Angel's Power (3 page)

“We are,” Gabriel said, sitting
back down as well. “We need another person from our generation who has the
skill to think clearly.”

Suriel laughed. “Who told you I
think clearly? Surely not my little brother?”

Raphael grinned. “I may have exaggerated
slightly when I called you a dumb bird to your face when we were kids.”

“You did that more than once, if I
recall,” Suriel said, one eyebrow lifted.

“Yes, well, I was a child,” Raphael
said crossly. “I also recall you smacking me in the head a lot.”

Ariel smiled to herself as they
bantered. Raphael’s eyes were twinkling.

“Your head just needed a little adjustment,”
Suriel explained.

Ariel laughed under her breath. A
glance at her brother showed her that he found Suriel and Raphael just as entertaining,
but he interrupted the sibling bickering anyway. “As amusing as this is, we
only have a half-hour before the other candidates come to the chamber.”

Suriel looked at Gabriel in
surprise. “That is why you three are here?”

Raphael nodded and sat down. “Yes.
We need to restore the People’s confidence in their leader. To do that, we need
to go back to the old ways. We need a Council.”

Suriel glanced at Ariel. “You agree
with this?”

She didn’t know why he was asking
her. “I do.”

He pursed his lips. “If I agree,
you must understand that there may be times when I cannot be here. Sometimes
the press of other angels makes my power difficult to control.”

Gabriel frowned. “Are you
accepting?”

“I am, if you understand that I
came here to stop demons. That is my first priority.” Suriel slumped down in
the chair. “It really should be my
only
priority.”

“As the leader of the People, I can
tell you with full confidence that rooting out any more demons is my highest
priority, too,” Gabriel said, his voice low and sure.

“We can’t allow another one to draw
our People into ruin,” Ariel added. She shuddered as she thought about the
battle her brother had fought against their late, demon-possessed leader,
Samael. Gabriel had almost died. She didn’t want to see that happen again.

“Then, yes. I accept,” Suriel said,
rubbing his face tiredly. “As long as you know my limitations.”

Raphael smiled. “Excellent. It’s
your turn to look these over.” He pushed the pile of papers towards his
brother. “We need to choose three more.”

Ariel chuckled at the look on
Suriel’s face. He eyed the papers as if they were going to bite him. When he
gathered them up and started reading through the stack, he looked even more
dismayed. “There must be at least twenty-names here!”

“There are twenty-one,” Ariel said,
smiling innocently at him.

He gave her an unfriendly stare.

She wasn’t fazed. “Welcome to our
world. It’s not hell, but it’s close enough to it to feel the burn.”

****

Suriel dropped his pack on the bed
and looked around the chamber. Ariel had shown him to the room at the top of
the tower built into the northern end of the castle. She’d said it was the most
isolated place in the building and apologized for the dust. He didn’t care.
After living in a cave for over a year, sleeping in an actual bed would be a
luxury beyond imagining.

He walked over to the windows,
drawing back the heavy drapes to look out over the winter landscape. Night had
come while they’d argued with the angels who’d come to be part of the new
Council. He sighed. He never wanted to confront that many hidebound oldsters in
one room again as long as he lived. Some of them even refused to believe in
demons at all. He couldn’t understand their willful ignorance, especially after
Gabriel had nearly died from the fight to depose the demon inhabiting their old
leader, Samael, who had been at the heart of the People’s decline in recent years.

He shook his head and tried to let
his anger go. God, he was tired. Unbidden, the sweet, heart-shaped face of the
Alpha’s sister came into his mind. She was beautiful. Her long brown hair slid
like water over her shoulders and her eyes were the blue of summer skies. Even
more impressive was her keen intelligence. When Raphael had said she’d been the
one to organize the Council on Gabriel’s behalf, he’d thought his younger
brother had been exaggerating. When the oldsters had filed in, he’d quickly realized
that Raphael had, if anything, understated the matter. Ariel had managed to get
all the candidates seated and quiet, and then had run the meeting for the next
several hours, giving her brother time and space to make the final decisions.
She was perfect as the Alpha’s second-in-command. Ariel was strong, beautiful,
and intelligent.

He wanted her for his own.

Suriel’s mother had been right.
He’d finally found a mate, except he could never let her know how he felt. The
last person on Earth he would subject to his wild power was the one he most
wanted to protect. Ariel could never know of his desire for her.

He growled under his breath, pacing
enough to send up little puffs of dust from the floor. The frustration ate at
him. He’d finally met an angel who matched him, mind, body, and soul, and he
couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t claim her. He started stripping his shirt off,
suddenly desperate to get out of the castle, into the skies where freedom was
more than a word. He needed to fly. Needed the space for his heart to accept
what it could not have.

He shoved open the window, pushing
on the casement until it opened with a harsh creak. It was old, but still in
good shape, not that he cared at the moment. He looked down. The circle below
the castle was covered with snow sparkling beneath the gibbous moon. The dreary
skies he’d flown through to arrive at Castle Archangel earlier had given way to
crystal clear views. Further away, the ridges and valleys of the Appalachian
mountain range stretched across the landscape. He stepped up onto the window
ledge and jumped, shifting his wings into being as he fell.

As soon as they unfurled, the wind
caught him and he swooped up into the heavens. He stretched his arms out,
fingers splayed as he soared over the frozen wilderness. He wasn’t heading
anywhere in particular. Instead, he let the winds talk to him. Energy slid down
his skin, dancing along his bones as he flew. He closed his eyes and let the
currents take him where they wanted. When he glanced down a moment later, he
sucked in a sharp breath. There was nothing beneath him. Nothing above him. As
had happened only a scant handful of times in his life, he was in a vision of
what might happen. He swallowed, hard, and let the universe speak to him.

