Obumbrate (14 page)

"That I do not know," she replied, worry and sadness filling every crease on her face. "No one has seen Michael in almost twenty years." Off her chair once more, she slowly walked around the desk to stand before me, reaching out to place a hand on my knee. "Do not be afraid of death, Essallie. It will pass before you know."

I offered her an absentminded nod, thinking of Ari's earlier words. Even most terminal cancer patients had a chance of survival, a sliver of hope. My only hope had been like a final straw,  now dissolved and scattered to the wind.

Taking her hand off my knee, I stood and gave a polite half-bow. "Thank you, Louise, for the information. I'd like to leave now, if you don't mind."

The smile I first saw had returned to her face, all traces of sadness gone. "Of course, dear. The door's right behind you. You'll find Ari waiting for you just outside."

I turned around, sure enough, to find the golden door restored to its original glory waiting behind me. Part of me prayed I'd never have to set foot in this place again, not even if baited with the opportunity to see my father. Hand on the red knob, I started to twist it when one last question bubbled up onto my tongue.

"Louise? Why did I have to go through all the spooky junk to get to you?"

From behind, I heard her chuckle. "You never had to do anything, Essallie. The halls only project what the mind perceives, and your mind imagined a battle. You wanted to prove you were worth it, not just to Ari and I, but to yourself. The question you need to answer is, did you succeed?"

I opened the door, and blinding white light encompassed me again.

The floor vanished from under my feet. My body fell, hurling down an endless tunnel of black that reminded me oddly of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. I couldn't breathe, my chest tight and knotted, until with a crash I landed flat on my back, any spare oxygen squeezed from my lungs.

I could see the room spinning, voices of every volume ringing in my ears. My insides felt as if they had been reduced to the consistency of some kind of pulverized pulp.

Sitting up, I looked around to see I was back in the first room once more, the desk and small man exactly where I had seen them last. Moving to lay back down, I spotted a body next me just as the room stopped spinning about.

Ari was lying on his back beside me, hands cradled behind his head, eyes staring listlessly at the ceiling. His teal eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting of the room, like a curious cat lurking in the shadows of an abandoned home. Something in his stare tugged at my heart, watching his eyes continue to stare into the abyss above as if he was searching for a memory long lost to the black.

"Ari?" I gently asked, leaning towards him until our arms touched. "Have you been here this whole time?"

His face scrunched into concentration, and for a moment I was sure I had disturbed him from some kind of trance. But then he rolled over onto one arm to face me, and I felt my chest tighten. At a glance his eyes were powerful enough, but the full force of his smoldering hued stare left me with the same feeling I had when we first met. Words like
naked, undressed,
and
exposed
came to mind.

Heartbreakingly beautiful to begin with, he only shined more with a crooked smile gracing his lips. "Probably should have known we both couldn't go at the same time. Sorry I couldn't be there," he murmured softly. Fingers reached up to touch one of the emerald earrings I still had on. "Did she...?"

Even with his ethereal looks, the easy tone of his voice and words couldn't save me from the gravity of his question. Like weight pulling me to the depths of the Atlantic, he brought my mind back to the reality of things. I had just been officially handed my personal death sentence. I had felt it in my gut for weeks now, but this was actual proof spoken directly to me.

"She did," I started to get on my feet, wincing. So much for thinking I wouldn't have leftover pain from the fall.

"And she said what?" Ari got to his feet before I could, and helped me up. I couldn't believe it; he looked completely unscathed, free from any injuries. Heat rolled off his skin in waves. Up this close and under the barely useful lights I could make out more than before. Tangled and curled strands of his platinum hair spread askew from his face, sticky strands clinging to his sweat-dampened skin. Perfect planes and angles of his face stood out, his skin radiating as if he were  filled with a personal sun within.

I warred against myself to reach out and touch him, fear that making any sudden movement would ruin the moment and send my ethereal saint away.

