Boundless (Unearthly) (33 page)

Her eyes are thoughtful. “I’ll give you a story,” she says. “Something that he’ll want to hear.”

She takes a deep breath and gazes down at the trees below us. “As I said before, I was a nurse once, during the Great War, working at a hospital in France, and one day I met a journalist.”

“At a pond,” I supply. “In your underwear.”

She looks up, startled.

“He’s told me some stories, too.”

She’s mortified at the idea, but pushes on. “We became friends, of a fashion. We became more than friends. At first I think it was only a game for him, to see if he could win me, but as time went on it became … more. For both of us.”

She pauses, her eyes scanning the horizon like she’s searching for something, but she doesn’t find it.

“Then one night the hospital was bombed by the Huns.” Her lips tighten. “Everything was on fire. Everyone was …” She closes her eyes briefly, then opens them again. “Dead. I clawed my way out of there, and it was just fire, fire everywhere, and then Sam rode in on a horse and said my name, and reached out his hand for me, and I took it, and he pulled me up behind him. He took me away from there. We spent the night in an old stone barn near Saint-Céré. He pumped some water and made me sit down, and he washed the soot and blood off my face. And he kissed me.”

Kissed in a barn. Must be a genetic thing.

But this story isn’t going to cut it, I realize. Samjeeza already knows it. It’s the horse charm.

“He’d kissed me before,” Mom continues. “But after that night it was different, somehow. Things had changed. We talked until the sun came up. He finally admitted to me what he was. I had already guessed that he was an angel. I felt it when we first met. At the time I wanted nothing to do with angels, so I tried to ignore him.”

“Right.” I smile. “Angels can be a pain in the ass.”

Her mouth twists, her eyes twinkling for a moment before she gets serious again. “But he wasn’t merely an angel. He told me how he had fallen, and why. He showed me his black wings. And he confessed that he’d been trying to seduce me because the Watchers wanted angel-blood offspring.”

“Whoa. He just admitted it?”

“I was furious,” she says. “It was all that I’d been running away from my entire life. I slapped him. He caught my wrist and asked me to forgive him. He said he loved me. He asked me if I could ever love him back.”

She stops again. I am transfixed by her story. I can see it, the images pouring out with her feelings into my brain. His eyes, earnest, full of sorrow and love, pleading. His voice, soft as he told her,
I know that I’m a wretch. But is it possible that you would ever love me?

I gasp. “You lied.”

“I lied. I said I could never care for him. I told him I never wanted to see him again. And he looked at me for a long moment, and then he was gone. Just like that. I never told anyone about that night. Michael knows, I think, in the way he seems to know everything. But I haven’t ever talked about it until now.” She exhales through her lips like she’s just set down something heavy. “So there’s your story. I lied.”

“You did care for him,” I say carefully.

“I loved him,” she whispers. “He was my sun and moon for a time. I was crazy about him.”

And now he’s crazy about you, I think. Emphasis on
crazy
.

She clears her throat. “It was a long time ago.”

And yet we both know that time can be a tricky thing.

“That must be uncomfortable for you to hear,” she says, seeing my frown. “Me saying I loved a man who’s not your father.”

“But I know you love Dad.” I remember Mom and Dad together in her last days, how obvious the love was between them, how pure. I smile at her, bump my shoulder into hers. “You loooove him. You do.”

She laughs, pushes back against me. “All right, all right, I’ll marry him. I couldn’t very well refuse him now, could I?” She suddenly gasps. “I have to go,” she says, jumping up like Cinderella late to the ball. “I’m supposed to meet him.”

“On the beach at Santa Cruz,” I say.

“I told you about it?” she asks. “What do I say to him?”

“You just kiss him,” I tell her. “Now go on before you’re late and I cease to exist.”

She moves to the edge of the rock and summons her wings. I’m startled by how gray they are, when normally, when I knew her best, they were so piercingly white. They’re still beautiful now, but gray. Undecided. Uncertain.

She hesitates.

“Go,” I say.

There are tears in her eyes.
I don’t want to leave you,
she says in my mind.

Don’t worry, Mom,
I answer, calling her Mom for the first time since I came here.
You’ll see me again.

