Sinner: Feathers and Fire Book 5 Read online

  “You dare to call me unworthy of keeping something safe?” I asked in a cool, measured tone. Then, with a mirthless chuckle, I indicated the Garden behind me and the war-torn landscape surrounding us. “Why would I give you the Spear?”

  To both our surprise, I was suddenly gripping the crackling white spear in my fist. Two black bands encircled the haft, cutting the weapon into thirds, but it remained one solid piece despite this weakness. I stared down at it. Then I let out a slow whistle. “Speak of the devil…” I chuckled darkly. “And she will appear,” I said, turning my wicked smile on the Angel.

  If I was about to die, at least I’d managed a good one-liner.

  “Foolish Angel…I am the Spear.”

  Chapter 10

  The Angel had gone entirely still, staring at the Spear incredulously. Then, like a glacier calving, the new spiky growths on his armor cracked and slid from his body, crashing to the earth in a chiming pile of diamond grit. He never broke eye contact with the Spear.

  I could tell he was trying to decide if I had spoken truly, but I was still blocking him from reading my thoughts, so he was instead trying to read or talk to the Spear. And it didn’t appear to be answering his repetitive, desperate phone calls—sending them straight to voicemail like a needy boyfriend after a breakup.

  He finally shook his head and turned to look me in the eyes. I ground my feet into the earth, ready for anything, gripping the Spear in preparation of a very short fight, hoping I had my affairs in order back home.

  The Angel abruptly flung out a hand and an orb of white fire suddenly erupted on the ground between us. It wasn’t any kind of attack, because it just looked like a mellow campfire, but I could sense the raw power within. It was like my own white magic but on crystal meth. Or perhaps Angel Dust. Was this a glimpse of my future potential—the answer to why my magic would occasionally turn white when I made flames? I wasn’t about to ask him, not wanting to further lower his already low opinion of me. The Angel took a deep breath, calmly walked up to the fire, and then calmly sat down on a short pillar of salt.

  I grimaced. That was just…distasteful. Hadn’t that been a brother, once?

  The Angel reached into the fire and withdrew a brilliantly glowing coal of pure light. He stared down at it in silence for a few moments, his face blank, but his hand shook in either pain or strain from the raw power. He finally looked up at me with his piercing white eyes and they flashed as if he had absorbed some of that fire. He gave me a nod, letting me know our argument was over. Obviously a card-carrying member of the man club—maybe their first member—he didn’t apologize or admit that I had been right.

  It was good enough for me.

  I released the Spear and it winked out of existence. The campfire flared brighter—as did the coal in his hand—before returning to normal. He considered this in pointed silence.

  But the set of his shoulders let me know it had been both significant and unexpected.

  “Sit with me. We have much to discuss…”

  I sighed, realizing I really didn’t have any other option. Cain continued to rail against the sky, mouth open in a silent roar, fighting to send his haunted, chilling music into his mother’s garden.

  I should have brought another apple…

  The Angel watched me, his fist still shaking from the coal. I waited in silence, pretty confident on my decision to not play follow the leader. “This is my first time,” he said in a tight, cautious voice. Well, for an Angel, it was practically screaming. I rose above my inner urge to pounce on the obvious laundry list of jokes, and waited.

  He eventually lifted the stone to his face, let out a breath, and set the coal against his forehead. He hissed and grunted, and I watched in disgusted fascination as his face…changed.

  The beauty burned away, revealing the same face below, but…terribly, permanently scarred.

  I leaned closer, my eyes wide as I picked out the same features from the previous mask, horrified to see the nasty scars that had marred such perfection. Like seeing before-and-after pictures in reverse. What remained was a rugged, raw, haunting beauty.

  This face had seen war. His eyes were no longer as closed off, and I could see they were haunted and full of…loss—the first emotion I had seen here. As I stared at him, I realized his entire face now showed signs of life, emotion, sympathy, and fear. Not as naturally and easy to read as a human’s face, but the potential was there.

