Angelfire
Page 99

A chil y breeze rushed through my hair. "Care to elaborate?"
He took in a slow breath. "I don't know how to handle this."
"We both learned a lot about each other last night. What do you say we just cal it even?"
He almost smiled, but he caught himself. "I suppose that's true."
"Why didn't you tel me you had wings?"
"I was afraid of scaring you," he confessed.
I frowned. "You know, for someone who believes in me so much, you real y have no faith in me at al ."
"That's not what I've meant by everything I've done," he said. "I guess I'm a walking contradiction. I'm not perfect."
"You told me that you're my servant, yet you decide what I ought to know. You can't control me like that, Wil ."
"I don't want to control you, El ie. I just want to do the right thing and what's best for you."
"How would you know what's best for me?" I asked sharply. "You're not me. You have no right to make decisions for me."
"El ie--"
"Why couldn't you have been up front with me in the beginning? I'm a big girl. I can handle it."
"Right," he almost laughed. "Tel you everything the first day: 'So, my name's Wil . You don't remember me, but we've known each other for five hundred years. You hunt monsters and I'm one of them, but I'm also your friend. Oh, I can fly, too.'"
"Wil ," I said sadly. "Okay, you have a point, but you should have told me these things a little sooner. I shouldn't have had to find out the way I did. It was like a slap in the face. That shocked me way more than it would have if you had just been more honest."
"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. No more secrets."
"Swear?"
"I swear."
I smiled and stood. "Show me. Show them to me."
He watched me curiously. He knew what I meant. "Why?"
"I want to see them."
He climbed to his feet. "As you wish." I heard cotton rip and Wil 's wings appeared, spreading wide, their ivory pearlescence shimmering in the moonlight. I reached out to touch them and he shied away, almost as if in embarrassment. A feather fel and drifted away in the breeze.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Don't be sil y. I'm not going to yank on them."
He smiled weakly and looked away from my face. "I know. I just . . . I hate them. I don't want to be anything like Bastian and the others. I try so hard to distance myself from the rest of my kind, but these wings remind me that I'm a monster."
Sadness washed over me. I couldn't stand seeing that he hated himself so much. "You're not a monster. You are an angel, not me. My guardian angel."
His eyes lifted to meet mine and he said nothing. I held a hand out to touch one wing, and the softness of the feathers startled me. I'd felt bird wings before; Kate had had a parrot up until a couple of years before, but its feathers had been stiff and slick and there was a funny, oily smel to them. Wil 's were soft and delicate, and the scent brought memories of a warm, golden dawn to my mind. I ran my fingers down the length of the feathers, and the wing quivered beneath my touch.
"I missed them," I said softly. "They're so beautiful."
"Do you remember them now?" His voice was barely more than a fragile breath.
"Yes." My gaze returned to his, and he smiled ever so slightly. I wanted to do nothing more than curl up in his arms.
"This is why I don't think I'm an angel. If I were, shouldn't I have wings like Michael?"
"You're a mortal angel," he suggested. "You can't shapeshift like a reaper. Your body isn't an angel's body either, but you have their power. Do you remember how ghostlike Michael was, as if he were only half here, as if he couldn't completely enter the mortal world? Maybe that's also why you're reborn into a human body. Your true form--your archangel form--can't exist here."
"Perhaps," I said. I was a mortal angel. Was there a way for me to become who I real y was? My true form? Wil once had told me that a powerful relic could help angels and the Fal en come to the mortal plane, but what if something like that wasn't real y lost to the world? If the Grigori were out there somewhere, the keepers of angelic magic and the gates between worlds, they might know of a relic that could restore my true form. What if things more terrible than the reapers, wicked or divine, could walk the earth among us, like the extinct Nephilim?
"Wil , why do you keep so much from me?" I ran my hand down his arm, tracing the beautiful tattoos with my fingertips. I had a clear memory of myself inking his skin centuries before in a warm candlelit room, whispering a prayer in a language long lost to me, and it brought a smile to my face.
"Because I'm an idiot," he confessed. "I was wrong to judge you. I didn't think you were strong enough to take in everything at once, but that was stupid. You have more strength in you than I've ever seen in anyone, and I don't mean how hard you can hit. I mean the strength you have to keep doing this without giving up. You might want to, some days, but you never do."
"What about you?" I asked. "You stay by my side day and night and take the hardest hits of them al . Why, Wil ? Why have you stayed with me al these centuries? You watch me die again and again, yet you never leave. You keep trying to save me, even though you know I'm doomed. Al because some angel told you to? Come on. No more secrets, you said. Tel me."