“No, of course not.” He led me to the bathroom and offered me a clean towel. I took a scorching-hot shower and scrubbed myself until my skin was raw but clean. I gingerly stepped back into my dirty clothes, unhappy I had nothing else to wear.
Back in the kitchen, Cadan and I made small talk while I ate. It was obvious how hard he’d tried. “Thank you so much. I ought to get going.”
He nodded. “What do you think should be the plan? Regarding Antares?”
“We find her,” I said clearly and surely. “If she’s in the Rocky Mountains, the same place you saw her last, then we go there. I’ll pack and we can get going today.”
“Tonight,” he corrected. “Sunlight and I don’t get along.”
“Right.” I surprised myself with how easily his demonic nature escaped me. “Okay. Why don’t you arrange travel plans for us? I need you with me. You’re the only one who knows where Antares is.”
He stared at me, his gaze firm and drilling. “Are you sure you want me along?”
“Absolutely,” I said, recalling how well we fought together last night. “We’re a good team.”
He watched me a moment longer before tearing his eyes away, and he put the food away in a bag and slid it across the counter toward me. “I hope you liked the stir-fry. It’s from my favorite Thai restaurant. A little hole-in-the-wall downtown. You should go there sometime.”
I smiled at him. “I appreciate this—everything you’ve done for me. Thank you.”
The corner of his mouth pulled back for an instant before he shrugged. “All right. Get out of here so you can get back. I’ll find us plane tickets into Denver.”
On my way out, I glanced back at him. He leaned over the counter heavily on his hands and he wore an expression hard with determination and worry. I had to force myself to keep going.
“I’m beginning to dislike seeing you come home covered in blood,” Nana said as I dragged myself through the front door. She didn’t seem pleased in the slightest. “We have a visitor as well.”
Marcus stepped into the foyer, his expression a mixture of relief and irritation. “Where in the—”
“Save it,” I hissed.
“My car had better be in one piece,” he growled back, and I shoved past his shoulder. Then he grabbed my arm. “Hey—”
I jerked away from him and gave him a scathing glare. “Don’t you dare touch me, or I’ll torch your stupid car.”
He wasn’t amused. “Where have you been? For the love of God, please tell me you weren’t with that demonic vir.”
“That is none of your business.”
“It sure as hell is!”
I laughed bitterly. “How is it your business? You are not my Guardian and I am doing whatever is necessary to save the one who is. I’m not sitting around on my ass like you are while he wastes away!”
“You’re going to get your ass killed, that’s what you’re doing!”
I crunched my teeth together so hard they squeaked. “Get out of my face, reaper.”
“You’re an idiot,” he said exhaustedly. “Running off with Cadan? What’s the matter with you?”
“Don’t you dare say a word against him,” I warned Marcus. “All he has ever done is help me. He told me that Bastian found the sarcophagus, about the necklace they used to give Lilith corporeal form—not to mention he killed Ivar and Bastian to protect me. He’s even the one who warned me that Bastian feared we’d find something called the hallowed glaive, a weapon that can destroy the Fallen. Once Will is better, we’re going to find it.”
“I can’t believe that you’d trust a demonic reaper, that you’d risk everything by doing so.”
“I’m not an idiot to risk everything for Will,” I snapped back. “He’s done the same for me for hundreds of years. I’m going to save him and I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“He would hate you risking your life for him—”
“Too bad!” I shrieked. “Cadan knows where Antares is and he’s going to take me there.”
His eyes bugged. “Antares? That’s who you’re after? You’re mad for going after a Grigori, let alone a Cardinal Lord. She’ll eat you alive.”
I lifted my chin in defiance. “If she tries, then I’ll at least make sure I get what I need from her first.”
“Listen to me,” he rasped hurriedly, leaning over me. “The Grigori are powerful and beyond dangerous. You don’t know—”
“I do, actually,” I shot back. “Cadan has already warned me. You all seem to forget who I am. I am the archangel Gabriel. I commanded the legion of Heaven that defeated and banished the Grigori to Earth eons before the first reapers were created. I know better than anyone what they’re capable of. Antares may be too much for a reaper, but she knows who I am just as well as I know her.”
