Ash & Flame: Season One (26 page)

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Emma followed a step behind her dad, the angel’s feet dragging on the street as Dad carried him. They had left the quarry and the larger forest behind them, and now Dad was leading them down a narrow street, dark abandoned houses on either side.

Emma glanced up and frowned.

The full moon made her skittish. Maybe it was because the moon was almost like a spotlight that showed the damned where she was.

Or maybe it just marked her as one of them. She nearly was. She’d nearly turned on her dad, although she didn’t know why. The anger burning inside her, the whispers that told her that her dad wanted the Words for himself even though she knew he didn’t. He couldn’t.

She didn’t want to know how close she had been to turning that Word on him.

Dad took a deep breath beside her, beginning to struggle under Ithuriel’s weight.

“You okay, Dad?” She thought about giving him another Word, but she didn’t know if it might damn him too, so she left it alone for now.

“Yeah, I got him.” Dad grunted as he shifted the angel on his shoulder. One side of his shirt glistened where the demon had cut him. “Hope he comes to soon, though. Not sure how much longer I can do this.”

Emma glanced at one of the abandoned homes. A section of the roof had caved in, and the faded white siding had been ripped off in long gouges down one side. Scorch marks surrounded one of the broken windows on the second story.

“Do you want to stop here?”

Dad shook his head. “Not yet, Em. I want to get as far away from that shithole as we can.”

Truth be told, Emma was all too glad to be away from there. All those dead things, and no skin on the demons to hide what should have stayed inside. Especially the one she’d burned.

She hadn’t dared get any closer to the big daemon’s corpse, her skin crawling, like somehow it watched her. She’d imagined the wings fluttering, and the daemon’s neck cracking as the head shifted to leer at her. Even now, back on the road, she felt sick to her stomach just thinking about it.

Emma coughed quietly into her hand and walked beside her dad.

They had rounded the street, which turned left past a cluster of dead trees and a marker naming the road

“Old Hwy CC”, when the angel woke up. He took a loud gasp of air, his chest heaving, and pushed Dad away. Dad nearly fell, suddenly free of Ithuriel’s bulk.

“Ithuriel…” Dad took a step towards the angel, his hands out in front of him.

The Malakhi looked back at Emma and her dad. His eyes went wide for a second, a panicked look on his face. He blinked and took a deep breath, licking his lips. “Where…where are we?”

“In town,” Emma said. She pointed back the way they’d come. “We left the quarry a while ago.

Remember the quarry?”

Ithuriel peered down at the ground, and he slowly nodded. “Yes, Emma.” He rose up to his full height and looked up into the nighttime sky. He nodded again. “I remember.”

“Are you alright?” Dad asked. He glanced at Emma, then back at the angel. “We can stop soon to rest, but the farther we get from that pit the better, as far as I am concerned. Neither of us seem all that up for another fight, and—”

“Why aren’t we going back to Haven?” the angel asked, cutting Ren off.

“We can’t.” Emma stepped forward, standing beside her dad. “We have to go north. I have to.”

Ithuriel turned to face Emma, and she felt the heat of his stare. It was like he peered into her, right through her body and into her soul, judging her. She wanted to squirm away, but she held her ground and his gaze.

“I cannot allow that,” the angel said. “If the Grigori—”

“We’re going north,” Ren said. “I don’t think we can run far enough, fast enough, not anymore. We can’t keep hiding. And you can’t protect her, not by yourself. Look at you.”

Ithuriel paused, his gaze trailing down his pitted armor. Dad had cleaned him up as best he could, but dried blood and dirt still clung to his skin. He visibly sagged, dark bags under his eyes. The angel’s wings looked a tattered ruin to Emma, feathers torn or hanging loosely.

He straightened and turned his stare towards Ren. The spear flashed in his hand, its point softly glowing in the darkness. “And you, Ren? Can you protect her?”

Dad stepped in front of the Malakhi, his fingers hovering over the hilt of the knife jutting from his belt.

“What are you doing?”

Emma’s heart beat against her chest, and her pulse pounded in her ears. Then she saw the bead of sweat run down her dad’s forehead. She was feeling his nerves, mingling with her own.

Calm down, Dad
. She bit her lip and focused on the thought, telling herself the same.
Please
.

“I…I don’t know,” the angel finally murmured, slowly shaking his head. He stepped back, wavering on his feet. He looked down at the ground, and the spear flashed out of existence, Emma’s ears popping. “I just need to rest, that…that’s all…”

Dad’s posture eased, and he relaxed. He tried to hide the low sigh that slipped from his lips, but Emma noticed. “Okay, then,” he said, looking back down the street. “Let’s find us a good spot to stop for the night.”

“Good.” Emma peered up at the moon, shivering.

Dad helped Ithuriel as they headed down the street, the angel limping along beside him. Emma caught the angel stealing glances at her as they walked, the skin on the back of her neck tingling. Her eyes would meet his, and he would tear his gaze away to stare off into the darkness.

She was about to ask him what was wrong when Dad stopped them near the end of the narrow street, pointing at a house to their left, cloaked in shadow.

“This looks good.”

A one-story brick house sat tucked against tall trees that cloaked the roof under their limbs. Bushes lined the front of the house, grown over and obscuring the tall windows, which all surprisingly seemed to be in one piece. A crumbling path led to a small front porch, and a white wicker chair lay on its side by the door. A round pool, the moldy panels sagging at the bottom, sat to one side of the house.

Dad was the first to crack the front door open, Emma a step behind. He peeked around the narrow opening, and Emma stood beside him, listening intently for anything inside the house.

“Wait here,” Ithuriel said. He barged past them, hurt and all, and swung the door open, ducking through the doorway. He disappeared into the darkness beyond.

