Angelborn (11 page)

I
follow
Genna’s bouncing head as she winds a labyrinthine path through the partygoers. Our second party in as many nights, this one at a fraternity house just off campus. Last night she seemed distant and somewhat … off. I returned with the drink she requested and suddenly she wanted to leave, claiming a headache. My plans to kiss her were thwarted.

But today she was back to normal and seemed very excited about this party.

“Would you like some beer?” I shout into her ear to be heard above the noise of the crowd. She nods, and I grip her more tightly so as not to lose her.

There’s a line at the keg and, while we wait, I scan the crowd. My human body has blood and organs like everyone else’s, but this is the first time I’ve really noticed how the blood flowing through my veins can freeze into ice when faced with a shock. Maia stands across the room. I recognize her instantly, though it takes me several seconds to believe my eyes.

Her face is free of the dark, aggressive makeup she usually wears. A healthy glow brushes her cheeks. Her hair is down, framing her face in soft curls, and a gentle sheen adorns her bee-stung lips. She’s still wearing black, but not her usual jeans and sweatshirt. Tonight she’s donned a dress — sleeveless, with a hemline ending at mid-thigh. It hugs the curves of her body in a sensuous way, and that’s when my blood heats up again. High heels, similar to ones that Genna recently gushed over in a magazine, adorn her feet. She stands awkwardly, discomfort written all over her, and though she looks beautiful, I miss the usual clothes that she wears like armor.

I gape at her for a few moments, then come back to myself when Genna nudges me to move forward in the line. My view of Maia is blocked until the crowd parts, revealing her again. She’s breathtaking. She’s also standing next to a man I’ve never seen before. I remember every face I’ve come into contact with, and his is new. Douglass is a big school, but Maia goes virtually nowhere except class, the cafeteria, and the dormitory.

The man slides an arm around Maia and she tenses. Somehow this causes me to breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t understand her clothes or new appearance, but at least she isn’t interested in him.

Guilt washes over me as Genna presses herself to my side to tell me something about one of the other partygoers. I smile and nod, using half my mind to feign attention to the girl I’ve pinned all my hopes on. The other half of me churns as Maia’s companion slides his hand down her arm, then around behind her back, and she grows even more rigid. It’s then that she notices me. She meets my eyes and frowns, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. She takes a small step away from the man, but he follows, apparently oblivious.

“I think Maia’s in trouble. I’ll be right back,” I tell Genna.

“Maia’s here?” Her voice is filled with incredulity, but I’m already stalking away, filled with indignation on Maia’s behalf. I need to watch it or I’ll start to glow again.

When I reach them, I acknowledge her with a nod and stare pointedly at her companion. He launches a Cheshire cat smile at me, wide and roguish. I turn my attention back to Maia — there’s a warning in her eyes, but also fear. How did she get mixed up with someone she’s afraid of? Doesn’t she know that I’ll protect her?

“I’m surprised to see you here, Maia. I didn’t think this was your kind of event.” My voice sounds foreign to my ears, colder than I intended.

She casts her eyes down and mumbles a response. “College is for parties, right?”

Her gaze is on her feet, so I turn to her companion. “I’m Caleb, a friend of Maia’s. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” It’s not, but I keep it polite, for now.

“Caleb.” His grin grows even wider. He looks over my shoulder, toward the party, and then back to me, and then laughs. It’s a great big belly laugh, completely out of place for the circumstances. Is he mentally stable?

“Oh, this
will
be interesting,” he says, ignoring my outstretched hand.

“And you are?” I ask. He looks older, past the age of most students. Perhaps a graduate student? He loops an arm around Maia’s shoulder, pulling her stiff form closer to him. “I’m a friend of Maia’s as well.”

I’m unaccustomed to anger — I’ve had little cause to ever feel it, but now it grows inside me and I see it for the cancer it is. This feeling could overtake everything if allowed to fester. It could grow and expand until there was nothing left but this rage, and then I could explode, throw my hands around this man’s neck, and squeeze the life out of him.

“Dear Maia,” he says, “why don’t you run off and keep your roommate company since her
beloved
has seen fit to abandon her? Caleb and I need to talk.”

She spears him with a look that holds no fear, only challenge.

“It’s fine. I’m a creature of my word; you can believe it,” he says.

She leaves with another, longer, look at me. There’s guilt and sorrow in her eyes, and more that I don’t understand.

I take a step closer in order to be heard. He rests a hand on my shoulder, and before I can wrench out of his grasp, we are somewhere else. On the roof of the house. In the yard below, the party continues, and raucous laughter filters up to us through the trees. I stumble away from him just as his eyes turn to flame.

“You’re an angel.”

He laughs again. “Perceptive little halfling.”

“Who are you?”

“Helix, and I am keeping your secret, for now.”

My head spins, all that anger morphing into something else. Fear — both for me and for Maia. What is she doing with this angel?

“Why aren’t you turning me in?”

He looks down to the backyard where Genna and Maia are walking together, drinks in hand, scanning the area, no doubt looking for us.

“I have vowed it to her.” He nods at Maia.

A sour coldness grows inside me. “Your vow comes at what price, angel?”

His slow grin spreads across his face like a virus, at once lascivious and victorious. “A very human price. Do you not like the clothes I bought for her? They are much more appropriate than the morbid rags she usually wears. They accentuate more of her … assets.”

My tongue thickens with a putrid taste. “Leave her alone. There are billions of other humans to play with — why her?”

He comes closer to me, a soft glow emerging on his skin. I don’t think he’s aware of it, but he’s radiating power. Angels, too, have difficulty maintaining human form, especially when experiencing strong emotions.

“I can see why you like her. She is remarkable. Much more interesting than your limp rag of a soul mate.”

