He cuts me off with an open palm in front of my face. He’s so rude, but I won’t get answers if I lose my temper again. ‘No more questions tonight,’ he says.
‘But –’
‘No more questions, Ebony!’
‘What are you hiding from me?’ I persist.
His lips purse together, his jaw clenches. ‘You have a problem with trust. You might take it the wrong way.’
‘Try me. Not knowing is far worse.’
‘Fine. But don’t come crying to me when you can’t handle what I tell you.’
‘Okaay.’
‘Nathaneal does not want you to know.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘He does not want you to know what retribution the court has agreed to, or where he is going, how long it will take, who is with him, or what he must do. Is that clear enough for you?’
To say I’m floored is a massive understatement. ‘I don’t understand. Why not?’
‘All I can say is that he made me swear not to tell you the specific details of his mission. As for his reasons –’ he shrugs – ‘purely supposition. You will have to trust him.’
I sink into the soft couch, stifling a gasp. Why does Nathaneal not want me to know? There’s only one reason I can think of. ‘How dangerous is this place he’s going?’
Gabriel’s eyes meet mine with the directness of a challenge, like a medieval knight laying down a gauntlet. If there’s one thing Gabriel wants me to know it’s how dangerous this mission is. ‘Extremely,’ he says.
‘Skade.’ My voice is barely a whisper. ‘He’s going into Skade, isn’t he? But why doesn’t he want me to know who’s going with him, or what he’s going to be doing there?’
He slices the air with his arm. ‘Enough! Nathaneal will be distraught when he discovers how much you dragged out of me.’
Jordan lays his hand on my shoulder. It feels good, and I don’t care what Gabriel makes of this innocent comforting touch. ‘He’ll be all right, Ebony. It’s Nathaneal. Remember how powerful he is.’
Sure, I’ve seen Nathaneal’s powers in action. And, yes, he is utterly amazing. But . . . ‘Whatever he’s doing, Gabriel, do you believe he will be successful?’
Gabriel’s face contorts with rage as he springs off the couch and stares down at me. For a moment I don’t understand, but then he says, ‘If you really knew my brother, if you believed in him a mere fraction of how much he believes in you, you wouldn’t ask that question. Perhaps the question you should be asking is whether you are worthy of that devotion, of that irrefutable loyalty and illimitable love. If you are – indeed – worthy of him.’
21
Jordan
When my alarm goes off on Friday morning, my first instinct, other than to smash my fist into my phone, is to wonder if Gabriel is still here. A door down the hall opens and shuts. That’ll be Ebony returning from her morning ride.
I swing my legs to the floor and head into the shower. It’ll be a relief to know Gabriel has gone. I can’t think straight when he’s breathing down my neck, accusing me of not being a good enough human being, that his brother made the wrong decision giving me a second chance.
Thane treated me like an equal from the start. But with Gabriel here I can’t be free with what I say to Ebony. And now she’s come into some of her powers, I may have to rethink my plan. How am I meant to convince her she’s not an angel when she’s destroying furniture without lifting a finger?
I hate it that I might have to ask Skinner for his opinion.
Ebony is sitting at the breakfast bar with her standard muesli and orange juice when I walk into the kitchen.
‘Sleep well?’ I ask.
She waves her hand in the air from side to side.
‘That bad, eh?’
She shrugs. She doesn’t want to talk, so I set about cooking up two slabs of ham with eggs, a tomato and mushrooms. I’d never get away with this if Thane were here. Halfway through cooking she comes over for a look and turns green round the edges. ‘I think you’d better sit down,’ I tell her, half joking, half not. ‘You look pale.’
‘I don’t know how you can eat those little chickens.’
I glance at my eggs, the bright yellow yolks bubbling away in hot oil. ‘You do know they’re not fertilised. They were never going to be chickens for real.’
‘And you don’t think that’s a tragedy?’
‘Sorry,’ I mutter under my breath.
‘I just prefer to eat what grows naturally,’ she says.
