Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Gabriel!” My scream was eclipsed by another crack of thunder. Gabriel hit the ground and didn’t get back up. “Gabriel!”
My throat hurt, my ears rang, and adrenaline burned a path through my veins as Kabiel continued to fly past Gabriel. Away from Gabriel. “Stop! We have to get him. We have to go back.”
“No. I need to get you to safety.”
Gabriel was hurt. He was fucking hurt and Kabiel wasn’t fucking stopping.
I thrashed in his arms, trying to twist my body, trying to look back, trying to break free, but Kabiel held me tighter, swerving and diving to avoid the streaks of lightning that cut zigzag paths in front of us.
The hiss and crack in the air, so loud it smothered my screams, should have terrified me, but there was no room for terror with rage flooding my veins.
“Take me back! Take me back, you bastard!”
I was so focused on my ire that I didn’t notice that we were out from beneath the angry sky until Kabiel began to descend.
We hit the ground, and he set me on my feet but didn’t let go. “Calm down.”
My breath came hard and fast. Calm was far out of reach. “You left him. You fucking left him! We have to go back! Now!”
“No need.” Kabiel turned me to face the glass road and the angry sky that ended several feet away from us.
Asbeel landed with Jilyana a moment later, but my gaze zeroed in on Yomiel running toward us with Gabriel slung over his shoulder. Kokabel and Matarel were close behind.
A sob of relief tore from my throat.
“You really thought we’d leave him?” Kabiel asked.
I glanced up at him in time to catch the disappointment in his eyes, but I didn’t have time to soothe his ego.
Gabriel was hurt. I broke away from him and ran toward Yomiel.
He carefully set Gabriel on the ground.
“Gabriel?” I crouched beside him. “Hey.” My fingers trembled as I reached out to touch his cheek. Cold…so cold…
His eyes were closed, chest rising and falling rapidly in a way that told me he was in shock, unsurprising considering the state of his torso—a charred, blackened mess where the lightning had struck him.
“The damage is extensive,” Yomiel said. “He’s not healing.”
It was okay. It would be okay. “I can help. I can heal him.”
“Morningstar power doesn’t work on celestials like it does on watchers, Rue,” Kabiel said softly.
A vise gripped my lungs. “I can try. I have to try.”
Gabriel cracked open one eye, but it wasn’t me he looked at; it was Kabiel. “Protect…her.”
“I will. I swear it,” Kabiel said.
Like hell were we doing this. I gripped Gabriel’s chin and forced him to look at me.
“You are not going to die. I won’t let you.
Where’s the serum?” He must have brought some serum.
I patted his pockets, but they were empty.
“Where is it?” His eyes rolled, and a sob bubbled up my throat, but I swallowed it.
There was time. There had to be time. “Where’s the fucking serum? ”
“Didn’t bring any.” His eyes fluttered closed.
“It wouldn’t have been enough,” Kabiel said. “He’ll need a huge injection of celestial energy to heal him. More than a vial could give. More than ten could give.”
He was saying it was futile, but I didn’t accept that. I wouldn’t. I’d failed to save Shem, and I’d be damned if I lost Gabriel too.
I slapped his cheek. “Wake up. You have to stay awake.” I couldn’t lose another person I cared about.
“You need to heal.” But he was heavy and limp in my arms, his breath shallow and reedy.
My vision blurred. “Please, Gabriel…don’t you…
don’t you dare…” I blinked back tears and gripped him harder, my eyes blazing with enough determination for the both of us. “Wake the fuck up!”
Kabiel touched my shoulders lightly. “Rue, I don’t think—”
Panic flooded my senses. “No.”
I pressed my palm to Gabriel’s charred chest, and the fact he didn’t cry out in pain told me how severe these injuries were, so bad that the sensory vessels in his body were dead.
The scout in me said this was good, that he would die painlessly now, but right now, I wasn’t a scout.
I was a woman determined to save someone precious, so I shut the voice down. He was not dying today.
I opened the channel to the Morningstar power, allowing it to rush through me and into Gabriel.
The tugging sensation at my solar plexus intensified.
I was losing him.
This wasn’t working.
