Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
DAKOTA
I collapsed on my stomach the moment I had ground under me, my entire body screaming, pain stabbing through my veins with every breath. I was lying in a large, shallow pool of water, its surface reflecting the black sky. The water was cool on my cheek and the side of my mouth.
It lapped quietly against my aching ribs, washing diluted ribbons of blood away from my skin. There wasn’t a current or real waves or an actual shore. Just an endless sheet of dark water disappearing into a horizon somewhere unseen under a sky of pure onyx.
My head was pounding and I could feel all the blood matted in my hair, still wet and sticky, clumped in the strands. My spine throbbed with a dull, consuming ache. I shifted instinctively, and something heavy dragged through the water behind me, making my breath catch.
Feathers brushed against the backs of my arms, unfamiliar enough that my own body startled me.
When I dared to turn my gaze outward, a large white wing was there. It was also covered in blood like crimson lace, laying limp in the reflective water.
I flexed instinctively, and those hundreds of snowy feathers answered instantly, sending a wave of unease through me. The sensation reached places inside my body I didn’t have names for, muscles that had never existed until moments ago.
A single white feather drifted loose, landing on the dark surface beside me. Concentric ripples spread outward until they vanished into the endless water, making me dizzy.
There was a weird warmth tingling in different areas of my body, each heartbeat tightening invisible threads inside of me. The more I breathed, the stronger the feeling got.
Hands, arms, ribs, hips, skull. Everything felt fuzzy, the pain dulling with every breath.
I tried to keep breathing as deep as I could, focusing only on that, and not the way my thoughts were threatening to crush me with their panic.
I moved, pushing to sit up, my knees bent in front of me, staring down at my ruined body. Bones shifted beneath my skin, bruises disappearing before my eyes, cuts stitching themselves together before I got the chance to experience the depth of their pain. I watched all of it in a daze.
There were pieces of gravel embedded in my cheek. I brushed them away, fingertips skimming over raw skin on my chin that was quickly healing itself.
My shirt was torn wide open in the back but still plastered wet to my body in the front, blood and dirt staining the fabric. Tears pricked my eyes. I was trying not to dwell on the reality of my situation, but with each inhale, I was less and less capable of ignoring this transformation.
As I breathed deeper, my skin began to faintly glow.
Ultraneon.
More white feathers floated around me in the cool black water.
White, not black.
Panic hovered just beneath the surface of my skin, pressing insistently against my ribs, swarming me. I kept swallowing it back down.
I have to go back.
Micah and Mason were still waiting for me.
My chest tightened.
I remembered the truck and the headlights, remembered clinging to Mason as he dragged me up into the sky, but I remembered little else. Micah hadn’t flown with us up to Heaven, but maybe that was because he had to help whoever had hit me in the car. I don’t know. I don’t know.
The word swirled through my brain. Angelakia.
Apparently, when Angelakia died, they became angels that had to go to Heaven. I wasn’t sure why Micah and Mason didn’t tell me that. We had run out of time, or something.
Now I’d become an angel that had to go to Heaven.
The silence engulfing my senses was starting to catch up to me. It was as if the silence was waiting, waiting for me to move forward, to continue on into whatever place came after this void. It was an expectant sort of silence.
I blinked and rubbed my eyes as I noticed something across the water. A gate, seemingly made of copper, gleaming dully.
Since it was the only thing I could see other than the water, I assumed it was where I needed to go next, my next step in getting back to Earth. I tried to stand up, but I stumbled, almost instantly tipping backwards with the massive weight now hanging off my back.
Dropping to my knees, I took several more deep breaths.
My fingers were visible through the dark water, glowing steadily.
I have to keep going. I have to get back.
I tried again to get on my feet, focusing more purposefully on offsetting the weight on my back, feeling the ache and stretch of my rearranged muscles.
I was still wearing my boots and my jeans and torn shirt, but everything was completely soaked through with the water, heavier now as I began to shuffle towards the copper gate.
The more I walked, the more I realized how greatly I’d misjudged the distance between me and the gate. It took me several minutes to reach it, and once I was there, it stood much taller than I’d anticipated, stretching high above my head.