She smiles and caresses my cheek, then turns and takes off, the wind from her wings blowing back my hair, and glides toward the ocean. Toward the beach, where my father is waiting.

I wipe my eyes. And when I look up again, I’m back in the present, like this entire afternoon has been some kind of beautiful dream.

Two minutes to midnight.

For real, this time.

The vision hasn’t prepared me for the sheer enormity of this moment. I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin. I feel each tick of my watch’s second hand like an electric charge pulsing through me again and again.

I can do this, I tell myself, fiddling with the zipper of my black hoodie.

Tick, tick.

Tick, tick.

The northbound train comes and goes. Samjeeza arrives, claims the lamppost, squawks at me.

But Christian’s not here.

I turn a slow circle, looking for him, my eyes lingering on every empty space, every shadow, hoping to find him, but he’s not here.

He’s not coming.

For a minute I think my fear is going to eat me up.

“Caw,” says the crow impatiently.

It’s midnight.

I have to go. With or without him.

I face the stretch of pavement that will take me across the tracks. One step at a time, my heart going like a rabbit’s, my breath coming in shallow gasps, I cross the tracks.

On the other side Samjeeza unfolds himself into a man. He looks pleased with himself, excited, the fox-in-the-henhouse kind of excited, a wicked gleam in his eye. My skin prickles at the sight of him.

“A fine night for a journey.” He glances around. “I told you to bring a friend.”

“Do you have any friends who’d go to hell for you?” I ask, trying to keep my bottom lip from trembling.

His gaze is piercing. “No.”

He has no friends. He has no anyone.

He
tsk
s his tongue like he’s disappointed in me. “This will not work without someone to ground you.”

“You could ground me,” I say, lifting my chin.

The corner of his mouth turns up. He leans forward, not touching me but close enough to envelop me in the cocoon of sorrow that’s always enclosing him. It is a deep, gut-wrenching agony, like everything beautiful and light in this world has slowly withered and died, crumbled to ash in my hands. I can’t breathe, can’t think.

How did Mom ever manage to get close to this creature? But then, she didn’t have the way with feelings I have. She couldn’t know how black and bone-chillingly cold he truly is inside, how shattered.

“Is this what you want to be bound to?” he asks in a rumbling voice.

I step back and gasp when I’m able to get my breath again, like he’s been choking me.

“No.” I shudder.

“I didn’t think so,” he says. “Ah, well.” He looks down the tracks, where in the distance I can hear the very faint whistle of an approaching train. “It’s probably for the best,” he says.

I’m going to miss my chance.

“Wait!”

I turn to see Christian hurrying across the tracks, wearing his black fleece jacket and gray jeans, his eyes wide, his voice ragged as he calls, “I’m here!”

My breath leaves me in a rush. I can’t help but smile. He reaches me and we hug, clutching at each other’s arms for a minute, murmuring “I’m sorry” and “I’m so glad you’re here” and “I couldn’t miss it” and “You don’t have to do this” back and forth between us, sometimes out loud, sometimes in our heads.

Samjeeza clears his throat, and we step back from each other and turn to him. He cocks his head at Christian.

“Who is this?” he asks. “I’ve seen him hanging around you like some lovesick puppy. Is he one of the Nephilim?”

Christian inhales sharply. He’s never seen Samjeeza before, never been this close to a Black Wing. I wonder for a moment if he wasn’t wrong about seeing Asael. Asael and Samjeeza look enough alike that maybe he confused the two. It’s possible. This could still be his vision, I think.

“He’s a friend,” I manage, grabbing Christian’s hand. Immediately I feel stronger, more balanced, more focused. We can do this. “You said I needed a friend, and here he is. So now you can take us to Angela.”

“Forgetting something, are we?” Samjeeza says. “Your payment?”

What payment?
Christian demands in my head.
Clara, what payment? What did you promise him?

“I didn’t forget.”

The train is approaching, a dull red light at its head, advancing down the tracks. I’ll have to make this fast.

“I have a story,” I tell him. “But I’ll show you.”