But then a low-grade vibration filled me, and his charred skin began to knit and recover.
“It’s working,” Asbeel said in a hushed tone. “How is it working?”
“The bond…” Kabiel said. “I think this must have something to do with the bond they share.”
I continued to channel until his skin was smooth and unmarred. “Gabriel? Wake up. You’re okay. I fixed you. You’re okay now.” But even as I said it, I knew it to be a lie. The special connection between us that had become so much a part of me the past few weeks that I barely noticed it was gone.
“He’s gone,” Yomiel confirmed flatly.
A strange calm settled over me—an eerie emptiness that part of me recognized as the absence of him.
He’d been with me all this time.
His essence, connected to mine through the bond.
He'd been there, silent and unintrusive but exuding security. But now he was gone. Just like Shem.
Where were they?
“Where is he?” The words stuck in my throat, thick with emotion. “Where’s his essence? Where’s Shem’s? Where are they?” Fresh seeds of panic took root inside me.
“If our earthly forms are destroyed, our essence returns home,” Kabiel said.
“A new earthly form is provided when it’s time for us to walk the earth again.
But with heaven’s doors closed and God gone, Gabriel’s essence will be trapped in between heaven and earth and eventually… eventually it will be lost.”
“And Shem? He’s there too? In between?”
“No, Rue. Shem was killed with a celestial sword. His essence was destroyed along with his earthly form.”
A ball of pain pulsed in place of my heart. Shem was lost to me. Completely. Utterly. I took a shuddering breath riding the sharp wave of pain that rocked through me. Shem was gone but…but there was hope for Gabriel.
I needed to bring him back. “I fixed Gabriel’s body though. So, he can come back. Why isn’t he coming back?”
“He can’t simply enter the vacated vessel,” Asbeel said softly. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“We should have brought Erelim. He could have put him back.”
“A reaper can’t do that for a celestial,” Asbeel said. “In the days of war, the celestials would share their name with a confidant, to be uttered only if their bodies fell because a true name can guide a celestial essence back to its body.”
What did he mean? “His name is Gabriel.”
“No. Gabriel is a word. A celestial’s name is a melody. Every celestial has one unique to it,” Asbeel said wistfully. “Watchers do not.”
A melody…Wait…When we’d bonded, he’d kissed me, and I’d heard a melody. Could it be? Could that be his name? Hope ballooned inside me, shoving away the darkness that crowded my heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut and dragged the memory of that kiss, of that melody, to the surface of my mind. Its sweet notes filled my head and formed in my throat before springing to my lips.
Holding a tune wasn’t a skill of mine, but it was as if this melody had been programmed into my vocal chords. It spilled free, rising in the air like a delicate scent.
My heart beat harder as the promise of something unnamed bloomed inside me. Hope and yearning and forever more.
The melody rose and ebbed, coming to an end, but Gabriel remained unmoving and cold in my arms.
I needed to sing it again. But when I tried to summon the notes, they eluded me. Lost now. Used up. “No…” My voice cracked on a sob and then rage bubbled inside me, eating away at the sorrow because how dare he? How dare he break his word.
I tipped my head up to the sky, eyes burning with indignation.
“You get your fucking ass back in this body right now, you hear me? You promised! You fucking promised you’d stay!
” He lay still, unmoved by my plea, taunting me with this silence.
“Damn you!” I slammed a fist onto his chest. “Damn you, you lying bastard!” I hit him again.
His body jerked on a gasp, eyes snapping open and gaze training in on my face. “What…what happened.”
A manic laugh bubbled up my throat and I blinked back tears. “You fucking died, you ass. You died on me.” I gathered him to me and squeezed. “But you came back.”
He turned his head toward me, his breath warm against my collarbones. “I promised you that I’d stay, didn’t I?”
I exhaled on a shaky laugh. “Yes, you did. You bloody did, so don’t you dare try to check out again.”
“Never.” His voice was a reassuring rumble kissing my skin.
I closed my eyes and swallowed past the pinch in my throat, because almost losing him had made me realize that it was more than need that I felt for Gabriel. It was want.
I wanted him to stay.
I wanted him, and in this moment of pure relief and joy, there was no room for guilt.