FORBIDDEN (10 page)

I stood at the window, waiting on her to finish. She had put my hoodie in the bag along with her things. I shook my wings out restlessly, just to feel like I was doing something. Where could I take the girls? How would Ethan not find me? Maybe he would go along with it, who knew? I glanced at Hannah’s clock and realized it was nearly time for school to let out. How had the time passed so quickly?

“Hannah, we need to go if you want to get Angie.”

She nodded and slung the bag onto her back. “Are you going to be able to carry her and I at the same time?”

I shrugged and then opened my arms wide for her to fill them. “Not a problem. Let’s just get going.”

She curled into my arms, pressing her face against my chest. The explosion of warmth and feeling was immediate. If my heart could beat, it would. I wrapped my arms around her tight and felt her touch my wings. She looked at me hesitantly. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, but I need to use those right now.”

She laughed. “That could be helpful. Let’s go.”

I burst through the open window and into the drizzly day. The sun was nowhere to be found and below the fallen leaves were stuck to the wet pavement. The wind wasn’t terrible, so I could just focus on keeping us out of the sight of humans and allow Hannah to keep her mind off of the issues at hand.

She squeezed me tighter as I took us through a low cloud. I heard her laugh, which made me smile. I barrel rolled and ended on my back, Hannah clutching around my neck and smiling like a kid on Christmas day. Good. She was distracted.

Then she screamed - only it wasn’t a happy scream. It was one of those horror movie, bloodcurdling screams. One of her hands pointed at something, but I couldn’t see it.

I tilted my head back to see what the problem was.

A Fallen was hurtling toward us.

I dove underneath the demon just in time, its claws connecting with Hannah’s backpack. I was shook for a second as the Fallen ripped the bag from Hannah’s back. The thing would have taken her arms off with the bag if I hadn’t let go of Hannah for a split second to rip the handles. The Fallen screamed in fury and threw the bag to the earth below when it realized Hannah wasn’t connected to it any longer.

“Levi! It’s coming back!” Hannah screamed. She had turned her head to see the result of losing her bag.

I hurtled toward the earth, my wings tucked in tight. The cold wind stung my face mercilessly. The light rain suddenly felt like rocks as it struck against my face. I tried to shield Hannah from the elements, but that wasn’t exactly the top priority at the moment.

We hit the ground running – literally. Hannah tripped over herself, but I grabbed her hand and practically dragged her along. She finally got her feet underneath her and started to run. Unfortunately for her, she was human. I forgot that for a second before realizing that I’d left her in the dust behind me. When I turned around, my worst nightmare was playing out.

She screamed as the Fallen grabbed at her legs. She jumped to dodge capture, but the Fallen got enough to grab her by the ankle. She fell to the ground and tried to keep moving.

I got to her the same time that the Fallen did. She ducked and covered her head, thinking I was going to crash into her, but at the last second I hurdled her and tackled the Fallen. We rolled backward and I punched him. A chunk of its already rotted flesh sizzled from my attack. It shrieked. “Guard! You have disobeyed a direct order. This Call’s time has come! You chose to intervene, so fate no longer is taking care of her. I have been sent to make sure she is taken. Step down!”

“It’s not her time!” I yelled, connecting with its right cheek. The Fallen dodged just in time, but I still caught some flesh. The smell was overpowering.

The Fallen roared in anger. “That’s not your decision! There needs to be balance, and you’re causing us to lose it!”

It managed to claw my chest, leaving four deep lacerations that went from my shoulder to my waist diagonally. The pain was unbelievable.

I inhaled in shock and the demon pinned me to the ground. His burned, rotted hands were on either side of my face. “You would have been a wonderful Fallen,” he sneered, “You’ve got spunk.”

“Bite me,” was all I could come up with.

Unfortunately, the thing took it literally. “No problem.”

Its teeth sank into my neck and I screamed in agony. Hopefully Hannah had enough sense to have run far away from here. With the little strength I had left, I rocked back and managed to get my legs under the demon’s chest to kick him away.

There was blood everywhere. I stumbled forward to engage the demon again. He smiled at me, my own blood dripping from his mouth. “You don’t know when to give up.”

“Nope, never figured out what that meant.”

He ran at me and I dodged his incoming attack. Unfortunately he grabbed my right wing on the way past.

Thankfully I couldn’t hear the snap because of my own scream. Searing pain ran up and down my spine. It felt like a part of me had been snapped off. Oh God, please don’t let him have snapped off one of my wings.

I whirled around to face it and saw that the thing had a handful of my feathers. That seriously pissed me off. “You’ve done it now, Fallen. Go back to where you came from.”

He laughed. “You have no power here anymore. You’re no better than us. The only time your words have meaning is when you’re doing the bidding of your master.”

I didn’t even think about it. I ran forward, grabbed him by his neck and threw him to the ground. “I said go back to where you came from
now
.”

