Shadows in the Silence

  I watched him as he suffered internally. His pain and regret was so clear over every inch of him that I felt terribly sad for what happened. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. I hope I suffer for the rest of eternity for what I did to that girl. I knew—I knew—I never should’ve gotten involved with Emelia. I should’ve been more careful. But I’m selfish. Still am. As I am with you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I assured him. “Ivar—”

  “Yeah, Ivar took her life, but I handed it to her.” He shook his head again, this time less angrily. “I’m so impulsive and completely aware of it. You remind me of Emelia a little. It’s your eyes and your big smile. She loved to go to parties and dance and have fun. Both of you are so bright and full of life. You scared me too. Still do.”

  “Good,” I said with a grin. “Then I’m doing my job right.”

  I was rewarded with a small smile. “I mean about the way you make me feel, how quickly what I felt reminded me of when I had Emelia. That night when Ivar attacked you, it was like a flashback from Hell. At least I finally found the courage to avenge Emelia. By killing Ivar, I’d broken myself from Bastian completely, my allegiance to him, and then I killed him too. How sad it is that by dealing death, I gained my freedom?”

  He gazed back up at the stars, the breeze blowing his hair a little. I hadn’t realized he hurt so much inside, that he felt so much guilt about serving Bastian and for Emelia’s death. The fire crackled in front of us, all heat and light and comfort. I rested my cheek on Cadan’s shoulder and rubbed his arm soothingly.

  “It’ll be okay,” I whispered, and took his hand in both of mine. There was nothing I could do to convince him that what happened to that girl wasn’t his fault, despite what he’d convinced himself. It was up to him to forgive himself.

  “Whatever happens tomorrow with Antares, I’ve got your back,” he said. “Hopefully Antares won’t be up for round two with me, but a few decades is a blink of an eye to a creature like her and she’ll know me when she sees me. Who knows, though—it may be different with you here.”

  “I swear, I won’t leave without the cure,” I said. “I can’t.”

  He sighed, relaxing. “We’d both better get some sleep if we want to be functional in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed and groggily finagled myself out of my sleeping bag burrito and got to my feet. “See you in the morning.”

  “Yep,” he replied.

  Behind me, I heard him rustle his own sleeping bag as I climbed into the tent to make my nest of blankets. It took a few minutes to get comfortably warm, and it took even longer for me to fall asleep.

  I woke the next morning without having dreamed about Will and was so afraid for him that I had trouble finishing my breakfast. An ill spin in my gut matched the horrible thoughts in my mind. I didn’t have cell reception way up here so there was no knowing if something had happened to him. Marcus or Ava had no way of contacting me. All I could do was keep going.

  Only a few miles higher than the elevation we’d camped at, it was snowing. The ground was lightly dusted and snowflakes fell slowly, sticking to my eyelashes and to Peewee’s mane. The air grew colder and harder to breathe the whole way we climbed. We stopped for lunch around midday and then were on our way again. At last, Cadan pulled his horse up and dismounted, his boots thudding gently in the snow.

  “Is she close?” I asked and slid from the saddle to the ground. I led Peewee by the reins up to where Cadan had stopped.

  “From here we go on foot,” he said, and tied Savvy to a tree. “Judah has a map of our route and if we don’t return, he’ll come this way up the mountain and at the very least, find the horses.”

  I gave Peewee a good-bye kiss on the nose and a scratch between her ears. I smiled a little to myself when I realized I worried the horses would be left all alone. For a second it felt good not to worry about the dire situation I was soon to walk into.

  “You probably won’t want to bring your heavy jacket,” Cadan said almost dismissively.

  I gaped at him. “Are you serious? Did you not notice the snow? or the mountain?”

  “All right. Your choice.”

  “I feel the cold, remember, Superman?” I grumbled.

  “What I mean is that the Cardinal Lords make things change,” he said.

  “How so?”

  A pause. “You’ll see.”

  I decided to trust him and leave my coat and wool hat behind. I hopped up and down a couple times to get my heart rate up and blood pumping. “You’d better not make me regret this,” I warned him.

