Heaven and Hellsbane (9 page)

“It makes a difference,” Eli said. “The war was fought to see that the Fallen were punished for their sin of copulating with human women. My brothers warred for eons. A truce was only accepted when our Father permitted the illorum to atone for the sin of their birth by banishing their angelic fathers themselves. The battle is between father and offspring now. We cannot interfere without it being perceived as the seraphim moving to punish their fallen brothers once again. Such an act would restart the war.”

I knew this better than anyone. I was friggin’ living it. Killing my angelic father was the only way I’d be free of all this angel-and-demon crap. But this was different. “This has nothing to do with Fallen fighting illorum to avoid their punishment. This is just a bunch of misguided, half-human idiots trying to make a power grab. This is exactly the kind of thing seraphim should be stopping.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” he said. “The difference is between simply putting down an uprising or igniting a war,” he said. “Do not wish heaven’s warriors to come to arms, Emma Jane. Few nephilim, marked or not, will likely survive it.”

We made it as far as the old-fashioned streetlamp I’d seen through the trees when Amon appeared on the path before us. We’d seen him approaching faster than any normal human could track.

“I found a car,” he said. “It’s just ahead alongside the road.”

“Found?” I asked. Stole, he meant.

The tall, athletic blond rolled a shoulder. “First place I looked.”

“Good on ya, Amon, but we’ll be a bit longer. Hop-along’s moving slower than a mortal in lead boots,” Liam said.

“I can help with that.” Amon dashed forward and before anyone could stop him, he’d scooped Eli into his arms.

Cradled in against the other man’s chest like a child, Eli gave a loud yelp of pain before quickly swallowing the momentary weakness. He gritted his teeth. “Put me down, demon, before I pull your spirit from that body with my bare hands.”

“The assailants could return at any moment. Let me help you, brother,” Amon said. “We have to move swiftly.”

“Just until we get to the car, Eli,” I said. His dangerously slow pace wasn’t my only concern. With every step pain carved a new crease across Eli’s forehead and squeezed small sounds from his tightly clenched mouth. He needed to be still. He needed time to heal.

Liam and I were stronger than normal humans, but Eli was heavier than a man three times his size and his height made carrying him virtually impossible for us. Amon was the most capable of getting Eli to a safe, comfortable place and fast. In my book, that was all that mattered.

“What more does the sorry gob have to do to earn a little forgiveness from you?” Liam asked Eli.

“Receive it from our Father first.” Eli turned his gaze on Amon. “But that would require that he ask. That he repent.”

Amon’s jaw tightened and he looked straight ahead, nodding. “Understood. But for now, I’m the only way you’re getting out of here before sun up.”

We were in the car three seconds later, pulling into my driveway seven and a half hours after that. Eli had passed out against my shoulder an hour into the trip. I’d spent the time loving the simple nearness of him and watching as the raw stump of his arm healed, then began to lengthen and shape into a wrist. Little by little the nubs of fingers grew, but it still had a ways to go. I’d only checked once, but I was pretty sure his leg had healed, though the effort had clearly cost him.

“Where do you want him?” Amon asked, hefting the sleeping angel into his arms.

“The spare room,” I said, leading the way to the front door, grabbing the fake hide-a-key rock next to the front steps as I passed. “Top of the stairs first door on the left.”

I stepped through first and held the door for Amon. He didn’t move.

The tall, fair-skinned demon blushed. “I’m not human, Emma. I can’t enter unless I’ve been invited.”

“Oh. Right,” I said, but every instinct inside me warned against it. Liam’s lover or not, he was a demon. Tommy, my friend and Eli’s illorum before me, had trusted a demon once, even allowed her into his bed, and she’d nearly killed him for his carelessness. He’d told me that she’d slit an artery in his groin and intended to bleed him dry. Tommy had taken her head as she kneeled between his legs, a moment of intimacy turned into a brutal betrayal. The memory of that day never left him.

“Are ya bloody serious?” Liam said beside him. “The man saved yer magister’s life. Carried him to safety and drove across the bloomin’ state to heal in your home and you’ll not invite him in?”