Hmm, well, this is one area of Avenean life where she’ll fit right in, not that I’m going to tell her. I need to come up with ideas on how to keep her here, not encourage her to want to live in Avena.
Plate loaded, I dig in. ‘Have you seen Gabriel yet?’
‘Not this morning.’
‘Maybe he’s gone, yeah?’ I suggest hopefully through a mouthful of ham and dripping yolk. ‘If we’re lucky, he will have dealt with that “entity” and gone home already.’
‘I hope so. The crash is all over the news this morning. Both policemen in that car last night were men with wives, families, children, parents, sisters . . .’
‘Hey! I get it, Ebony.’
She stops and sighs.
‘There was nothing we could have done for them. Even if we’d stopped to help, called Triple Zero, banged on the monastery doors, they wouldn’t have made it.’
She nods, then rinses her breakfast dishes, sniffing. Damn, she’s really upset over the . . . I was about to say ‘accident’, but that’s not exactly right.
She turns round and leans back on the sink. ‘Will you be ready in ten . . .’ She stops and tilts her head.
‘What is it?’
‘He’s still here. I can hear him.’
My appetite dwindles. I toss the last few bites into the bin and load the dishwasher.
‘Morning,’ Gabriel says in a tight voice as he strides into the kitchen. ‘I hope you both slept well, something I didn’t have the pleasure of doing.’
‘How did it go last night?’ Ebony asks.
He pours himself a glass of orange juice and drinks it. ‘I chased that thing all the way to Alice Springs.’
‘Seriously?’ I ask. ‘That’s like a couple of thousand kilometres from here.’
‘Did you catch it?’ Ebony asks.
‘No, I did not. It hid in the dunes, and just before dawn it slunk into a rock cave, one of many in an area of high cliffs and deep gorges. I checked them all and detected nothing but its odour.’
‘Odour?’ Ebony asks with a frown.
He turns his face to her. ‘Yes, indistinguishable from rotting flesh in the putrefaction stage of decay, when gases diffuse through the body, and amines like putrescine and cadaverine are released. Dense, wet, vile, almost shockingly sweet, like the vomit of a drunk, or the rancid breath of a hyena after it has gorged itself on a dead mammal.’
‘Jeez, Gabe, I just had breakfast!’
He stops and stares at me, then goes on, ‘The odour was in the air, in the soil, everywhere it had passed, making it impossible to differentiate between old and fresh scent.’
‘Could you determine its composition?’ Ebony asks.
‘I didn’t get close enough to take a sample. It fed on insects first, and then a sheep, a goat, a llama, even a camel, the poor thing.’ He shudders. ‘I tried to save it, but the entity had drained its blood.’
‘So this “thing” eats!’ Ebony gasps. ‘And it drinks blood?’
Gabriel shrugs. ‘It’s learning how to survive in a world where it obviously doesn’t belong.’
‘Dude, who created this monster?’
‘Jordan, that’s one of many questions that still needs answering. And I can’t leave you two unprotected until this force is no longer a threat.’
‘Are you going to stay here?’ Ebony sounds as if she’s querying a death sentence.
‘Can I trust you both to be home before sunset?’
‘Of course!’
&nb
sp; Ebony’s rapid response makes me grin. ‘Gabe, I’ll never bring Ebony home late again. I swear, man.’
He nods. ‘All right. Then I’ll return at dusk each evening. From what I learned last night, this creature moves freely at night and slinks away into a cave at dawn. Like all dark creatures, it doesn’t appear to tolerate sunlight.’
I collect the car keys hanging from a hook on the wall. ‘Well –’ I glance at Ebony – ‘we should probably get going.’
‘In a sec,’ she says, and waits while Gabriel draws out last night’s leftovers and piles them on to a plate.
He notices her watching him. ‘Ebony, can I help you?’
She replies, ‘Yes. Actually you can.’
Weirdly, the two stare at each other for another minute. Ebony’s breathing quickens while Gabriel’s slight frown deepens. ‘Since I can’t mind-link with you, my lady, you’re going to have to say the words aloud.’
