Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
S itting on a lone bench at the local park, I rested my elbows on my knees as I leaned my head forward into my hands. My fingers dug into the depths of my hair, tugging and releasing intermittently with my ebb and flow of emotions. I stopped giving a fuck about the strands that had been pulled from the elastic band keeping my face clear of my locks.
All around me, nothing but the sounds of the city slowly settled into the peace of the late evening. In the distance, the water of the park’s fountain still lightly splashed as it continuously fell onto itself in the basin. Every so often, the rumble of a passing car growled from a nearby street, but for the most part, all I heard were my thoughts.
The fierce pounding in my skull from where Kinley had smashed her head into mine still lingered. However, that pain was not nearly as intense as the one I felt beyond the physical. Emotionally and mentally, I had been rocked to my core.
It seemed that she was still as strong as she had ever been, there was no denying that. It was her mind that had crumbled into a weaker state. The look in her crystalline eyes told a much different tale of her psychological well-being. I knew she had finally seen me, which should have brought me all the happiness I had been seeking. The result, however, was not what I had expected or wanted. It had been what I was warned would happen.
My presence should have brought her peace, joy, all that sappy crap. Instead, I had seen a frantic and frightened creature—a beautiful tragedy if I had ever seen one. I couldn’t explain why I had been saved, but I had to believe it was to find my way back to Kinley. Now, in turn, I needed to show her the path back to me.
I had seen her kill before, but never with such reckless abandon. There used to be justification for the blood she spilled. Tonight proved to me she was a danger to anybody who got in her way. There was no doubting that I could have been as much of a target as that poor waitress.
Feeling Sylas’s overbearing presence behind me, I dropped my hands between my knees, loosely lacing my fingers together.
“Go ahead and say it,” I said quietly. The disappointment in myself weighed on my words as well as my thoughts.
Sy came around to sit on the bench next to me, leaning back and hooking his elbows on the backrest. “That went well,” he said, sarcasm wrapped around his response.
So much for him taking pity on my failed attempt to lure Kinley back into remembering who she once was.
Continuing to stare down at the ground between my feet, the manicured blades of grass were perfectly imperfect. Kinley used to be perfectly imperfect, and now she was someone completely foreign to me. Her erratic behavior was only one piece of her broken puzzle.
“Why are you here?” I asked, figuring Mr. High-And-Mighty-Archangel came to gloat. My voice was rough with exhaustion.
He drew in a slow breath before quickly blowing it all back out again. “I was in the area. I had to clean up her mess, transport that woman’s poor soul to the hour of her judgment.”
Other than giving an unimpressed grunt, I remained silent.
“Look, Atlas,” he began. “I’m not going to pretend to know why the hell you were sent here to watch over her. Everything about your existence goes against the rulebook, and rules are put in place for a reason.”
Well, this was a fucking inspirational speech for the ages.
I scoffed and sat up, looking over at him to see that he was staring off into the darkness that cloaked our surroundings there in the quaint city park.
Staring at him, unimpressed, I asked, “Is this your idea of boosting morale in the ranks? Because you suck ass at it.”
Fucker gave a half-tilted smile. “Well, if you’d let me finish, I was going to point out a few things.”
Great, this visit came with a play-by-play critique of where Sylas thought I had fucked up? I couldn’t wait.
Rolling my eyes, I sat back in my seat prepared to be scolded like an errant child.
“For starters…”
Here we go.
“Angels, fallen or not, don’t get assigned guardians. In all my existence, I have never seen it. You want to know why?”
I bet he was going to tell me anyway, but I went ahead and bit. “Why?”
Sy reached over and patted a hand to my chest, prompting my brow to draw up at the contact.
Seeing that I wasn’t following his vague explanation, he added, “The heart and soul. Mankind is a fragile creation, easy to trace, and even easier to predict. Our kind? Not nearly as much. Not to mention we already have our place in the universe. What greater purpose can we have than to carry out our duties?”
I laughed. “You believe that bullshit?”
“Look, kid, you’re new to this game. Have you ever heard of an angel being promoted through the ranks? No, because it doesn’t happen. We are given our purpose upon creation, it’s as simple as that.” He shrugged.
“If that’s the case, why am I here?” I posed. Yes, tracking Kinley hadn’t been without its challenges. Everything I had learned after my death and before my return had made it seem like this would be a much easier task. Nobody mentioned the unique and challenging nature of this assignment.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Good question.”
Allowing the silence to dangle between us, I let everything Sylas had said sink into my brain. After several thoughtful minutes, I finally confessed to just how naive I had been going into this. “I thought if she remembered me, that she would come back into her own. You should have seen her face, she nearly had me convinced I wasn’t me.”