  I leaned back, letting out a breath as he met my eyes and nodded. He had experienced at least one bad Monday in his existence.

  I very carefully considered my response. He had admitted this was his first time. This seemed ritualistic. A gift. A baring of blades. The first sign of honesty I had seen from him. Something real. I relaxed my shoulders, and let myself show a genuine smile I hadn’t realized I’d been holding back from him.

  “You are still beautiful,” I breathed, making sure to look into those white eyes as I spoke.

  His face—I hadn’t even realized it was tense and apprehensive—softened. Barely.

  But his eyes glowed with appreciation. They were still hard and merciless, but a little humanity lurked in those depths. We weren’t friends. I knew that. Beings like him didn’t have friends. He only had brothers—and those brothers had earned their place at his table.

  In his eyes, I was likely some yapping dog with a bad attitude. A dog he had taken on a walk to his Father’s Garden. Then I had bit at my leash, begun barking at everything, and peed on their things. Out of the blue, I had then looked up at him and wagged my tail politely.

  Something along those lines. Now, I needed to prove that I wasn’t a temperamental Yorkie.

  I hadn’t been railing against God with my previous disrespect. The Angel seated across the fire was solid proof that He existed. In what capacity, I had no idea. But there was obviously a source to the Angel’s creation. But until the big guy sat me down for a chat, I wasn’t about to devote myself to Him.

  Call it what you will, but it just wasn’t in my nature. I knew it was wrong, and that I was supposed to just have Faith. I could have chosen to sit beside everyone else at church, singing the songs, reciting the prayers, but…it wouldn’t have been genuine.

  Accepting that fact, I had chosen to be brutally honest. Because I wasn’t happy with how management had handled things. I was leaving a bad review.

  I was showing this Angel—and his Father—that their actions had consequences. It wasn’t bravery on my part. I knew I had an ace up my sleeves—that if this Angel had truly wanted to end me, he would have already done it. He was powerful enough to snap his fingers and end me. Which meant he wanted or needed something from me.

  “Why have you brought me here?” I asked him, folding my hands together in my lap, studying the white fire between us.

  His gaze latched onto the shadow ring circling my thumb and his scarred face tightened angrily. “You bound an Angel.”

  This was shaping up to become one of those sensitive conversations. One where someone got their feelings hurt…

  Chapter 11

  I let the statement settle between us for a few moments, knowing it hadn’t been what he originally intended to say. I slowly lifted my thumb, displaying the band of shifting shadows. “What choice did I have?” I asked softly. “Let him join your Fallen brothers and sisters?” I shook my head firmly.

  He studied my finger in silence, a troubled look replacing his anger. “I do not have an answer, but it has been a long time since one wore an Angel on their finger,” he admitted, sounding sickened.

  I glanced up sharply. “I’m not the first?” I asked, surprised.

  “Your ancestor, Solomon, son of David, also bound the Fallen into a ring. He had the wisdom to not let them touch his flesh. But to risk them so close to clawing away at your true soul…” he shuddered at the thought, staring at my thumb.

  I twisted away from him to reach my fingers into the top of my bra and withdraw the tiny silk pouch holding the Seal of Solomon that
I had tucked inside—not having wanted to risk it out of quick reach at the party. Good thing, too, because I had no idea where my clutch purse had ended up. It had only held my phone and some cash, thankfully—I hadn’t bothered putting my driver’s license in there. I smiled absently, wondering if it was lying somewhere here in the once-beautiful Garden of Eden.

  That would really confuse some Angels.

  I turned back to the Angel, dumping the silver ring into my palm and showing him.

  He leaned back instinctively. I closed my fingers over it, shielding my mind in case any of the residents inside decided to reenact a Jerry Springer episode of family drama. Luckily, they were quiet. “I don’t know how to put this one inside,” I admitted, holding up my shadow ring. “Or what that even means,” I admitted.

  “It is not for me to know, but you should find out how to extricate him from your flesh.”

  I sighed tiredly. “No argument there.”