I froze. Ethereal saint? Warring to touch a person? I balked at my own state of mind; what was I, a boy-crazed twelve-year-old waging battle with hormones? I liked Ari, that much was obvious, but I certainly didn't need him. My life would continue without him should something happen. I was a half-angel with the clock ticking against me- there was no time to be thinking of budding emotions over another half-angel.

"I was right." The words sounded like a dull echo as they left my lips. "Leo had been mine. I will die."

For a minute, Ari said nothing. In answer, he reached out silently, wrapping his arms around me in a soothing embrace. The effect was like stepping into a tropical paradise untouched by man, left alone and beautiful in its wild state.

"We should go," I finally said, stepping away from him. Two small spots on his shirt were damp- tears I hadn't even been aware of collecting in the sides of my eyes. Nervous laughter painfully mixed with my words. "I'll need to be returning to Maine."

He seemed to regard me for a long moment, waiting to see if I'd crack under the weight of my world and initiate hysterics. I was stronger than that.

"It can be arranged," he said quietly, the zeal in his eyes dimming to burnt out coals. "I can get you to a safe portal home so you can be with your family." Reaching out for my shoulder, he stopped and thought better not to, instead gesturing to the door leading outside. "Come on, it's probably getting close to sunset."

Ari hadn't been far off; the door open, I could make out the faint glimmers of stars decorating the color-blended sky, navy blue crushing over oranges and yellows still fighting to linger on the horizon line. Even a city girl like me had to stop and stare. A delicious, chilled breeze swept at the skirts of my dress, far better than the heat we had originally walked through to get here.

"Coming?" Ari called over to me, impatience playing in his tone. "I highly doubt you want to spend any unnecessary time here."

I removed the emerald earrings and placed them in a small pocket fashioned on the seam of the dress. "Hold your horses, I'm on my way." Two handfuls of the skirts and a small jog was all it took to catch up to his slow and exaggerated stride.

"Technically I'm holding your horses, Miss I Can't Wait To Get Home and Explode Into Flames," he teased rudely, the grin on his face the only balancing factor to his words. "I really do wish you'd stay, Essallie. You never know, we could find a cure for you before it's too late."

"Are you afraid of death, Ari?" I asked with a growing suspicion.

He looked shocked, nearly colliding into a set of barrels outside one of the street shops. "What? I, no, heavens no. Why would you think that?"

It was as if someone had ignited a darkened part of my brain to life. At first, Ari's words over trying to save me from my assumptions had seemed noble, very angel-like. Still, there was a layer of wonder that left me curious if his aversion of death had something more to do with a particular black memory in his life.

"Nothing," I said hurriedly, but not before making a mental note to revisit the thought at a later time. "Just some mindful musings."

We kept going forward, reaching to the end of the main street. The packs and thick pools of people that had been there earlier were gone, no doubt home with family or friends to settle in for the night. I started to feel the familiar ache of missing my brother, couldn't help but wonder how he was. Was Abigail staying at home with him, protecting him just in case? Or did Kayden have anything to do with helping him? Regardless of earlier conflicts with both, I couldn't see Kayden doing anything to help out my family, not when he was seeking my death for his freedom.

"Hey Ari," I started to say, about to ask him if he knew any neat ways to possibly set a demon on fire for all of eternity, when a loud scream cut off all other sound.

CHAPTER EIGHT

PRAY FOR THE WEAK

I spun around, bewildered. What little people that were left on the strip were scattering, running in every which way they could. Behind them, darkness surged in billowing black smoke, the silhouette of a Vens coming forth. This one was male, unlike the first one I had dealt with, dressed in the same all-black get up.

Ari took one look at the Vens before rounding on me, eyes nearly popping from their sockets with a jolt. "You weren't lying when you told Serena you were attacked?"

"What do I look like, the little girl crying wolf? And what the heck is with all this Men In Black crap?" I swore, grabbing even larger handfuls of the dress and running. Ari grabbed my wrist and pulled me along faster, turning us onto one of the streets off the main and rushing forward. "We need to get to a portal-"

A sharp silver dagger sailed past me, but not before it sliced into my arm. Pain rippled through my arm, and I screamed in the same moment my shoe caught something in the ground, ripping me from Ari's grasp and flattening me to the pavement.

