Torn (17 page)

I felt naked and exposed. Like evil was on my heels, a persistent, snarling dog. A thought pushed forward. A thought I couldn’t fight. What if darkness was my fate? Sadness and anxiety for all those who were giving up so much to protect me fell upon my shoulders. I wondered if they should’ve been protecting themselves
from
me instead.

“I don’t fully understand this whole good angel/bad angel thing. Can you explain it for me? Lucas and Ethan told me all angels are fallen? Is that true?”

“Sort of.
I think they meant all
Exiled
and all Faithful. We are of the original Fallen, our lineage progressing with help from humans. When Satan fell, he only took a third of the heavenly angels with him. You have to know, there are many different types of angels, from Seraphim, who are the closest to God to Virtues, which, by the way was the type of angel your father was, to archangels who are the guardians of all humanity and angels, guardian angels, who guard over individuals.

“Most of the Faithful would be best compared to archangels. It is our duty to atone for the sins of the Fallen by keeping humanity safe from the Exiled. We continue to repent because, one day, we may be forgiven and allowed to enter Heaven once again. The Exiled, on the other hand, are demons, though they were at one time angels. Many take human form and revel in the sins of humans by presenting them with opportunities to sin.
Greed, lust, envy.
The Exiled do what they can to make these sins appealing to humans.”

I chewed this over in my head for a few minutes. It was a lot to take in. Questions flooded my mind and I carefully chose the next one to ask. “Can an angel be hurt? I mean, like, injured but not killed?”

“Yes. We can bleed, we can break. But we have an amazing ability to heal ourselves. You, being a healer, can ease our pain faster than we can on our own, like you did with Lucas. He could’ve healed himself. It just would’ve taken him longer to do so. If our wings are removed but we’re spared the sword to the heart, we can heal.” He picked up a stick and started turning it between his fingers. “Wings take a long time to heal, to regrow. But they will regrow. Our gifts will be diminished until our wings regenerate fully but when they do we are often stronger than we were before. Only by both cutting off the wings and piercing the heart will an angel die.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to learn everything, understand everything before I had to face Sebastian and the rest of the Exiled. “Do all of you have wings? Ethan and Lucas said not all do.”

“Yes and no. Many wait years before they appear.”

“How do you kill an angel with no wings?”

“Ahhh...If an angel hasn’t gotten their wings yet, they must be beheaded.” My mind raced to Ethan and I had to choke down the bile that filled my throat.

“Why don’t you all get your wings at the same time? Like a right of passage? Like puberty?”

“We aren’t sure why. I can surmise it has to do with purity of lineage, either those who have remained Faithful or those who have remained Exiled. We have the ability, you see, to choose on which side we are to remain. Many Faithful fled to the arms of the Exiled because they thought it was easier.”

He turned his head to watch a group of squirrels rummaging for acorns. “It is so much easier to give in to temptation than it is to shy away from it. Remaining Faithful is difficult, primarily because you have to believe in hope. Without it, the Exiled will rule.”

“Hope? Isn’t that where I come in?
The box?
The pendant?
Is that why I am important?”

Jesse appeared to choose his words carefully and proceeded slowly. “The Box of Hope is not unlike the myth of Pandora’s box. In it should lay all the sins and troubles of the world. Many years ago, followers of the Exiled forced the box open and let loose a litany of evil and hate and despair. It is, you see, easier to promote hate and sadness than it is to promote happiness and love. The world became as it is now, full of war and gluttony and deceit.”

“And the Heart of Hope?”

“The Heart of Hope, once laid into the box will remove the most evil of evils, the most hateful of hate from the world, and lock them up within the Box of Hope. Most of us, Faithful and Exiled alike, understand there needs to be a balance. There needs to be sadness in order for there to be hope. There needs to be difficulty in order for there to be faith. At times, even though we have different agendas, we can find ways to get along together. Unfortunately, what Sebastian and the Exiled that have pledged
themselves
to him have done is plague humankind with troubles from which they cannot escape.”

“Surely, there are still good people, hopeful people,
faithful
people in the world?”

“Of course there are, Samantha. But it’s getting too easy to drop everything and run for individual satisfaction.”

“So, where do I come in?”

“You are a Virtue. You are the one who protects hope. The guardian of the pendant, as your mother was. It is your duty to find the box and lay the Heart of Hope within it to end this fight. However, because the darkness is within you, if you choose to follow the Exiled, you also have the unfortunate responsibility to return it to Sebastian and his followers. That is the war that wages within you. You have to decide. We can only teach you so much, train you so much. In the end, we can only place faith in the fact that you will do what is right. Your choices will decide the balance, or imbalance, of what is to be.”

Scared didn’t begin to cover what I felt at that moment. Overwhelmed, unworthy, challenged, determined, conflicted—that might’ve covered a third of it. If I was hearing him right, I was in charge of saving the world and all humanity from self-destructing. But I was just me; a girl thrown into all of this, a girl who’d rather stay ignorant to what was going on around her.

How could I have ever been concerned with designer labels, hair and fashion trends, or what kind of car Daddy was going to buy me? For a second, I felt ashamed of the fact I’d rather be in calculus than saving the world.

“You said that ‘most’ Faithful are archangels. My dad, wasn’t though? He was a Virtue?”

“Yes, he was.
A healer, a protector.
Virtues often take human form as doctors, nurses, scientists, artist, musicians, and such. Ethan however is neither a virtue nor an archangel.”

“What is he?
A demon?”

Jesse laughed at my apparently funny question, but I was totally serious. “No, Sam. Ethan is a guardian angel.
To be more specific, your guardian angel.
It is his duty now that he has chosen the Faithful over his
Exiled
lineage. Above all, it is his duty to protect a member of the Faithful, regardless of his feelings for them.”

