“So do you want to do something tonight? Something fun?” asked Mick.
“Mmm … ” I said preoccupied by reading.
Suddenly the book disappeared from between my hands. Mick put his head where the book had been. I laughed. Then I sighed and looked into his blue eyes while running my fingers through his blond hair. I grabbed his face with my hands and pulled it close to mine. Then I kissed him.
“Please … ” Mai said from her corner of the dormitory. “Can’t you wait until you are alone?”
I sighed and let go of Mick.
“We are never alone,” I said.
“Let’s do something fun tonight, just the two of us,” Mick repeated his request from earlier.
I sighed again and looked at the book that had ended on the floor.
“I could use a break,” I said.
“Great. Let’s go swimming. The ocean is calm again.”
“But I can’t.”
“Why not? Don’t worry about your class tomorrow. I can teach you all you need to know.”
“But what about the guards? They have been following me around everywhere and it’s driving me insane. I don’t want to bring them on our night out. They are everywhere I go and keep reminding me that I am in danger. I feel more like a prisoner. You would think Angels would know how to be a little more discreet.”
“They probably think they can scare the bad guys away just by showing themselves.” Mick scoffed.
“I guess they could,” I said.
Mick leaned over and placed his lips close to my ear. “If we go through the windows they would never know,” he whispered. “We could meet outside.”
“But I am not supposed to leave the castle after sunset,” I whispered back as if the walls could hear me. “What if it is too dangerous?”
Mick lifted an eyebrow. “I am with you. Do you honestly think I would put you in danger?”
I had to admit I always felt completely protected when I was with him. He was always so sensible and he played by the book, so this suggestion to go out after dark took me by surprise.
“See you later, then,” he whispered just before he streamed out of the room through the wall with a confident smile on his face.
The air felt great as it went through my body. It was windy at the cliff where I waited for Mick after the sun had set. I had come first and had floated down on a ledge to hide behind the cliff so no one could see me from the castle. It was the same plateau that we had jumped from last summer when we went swimming in the great ocean.
The waves were still big and the ocean deep and dark in front of me. The moon was almost full and shone on the surface. Above me stars twinkled brighter and bigger than I had ever seen before. It was like we were closer to them here than back on earth. And there seemed to be so many more of them. Like hundreds of thousands more. They were all over the sky, sparkling like the glitter I remembered playing with as a child. It was truly magnificent to observe. As I waited, I saw several shooting stars dart across the sky as well. Even if Mick never came, it was already a night to remember.
He was late and I started wondering if he wasn’t going to come at all. Just as I gave up waiting and turned to fly back, he arrived. He took me by surprise with his sudden appearance. I hadn’t heard him come, but as I turned I stared directly into his face. He was standing right behind me. I jumped.
“You scared me.”
He looked at me mischievously. Then he tilted his head while he grabbed me around my waist and lifted me up. He was breathing heavily as he turned and pressed my body against the cliff. His face was only a few inches from mine and his blue eyes glowed in the darkness. He grabbed my arms and held them against the cliff, pressing his body against mine.
“I want you so much,” he moaned with a low voice. “You have no idea what you do to me. You bring emotions in me that I had no idea I had. I didn’t know I was capable of feeling this way,” he whispered heavily.
I felt his lips pressed roughly against mine as he kissed me desperately. My heart beat so fast it almost hurt, while an intense heat spread through me. I never wanted him to stop. I pulled him closer to me and kissed him back.
Then much to my surprise he pulled away from me. I looked at him with disappointment. I hated when he did that. It was as though he wanted me to stay hungry for him, like he was toying with me. He knew how much I longed for his touch.
He smiled even more mischievously just before he jumped off the ledge and into the dark waves.
I followed him into the deep water and tried to plunge right through the waves. It felt incredible. The feeling of water going through my body was indescribable. Now being nearly weightless, or weighing exactly twenty-one grams as we were told we do, makes swimming very different. Because our bodies are so light, we have to make an effort to push ourselves under the surface, because if we don’t we will just float on top. So it is actually hard work to go swimming, especially if you try to go under the surface.
As I landed on the water I couldn’t see Mick anywhere. I looked all around but he was nowhere to be seen. The waves pushed me around and I had a hard time orienting myself. I came awfully close to the cliffs and started swimming away from them when I felt something grabbing me under water and pulling me down. I barely managed to hold my breath as I was pulled under. When I opened my eyes under the water I saw Mick. He was smiling while pulling my leg. I signaled that he should let go and, as he did, I swam toward the surface and he came up close to me. I coughed trying to catch my breath again.
“What?” he asked. “Are you afraid of dying?”
“Very funny,” I said between two coughs.
“I thought it was.”
“I really didn’t.”
He grabbed my waist and pulled me close. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I coughed one last time. “I’m okay,” I said.