I shook my head, still reeling from how things had gone so poorly over such a short span of time. Beginning to reminisce, I looked up at the stars looming above us, peppering the sky with various levels of brightness.
“When I first met her, she was unlike anyone else working under Lucifer’s reign. Cambions aren’t exactly embraced with open arms amongst his crew. But Kinley? Not once did she ever look at me as a lesser being. She always saw me for who I was underneath it all, just as in the way I saw all the things she hid from everyone else.” I sighed wistfully; Kinley had been hurting long before I was taken from her. Her fall from grace hadn’t been without its scars. I had hoped to continue helping to heal her bruised heart, but my aspirations and life had been cut short.
She missed her home, though she never would admit it, not even to me. Now, having been up there, I understood. There was nothing like the warmth and sense of contentment that filled you while you were in a perfect paradise.
A thin layer of moisture coated my eyes. “Tonight, she saw no part of me.” That was what hurt the most.
The archangel at my side pushed against the tops of his thighs as he stood. “I tell ya what. Let me talk to her, see if I can’t calm her ass down.”
Shocked, I looked at him. “You’re going to do that for me?”
“Fuck no, I’m doing it for all the other people she might come across. Her tailspins haven’t been known to leave just a single body. But—” Begrudgingly he tipped his head side to side. “—it wouldn’t hurt to make sure you get on the right footing since you’re starting at a disadvantage.”
I grinned. “Thanks, man. I appreciate all the help I can get. Maybe you’re not half the ass everyone at the academy says you are.”
He continued to speak, giving me a disclaimer. “I’m not making any promises. Kin is about as predictable as two shooting stars on a collision course.”
Then, he abruptly paused as he caught my last statement. Glaring at me, his jaw clenched tighter before grinding out his next words. “Wait, who is going around saying I’m an ass? It’s Evangeline, isn’t it? Pfft, you put your foot down one time and she gets all bent out of shape.”
You could see the flexing of his muscles under his shirt as his blood pressure began to notch up. Despite the smirk threatening to spread across my face, I tried to play it off casually with a shrug. “I don’t know; people. You have a reputation amongst the newbies.”
Crossing his arms in front of him and widening his stance, he gave me his best look of indifference. “Oh yeah? What do they say?”
“It’s just talk, man. I wouldn’t worry about it.” I was enjoying watching him slowly simmer underneath the surface. Heaven forbid there was potential that someone wasn’t kissing his ass like he was the fucking angelic equivalent of Captain America.
Unsurprisingly, my half-hearted attempt to assuage his concerns was unsuccessful. You could damn near see the gears in his head spinning wildly at all the possibilities that someone out there had something bad to say about him. Shit, I hadn’t known Sy all that long, and even I didn’t disagree with what people said in hushed whispers.
“No, go ahead and tell me what people think they know about me.” He lifted a hand to wave me on.
Who was I to say ‘no’ to Heaven’s great warrior, Sylas the Stickler? “You’re crotchety and a stick in the mud. That you wouldn’t know how to have fun unless someone put it in a rulebook. All things said in jest. As I said, nothing worth worrying over.”
Given he was offering to help smooth things over with Kinley, I didn’t dare bring up my contribution to the long list of nicknames he had been given by others. Most spoke to his self-righteous attitude and inability to be flexible. He was wound tighter than Lucifer when the thermostat in Hell dropped a degree.
Scoffing at me, Sy seemed to believe everybody was off base. “When you’ve been along for as long as I have, you’ll get it. None of you have seen the darkest times of humanity like I have.”
He began to step away from the bench, before halting and turning back to me. “Just do me a favor, huh?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
Sy authoritatively pointed a finger at me. “Keep your distance from Kinley until we’re sure she’s not going to wipe out the entire planet thanks to your fuckin’ stunt tonight. No fake business deals, no fake dates, no fake agendas. Got it?”
“It’s not my job to keep my distance,” I countered.
Grumbling, he shook his head at me. “Then, make sure you cloak your damn presence so she doesn’t so much as breathe the same air as you. She’s not the same angel you knew in your previous…form.”
Not entirely fond of staying away from Kinley, I knew that I needed to give her some space unless I wanted to risk an even more dangerous mental break. “Fine, but all bets are off once she realizes I’m not a figment of her imagination.”
He gave a light growl in response, grinding his teeth together in the process. “Whatever, Atlas. But if she loses her shit because you are on some Shakespearean love mission, I will clip your wings myself.”