Dark Before Dawn Page 4

  I looked at him warily. “What are you proposing?”

  His grin widened and he arched one brow. “I believe you humans call it wooing.”

  My cheeks flamed even hotter. “You want to … woo me?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  I stared at him. This impossibly perfect creature, golden haired with eyes like flame, wanted to win me back? A tumult of emotions warred inside of me.

  “In the twenty-first century, we call it dating,” I finally answered, with the safety of sarcasm.

  He laughed. “Duly noted. So, what do you think? Will you give me a shot? Do we have a deal?”

  I looked at him skeptically. “I’m not promising you anything, Michael. I may never agree to go away with you. Or for you to join me here on Earth. Just so we’re clear.”

  “All I’m asking for is a fair chance.”

  “What, exactly, would be the terms of our, er, dating relationship?” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, shifting on my feet as I eyed him.

  “I’ll have to be gone a lot, of course.”

  “To keep up with your duties.”

  He nodded, conceding my point. “Is that acceptable to you?”

  I shrugged, heart in my throat.

  “I would understand if you wished the freedom to see others,” he continued, but I cut him off with a quick shake of my head.

  “I don’t need to see anyone else,” I mumbled, dropping my eyes to the dirt. It was an easy promise. I would never admit to him that there hadn’t been anyone else yet. There had been no point, it had seemed.

  He tugged at my chin, drawing my gaze up to meet his. “I’m glad.”

  A wave of heat swept through my body, threatening to wipe out any reason. I swayed, unsteady on my feet. But finally, I cleared my throat and looked him straight in the eye.

  “We’d better get you back home, then,” I said, “so that I can introduce you to everybody all over again.”

  two

  LUCAS

  Hell is not a place of fire and brimstone, as the hoary imaginations of terrified Bible thumpers would have it.

  No, Hell is a place of dislocation. Of separation. Of isolation.

  Hell is a place of waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting, with nothing to distract oneself from rehearsing in one’s mind, again and again, the complaints one has hoarded over centuries of dispossession—the newest of these insults still fresh—nor the gnawing, incessant need for revenge that preoccupies one’s thoughts.

  I am waiting for my banishment from corporeal form to be over, for only then will I be able to rejoin that wretched race called human and exact my own punishment on Michael and that—that thing, that girl—of which he has become so enamored. It will take some time, as it always does. This time will take longer than the others because in their twisted calculus of right and wrong, the audacity of my crimes—daring to take the life of an archangel, storming Heaven’s Gate—deserves it.

  At least I’m not being blamed for Hope’s father’s death. Though I would have been within my rights to punish him—after all, if it weren’t for his training, I could have easily defeated Hope—I had a greater goal in mind, and I had no involvement. That the trafficking syndicate targeted him shouldn’t have surprised me, but I must admit, I was a little wistful when I learned of his death. Without even knowing it, he had proven to be a wily foe.

  But I digress. There is no atonement for what I have done, of course. My banishment is really just the equivalent of a cosmic time-out. If I am honest with myself, my isolation here, in this vast, icy, empty void, is not that different from the decades and centuries and millennia that have preceded this moment.

  Here, though, there are no vile humans with whom I can entertain myself while I live out my sentence of exile. Instead, I’m stuck with their forms of entertainment. It’s God’s sense of justice: I can only access those limited distractions the human mind is capable of inventing. I play Candy Crush and Farmville. I sing showtunes to myself: after all that time on Earth, I developed a weakness for the stylings of Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter, though if I ever run into Stephen Schwartz, I’ll run a pitchfork through him as punishment for inflicting that whiny, insipid Wicked upon us all. I guess the answers on Jeopardy, though really, that Alex Trebek is no match for me. After all, I’ve lived through everything he ever asks about.

  And of course, if I concentrate, I can project my spirit out into the earthly world. The projection is too weak to do anything, and I can only do it for a brief period of time—for example, time enough to offer my twisted blessing to a newborn child. Otherwise, I simply watch.