“You are just looking for pity,” he said.
I stared at him. Where did this come from? What was with him today?
“What? Why are you staring at me like that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But there is something. Something is going on with you.”
His eyes turned ice cold. “You were the one looking strangely at me.”
“ ‘Cause you’re acting weird.”
Mick scoffed and pulled himself away from me. He stretched out and floated on his back with his hands behind his neck.
“I am the normal one here,” he murmured.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yeah. But what do you mean?”
“Come on, like you don’t know.”
I shook my head. I had no idea what was going on in his head. “Why are you acting like this?” I asked. I felt like leaving immediately.
“I am not acting like anything. You are,” he said with an indifferent voice. “You are the one who is strange and abnormal.”
I shook my head in anger and started swimming toward the cliffs. I held back the tears welling up in my eyes. Why was he so mean all of a sudden? I didn’t understand anything anymore. Earlier he had been so nice and loving and now all of a sudden he was acting like this! What had changed? Why was he being like this?
“Yeah that’s right just leave me. Going back to mourn over him?”
I turned in the water and stared at him. “Is that what this is all about? Is this about Jason?”
“Who else should it be about?” he yelled. “It is certainly not about me. It is always about him, is it not? Everything is about him. I never stand a chance, do I? That is why you wanted to keep us a secret, right? That way you didn’t have to admit to yourself that you had given up on him. That way if he ever showed up at the school or if he felt better and started seeing you again he wouldn’t get to know about us. Am I wrong?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Well am I?” he asked again.
“I am done with you,” I said
and ascended from the water.
“Fine,” he yelled.
I flew as fast as I could back to the castle where I threw myself on my bed, letting all the piled up tears run down my cheeks.
Chapter 12
So just like that Mick and I were over. In the following days and weeks I did my best to avoid everything that had to do with him. The only time I was forced to see him was when I went to eat at Hornam Hall. As usual, he came out of the kitchen when the food was on the table and was sociable among the students, chatting with them, but he no longer came to my table and sat down to eat. So the whole school immediately knew something was wrong between us. No one said anything, but I knew if Abhik had been there he would have asked about it. I really missed my friend now. I could surely use one.
A month passed without any attacks on students and the security became less tight around the school, and especially around me. The two guards who had been following me closely were still at the school, but they were mostly hanging out in the corridors chatting and talking to each other and to the spirits that passed them.
I was happy to get them off my back and tried to stay focused on my schoolwork. I was doing well in a lot of my classes.
I was so mad at Mick that I had no time to mourn over the loss of our relationship. I missed it and parts of me missed him, but he had made me so angry that I didn’t allow myself to even think about him. I stayed busy all day, especially after school, and in the evenings when Mick and I used to be together.
Instead I hung out with the girls from my dormitory and it felt kind of nice doing girl stuff again. If I wasn’t with them I would go and talk to Yofi in the stables or stick my nose in a book on my bed.
I could tell by the way Mick always strolled past my table at each meal that he wanted me to miss him. But I was not going to give him that.
One evening just as the sun had set, I sat at my window reading a book about ancient Angel healing techniques.
I had tried a couple of times to get Raphael to answer questions about the screamers and especially about Abhik, but he seemed to be avoiding having to answer them. He was really good at that, I had come to realize, and eventually I had given up on getting to know more about the strange illness that seemed to have struck three of the students at the school. I looked through all of our textbooks but found nothing. Then I decided to go to the school’s library to look up the symptoms of the illness I had seen and felt in Abhik. I checked out a book and took it to my room.
As I sat and read, I came upon something interesting. Apparently there had been similar cases before. But it was a long time ago. Back in ancient times, it only said. In one of the cases, a female spirit woke up with the same symptoms—screaming and as cold as ice. Her body froze into the same position. It had been an attack, the book said. A demonic attack on the woman was believed to be somehow linked to the demon Azazel. The Angels had been certain that he was behind it.
“Azazel,” I murmured out loud while I closed the book and stared out at the forest that slowly got darker. Soon it would only be lit by the lights shining from the castle. Azazel was the demon whom Raphael had fought and tied to a rock under the desert of Egypt, I thought to myself.
I jumped down and found my History of the Angels book, where I remembered reading about Azazel. I found the name in the index and flipped through the pages. I started reading. It was written in an old-fashioned language and I didn’t understand it all. But I did understand that Azazel had been one of the Angels at the time. I read on:
Azazel became one of the leaders of the rebellious Watchers in the time preceding the flood. He taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows. He also revealed to the people the secrets of witchcraft and corrupted their manners, leading them into wickedness and impurity until at last he was, at the Lord's command, bound hand and foot by the archangel Raphael and chained to the rough and jagged rocks in the desert of Egypt, where he was to abide in utter darkness until the great Day of Judgment, when he will be cast into the fire to be consumed forever.
