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  “Adam.” She returned my smile as she eyed me closely. It was clear she didn’t feel like smiling.

  We just stared at each other, both trying to read the other, and neither of us being successful.

  After a moment, I lost patience. I couldn’t hold my hand in place much longer and allowed it to reach out toward her. She didn’t flinch until our fingers touched. A heatwave rolled through me, a tidal wave of warmth and uncontrollable, unidentifiable emotion.

  I jerked away from her and sat upright on my cot, heat still searing through me.

  11

  Revenge

  The dream left me breathless for a while—not that I needed to breathe. I was figuratively breathless. The hot sensation in my system was gradually ceasing as I focused on the flickering torch on the wall. She had been there in my dream, she had seen me, noticed that I was different, illuminated from within. The longer I thought about it, the more it appeared as if she wasn’t just a vision when I saw her in my dreams. She seemed to actually be there, interacting with me, reacting to the changes in me. And the fact that her touch had caused a physical reaction… Was I going crazy?

  I was one-hundred percent certain I preferred to keep this to myself. Who knew what the others would say if they realized I had someone in my head. A little, grayish-blue-eyed person, who was trying to unearth my secrets. But maybe I should be telling them. What if that person, that girl, was dangerous? What if she was reading our plans from my mind? I laid back and rested my head in my hands, trying to clear my thoughts of all worries. I was a demon. Right now, one fueled with extra energy. I was invincible—or I should be. But the thought didn’t let me push it aside. What if the girl was THE girl? The girl-monster? She’d had a guardian angel at her side the other day. Hadn’t Volpert said she was building her own army of angels?

  Now there was definitely no way I was going to sleep again. Suppressing a sigh, I rolled off of the cot and flexed my arms and back before I made my way to the only place in these caves that was capable of bringing peace to my mind: the pool.

  The singing trickle of water invited me to speed up when I turned the corner into the narrow tunnel, and orange candlelight threw dancing shadows in the haze as I stepped into the bathroom just a fraction of a second later. Teleporting came as a blessing to my impatient nature.

  When I got out of my clothes, the pulsating glow of light was still there under the skin on my chest. I watched it for a minute, staring at the mirror, and ran my fingers over the thin, glowing lines. They didn’t hurt any longer, but they still held a fascination almost as powerful as the fiery symbols at the bottom of the pool.

  When I slid into the steaming water, I rested my head on the stone frame of the bath. I didn’t close my eyes, though, eager to keep my mind shut to the intriguing stranger. The flames were like small beacons along the outline of the pool, catching my attention with their little dances whenever my thoughts threatened to return to those grayish-blue eyes.

  After soaking for a while, I dipped my face in the water so I could observe the symbols again. They were still there, bright and orange, containing angelic energy and heating the water. This time, in order to distract myself, I cautiously reached out my left hand and touched the fiery lines. My entire body resonated as my fingers made contact. At first, it was just my hand that heated up, then my arm followed until finally, my chest filled with the pulsing waves of energy. I lost myself in the fascination so much that I didn’t notice when my mind finally took a turn and drew up the image of the girl again. She stared at me for a second, eyes wide, almost as shocked as I was to see her. Had I lost control over my thoughts?

  I pushed myself out of the water, dead heart yearning to race. My body was a spring, ready to be released, to attack. But there was no one there with me. The girl had been just in my head. I glanced down at my dripping, naked body and decided there was no refuge for me there in the pool any longer.

  “You don’t look half as energized as you should,” Maureen commented as I met her in the throne room. Volpert had called for us about an urgent matter.

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  “I’m serious, Adam,” she patted my shoulder. “You don’t look as if you have the lives and souls of four humans stored under your skin.”

  Not wanting to respond to her observation, I gratefully turned to Volpert as he stepped in the room, hair disheveled and eyes frantic.

  “We have to move!” he yelled before he had even fully crossed the threshold and pulled his blond strands back into his signature ponytail. “Now!”

