Awakening (Children of Angels) (24 page)

“
NO!
”
he roared aloud, surprising himself, as he began his painstaking work.

Gently, carefully, he sent his sensing up to the very top of the shield, which met with the ceiling of the cavern, so high up that he could not see it usually - but with the flames reaching all the way up there, the entire cavern was illuminated. He painstakingly lowered it by no more than a millimetre, and jumped back as the flames flew out of the top, scorching the roof of the cavern.

To his surprise, the flames, now that they had an outlet, managed to force the shield down further, and he found himself fighting to keep it at that level. He didn't know how much further down it could come before the shield would fail completely under the force of this raw and completely uncontrolled power. Quickly, he sent out jets of his own power, focusing his energy on the Truth that his power was cooling, that it would extinguish the flames of Mia’s fire. It seemed to be working, but still the fire fought against him, he felt his power draining already, much faster than he had anticipated. Mia was strong, very strong, to have this much power in her. With one final exhausted push, he sent out as much of his own power as he dared, and like a fire blanket, it fell down in a fog extinguishing the flames as it went.

Finally, he dropped the shield altogether, and looked through the smoke and smoldering stone for any sign of Mia. He hoped, foolishly and even as he did so knowing it was not possible, that she had somehow escaped from the shield. She had been much stronger than he anticipated, perhaps she had been strong enough to Shift out of there, and had left the fire as a screen so he could not see that she was gone. He hoped. But his last shred of hope left him as he saw her figure there on the floor, and the stench of scorched flesh reached his nostrils. She was dead, there was no way she could have survived. This thing that lay before him was no longer Mia.

He moved to take a step forward, towards the small heap on the floor, from which smoke still rose from the tattered burned remains of clothing. Before his foot hit the floor, he had passed out and was blissfully unconscious and unaware of anything happening now in the cavern. She was gone. She was dead. He could not process anything else. A familiar and unexpected emotion, one he had tried very hard to forget - grief - overwhelmed him, and he did not care if he never got up from this floor again. He let unconsciousness take him away to a dreamless blackness, where he did not have to think or feel.

A few feet away, Mia moved her arm feebly.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

W
hen Evan regained consciousness some time later, the smoke had
cleared and the dust had settled. The smell of charred flesh still hung in the air, making him retch as he lay there. He rolled onto his side, his back to Mia. He couldn't look at her. He did not want to remember her like this. No, he corrected himself, he did not want to remember her at all. He wanted it to be a nightmare, he wanted to wake up and find himself in his bed with his mother’s face smiling down at him, telling him it would all be alright.

He lay there, and for the first time in his life, he felt wetness on his cheek that was not from rain or snow or a shower. He lifted his hand to his face in wonder. He was crying. He lay there for a while, allowing the tears to fall, and his chest began to heave with wracking sobs. This was pointless, useless, like all human emotions. All the things he had been raised to see as weaknesses, they were right, they had always been right. He did not want to feel this way. He wanted to shut it off, to go back to not caring. But how could he not care? When the girl had died, because of him.

He wrestled with his own mind as the great heaving sobs continued, and the ground beneath his face grew wetter with tears. Part of him wanted to feel this pain, knew that he deserved the guilt. He should not have taken the girl, he disobeyed direct instructions, he put her into a bubble without warning her, and he provoked her. She had died because of him.

Of course he should feel this wrenching in his chest. He deserved much worse. But another part of him rebelled, the part that had always been there, his whole life. The part that should him
she
had tried to kill
him
. That she was the enemy, that she was actively working against them, to destroy everything. That she had deserved to die - better her than them, and better her than the millions of other creatures on this earth falling into her hands. She had died because of her own uncontrollable rage - it was fortunate indeed that that rage had never had the chance to be released upon the rest of the world. They wanted the world intact, alive - not a desolate and burned wasteland. What good would that be to them?

And yet, one thought screamed louder than all the others - “I wish it had been me that died.”

He wasn't sure how long he lay there. A long time, by normal human standards, he guessed. Long enough for the tears and the wracking sobs to stop. Long enough for his face to dry, and for the floor around him to dry too. Long enough for him to come to his senses, to realize he had to get up and carry on. He had a purpose. And besides, they would be so angry with him for running off. He covered his tracks far too well for them to follow now. They would be worried, he’d never been gone this long. Although he had no idea if they’d even realize how long he’d been gone - timekeeping was not a strong point of his kind. Time was something they considered as a human concept, typical of humans, always trying to quantify and explain things, to make sense of them. Time did not matter when you had eternity.

He sat up slowly, numbly. All the other things had passed in the time he had lain on the floor, the crying and the sobbing- but he hadn't been there long enough for this ache in his chest to go away. His grief and guilt still pricked at the edges of his mind, trying to fight their way back in as he quashed them with sense and reason. He had never felt this before. He had known people (well, to use the term loosely, he had really only ever known Angels) who were gone now. Whose lights went out. Angels did not die - they simply ceased to exist. And he had known many of them, lights lost to the war.

His own parents were gone, extinguished when he was just a small boy. He had
caused
the lights of others to go out, he had banished them to the Shadow World. But never had he experienced this strange ache, as though his heart was collapsing in on itself. He had spent too much time in the human realms, too much time watching her, he decided. He had grown fond of her, despite his own mind trying to tell him he hated her. He cared about her. He
had
cared about her, he corrected the use of tense in his own mind. And now she was gone.