  Cadan led me through the narrow path parting the dense thicket, brambles catching on our sleeves and collars, tugging at my hair. I heard the horses nicker and rustle behind us and I prayed they wouldn’t break free and strand us here. The farther we climbed up the mountain, the warmer the air seemed to be. Not summer warm, but like a late october afternoon’s gentle sun on your skin, and I was glad I’d left my jacket behind. The snow was disappearing, melting away more and more up the path until fallen leaves appeared beneath our feet, crunching with each step. I looked up at the trees and the snow had gone from them, too, their bark dry and dark, limbs still full of red and gold leaves. It was as if time had gone backward; the late spring mountain snow had melted away and autumn emerged before our eyes.

  The forest opened to a small golden meadow with an enormous tree in its very center. It looked thousands of years old, its trunk easily thirty feet around, and its boughs so massive and heavy that many of them hung twisted and gnarled to the ground. They curled and coiled in every direction, weaving in and around each other, some of them so wide that I could probably have fit my entire body inside them.

  “What is going on?” I asked. “Cadan?”

  I looked around for him and spotted him stepping up to the giant tree. He drew a knife from his belt and pressed it to his palm, slicing a fine, thin line of red. Then he touched his hand to the trunk and pushed his blood into the bark. He looked up twelve feet or so, where the branches began to unfurl, and he whispered something.

  Immediately the great tree gave a shudder, its branches shaking loose golden leaves. The bark began to morph and I had to blink my eyes hard, certain I was losing my mind. Something began to grow right out of the base of the branches. It shimmered in the sun, glossed in the shade, and looked nothing at all like bark. It looked like the top of a head. Human limbs rippled smoothly from the bark, extended along the branches at shoulder height as a torso emerged from the tree’s trunk. The body pulled itself from the tree, arms tugging hard, but vines wrapped tightly around the wrists, refusing to release. Hair fell from the figure’s head, gleaming red-gold locks, and pale gold robes wrapped around the body to form a dress that looked unlike any fashion from the last several thousand years. The face stared at the ground as the body pulled forward to free itself from the tree, the hair spilling over narrow shoulders and dainty arms. Bare feet touched the leaf-covered ground, more vines coiling around delicate ankles as if they were chains binding a prisoner to the tree.

  Once the body stepped toward me, chains of vines and branches binding its limbs, I could see that it was clearly a she. Her face rose to gaze upon Cadan, eyes blazing like a wildfire beneath heavy lids, lips a natural rose-red, skin golden and shimmering with light as if autumn leaves burned just beneath the surface. She appeared my age, perhaps a couple years older, and she was beautiful in an unnatural way, a frightening, fiery way. She was ancient, never-changing, and I was terrified of her.

  When she spoke, her voice seemed to seep through my ears, eyes, and mouth like warm milk and honey, making my brain fuzzy, my limbs heavy and tired. “Audes provocare mei?”

  “Antares—”

  “Non loqueris nomen meum.” She cut him off sharply with a wave of her hand. “You swine, vermis, you insect of earth and rot.” Even when speaking English, her voice was edged with an accent, the crippled remnants of a language long
since dead. Her bindings stretched and groaned, refusing to allow another inch of freedom. “I am the Grigori Lord of the West. You dishonor me by breathing in my forest. Be gone!”

  Cadan flinched at her voice. “I have not come for myself. I beseech you on behalf of the archangel Gabriel.”

  The ageless Grigori laughed, her voice making my spine shiver and heartbeat slow. I could taste sugar in my mouth with every one of her words. “Tu me delectas. I know who Gabriel is and she would have nothing to do with you, demonic spawn. Leave me in peace.”

  “Gabriel is here now. With me. In human form.”

  Antares’s head tilted to the side inquisitively. She looked past him and her fire eyes met mine. It felt like her gaze was digging straight into my soul. “And so she is. What a delicate thing you are now, Strength of God. Have you come to destroy your Fallen sister at long last?”

