Wings of Darkness: Book 1 of The Immortal Sorrows Series (10 page)

     Literally, from one blink of the
eye to the next, we went from my bedroom to Gwen’s room about a mile down the
road from my house.  I was left dizzy and disoriented.  I wondered
what Asher would do if I yakked on his boots.  The idea was almost
funny.  If he didn’t stop bullying me around, I might just find out how
he’d like it.  Would serve him right, if I did puke on him.  He let
me go and stepped away from me, as if he sensed my thoughts.

     Dazed, I glanced around.  How
did we get there so fast?  How on earth was that even possible?  Gwen
was asleep, the colorful old quilt her grandma had made her, pulled all the way
up to her chin. The bruises under her eyes were dark and livid.  She
looked bad; much paler than her normal, healthy pink color.  “Your friend
is not sick; you are taking the life out of her.  Her energy is feeding
you.”  Asher’s voice was harsh and entirely too loud; it grated on my
nerves. 
He
grated on my nerves.

     “Would you hush?  You’ll wake
her up.”  It came out as a furious whisper.

     “She cannot hear us.  We are
in a different level of reality.  Just the fact that you can even exist
here tells me that you are no longer human.”  Sweet talker.  All this
talk about me no longer being human was about to hurt my feelings.

     I watched Gwen toss and turn in her
sleep.  She moaned softly.  Probably dreaming of being chased by a
crazy, homicidal clown.  My eyes began to sting a little.  Was he
right?  Was I really hurting Gwen?  Like some kind of vampire?

     I chose to ignore the part about me
no longer being human.  I could deal with that later. I figured there were
lots of things I would have to deal with later.  In the meantime, I had to
find a way to fix Gwen, if I could.  I sighed, defeated. “What do I have
to do, to make her better?”

     “Learn to channel your
abilities.  You have been feeding on her, your father, everyone you have
been in contact with.  That is how you healed your injuries so
quickly.  It is why you are so much stronger and faster than you
were.”  That was horrifying information, but it rang true with me. 
Would I have to give up my family and friends?  Move far away from people
and become a hermit?

     Suddenly, I wanted to sit down and
cry like a six year old.  This was all too much.  “She was looking
better at the haunted house.”  That came out in a pitiful, soft
whisper.  I felt ashamed of myself, but I had never meant to harm anyone,
much less, Gwen.  Never her.

     “You were surrounded by a crowd of
people, all amped up on adrenaline.  You had energy coming in from a dozen
different sources.”  I was thoroughly disgusted with myself, but I knew he
was telling the truth.  I’d felt a rush at the haunted house, and thought
I was simply wired from being startled every few minutes.  Instead I’d
been feeding from the people around me.  This whole situation was just
sick and wrong, and I could see no way out of it.

     “What did you turn me into,
Asher?  Some kind of vampire?”  I couldn’t believe I was even having
this conversation.

     “I told you; no one has ever seen
your like before.  You are utterly unique.”

     “Cut the shit, Asher.”  I
rounded on him.  “Who, exactly, are you?”  I wasn’t one hundred percent
sure I really wanted to know.  He said he could protect me from the
Reaper.  Which meant he had to be just as bad, if not worse. 
Probably much, much worse.

     He looked directly into my eyes,
and never blinked. “I am Ashrael, and I am the Angel of Death.”  It took a
moment for that to sink in.  The Angel of Death… the freaking Angel of
Death!  Oh, shit.  It dawned on me
why
he was at the wreck.  Oh, I had been so stupid. 
Trusting, and stupid.

     I backed away from him,
slowly.  “No, you said the other guy was the Grim Reaper.  The crazy
one?  Remember him?  Tall, dark, and fangy?”

     Asher nodded, looking tired
suddenly, and I saw infinite age in his eyes.  Those eyes had seen entire
civilizations rise and fall.  He covered it quickly, but I know what I
saw.  “There are several embodiments of Death, Isabel.  I am the
Angel of Death.  Samael is the Grim Reaper.  Beneath him are many
lesser, Reaper angels.  Death is everywhere, and it is constant.  No
single individual could keep up with all of it.”