I looked up from the book. So he was a fallen Angel who had been thrown out from Heaven because he taught humans evil practices. I got that much.
I read on: The corruption brought on by Azazel degraded the human race, and the four archangels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Phanuel—saw much blood being shed upon the earth and all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth. The souls of men made their suit, saying, “Bring our cause before the Most High; Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were in heaven, which men were striving to learn.”
The following paragraph was more detailed about how God became angry with Azazel and asked Raphael to throw him out of Heaven. But as he did, Azazel took two hundred Angels with him in the fall, along with numerous spirits. The ones who refused him, he froze. He froze their minds in a state of terror inside a nightmare, as well as their bodies. The only way they could be freed was by tying Azazel under the ground. So Raphael bound his hands and feet and cast him into a hole that God made in the desert and then placed rough and jagged rocks over him and covered him with darkness.
I was breathless. So Raphael knew perfectly well who was behind these attacks on the students. He had to know, and so did Rahmiel and Salathiel. Who else knew? And why did they all insist on keeping it a secret from us? To protect us? To avoid creating panic? I closed the book and stared out the window again. Now I was more scared than ever. The fact that students in our school were subjects to the same type of attacks—did that mean that Azazel had escaped? And did it mean he was here at the school?
The grounds outside were still and quiet. No breath of wind disturbed the treetops in the forest. The stables seemed quiet and the ocean calm. I put the book on the floor and was about to get down from the window sill, where I often enjoyed reading, and go back to my bed, when something caught my eye. Someone was prowling across the silvery lawn. It looked like a young boy or some kind of animal—I had a hard time telling. I followed the shape as it moved across the lawn toward the stables. It was flying and running at the same time and looked mostly like a strange animal. Was it a big cat? But it wasn’t running on the ground; it was flying in the air. Where was it going? Why was it heading toward the stables?
In the same second my roommates entered the chamber. I asked Mai to come to the window.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“I want you to tell me if you can see something,” I said.
“It’s pretty dark. What am I looking for?” Mai asked with a yawn.
I pointed. “Down there…”
As I looked out the window again the cat-like figure was gone, like it had vanished. I climbed back into the window sill in order to see better, but nothing was there. I stared at the stables. Had it gone inside or had it disappeared back into the forest where it came from?
“It is probably just some animal from the forest,” Acacia said while Mai yawned again.
“Boy, I am beat,” she said and went to her bed.
“Me too,” Acacia said.
I was tired as well, but as the lights went off in the dormitory, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept seeing that strange cat-like figure. It looked so big, the size of a human. And it floated above the ground like a spirit. But again, as Acacia said, there were a lot of strange animals in the forest that we had never seen. At least that’s what Adahy had told us. He was the one closest to nature, since he lived in the forest, in a cabin no one had seen, since it was so deep in the forest.
The next day I flew to the stables on my lunch break to find Adahy. I wanted to ask him about the animal I had seen, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I found it strange since Adahy was always in the stables. As I approached Yofi I could tell he hadn’t been fed. He stared at me with his deep purple eyes
and neighed, like he was trying to tell me he was hungry. As I checked the rest of the Pegasuses’ troughs I found them all empty. No one had fed them all day, I realized. In the first year of school I had helped out in the stables so I knew my way around and quickly found their food. I put it in big buckets and soon the Pegasuses were eating eagerly.
I enjoyed the sound of them eating, when I suddenly felt someone was behind me. I turned and found Adahy. He was standing in the entrance and was staring at me. His long black hair was tousled and he seemed to have a hard time catching his breath.
“What are you doing here?” he said with great exhaustion in his voice.
“I … I was just … Well I came to talk to you actually.”
He looked at me looking like he didn’t believe me.
“I saw that the Pegasuses hadn’t been fed.”
Adahy looked at little confused.
“Well, I was just going to do that now.”
“Is everything all right?” I asked, a little concerned. Adahy didn’t seem to be himself. He never forgot to feed his animals.
He stared at me. Then he nodded. “Why do you ask?” he said.
“I don’t know. Just making sure,” I said.
“It is none of your concern.” He started floating past me while he was still speaking. “You shouldn’t even be here. Don’t you have class now?”
“Well lunch break is almost over,” I said.
Adahy seemed to not be listening. “Mmm …” he grumbled while floating around a little bewildered.
Wanting to get back to my class I started heading to the door. When I reached the door I turned around and looked at him. He stood still, bent over a sack of food for a long time without moving. It was odd to see him like that. It was like he didn’t know what he was doing.
“I was just wondering if you had seen a cat-like animal running around on the lawn outside the stables,” I asked. “I think I saw it from my window last night.”
He froze. Then he turned and looked at me. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said while shaking his head and breathing faster.