The ground shook, then opened up underneath the Fallen. His eyes widened in fear and shock. “What are you?”

There wasn’t a chance to reply. The earth swallowed him whole.

I stood there in a daze. The pain was so unbearable that my body had basically gone numb. I swayed on the spot, then felt tender hands on the small of my back as I went down.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Hannah said shakily.

Don’t do what? My vision was blurring. Her face swam before my eyes.

I felt her shake me. Something inside of me stirred, urging me to stay away. Why? It hurt too much.

“Levi, don’t do this,” she cried.

My heart hurt. From what, I wasn’t sure. It could have been the physical pain, or the feeling that I got from knowing Hannah was upset with me. She started praying. “Oh God, please don’t let him die. Don’t let him die.”

“I’m already dead,” I half murmured. It was unintelligible, anyway.

“No, you’re not dead. You’re still here. Stay here with me. I need you.”

I looked at her and grinned weakly. “Of course you do, I’m keeping you alive today.”

“You won’t if you die.”

That bothered me. Well, a lot of things bothered me, particularly my wing. Hannah was still sitting by my side, praying to someone she’d never met and possibly never would. I didn’t get it. Why did she think that God would care enough to save me, or any other damned creature?

Then I felt it.

Warmth spread from my toes up along my legs. It went into my chest, then snaked down my arms. It felt like I was being stitched together.

This wasn’t a bad feeling. Instead, it felt like I had just taken a gulp of something warm that was filling me up. It was nice. I heard Hannah gasp and I turned my head to get a better look at her. My vision wasn’t as blurry anymore. Hannah’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Your chest… look at it!”

I looked down, not sure why she wanted me to look at the awful gashes that the Fallen had inflicted. Instead, all that remained were pink, puckering scars. “What in the world?”

“Looks like someone upstairs likes you. Well, that, or they’re just humoring you right now.”

Hannah and I looked up to see Ethan standing with his arms crossed. He watched closely as he took in the fact that I was lying in Hannah’s arms. His sarcastic smile gave him away before he said a word. “Well, isn’t this a nice little turn of events. You save your Call from a Fallen, and she saves you from having to roam the Underworld as a rotting zombie. That’s true love, right there.”

I tried to get out of Hannah’s embrace as I spluttered a half explanation of what just happened. “Look, Ethan, it’s not what it looks like – ”

“It’s not, is it? From the way I see it, you’re pretty cozy with a human I told you not to get attached to, and you just took out a Fallen that came specifically for you.”

We all looked at each other in silence. Ethan’s serious face suddenly erupted into a broad smile. “If I thought it mattered, I’d tell you that you’re insane. But I gotta give you props, that fight was pretty badass.”

Only Ethan would say something like that after what just occurred.

TWELVE

Ethan came over and grabbed my forearm to pull me onto my feet. “You know you should have let her die,” he said before looking at Hannah and shrugging apathetically. “No offense, human.”

She shot daggers at him, but directed her question to me. “Who’s that?”

Ethan stepped in front of me to stand face to face with Hannah. “I would be Ethan, Levi’s best friend and literal wingman. You, on the other hand, would happen to be the little thorn in my side that has Levi here all up in arms.”

It was almost physically possible to see Hannah puffing up. “I didn’t do anything, thank you very much. Personally, I think you’re a jerk and I haven’t even known you five minutes yet.”

“Good. That means you’re at least a little observant. Now why don’t you run off and ruin some other Guard’s chance of getting moved up?”

Hannah opened and closed her mouth like a fish. She craned her neck around Ethan’s shoulder, her eyes questioning me. “What does he mean?”

Ethan didn’t stop. I knew he was just trying to be a friend in his idiotic way, but he was seriously screwing things up. “I’ll tell you what I mean; I don’t need a translation service. I mean if you hadn’t come along and gotten Levi all screwed in the head, he might have gotten out of being stuck in hell for eternity.”

I stepped between the two of them, which was pretty hard considering they were toe to toe. “Ethan, shut up.”

“You’re so blinded by this human that you one, broke the rule about telling her about her death. Second, you somehow managed to fight off the Fallen that came for her – early, might I add – because of you telling her about her upcoming trip to the other side. Finally, I find you on the ground and she’s cradling your head in her lap like a little lost puppy. I’m pretty sure there’s a rule about not physically touching your Call if I read the rulebook correctly. You’re three for three, dude. It’s a wonder the Fallen didn’t rip your wings out just now.”

Hannah swayed. “He tried.”

Ethan whirled around to face her again. “He what?”

I answered. “It tried. I broke my wing.”

Ethan spun me around and started tugging at my wings. “Dude, there’s nothing wrong with your wings. Are you sure he just didn’t claw your back?”

“Hey, bird boy, I was here, that thing nearly ripped Levi’s right wing off,” Hannah said irritably. “I’m not blind.”