He seemed to deflate. “Fine. Then go. You’re making a huge mistake.”
I bit back a snarl. “I wish everyone would stop telling me how stupid I am and at least offer to help me.”
He was silent. After the longest moment, I shook my head and marched up to my room to change my clothes and pack a bag. I threw in jeans, warm- and cold-weather tops, toiletries, and then raced down the stairs to find Marcus and his car gone. Nana stood on the porch, her arms folded over her chest. I eased around her carefully, peering at the sad look on her face.
“Come back, okay?” she asked.
I fought a sob in my throat and dropped my duffle bag to the ground before hugging her tightly. “I promise, Nana. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she replied. “And I trust your judgment. No one’s perfect, but I believe that you believe you’re on the right track. Do what you need to do, and I’ll be here waiting. Go save your Guardian.”
It was so hard to pull away, but I had to hurry. I threw my things into my car and peeled out of the driveway, forcing myself not to look in the rearview mirror.
Cadan and I caught a direct flight to Denver and I slept almost the entire way. He rented us an SUV that was blacked out all over to offer himself protection from the sun and we headed northwest toward the Rocky Mountains. After a few hours of driving, I had him take the wheel so I could rest. When I woke again, it was after dark and my ears were popping from the altitude. Somewhere in the mountains, we would meet another of Cadan’s “friends,” but he assured me that this one was friendly through and through. Antares’s location was too remote for access by car, so we would travel the last few miles by horse and foot.
“You’re going to need to sleep here pretty soon,” he said, glancing over at me. “In a real bed where you can get some rest instead of in a plane or car.”
I watched the headlights paint the winding road ahead a dull yellow. The higher we climbed into the mountains, the more upset my stomach got. “I’m fine. Just keep driving.”
He huffed. “I’m getting a room at the next town. I’m not dealing with your attitude the entire time I’m risking my ass for you. You at least owe me a good mood and a continental breakfast.”
I rolled my eyes and ignored his remark. “There better be a room with two beds. If we have to spoon in a double, I’ll be even grumpier.”
“I hog the blankets anyway.”
“I kick crotches in my sleep.”
A small smile curved his lips and he caught me watching him from the corner of my eye. I pinned my gaze back to the road. “So we sleep for a few hours, grab a bagel in the morning, and head out. Deal?”
“Deal.”
He managed to find us a moderately not-seedy motel in a small town with a few stoplights. Once we checked in, I dragged my duffle bag into the room and tossed it on the bed closest to the heat register and put the vents on full blast. It was almost June, and yet Colorado hadn’t caught on.
I hugged my arms to my chest and, exhausted, flopped onto my bed.
“You need the shower?” Cadan asked me.
“Not yet,” I grumbled. “I want to just lie here for the rest of my life.”
He huffed a short laugh. “All r
ight. I’ll be out in a few.”
I must have drifted off because I opened my eyes what seemed like seconds later and he was already out. He was bare from the waist up and ruffling through his bag for a shirt. I tried not to stare too hard, deciding then and there that reapers just automatically came with Photoshopped chests, arms, and abs. Ridiculous.
“All yours,” he said without looking at me.
I grabbed the baggie filled with my shampoo and stuff, and before I disappeared into the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of Cadan’s muscled back out the corner of my eye. My breath caught. Burn scars were shredded down his back, a marbled and gleaming slash of them. They mirrored Marcus’s scars almost exactly, and I knew only divine fire could cause such a permanent injury. Cadan wore scars from angelfire.
He glanced over his shoulder at me before tugging a shirt over his head. “Don’t forget that I know what we’re about to walk into,” he said, understanding what I’d been staring at. “I never fear anything unless I have a good reason to.”
I said nothing, or rather I could think of nothing to say, and I closed the bathroom door behind me. I paused for a minute, absorbing what I quickly began to understand. Only angels could wield angelfire, and the only angel Cadan knew besides me was Antares. She had done that to him, nearly killed him.