I looked from Liam to Amon and then to Eli, his face so pale against the inky blackness of his hair. He needed more time to heal and I couldn’t get him to the spare bedroom myself. “Come in, Amon.”

The demon took a single step over my threshold and stopped, his lavender gaze falling on me. He hesitated a half beat, then forced a smile that was all about polite manners and nothing to do with actual emotion. “Thank you.”

I nodded, regret making my return smile a struggle.

He and Liam took Eli to the bedroom at the top of the stairs on the left while I went to apologize to Dan. I’d told him I’d be right back, but that was more than seven hours ago and it was already past eight in the morning. I hadn’t planned to be gone so long and I’d left my phone on the charger.

I could’ve transported home to fill him in and gotten back before Eli even realized I was gone. But seeing Eli so hurt had knocked every other thought from my head. I’d never really prepared for the possibility. He was weak, vulnerable like I’d never seen him before.

I knew before I walked into my bedroom that Dan was gone. I couldn’t hear his soft snores and when I turned the corner I saw that my bed was made and a note was folded on my pillow.

Em,

Hope you took care of what you needed to. I had to go. Call me when you’re ready.

Waiting,

Dan

I read the note three times, my gut sinking with each reading. Not because of what he’d written but because of what he’d meant.

I’d left his bed to go to the side of another man. No matter my reasons, my excuses—good intentions, divine calling, world salvation… In the end it always boiled down to one undeniable truth—I’d left Dan’s bed to go to another man. It was simple and yet infinitely complicated at once. Regret made it hard to swallow, a heavy weight pressing against my chest. I couldn’t keep thinking about it.

I slipped the note into the back pocket of my jeans and went across the hall to the spare room. Eli was awake, grumbling at Liam as he fought against his attempts to remove his damp suit jacket.

“Ya can’t crawl into bed wearing all these sodden clothes, ya git. You’ll ruin the lassie’s sheets and mattress.”

Eli shrugged him off, giving himself a hard shake. “Problem solved,” he said—his suit magically dry, the tear in his slacks repaired.

Liam stepped back. “Well, don’t that be a nifty trick. Could’a spared a wee Irishman the effort and dried yerself from the start.”

Eli’s shoulders drooped, his head down, his hands bracing against the bed on either side of him. He took a shaky breath, the small flash of strength expended. “It’s not as easy as it looks at the moment.”

I strode the rest of the way into the room. “Okay, that’s enough. Thanks guys, I’ve got it from here.”

“Aye. Good. We’ll see if we can track the bastards who did this,” Liam said slipping his hand into Amon’s.

“He’ll be safe here,” Amon said. “Just keep him inside until he’s fully healed.”

I nodded, reaching out to touch his free hand. “Thank you, Amon.”

A smile flickered across his young, roguish face and then both he and Liam were gone. I turned to Eli, barely able to hold himself upright on the edge of the bed.

“You need to rest,” I said, pushing him back against the pillows. I lifted his feet to the bed just as his shoes vanished.

“I’m nearly healed,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

He looked so…human lying there—his skin ghostly white, his body limp. My chest ached for him, emotion thickening at the back of my throat. I cared about Dan. He was my tie to reality. But I’d nearly lost Eli today and the realization turned my blood to ice.

It didn’t make sense, but I had to stay near him—make sure he was alive, safe. Even as guilt turned my stomach, I couldn’t stop myself from lying down next to him, my head resting on his chest, the steady beat of his heart echoing against my ear. I breathed him in, taking comfort in the sweet, summery scent of him—fresh-cut grass and sunshine.

In his sleep, Eli curved an arm around me, tucking me in closer. The tension that had the muscles down my back in knots eased and I closed my eyes. Eli was an angel—constant, invulnerable, or so I’d thought. Now I knew I could lose him and that…that changed everything.

Chapter Nine

It must have been a thunder strike that woke me. The sound still rumbled through the sky, like the long grumble of a lion. Lying on my belly, I pushed up to my elbows, squinting at the clock on the bedside table in the gloomy light. I wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth. It was 12:32 p.m. and Eli was gone.