‘Of course. I know that. It’s just . . .’ She breathes in deeply, releasing it slowly. ‘Did you see Nathaneal before you left?’
He puts the loaded plate in the microwave and sets it for three minutes. ‘We talked. He asked me to watch over you both. I refused and he ordered me, pulling rank. He’s never done that before. I wanted to be in the team he selected for his mission to Skade. Instead, he ordered me to babysit a pair of horny teenagers. So here I am.’
Whoa! No wonder he’s annoyed. Youngest brother pulling his princely rank over the eldest sibling obviously hit a nerve.
‘So, Nathaneal sent you.’ Ebony’s violet eyes burst into an amazing deep purple for a second. I wish they reacted like that when she thought of me.
‘I believe we had established that already, my lady.’
‘Did Nathaneal . . .’ she starts but stops, then blurts out in a rush, ‘Did he give you a letter for me?’
He holds her gaze without speaking and across the room the air crackles with electricity. ‘No. He did not.’
The microwave pings. He turns his back on her to open it, but Ebony is not having any of it. She calls out, ‘Wait!’
Gabe’s shoulders straighten and the muscles under his tight shirt bunch into tense knots. He turns round slowly. ‘Yes, my lady?’
‘It might not be a letter. I’m not sure how angels do this, so I guess it could be in any form,’ she says, controlling her breathing as she tries to keep calm. ‘Gabriel, did Nathaneal give you a message specifically for me?’
Gabe growls, the sound coming from deep inside his chest. ‘If my brother gave me a message specifically for you, do you really think I’d wait until the following day to give it to you?’
‘I don’t know you well enough to make that assumption,’ Ebony says. ‘I do know that yesterday you were angry and unapproachable.’ She shrugs, leaving the accusation that he might not have felt like passing on his brother’s message from spite to hang awkwardly between them.
When Gabe remains silent, she picks up her backpack and storms off to the garage. The message Thane promised to send her at his first opportunity hasn’t arrived. Gabe was obviously that opportunity.
Ebony gets into the Lambo and slams the door.
I jump in behind the wheel and our gazes meet. She presses her lips together as she blinks back tears. One escapes down her cheek. Then another. She swipes at them viciously with her blazer sleeve. ‘Something’s happened,’ she says, sniffing. ‘Before Michael took Nathaneal away, I was afraid that once Nathaneal returned to his homeland he would reacquaint himself with his family and friends and forget that I exist.’
‘You don’t know that happened.’
‘I’m pretty sure it didn’t,’ she says. ‘It’s something else. I can’t put my finger on it, but Nathaneal hasn’t forgotten me. He nominated this particular, more dangerous mission so he could return faster.’ She takes a deep breath and uncurls her fingers. ‘OK, so I know he’s in Skade, just not why.’
‘He’s doing penance for his crime of saving you, remember?’
‘Yeah, but what form does this penance take, and who’s with him? He hand-picked a team.’ Almost as if she’s reasoning with herself, she adds softly, ‘Why doesn’t he want me to know who his team members are?’
She lifts her eyes to me. They’re so vivid, so deeply violet, if she looked into a mirror now she would never doubt her origins again. God, she’s beautiful.
I notice her hands tightening and flexing. I hate seeing her like this.
And yet, I could put her mind at rest so easily. Last night in the kitchen while Gabe helped me prepare dinner, he told me that everything Thane is doing in Skade is for Ebony’s sake, and that he has loved her since she was still an infant in her mother’s womb. ‘It’s a rare phenomenon,’ he’d told me. ‘Some say it’s a gift, or a blessing from the High King, and it only happens to those destined for greatness and eternal love.’
An image of Mum comes to mind, the one Prince Luca showed me when he came into my dream once. Mum was clearly in pain from physical and mental torture, and when our eyes connected she seemed so real she could have been right in front of me. I wanted to reach out and take that pain out of her eyes. Now I know I wasn’t looking into the eyes of a dead person’s soul, but my living, breathing mother.
This helps me get back on track.
