Jonah Read online

  Just as Jonah was about to slide the zipper up, the leaves that had been blowing around us dropped to the ground simultaneously. The river stopped whistling as though it had run out of breath. It was as if here on this hillside, unexpectedly and without warning, everything just died. Even Brooke, who had been shifting her weight impatiently, desperate to bend our ears with her chatter, said nothing.

  Ruadhan was the first to break the eerie silence. “We best be on our way.”

  Jonah turned toward the hole in the ground. “I should move the tombstone back—”

  “Lad, there’s not enough time,” Ruadhan said, cutting him off. “Come.” He then curled his hand over mine, looking from left to right as if we were father and daughter about to cross a busy road. He stepped out first, a protective action that calmed me, and I squeezed the hand of the person who never let me down, thankful that he remained a permanent fixture in my life.

  Dust rose into the air as we sped away, leaving the tree’s lost leaves, the river, and the rock to watch as we departed.

  FOUR

  WE DIDN’T HAVE TO RUN FAR. Ruadhan led us down the hill through lush gardens at the back of a church. We followed the roadside for three miles, stopping just short of a detached house.

  I let go of his hand and quickly backed up, bumping into Brooke as I tried to avoid being seen from the house’s windows.

  “Sweetheart?” Ruadhan said. He straightened his trench coat, and then ambled after me.

  “He’s in there, isn’t he?” I said, standing on tiptoes to peek over the hedge bordering the front lawn.

  Ruadhan smiled gently. “Yes, love. He’d have come to see … Well, he’d have come to meet you himself, but he can’t keep up like he used to.”

  It took me a moment too long to realize what that meant. “Brooke said we’ve been gone three years.”

  “Aye.”

  “Three years, Ruadhan, and Gabriel’s still fallen?”

  Ruadhan nodded. “He’s been waiting for you. I told him to prepare … that it was conceivable that you might not be able to return.” His small grin creased his cheeks.

  “What?”

  “I should have remembered that Gabriel’s being wrong is the exception, not the rule. He told me you, Lailah, have always been inconceivable, that you make the impossible possible.” He stroked his stubble thoughtfully. “Belief is a powerful thing, and his belief in you never wavered, not for one second.”

  Ruadhan delivered this news as though it was something I would be pleased to hear, when, in fact, he couldn’t have been more wrong. I hadn’t wanted Gabriel to wait for me. I’d let him go, hoping he would do the same. The conversation we’d shared before I went back in time, in which I’d spoken this intention to him, was one I remembered well, but for Gabriel, it had never happened. In the end, the only message he had received from me was short and without explanation. Worse still, Jonah was the one who had delivered it. But then, even if the words had left my lips, I’m not sure Gabriel would have listened. One thing I had come to know about him was that he’d never found a reason good enough to give up on me. Evidently, in the last three years, that hadn’t changed.

  “Love, he’ll be waiting,” Ruadhan said. “They will all be waiting.”

  “The Sealgaire?” I didn’t need Ruadhan’s confirmation. We were in Lucan—this was their home.

  I breathed in as I studied the sizable brick house. A lawn with pretty flower beds bordering a wrought-iron fence spread out in front of the property. A paved path stretched up to a porch decorated with planters on either side of the royal-blue door. The lion’s-head knocker could not have been less inviting—and it wasn’t because it was made of silver.

  “Before we do anything else, we should talk,” Jonah said, coming up beside me.

  The front door opened before I could answer Jonah’s request. Gabriel set foot on the porch, and his eyes locked with mine.

  My lips pulled in a tight line, and I battled to retain my composure at the sight of him. I had made my choice; letting Gabriel go was just the first of many. The decisions I would continue to make would no longer include him. They couldn’t. Not as long as I wanted him to live and not as long as I wanted him to be free.

  I bowed my head as Gabriel rushed toward me. Without a word, he wrapped his arms around the small of my back, bringing me in close. His cheek pressed against the top of my head as his fingers threaded through my short hair.

