CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JESSICA
My gums became raw as I brushed my teeth frantically. I probably hadn’t even gotten all the shampoo out of my hair before I had flown out of the shower. How could I worry about how I looked, with so much on the line?
I felt frustrated as I spit into the sink. Emily knew what Cole was. Like she had said, he had branded her too, hundreds of times. How could she be so stupid? How could she run straight into the arms of the leader of the condemned?
Yet I already knew the answer. Emily had already explained it to me. Who else would want her, when she had already damned herself? Who better to be with than the leader of the condemned?
“Let’s go,” I said as I threw my toothbrush into my bag. Alex and Cormack had already gotten all of the other bags loaded into the car.
Alex checked us out of the hotel then joined us outside. Cormack had insisted on driving, true to his threat the night before. Alex didn’t seem to mind and to be honest, I didn’t mind either. As Cormack had said, there was no need for all of us to be dead.
“So ya jus put an address in this little thing an’ it will tell ya how ta get there?” Cormack marveled as we got onto the road and Alex started punching in where we were headed.
“Um, hum,” Alex nodded as he entered the information in.
“Amazing,” Cormack shook his head and stared out at the road that stretched before us.
Under normal circumstances I would have enjoyed the scenery around me. I had never traveled outside the country before but had always wanted to. Now that I was getting my chance I felt distracted and sick. The nightmare I’d had petrified me. Seeing and feeling the things that were happening to Emily unnerved me more than I could ever explain. I didn’t want to be feeling those things for Cole again, even if it was just in a dream. It made my skin crawl.
And I didn’t for one second, forget what had happened after Cole had the woman’s portrait painted in the other dreams. I just hoped it wasn’t too late.
“So what’s the plan of action here?” Cormack asked as the road fell away beneath the tires. I glanced at the clock, surprised we had already been driving for two hours. “How do ya plan on gettin’ close enough to grab him an’ make him go back?”
“We weren’t planning on anything of the sorts,” Alex said as he stared out the window. “Don’t forget, you’re the one who’s supposed to make him go back. We’re just here to get Emily back before something happens to her.”
“I know I’m the one to make him go back,” Cormack said, irritation evident in his voice. “I jus wondered if you had thought of anythin’. Et’s not like gettin’ that girl back es going to be an easy thing if she’s with him.”
Cormack was right. Cole most likely was going to put up a fight. The thought terrified me, the last fight I had seen Cole get in over a woman resulted in Alex’s death.
“We’ll just have to see how things pan out,” Alex said. “We don’t know what’s going on or what to expect.”
“That’s et?” Cormack asked. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“Yeah, that’s all I’ve got!” Alex barked. I was surprised at Alex. He didn’t seem to like Cormack too much. Cole was the only other person I had seen that Alex didn’t like. Maybe that was all it was. Cormack was an angel too.
“I could talk to him,” I chimed in, wanting to calm the tension that suddenly filled the car. “Distract him while you grab him, Cormack.”
“Absolutely not!” Alex shouted at the same time Cormack nodded in agreement with my plan. “You can’t be serious about going around that monster again? After everything he did to you?”
“I’m the reason he came out of the world of the dead in the first place. I’ve got to help make him go back.”
Alex shook his head. “No way. We’ll figure something else out. The two of us can handle it. There’s two of us and only one of him. We’ll make him go back.”
I detected another emotion brewing under the surface of Alex’s skin. Fear. I could imagine how the thought of Cole and I in the same room again terrified him. While this made my heart flutter, I also wanted to say that perhaps they had more to worry about than they realized. I had a feeling being a council member came with a little more than being just any angel, especially an un-judged angel as they both were.
The tension didn’t leave the car and I felt on edge. I hated contention. I supposed that came after listening to my parents fight about me for years. I wanted to do anything to avoid it but at the moment I couldn’t escape.
The GPS chirped that we were 150 kilometers from our destination.
We drove for another good half hour before the thick silence was broken by Alex’s cell phone ringing. Puzzlement filled his face as he looked at the caller ID.
“It’s Emily,” he said quietly as he looked back at me for a brief moment.
“What?!” I nearly screamed, fighting the instant reaction to snatch the phone from Alex.
“Hello?” Alex answered.
“You’ve got one of those mobile phones?” Cormack said in awe, though I didn’t register what he was saying. I was trying too hard to hear what Emily might be saying to Alex.
Alex’s face was quickly changing from serious to grave. I could also detect a hint of anger and frustration. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t hear what Alex was hearing from Emily.
“Pull over,” Alex said quietly, but continued listening to Emily.
Cormack obeyed and pulled to the side of the quiet country road. Just as he rolled to a stop Alex hung up.
“What is going on Alex?!” I demanded, my voice shaky and frantic. “What did Emily say? Is she okay?”
Alex just stared at the dash and shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t Emily.”
“It wasn’t…” I started to ask before cold, sick realization hit me. Tears sprang to my eyes and I covered my mouth with my hand to hold back the sob. “It was Cole,” I said in a choked off cry.