I rolled over, my gaze gliding to the window, catching a glimpse of glowing white eyes. I swallowed back a scream. “What the hell?”

Fred stood outside my window—his weird white eyes staring at me, hands clasped in front of him, long, bloodred hair curtaining down his back. Problem was, the bedroom window was on the second floor.

Your presence is commanded in the backyard. Come at once.
His smooth, melodic voice echoed through my mind and then the next instant he was gone. Crap, I hated that.

I scooted out of bed just as another clap of thunder shook the house. Rain beat against the window where Fred had been, the wind whipping through the trees. I hurried out into the hall to the window that overlooked the backyard.

Wind rocked the trees that ringed my gram’s backyard. I’d inherited the house when she died a few years back, but it would always be her home. The big oaks had been saplings when she and my granddad bought the place. Those trees were more than fifty years old now and I worried that for some of them, this storm might be their last.

“I’m not going out in that.” Gram’s old metal lawn set was holding up against the wind and pounding sheets of rain, but puddles were forming in the lower spots of the yard and an impromptu stream had formed around back. The quick current rushed between the trees into my neighbor’s yard.

I stepped away from the window, determined to ignore Fred’s request when something in the shadows behind Gram’s glider caught my eye. I lunged forward, hands on the windowsill, narrowing my eyes to see through the gloom and rain. “Eli?”

He was on his knees, his back to the house, his chin up as if in prayer to the heavens. His short, black curls were plastered to his head, the jacket of his suit waving to the side like a flag. His white dress shirt was nearly transparent. Whatever the reason Fred wanted me in the backyard, I didn’t need any more convincing.

I called on my power, seeing where I wanted to go, and took a step. The world narrowed, blurred, and the rules governing time and space gave way for me. With my next step my bare foot sloshed in the cold, wet grass behind Eli.

The icy rain stabbed at my cheeks and bare arms, the wind snapping my hair over my eyes, plastering it to my face. I shoved at my hair and stepped up next to Eli. “What’s wrong?”

“You will leave it,” a voice said from the trees in front of us and I turned to see seven angels, including Fred, perched in separate trees. Their weight had no more effect on the limbs than a feather or a drop of rain would. The thickly leafed branches around them all seemed to bend away, framing each angel in a curtain of green.

Aside from Fred, I recognized only three of the other seraphim. I’d seen them after Tommy was killed. They were part of the Council of Seven’s envoy and had stalked Eli and me last year, making sure we didn’t give in to our grief over Tommy’s death and cross a line there was no going back from. We hadn’t, and I hadn’t seen the three again until now.

All seven angels were unnaturally tall and lean, with long hands and fingers and oval faces. Their hair, thin and silky, reached the smalls of their backs, and their skin had a soft, newborn glow. Like the cluster of angels in the hospital, the seven were dressed in matching tailored suits in varying shades of black and white with overcoats that reached their calves. And they were all dry. The storm didn’t touch them.

Goose bumps tingled over my skin from head to toe and a bone-deep shiver had my body vibrating like a cheap motel bed. My teeth chattered even as I pushed my hair from my eyes again, squinting up at the angels through the beating rain.

“Who are you telling him to leave? Me?” I yelled, ignoring the jolt of adrenaline and fear squeezing my chest. I’d almost lost him last night. I couldn’t go through that again.

“I will not,” Eli said as though I hadn’t said a word. “This is ill timed, brothers. The situation has grown too dangerous to abandon her now. Magisters and illorum alike are at risk.”

“It is because of the situation that we command you to part from it,” the angel on the far left said. His voice was soft and deep like a late-night radio DJ. He was one of the angels from last year, his long hair so white it was nearly translucent. The pale hair made his seraphim-white eyes even more creepy.

“This is not a request, Elizal,” Fred, in the center tree, said. “The Council commands it.”

The wind howled and I had to yell just to hear my own voice. “Then let us talk to the Council. I need Eli to help figure out who’s behind the attacks.”

The angel on the far right spoke up. “Tell it that another magister has been assigned. He will aid it as you would. It will discover who is behind the attacks and end them.”

