I finally saw it. What he saw. The mark. I’d seen them before, but it was rather hit or miss. If I looked closely enough, I could see what they did, that one act that earned each of them such a fiery destiny. These were not nice boys.
I shut my eyes to turn it off, for lack of a better phrase. They’d killed entire families just to set an example for others. They’d hung them from bridges. Decapitated them. Tortured wives while husbands and children watched. I stopped there, unable to see any more. The darker side of humanity. Like toxic waste.
I focused on my husband and said, “Kill them all.”
And I’d meant it. For a split second, I was ready to kill. To take human life. Like I had the right. Like I was one of them.
Just as Reyes was about to break his first neck of the evening, I yelled, “Wait!”
But it was too late. An angel appeared. An archangel, to be more precise. Michael. He materialized not three feet from me, his massive wings taking up half the already-crowded room.
I jumped to my feet. Reyes stepped away from the goon and lowered his head, his muscles poised and ready as his billowing black robe materialized. It undulated in giant waves. Made him look even more menacing, not that he needed any help. I could just make out the glint of steel underneath it – the boy really wanted a fight – then it settled around him.
And Uncle Bob, who I was surprised could see the archangel, scrambled to his feet, not sure what to do next. He couldn’t decide if he was more taken aback by the angel or by Reyes.
Personally, I would have placed my bet on the prickly son of Satan, but I did marry the man. I was probably biased.
“What?” I asked Michael in my rudest tone. We hadn’t always gotten along. Mostly because he tried to kill me. Or, well, hold me until Jehovah arrived to do the deed Himself.
He’d warned me. Michael. He’d warned me not to stop what was already set in motion. “I suppose He’s coming for me now that I’ve changed human history. Now that I’ve saved my uncle’s life.”
“Not at all,” he said, keeping his gaze trained on the biggest threat in the room which, sadly, was not me. “You arrived before he died. No laws have been broken.”
“What?” I stepped forward, incensed and ready to throttle him. But I stopped short and took him in.
Angels had the most incredible inhuman eyes. They shimmered with the lights of the universe. Their eyes were proof that Reyes was part angelic being. The way they glistened even in the lowest of light. The way they saw straight into one’s soul. The way they knew way more than they let on.
Reyes had been created from the energy of a god and the fires of hell, but part of him was angel. True, that part was fallen angel, but angel nonetheless.
And just like Reyes, they could be the most frustrating things this side of eternity.
“I thought I couldn’t heal at all. Isn’t that what you said?”
“You may heal on occasion. Many of the gifted in this world do.”
I folded my arms, annoyed. “Yeah, I hear doctors do it all the time.”
“There are laws, reaper. However, you did not break any this night.”
“What laws? Remember, this whole gig came with a serious lack of instruction manuals.”
He finally spared me a glance. “You are a conundrum. We’ve had only one reaper live as long as you have. And she was a hermit with no other abilities than what your reaper status entails. You, on the other hand, require special… mandates.”
“So, I can heal people? Because I thought if I healed anyone or stopped Ubie’s untimely demise, I’d send heaven into an uproar.”
He let his gaze wander over me as though trying to place my species.
“Not that it would be the first time. Heaven seems insanely easy to uproar these days.”
“You can heal,” he said at last, “only very occasionally and only – and mark these words, reaper – only if the soul has not already been freed. Only if it has not left the vessel and entered our Father’s kingdom. That is the most sacred law.”
“So, that’s the biggie?”
“Yes.”
“And if I break it?”
“You will be cast from this dimension for all eternity.”
“Oh. Well, that doesn’t seem too difficult to follow. I can’t heal dead people, which, why would I? They’re dead.”
He tilted his head to the side, but his attention snapped back to Reyes when the devil’s spawn – in the literal sense – took a miniscule step forward. He’d been itching to get to Michael for a while now. I could feel the desire tug at him. Urge him forward.
I glared and shook my head. He ignored me.
“And no curing cancer,” Michael continued.
“I didn’t.”
He tore his gaze off Reyes again and gave me a knowing grin. “You thought about it.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ve thought about breaking your neck, too. Does that count?”
“No,” he said, one corner of his mouth tilting heavenward.
“Wait a minute. Is that why your henchmen have been tailing me?”
His gaze grew curious. “Henchmen?”
“Are they following me because I threatened to cure cancer?” Then something else hit me. I sat in a chair when I realized what Michael had said. What he’d really said. “You were going to cast me from this plane if I healed my uncle, but you didn’t. Because… because he wasn’t dead yet? Because we’d stopped them from killing him?”
He nodded.
“So, then, he was really going to die here. We stopped Grant Guerin from killing him, so this was… and I was going to —”