Alex nodded and finally looked at me. “He said Emily is in no immediate danger but he knows we’re coming for her. He wants to see you Jessica, alone.”
“How could he possibly think you’d let me come without you?” I barely managed to speak.
“He’s made sure I won’t,” Alex’s voice cracked slightly. “He’s found my mother. A few hundred miles away. He said if I don’t get there in the next few hours, she’ll be dead.”
The world seemed to fall silent as I understood what Alex was saying. To make sure Alex would leave my side, he had gone after the one person Alex would do anything for to find. Alex had never met his mother but I knew how much this would mean to him. She was the only family he had left.
“You have to go, Alex,” I breathed. “You have to find her.”
Alex’s lower lip quivered just slightly as his steely gray eyes met mine. I knew if it were possible, there would have been tears there. “I can’t,” he whispered. “How can I let you go to meet that monster?”
“You have to Alex,” I said quietly as I leaned forward and placed a hand on his perfectly smooth cheek. “She’s your only family.”
“You’re my family,” he whispered.
My insides trembled at his words. I bit my lower lip for a moment to collect myself. “I’ll be fine. Cole doesn’t know about Cormack.”
“I’ll protect her,” Cormack, who had been silent up until this point, said. “Don worry about anythin’. She’ll be safe with me.”
Alex kept my stare for another long moment, his hand coming up to his face to lay on mine. He then turned to Cormack.
“You’d better keep your word,” he said, his voice harsh but filled with emotion. “I swear, if anything happens to her, I will hunt you down and rip your wings out myself.”
“Alex,” I chided. It frightened me to hear him talk like that. It seemed to be happening more and more lately.
Alex continued his hard stare for a second longer. He then opened the door and got out. He barely even slammed it shut before Cormack sped off
.
I jerked my head around to catch one last glimpse of Alex but all I saw was a flash of metallic light.
I gave a quivering sigh as I sat back in my seat. I was glad Alex had not given me a kiss before he left. It would have felt like too final of a good-bye.
After a minute Cormack glanced in the rear-view mirror at me. “He loves you a lot.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly as I wiped a tear away.
It started raining a few minutes later, making the day feel all the more ominous. The thought that the day couldn’t get any worse crossed my mind, but then I realized it could. It could still get so much worse.
When I felt like I had control of my emotions I crawled into the front passenger seat.
“So, now that it’s up to just you, what’s your plan?” I asked as I stared at the road ahead of us. The female voice coming from the GPS told us to merge onto a highway.
“All I have ta do es get close enough to him to grab him and et won’ be difficult to make him go back,” Cormack said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Et’s difficult enough keepin’ ma self in this world. Et takes constant concentration to keep bein’ here. Et’s not easy for a dead man to stay in the world ‘o the living. I figure if I can only get a hold of the man, I just have to stop thinkin’ about stayin’ here and it will be done. We’ll be back.”
“Wait,” I asked, panic starting to seep into my veins. “You have to think about staying in the world of the living?”
“Oh yeah,” Cormack chuckled. “The afterlife is constantly calling. The pull es strong. I don know how Alex keeps et up. Or how Cole’s kept it up for this long. Et’s brutal.”
I slumped in my seat as I took in Cormack’s words. As they did, someone else’s words came back to me.
Maybe he knows something you don’t. Maybe that’s part of the reason.
Sal had been right.
So this was the real reason Alex wouldn’t propose. He was already being pulled back into the afterlife. He really could be sucked back at any moment. That was what he had meant when he insisted all the time that he had no control.
“Why didn’t he ever tell me?” I said out loud, not realizing I did.
“What?” Cormack asked, confused.
“That it’s so hard to stay. That at any time he might lose it and be pulled back.”
By this point I had already said enough and had to explain the entire story to him. I told him about how I knew Alex was going to propose, how nothing had happened after Alex had come back. About how he seemed so stubborn and unreasonable for refusing to ask me again. It all made sense now and I felt horrible for how I had reacted before.
“The council agreed ta give Alex more time with you,” Cormack said as he stared at the road. “They never said how long they’d give him.”
I cursed under my breath, suddenly violently resentful toward Emily for being so stupid and eating up the precious time I had left with Alex. If our days were numbered, I wanted to spend every second of them with Alex.
“Please talk about something else,” I said with a wavering voice. “Anything else.”
He glanced over at me, sadness and another emotion warring in his eyes. It almost looked like jealousy. “I grew up in Scotland, as I’m sure you’ve already assumed. I was an only child. It was always jus ma mother ‘n me. Ma father ran off when ma mother was still carrying me, too young and not ready to be a parent. That was the excuse ma mother made for him anyway.
“Money was a constant struggle for the two of us and I grew up pathetically poor. I didn’t mind most of the time though. I felt sorry for ma mother. She worked herself ta death but could never seem to get ahead. I wanted to drop out of high school to help support her but she wouldn’t allow it.