I undressed and ran the water as hot as I could stand it before hopping into the shower. The water practically scalded me, but I savored it. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t think of anything else but what would happen tomorrow. Only when we found Antares would I know if I could save Will’s life. What if Antares wasn’t there? What if she refused to or couldn’t help me? What if Marcus or Ava called to tell me Will had died in the night? As tears fought to break free, I stood under the water and let it hammer my face, the stinging heat and pressure keeping me from concentrating too hard on the horrible thoughts. If I cried, Cadan would surely hear me with his stupid super reaper hearing and then he’d bug me with questions. Why was it that people always asked you about why you’re crying? If you’re crying, then something shitty happened and you don’t want to think about it. In this case especially, it was better for me to be left alone.
The hot water had turned my skin pink, but it didn’t hide my puffy eyes and generally crappy appearance as I’d hoped. If I was lucky, Cadan would keep his questions to himself. I combed out the tangles in my hair and let the damp curtain fall over my shoulders. My pajamas never felt more comfortable. I felt so sore and tired everywhere, but my journey had barely even begun.
When I left the bathroom, I plopped onto on the edge of my bed and Cadan turned off the TV from his seat on his own bed. He moved to sit across from me and rested his elbows on his knees, peering into my face studiously.
“It’d be stupid to ask if you’re okay,” he said softly.
I gave him a pathetic smile. “Good thing you’re not stupid.” I waited for him to respond, but he was quiet. “Would it be stupid to ask if you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, I promise. And everything else will be fine too. Antares will be where I left her. It’s been a few years, but I’m sure she’ll remember me.”
“You left that big an impression, huh?” I joked.
“In a way.” His tone was serious.
“What did she have that you tried to kill her for?” I was just as grim that time.
“I didn’t want it,” he replied. “Bastian did. He wanted the grimoire. She didn’t have it, but I thought she was lying. Bastian ordered me to bring him the book and I’d been tracking her down for years, so there was no alternative, and I was desperate. Of course she beat me to a pulp, but she’d tossed me beyond the reach of her bindings and couldn’t finish me off. I was even luckier to walk away alive from Bastian after he was through disciplining me.”
“It couldn’t have been easy growing up with him, and then working for him.”
He wore a distant look, licking his lips as if tasting for the response he wanted. “I suppose. A birth to any reaper is rare, but things are different for the demonic. My mother worked for Bastian, following the Christian armies invading the Holy Land. She had a taste for the most pious of souls. It was easy for her. She was good at hunting humans and fighting the angelic. When I was born, she went right back to it and I was handed off to others to be raised, as most demonic children are. Bastian believed that his fatherly duties stopped at teaching me what he deemed important life lessons. He taught me how to fight, how to kill, and how to use what power he gave me through his blood. He was cruel, but if he hadn’t been, then I’d have died in battle a long time ago. But then again, look at Will.”
Cadan was right. Will’s mother and Nathaniel had raised him with love, and he was a better fighter than anyone. I wondered what Will would have been like if Bastian had known Will was his son all along.
“I’m so sorry,” I told Cadan.
He shrugged. “I don’t know any different.” He watched me carefully, curiously. “I’d like to, though.”
“What’s your mother’s name?” I asked. “Is she still around?”
“Isolda,” he replied. “I only saw her a few times. She wasn’t interested in caring for me and I knew she’d died. In battle, of course. Bastian never mourned her. I remember she had hair like mine, but more silver. Eyes like chilled amethyst. I think I look a little more like my father, except for my hair. Will looks a bit like Bastian too. It’s the sharpness of his eyes that gives his lineage away. Eyes that see straight to the pit of your soul. I never liked when Bastian looked at me in anger. Both he and Will give that look like they won’t just kill you—they’ll obliterate you.”