“Feelings?”
How did Jesse know about that?

“Yes, Sam.
Feelings.
He thinks he cannot properly protect one he loves so much. That is one of the reasons you’re here. He feels he isn’t able to keep you as safe as he should.”

My bug-eyed, gaping mouth stare said it all. Was that why it would never work? Was that what they were talking about? Was that why he seemed so quick to back away?

No wonder.

Now I felt like a total jerk.

CHAPTER 14

We ate a silent lunch, though once again my appetite had dissipated. Jesse decided it was time to move on. We walked another half hour into the woods until we came to a seaside cliff. Below the water was churning restlessly. I felt like I’d been there before, that the place meant something. I was sure of it but I couldn’t figure out what. The edge was rocky and crumbly, daring anyone to step closer to the void. It was both beautiful and frightening.

“So, Jesse.
What’s next?”

“We’re going to clear your head first, then do some simple exercises. From what I understand, you can do amazing things. We need to make sure you can focus on those powers and control them. In order to do that, you need to be in control of your emotions and you aren’t. You are, pardon me, a bit of a mess right now. I’d like to help clean up that mess before I allow training with the others to go on. We may mop this up today, or it may take longer. We’ll see.”

“I’m that obvious, huh?”

“Yeah.
A bit,” Jesse said as he smiled that fatherly smile of his.

I didn’t know what it was about him but there seemed to be something familiar in his demeanor. Something about him eased me, calmed me.

“Okay. How do I clear my head? Is there some sort of angel mumbo jumbo I need to chant or something?”

Jesse chuckled. “No, no.
Nothing like that.
We just talk for now.”

“Talk?
That’s it? Haven’t we been doing that? What are we supposed to talk about?”

“What do you want to tell me?”

And wasn’t that the loaded question of the century?
What did I want to tell him
? Was he a shrink now? I was struggling a bit with the truth. Not so much that I wanted to lie to him, as I was sure that would’ve gotten us nowhere. Besides, I had a weird feeling he’d know if I wasn’t being straight with him. I just didn’t know how much to tell him. Was I supposed to talk more about the voices? Did I tell him about the dark thoughts that crept into my head at night? About feeling like I was balancing between some walking zombie and the real me? I knew he could see I was stalling but he made no gesture to speed the process up. Half of me was relieved at his patience but the other half was begging for a leading question. I had to say something, anything, just to get the ball rolling so I sat on a rock, closed my eyes and remembered.

“When Dad died, I didn’t know what to do. My mom, as you know, died in childbirth, or so I thought until a few minutes ago, so it was just us, just Dad and me. I know he was gone a lot but not until I could fend for myself. I guess he was gone more than usual that last year or two. But I had Lucas and Ethan with me so I didn’t mind too much. They moved in when their dad died five years ago. It was easy, natural. We’d always been close so there was no real issue with it. I had school, friends, and sports. Then one morning my dad was dead. No warning at all. It was like someone dropped a bomb. Well, not really
no
warning. I did have a dream the night before. I was told he was killed while transporting medical supplies. But now I know the truth. Now I know Sebastian murdered him.”

“Can you tell me about the dream, Sam?”

I hated remembering that dream. I hated talking about it. I hated the fact that it kept cropping up. But I told him all about it, just as he asked. I got lost for a minute in the memory. It felt like only moments had passes since that dream changed my life into a living nightmare.

Jesse put his hand on my shoulder to encourage me to continue. “After that, I used a knife to open the paper, because I didn’t want to tear it,” I said. “But I cut my hand. I don’t really know what happened after that. I know, in the dream, I passed out. I know I had a weird vision of my dad. The one Lucas told you about. It was like a dream within a dream, if that makes any sense. Every night for weeks, I’d have the dream. I was stressed and sad and confused and then the incident with the kitchen window happened. That’s when I found out Lucas and Ethan were angels, when I saw Lucas had wings. That’s when they told me my dad was an angel, too. The next day, the morning after I found out about them, Lucas and Ethan took me away. They said it wasn’t safe to stay there. They told me it had to do with the box and my dad but I didn’t understand. We just left and they took me to the cabin.”

“I know it probably upset you, but that was smart of them. Then what happened?”

He watched and waited for me to answer as I stepped closer to the edge of the cliff.

“Once we got settled in the cabin, they started my training. At the time I was too numb to question anything so I did what they asked. I trained to fight. But fight what? At the time I wasn’t sure. I didn’t understand. I just knew that it was something I had to do, to fight the ones who killed my dad.

“I can run, fast. I can see three, four, five moves ahead. It wasn’t long after we arrived at the cabin that I began to hear the voices more clearly. I began to understand they weren’t just tricks of my imagination. They were actual voices. Sometimes, I know it’s my dad. Sometimes the voice is Sebastian’s. Sometimes I dream of angels and light and darkness. Sometimes I hear weird noises.”

Jesse stood next to me, trying to comfort me with his presence. “It seems to me you know a lot. When they took you away, were you frightened? Did you try to contact someone?”

“No. Who was I going to call? I have no family other than my dad, and I wasn’t going to call any of my friends from school, though I am sure I could have. Lucas and Ethan were with me. They’d be who I would’ve called anyway. I mean, sure, I was frightened but I was mostly just sad.”

“What is it about
this
place that frightens you?”

Wow. I did not see
that
coming. How did he know this place was familiar to me? How did he know it gave me the jitters? I needed to work on my poker face, for sure.
Time to play dumb.
“This place?
What do you mean?”