The Secret (20 page)

“Yeah, I know. So that was the big secret? That the Fallen have daughters?”

“Trust me, it is a secret we have endeavored to hide for thousands of years.”

Malachi stood behind Ava. He had no interest in sitting with the angel.

“Why?” Ava asked.

“They’re uncontrollable. Unbalanced. Most do not have the physical strength of their brothers, so they’re not useful. They’ve always been a problem for us, and they’re considered a weakness.”

Malachi was disgusted, yet hardly surprised.

“You act completely disinterested, but if that’s the case, why are you here?” Malachi asked. “What’s so special about Ava Rezai?”

For once, he sensed a reaction in the inhuman eyes of the Fallen before him. Jaron might have morphed his form into the shape of the harmless, middle-aged academic before them, but his eyes were the same. Frozen gold that shone with neither fear nor joy. But for an instant, there was a hint of something else. Had he imagined it?

Jaron ignored him and turned to Ava. “Why are
you
here?”

Her mouth dropped. “Because she’s my grandmother.”

“You already know the magic in your blood comes from your father through her. And you probably guessed she has Grigori blood. What more do you hope to learn?”

“I… I don’t know. I just want to meet her.”

Jaron slid forward, put his chin in the palm of his hand as he rested an elbow on the edge of the desk. “She might not speak. Would you leave here even more confused than you came? Will this ease your mind or torment it?”

“I don’t know,” his mate whispered, “but at least I’ll know the truth.”

“The truth…?” Jaron stood. “An interesting concept. You seek the truth, but will her truth be one you can accept?”

“I want to try.”
 

“And you?”
 

Malachi looked up, realizing Jaron was talking to him. “What about me?”

“Why do you want to meet her? What do you hope to gain?”

“This is not about me, Jaron. It’s about Ava.”

“Yes.” Jaron’s eyes bored into his, and Malachi felt his body sway under the power of the angel’s stare. “I have spent much of the past sixty years concerning myself with Ava.”

He drifted off for a moment, his eyes lifting to the high windows that covered one wall in the doctor’s office.

“Come,” he finally said. “Let us meet her.”

WHEN they stepped out of the office, Malachi noticed the quiet immediately.
 

There was no one in the house.

No chattering nurses near the large oak reception desk. No men playing chess. The fire crackled, but no one took up the knitting needles lying forlornly on the sofa.

“Where is everyone?”

“They’re here and they’re not.”

Ava stepped forward and looked across the now-empty room. “Is this a dream?”

“In a sense,” Jaron said. “More accurately,
they
are in a dream. A simple twist of time. When I call them back, they will have no memory that they didn’t spend this time in the living area, going about their tasks.”

Malachi felt his skin prickle. “You can just… make everyone disappear?”

“Not humans with angelic blood. But pure humans?” Jaron shrugged. “It’s not without effort on my part, but I hardly consider either one of you a threat.”

Malachi had never heard of such a thing. Never even conceived of it. Why was Jaron revealing this power now? He eyed the man with suspicion but followed him down one hallway and up a wide set of stairs. As Jaron walked, he grew, morphing into the form he’d taken the previous times he’d revealed himself to Ava. Close to seven feet tall, dark hair falling around a clearly inhuman face. He was an ancient god. An artist’s mad dream.

And Malachi sensed he was still seeing only a fraction of the angel’s presence.

It was on the third floor of the massive house that he stopped and turned to Ava. A long corridor stretched before them, empty like the rest of the house.

“Is your mind shielded?” he asked Ava.

“Yes.”

Jaron cocked his head, clearly curious. “How?”

“It’s like… a door. I can keep it shut or open it.”

“Interesting. I always wondered. That door?” he said. “Keep it locked.”

Malachi became aware of a growing power. It called him. He could hear the seductive voice in his mind. Twisted whispers of longing. Need.
 

Anger.

Whatever called to him was hungry.

Malachi heard a high girlish hum drift down the corridor. It was beautiful. He needed to find the voice. Hold it. Touch—

“Enough!” Jaron lost any human facade when he shouted, startling Malachi out of the trance. “Silence, Ava!”

Without another word, the angel strode toward down the hall. He raised a hand and a paneled door swung open. Malachi followed cautiously, holding Ava behind him.
 

“Do you feel it?” she whispered.

He nodded but didn’t speak. He felt it. Like coals glowing under long-dead ashes, the voice waited. He hesitated at the threshold but felt Ava’s hand at his back, urging him through.

When Malachi turned the corner, he saw something his years of training could never have prepared him for.

Blinding color filled the institutional room. It was as if he walked in an impressionist painting. Swirling seas and mountain crests. An achingly brilliant sunset covered one entire wall. On the opposite side, a blood-red eclipse hung, surrounded by black night and whorls of stars. Flowers filled one corner. Bones filled another. Twisted roots and looming trees. Layer after layer, the paintings filled the space, even crawling up the ceiling.

And in the corner, a woman sat, huddled on Jaron’s lap.
 

Beautiful was too soft a word.

Her eyes were closed, and her cheek was pressed to Jaron’s chest. When her breath stirred, the raised glyphs on the angel’s skin glowed with a bronze light. Her hair was streaked with red and gold, her skin a dusky echo of the angel who held her. And on Jaron’s face, an expression of such familiar tenderness that Malachi knew immediately why Jaron had been shadowing his mate her entire life.

“Come in,” Jaron said in a voice touched with despair. “Come, Ava, and meet my daughter.”

Chapter Twelve

“DAUGHTER,” AVA WHISPERED, knowing immediately it was true. It had been there all along. Jaron’s strange protectiveness. Watching her. Guarding her in his own way. And Ava’s magic, far too powerful for someone completely untrained.

Of course she was strong. Her great-grandfather was an archangel.