  He leaned forward, staring into the white fire. “It saddened me to feel him Fall…” he breathed. “We wear these scars like broken hearts for our siblings who chose wrongly on that fateful day,” he said, holding his hand palm up as if to indicate his entire face with his fingers. “I have never shown a human this,” he reminded me.

  I sighed at the raw pain that briefly flickered across his eyes at mention of his scars. “Thank you for the gift. The scars do not negate your beauty, though. Why hide them?”

  He let out a breath, shaking his head. “They see it as tiny victories, knowing we are just as scarred from our broken family as they are—even if it is a different type of scarring. They embrace their transformations, their grotesque visages, their self-inflicted mutilations, making a mockery of the perfection given to them by our Father. As a balance, we conceal our pain.”

  My heart broke a little at that, not having ever thought about it. He was speaking of Demons. Both literal and his own internal demons. Cain continued to pound at the sky, managing to emphasize the potential harm siblings could inflict upon each other.

  I wondered if Abel’s demise bothered Cain more than he let on. If he, too, felt like this Angel.

  I smiled consolingly at the Angel. “Masks don’t heal pain. Pretending otherwise simply means you continue to carry guilt on your shoulders. The scars are a part of you.” I pointed at the landscape around us—at all the unmasked scars. “Pain is a lesson one shouldn’t ignore. Embrace it. Understanding and accepting is healing.”

  He looked up at me, staring into my soul for a few moments, considering my words. “Perhaps.” Then he smiled faintly, as if at an inside joke, but it was gone as swiftly as it had appeared, like a blown-out candle flame.

  I frowned, wondering what I had missed. “But I’m just an ignorant human,” I admitted.

  He nodded seriously, turning back to the flame so he missed my responding scowl. He’d taken it literally. Bastard. “It’s been thousands of years since I’ve spoken with a human. Ignorant, perhaps, but you see much. Experience much. Hurt much.” He shivered as if shaking off a potential contagion. “It’s terrifying.”

  I blinked a few times, and then a throaty laugh bubbled out from my lips. Soon, I was clutching at my sides, my eyes watering. He cocked his head, frowning. I waved a hand, laughing harder. “It’s not terrifying. It’s existing.”

  “I exist,” he argued.

  I forced back my laughter, knowing it wasn’t helping. That this was a genuine opportunity to perhaps teach him something. “What have you learned in all your years?”

  He thought about it. “Love. And War. Good and Evil—”

  I nodded soberly, but held up a hand to cut him off before he began reciting scripture. “I understand that, but you had one taste of true existence…” I again motioned at the war-torn land around us. “And your solution was to run from it, lock it away, hide it from sight as if it never happened. You won’t even show your own face…” I added softly.

  He stared into the fire, thinking silently. I gave him a few moments, but he seemed to be struggling with a response. “It was…bad,” he finally said. I waited for more, because hearing that his family had been ripped apart, that a vast group of his siblings had rebelled and then been banished to Hell…well, that was a few million miles past a bad day.

  Silence settled over us, and I realized that was the extent of his opinion. Wow.

  “What use is there in reliving it? The battle is over until Judgment Day.”

  I nodded, a part of me jolting at the sudden realization that our conversation was entirely literal. I kept that from my features, attempting to address the topic in a rational, dispassionate way—trying to understand it from his point of view—speaking his language.

  “And without learning from your past mistakes—and those of your Fallen brothers—what kind of result do you expect from that fateful day? From my opinion, I would expect no different an outcome than last time. Perhaps a worse outcome. Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.”

  “The same can be said of Sin, yet here you are,” he challenged.

  I nodded, understanding that he wasn’t insulting me. Again, he was being literal. There was no room for emotion in this conversation. Maybe a little bit of humanity, but not too much. “That is true. We each have much to learn,” I admitted.

  He was silent for a time, thinking Angel thoughts. Finally, he pointed his finger at my ring. “May I embrace my Brother?” he asked hesitantly, his voice shaking slightly as if it had cost him something to ask me such a personal question. The passion in his voice moved me, making me reconsider just how much an Angel knew about love. Maybe they knew more than I thought. Or had a better capacity for unconditional love than humans. Which made perfect sense, really. God had hardwired it into them, after all, not giving them the ability to have Free Will.