  “No,” I said, swallowing my fear. “I need your help.”

  Her lips curved slightly, barely a smile. “My help? How curious.”

  “My Guardian is dying. He was poisoned by a demonic reaper’s venom.”

  Antares looked at me without emotion. “Your Guardian is a reaper?” she asked, her voice lilting.

  I nodded. “Of your bloodline. He’s angelic.”

  She said nothing at first. Then she raised a hand and beckoned to me. “Come forth then, mortal archangel.”

  I took a hesitant step forward with a glance at Cadan. His expression was gentle and comforting, and he gave me a small amount of courage. She grasped my wrist and yanked me forward. I cried out in surprise. Her fingers were hot and they moved up and down my arm as if she was trying to feel every vein and tendon beneath my skin. She touched my hand and opened my palm flat.

  “Your Guardian,” she said musically. “Amas eum. You love him. This reaper. He protects you at the risk of his own life. How very noble of him—and how very unwise of you to come to me.”

  The ice in her voice made tremors of fear stab through my inside. “Will you help me?”

  “I know of demonic venom very well. Whoever poisoned your reaper Guardian wanted you both to suffer long. This is a cruel death.”

  I brightened. “Then you can save him!”

  “I can,” she said dismissively. She stepped back and her power pushed into my body, propelling me away from her. “But I will not. I do not see the benefit in it.”

  My veins ran cold as fear settled once again on me. “But you can save him! Why won’t you help me? Just tell me how to cure him. You don’t have to do anything. Just tell me the antidote. Please!”

  She watched me silently, her brow furrowing with curiosity. “Who are you, Gabriel? How far you have fallen, my sister, to feel so much? I barely recognize you. Your human soul has diseased you.”

  “No!” I shouted back. “Don’t you see the difference in us? I was like you before I became human. Now I have a heart, a soul, and all I want to do is protect the ones I love. Your selfishness is your own disease, Antares!”

  She laughed, her voice musical as it rustled the autumn leaves. “Go now, Gabriel,” Antares said tiredly. “Leave me in my purgatory.”

  “You’re here to help the humans!” I cried. “You watch over them, guide—”

  “Watch them, yes,” Antares hissed. “Do you know what I watch of them? Every moment, I watch a murder. With every word I speak, countless children around the world are defiled. A man beats his wife until her face is unrecognizable. War. Genocide. I see it all behind my eyes so that I can never close them and have reprieve from the suffering I am forced to witness as punishment for bearing my own thought and desire. For daring to have a mind of my own, it was taken from me and replaced with thousands and thousands of years of horror. Do you, Gabriel, truly believe I was sent here to aid humanity? Now do you see that I am chained to the Earth and forced to watch humanity destroy itself?”

  “You aren’t supposed to be angry,” I said. “The angels are not meant to feel emotion.”

  “But was it not inevitable? All I know now is hate and pain.”

  “I’m human,” I told her. “It’s not so bad.”

  “You are not human. You are the same as Raguel, the one who bound me here in the name of Justice. I owe you nothing.”

  She turned her back to us and I couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath as I glimpsed the two burnt and bloody stumps protruding from her shoulder blades. The skin was blackened and grotesque, her robes torn and singed. I knew then that the stumps were what was left of her wings. The wings she had used to fly before she fell to Earth.

  “Antares,” I begged her and collapsed heavily to my knees and dropped my head. “Please. Please help me.”

  Warm fingers lifted my chin and I looked up into the face of Antares, who watched me with interest. Up close, her eyes were like liquid gold. Rivulets of iridescent pearl flecked with chips of ruby swirled in their depths, hypnotizing me.

  “You…kneel before me?” she asked, her voice slow.

  “I’m desperate.” A tear rolled over my cheek and slipped into the corner of my mouth. A shock of salt on my tongue.

  The Grigori Lord stood, pulling her hand away from my face, and I let out a terrible sob. My body shook as I cried, letting out everything I’d held in for days, all of my sorrow and rage and exhaustion. I buried my face in my hands. It was so hard to stay strong every second of every day, but I had to. I allowed myself to be weak for one minute, but now it was time to suck it up and do what I needed to do. When I let my hands fall and looked back up at Antares, she still watched me.

