Wings of the Wicked

  I smiled weakly back. “Yeah.”

  “I just want to know why no one else heard,” she said, and suddenly she was all business again. She straightened herself and looked to Will. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Think about Nathaniel’s aspect. If the attacking reaper was strong enough, he could wipe the minds of any humans close enough to have overheard. Either they never noticed or they remember nothing of the incident. Human minds are easily tampered with. Nathaniel would have had no trouble covering this up.”

  “Right,” Ava grumbled bitterly. “Well, Bastian has quite the assortment of thugs. I’m sure he’s got a vir for every occasion.”

  The idea of Nathaniel, or another vir, being capable of manipulating the human mind disturbed me. It seemed like the ultimate violation of a person. The mind was supposed to be a safe, sacred place, and for it to be torn open and completely vulnerable was a terrifying idea. I had no clue how to protect myself against such an attack and prayed that I’d never have to.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to be in the parking lot, so close to that place of death. “I’ve got to go back to school,” I said briskly. “I can only get away with playing hooky for so long.”

  “All right,” Will said. “But let’s go back to Nathaniel’s and eat first. You should have a rest before going back.”

  That sounded like a wonderful idea. As soon as the thought of food entered my mind, my stomach clenched and growled. I blushed when I saw Will grin.

  He gestured toward my car. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We rode back to Nathaniel’s house. Ava took off, and Will made lunch for the two of us. When I glanced at my cell, I saw a text from Kate but didn’t answer it. Instead I checked the time.

  “I’ve got to run,” I said, stuffing the phone into my back pocket and taking my dishes to the sink to scrub them clean and stick them in the dishwasher.

  Will watched me silently from his seat at the table before he rose to follow me out into the living room toward the front door. He caught up to me and pulled lightly on my fingertips, slowing me to a stop. I turned to him and smiled, studying his gaze when he didn’t say anything.

  “What’s up?” I asked, allowing him to pull more of my hand into his own and rub my palm with his thumb. He sucked in his upper lip, and I knew then that he was nervous. My smile faded.

  “I have to tell you something,” he said. “Because it’s not right that I keep this from you any longer. I don’t want to keep anything from you.”

  “Okay …”

  “Do you remember when we said no more secrets?” he asked as he stared at the ground, his voice faint and small.

  I swallowed hard and something tightened in my chest. “Yeah.” The word was almost nothing.

  “It’s been eating away at me,” he said. “Devouring me from the inside out.”

  I shook my head, studying his dull green eyes in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought everything was over.” His voice was cracking, and he took a long, deep breath to steady it, but the effort was useless. “I believed that I’d failed for the last time, that you were gone forever, because of what I’d failed to do for you.”

  Fear tightened around my throat as I tried to figure out what he was trying to tell me.

  “I loved you,” he continued, looking up to meet my gaze at last. “And I was broken for so long. For forty years, I waited and waited and searched for you. I hadn’t seen Nathaniel in over a decade, and I was so alone. Marcus and Ava came around a few times, and after being alone for so long, I stopped thinking or feeling. I hated myself for losing you.”

  I felt an urge to reach for him, but I was afraid to. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Ava and I grew close,” he said, looking away from me. “We …”

  “So it’s true, then. You slept with Ava?”

  “Yes.” The word was barely audible, barely anything more than a small exhale of air through those lips I’d kissed and loved.

  “I don’t even know what to say.” I swallowed hard.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Ellie.”

  My fingers were numb. I tightened them into balls and stretched them back out to regain sensation, but as I did, the rest of my body began to lose feeling everywhere. “So she’s not demonic or a spy or anything. The only reason she hates me is because you slept together. All this time, you told me there was nothing between you two, and there was.”

  He started to reach for my hands. “She’s only my friend. She is nothing compared to the way I feel about you.”

  “You don’t have sex with people who are only friends!”

  “Ellie.” He sighed my name in that way of his that could calm me during any storm but this one.

  “You told me it wasn’t what I thought! You lied to me!”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” he said tiredly. “I never dated her. We were never anything more.”

  “Well, you wanted something from her!” As soon as I said it, I was sickened by myself. I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore.

  His expression darkened and his brow furrowed as anger boiled to the surface. “I didn’t want anything from her! It was a mistake!”

  Tears were streaming down both sides of my face now, pooling in the corners of my mouth. I didn’t know how I’d gotten so upset so quickly. “So you broke it off with her? Just like you did with me?”

  “I thought you were gone!” he repeated, his voice breaking. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, but he had little more control. “I was dead inside. I believed I’d lost you, the only thing that made my life worth something! You are all I knew, Ellie, and I’d died along with you. I never loved her, never loved anyone but you in all these centuries. You were gone and I gave up. When I found you again, barely a year afterward … I can’t describe to you what it felt like to see you again after believing with every last thread of my soul that you were gone forever. Seeing your smile brought me back to life and killed me again at the same time. I felt like I had to tell you, after all these centuries, how much you meant to me, how much I have always loved you, in case I lost you again and you never came back. In case I never got to say it to you at all.”