  As the others were still arriving, he explained we had a window of opportunity.

  “The girl is on her way to the graveyard. During all of these past weeks, she has never set a foot near that graveyard, and I had been hoping she would.”

  “We have an exit into the graveyard,” Maureen whispered as I stared at Volpert, uncomprehending.

  “We need to seize the moment, who knows when it will happen again.” Volpert closed the buttons on his sleeves.

  “How many angels are with her?” Blackbird’s voice buzzed from behind me. “Is she alone?”

  “Not alone, but with only one angel,” Volpert informed us.

  “A guardian angel to be precise,” Nora added. She had entered the room behind Volpert and was nervously pulling on her necklace.

  “It’s broad daylight,” Jin put into consideration as he joined us.

  Nora nodded. “True, but no one will be in the graveyard around this time of the day.”

  “We’ve never been able to attack, even when she’d been alone. Always too many witnesses, or an angel guarding her, even when they’d been invisible. If we have a chance, it’s now,” Volpert smashed Jin’s objection. “Adam is prepared, we all are.”

  Without allowing another word from any of us, he started walking.

  “Follow me!” he yelled as we didn’t react the second he turned around.

  Impressed by his outburst, I set in motion, following behind him. He led us into a part of the tunnels I’d never seen. It wasn’t natural stone, but a type of marble, or granite, the type of stone used for a mausoleum. At first, it was small pieces of the wall which were covered with it, a couple of columns carrying the ceiling, but soon the entire walls were made of that material and the tunnel had gotten a geometrical shape, leading slowly uphill.

  “Adam kills the girl,” Volpert reminded us. “Don’t kill the angel, though. We’ll need him.”

  I could smell fresh air, carried toward us on a draft.

  “What will you do with him?” I wondered.

  “He’ll go to the Sacred Halls of the Dark,” Volpert smirked. “He might be of use to us.”

  I didn’t ask, knowing he would tell me about it when he thought it was the right time—which wasn’t now.

  Volpert had stopped at a door and was facing us with a mask-like face. He seemed calm now, more prepared than before.

  “These tunnels are protected,” he said. “No one can teleport in or out of here. That means, once the girl is dead and we capture the angel, we’ll have to carry him back through here.”

  Blackbird squared his shoulders, indicating he would be the one taking on the responsibility.

  “If anything goes wrong,” a flash of concern crossed Volpert’s face, “abort. We cannot afford to lose any member of our clan. Understood?”

  We all nodded, but I had my doubts. What if the angel was too strong?

  “It’s six against one,” Blackbird reassured me as he saw me frown. “Nothing will go wrong.”

  The next couple of minutes were silent. None of us dared to speak a word, all ears focused on the sounds coming in through the crack in the marble door Volpert had pushed open. We stood, side by side, a wall of darkness, he the only one able to see outside.

  Somewhere in the distance, a car engine was cut and doors slammed. The squeaky sound of metal being turned in a hinge indicated something—or someone—was moving into the graveyard. Footsteps, slow and cumbers
ome in rhythm, were approaching us. Only one pair of feet for now. Was that the girl?

  “Shall we?” a male voice, smooth and golden, the voice from the parking lot, asked and the footsteps doubled for a couple of steps as if the man—presumably the guardian angel—was walking with her for a little bit. The sound of branches swaying in the wind mixed into the scene, bare and cold, like the air that was blowing in my face from the gap in the marble.

  It would be difficult to kill her if her guardian angel would be right at her shoulder.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” he said, concern resonating in his words.

  A minute for what?

  “Thank you. I won’t be long.” Her voice was different from when I had observed her in the parking lot, it was dull, gloomy, but it was definitely the same voice. I froze. The stranger, looking at me from inside my head, had been the girl-monster all along. How could I have been so foolish to think otherwise, that she might have been the key to something…anything.

  “I’ll be waiting at the gate.” His footsteps turned and swiftly the sound grew more distant until I heard the gate again.