  I watch and I wait for my moment to strike.

  It is sort of sick, I suppose, how drawn I am to watch the humans live out their puny lives. But what can I say? Each passing day proves me right. They are not fit to hold God’s love and attention.

  Michael knows where I am. And he knows it is only a matter of time before I return to demand recompense, to hold him accountable for his love of wretched mankind.

  He would never admit it, certainly not to me, but I think he understands why I do what I’ve done.

  Before, we were brothers in arms. He was God’s sword—majestic, merciful to the just, harrowing to those who defied God’s will and threatened His people. But I—I was God’s shield. If Michael cut down the threats to God’s rule, I shielded God from insult and threats—and, most importantly, from breaches from within. I searched His rules and His logic for loopholes and risks and contingencies, ensuring that the world He created made sense. Like the chambers of a nautilus, the delicate spine of a perfectly formed snowflake, or the feathery veins carrying life-giving water through the lush leaves of a bower: orderly, perfect, complete. One only had to look at it to know that it was right.

  And then He had to ruin it by His fascination with those damned imperfect humans.

  He wouldn’t listen to reason. He couldn’t see how they weakened His glory with their continual failures, their disappointing relapses. They were a blotch upon His creation. But instead of acknowledging it and dealing with it as He should, He made excuses and gave them chances, time and time again.

  And Michael was right there at His side, encouraging Him. Enabling Him.

  It was illogical. It was a blight upon His perfect world. Is it any surprise that I was sympathetic to Lucifer when he challenged God’s judgment and demanded that God step aside?

  How ironic, then, that He—who was so quick to forgive mankind’s follies—cast us unceremoniously out of Heaven, inflicting the endless pain of His displeasure upon us for all eternity. And again, Michael, my former comrade, was right at God’s side. In fact, he was the one who expelled us, his army of faithful angels refusing to listen until we had fallen far, far away, leaving Michael to turn the key with a resounding, hollow click behind us.

  And now he dares to offer her the role of God’s shield? As if I never existed? As if she could ever play the role that once I played? I do not envy them their human emotions. But to reward her with what was once mine, to besmirch it with the insipid entanglement they call love, is unacceptable.

  If he saw her as I saw her, perhaps he might think differently. But he cannot. His thinking is clouded by the slurry of human hormones and emotions that clogs his brain when he chooses to take that form. Besides, he did not have the direct access to her thoughts that her turncoat Guardian Angel gave me. Michael thinks she was part of the Fallen’s redemption? Ha. She fought it at every turn. She would have given anything, anything at all, to prevent his death.

  That is not bravery. Nor is it sacrifice.

  She is just another weak human, thrust upon the stage of heavenly greatness by an accident. Her elevation is just another in a string of mistakes made by a God who refuses to admit He was wrong.

  God is not ignorant of the facts of humanity’s behavior. He just refuses to acknowledge that those facts signify any unpleasant truth about His creation.

  Why would I want forgiveness on those terms? W
hy should I admit I am wrong, when He cannot do the same?

  Besides, I am not wrong. Humanity is an abomination.

  Ah. Even now, God smites me with pain for daring to speak the truth. I am His angelic pincushion. Loving God, indeed. He doesn’t realize I cherish the pain, I jealously hoard it unto my heart—proof, in the end, that I am right.

  Those Fallen who embraced their chance to return to Heaven— they are nothing, nothing compared to the legions that wait out their real salvation. They will continue to wait faithfully for the day when God must admit that we were right—that His perfection is marred by mankind, and that, therefore, they must go. And when I return, I will lead them, on behalf of my Master, once again.

  But what is more: I will wake Michael up to the truth about humans. I will show him how easy it is to lure humans to prey upon one another, betraying their very nature. I will show him how easy it is to break them down, stripping away the very things that make them human and revealing them as the base animals they really are. I will make Hope pay for her presumption in the worst possible way—by striking at her family. I will show him how even his precious Hope, if pushed far enough, will choose vengeance over mercy.