  I didn’t pull away immediately. It was strange. Somehow, he didn’t feel as he used to. Maybe it was because that citrus aroma that I had loved so much hadn’t just diluted, it had disappeared. Maybe it was because he didn’t sound as he used to, either. My ear was against his chest, and his heartbeat was not as I remembered it.

  Or maybe the thing that was truly different was me.

  My arms were pinned to my sides. I knew I was cold and empty beneath him; he knew it, too, as, with reluctance, he parted from me.

  “Come, let’s get you inside. Let’s get you both inside,” he said, offering Jonah an almost respectful nod.

  I lifted my chin, and Gabriel did a double take.

  “Lailah! What happened to you?”

  Once again, he reached out for me, and I withdrew, shaking my head.

  Jonah stepped in front of me, protectively placing his arm across my chest. “What happened is that you sent her to death’s door, and she was happily knocking on the damn thing when I found her.”

  Gabriel’s faded blue eyes left mine, and he turned his attention back to Jonah.

  “Don’t,” I said. This was one fight I had no interest in being at the center of.

  Jonah relented. “It doesn’t matter what happened; all that matters is that she’s here. That she’s still alive.”

  Ruadhan shuffled me forward. “Come, let’s go inside, as Gabriel suggested.”

  I followed Ruadhan through the gate, and we walked around the outside of the house, making our way from the front to the back garden. Jonah and Gabriel trailed us, and Brooke, unusually, hung back, quiet.

  “We don’t tend to go into the main house—that is, Brooke and myself,” Ruadhan said.

  “Not Vampire-friendly?” I replied. Although I was blind in my left eye, the sight in my right was still sharp enough to detect the glint of silver weapons hidden within the gardens. I especially liked the creative use of the unassuming, decorative garden gnomes. Though they appeared innocent, they had murder on their minds; each one was molded around deadly silver saber claws.

  “Not in the least,” Ruadhan said.

  At the end of the backyard, behind the fence, was a field upon which sat the Sealgaire’s home away from home, in the form of their large, well-equipped motor home. Positioned seventy feet or so behind that was Little Blue—the Winnebago. To the left was a dirt track, leading out to the road at the front of the house. Numerous trucks and bikes were parked next to one another, standing by and waiting for action.

  “Sealgaire HQ,” I stated, and Ruadhan nodded.

  Ruadhan nudged me in the direction of the larger motor home, where, chivalrous as ever, he held the door open for me. The place hadn’t changed. In the open-plan sitting room was the dining table where I had first broken bread with the members of the Sealgaire—the surviving members. So many of their group had perished the night they’d traveled to Wales at the request of an Angel—my mother—to rescue me. I could almost smell the chicken casserole Iona had prepared that evening. So inviting, it had warmed me through despite the cold shoulder Phelan had offered. In the corner of the van, the same sofa Iona had pulled a silver blade from when she’d felt threatened by me—not knowing then who I really was—still wrapped around the walls. Though the motor home seemed untouched, it had been repurposed. As ludicrous an idea as it would have been back then to the Irish band of slayers, this place was now residence to a demon and a fallen Angel.

  We were barely through the door when a familiar voice sounded behind me. “Feck me, so you were right then, she made it out aliv
e.” Phelan’s smooth words rose up alongside the twirl of smoke from his cigarette.

  I spun around, startling Phelan, and the roll-up dangling between his fingers fell to the floor.

  “Sorry,” I said, “but I don’t trust you when my back is turned.” I might have placed my belief in the wrong O’Sileabhin brother, resulting in Fergal capturing me, but I hadn’t forgotten the revelation about Phelan. He had been the one who had shot me in the back the night I had found Jonah in Creigiau.

  He gathered himself quickly. “And I don’t trust you full stop. You take being two-faced to a whole new level, like.” He tipped his head as he stared at me. “And I told you before, I was aiming for the Vampire.” He glanced at Jonah as he stamped down on the cigarette beneath his feet.

  “Sorry, what?” Jonah growled.

  “Now, lad, leave it be,” Ruadhan interrupted. “All water under the bridge. With things as they stand, arguing among ourselves is wasted energy.”

  “And how do things stand?” I asked.

