Angelfire
Page 42

The world spun once more, and a pickup truck blared its horn as it blurred by, narrowly missing me. I wheeled around and bumped into a firm, warm body. I looked up to find myself in Wil 's arms, and I was back in my school parking lot. He'd pul ed me out of the truck's path.
"El ie? El ie!"
My heart pounded and my eyes whipped around me wildly. "Where is it?" I asked breathlessly. "Where's the reaper? My swords?"
He held both my shoulders firmly. "There's no reaper. Relax."
My pulse began to slow down and I took long, deep breaths. It must have been another flashback, like the one I had experienced in my history class. As I steadied my nerves, more of the memory came back to me. I'd been surrounded and alone.
"Where was I?" I asked fearful y. "Who was that?"
He studied my face with a puzzled look. "Who? Who are you talking about?"
"The reaper!" I cried. "She was a vir, I think. And there were more. There were Ursids everywhere. The pharaoh--"
"Pharaoh?"
"Yes, he'd been kil ed and a vir reaper had shape-shifted and mimicked his appearance to take his place. They'd kil ed so many in Egypt already, taken so many souls, and I was fighting them alone. My Guardian then was dead. It was before I knew you, long before. It must have been thousands of years ago."
My thoughts were scattered and incoherent as I tried to make sense of too many details at once. It had been long before Wil came into my life, long before I started to feel human, as he had told me I gradual y had as the centuries passed. Had I been in direct contact with the archangels?
When had I stopped receiving orders from them? With a reaper posing as the pharaoh, the demonic forces were able to kil an immense number of humans, so many in fact that I had been sent to Ancient Egypt to intervene.
But who had sent me? An angel?
"They sent you here to die, killer." The reaper's words haunted me.
"El ie," Wil said, laying a hand on my shoulder. "Are you okay?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I'm just . . . thinking."
"Wel , let's think out of the way of speeding vehicles." He led me back to my car, and we sat inside for a moment.
"Something else," I said. "The reaper cal ed me a kil er. They usual y just cal me Preliator. What exactly does my name mean?"
"You didn't always go by that name," he explained. "The origin is Latin, so I assume that people began cal ing you
'Preliator' while that was an important language in the ancient world. It means 'warrior.'"
Warrior. "I guess I have quite the reputation to live up to."
"Don't worry about it. You'l get there. You always do."
"I hope you're right," I said. "What are you doing at my school, anyway?"
"You were distressed. It must have been the flashback. I rushed here as quickly as I could and I saw a reaper about a mile away."
That caught me off guard. "In broad daylight?"
He nodded. "It might have been looking for you or fol owing your scent. You should get home so there won't be any fight in public."
"It won't attack anyone, wil it?"
"No," he assured me. "They don't feed during the day, and it's very rare for one to be out at this hour. The reaper was smoking like a chimney in the sun. Whatever it is out for must be important, which is why we should get you home."
I looked at him in surprise. "You're riding in my car?"
"Yes" was al he said.
"You're not going to be flying back to my house, then?" I asked sarcastical y.
He turned to give me a surprised, questioning look. "No."
"That memory real y freaked me out, Wil ."
"What do you mean?"
"I was so cold and just . . . different. I took my job very seriously. Too seriously. It was kind of scary. It was like I wasn't even human." I was glad there wasn't a mirror, so I couldn't see my face. The darkness in my expression would have been too much for me to take.
"You can be very intense," he confessed.
"And something else," I continued. "In my memory, I told the reaper that I was sent by the angels. Do they give me orders?"
He blinked at me and I took that as a no before he said anything at al . "Not that I ever remember."
"If they did give me orders before, why not now? Why did they stop? Why don't I remember speaking to them?"
"I don't know when or why they stopped."
But why didn't I remember it? Was I slowly becoming so human that I was forgetting myself? Had I forgotten where I came from? What I truly was? Was my humanity a weakness? Or was it a strength? Was it my own fault that I no longer spoke to the angels? Had I done something wrong?
Wil had told me the angelic reapers served the angels in Heaven. What if I was part of their plan? Who was I supposed to serve? What if they had created me?
I scoffed at the idea that I might be some twisted science experiment of the divine, but something was obviously bringing me back every time I died.
Was it angels?
15
"GET UP TO YOUR ROOM AND I'LL MEET YOU THERE," Wil said when we got back to my house.
I shot him a suspicious look. "My mom wil --"
"No, she won't know I'm here. Just get upstairs."
I nodded. There was no use fighting him. As soon as I walked in the front door, I heard my mom cal me from her office.