He took a deep breath, and turned to look at the spot where he knew she lay, just a few feet from him. There was a hump on the floor, barely distinguishable from the gloom of the cavern, and he knew that must be her. In his mind, he pictured her as she would be the other times he had seen her asleep. Her eyes closed, her face so peaceful, her chest rising and falling as she breathed. He wanted so desperately to find her like that now. But he knew that he wouldn’t. He didn't want what he saw here to take away the memory of her like that - but was sure that it probably would.

Rising to his feet, he took a few steps and stood over her, looking down at the figure on the ground. He had to move her, he could not just leave her body here - it could be found by them, her death would surely trigger a massive counter offensive, he told himself it was too dangerous. She was no longer shielded, and although she was gone, there would still be the aura of power about her body, they could find her if they looked hard enough. He could give her a proper burial, the earth’s power would cover her own, and they would never find her. Or he could take her to his home, bury her there. Then he could be certain his tracks were covered. But somewhere in his heart, he knew that the real reason he was taking her to his home to bury her was that he could not bear to leave her there alone in the dark.

He quickly shifted back to his rooms, grabbed a huge bed throw and then shifted back to the cavern in a flash before Arduino even had a chance to fully register that he was there. Arduino had been sitting in a chair in Evan’s bedroom, waiting by the window for the boy to return. He did not look best pleased, and Evan was glad he could delay that particular encounter until later.

Now he was back in the gloomy cavern, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness once more, as he sought out the figure on the ground. He gently and carefully spread the throw on the ground beside Mia’s body, and then walked around to the other side of her. He bit his lip as more tears threatened to fall, and he knelt down beside her.

“
Oh Mia
”
he whispered, glad that he could not see her face any more clearly than he could at that moment. Even in the failing light, he could see that she was so badly burned and scarred that she was unrecognizable. Slowly and gently, he slid his hands under her body, his heart breaking as he felt her crisped skin against his hands, and feeling her body weight completely limp, as he lifted her slightly then laid her gently onto the blanket. As he lifted the edge of the blanket to cover her with it for her final journey, a single tear escaped his eye before he could catch it, and splashed down onto her face with a soft pattering sound.

He dropped the blanket and flew backwards in shock as Mia’s clear blue eyes opened and stared up at him.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

T
he darkness and the agony were never-ending. Mia lay there in the
darkness, and wished it would all just stop. She had been lying there for a long time - even a short while would feel like a long time in pain like this, but somehow she knew, it had been a really long time.

She thought she heard, though she could not be sure as her ears were burned and scabbed, someone crying. That couldn't be right. There was no-one there but her, and even if the boy had survived, how was he able to cry? She could not cry. She envied him that, and it seemed she had died for nothing. They didn't sound like the final sobs of someone dying in excruciating pain. They were the wracking heaving sobs of someone in great pain and turmoil, yes, but not the cries of someone about to die. So
they
had won.

She continued to lie there, listening to the sounds of silence now that the crying had stopped. Even her own heartbeat, which had been thundering through her ears as her body screamed in pain had quieted and slowed. So this was it. She was going to die here, alone.

Or not alone? She strained to hear, it sounded like footsteps approaching. Footsteps? That made no sense, who would be walking here?
Leonara
, she felt a surge of hope, hope that the Angel had found her, come to rescue her. Whoever it was, they didn't speak as they approached. They were unsurprised to find her here like this. She thought she heard someone whisper her name softly.

She felt a slight waft of air skitter along the floor beside her, and even as that brushed against her tender skin, it felt like a thousand knives stabbing into her flesh. She lay there limply, despite the pain. Her body did not have the strength to even flinch. And what good would it do her? It would only cause her even more pain. What happened next was both confusing and excruciating. Something slid beneath her, grating against her skin like glass sandpaper, and sending a burning through her entire back. It was as though the fire was still here, although she knew that it wasn’t - the air around her was cool and damp. She felt herself lifted from the ground, and her body remained limp.

She was placed very gently down again, on something soft and much warmer than the cavern floor, although she could still feel the stones beneath her. Her heart slowed even further, and she knew that she was not long for this world. She wondered where her soul would go to. She had always believed in Heaven and Hell, but now she didn't know what to think. Where do Angels go when they die, if they spend their lives in heaven?

Unexpectedly, she felt something fall onto her face, something wet. It couldn't be raining - she hadn’t been lifted long enough to have left the cavern, she was lifted for barely a second. And if it had been Leonara, who had shifted with her, she would have known it, she was sure. The hands that had touched her - she was sure that’s what they were now, hands lifting her gently - were unfamiliar, they had never touched her skin before, of that she was certain. And as the small spot of wetness spread slightly on her face, she got sudden flashes in her mind, broken and confused images that her mind tried to make sense of. Feelings that were not her own.

Hatred, disgust - then shock at the sight of the wall of flames, the inferno that she could not stop. Frantic now, how could she stop it? She must get to the person on the other side! Flashes of the shield lowering, the panic as the flames pushed through. And then grief. Unimaginable sorrow, as she realized she was too late. The girl she had been watching was gone now, dead because of her. Guilt. Why had she done this? Why taunt? They were the same, and now she was alone. And then she realized who it was who had lifted her, who had come back for her - who was crying for her. It was the boy. She used the last of her ebbing strength to force her eyes to open and meet his, as he leaned over her.