  He must have returned so she could have her minute of whatever to herself.

  The rhythmical noise of her shoes on gravel, on the other hand, continued to draw nearer and then it suddenly ceased. She had stopped moving.

  Volpert straightened a little and turned to me with a smile. “It’s time.” He stepped through the gate. Silent as a ghost, dark as the night. Ready for his revenge. I followed with some space, letting him lead the operation, and stayed in the shadows with the others, right behind the trees by the marble door.

  The image I found fueled my hunger. There she was, in the center of that same old graveyard I had fled a couple of weeks ago.

  Her soul was rising and falling with her agitated breath. She was upset about something, I could tell, even though her face wasn’t visible from my angle. I ignored the stone statue looming over her with an annoyingly peaceful expression on its face. Peace was the last thing on my mind. Disenchantment settled in my mind. The girl had used me to lure me out, hadn’t she? She had called me in my dreams using her intriguing eyes, her pretty face, to catch my attention. Was that what Volpert had warned me about? That she was more dangerous than other humans?

  As I watched her from my hiding place, the guardian angel popped up beside her with his blindingly bright angel-light and grabbed her by the shoulder.

  “Jaden!” The girl jumped.

  “I felt something. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be here.”

  Had he spotted us? I looked over to Volpert, who gestured me to stay hidden. When I turned back to my target, the girl was stubbornly shaking her head.

  “Then at least let me stay with you.” The angel stepped closer to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

  Something stirred inside of me. A feeling I didn’t have a name for, but it was there in my chest, a hollow ache, physical proof of whatever it was I was feeling.

  “Do you see anything dangerous nearby?” The girl was still resisting the angel’s wish to get away, and I felt the urge to thank her for making my task possible. As long as she wanted to stay at that grave, I could get a shot at ending her.

  The angel glanced around the graveyard, hiding his concern from the girl by pulling her closer.

  “Yes.” He was staring at Volpert.

  Both of them suddenly brightened up as if someone had poured gasoline into a fire.

  “What is it?” the girl-monster whispered.

  “It’s them.” His piercing angel-gaze had spotted Maureen, Nora, and Jin in the shadows.

  The girl’s face was still hidden from my view, but her body gave away how much she feared us. And she should. She had hurt Volpert. She had hurt my clan. She had hurt me.

  “I’ll take us away,” the angel suggested in an attempt to unfreeze her.

  “No!” The girl rejected his offer fiercely as if she wanted to let fate decide.

  “But I can’t protect you here.” The angel was devastated. How could he do his duty if the girl kept defying him?

  “I don’t want protection.”

  It was only then that the girl turned her head and noticed Volpert as he gestured me to follow, stepping out of the shadows. But it wasn’t the girl’s look which concerned me, it was the angel’s. There was one expression overruling all the others: recognition.

  “No,” he hissed, fury boiling up inside of him. I could feel it heat the cool Spring air.

  “What is it?” The girl was trying to see what the angel was seeing, but her weak, human eyes didn’t stand a chance to make out faces as far away as we were.

  The angel planted himself between the girl and the six of us, suddenly looking very outnumbered, no matter how strong his angel-powers.

  “Jaden.” The girl was trying to get his attention. “Jaden, what the hell’s wrong?”

  “Hell pretty much describes what’s wrong.”

  I involuntary chuckled at his statement. He had no idea how right he was.

  Volpert had seen the accidental humor in his words, too, and suppressed a cold grin as he took another step toward our target.

  “Good evening, Jaden, Claire.” His voice was smooth, controlled. There was nothing indicating the importance of this gathering in the graveyard. He was a master of hiding his emotions. He seemed like a cold statue, peering to the willow where the angel was shielding the girl.

  “Volpert,” the girl recognized the voice and her bright light showed as a seam along the angel’s silhouette.

  “The one and only.” Volpert was enjoying this. The angel’s horror of failing to protect the girl. The girl’s angst.