  “Of course.” I lifted up my shadow ring—which was entirely silent in my head. Still, the shifting shadows seemed to vibrate like a child on the verge of tears. I realized it was shame. And hatred. And despair. And hope.

  I hesitated. “I don’t know how to take it off,” I admitted, frowning.

  “You do not need to.” He waved a hand, and suddenly a smoky apparition hovered before us, making my heart drop into my stomach with a big splash.

  Between us, directly over the fire, a somewhat transparent—like a hologram—Nameless hung suspended from millions of glittering, silver chains as fine as fishing line. They stretched out from him in every direction, the ends sewn into his very flesh—even his earlobes, nostrils, and lips.

  There were so many silver chains that he resembled an exploding sun. I cringed at the agony on his face. He was nude, and his body was covered in thousands of runes, all throbbing with a pitch-black light, even though the wounds seemed to simultaneously eat up the very light they emitted. Gray, grimy blood oozed from his wounds like tree sap, never actually falling from his flesh. He stared at us with black eyes, his eyelids peeled back by yet more chains.

  His face didn’t seem to register pain at the piercings. It was cold and unyielding.

  But his eyes showed a storm of emotions. He was…

  Crying…

  Laughing…

  And silently screaming.

  “My brother…” the Angel breathed. Then he stood uncertainly, approaching Nameless in a hesitant shuffle. He paused for a moment, shaking his head longingly. Then he enveloped him into a fierce, heart-wrenching hug that made my own eyes water. I could see that the simple contact threatened to destroy both of them with the emotions they so adamantly denied.

  Nameless wilted into it, gasping out a rasp for the first time—as if the mere touch of his brother had filled some yawning, gaping chasm in his soul. A flame in the dark. A spark of hope in his torture.

  Nameless whimpered in a soul-crushing shudder that rattled his chains like windchimes.

  The Angel finally stepped away, his shoulders also shaking. He opened his mouth to say something further, closed it, and then finally hung his he
ad as he jerkily waved his hand again. Nameless vanished, and my ring suddenly throbbed twice. I felt Nameless retreat deep within me, my ring no longer threatening to freeze my bones to crushed ice.

  The shadows shifted more sluggishly now, like syrup around my thumb.

  The Angel sat back before the fire, his face blank, but his eyes on fire. “Thank you,” he whispered after a few moments. I nodded, unable to formulate a proper response. “Hopefully, that will quiet him for a time. Lessen his impact on you…” His voice trailed off, sounding numb.

  The wasteland was silent for a time, other than the distant sweep of wings from his patrolling brothers and the crackling fire before us.

  “Regarding the reason for your presence,” the Angel finally said, regaining his composure.

  “Abduction,” I corrected.

  His white eyes narrowed as they shot my way, but he found me smiling and let out a grunt. “There are three reasons you were…abducted,” he said. I nodded, leaning forward expectantly. “But I will not explain them until you stop blocking my ability to read your mind. It is disrespectful to mask one of my many senses. Like me placing a blindfold on you for the duration of our conversation.”

  Then he gave me a look he must have learned from his Father, because it made me wilt.

  How open and honest did I dare to be with the Angel. I didn’t want him flying away in horror or turning me into one of the pillars of salt decorating their front yard.

  He continued giving me that look, his white eyes roiling like swirling milk.

  Chapter 12

  I hadn’t really thought about it the way he described. Reading minds was one of his natural senses—like touching, tasting, hearing, seeing, or smelling for humans. I didn’t want to comply, but he made a valid point. And he had shown me his face, first—a sign of trust.

  I let out a breath, released my control, and felt suddenly naked.

  He dipped his head and let out a relieved sigh as his sense of telepathy came back online. “Thank you. I will not abuse your trust,” he told me, wasting no time in reading my mind.