Out of the corner of my vision, a flicker of light appears and stays. I turn towards it, catching the ephemeral image of the ghost of an angel with wide-spread wings. And for some reason… I recognize her. Her gaze goes to me, and her eyes widen like she’s aware that I’m there. I hadn’t realized the ghosts were actually aware of me, but it’s obvious she is, by the way her gaze goes over my body, my fiery wings.
She opens her mouth. “You.” The single word is packed with so much hate, I stagger back a shaking step. And I realize where I’ve seen her before, and who she is.
Etheria, the former headmistress and one of the founding Prods of Academy of Six.
The cruel angel who killed Professor Shade’s child.
The onslaught of hatred that spirals through me is sudden and surprising. I glare. Because of her, a child died in the Dark Genocide. Her own child, her’s and the teacher's who helped me ever since I found myself at that detention center of a school.
The sorrow I witnessed Shade display becomes my own as I take her in. When I look at her, I see the small, broken body of a little boy with bicolored eyes that are open but unseeing, staring up at a sky that rains down ash in the aftermath of destruction. Of a war that killed demons. And demons… they’re evil. It shouldn’t matter to me, but itdoes. Because, like it or not, I’m part demon. Phoenix is a demon. Azazel is a demon, and there are some in that second circle who are kind. Any one of them could have died in the Dark Genocide.Childrendied in the Dark Genocide.
And she cruelly mocked Professor Shade as he held his dead child in his arms.
For a single cruel second, I’m glad she’s stuck here, glad she has unresolved problems and will spend the rest of her afterlife in limbo.
The denial dead. I bet she is in denial.
“You shouldn’t exist,” she echoes, her voice becoming a high-pitched whine, so similar to the others around us.
“Well I do.” I take an angry step forward.
“No, no, no,” she wails, grasping her hair, but the strands pass through her fingers like she’s grasping air. “Chaos. So much chaos. Destruction. Fire and hell on earth.”
I want to know what she’s talking about, I want to ask, but I don’t. These are her sins, everything she has to live with in this dimension. The blood she helped spill? It’s on her hands, in her heart, and that’s why she’s crying, why she’s tortured.
And she deserves every fucking bit of it.
“Don’t go, don’t go. Blood and fire. Chaos. Hell on earth!”
That seems punishment enough, and still not everything she deserves for what she did to her own child. This pain could never match up to the pain I glimpse inside Professor Shade’s eyes every time he speaks of his little boy.
So I stalk past her and let her wallow in her own misery.
But all the way, her haunting cries follow me, echoing in my mind like the dark promise of a premonition.
* * *
It feels like hours before I finally make it to the end of the forest, and my whole body, even my heart and soul, ache like I’ve been physically beaten. Even my wings hurt. The walk seemed endless, but finally, fuckingfinally,I’m at the end.
I step away from the copse of trees and into the light. Beyond, there lays a doorway, a portal and beyond it, I can see the front steps of the Academy. I can see home.
Home. It’s strange to think of that wretched place as my home.
But as long as my men are there, that’s exactly what it is.
How much time has passed? That’s the first question that flutters through my mind as I step in front of the portal. If I step into it and emerge on the other side, will it be to realize that an eternity has passed? Will Saint, Phoenix, Malek, and Syko still be there waiting for me? Will they be old and wrinkled, will I be nothing but a distant memory in their fragile, decaying minds?
I fucking hope not.
Only one way to find out.
Taking a final breath, I whisper my goodbye to hell and step through the portal.
Eleven
Izara
The damp cobblestone ground cuts into my back and wings as I roll over and stare up at the blue sky.