  And when she does, they will see, through my eyes, just how corrupt the hearts and flesh of men can be.

  They will be as desolate as any of the prophets set to wander the desert. They will be as desolate as this place in which I wait. They will be as desolate as my soul, and they will know the truth.

  And when they do, God will have to acknowledge that I am right.

  Just watch.

  three

  HOPE

  Ten years later …

  We heard the door swing open, the buzzing of our alarm system giving us warning that someone was penetrating the security of our Buckhead home. Ollie began dancing around in a frenzy of barking, his lopsided gait betraying his age. He was a year older than Rorie—an old dog now at thirteen, but still insistent upon playing guard.

  “Anybody home?” Michael’s voice bellowed from the front of the house, bouncing off the marble and stone hallway. My heart thumped in recognition, ready to welcome him home.

  “Back here!” my mother called out to him, smiling knowingly at me as she deactivated the alarm. It had been six months since we’d last seen Michael, and she had been counting the days, just as I had, until his return from what we referred to as his latest “tour of duty.” Over time, my mother had come to accept the explanation for his regular absences. His “career” as a military contractor was the perfect cover, giving him wide berth to be gone for long stretches of time, explaining his familiarity with the far-flung troubled reaches of the world that were his haunts, and letting him avoid any deep inquiry on the basis of “national security.”

  My mother had eventually just given up probing for more and accepted his excuses, mostly due to the fact that she had grown to genuinely like Michael. She’d grown in lots of ways over the years, barely recognizable now as the polished corporate executive she’d been only thirteen years earlier. Her uniform of black suits had been banished, and she’d let the hints of red that streaked her long, mahogany hair run riot along with her curls, which she no longer bothered to straighten or pull back. Her hair cascaded around her pale face, its bounty threatening to overwhelm her delicate frame. She’d softened, if not mellowed. Her grief over losing my father, and over the time they’d wasted apart, had long ago been set aside so that she could focus her energies on raising my now twelve-year-old sister, keeping her intellect sharp with the occasional consulting gig and a portfolio of board appointments.

  That mellowness had been hard won. I remembered the months leading up to Rorie’s birth. After I’d finally emerged from the fog of my own grief, I’d looked at my mother; really looked at her more than I had in a long time. Her face had become lined, deeply etched by sorrow. Her thick mane of dark hair was shot through with even more silver, and she’d stirred her coffee listlessly with a spoon, unable to bring herself to eat anything substantial. She’d seemed so fragile, then, like a dry leaf that has seen the prime of summer and been left an empty husk. I tucked her in at night, looking in on her after she’d fallen asleep, and invariably I’d find her hands clutching the old photograph of her and my father on their wedding day.

  It had taken Rorie’s birth to wake my mother from her slumber, the new baby forcing her to pick up her life again, to live it, to embrace the tiny wonder she had borne and to embrace along with it the mundane things that made our world a beautiful one: the feeling of satisfaction of snapping up the red flag on our mailbox to send out a handwritten note on creamy, crisp stationery; the smell of gardenias wafting in from the garden; the soapy bubbles up to our elbows as we stood, side by side, washing dishes to keep our home tidy and cheerful. The little moments we had together, as a family, were what had drawn my mother back.

  Michael strode into the room, a whiff of honey and hay preceding him, and took us all in. My mother, dressed in yoga pants and a billowy top that was splattered with clay from her pottery studio. Arthur, a permanent presence in our lives, his body a wall of muscle shielding my mother from any intrusions. My best friend Tabby, the outward rebelliousness of her high school years tempered now that she had followed her father’s footsteps to become a minister herself, her funky cat-eye tortoiseshell glasses the only nod to her insistent individuality. Ollie—our stray, adopted from Istanbul—danced at his feet, barking his welcome and demanding attention from the only person besides me whom he would recognize as master.