  Of course, he could hear me across the graveyard. I shouldn’t be surprised by things like that anymore.

  “Step aside, Jaden,” he challenged the angel. “We honestly don’t have any intention of hurting you…unless—”

  As Jaden didn’t show any intention of following Volpert’s call, our leader’s mouth twitched briefly, giving away just how impatient he was under the surface.

  “I give you ten seconds.”

  I didn’t count, but simply followed the scene, building up courage for my entrance.

  The girl jumped past the angel in a quick movement, again making the angel’s frustration peak. It was like a dance between a dominating abomination of light and a stubborn child. Fascinating. Entertaining. As Volpert took another couple of steps toward her, her eyes widened, finally seeing his face. She was beyond scared, and she was right to be. Just not of him, but of me, lurking in the shadows, ready to bring her down for good.

  “So you value your guardian angel’s life more than your own?” Volpert laughed, showing his amusement openly.

  “Claire, no!” The angel seemed to still be thinking he could change the girl’s mind.

  “I won’t let you get yourself killed,” she said, determined.

  Well…wasn’t that exactly his role as a guardian angel? Die for her if necessary?

  “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself,” the angel insisted.

  We watched them argue, all six of us enjoying how they were driving each other mad with their weakness.

  “If you will honor me with your attention for a while...” Volpert reminded them that he wasn’t finished with his performance, and both of them froze. How easy it was to manipulate them. They cared about each other, that much was clear, and this was the exact reason that made them vulnerable. Had they kept a cool head, they could have escaped. The girl would have realized the danger and she would have let the God-damned angel do his job. Their act alone was what made me want to silence them.

  That was the moment Volpert glanced at me over his shoulder then reached out his arm as if he was putting it around my shoulder. “Come to me, my son.” I nodded and slowly stepped out of the protection of the shadows, ready to face the enemy. “It’s time for your revenge.”

  I did it at human pace, slow and visible for both the angel an
d the girl. They should see what was coming for them. When I arrived at Volpert’s side, he smiled at me, relishing in the moment, ecstatic by anticipation.

  “Take your time, son.” He patted my shoulder as he sent me on my way to accomplish my task, a weapon of his revenge.

  The girl didn’t look up, maybe hoping that I would disappear into thin air, that she’d wake up and it had all just been a dream. For a long while, longer than I had actually expected her to be able to keep it up, she looked at the gravel rather than me, but once she looked up, and her eyes locked on mine, the same way they had in so many visions, the fear in her gaze was replaced by another expression. It was shock, and relief, panic. I could feel heatwaves coming from her, driven by her racing heart, and her light, her inner star had broken into deliciously bright light, almost impossible to ignore. No matter how much I wanted to suck it out of her, I couldn’t—at least not yet. First I needed to stare into those intriguing eyes and understand why she’d been calling me in my dreams.

  “Finally.” I was on edge, nervous, elated, relieved, all at once, just by the simple fact that I was finally able to confront her. “I’ve waited a long time to see you.”

  The girl gawked at me, mouth wide open with disbelief.

  Intrigued as I was, I hadn’t forgotten what my task was. I was about to kill that being, whether she held the answers to my questions or not.

  As I opened my hand, ready to grasp the ends of her strings, I noticed a grave beside her. It was the very same grave I had dug myself out of—the grave of Adam Jonathan Gallager. The earth had been smoothed by the rain, leaving no proof of my escape, but it was enough that I knew the truth, wasn’t it? Or did she, too? Her face for sure suggested she felt like she was looking at a ghost.

  It was now or never. This window of opportunity might never come again if I didn’t seize it.

  “Tell your little pet-angel goodbye.” I skipped the last couple of strides at demon speed, afraid I might change my mind if I waited too long. But as I stood there, right in front of her, it was clear. Her soul was so temptingly pulling in her chest, in her entire body, that it was hard to focus on the shell around it. I needed to taste it, to absorb it.