With my free hand I reach up and touch Samjeeza’s cheek, which is smooth and cool, inhuman. His sorrow floods me, making Christian gasp as it reverberates through me and into him, but I surge against it, squeeze Christian’s hand tighter, and focus on today, the hour with my mother on the top of Buzzards Roost. I pour it all into Sam’s shocked and open mind: her voice telling the story, the wind blowing her long auburn hair, the way she felt as she told it, the warm soft clasp of her hand holding mine, and finally, the words.

I lied.

I loved him.

Samjeeza flinches. It is more than he expected. I feel him start to tremble under my hand. I step back and let him go.

We wait to see what he will do. The train’s approaching the station. It’s different from the northbound one; this one is smudged with dirt or soot or something black and nasty so that I can’t read the words on the sides. The windows are crowded with black shapes. Gray people, I realize. On their way to the underworld.

Sam’s eyes are closed, his body absolutely still, like I’ve turned him into stone.

“Sam …,” I prompt. “We should go.”

His eyes open. His eyebrows push together, the space between them wrinkling like he’s in pain. He regards Christian and me like he doesn’t know what to do with us anymore. Like he’s having second thoughts.

“Are you absolutely certain that you want to do this?” he asks, his voice hoarse. “Once you board this particular locomotive, there’s no turning back.”

“Why do we have to take a train?” Christian asks impulsively. “Can’t you take us there, the way you did with Clara and her mother before?”

Samjeeza seems to gain back a bit of his equilibrium. “For me to expend energy in that way would call attention to what I’m doing, and the trail could be followed. No, you must go like all the common damned of this world, into the depths by ferry, or carriage, or train.”

“All right,” Christian says tightly. “Train it is, then.”

Are you sure?
I ask him silently, looking into his eyes.

I’ll go where you go,
he answers.

I turn back to Sam. “We’re ready.”

He nods.

“Listen to me carefully. I will take you to your friend, where I have arranged for her to be at the given time, and you must convince her to go with you.”

“Convince her?” Christian interjects again. “Won’t she be eager to get out of there?”

Samjeeza ignores him, focuses on me. “Speak to no one else but the girl.”

What, does he think I’ll stop to chat with the first person I stumble across? “No problem.”

“No one else,” he repeats sharply, talking loudly to make himself heard over the engine of the train as it slows to a halt in front of us. “Keep your heads down. Do not look anyone in the eyes.” He glances at Christian. “Try to maintain physical contact with your friend, but any outward sign of affection or connection between you will be noticed, and you do not want to be noticed. Stay close to me, but do not touch me. Do not look directly at me. Do not speak to me in public. If I am to stay with you, you must do exactly as I tell you, when I tell you, without question. Do you understand?”

I nod mutely.

The train shudders to a complete stop. Samjeeza takes two golden coins from his pocket and drops them into my hand. “For passage.” I pass one to Christian.

“Your hair,” he says, and I pull my hood up over my head.

The doors hiss open.

I step closer to Christian so that our shoulders touch, take a deep breath of what is all at once oily, stale air, and let go of his hand. Together we follow Samjeeza into the waiting car. The doors close behind us. There’s no going back.

This is it.

We’re going to hell.

It’s dark inside the car. I’m immediately overpowered by a claustrophobic feeling, like the grimy walls are shrinking, enclosing us, trapping us. It’s not helped by the fact that there are people crowded around us like shadows, insubstantial and ghostlike, sometimes immaterial enough that I can see right through them or they seem to overlap one another, occupying the same space. There’s an occasional moan from one of them, the sound of a man who’s coughing wretchedly, a woman weeping. The lights over our heads are red and flickering, buzzing like angry insects. Outside the window is nothing but black, like we are passing through an endless tunnel.

I’m scared. I want to clutch at Christian’s hand, but I can’t. People would notice. We don’t want to be noticed. We can’t be noticed. So I sit, head down, eyes on the floor, my heart going
pump pump pump
, and every now and then my leg brushes his, and his anxiety in this situation, his own fear, pulses through me and mixes with my own until I can’t tell who’s feeling what exactly. The train shudders and rocks, the air inside heavy and stifling and cold, like we’re underwater and slowly freezing into a solid block of nothingness. I have to fight not to shiver.