  I was sobbing now, and at some point I had sat down on the sofa and hadn’t even realized it. I buried my face in my hands, tugging at my hair, desperate to rip the images of Will and Ava kissing, touching, out of my head forever. He sat tentatively next to me, but he didn’t reach to comfort me, didn’t murmur into my hair the way he often did when I was upset. He did nothing. When I pulled my hands away from my face and looked at him, he was watching me, his eyes dull and dark. It wasn’t like we were together then, or even now, and it wasn’t like he cheated on me. I didn’t have a claim to him, but I felt like I did, and knowing all that didn’t make it hurt any less. I couldn’t be mad at him or hate him, because I didn’t have a right to.

  I stopped crying, wiped at my face with my hands, and climbed shakily to my feet. I faced him, looking down at him where he sat. He took my hand, his gaze lingering on it soberly, and I allowed him to pull me close. His touch was warm, unsteady, and gentle as he ran his fingers across my palm and wrist and then wrapped both his arms around my body. His palms opened on my lower back, and he tugged me toward him gently as he sat there, and he rested his face against my belly. He gave a small squeeze and kissed me there, his lips pressing to the sweater I wore. It took me a few moments to regain my composure and the strength to pick my hands up to touch his face, lift his chin, and smooth my fingers over his rough cheeks, his lips—and then he smiled beneath my fingertips, and my heart broke.

  “I need you,” he said, and turned his face to kiss my palm.

  Something collapsed in my chest and my lips trembled. “I need you, too.” I ran my fingers through the silk of his hair.

  “Nothing has ever meant more to me than you,” he whispered. “You are all I know.”

  “Don’t say t
hat,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not true.”

  “I have never lied to you.”

  I had to leave before I started crying again. I pulled away from him, and his hands slipped from around my waist and fell. “I’ve got to get back to school before lunch hour is over.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Without saying good-bye, I left Nathaniel’s house and drove back to school. The rest of the day went by in a blurred daze, and I made a point of avoiding meeting Kate, only texting her back to tell her that I had learned nothing at all.

  11

  I WROTE TWO PAPERS FOR SCHOOL THAT WEEK, AND by Thursday I needed some down time and to get out of my house. Will and I were still a little shaky after our fight-slash-discussion about his history with Ava. No one I knew would bother me at the library, and it sounded like the perfect escape. Snow began to fall, lightly enough that it would be safe to drive in the dark if I went slowly, but tomorrow I’d have to shovel the driveway for sure. Three hours before closing was the perfect amount of time for me to find a good book and curl up in one of the giant sofa chairs on the second floor.

  After some searching through the stacks, I selected a book I’d first found on my mom’s shelf when I was in middle school. I remembered being sucked in by the romance, so I grabbed it off the shelf and padded up the creaky stairs to the second-floor lounge, where it was quieter. I settled into a squishy chair next to an end table and lamp and lost myself in the novel. I didn’t even notice the reaper in the room quietly suppressing his energy until he dipped his head over my shoulder and cast his shadow over the pages.

  I jerked out of my seat to face him and dropped the book, startled by the sensation of the reaper’s energy crawling on my skin like feather-light spider legs. “Cadan!” I cried out in a hushed voice.

  He wore a gentle smile edged with amusement. The warm light in the library made the gold color of his hair even richer. “That book must be pretty good. You didn’t even notice me until I was right next to you.”

  “What do you want?” For some reason, I wasn’t afraid of him—though I really, really should have been. I couldn’t explain the feeling. He never made me feel threatened.

  “To see you.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  He didn’t seem bothered by my suspicion. “Why not?”

  Was he serious? “Cadan, we’re enemies.”

  “Who decided that?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious. He stepped around my chair to sit in the one across from me. “If we were enemies, then I would have tried to kill you already.”

  “So far you haven’t.”

  “But if you truly thought we were enemies, then wouldn’t you have tried to kill me by now? You hunt the demonic almost every night, so it’s not like you wait around to be attacked. You could have come after me, but you haven’t, though I can’t say I’m not disappointed.” He touched my hair the way he had the night we first met. I watched his fingers treat the lock as if it were delicate. The tips of his fingers brushed my neck and trailed across my collarbone, sending my heart pounding.

  I wasn’t about to show any fear by backing away from him. “Don’t make me get violent.”

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered, his voice husky and his smile darkening. “Please do.”

  “You’re into that sort of thing, are you?”

  “I’m into you.”

  “This is extremely awkward,” I said, unsure of how to react to his blatant flirting.

  “I disagree.” He let my hair fall, but he didn’t step away. “I very much like this.”

  “It’s barely even nighttime,” I noted. “Shouldn’t you nocturnal types be sleeping at this hour?”

  “What can I say? I’m an early riser.”

  I was tired of being toyed with. “Why did you find me, Cadan? Besides to try to shower me with your charm. Last time I saw you, you came with a warning.”