He was another of the angels I’d seen last year. Hair the color of butterscotch curtained the back of his pinstriped suit. Those stripes made his suit the most…different.

“What do you think we’ve been trying to do? You take Eli away and I’ll have to start from square one,” I said, but I knew they weren’t listening to me—at least they were pretending not to. I was there to listen, not speak.

“I am the only one to have seen the demon who accompanies the gibborim attacks,” Eli said. “I am essential to this endeavor.”

“Right,” I said, following Eli’s lead. “You see? I don’t know who we’re looking for. I need Eli.”

“You will share this information with its new magister,” the third angel who’d stalked me last year said. He stood on the right in the tree next to the white-haired angel. This angel’s hair was darker than Eli’s—so dark it was nearly blue—and his plain, snug suit was a deep black that matched his hair almost perfectly.

“No. It’s too great a risk. There’s more.” Eli’s body stiffened as if he were about to stand to make his point but didn’t. “I’ve already been attacked. I’m the only one to have survived. I’ve seen them. They’ll want to finish what they started. They’ll want to silence me, keep me from warning others.”

“Warning others about what?” the butterscotch angel asked.

“The swords,” Eli said. “The angelic swords they’re taking from the magisters. They shield the gibborim from seraphim powers—we are defenseless against them. Removing me from this engagement just because…” He glanced at me then back to the seven. “We need to focus on what’s important here. I chose to be a magister. I knew the risks. I have faced them before and triumphed. I will again.”

The white-haired angel on the end glanced at Fred, just a quick flick of his creepy eyes, then back to Eli. None of the other angels allowed his somber mask to crack. After several seconds, Fred gave a single nod, closing his eyes as though in answer to some unspoken question.

He raised his chin and looked at Eli. “Is this why they are taking the magisters’ swords? To use them in battle against seraphim?”

Eli exhaled a frustrated breath—jaw tight, blue eyes blinking against the driving rain. “I can find no other explanation. Please, brothers, let me stay and fight.”

“Then it matters not,” Fred said, unclasping his hands so they hung loose at his sides. “The war has begun.”

“Wait. No,” Eli said, raising his hands as if to stop them. “We can’t be certain that a Fallen is behind the movement.”

Fred narrowed his eyes on the kneeling angel. “Do you suggest that the human half-breeds conceived of this possibility on their own?”

“No. Of course not,” Eli scoffed, glancing apologetically at me. “But I believe the demon I witnessed may have.”

“To what end?”

“I don’t know. So far we have only fought in self-defense without knowledge of who was behind the attack order. If it is a Fallen, then, as you said, they have begun the war. But if we initiate a strike at a Fallen and discover later that this demon is working for his own interests, it will be too late.
We
will be at fault for restarting the war. We must know with absolute certainty.”

Fred seemed to think about that for a moment, then glanced in the direction of the butterscotch angel in the pinstriped suit. He gave him a nod, then looked back to Eli. “Your illorum will discover the truth of this mystery and what devil is behind the attacks. It will report what it finds to its new magister. And it will end the transgressors. This will take precedence over the search for its father.”

“No,” I said, my arms clutched around me, my body shivering so much it was hard to speak. Only Eli turned to look at me, but I could feel the weight of everyone’s attention pressing against my chest. “I don’t want another magister.”

Eli shook his head. “Emma Jane, don’t…”

I ignored him and took a step toward Fred and the others, forcing my back stiff, my head high. “In fact I
won’t
work with another magister. Free will, right? The deal was I’m supposed to find my angelic sperm donor and kick his butt to the abyss. Then I get my life back. That’s why I have these powers, why my life was put on hold. You want me to put that off to do you a favor? Fine. I’ll be your little special-agent nephilim. But I get to pick my own team. It’s Eli or nothing.”

The search for my angelic father was always there, ghosting at the back of my brain. I wasn’t sure if I could really stop looking for him, stop wondering who he was, where he was. But in that instant all I could think about was keeping Eli planted on terra firma—keeping him with me. I’d say whatever they wanted to hear.

