Authors: G. R. Fillinger
My chest was empty, unable to feel much anymore. “How’re they doing?” I asked Freddy as he hummed softly and waved his fingers in the complicated sign language I would never know.
“The dark essence is like the one that hit Nate, so we should be ok…thanks to Ria,” he said, his voice still rising and falling in a soft melody.
I nodded and smiled, my eyes watering. Damian reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. He was bigger and more muscular than Freddy, and yet, right now he looked as if he could slide between prison bars. He’d done this before—taken my hand. Each time he looked as if he was going to say something, but he never did.
I squeezed back and walked on. Miranda was just ahead, dancing around Jody’s bed like a gypsy. Jody had taken the brunt of the attack to save her brothers. Her leather armor was burned into her skin.
Miranda squeaked and gave me a hug as I passed. She and Freddy made it out unscathed by rolling down the mountain in continuous cartwheels, somehow escaping any collisions or hits from the demons. Ria hadn’t been with them.
I walked toward the bed at the far end. Orange light from the setting sun filtered in through the lead glass windows and stretched across her bed. Her chest was completely still.
“I told you at least twenty minutes.” Ria popped her eyes open when I sat down.
“Were you holding your breath?” I nudged a juice box into her hand.
Leo—Ria’s unfortunately named brown and white beagle—got up, circled around, and lay down in the same spot at Ria’s feet. He hadn’t left her side for more than a minute since they’d brought her in here.
Ria grinned slightly. “Someone’s got to lighten the mood around here,” she said and carefully lifted the straw to her lips. Even that was a strain.
The pit of emptiness in my chest filled with guilt. “Here.” I reached out and guided her hand the last eight inches.
“I got it.” She pulled her hand back and narrowed her eyes.
I kept my eyes on her hand. The only visible bruise she suffered was on her left hand—a patch of brand new skin with a black tinge to it. A small speck of dark essence had dropped onto her hand during the fight. Luckily, she thought quickly and sliced it off with a considerable amount of her own skin before it could get into her bloodstream. “Being a Patron’s sure made you one tough badass.”
She finished drinking and plopped her head back onto the pillow with a grin. “That’s right. All badasses sip their juice boxes by themselves.” She smiled again.
I looked down at my own hands, completely clean. Not even gunk under my fingernails. My body had just pushed all the tar-like essence out as if nothing happened. I should be the one in that bed, the one who’d almost died.
“When do you think Charming and Sleeping Beauty will wake up?” Ria nodded to Duke and Cheryl, each sleeping peacefully in beds next to hers. Cheryl’s bleach blond hair fanned out over her pillow, red lips pushed up in a continual kiss as her chest rose and fell. Duke’s lips pursed as he took deep breaths through his nose, his unconscious body admitting even now that he was in pain. They hadn’t been able to reattach his leg.
I shook my head as a voice inside forced me to look at them longer. I was responsible for this. I was the reason he lost his leg. I was the reason Ria was lying here. I was the reason Nate was in hell.
“Hey.” Ria reached out and squeezed my hand. “Remember when we’d go down to that cavern as kids? We’d climb down and have to squeeze through those really tight holes.”
I nodded, my eyes rolling around and around to keep tears from falling out. “My hyperventilating stage.”
“Yeah, Grampy learned to carry a paper bag pretty quick.” She chuckled. “We’d get down to the bottom—it felt like a thousand feet down—and then he’d tell us to look up.”
I closed my eyes and remembered. The air was chilled down there, and we could barely see the rocks except for the goofy yellow headlamps he made us wear.
“We’d turn off our lights, and up above was the hole we’d come down through. It was like a star, and he’d always say—”
I mouthed the words as she said them.
“See, light always shines through the darkness.” Ria squeezed lightly, though the strain on her face said she was trying to squeeze hard. “Whatever that scepter thing was, the artifacts and power and whatever else he told you—”
Procel’s face flashed through my mind.
“The light will always shine through.” She released my hand and made a half-hearted attempt to punch my leg. “And I know you don’t like getting all emotional, so there.”
I smiled and pushed the juice box to her mouth again, a small exhale taking some of the infinite weight off my shoulders.
