Lunangelique (The Lunangelique Series) (26 page)

He’s sitting at a little table in the corner of the room, reading the newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee like a woman isn’t being held hostage right in front of him.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Alexis.” He looks up at me and puts his paper down.

I want to say, ‘
It’s nice to meet you too, Cerviel,’
but decide it might be better to continue to play ignorant. “Who the hell are you?”

He smiles at me but doesn’t answer. “Why have Kakabel and Astaroth taken so much interest in you? What are you to them?” he demands in a voice that radiates anger while his face still reads extreme pleasure in talking to me.

“A really good artist,” I reply back.

He laughs at me like I have said the funniest joke in the world. I keep my face neutral, not wanting to show any emotions while he finally collects himself. “You
are
amusing. Aren’t you scared? Why do you not fear me? Do you know what I have done to Kakabel? What I intend to do to you?”

I shrug my shoulders, wanting to appear as calm as possible. “I won’t be scared if I tell myself there is nothing to fear. You cannot hurt me because I will tell myself not to feel pain. I don’t know what you did to my art professor so I won’t know what you will do to me.” I play with him with words because I know he will not understand.

“Where are your wings?” he demands, angry now because I’m not giving anything away.

“What this?” I nod my chin to the necklace around my neck. He comes forward and yanks it off my neck. “Hey, I like that,” I whine like a spoiled child.

“Malachi,” he calls towards the other room. In a few seconds Malachi is by his side. He takes Cole’s wings that Cerviel hands him and studies it before laughing. “I thought you would like that.” Malachi throws it on the floor and stomps on it. “Go back to Samson,” Cerviel orders him. Malachi is gone in the blink of an eye, leaving me alone with Cerviel again.

“That’s my necklace.” I pout. “There’s no reason to treat it that way.”

“It will hurt your lover,” he informs me with a malicious smile. “If you will not cooperate then we will torture him.”

“How?” I challenge him.

“His wings,” he indicates to the necklace lying on the floor, “contains a link to him. They’re still connected even though they’re not attached. If you hurt one than you hurt the other.”

“You’re insane,” I act like his notions are ridiculous.

“Want to test it out?” he picks it up and places his hands on either end like he’s about to twist it or break it in two.

“No!” I scream. Games up. I lost this match. Shit!

“What are you?” he asks again patiently. He takes a chair and places it in front of me. Then, he sits down, folding his legs and hands as they rest on his leg. He’s acting like this is a normal conversation over tea with a friend.

“Can I have some water, please?” I’m trying to buy some time to get away.

“After you answer my questions,” he answers.

“Are you going to let me go after I do?”

“It depends on if I like your answers.” He smiles sweetly at me. “What are you?” he asks again.

“A girl who is starting to get pissed off that you keep asking me that like I’m a freaking alien or something!” I scream it at him. I close my eyes and take a deep breath to calm down when I feel a slap across my face. My eyes dart open and I glare at him angrily. I taste blood on the side of my mouth and lick at it. He stares at the wound and I see a light bulb go off in his eyes. He grins wickedly at me and then produces a switch blade from his pocket.

“Let’s see how much of a pissed off girl you really can be,” he mocks me and then plunges the knife into my hand, impaling it into the arm of the chair I was gripping. My eyes bulge open in shock and horror and I want to scream but I tell my nerves not to feel anything and my hand goes dead of feeling. I’m so glad right now that I’m a freak.

He watches my expression change with amusement and then looks lethal again when I don’t scream out. I drum the fingers of my other hand on the arm of the chair. Acting like I’m bored with this act. “Where are your wings?” Cerviel demands of me.

“I don’t have any wings you freakin’ lunatic. I’m just a girl.” I start laughing because my hand not responding to being impaled is a pretty sure sign that I am not human. I feel psychotic in the moment. I think shock is setting in and I cannot control it. I just continue to laugh at him.

His face breaks out in uncontrolled angry grimace and then he pulls the knife out of my hand and plunges it into my chest. I feel it tear through the arteries of my heart. I’m so shocked he did it that I stop breathing, which ends my laughter.

Go and find her brother,” I hear him bark at someone before I black out again.