  “Gabriel,” Antares whispered. “What has your humanity done to you?”

  I pushed myself off the ground and stood shakily, staring right at her face. “Being human has taught me to love and that’s why I’m here. I will do whatever it takes to save him.”

  “Why?” the Grigori asked. “Why would you want to save your Guardian if this is what he has made you become? This sorrowful, weakened thing fallen so far from the creature I once knew.”

  “I am not weak,” I growled, rolling my hands into fists. “If I were weak I would not be standing here. It is not weak to admit your limitations and ask for help. It is not weak to feel sorrow. It’s human. I have changed since you last saw me, because I have become human.”

  “And the rest of humanity? Why do you still fight for them? This world drowns in grief and pain.”

  “That’s true,” I told her. “I’ve lived a thousand lives. I know as well as any human how much suffering there is in the world, but there’s also joy and love.”

  She shook her head. “The human race is still as it was before the Fall. They have not changed.”

  “There’s also hope,” I pleaded. “To hope for a better world—that is why I fight. That’s why I’ve been fighting for so long. The humans are young and imperfect, but they are strong. They would not still be here if they weren’t. This is why I stand before you now. I need my Guardian’s help. And I love him. I can’t save humanity without him.”

  She seemed to weigh me with her gaze for a moment before looking at Cadan and then back at me. “You have moved me, Gabriel. Your passion is beautiful in a way that I have never seen up close. If your human soul has taught you to love, then there may yet still be hope.”

  “Will you help me, Sister?”

  “For the antidote I require a payment,” Antares said.

  Cadan stepped forward before I could stop him. “If you want blood, take mine.”

  A stab of ice hit my heart. “What? Cadan, no!”

  I reached for him, but he tore away. Antares’s face filled with amusement.

  “You would sacrifice yourself to save her beloved?” she asked, tilting her head at him curiously. “How you have changed, reaperling.”

  “I’ve done a lot of bad in my life,” Cadan replied. “It’s about time I did some good.”

  “No,” I ordered and grabbed his arm. “You’ve done enough. This is for me to do.”

  “Fortunately for you,?
?? Antares interjected, “you are not the one who can pay me.”

  Cadan called his sword, silver flashing in the golden autumn light, and he stepped in front of me. “You will not harm her!”

  “Silence, fool,” Antares said, and waved her hand. Cadan’s body was thrown to the side and his back slammed into the trunk of a tree. “Have you not learned your lesson?”

  I trembled, but held my chin high. “What do you want?”

  Antares beckoned me forward. “For the antidote to heal your Guardian, I want you to free me.”

  “Free you?” I asked in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  “Send me home,” she said. “To Heaven. Restore my wings, redeem me. I only want to leave this wretched place.”

  I wasn’t sure if I had the power to do that, if I even knew how, but I nodded anyway. For the chance to save Will, I’d at least try. If I left her there chained to that tree, then Sammael would eventually find her and kill her. Antares might have never learned about mercy, but I knew it well. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Swear it!” Antares roared, her eyes flashing white gold. “Swear it on your life’s blood!”

  I swallowed hard. “I—I swear on my blood that I will set you free.”

  Antares paused for the longest moment of my life before lowering herself to the ground. She hovered her palm just over the ground, the tips of short blades of grass brushing her skin, and a light shone brightly. Something slid out of the dirt, something dark and coiled, and Antares broke off a piece. She stood and came toward me and I struggled to see what she had. She held her hand out and revealed something that looked like organic plant material, a root maybe. She nodded to me, motioning for me to take the root, and tentatively, I obeyed. The thing was soft and flexible, but its outermost layer was rough against my skin. It looked so ordinary, so plain and powerless.

  “Only the root of a tree that binds a Cardinal Lord can heal reaper venom,” Antares explained. “You need to make a poultice from it and cover the wound entirely. The healing process will take three days.”