“A few years after I finished school she fell ill. The doctors weren’t sure what was wrong and we couldn’t afford to get any further testing. I worked as much as I could and spent the rest of my hours taking care of her as she slowly decayed away. She passed the day after my twenty-fourth birthday.
“While I would miss her terribly I couldn’t be to terribly sad. It was painful ta watch her waste away, eventually forgetting my name and even her own. I didn’t want her ta have ta live like that. And besides, she was exalted,” he said with a smile.
“Soon after she passed, I decided I was ready for a new life. A fresh start. America seemed like a good place for that. I got all my papers, all that stuff taken care of and moved over. Got a job at a large corporate office working in the mail room. Didn’t pay much, but when I needed extra money I worked a few hours as a bouncer at a club. Never woulda’ guessed I woulda’ meet my end behind one.”
“I’m so sorry Cormack,” I said quietly, watching his flawless face as he spoke. “You’ve had a pretty rough life.”
“Yeah, had,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s alright though. It wus a good one. I’ve got no complaints. Except for the being shot part an’ it all ending.”
I admired Cormack’s attitude. He was a good man. Before, when I had thought of him as Adam, I guessed he would be exalted come his own judgment time. I had no doubt now that I was right.
“Cormack?” I said quietly as I looked out at the road ahead of us. “Why haven’t you been judged yet? You said it’s been eighteen years. That hardly seems fair.”
“Little the council does outside of judgment es fair,” he said as he looked over at me. “I would think you would know that best.”
I could only nod at this. He was right.
“I’ve never been told why. Given recent events, I can only guess that they wanted to keep somethin’ over ma head. They guessed they would need someone like me later.
“An’ I’ve always wondered if there was something left I was supposed to do. Ma life wus cut short, maybe there’s somethin’ I need to take care of.”
I looked over at Cormack as he fell quiet. I hated the council all the more in that moment. Nothing was fair.
The gas station we pulled into was small and nearly empty. I had never seen a station with only two pumps before. While Cormack filled the car, I went inside and asked to use the phone.
It had been nearly two hours since Alex had left and my insides were an emotional storm. I was anxious about having Alex gone but I knew what finding his mom would do for him. I also felt sick to think what Cole might have done to Alex’s only remaining family member. My fingers were barely even able to punch the numbers into the ancient phone. I waited with nervous anticipation as the phone rang. After four rings it went to his voicemail.
I went back outside to find Cormack showing the attendant a map, pointing to where Cole’s family’s legacy was supposed to be. He didn’t seem to trust the “talking box”.
“You’re only about twenty minutes away but I don’t know what you’re expecting to find there. The area’s been deserted for as long as I can remember. No one will go near the old Emerson place. Bad things have happened there. People say it has been haunted lately. You’d best just stay away.”
My skin crawled at his words. Cole really was back. I’d be seeing him soon.
“I’d stay away from that place if I were you,” he said as he started walking back inside.
“Okay,” Cormack said as he walked around to the driver’s side. “That creeps me out a bit.”
“That terrifies me a bit,” I said as I slid into the passenger side.
My pulse seemed to pick up another beat with every minute that passed as we got closer and closer to the former Emerson estate. My palms started sweating and I couldn’t quite sit still. “You’re sure this will be easy, making him go back?” I asked nervously as my hands twisted around each other.
“Once I can get to him et will be easy. I never said et would be easy getting’ to him.”
I really, really wished Alex was there with me.
Thirty-three… thirty-four… thirty-five…
Since Alex’s disappearance I had started counting again. The fear was c
oming back in an all too familiar way.
“I won let him hurt you Jessica,” Cormack said as he placed a hand over mine for just a brief second and gave it a squeeze. “I’d really rather not have Alex rip ma wings out. Don think that would feel too great.”
I gave a nervous chuckle, grateful to Cormack for trying to lighten the mood.
The voice from the GPS announced we had arrived at our destination as we pulled off the decaying main street and onto what was little more than a path of gravel that used to be a cobblestone road. Mature trees lined what had once been the road leading onto the property. Through them I could see several smaller buildings I could only guess were servants’ quarters and out-buildings, a barn, a carriage house, a shed.
I thought my heart was going to hammer out of my chest as we pulled to a stop in front of the decayed mansion.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JESSICA
The building before us was massive. Different wings spread out over the property with balconies supported by pillars, arched windows were scattered across the face. I had never seen a bigger house. Or one so un-structurally sound looking. The middle of the roof sagged; a section of the massive front porch had caved in. It looked as if every window had been broken in, shards of glass shining in the gray light. I could only imagine how the place looked in its days of glory.
Cole had hinted that his family had been wealthy. I felt I had greatly underestimated how wealthy they had been.
I don’t know if I can do this, I thought to myself. I was fighting off a fully-fledged panic attack.
“You ready?” Cormack asked as he unbuckled his totally unnecessary seatbelt.
“Um, hum,” I lied as I undid mine and opened the door.
The air around us seemed unnaturally silent as we walked across the soggy grass up to the front door. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to turn and run. Fear that Cole could be watching us from a busted out window saturated my system. I felt sick. I felt like I might pass out.