Images flashed across his eyes, too
fast to understand. When they slowed, he gasped as Ariel’s face floated up
through the mist. She was crying, mottled wings closed around her body
protectively. Something was wrong with her. The vision pushed her down into the
dark and he groaned as blood filled his gaze. When the images cleared, he saw
her on the ground, unconscious, a grievous wound in her abdomen. Her wings lay
like broken sticks around her as her blood seeped into the hard stone of a
cavern.

“No!” he yelled, wrenching his face
to the side, refusing to accept the vision, but the image followed him. She
looked like death, so pale and still and beautiful. Suriel couldn’t control his
breathing. He couldn’t control anything at all. He hung in the fog of his power
gone rogue, praying for an end to the terrible possibilities. When the energy
finally released him, he shuddered in relief, barely catching himself before
plummeting to the ground. The image faded and he saw that he was gliding across
a ridgeline near Seneca Lake. He pivoted in the air, letting the magic take him
higher. When he was so far above the Earth that he couldn’t breathe, he let
himself fall.

Air rushed past him. His face felt
like a mask, frozen and angry. He had to make sure that what he saw didn’t
happen. Somehow. He opened his wings at the last moment and caught the air just
in time to avoid splattering himself on the snow. Then, silently, he opened his
mind and let the winds fill him. Power trickled along his fingertips and wings,
and he warmed it, forming a powerful line of warm air that he cast out over the
winter landscape. Fog rolled over him as the heated air met the snowy ground,
and Suriel let himself lightly float down. The mist wrapped him in its arms,
and only then, when he was certain he was alone, did he let himself cry.

Chapter Three

Ariel pried her eyes open, groaning
as her body informed her that she hadn’t gotten enough sleep. It didn’t matter.
Her alarm blared at her from the nightstand and she had to get up. She needed
to fly long before anyone else woke up so no one saw her wings. She shoved the
covers down, shivering as the cold air of the chamber hit her skin. She almost
wanted to skip it today, except she’d learned her lesson with that a long time
ago. If an angel spent too much time in human form, the urge to change became
an itch, then eventually a compulsion.

She smiled to herself as she
thought about the lesson they all learned eventually, usually the hard way.
She’d put it off when she was a teenager once, not shifting for about a month. When
her wings had finally demanded her attention, it had happened in the middle of
a family dinner. Her mother, father, and brother had all ended up with a lot of
chicken soup in their hair. Ariel had ended up with her favorite sweater in
shreds.
Not a lesson I feel like repeating.

She used the bathroom and changed
into a halter and a pair of leggings and tall boots. When she opened the window
facing the circle, a blast of pre-dawn cold air made her shiver. Outside, early
morning stars glittered like diamonds in the clear sky. Her fingers tingled,
and she glanced down at her legacy marks, frowning when she realized that more
of them had changed to blue. Prickles like static electricity ran up and down
her skin and she rubbed her arms to dispel the sensation. She’d started to
wonder if maybe she had some kind of nerve damage happening, except she didn’t
seem to be losing any muscle tone. In fact, when she flew, she had more energy
than ever, almost like the wind spoke to her.

Which is crazy,
she told herself,
squaring her shoulders.
Only a sorcerer can use the energy of the winds to
boost power. And the People already have a sorcerer.
She shook her head,
putting her worries aside. From the look of the light just beginning to color
the horizon, she didn’t have much time for flying. She’d have to hurry if she
wanted to get a good workout.

She shifted quickly, then stepped
up onto the window ledge and leaped. From the corner of her eye, the mottled
blue and brown of her wings flashed darkly and she winced. She hoped no one saw
her fly off.

****

Suriel woke up just before dawn, feeling
restless and tired. He’d flown back late last night after his vision and
collapsed into bed. After flying down to the castle from his home in Maine,
spending hours with the council, and
then
going for a flight that had
turned into a life-altering vision, he’d been exhausted. He thought he’d sleep
until the sun was up at least.

“This is because you’re thinking
about Ariel,” he murmured to himself. He closed his eyes and tried to go back
to sleep, but something deep inside kept him from resting. Finally, he gave up
and padded to the windows that faced east. Something called to him. He pushed
back the drapes and stared out into the darkness for a long time. When a bright
flash sparked in the corner of his eye, he turned to look, sucking in a sharp
breath when he saw a delicate angel leap from the building.

That’s Ariel,
his subconscious told
him before his waking mind had a chance to recognize what his eyes were seeing.
She was gorgeous, but there was something odd about her wings…

“My God,” he breathed, hands going
to the windowsill. Her wings were silver-tipped, like his, and mottled. Most of
the People’s wings were brown. He’d never seen anyone with wings that were
streaked the way hers were. “But she’s clearly not injured,” he said to
himself, staring as she flew up into the sky. When her form blurred into
nothing, he forced himself to close the window and step back.

Why were her wings half-brown,
half-something else? He hoped she wasn’t ill. His gut told him she wasn’t. His
body told him it didn’t matter. He still wanted her.

****

“God, I don’t ever want to go
through that again,” Raphael was saying when Ariel walked into the kitchen.
She’d changed into a pair of dark corduroys and a soft, pink sweater. After her
flight this morning, she couldn’t seem to get warm and so she bundled up in her
favorite warm clothes. She’d spent most of the day in her room, resting. It
hadn’t helped. Her wings were even bluer now, the brown fading away like mud
settling to the bottom of a pond. It was strange and disturbing. She was doing
her best not to think about it.

“What don’t you ever want to go
through again?” she asked as she pushed her worry aside. She grabbed a banana
muffin from the plate in the middle of the table and smiled her thanks at their
housekeeper, a sweet older human lady who’d worked at the castle for years.