“That’s enough, Emma Jane.” Eli was on his feet, jerking me back by the elbow, putting his body between mine and the seven angels. “Forgive her, brothers. She knows not what she asks.”

“Yes I do.” I couldn’t let them take Eli away. They may be his boss, but they weren’t the boss of me. I stepped around him. “Aren’t you listening? Whoever’s behind these attacks, whatever their reasons are—you’re all at risk. Now is not the time to send in the second string. Eli and I are your best defense. We know what we’re looking for, how to fight them. We’re the only team that’s gone up against them and survived. We work. Simple as that.”

I believed what I was saying, though I thought it best not to mention that of my first-string all-star team only one of us had actually taken on a gibborim. Seemed counterproductive.

From the corner of my eye I saw Eli move forward at the exact instant Fred vanished from the tree and reappeared four feet in front of me.

Eli was between us. “Fraciel, no. I will not allow you to harm her.”

Fred tilted his head, the corners of his blush-pink lips turning up in what could only be a smile, though his eerie white eyes left the expression cold. “You are dear to me, Elizal, so I will give you a moment to reconsider your actions. You are not helping her. Worse. You are not helping
yourself
.”

Eli lifted his chin. “Her arrogance is my fault.”

“Yes. As are your actions. Let us strive to lessen at least one cause for your misgivings,” Fred said. Then he took a very slow, very human step forward and the storm raging around me stopped.

I fought against the tremble quaking through my body and stared up at the seven-foot-tall, blood-haired angel. This close I felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. I kept my head high.

Fred leaned over, speaking slowly as though I was a child. “You are a danger to Elizal.” He straightened and looked to Eli. “Does it understand?”

Eli’s angry eyes narrowed. “
She
not it. She understands as well as you or me.”

“What do you mean?” I didn’t really care what Fred thought of me. I figured he had the same low opinion of all illorum.
Oh well
. But how could he say I was a danger to Eli? I’d never let anything happen to him.

Fred looked back to me, white eyes focusing. He leaned over again, talking down to me in more ways than one. “He has allowed the corruption that brought about your existence to infect him. It will cost him his life.”

I felt my brows go up, and I glanced at my magister. “Eli’s sick? What is it?”

“It is lust,” Fred said and I snapped my attention back to the too-tall angel, a hot flush warming my cheeks.

“We haven’t done anything wrong.” I held Fred’s creepy white gaze. “You can’t punish us for something we haven’t done. Eli and I make a good team. That’s all that matters. We care about each other. We’re close, yes, but that just…that gives us a better connection—a stronger connection.”

“It makes him weak,” Fred said.

“You’re wrong.” I straightened, lifting my face a fraction closer. “We’ve never been stronger.”

Our connection had allowed Eli to see through my eyes last year and identify the Fallen angel who had been trying to kill me. According to Eli, illorum weren’t supposed to be able to speak mind to mind with angels; it’s normally a one-way connection. Angels can speak to our minds and read our thoughts, but we can’t really talk back. To hear our response they have to be listening to our thoughts.

So how had Eli heard me without plucking the words from my brain himself? I didn’t know. I wanted to believe it was because of all we’d been through, how much we understood each other. We
were
a perfect team, but I wasn’t sure that was all of it.

“Stronger?” Fred leaned back and stared at me in quiet repose. Finally he clasped his hands in front of him and spoke very matter-of-factly. “We have known from the beginning that the bond between magister and illorum is a treacherous one. It is why so few are willing to serve. Every moment my brothers spend wallowing in the insidious adoration of humans is paid for with the slow decay of their purity. Too quickly magisters lose their perspective and begin to value the illorum over their mission. It is expected, to a degree. But the fear that one will slip further, will bond too closely as you and Elizal have… Most feel it is simply not worth the risk.”

“What risk?” I asked.

His delicate jaw tightened. “The fall, nephilim. What do you think? You are born of corruption, of lust and unleashed desire. You are made of temptation, and vice flows through your veins. You are that which angels desire and God so loves. You are our damnation. We risk our immortal spirit with the very acknowledgement of your existence in our minds.”