  Before anyone could answer, a polite tap at the door sounded twice, followed by a low voice requesting permission to enter. “Phelan?”

  “Just get in here, Cam.”

  The young lad made his way inside. He shifted nervously beside Phelan, a silver blade pressed down against his leg. Believing was seeing. We had indeed been gone far longer than it had felt. Little Cameron was not so little anymore. Now taller than his brethren, he was lanky and lean, his red hair styled neatly, short in back and on the sides, and his voice had finally broken.

  “’Lo, Lailah. Good to see you again,” he said. As he looked at me square, I expected him to recoil the way everyone else had, but he didn’t. He only smiled.

  “Is it really? You’re holding a blade in your hand,” I replied softly.

  Phelan cut in, “You’ve been gone three years, and it ain’t Heaven you were paying a visit … not to mention the Jekyll-and-Hyde situation you’ve got going on. So before we tell you anything, you tell me, what the feck are you exactly—Angel or demon? Coz from here I sure as hell can’t tell.”

  “Don’t,” Gabriel snapped.

  Pulling a chair out from underneath the table, I gestured for Gabriel to quiet. My reply to Phelan was honest. “Neither. The same as you, I live in the gray. Your energy, your soul, flips between light and dark, based on the nature of your day-to-day decisions.” Some time ago Ruadhan had explained how an individual’s soul could easily be tinged from light to dark and vice versa depending on their choices.

  “On the inside, I have the same color palette as you. So as far as I’m concerned, that makes me human.”

  Phelan considered this, scratching his temple underneath his woolly hat. “Yeah, well, might need to add a super in front of that human. We can’t none of us maim demons quite as effectively as you can.”

  “Then you’ll be happy to have me on your side,” I replied. “So how do things stand?” I pressed again.

  Phelan looked to Cameron and then back to me. “All right,” he said, taking a seat on the opposite side of the round table. He freed a roll-up from behind his ear and placed it at the corner of his lips. “Cam,” he said. “Drink.” And Cameron followed Phelan’s order without complaint.

  Ruadhan escorted Cameron to the kitchen, and Gabriel took the seat beside me.

  When we’d all sat here before, Fergal was with us. His absence suggested he hadn’t survived the attack in Henley. Then again, if that were the case, I’d have expected more reaction from Brooke. Still, three years had passed.…

  Automatically, Gabriel reached for my hand, and I pretended not to notice as I leaned away. Jonah was gesturing for Phelan to pass him a smoke, but I could tell he was watching me from the corner of his eye.

  “Roll your own,” Phelan said flatly, throwing a packet of tobacco and some Rizla paper across the table.

  Jonah snatched them as he took a seat next to me, while Brooke sat down on the sofa. She was scowling, displeased that she might not be the one to deliver the detail about the world having gone mad, as she’d put it.

  “First, I want to know why you’ve been gone so long—what you’ve been up to in Hell,” Phelan said.

  I should have known he would want me to show my hand before he’d even consider revealing his.

  I sighed. “As far as I was aware, I’d been gone a few hours, not a few years.”

  “Time travels slower in Heaven—” Gabriel began.

  I cut him off. “Wait, wait, wait. I’m sorry, but are we still doing this?”

  “Still doing what?” Phelan said.

  “Calling it Heaven?” I directed my question to Gabriel, as next to me Ruadhan placed down two tumblers and a bottle of scotch.

  Before I had fallen into the third, Gabriel and Ruadhan had insisted we keep the Sealgaire ignorant of the knowledge we possessed. Deeply Christian as they were, there seemed no point in enlightening them to the truth of what they believed to be Heaven and Hell.

  It appeared, in three years, Gabriel still hadn’t felt it necessary to have a religion-versus-reality conversation. But then, even Ruadhan himself was not in full possession of all the information. In their time together, Gabriel had kept things from him. I remembered then the reason I hadn’t attempted to fill in the blanks for Ruadhan, either; I’d had no desire to diminish his belief, for it brought him comfort. Perhaps Gabriel hadn’t wanted to shatter Phelan and his men’s beliefs in much the same way. It was, after all, a belief they had devoted their lives to, something their nearest and dearest had died for. It seemed we were still working on a need-to-know basis.