  His smile faded again. “I’m sorry to say that I have another. Bastian has a relic, the Constantina necklace.”

  I frowned, thinking of Ava’s anguish over Zane’s death. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “So you located the relic’s guardian,” he deduced.

  “What was left of him, yes.”

  His mouth tightened. “I suspected that he must have been killed in order to take the relic from him. The guardians never surrender.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Vir,” he said. “Their names are Merodach and Kelaeno. They are the ones helping Bastian find what he needs. And once they do that, they’ll be coming for you.”

  “If Orek fails, you mean.”

  His gaze burned into mine. “Yes, I’m sorry. The situation is only going to get worse for you.”

  I studied his face, my head spinning to come up with the answer of his true allegiance. He knew so much about Bastian’s plans, so they had to be close, but he was willing to risk everything to help me. “Why the espionage, Cadan?”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  “The risk is too great,” I insisted. “There must be something more. What’s in it for you? Are you going to betray me?”

  That smile came to life again. “Even if I said no, would you believe me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s Bastian you’re spying on or if it’s me.”

  “Why can’t you believe that I want you to stop him?” he asked earnestly.

  I narrowed my gaze. “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  He didn’t answer me at first, and a strange look came over his face as his shoulders stiffened. His eyes broke away from mine and searched around us before returning. “It’s complicated.”

  “No more complicated than our own arrangement.”

  His brow flickered with amusement, the uncertainty washing away in an instant. “Arrangement? And on what terms is this arrangement?”

  I ignored that. “Is it because you aren’t strong enough to kill him, or because you don’t want to?”

  His gaze moved slowly over my mouth and back up to my eyes. “Both.”

  “You’re still loyal to him,” I said. “And now to me, for some reason.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “You’ll have to choose a side, Cadan.”

  He grinned and gave a single soft huff of a laugh, though his eyes looked sad. “That is also true.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He was gorgeous and very mysterious, and I was indisputably drawn to him. Those things all made him dangerous, even if I believed he wouldn’t raise a hand to me. Simply being his friend was dangerous to us both. I picked my book off the floor and set it on the end table before I sank back into the soft chair. “What is this necklace supposed to do, anyway?”

  He sat down in the chair opposite mine and dragged it closer. He leaned forward and spoke softly. “It was crafted by the Grigori Cardinal Lord of the East, Aldebaran. He tricked Constantina, the eldest daughter of the Roman emperor Constantine, into taking it.”

  “I remember her,” I said, frowning as the memories flooded back to me. Constantina had been the driving force behind some of the earliest witch hunts, seventeen hundred years ago, executing innocent people and then taking everything valuable they owned for herself. The Grigori weren’t exactly like the Fallen imprisoned in Hell, and they were bound to earth to help humans in penance. That meant they were not entirely evil, but they were also not entirely good. Aldebaran knew of Constantina’s evil, and her underlings gave her the necklace cursed with angelic magic. Ever the greedy tyrant, she took it without hesitation, and within a month she was dead.

  “If Bastian needs angelic magic,” Cadan explained, “he’d want it straight from a Grigori Lord. The Lords hold the secrets of all angelic magic and medicine. The power of the Constantina necklace came from Aldebaran, and in its purest form.”

  “Were you around when the relic was created?”

  I asked. “No, I’m not that old,” he said. “I was born during the Fourth Crusade.”

/>   I gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, not that old. Only about eight centuries.”

  “My father is over a thousand years old,” he mused. “Only the most powerful of my kind live to be ancient.”

  I wondered exactly how strong Cadan was. “Is your father still alive?”

  He hesitated in answering. “He is.”

  “Have you ever met a Grigori?”

  “I have.”

  When it didn’t appear that he’d elaborate, I asked him, “And?”

  “She hates me.”

  “Really? That’s so surprising,” I asked, my sarcasm obvious.

  “I tried to kill her.” The statement was crisp and matter-of-fact.

  “Well, then you can’t blame her.”

  He smiled widely and I smiled back. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “I hope there’s a good story to go along with that,” I said. “Don’t you humans have a Valentine’s Day ritual coming?” he asked. “I believe I understand how it works. Two of you pair up in the name of love. That would make for a good story. Especially if I were involved.”

  I glowered. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “You seem so sore. No date?”

  “I don’t need one.”

  He tilted his head at me with a silly, adorable smile. “I’ll be your valentine.”

  I laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. That’ll go over well.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re against the idea. Do you think your Guardian would be jealous?”

  I did my best to give him a serious look as I fought back laughter. “Cadan, you are not going to be my date. And you’re avoiding all of my questions.”

  He frowned. “The answers aren’t so exciting, believe me.”

  I recalled Ava’s story about the relic guardian. “So, this Grigori who hates you. You aren’t old lovers, are you?”

  “No.” He laughed. “No, no. She had something I wanted, and she wouldn’t give it to me. It’s a story for another time.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “If you won’t talk about the Grigori, then I won’t talk about Valentine’s Day.”