Hands were on me in an instant, grabbing at my throat and digging fingers into the soft skin. I gasped and kicked about, connecting with someone's shin hard enough to drop me with force back to the floor.

I rolled over to my back, coming face to face with the Vens out for my blood. He gave me a petrifying smile before striking me with some kind of metal, and I blacked out.

Inside my mind, everything was underwater. A voice, urgent and afraid, continued to call out to me from above the surface, but I felt comfortable under the waves.

"It's nice in here, isn't it?" A voice, oddly familiar, said to my side. In the shifting colors of the water, I made out a face with long, sleek blonde hair and bottomless brown eyes stare back at me. She looked like a porcelain doll, perfectly made up from the even tone of her skin to her plump red lips.

I had to laugh; of course the face was familiar, it was me a year before Chase came along and ruined everything. My mind was playing games with a shrink version of me.

"Have you ever been out there?" I asked my carbon copy, pointing toward the surface. "It's violent as hell. I'm pretty tired of having to run for my life because my parents created a little bundle of unloved abomination."

"You don't have to go back, you know," the long haired me replied, shrugging her dainty shoulders with grace even underwater. "No one is forcing you to leave."

"But if I stay here," I trailed, frowning. "I'd never see anyone again. Jayson, Ari, Kayden, Abigail, Serena. They all mean something to me."

"Then go," she urged, but the smile on her face wasn't happy. She looked almost disappointed I chose to leave. "I'm sure we'll see each other another time, soon enough."

"Essallie!"

My eyes fluttered open, and I heaved a sigh of relief. Pain throbbed at the top of my skull, and something wet was running down the side of my cheek. I hadn't been moved from the pavement, which meant I had to have been out for five minutes at the most.

I struggled up and looked over to the sidewalk, where Ari and the Vens were at it. Ari's upper chest and shoulders had been covered by the white fire like the breastplate of a suit of armor, his arms encased in the flames as well. He and the Vens moved around in short, jittery moves, circling each other like men in a fighting ring.

Ari made the first move, lancing a spear of the flames at the Vens. He dissipated into black smoke, swirling behind Ari and reforming in time to make a critical blow.

Without thinking I raised my hand, an arc of the wild blue fire soaring through the sky and searing the Vens' arm. He screamed in agony before bursting into smoke once more, blue smoke trailing with his dematerialized shape. I took the opportunity to roll up onto my feet and over to Ari's side, hands pressed outward and ignited for the fight.

"Enjoying your final days before you burn, Nephilim?" The smoke laughed cruelly, small tendrils steadily forming limbs. "I knew it would only be a matter of time before you returned to this place."

"If you have a point to make, then
make it
," Ari hissed, flames rising off him in waves. His hair began to defy gravity, hovering off his face mystically. "Otherwise, it's time to barbecue you and move on."

The Vens burst into smoke, spreading out through and around us. Coils of it laced around my neck and forced up my nose, choking me worse than when he had grabbed me. I fell lightheaded, stumbling away from Ari and falling painfully onto my knees and palms. The Vens materialized instantly, one hand still smoke, the other grabbing my shoulder and roughly pulling me back to my feet.

"She comes with me, but don't worry, Nephillim, you'll join her soon enough," the Vens shook my shoulder. "Wave bye-bye, pretty girl."

Fire sparked off my back like quills exploding from a porcupine, shooting straight at the Vens. Once more he screamed and pulled away from me, only this time he couldn't vanish into smoke to save himself. The volatile blue fire wrapped around him like a boa constrictor, tightening and burning deeper into his skin. Ari ran forward, arms still covered in his white flames, and grasped the Vens around both shoulders.

"Who sent you?" Ari demanded, repeating the question when the Vens only answered in a soul-shaking scream. "Who sent you to kill Essallie?"

The Vens jerked his head, whipping it back and forth in a violent display. "Not kill, only capture. The Queen can't use dead blood, not for what she needs."