  “I know you call it something different,” Phelan said as he gripped the base of the bottle Cameron had brought him. “Plenty of people do. But it is the abode of the Angels, of our Lord, and the place of divine afterlife. Paradise, Nirvana, the Promised Land … here, we call it the Kingdom of Heaven, and we offer our holy reverence, and our lives to protect it and all who serve it.” Calm and collected, Phelan poured himself a glass.

  His words echoed a similar conversation I had shared with Jonah. He had told me that no matter what name I went by, and I’d had many, I was still the same person underneath.

  Phelan had a point, but it was a weak one.

  What he didn’t know was that an Arch Angel by the name of Orifiel sent his Angel Descendants here to claim, in death, the light energy—or souls—of mortals to fuel his world, Styclar-Plena—Heaven—to sustain its existence. Rewarding the human race with some distorted form of divine afterlife was not the principal design for his Heaven. Phelan and the rest of the human race were not the center of the universe as he believed.

  I expected that his Bible stories did not explain that Hell was, in fact, another dimension existing in a state of cold, dark matter. That the Devil—Zherneboh—only came to be because the leader of the Arch Angels took it upon himself to cast another of his kind through a dark gateway. In essence, his Heaven had created Hell, which in turn led to the loss of so many mortal lives by the hand of the dark forces that now penetrated Earth.

  Jonah’s faith in me, in who I really was, might have allowed him to see beneath my name, but for Phelan, his faith would keep him blind as to what lay beneath Heaven’s.

  “The first dimension travels at a slower speed than Earth. One day there is around twenty years here,” Gabriel reminded me. “You were gone a few hours in the third, and those few hours to you equated to three years here. Heaven and Hell are on the same clock; it’s Earth that runs out of time.”

  “You don’t say,” Jonah chimed in, rolling his cigarette with exaggerated slowness; the same could not be said for the way he was helping himself to the scotch.

  “So what were you doing there?” Phelan pressed, blowing a stream of smoke past my face.

  “Taking the place of someone I care for.” I paused, and even though I knew it would sting, I ripped off the Band-Aid. “Someone I love.”

  Gabriel said nothing, but the whites of his knuckles showed through the speck
led spots that blemished the back of his hands as his grip tightened around the cuff of his black sweater. Jonah looked around the table, his hazel eyes widening, noticing for the first time that Gabriel was not between the two of us.

  “I went there to die. And I went there with the intention of taking the Devil and all of Hell with me.” I spoke in a language Phelan understood, one of both religion and warrior. It was too much for Gabriel; he got up then, making his way in the direction of the door. But he didn’t walk through it. Instead, his shoulders hunched as he spread his arms out, steadying himself using the door frame, where he stayed.

  “Well, you’re not dead, like, so I guess that means neither is the Devil.” Phelan sipped his drink.

  I shot Jonah an unforgiving look. “No. Now that you know where I’ve been and why, what have I—what have we—missed?”

  “Oh, you know…” A sarcastic grin edged up Phelan’s cheeks. “Just the dawn of the apocalypse.”

  FIVE

  AT MY REQUEST, Ruadhan fetched another glass, and I filled it to the top as Phelan began. “After you disappeared, we returned home, but by the time we arrived, already things had changed.”

  “Changed? Changed how?” I asked.

  “The demons were everywhere, Lailah. They flooded out through the mouth of Hell, spreading across the world.”

  I would have looked to Gabriel for a more accurate explanation, but still he had his back to me.

  “The day you went in, they all came out,” Phelan added.

  Okay, surely the time had come for “need to know.”

  “They didn’t all come out, Phelan,” I said. “Second Generation Vampires were human once. They were changed by the Pureblood Vampires who emerged from the third dimension, or as you prefer to call it, Hell.” When I left, the Sealgaire were totally uneducated to the fact that the demons they slayed had been human once, and clearly nothing had changed.

  “You’re wrong,” Phelan insisted, taking a sip of his scotch.