She sipped and leaned back again.“Do you think Nate’s seeing the same thing right now? Even just a little light from way down there?” Tears threatened to spill over her lashes.
My voice found its sound even as the rest of me wanted to fall into nothingness. “We’ll find him, Ria. I promise.”
She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “I know, and then we’ll figure out why you find metal sticks in trees.”
I laughed and wiped my eyes roughly. “While we’re at it, let’s find out how the archangel Uriel’s actually my dad, how a Fallen wanted me to join him or kill him in order to release all my supposed power, and how Josh duped me this whole time.”
“Duped
us
.” Ria nodded. “But yeah, maybe we should just take this one step at a time.”
Every moment I’d spent with Josh bounced around my mind with no relief. The subway platform. The liquor store. The Babylonian headquarters. The diner. The rooftop. There was no meaning to anything he’d said, just like there was no meaning to what he’d done, to what he was.
I looked around the infirmary and saw all the good Freddy and Miranda were doing. Their essence was beaming off of them so even I could see it now that my lack of sight had returned.
In the subway, Josh had us buy tickets for strangers to build up our strength, to build up our essence. That was actually something Patrons did. What other truths had he interspersed with the lies?
I closed my eyes and could still feel his lips against mine. Just before we kissed the first time, his hand had glanced off mine and I’d seen him in a uniform. My visions were becoming clearer now—at least the ones I’d already seen. A woman had thrown a blue dagger of essence at him. It was a memory just like Nate’s.
I shook my head and bit my lip. I should have known right then that Josh wasn’t who he said he was. A Patron had tried to attack him, and that World War II uniform wasn’t some costume. If he’d been alive in World War II—just like Nate was alive in Gomorrah or whatever that was—he wasn’t human.
Josh is a Fallen.
I repeated the sentence over and over until my mind could accept it, could grow to hate him.
“Hey, that’s enough moping.” Ria nudged a magazine into my lap. “Seriously, it’s going to be my turn soon.”
I smiled and took Ria’s hand in my own, half hoping I’d be able to see one of her memories, her future.
She smiled cheerfully, but nothing came.
I looked down at the glossy magazine cover and sighed. “Exotic Vacation Destinations. You trying to tell me something?”
She shrugged. “You never know. Maybe there’s a nice stairway to hell in one of those places. We hit the beach, get nice and tan, then we’ll be ready to go down and save our red-headed dork.”
“
Your
dork,” I corrected and chuckled, scanning the three gorgeous pictures on the cover. A white sand beach with palm trees and coconuts. A lush green forest with a fawn in the foreground. A tan desert with blue skies that made my essence look dim.
My vision blurred, and a rush of adrenaline coursed through my eyes and into the back of my head.
A dark figure stepped forward, the clink of metal on every other step.
He muttered something, and red essence surrounded him and the cold iron scepter he used as a cane.
He bent down and picked up a flat, black stone with gold markings, a familiar smirk turning up the right side of his mouth.
“Eve? Eve!” Ria threw her juice box at me.
I opened my eyes and looked up at her pale, fear-stricken face. I was on the floor.
“Eve, what’s wrong?”
I pushed myself up and stared at her with the vision fixed in my memory. “I saw Josh, and I know where the next artifact is.”
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G. R. Fillinger is a high school English teacher by trade, a full-house rehabber by challenge, a smoker (of meats) by deliciousness, and a writer by night. He does not wear a cape.
He lives in Southern California with his wife and son.
Still interested? Check out his website:
www.grfillinger.com
First, I have to thank God for allowing me to write this book. Thank you, Jesus!
Many thanks have to go out to my beta-readers (in no particular order): Noah Amaya, Tom Vega, Yumi Fugi, Christy Lozano, Natasha Lozano, Theresa Mendoza, David Moberly, and Faye Femister.
Thanks to my wonderful cover artist, editor, and formatter.
Thank you, Wifey, for always supporting me and pushing me to make this the “best-in-show.”
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2016 by G.R. Fillinger
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the author.
Cover Design by
Mae I Designs
Copyediting by
Finish the Story
Formatting by
Polgarus Studios