     I backed away from Gwen’s
bed.  The room spun.  He caught me as I started to fall, and smooth
as if we were dancing, I felt my own bed come up to meet me.  “Neat
trick,” I muttered.  “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you do
that.”  I closed my eyes and waited for the room to stop moving.  I
felt sick.  My nerves were raw.  This was too much information to
take in, all at once.  I didn’t want to know any of it; not now, maybe not
ever.

     I heard him cross into the
bathroom, then the sound of the tap running.  “Drink this.  It will
help.”  He pressed a cool glass of water into my hand.  I sat up a
little and took a sip.  He was right; it helped.  It was something
normal to hang onto at least, in a world gone crazy.

     I found myself taking a shaky
breath. “That thing you do is rough, but better than flying, I guess.  Why
did you fly with me, by the way, if you could do the blinky thing?”

     “The ‘blinky’ thing is a shift in
space and time.  It allows me to move very quickly.”  He shrugged again, that
non-committal gesture I was quickly growing accustomed to. “Would you have
believed any of this if you had not seen my wings?”  Soft, dark wings the
color of charcoal.  The color of nightmares.  I was in such seriously
deep shit, I thought bleakly.

     I shook my head.  “I don’t
know.  Yes. No. Maybe.  I’m still not sure this isn’t a very strange
dream I can wake up from in the morning.” 
Please be a dream I can wake up from. 

     The mattress groaned and sagged as
Asher sat down next to me.  He looked way too big for my little
room.  “Everything I told you is real.  You are not crazy.  I
know this is a lot to take in all at once, but you need to know the truth.
 I am not trying to frighten you, but we have gone too far for you to remain
ignorant of your gifts.” 
Ignorance
is bliss, or so they say. 

     I studied his face for long moments
in the dim light of my bedside table.  He was a beautiful thing. 
High cheekbones, strong jaw, golden hair, and eyes so dark they were nearly black;
everything I imagined an angel should look like.  The Angel of
Death?  Not so much.  And yet, those eyes were ancient.  He was
as old as time itself, it seemed. “So you’re what Death looks like.  I
always wondered.” 

     He glanced away, then back at
me.  He seemed almost shy.  “How do I look to you, Isabel?” 

     I snorted.  I couldn’t help
it, he continued to surprise me.  “Seriously?  Are you fishing for
compliments?”  Um, vain, much?

     “No,” the slightest hint of pink
colored that smooth skin of his, “it is just that Death appears to everyone
differently.  Some people refuse to see me at all.  They may get a
sense that I am there, a feeling, but not much else.  Some people find me
terrifying.  They see the thing that they fear the most.  There is a
reason I am depicted as a skeleton, more often than not.”  His voice grew
soft and he smoothed the corner of my comforter down.  “I have often
wondered how you would see me.”  He glanced up at me from under his lashes
and I had the distinct feeling that I was drowning.

     I blew out a deep breath.  I
felt much better; the nausea was almost gone. Now, I felt uncomfortable for an
entirely different reason, but this seemed important to him.  It couldn’t
have been easy for him to ask me such a thing.

     “I’m only saying this once, so
don’t let it go to your head, ok?”  He looked suddenly wary, like he was
afraid of my answer.  I touched his arm so he would look at me. 
“There is nothing frightening about you, Asher.  Your hair is blonde, your
eyes are dark, and you have incredible bone structure.  There’s nothing
hideous about you; no fangs or warts, if that’s what you want to know.” 
His eyes warmed me as I spoke and I had an unbearable urge to crawl under the
bed to hide.  His smile was devastating.  When he smiled like that,
his whole face lit up and he might have been the most beautiful thing I’d ever
laid eyes on, but I’d be damned if I would tell him that.  A girl has to
have some pride, after all.

     “You can see my true face.” 
He nodded to himself, seemingly pleased.  He grinned a slow grin that made
my head swim a little.

     “Yeah, I guess.”  I was
incredibly warm.  This whole conversation was embarrassing, and I really
didn’t have much experience dealing with guys my own age, much less some
immortal, all-powerful being, needing his ego stroked. 

     “I do have to ask one thing,
though?”

     Abruptly, his face seemed to close
off.  “Alright.  Go ahead.”

     “What’s the deal with your
wings?  Why are they black?  Aren’t angel wings supposed to be
white?”  Unless he was a fallen angel, maybe?  Those are supposed to
be black, aren’t they? I should’ve paid attention when my grandma was dragging
my ass to Sunday school all those years ago.