I peered through the bars, trying to get a sense of what was on the other side, before the entire thing began to swing open on its own.
Taking a half step backwards, I waited for the gate to finish opening, then I stepped out of the water, my boots finding dark stone. Right as I put my weight onto the stone, the void disappeared from behind me, being replaced with…Heaven.
The sky had shifted from black to a deep red, the color rippling and shifting in aurora-like waves, all different hues of red. There was no moon, but millions and millions of stars, way more than I’d ever seen on Earth.
I took another tentative step forward, my eyes darting around.
It was much darker than I’d expected it to be.
In my human mind, I’d expected Heaven to be made of white clouds and glowing sunlight, but instead, it felt gloomy and ancient.
Celestial rivers of shimmering scarlet floated in the sky with wine-dark clouds, and all the shadows were less sharp here, darkness smudged on everything.
There was a city in front of me, buildings stretching impossibly tall, ultraneon-bathed angels walking and flying over the roads, crimson illuminating every window, every street lamp.
Every light was a small red flame.
When neon burned, it burned red. Asteria was red, and asteria was everywhere.
I remained standing perfectly still, unable to do anything other than stare at the monumental scale of the architecture.
This was the real Mount Olympus.
Millions of years of immortal civilization.
The air was crisp and cool, brushing my cheeks as the water dried from my glowing skin.
A rustling sound made me turn my head, my eyes finding something behind me that looked like a very tall forest. All the massive trees were dark enough to be black, swaying on invisible winds, and they looked similar to pine trees, but there was something different I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Until I did.
There wasn’t a single pine needle on the ground. Nor a branch or a leaf or a pine cone.
Not a single part of these trees had ever died or weakened or fallen off. How long have they been alive? Forever?
Moreover, the scent coming off the forest wasn’t familiar to me at all.
The air smelled clean, stripped of every scent I’d unconsciously associated with being alive, all the familiarity of Earth erased from my inhales. Every breath tasted almost metallic, though not unpleasant.
I glanced down at the dark stone I stood on, noticing for the first time the veins of glowing vermilion snaking under the surface. A few strange flowers with glinting petals sprung up in long cracks, and I knelt to look at them. Instead of smelling floral, they smelled almost mineral.
I turned my gaze back towards Mount Olympus.
It was…beautiful.
Beautiful in the same way the ocean on Earth was beautiful. Vast enough to swallow me. Majestic and lonely and alive in a way that was difficult to describe.
The life in Heaven wasn’t the same as life on Earth, because there was no death to counterbalance it.
In the distance I saw cliffs and mountains and large pools of black water, more dark forests and silvery fields, everything tinted ruby.
I began taking tentative steps towards the city, since it didn’t seem like anyone was coming to guide me.
My boots squished wetly with each step, and I eventually just took them off with my socks and continued barefoot.
The stone beneath my feet was cold, but it didn’t seem to affect me anymore—I could still sense coldness, but it didn’t bring with it any negative feeling. I was perpetually warm from within.
Just like my journey to the copper gate, my journey to Mount Olympus took much longer than I’d anticipated. Everything was always much further and larger than it appeared at first.
Large flames of asteria flickered from raised bowls as I got closer, and the marble columns on which they sat seemed very old. The thin metallic taste in the air was stronger as I passed each flame, settling interestingly over my tongue and filling my lungs. It was…restorative. The taste of neon?
I finally reached something that looked like a paved road, and a female angel swooped out of the sky right in front of me, startling me.
My heart was racing as she stepped closer.
Her glowing face was gorgeous.
“Angelakia?” she asked.
I just nodded, unable to find any words to respond to her.
“You can follow me,” she said, then turned without waiting for my confirmation, or checking to see if I was following.
I did follow her, though.
She kept her white wings out while we walked, which made me think about my own new wings.
Most of the angels we passed also had their wings out, but some didn’t.
Almost everyone wore a shirt with a large slit or hole in the back—much more elegant than the shredded back of my own shirt.
Many of them stared at me as I walked, their gazes lingering just a few seconds too long.
If what Mason and Micah told me was true, practically none of these angels would know about Angelakia. They’d have no clue who I was or why I was here.