As they moved through the room, they passed collections of luxurious leather furniture grouped together to form comfortable, private meeting spaces with coffee tables and side tables conveniently placed throughout. Those meeting spaces were effectively closed off by round rough circular walls that rose up from the floor of the cave like stalagmites, creating rings of semi-privacy, like booths in a restaurant. A few of these were already occupied, and the people who occupied them were an eye-f themselves.
Are they… elves?
Two women and three men sat inside one of the stone rings, around a small round polished oak table. They were all very beautiful, with clear skin, not a pore in sight, and long, thick lustrous hair – even the males. But their eyes were strange and cat-like, and they sported pointed ears. They were dressed in dark colors and discussing something fervently as they drank what looked like cappuccino’s, and over all, they reminded Angel of a supernatural group of beatniks.
Another stone ring was occupied by what at first appeared to be normal people. However, the leather furniture beneath them was bowing a little as if under a great weight.
Gargoyles
, she thought, recalling how dense gargoyles were, despite their human disguises. They tended to weigh as much as a ton, some of them. It could be dangerous if not carefully considered while out in public. You’d never find a gargoyle in an elevator.
Some gargoyles, the more powerful among them, were in positions of great responsibility, and hence had to mingle with the mortal world more often. Those gargoyles wore charmed items that negated this extra weight and its issues. But charmed items that powerful were hard to come by, because gargoyles were literally made from earth that had been saturated with magic. Developing an item that directly worked against that ancient magic was difficult, to say the least.
The temperature in the room was perfect. Some people liked it very warm. Others liked it on the cool side so they could wear sweaters or suit jackets. Some creatures had blood more adapted to winter, and others had blood that ran like lava through their veins. Yet, everyone in the restaurant seemed comfortable. In fact, they appeared
more
than comfortable. They were all smiling genuine smiles that reached their eyes, and there was an air of excitement about the place, as if they were about to be treated to something truly special.
As she and Sam moved through the play house, descending level after level, eyes turned their way. Conversations lowered in volume or stopped altogether. She felt conspicuous, but also, dare she admit it,
lucky
. She was intrigued, too. Because, she’d half expected men to look upon Sam with jealousy, knowing who he was and all he possessed. She’d expected women to look at him with longing. However, right here, right now, it was different. Men nodded politely, their expressions friendly, and women casually raised glasses as if in salute or toast.
This was intriguing. There were obviously things going on behind the scenes, and Angel wasn’t privy to them.
Yet
.
Their table was at the front of the play house, of course. That, she sort of
had
expected. He was Sam. But rather than a ring of stalagmite stone separating it from the rest of the venue, the ring was constructed of pure quartz crystal, born of the cave and carved by magic. The table in the center of the ring was also crystal, cut with a thousand facets to make it sparkle like mad. There were no chairs at this particular table. Instead, the ring of crystal was itself actually a booth, and atop the seated parts were plush white velvet cushions.
The maître d’ bowed low as they took their seats, and the cushions sank slowly and splendidly beneath Angel’s weight, as if she’d deposited herself upon marshmallows. They were handed menus, but Angel was so entranced by their surroundings, she politely took the menu and didn’t even open it. She was caught up, and honestly had no appetite.
Candles were laid out in the center of the table, but rather than wax, they appeared to be made of ice. This ice “melted” into mist as the flames burned them slowly away. Angel gazed at the flames and
quite
suddenly – felt a little lost.
Music played from somewhere, guitar music, soft and sad and hypnotic. She recognized it as belonging to Sungha Jung, her favorite guitarist.
I really am in a dream.
“Angel.”
She looked up, meeting Sam’s gaze. That didn’t help the dream feeling. “Yes?” Her voice sounded far-off in her own ears.
He leaned in, just a little, and his handsome brow furrowed. In a soft, serious voice she barely recognized and would never have expected to come out of Samuel Lambent, he asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. It was automatic. But in that moment, she also meant it. “I’m good,” she said. And considering she’d just lost her powers and was alone with the man she’d feared being alone with for two-thousand years, that was saying something.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Her grave had become something else long, long ago. Sixty-one years after her death, a river came through the area and washed the headstone away, along with anything that might have remained of her body, itself. Gregori had re-built it, burying items she’d made for him and articles of clothing she’d worn. He’d placed a new headstone over the space, and upon this, he’d laid her favorite flowers, as always.
One hundred and eleven years later, a hard freeze had cracked the headstone in two, and a few years after that, a harsh wind had crumbled the rest to dust. Again, Gregori had rebuilt the grave, this time planting a tree above it in the hopes the roots would stay the earth with more stability.
Two hundred and thirty-nine years later, a stampede of bison destroyed the tree and surrounding vegetation, and left the ground littered with the unfortunate remnants of those who could not run as fast as their fellow bison.
Gregori rebuilt.
Centuries later, a flood wiped nearly all traces of the grave away. Gregori hunted for remnants of what he had buried and gathered them up. This time, he took the land around her new grave and turned it into a cemetery. Over her own resting place, he built the first mausoleum, though it would not have been recognized as such at the time.
Years later, grave robbers and war saw the cemetery destroyed and burned, and the mausoleum desecrated. Again, he’d rebuilt.
This cycle continued for the next ten thousand years, seeing the grave and its memories ploughed under time after time by meteorology or geology or humanity. But always, he came back, and he found the ground where he’d laid her to rest, and he somehow made it sacred once more.