I’d seen that look in Will’s eyes infinite times, and every time he gave that look, he destroyed. He wasn’t known for his mercy on those who tried to hurt me. “I wish that Bastian didn’t have to die, but I guess it’s rather naïve of me to hope that we could’ve worked things out. He was still your father. And Will’s. Family is family. They’re a piece of you no matter what.”
“It isn’t naïve to hope one can change,” Cadan continued. “But for Bastian, it was all he ever knew. He knew he had a purpose on Earth, as do the rest of our kind, that we are at war with the angelic, and that we are on the eve of an even greater war, one that could destroy the races of both Earth and Heaven. He grew up learning that the humans, angels, and angelic reapers are his oppressors, and this war proved to him what he’d been taught. My life has taken the same path, but my heart is not as cold as Bastian’s was. He couldn’t see beyond the hate he was conditioned to feel. Perhaps we will never know if the demonic are born evil or the angelic born good. What really determines good and evil, anyway?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that one out for a long time,” I said. “You’re my argument against perfect evil and perfect good.”
“It’s never too late to start over,” he mused. “After eight hundred years, this dog can still learn new tricks.”
That made me smile a little, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “I wish the same had been true for Bastian. There had to have been something good in him.” I remembered what he had said to Will—that he’d loved Will’s mother, Madeleine. If he could love, could feel true love, then there was hope that he could’ve changed. But now it was too late to save him, and considering what could have been only weighed on my heart even more.
Cadan considered my words thoughtfully. “I don’t know if he was inherently evil. He was a reasonable and logical man, though his reasoning took a darker turn. He lived over a thousand years in the world of demonic reapers. They were his people, his kind—our kind—and he wanted to help us. To him, to many of us, the demonic aren’t ‘evil.’ The Fallen in Hell aren’t monsters. They—we—are just another group with different views from the angels and their angelic reapers. I grew up believing the angelic were our oppressors, that there really was a place for us in a peaceful afterlife. That we could go to Heaven if the humans weren’t standing in our way. Now, though, I realize what is truth. That a
ll reapers are an accident, playthings of the divine that were never meant to be. Reapers are pawns in a proxy war. I’ve always doubted what the others believed, ever since I learned that Antares’s blood runs through my veins. Not a whole lot dilutes her power mixing with my line, and that’s what makes us so much stronger than other reapers. We are so close to the pure source, to pure divine power.”
I became so restless with thought that I got to my feet and paced along the wall. I wondered if the small piece of angelic lineage was what drove Cadan to want to be good, but I realized Bastian had even more angelic blood, and he’d been less inclined to see the light. It didn’t make sense, but it made me realize that I had to be right: that despite a reaper’s heritage and tendencies, he could change, become the kind of person he wanted to be. Bastian had no heart, no goodness in him at all, but his first son, who had even less angelic blood in him, chose to leave the demonic behind.
Cadan stood and eased toward me, moving like a wave. I pressed my back into the wall as he stopped inches from me. “Whatever I am, I’m not evil.”
“I know you aren’t,” I said, and swallowed, fully aware of every part of him and feeling the heat of his closeness. “You have a good heart.”
He rested his head heavily against the wall and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He raised a hand to touch my arm, but stopped and put it back down. His eyes opened to mine. “I’m trying to change. I know all that I’ve done wrong, the things I’ve let others do because I was too much of a coward to stop them. I want—need—redemption. And I know you can give me that.”
He touched me then, smoothing his hand up my arm, fingers catching on the strap of my tank top before wrapping around the back of my neck. He turned my face to his and his hand molded to the curve of my jaw and lifted my chin.
“I want to help you,” I told him. “You’ve done so much for me.”
His gaze fell to my lips for a heartbeat. “You’re an archangel and I can feel your goodness in you so strongly. I felt it in you even before I knew what you were. The night we met, it was only you in that crowd for me. I walked into that party, knowing you were there somewhere, but I could sense you a mile away. I had to know you. I was sure that if I could save you, then you could save me. God knows I need it.” He smiled only just, and something like wings beat through my chest. His thumb brushed my cheek and lips, and my heart pounded as I considered what else he wanted me to allow him to do.