Emma looked at her dad and shrugged. Dad shook his head. He had rules for this sort of thing, but apparently angels didn’t have to follow them. They waited just outside the door for Ithuriel to return, Dad constantly scanning the overgrown yard and down the street, tufts of ash like snow over the wild grass. He was exhausted, his eyelids drooping. He leaned heavily against the wall, blinking way too much.

After a couple of minutes Ithuriel’s head poked through the doorway, and he beckoned them inside.

It was hard to see in the near darkness, and it was even worse when Dad closed the door behind them.

Emma blinked until she was able to make out vague details of the front room, and a hall that led deeper into the house.

“This way,” the angel said, and Emma followed his voice. He paused by another doorway, the door missing.

Emma squeezed past her dad, and entered the room. She could just make out the edges of a mattress, which had been tossed against one corner of the room, leaning against a battered dresser. Trash had been heaped against the far wall, but she’d learned long ago to deal with that.

“Sleep,” Ithuriel said, unmoved, his massive shadow shifting in the darkened hallway. “I will take the watch tonight.”

“Maybe I’ll stay up, too,” Dad said, but there was no conviction in it.

“No, Dad, you need to sleep,” Emma said.

He nodded dully, and stumbled into the room, lying back next to the abandoned mattress. His eyes flitted closed, and he motioned to Emma. “You, too, Em…” His hand fell back against the floor, and his head flopped to one side as he passed out.

Ithuriel looked at Emma, his expression indecipherable. He nodded. “Sleep, child. You are safe.”

“Right.”

She waited for the angel to retreat back down the hall. She scrounged through the dresser and pulled out a faded t-shirt, nodding to herself. It would have to do.

Carefully, afraid she’d wake him up, she tried to clean Dad’s wounds, softly patting at the thin cuts that raked across his ribs. She wiped his arms clean, worried over the mottled bruises that seemed to be everywhere. The gash over his eye probably needed stitches, but that was out of the question right now, so Emma just cleaned the area around it the best she could.

She held his hand after she’d done what she could, afraid to go to sleep. Her fingers traced burn lines on his palm, and she wondered how he’d gotten them. So many cuts and bruises, so much her dad had gone through for her. Feeling the scars and wounds made it real.

Emma fought off a yawn. She laid down next to her dad, still holding his hand.

Maybe she was safe after all.

▪▪▪

Ithuriel stood by the front door, scanning through the window into the yard. In the room behind him he could hear the light snore of Ren, and the quieter breathing of the man’s daughter.

He had almost done it. He could have ended the child’s life with a flick of his spear, ended the Grigori’s quest. Even with Ren stepping in front of him, flush with whatever power the child had given him, it would have been so easy.

He no longer knew what to do. Everything that had seemed so clear was now murky. All answers had vanished like a wisp of smoke blown away by a breeze. He was a Son of God with no God, an angel stripped of purpose. Even the divinity he had known and felt for all of his existence was failing, now just an ember of the fading fire.

He was between worlds. He had no home, no place to call his own.

A part of him wished that he had died back in that quarry. It would have been so easy to lie there in the dirt and let the daemons have their way. The pain would have ended, the black pit in whatever soul he had would have overcome everything. He wouldn’t feel tired anymore, wouldn’t wonder what he was supposed to do. He looked down at his beaten body, at the cuts and punctures, and at the dried, crusted blood smeared down his legs.

Ren was right. Ithuriel couldn’t protect them. Not anymore, and perhaps never again.

He had been the Spear, bringing the light to this world, hunting the darkness that sought to bring down humanity. He had been a Malakhi, one of the numbered few, charged by God to protect His children. An Angel of the Light…

Ithuriel blinked, felt wetness tracing down his cheeks. His vision blurred, and he couldn’t contain the tears spilling over his lids. He sank to the floor, huddled against the door, his arms around his knees, and sobbed. His shredded wings brushed the wall, the pain little more than a hollow pang against the overwhelming anguish he felt inside.

He had never felt so broken.

He cried until the tears dried on his cheeks. He sat there for a while longer, his mind numb and blank.

His fingers absently rubbed against his knees, like a stranger had stepped into his skin.

And, like a stranger’s, when they finally came, his thoughts surprised him.

Ithuriel pushed himself to his feet. Slowly he unclasped the joints of his armor, slipping the breastplate off. He set it down quietly on the floor. Strange how light he felt now, just in that one act.

He wiped his face clean, and walked towards the back room.

They were both asleep in a corner of the cluttered room. Emma lay curled up next to her father, an old, faded mattress behind her. Ren slept on his back, one arm stretched out protectively over Emma’s head.

Her guardian.

Ithuriel stood in the doorway for several seconds, just watching the two as they slept. All this time, and he still had not truly understood humanity. He had an inkling now as the emptiness spread inside him. They were much stronger than he could ever have guessed.

And now they were stronger than him. He had nothing left to give. He was a mere shadow, a symbol of the world that had passed away, and now it was his turn.

He stepped into the room, his footfalls careful and quiet, until he stood over them. He pulled the relic weapon clear of his belt, the pendant that Rachel had worn. He held the chain in his fingers, the pendant hanging loose, and looked down at Ren. The man had saved his life, even with the danger that had surrounded him. He had proven himself worthy, truly worthy.

Perhaps there was hope for the man after all.

And Emma’s secret, the reason the Grigori wanted her so bad. The reason they had hidden her with her unassuming father while the world fell apart. The girl was part of both worlds, two halves that strove to make her whole, and now Ithuriel knew that she would be the key to everything. And for all their plotting, the Grigori had dismissed Ren.

Ithuriel smiled. They would have to account for him now.

He lifted the pendant to his lips, and closed his eyes. He whispered a Word, the divinity ebbing as he spoke, and knelt beside Ren. He placed the pendant beside the man, and rose to his feet.