“It’s a murderer,” he stated baldly, waving a hand at the still-smoldering pile of corpses. “And we need to go. The police are coming. They’ll find this… mess. We need to be gone when they arrive.” I ignored him; we could both be invisible if we chose to be. Of course, maybe this little one couldn’t do that.
I stood, holding her on my hip, unsurprised when she pulled one of my blades from the shoulder harness and started gnawing on the bone handle. I quickly wrapped a bit of my robe around the blade’s edge to keep her from cutting herself. Gav leaped into the air, winging his way to a city park, and I followed, enjoying the slight weight on my side, and the awed babbling as the little one flew higher than she probably had before.
“Is it one of yours, Mik?” Gavriel asked when we’d landed in a secluded, grassy plain. There were no humans around for at least two miles, so I relaxed.
“It is. One of my newest Novices. Made from my own flesh, but changed. Altered somehow.”
Gav’s face went pale. “Do you think the Abyss has altered the other Novices in the last group you sent as well? If this is one of those four....”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think so. We should check before we go back to Sanctuary.”
Gav nodded, and only groaned softly when I insisted on picking up supplies for the child at a human store. The pacifiers melted in her mouth almost instantly, though, and she cried as she tried to scrape the rubber off her tongue. So I wrapped my knife more securely and let her suck on the handle as we flew to visit the other three Novices. Gavriel had their missions memorized, as he’d chosen them specifically for that group. We flew all day, from the United States to South Africa, then New Zealand, and finally to a village on the border of what was called Afghanistan and Pakistan in this century.
None of the other Novices noted our presence. They were still unawakened, living their human lives before the memory of their purposes would bloom and they would be called on to perform their tasks.
Finally, Gavriel’s shoulders slumped. “Thank the Maker of All,” he murmured. “It’s only that one we’ll have to destroy.”
“Destroy?” I repeated, backing away from him, and rocking the now-sleeping toddler in my arms. “We’re not destroying her. She’s a living soul.”
He sputtered for a moment, then glared at me. “She’s the embodiment of evil. Philanthropy reported she’s killed dozens, maybe hundreds of humans in the United States. Who knows what horrific acts she’ll perform once she—onceit—is grown? It can’t be left on its own!” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself, not me.
“She won’t be,” I said, setting my feet and holding her tighter, in case he got the wrong idea that I would hand her over. “I’ll take care of her.”
His jaw opened and shut a few times, and I wondered if I’d somehow broken him. Finally, he wheezed, “Mikhail. Friend. It’s not a pet. You can’t… keep it.”
“Her,” I corrected. “And what would you have me do? I am a Maker, not a Destroyer. I made this soul, and how she became what she is now is a mystery. I will care for her, discover what befell her”—though I already had a suspicion, and the longer I was around this one, staring at the glitter that was my greatest clue, the more I knew I was correct—“and I will return her to her perfect, pure state.” He didn’t say anything. I sighed. “Let me try. It’s not as if I can make more Novices, Gav. Unless you want me to cut myself into ribbons?—”
“I never wanted that to begin with!” he protested, throwing his hands up.
I waited until he quieted, then said, “I have no mission, Gav. No purpose. I’m a Maker with no material left to create. And this small being… She is mine—I feel it in my bones. She is not just my creation. She is my daughter.” A tear fell down my cheek and splashed on the forehead of the sleeping baby, who woke, blinking furiously. I wiped the wet place on her skin, and the fingers that I used came away coated with smut. I squinted, but couldn’t tell whether the tear had made a difference in her coloration at all.
She grinned up at me, two small white nubs poking out of her pink gums. “Dada,” she said softly.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Dada.” She squirmed out of my arms and began playing on the grass, stuffing everything she discovered into her mouth as she explored.
Gavriel paced, thinking so loud I could almost hear him—though he’d been careful not to communicate with me mentally that often since we came to Earth. He was hiding something.
The small demon was playing with some bugs she had found, so I focused my attention on my friend. “What’s going on, Gav? Not with the baby. With you. What’s really wrong?”
He stopped, but refused to look at me. Finally, he spoke. “I’m failing. In my leadership of Sanctuary. In my personal life. I almost destroyed your… your mate.” A flash of pain crossed his face when he said that, and I understood on a bone-deep level what he wasn’t saying. This wasn’t just sorrow or shame at hurting me. Something in Gavriel was mourning… Feather?
It couldn’t be. He didn’t even like her. He’d been nothing but cruel.
“I don’t understand. You’ve been faithful to Arabella for all these years,” I said softly. “Do you regret that choice? Do you resent her… or me, for my failure in her creation?” He didn’t answer, but his face went stony as it did when he was trying to camouflage his inner turmoil. For all that Gav was meant to bethe calmest, most controlled being in Sanctuary, the waves that rocked his soul were tsunamis of emotion.
“No,” he replied at last. “I don’t blame you, Mik.” He clenched his jaw. “I am envious of you. I see what you have with Feather, and I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
I rocked back on my heels. Envy was the kind of taint that grew insidiously on the soul of an Angelus. Unlike the more overt forms of evil that showed up early on the physical form and were easily excised, Gavriel was admitting to a stain that was far more dangerous. “Gav. You’ve been around hundreds of mated Protectors. Have you felt this way about them? Envied their love?”
“Not like this.” He hung his head, arms wrapped tight around his chest like he was trying to hold himself together physically. “At first, I was… tormented by any happiness. I left Sanctuary for so long. I stopped singing, teaching, interacting with the other Protectors. I stopped having friends, besides you.”
“I deserted you, when I retreated in my own shame to the Maker Hall, to work,” I admitted, striding over to him. I pulled him into my arms, embracing him. “I knew you were as alone as I was. With our closest friends gone to the gate, or ascended.”
My mind skipped back to the centuries when Gav and I had first grown close. We’d spent every moment I wasn’t required in the Maker Hall singing together, and with Rafe. Or getting up to mischief. Gav’s mentor, Haneul—who I’d had a crush on for longer than I’d like to admit—and mine, the old Maker, had been good friends, and encouraged the bond. As leader of Sanctuary, Rafe had been far older than either of us, but his playful spirit had made him seem eternally youthful. He’d always made time for us, for our relationship.
Rafe would have been ashamed at how I’d failed our friend in his darkest hour. “Please forgive me, Gav. I should haveflown the skies of Earth with you, wept alongside you. Instead, I stewed in my own grief.”
“Your grief was real,” he rasped. “You mourned the soulmate you thought you would never have.”
