Ignite (30 page)

“What the Hell was that?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard your voice in my head.”

He smiles, raising his eyebrows. “Just like you’ve heard my voice in your head yesterday, and the day before, and the night before that.” His fingers curl absently around fallen pieces of my hair and he tucks it securely behind my ear. “Remember? You told me about Chicago. You wanted me to dance with you.”

I look around in confusion, as if I can find an explanation sitting next to me on the sidewalk. “That was really you?”

“Well it wasn’t Azael. You had to have known that.” He looks at me with concern. “You did know it was me, right?” His face falls slightly.

“I thought you were a dream. I didn’t think I was really… How can I talk to you?” I scramble to remember what I’ve told him, what I’ve shown him. He knows secrets about me that I’ve never told anyone, not even Azael.

“I don’t know. I thought it was something you had done.”

“It wasn’t.” I shake my head and whisper, “It’s impossible.”

He gently rests his hand on my cheek. “It’s a miracle,” he says softly.

I try to ignore the nervous electricity that spreads across my skin from his touch. I look down at his chest where my hand rested just moments earlier and see a bright, red handprint. My handprint.

Suddenly I am snapped back into the dark reality of the night. My focus on Michael blurs as I look past him and back out at the street.

The men.

Michael hears me, his face growing grave.

I stand up and walk away from the sidewalk and into the middle of the street. It feels like I’m walking through a nightmare, like what’s in front of me isn’t real. But it is real. Everything is much too real.

As Michael wordlessly steps up next to me, I look down at the vacant faces of the five men, stained red with their own blood. The real monsters aren’t in Hell, I think. They’re here on Earth, walking unnoticed in the crowd. They’re family, friends, neighbors. The monsters are the people you least expect.

“I can’t.” I shake my head back and forth, causing more of my hair to fall down and into my face. I push the tangles out of my eyes with bloody hands as I’m flooded with panic again. “I mean, I can’t reap their souls. I don’t have—it was always Az.” My throat is dry. “Their souls will die if they aren’t reaped. Not that they don’t deserve it.”

Michael looks down at the men, his jaw tight and his eyes hard. “I can reap their souls.” He’s quiet and serious. “I at least know how to do that much. I’ll take them.”

“To Heaven?” I hiss. “Is that really where they belong?”

“It’s not. But what choice do I have?” He looks at me, his lips set in a tight, thin line. “I have a job to do, don’t I? A responsibility to not let their souls just…”

He shakes his head and clenches his jaw, chewing his resentment so he can do his duty. He doesn’t want to help them, doesn’t think they deserve to be saved. And he’s right—they don’t. But he still believes there is goodness in everyone, and he won’t let go of that notion, no matter how lost a person is.

He crouches next to Danny’s body, resting his hand on his chest. “I have a job to do,” he says again, as if he is trying to convince himself.

His hand seems to glow as it sinks into his chest. Michael closes his eyes in concentration, his eyebrows drawn low and his lips parted. I want to look away, to be sick, but I can’t. I watch in horror as he leans forward, searching the far corners of Danny’s chest. Danny soul doesn’t deserve to be saved. He especially doesn’t deserve Heaven.

When Michael finally pulls his hand back out, it’s empty. There’s no slippery soul twining itself around his hand, no silver wisps squeezing through his fist.

He looks at me in alarm. “I can’t find it.”

I kneel down next to him, my jeans soaking up the blood that is settled in a small pool around Danny’s body. “Can’t find it?”

“He has no soul,” Michael says, shaking his head.

“He—what?” I lean forward and rest my own hand on top of his chest, trying to see if I can sense something within it’s deep caverns.

“He has no soul,” he says again, mystified. He turns around and reaches into a second chest, searching just as he did in Danny’s. “This one’s gone, too.”

He makes his way around to each of the five men, coming up empty every time.

“Gone. They’re all gone. You didn’t do anything…” He stands and reaches his hand up, running it through his unruly hair, thinking. His hand leaves a trail of deep crimson, staining his blond hair in streaks.

“I told you I can’t reap souls. I certainly can’t
destroy
a soul. Not with only my dagger,” I say, gesturing to the blade that still sits in the street covered in drying blood. I pick it up and wipe it over my jeans, trying to clean the blade as best as I can before I slip it back into my boot. “It takes a much stronger weapon to destroy a soul like that than I have. Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

“Yes, I’m positive.” He crosses his arms across his chest, spinning around in a small, slow circle in the middle of the road. “None of them has a soul. I’ve never felt anything like it. There’s something about them. Like their souls were…”

“Poisoned,” I finish for him, my voice hushed. “Like their souls were already dead and gone before I killed them.”

He looks at me questioningly. I grab at my amulet, which is heavy and sharp in my hand. It pulsed when I saw them. It was a warning that I ignored.
How did I miss this?

“I’ve seen this,” I go on. “The early stages, anyway. With Azael. One of the souls we stole from the patients at the asylum was changed.”

“Changed?”

I take a deep breath. “When you enter a soul, you can experience memories from its life. But this soul had no memories; it was like they were erased. The soul was being eaten away by a demonic virus.” I swallow past a lump in my throat. “The Lilim virus.”

He stirs. “It sounds familiar, but I don’t know anything about it.”

“The virus originated in Lilith’s blood. She gave birth to children that were half human, half demon. Demi-demons. Now it is spread from person to person,” I explain. “It is transmitted through a bite. The virus festers in the blood until everything pure is eaten away. It destroys memories, poisons their blood, and eventually, the soul. All it leaves is the heart.”

“And the purpose of this virus?” he asks in a low voice.

“To change humans into demons,” I answer. “It’s the start of the war between Heaven and Hell. It’s a sign of the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it.”