“Don’t talk about Genna like that.”

He snorts. “Yes, Maia is something special. Do you know that I removed her Sight and she begged for it back?” He takes note of the shock on my face, and his grin grows. “Said she needed it to help you. Poor Caleb, languishing there in the Wasteland. Poor Caleb, can’t convince the love of his lives to bind with him. I simply have to help him.” He mocks her concern with a high-pitched voice and a fluttering of the eyelids. “It’s all so very earnest. How could I resist?”

“So you gave her back her powers and what? Coerced her into being your girlfriend?”

He laughs. “Not all of us are obsessed with human love, Caleb. She does not need to be my girlfriend in order for me to get what I want from her. Pleasure only, in exchange for my continued silence to the powers that be about one fugitive halfling. I consider it to be a fair trade.”

I sputter, stepping away from him and the knowledge that he’s given me. “So you’re going to use her? And she agreed to this?”

“Mustn’t let poor Caleb rot away down there for eternity. You should be glad. I’m actually doing you more than one favor. Maia is a distraction to your goal. What you should be concerned with is how you’re going to convince your meek little mouse there to share a part of her soul with you. The Vultures are getting closer, even without me alerting them, and you are running out of time.”

He’s right, I know it, but the idea of him and Maia is still staining my vision with red.

“It’s really too bad you chose a soul mate with such strong convictions. ‘My soul must be whole and pure for any chance of heaven.’” He mimics Viv’s words to me from another life. I don’t bother to ask how he knows them.

Helix sidles over, and we both stare down at the girls. “I must give you credit, though, halfling. You certainly have good taste. Just remember to focus on what’s important, while you still can.”

With that, he disappears from sight, reappearing an instant later at Maia’s side. He says something to her, and both girls turn to look up toward the roof. I become invisible, knowing it will only protect me from Genna’s eyes. I can’t bear to look at Maia. Shame overwhelms me as I float down from the roof and become visible again in the bushes on the side of the house.

I’m so distracted that I forget to avert the humans’ eyes, and one stumbling student behind me shouts at my appearance.

“Whoa,” he says, then his skin turns a greenish tinge and he recommences vomiting into the bushes.

G
enna
and I lie in a hammock in the backyard as the party dies down around us. She’s pressed against my side, my arm around her shoulder, but still she feels so far away. Or perhaps I’m the one who’s distant. I’m back on that roof, replaying Helix’s words, watching him and Maia together.

Where did they go off to? What are they doing? The last I saw them, she was pulling the angel back into the sea of partygoers, leaving me and Genna without a second look.

Genna shifts in my arms. She’s quite drunk. I think she may have fallen asleep until she starts giggling uncontrollably.

“Are you all right?” I brush back her hair to reveal her face. She entwines her fingers with mine and raises our joined hands, pointing at the stars.

“You picked them for me,” she says, slurring her words slightly.

I tense, holding my breath.

She giggles again. “It was sweet, and I wanted to marry you so much. None of the other boys knew how to pick stars out of the sky.”

I scramble to sit upright in the hammock, causing it to sway and almost toss us onto the ground. Regaining my grip on the insubstantial material, I right us, but the whole action has us swinging back and forth. Genna groans at the motion.

“What else do you remember?”

She releases me and raises her hand to her head. “Tomatoes. You loved tomatoes so much. And the Easter fair at Hampstead Heath. We rode the merry-go-round for nearly an hour. You took me on a picnic at a sheep farm.” She laughs. “But you didn’t realize the ram was out.”

I’d had it all prepared and thought it would be a wonderfully romantic afternoon, but it ended disastrously when the ram took great offense to us being in his territory and charged.

“You remember! Vivian.” I pull her closer and squeeze her. She lets out a pained moan until I loosen my grip. The effect of the alcohol has turned her normally bright eyes cloudy. She looks up at me dreamily.

“I was different then. But you were the same. Caleb.” My name passes her lips with reverence, and the haze in her eyes clears momentarily. The memories from her old life are slipping back. I see the moment she remembers my death. Our deaths. Her face crumples, and she’s close to tears.

“You left me,” she whispers.

“I didn’t want to, you know that. But I’ve found you again.”

I can’t have this conversation lying in a wobbly hammock. I wrap her in my arms and stand us up, then carry her to the grass so we can sit face to face. Her eyes are still unfocused and dazed. I wish she were sober, but maybe then she wouldn’t have remembered.

“Do you recall what I asked you? Before we died?” She lazily traces the shape of my face with a fingertip, drawing small circles across my cheeks and nose. The feeling is like a fly buzzing around my face. It makes me anxious. I pull her hand into mine.

“I was able to escape the Wasteland and find you. Will you bind with me?”

She shifts over to sit beside me and rests her head on my shoulder. “You still want to take my soul.”

“No, no, never that. If you share it with me, out of love, then we can be together. No one will be able to take me away from you. We’ll have this life and the next, all of them, until our soul finds its place in Euphoria. You wouldn’t have to give up yourself at all.”

“I’d be damned.” It’s a whisper, an echo of her former fears. She reaches for the cross around her neck and rubs it between her fingers.

“No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be harmed or endangered. You wouldn’t lose anything. You would just save me.”

Her breath tickles my cheek as she leans into me.

“Genna, please. Will you save me?”

I crane my neck to view her face. Her eyes are dull and glassy. I caress her cheek, and she leans into my palm. She lays a finger on my lips, and her lids fall shut sluggishly. Her head rocks back and forth.

“Reverend says damnation awaits those who don’t protect their souls. Beware of demons in angels’ clothing.”

I drop my head into my hand. She still doesn’t believe me. I would blame it on her drunkenness, but I know full well that isn’t the cause. She made the same arguments a lifetime ago.