touching my cheek, my hair. “I will die for you one day.”

“Don't say that,” I begged. “Will, I'm in love with you. You're the only one who understands what I go through every day, the only one I can share this world with. You're my best friend, and I can't take it if you're going to shut me out like this.”

He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight. His hands balled into fists and his wings gave a shudder. I felt like I was dying inside.