He’s very still, standing frozen in his place. All of the color is drained from his face. In a tiny whisper, he echoes me, disbelieving. “The apocalypse.” He pauses, a realization dawning on his face. “Did I cause this? Me being back… Is this my fault?”

He lifts his eyes from the road to me. They are desperate and dark, pleading me to tell him it’s not his fault. I knot my eyebrows together and bite my lip. I can’t give him what he wants. Not this time. His face falls, darkening behind a cloud of guilt, and the corners of his mouth pull down.

I hear his thought, hopelessly sad, in my mind.
This is my fault.

Chapter 25

“Michael?”

He’s very still. He stares through me like I’m made of glass.

I step up to him, reaching out to touch his face, to bring him back to me. “Michael? Can you hear me?”

His eyes are distant and foggy. He can’t hear me. It’s like I’m not even there.

I cup his face between my cool hands.
Michael. Please, Michael. Say something. You’re scaring me.

He blinks and refocuses on my face. “We have to stop it. The war, the virus, everything.”

I let my hands slide off of his face and onto his shoulders. “We can’t. It’s too far gone.”

He shakes his head. “No, it can’t be. We have to do something. This is my fault. I have to—”

“There’s nothing we can do. We’d be killed without a moment’s hesitation.” I look at him seriously, desperately needing him to understand. “Michael, we can’t stop any of it from happening.” I take his hands in mine.

“So what are we supposed to do?” His voice is sharp and angry, but not at me. He doesn’t tighten his grip on me when his voice rises. Instead, he looks up to the dirty sky, his face drawn. He knows that this is out of my control, too, and it makes him angry. Angry at everything—at the world, at our situation, at its inescapability.

I know how he feels. Powerless. It’s a feeling I’ve had over the last few days, trapped in the middle of Hell’s plan. I’m powerless against the Lilim virus, powerless at fighting against the end of the world, even powerless when it comes to saving Azael, my own brother. It is the most hopeless feeling in the world because there’s no way to fight it. It’s like quicksand—the harder you struggle, the faster you’ll sink.

“We wait,” I say simply. “We bide our time.” I look at him meaningfully. “And when the moment is right, we strike.”

His eyes soften.

“We destroy the virus, and we dismantle Hell.”

“You would do that?” he asks, leaning back from me. “You would betray Hell for me?”

“I would do a lot for you,” I say slowly, realizing as I’m saying it just how true it is. “But this isn’t only about you. It’s about me, too, and about what I believe is right. And this, what I’ve been living for the past hundred centuries, is not what’s right. It’s not what I believe in anymore.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t think I’ve believed in Hell for a while. I just needed someone to remind me, challenge me.” I shrug. “No one in Hell questions what we do anymore. And it was like that in Heaven before I fell. We stop wondering why we are doing what we do and just focus on what we’re told. We do what we are supposed to do without thinking. But you reminded me to look closer at what I am, at what I do.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just grabs my hand and pulls me to him, threading his arms around me and kissing the top of my head. I tip my head back so his lips can reach mine.

“I’ve never met anyone so brave,” he says.

“I’m not brave.”

And it’s true—I’m not. Every choice I’ve made up until now has been cowardly. I fell from Heaven because I was afraid to lose Azael. I’ve lost myself in slaughter and let my veins freeze over with Hell’s ice because I was afraid of what would happen if anyone knew I didn’t believe in what Hell stands for. I’m anything but brave.

“Yes you are. You’re brave and strong and smart.” He smiles down at me. “I knew from the moment I met you that there was something different about you. I was meant to meet you. I was meant to land in that tree. It was fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate anymore,” I tell him.

“No?”

“No. Before you returned, the future was written, marked in black permanent ink. But lately, the future has been erasing itself. Pages that were once filled with fates and destinies are empty. It’s no longer predetermined. We are writing our fate right now.”

“And how will our story end?”

I smirk. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

He places his hand on my lower back and pulls me closer to him. He bends down, places his lips next to my ear, and whispers, “I’m falling for you.”

“What?” I freeze.

“The more I listen to you, the more I fall for you. You see things differently. ” He kisses the soft skin just below my jaw and then looks back into my eyes, which are wide and surprised. “There’s no one else like you.”

I don’t say anything, and I don’t need to because he continues.

“It’s really not fair, you know. You’ve bewitched me. I’ve never felt something so completely. I’m absolutely consumed by the thought of you. When we’re together, it’s like every nerve in me sings for you, begging me to touch you, to be closer. And when we’re apart, it’s nearly unbearable. It’s like I’m missing a piece of myself, and its sudden absence reminds me of just how important that piece was. How that piece allowed me to not only survive, but
live
.” He smiles. “With you, I’m whole. With you, I’m alive.”

My head spins, and I say the first coherent thought I can grab hold of, however inadequate it is. “Are you worried I’ve cast some curse on you?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

Stupid
, I think.
Stupid, stupid.
Here he is, proclaiming his feelings for me, and I cannot return his words. It’s not that I don’t feel the same, because I do. My nerves sing for him too, desperate and loud, because they have to be heard over the doubt in my mind, the distrust that I’ve been ingrained with.

His words are like the lines of poetry that I carry around with me. The prose that stick in my mind and pierce through my chest. I want to memorize what he’s told me, because they’re words I never thought I would hear. But he’s said them to me, brave and unashamed, and I’m too weak to return them.

I’m a coward. The words are stuck in my throat, fighting to escape, but I’m too careful to let them out. I’m still hesitant to reveal the emotions I’ve spent so long ignoring, denying.

“Oh no, I know it’s not a curse.” He pauses. “Pen, do you know what it’s like to be in love?”

I rest my head on his chest. “I’m a demon, what do you think?”