I start the engine, open the garage door using the remote and reverse out.
‘Without knowing, my imagination is going wild,’ Ebony says, and I can see she’s making headway with calming her temper with deep slow breaths. ‘What do you think, Jordan?’
Man, what a loaded question. If only I had a choice, but I don’t. I really don’t. I have to swallow my spit to force the lies out. ‘Well, you know Jezelle is in love with him, right?’
She peers at me sideways. ‘Yeah, I guess. Go on.’
I muster up an empathetic look. ‘She was the first he picked for his team.’
Her face drains of colour. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Gabe told me in the kitchen last night. You weren’t around.’ I pick up pace as I drive through Thane’s winding driveway, caring little for the fledgling flowers and shrubs springing up again after Thane’s drying winds burned them to their roots.
‘Who else?’
‘That’s the part I didn’t want to tell you.’
‘You’d better tell me now.’
‘There are five more, but Thane doesn’t want them to join up with him and Jez for a few days.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘It’s like the two of them are on some secret mission together . . . or something.’
‘And you’re sure about this?’
I swallow deeply. ‘Yep. Positive.’ And then I add for good measure, ‘Apparently, Jez found out that if you don’t return to Avena by the time you turn eighteen the court will select someone else to be Thane’s princess.’
‘What?’
‘And you know who that’ll be, right?’
‘Jezelle?’
I nod. ‘She’s already made a petition to the court and, once the voting members agree, all Jez will need is Thane’s approval. That’s what this secret first part of his mission is about, to work out what he’s gonna do.’
‘You mean, decide whether to dump me for Jezelle?’
‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Gabe didn’t have the guts.’
‘That’s why he was so vague and secretive,’ she considers aloud.
‘Don’t tell him I told you. Ebony, you have to promise you won’t mention any of this to him. You saw how angry he can get with me.’
She waves a hand in the air. ‘Sure. I won’t say a word.’ She then looks down into her lap at fingers clutched together so tightly they’re white to the bone. When she lifts her head, she stares straight ahead. Her silence and stillness is unnerving, like the instant before a grenade explodes.
Seeing her torn up like this is hard to take, especially knowing I’m responsible. I hate myself more than ever. But Ebony is gonna live forever. She’ll get over t
his. Mum is mortal; her time will run out.
All the way to school Ebony stares at the road, hardly moving a muscle. And I can’t do anything but watch because today I’ve done my job. When I meet Skinner in my next free period, I can report not just on how well yesterday’s meeting with Mr Zee went, but also on my new plan to break the lovebirds up, and how quickly it’s taking effect.
22
Ebony
It’s two in the morning and I wake from another dream, gasping for breath and clutching my chest.
It’s been three weeks since Jordan told me the real reason behind Nathaneal’s mission. At first it shook me to my core, but I’m not going to believe it until Nathaneal tells me himself. To keep from thinking about him with the beautiful angel Jezelle, I keep busy with riding, school and training in the downstairs gym.
But it’s at night that I struggle most. My dreams are becoming more realistic and vivid.
Like the one that just woke me. Prince Luca took me to his world again, this time showing me decrepit factories with broken windows. The workers were shivering human souls overlorded by dark angels and grotesque whip-wielding demons.
My thoughts go straight to Mum and Dad, wondering if they could still be alive after so much time, and if they’re right now in one of those factories.
With a groan, I slide my arms into my warm white dressing gown and head downstairs to make a hot chocolate. I become aware of Gabriel’s heart beating too late to turn back. Though he’s still staring out of the kitchen’s glass wall when I walk in, he knows I’m here, so I continue walking in and pretend his presence doesn’t affect me.
He turns slowly. ‘Can’t sleep either, my lady?’
‘I had a bad dream.’
He nods, and I fill the electric kettle with water. Only the low light over the hob is on, casting eerie shadows into the room.
I take a breath. ‘Have you heard anything, Gabriel?’ Not a word in three weeks is hard to take. As I wait for him to answer, the uneasy feeling in my chest sharpens to a knife point.