Now, political ridiculousness and petty religious strife in the land humans had foolishly claimed and drawn geographical lines across made it difficult to maintain the grave without using a good deal of the magic his existence on the earth had accumulated over the years. So, he used it. When he did, people died, but he literally couldn’t concern himself. Not about them.
Only about her… or what little he had left of her.
The desert space around him was empty now. A hundred feet away, the rubble of a demolished building collected drifts of sand as the wind blew. In the distance, an engine of some kind was running. But otherwise, Gregori was alone.
He looked down at the sand in front of him and concentrated. The wind redirected itself and began to blow across that sand. Little by little, the tiny pebbles were picked up and removed. Inch by inch. Foot by foot.
Until, at last, a massive hole had been dug in front of Gregori. At the base of the hole was a hollow of polished stone. At the center of the polished stone hollow rested a plaque. The plaque was ancient; its carvings were barely legible, and had been written in a dialect rarely used any longer. This was irrelevant to him; he would always know what it said.
Gregori continued to concentrate, until the carved stone steps he’d made long ago were also uncovered before him.
Then he let the wind die down and descended the steps. As his shoes touched down and lifted again, they left behind sprouting flowers. The stems rose directly from the stone, developed small buds, then bloomed into snow-white dandelions. These then shaded into light gray, then dark gray, and finally black.
Gregori reached the landing and approached the plaque. He knelt before it and brushed away the few remaining pebbles of sand from its smooth surface with glove-covered hands.
Here lies Amara,
the first love, the only love,
forever and always.
Gregori reached into his breast pocket and extracted a neatly tied bunch of flowers. These, too, were dandelions. However, unlike the black dandelions that were now covering the floor of the tomb like a thick, black carpet, these flowers were white as a dove’s wings. He hadn’t yet touched them. The gloves protected the blooms from the blackness of his heart.
Gregori gently placed the bunch of flowers atop the grave. It was tied with a white linen bow that was tattered at its edges. It was one of the few pieces he had left that had once been a part of the dress she’d worn the morning she promised herself to him. The morning they’d made love on the banks of a smooth flowing river… surrounded by her favorite flowers – dandelions.
Gregori’s teeth clenched. His jaw tensed, and his chest felt tight. He closed his eyes, eyes that reflected the shape and color of his soul, and wondered at the dryness of his cheeks. There were no more tears. He’d run out of them long ago.
When he rose and opened his eyes again, it was to find the flowers he’d left on the grave were no longer white. They, too, had turned black as night. Black as nothing.
This was the color of emptiness.
And he could not even protect this precious place from it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max had the strangest feeling. It was one of distinct familiarity, almost like a continuously running Déjà vu. He was sitting at a very large booth in a very busy restaurant on a fairly busy street, surrounded by the archangels and their archesses. Seated directly across from him was Lilith. Logically, she was the least likely of all of them to bring about a sense of familiarity to him, but right now, it was she who was the crux of it.
So strange….
He couldn’t put his finger on it, and it was leaving him in a sort of daze, but it was also… nice. Comfortable. It was like he almost remembered something. Like he’d been here before.
Mimi, the young red dragon more or less under Rhiannon’s charge, was also at the table. Max had the sense she was feeling a little lost these days, perhaps unsure of where she fit in. She would never admit it; the child was far too proud and strong, even at her young age. But Max knew she was clinging to Rhiannon because of all she’d lost and a fear she would lose what she had left.
The red-haired girl was currently swinging her legs back and forth, bumping her Converses against the underside of his seat, and slurping up a milkshake that was melting too quickly for her tastes. Her T-shirt read,
Live to Sniff, Sniff to Live – Strike.
Apparently, it was the latest in a long line of Strike memorabilia, created by her, personally, in memory of her late dog. It was the dog Gregori had killed.
The pretense for their luncheon together had been Samael, but Max suspected Gregori was in fact the reason they were really all gathered there, ordering fries and shakes at the Rainforest Café. If there had ever been call for a general plan, this had been it.
The group finished ordering, the waiter left, and Max opened his mouth to begin their discussion, when the table was interrupted by the approach of two teenage girls. One was holding a napkin and a pen. She walked up to Uriel, looking nervous enough to swallow her own face, and cleared her throat.
“Excuse me… Mr. Daniels?”
Uriel blinked in momentary confusion. Then, suddenly he remembered. He was in public. And in public, he was not Uriel the archangel, he was Christopher Daniels, the uber-famous star of the Comeuppance vampire series. Before Max’s eyes, Uriel straightened and slapped on a killer smile. He turned to face the girl and his light-beam grin landed on her full-force.
Beside him, Eleanore was being a good sport. She hadn’t yet rolled her eyes, which Max could tell she very much felt like doing.
Gabriel, on the other hand, had failed at that completely, and was not only rolling his eyes but muttering to himself under his breath about “bloody idiot actors” and their “bloody big britches.”
But the girls seemed not to notice. One had long lustrous red hair, much like Rhiannon’s, except that it was highlighted with bright green streaks. She had a smattering of freckles and bright green eyes. The other girl, the one with the napkin and the pen, had long black hair like Eleanore’s. Except, hers was also streaked through with stripes of green. Her eyes were also emerald in color.
Max frowned. He hadn’t noticed that at first. Very vivid eyes. Those kind were rare, and he could tell these were not contacts.
“Would you mind terribly if we had your autograph?” the black-haired girl asked.
Uriel reached out to take the pen and napkin, which the girl obviously chose to use because she didn’t have anything else. “Not at all,” he answered charmingly. “It’s my pleasure.”
“Uriel.”
Everyone froze at the sound of Lilith’s voice cutting through the quiet tension. They turned to look at her.