*

“Lexi. Lexi. Lexi!” I hear a voice calling me but it sounds muddled, like it’s talking through water. My eyes try to flicker open and I see a silhouette of someone standing in front of me. I realize by a sharp pain in my lungs that I’m not breathing so I take in a large gasp of air. The effort hurts and chokes me into a fit of coughs.

“Lexi!” I hear the voice clearer now. It’s filled with relief. I look down and try to focus my eyes on the closest thing to me. When my clothes come into focus I notice that my white shirt is soaked through with blood, already drying uncomfortably to my skin. I’m still handcuffed to the same chair.

“What the hell happened to me?” I ask myself.

“Cerviel stabbed you in the chest. Looks like you are an angel after all,” Ollie says to me. He was squatting in front of me, trying to look into my face but now that I have come to, he moves over to the table and leans against it casually.

“I was stabbed in the chest? Are you guys insane? What if I was human? You would have killed me, you stupid a-hole,” I shout at him.

“Relax. Cerviel was quite sure you wouldn’t die after he stabbed you in the hand and you didn’t respond. How did you do that by the way? Angel or not, it would have still hurt. You should have still felt pain.”

“Why should I tell you anything? You pretended to be my friend.” With Ollie standing in front of me talking to me for the first time in months, I realize the coincidence of meeting Ollie and Cole at the same time. I don’t think, now, it was much of a coincidence. “Why did you
really
come to Virginia?”

His body stiffens at my question. He looks like his debating whether it’s a good idea to tell me or not. “Astaroth and Kakabel were up to something,” he finally admits. “They had been hanging around the state for awhile.”

My mind wanders to how long they were around. Did Cole watch me grow up? Were they always in the shadows, waiting for me and Alex to grow up before they could confront us? Were they waiting for us to be strong enough to defend ourselves when the time came for us to actually know them?

At the moment, I’m upset about it. I’m uncomfortable knowing I might have always been watched from the shadows. Or maybe Edmund really didn’t know where we were. Maybe he drifted around trying to find where the adoption agency placed us. I think I like the second train of thought better.

I break out of my thoughts to catch Ollie saying, “It’s not something they usually do. We knew they were looking for something or waiting for something. We thought it might be an army so we kept tabs on them and moved in closer when they finally settled.”             

He moves closer to me and squats down so he can look up to me. He places his hand on my knee. “I
was
your friend. I knew there was something special about you the first minute I saw you at the mall. I had
no
idea that Astaroth had just placed himself in your life.”
Technically he hadn’t yet.
“I was only there to blend in with the crowd, to fit in while I watched Astaroth. Then, I saw you… you were so sweet, so honest and when I saw your temper flame up in your beautiful eyes at the movies…” He laughs at the memory. “I was won over.” All of a sudden, his eyes go dark. “Until you chose another, on the wrong side, to friend.

“Why are you with them, Lexi? Knowing the absurdities they believe in? Do you realize we have to tear your wings from you now because you’re a disgrace? Where
are
your wings anyways?” He’s looking behind me like they should be there.

“Where are yours?” I counter.

He looks at me confusedly. “What? You can’t see them?” He reaches up like he’s stroking something.

I shake my head. “Should I?”

“What the hell are you, Alexis?” He asks me in shock.

“I don’t know,” I lie. “What absurdities do my
friends
believe in?” He starts shaking his head at me, trying to wrap his mind around what I could be. His hair has grown longer over the past few months I’ve known him. They come into his eyes, making him look younger.

We stare at each other for a few minutes before his eyes soften and he finally speaks up. “You shouldn’t have rejected me, Lexi,” he says fervently. He walks around to the back of my chair and whispers seductively into my ear, “I would have been able to protect you. You’re on the wrong side.” He runs a finger down my neck, causing me to shiver.

I cringe away from him. “How am I on the wrong side?”

He moves back in front of me and turns the chair around that Cerviel had placed in front of me earlier, straddling the chair so he can be closer to me. He runs his fingers up and down my arm. “They are fallen angels. Do you know what that means?” I shake my head ‘no.’ “It means that they defied God.  They chose not to obey their Father. They are the damned.”