She stepped closer, reaching for Malachi’s hand to anchor her in the beautiful, frightening room. “She’s my grandmother. But… she’s too—”

“She stopped aging soon after she bore your father,” Jaron said, stroking the hair of the woman on his lap. “Like our sons, our daughters do not age as humans do.”

Ava stepped past Malachi, no fear in her heart. The frightening intensity that had bombarded her in the hall had leveled off the moment Jaron entered the room. “She’s so beautiful.”

“Once, she was the most beautiful creature to walk the earth. Her beauty rivaled the children of heaven.”

A wave of longing washed over her. She wanted to touch. Wanted to hug. She was drawn to this strange woman her father had named her after, but she was also afraid. And Jaron showed no sign of letting his child go.

“Ava?” she whispered, crouching down across from her.

There was no furniture in the room except a bed bolted to one wall and a small table attached to the opposite wall. No mirrors. No windows. Plastic pots of vivid paint were lined on the table in precise color order.

Ava looked up and wondered how she had reached the tops of the walls and ceiling.

“I have no idea,” Jaron said, guessing her question. “I’ve wondered that myself.”

Ava looked back to him, surprised by the gentle amusement in his voice. “Does she know I’m here?”

Jaron pressed a palm over his daughter’s temple. “She’s aware, but she’s resting right now. The only real peace she has is when I am able to visit her. Otherwise, she’s quite mad.”

“Why?” Malachi asked. “Is it because she has your blood? The woman we met in Sofia—Kostas’s sister—wasn’t like this.”

“Why do you care, Scribe? She’s the daughter of your enemy.”

Malachi ignored the taunt and knelt down next to Ava, his eyes on the trembling woman in Jaron’s arms.
 

“I have seen trauma like this before, Jaron, usually on the faces of Grigori victims. Who hurt this woman?”

Ava reached for his hand, strangely comforted by the anger in her mate’s voice. The thought of someone hurting a stranger might not have roused another man’s protective instincts, but Malachi wasn’t other men. Even the daughter of a Fallen angel was someone to be protected.

He brushed a kiss over her temple and waited for Jaron to answer.

 
Jaron said, “Yes, she has been hurt. In ways you cannot imagine.”

Her grandmother—it was hard to think of her as a grandmother when she looked the same age as Ava—twisted in her father’s arms. Her mouth opened in a wordless groan.

“Who hurt her?” Malachi asked.

Jaron raised his eyes to meet hers, and Ava saw the truth in the rage and betrayal in his gaze.

“It was one of the Fallen,” she said. “One of the others. Who else would be able to hurt your daughter?”

The angel nodded and let out a heavy breath, more human in that moment than Ava had ever seen him. “Unlike my brothers, I doted on my daughter with no thought of hiding it. I’d only ever had sons, then after she was born… I indulged her. She was quite spoiled.”

Her grandmother’s features twisted in pain before Jaron put a hand on her forehead and she settled again.

“Her mother was a lover I held in some regard. Atefah was descended from royalty. Beautiful. Spirited. A worthy lover for me. She survived the birth, mostly because I forced her to let my older sons care for their new sister. No princess was ever more pampered. Unfortunately, Ava’s mother did not survive a second child. She died giving birth to a son.”

“Did you love her?” Ava asked.

“Love?” Jaron frowned. “No. The Fallen are not capable of love. Atefah loved
me
. Quite desperately. I should have sent her away, but Ava was attached to her mother. So she stayed and died, along with the child. She was the last human lover I took and the only one who gave me a daughter.”

“And that’s why you care about Ava,” Malachi said. “You may not call it love, Fallen, but I can see your regard.”

“As others did,” Jaron said grimly. “It was my own failing. Ava was the first being in thousands of years I held some… affection for. She amused me. If I have a personality in this realm, she reflected it. Perhaps that is why I care for her still.” He looked up with sardonic eyes. “Everything is vanity, after all.”

Vanity, maybe, but Jaron appeared to be fiercely protective. What idiot would have risked his wrath to hurt her?

“Volund,” Jaron said, reading her frown.

Ava’s eyes grew wide. “Volund?”

Jaron’s daughter jerked in his arms.

Malachi picked up the connection immediately. “This is because of your damned rivalry? That was why he targeted
my
Ava. Why he killed me.”

“It’s about power.” The gold fire in Jaron’s eyes was a banked rage. “Everything is about power in our world. Volund was expanding his territory. He had eliminated his competition in Northern Europe. My allies. He had ambitions to hurt me, though I was a far more difficult target. He hurt my daughter to make a point. She was nothing more to him than a political maneuver.”

“I don’t believe you.” Malachi’s voice was low. “This was more than political.”

“Perhaps it is more correct to say it
began
as a political move.” Jaron’s hand tightened on his daughter’s back. “But he became… curious.”

A knot formed at the pit of Ava’s stomach.

Malachi asked, “About?”

“It was the Irin who gave him the idea.”

“What idea?”

Jaron shook his head. “Volund—”

“Nooooo!”
A shriek from the formerly silent woman startled them all. Even Jaron.
 

She shouted and scrambled away from her father, huddling in a corner, her eyes sweeping the room. She was frantic. Ava wasn’t sure her grandmother saw anything more than the demons in her mind.
 

“Stop!” she shrieked. “Stop it. Don’t speak his name.” The words poured out of her, a river of tormented pleas. “Please,
Bâbâ
, no!”

“Ava—”

“
Bâbâ, Bâbâ,
no
.”
A torrent of what sounded like Farsi poured from her lips. Ava wasn’t fluent enough to decipher it. But the strange energy pouring from her grandmother was familiar. Ava knew she could reach her if she could only catch her attention.

Ava crawled forward, ignoring Jaron’s warning to crack open the door in her mind.