     He looked relieved, like he’d been
afraid I would ask something really bad, or hard to answer.  “They are
actually dark grey.  No death is ever black or white; good or evil. 
There are always shades of grey.”  Well, that was a nice, evasive answer.

     I sat up and threw my legs off the
edge of my bed to sit next to him.  “Ok, so let’s say I believe all of
this.”  I held a hand up to stop him speaking before I finished. 
“I’m not totally convinced, mind you, but let’s say for the sake of argument
that I believe everything.  You are Death.  What were you doing at my
wreck?  You said it yourself; it wasn’t my time.” 

     “I was there for the other
driver.”  He rubbed his hands slowly together.  The gesture reminded
me of Lady Macbeth; washing, always washing, the blood from off her
hands.  I really wanted to start firing questions at him, but I had an
idea that he would either shut down or change the subject if I rushed
him.  So I waited.

     “Fate and Time determine a person’s
lifespan, normally.  I, and others like me, harvest the souls when their
time comes due.  Then the soul moves on.  If they have learned all of
the lessons that they needed to learn, they pass on to Judgment.  If not,
they move on for another life cycle.  Reincarnation.”

     Sounded reasonable enough, I
guessed.  I nodded to keep him talking.  “Your soul called to me. It
was the strangest thing I have ever witnessed.  You somehow managed to
slip, unaided, from your body.  If I had not intervened you might have
been lost.  Lost souls wander.  They find no peace.  They become
pitiful things that haunt the living. We call them the Immortal Sorrows.” 
He dragged both hands through his hair and sighed heavily.  “I am sorry.”

     A lost soul?  That didn’t
sound promising at all.  I patted his shoulder, awkwardly.  “You
don’t have to be sorry for saving me.  Really, it’s ok.”

     “I am not sorry I saved you. 
I am sorry for the hell that will be rained down upon you, because I saved
you.”  Yeah, that didn’t sound good.

     “Um, should I ask, or do I really
want to know?”  I tried for a light tone, but inside a cold finger of fear
crept slowly down my spine, setting off about a million little goose bumps.

     “Fate knows what I did.  She
does not like being overlooked.  She does not like to be second guessed,
either.  If she is not already, she will be coming for you.”  He took
my hand in his much larger one and butterflies soared in the pit of my
stomach.  I really needed to learn to control that.  “I can protect
you, but we have to prepare you.”

     “Sounds bleak. So where do we
start?”

     “You learn to feed.  Then you
learn to fight.”

     “Feed?  Like blood?”  I
thought I might be sick.

     Asher’s smile was rueful.  “My
blood will make you stronger, yes.  You can have my blood when you need
it, but you can take nourishment in other ways, I think.  To be honest, I
really have no idea how your abilities will manifest.  You may eventually
not need to feed from either blood or energy.”  Well, it wasn’t much, but
it was something to hope for.

     Asher brought my hand up and placed
it over his heart.  I wasn’t sure, being what he was, that he would even
have a heartbeat, but it was there, under my palm, steady and strong: beating
an eternal, perfect cadence.  I started to pull away, completely
embarrassed to be feeling up a relative stranger. “I’m not comfortable with
this, Asher.”

     “Hush.  Listen to the beat of
my heart.  Feel it call to you.”  His eyes held a dreamy, unfocused
look. I could feel my own heartbeat speed up to match his, till they were
beating in synch.  “Feel the bond.  Draw from it.  Take what you
need.  Feed from me and you will not need to take from those around
you.” 

     Energy hummed through our
connection; my whole body tingled and thrummed like I’d just grabbed a live
wire.  I pulled back, breathless from the contact.  “What was that?”

     He smiled at me, and looked
pleased.  “That is one of the ways you can feed.  Only from me,
however.  You are much stronger than I thought; you could kill a human if
you did that to one.”

     I felt incredible, like I’d just
had multiple cups of coffee, only minus the jitters that go along with
it.  “Wow.”  I laughed and rubbed at the palm of my hand.  I
could still feel energy humming along the skin where I’d touched him.

     “You were changed by the blood of a
Reaper.  You will have certain characteristics that mimic mine.  When
a soul is harvested we touch above the heart; here.”  His hand hovered
above my heart, so close, but not touching.