  And then there was me. Michael’s azure eyes sparkled as they came to rest on my face, his grin widening.

  “No suit. Home on a weekday? You didn’t get yourself fired, Carmichael? Decide to hang it up and do yoga like Mona?” There was a note of hopefulness underlying his jest as his gaze ran over me.

  I laughed. It was the same every time we came together: he searched me for wholeness, making sure that I hadn’t somehow been hurt in his absence. But I was a different person now than the confused teen he’d come back to ten years ago. Confident. Poised. Living in the present. While I desperately missed him while he was away, I had my own, full life: a profession at which I excelled, and a close circle of friends and family. My cropped hair had grown out into a sleek, sophisticated bob, hiding the tattoo-like Mark on the back of my neck lest it become a distraction to the juries in front of whom I argued my cases. The Mark itself, and all that had come with it? To me, now, it was a representation of strength, of all I had come through to get to this point in my life.

  “Even public defenders and prosecutors can take a day off now and then,” I said. “It was too beautiful a day to sit in a stuffy office, especially since I knew Rorie had the day off from school. But don’t worry.” I reached down to where my overflowing briefcase rested next to me, patting it with my manicured fingertips. “I’ve got plenty of case files here with me.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, his eyebrows drawing together slightly. “You know I think you work too hard as it is.”

  Something about his tone startled me. Me “working too hard” was an old complaint, and one that I knew had to do with his desire for me to loosen, not tighten, my earthly bonds so that the choice that faced me would be easier. But this time, there seemed to be an edge to it.

  I pushed aside the niggling of my intuition and let my gaze race over his body, tallying his every scratch and wound, knowing that before they faded he would recount for me the battles against evil each mark represented. I realized that I’d been holding my breath, waiting for this moment.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he whispered gruffly, his face softening as he pushed aside whatever it was that was making him so tense.

  I let out my breath in a shaky laugh.

  “We could say the same, except you’re a bit stinky, if I do say so,” Arthur interjected, his face a mask of mock disgust. “Where’ve you been that you’ve had no water for a shower?”

  Michael laughed and
shrugged, running a hand through his hair so that it stood up on end, the moment of tension between us gone.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I was a little eager to get here. I came straight from the airfield.”

  “Never mind that,” my mother interjected, rising from her comfy rocker. “You’ve had a long trip, that’s for certain. Sit down and I’ll make you up a plate of something to eat.” She walked over to where he stood, towering over her, and gave him a little squeeze. “I insist. Go sit down next to Hope.”

  He looked after my mother with affection as she walked with purpose to the kitchen. He threw himself into the chair she’d abandoned, letting his lanky body stretch out next to mine. Ollie stationed himself right next to the chair; Michael began absent-mindedly scratching his ears. He was still dressed in desert camouflage, and the cotton fabric clung to his thighs. He caught me staring at him and arched a brow.

  My cheeks flushed. He shot me a wicked grin and thankfully launched into conversation.

  “Mona in the kitchen. Shocking. Can she actually cook now?”

  Arthur laughed. “Don’t worry, she’ll probably just arrange some fruit and cheese on a plate. No risk of food poisoning. It’s hard to imagine that she used to arrange some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions in the world. But those days are gone. I’m telling you, man, she’s a different woman. Yoga, pottery … she’s even the vice president of the PTA at Rorie’s school.”

  “Much to the horror of everyone else on the PTA. Last meeting she proposed they not require a consensus majority rules vote on every piece of PTA business. You’d think she’d proposed they go club baby seals to death or something,” I added, remembering the rash of horrified Facebook postings and letters to the editor her suggestion had unleashed.

  “She even inflicted PowerPoint upon them,” Tabby added with faux gravity.

  “Troublemakers all, you Carmichael women,” Michael intoned with mock seriousness. “I include you in that group, my good doctor,” he added for Tabby’s benefit. “How fares your congregation?”