“But why?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know why. They just refuse to believe in him. They prefer to believe that other gods, before him, built the world, the stars, and the sun. It’s all nonsense. If it were true then where are these gods?” He can’t really believe that.

“How old are you Ollie?”

He glances up at the ceiling to think while his fingers don’t break their routine of tracing my arm. “About fifteen hundred years.” I act surprised to hear that. I knew he would be younger. How could he not know about the gods, though? Is he in denial or are the others keeping it from him?

“Where are the others? The ones you were with when you kidnapped me?”

“Looking for your brother. Cerviel thought that if you weren’t going to give us any answers then your brother will.” He watches my face for signs of distress but I don’t show him anything. If Alex has fair warning he could literally disappear with Kaitlyn and Cole. “What are you thinking about? You’ve been so hard to read lately.”

“Have you ever considered that the fallen are right? Maybe it’s you who are playing for the wrong team. Has Cerviel or Malachi, your
brother
, ever told you about Selene?” I lean as close as I can to him and whisper, “I think they’re keeping something from you. You should ask them about it.” Ollie’s eyes smolder from our close proximity. He grabs the back of my head and pulls me in to kiss me. I don’t respond to him as his lips, teeth, and tongue play with my mouth.

I use the opportunity to kick off my shoes and Houdini my feet out of its shackles. I bring my feet in and kick his chair back as hard as I can. Ollie flies backwards and catches himself in midair before zooming back at me.

“You really do have wings, don’t you?”

“Don’t try to escape Lexi. You’ll force me to stab you in the heart again and I really don’t want to do that to you. It seems wrong,” he admits.

“Why keep me? You can’t torture me. I don’t have to feel pain.”

“So you
can
feel pain?” he guesses.

“Not if I don’t want to,” I admit. I doubt he understands anything about what I am capable of. “Just let me go, Ollie. Tell the others I got away. They won’t know the truth.”

He watches me slip one hand out of a cuff, looking at me with wonder in his eyes again. “What are you? Just tell me,” he pleads. I keep eye contact with him as he lets me slip the other hand out of the cuff and I stand up, rubbing the impressions left behind by the cuffs.

I walk over to him and brush his hair out of his eyes with my fingers. “You’re a better angel, Ollie. You deserve the truth.” I lean in to whisper in his ear and feel him shiver when my arm rubs against his. “I can’t tell you what I am because Cerviel will put me in a very dark place. Just ask about Selene. If he tells you, then you will know. If he doesn’t, then you know he’s lying. Trust me,” I say, kissing him on the cheek.

I turn around to grab a blanket from off a chair and Cole’s wings from the place that Cerviel had thrown them down earlier and I walk to the door. I open it slowly and look up and down the hall to make sure no angel is coming. I don’t look back to see if Ollie will stop me.

The apartment is in a similar building as Coles. It could well be the same. I wrap the blanket over my shoulders so no one will see the blood soaked shirt I’m wearing. I run to the door for the stairs, too afraid to wait for an elevator just for it to open to a flock of angels. I see that I am on the twenty-third floor. Great.

Running down the stairs at top speed I make it to the bottom floor and use the back exit instead of the lobby’s. I look around but I have no idea where I am. I run down to the nearest subway and study its maps. I’m afraid to go back to Cole’s. Afraid Cerviel will be waiting for me, so I look for the route to Edmund’s and jump on the train when it arrives. It takes forty minutes for me to get to his neighborhood after jumping trains and changing stations.

When I’m on the last train to Edmund’s, but only a few blocks from Cole’s, I start to feel panicky. What if Cerviel, Malachi or the other angels I wasn’t introduced to see me? I try to hide my face into a wall and pull the blanket up closer to my face.

“Your disguise isn’t very convincing,” a voice warns me from behind.

I turn around and instantly find relief at the voice that spoke to me. “Patryck! What are you doing here?” Like it’s not obvious he’s riding a train but it is a coincidence to run into him in a city so big. I turn into him and give him a hug. Thankful that I have someone to support me right now. I feel like I’m falling apart after having time to think of everything that was done to me.