I can’t tell her about the thing I asked him to do. It kills me inside. At least all the devastation has brought back my feelings.
I have to go to Boston. I have to find Wyatt. I look at Michelle, “Is your phone here?”
She gives me a look, “Where else would it be?” She pulls it from her boobs, of course. I take it and press Wyatt’s name. She has sent him messages in the last two days. They were in the house together texting while I was in the garden? I don’t know how to feel about that, it doesn’t even make sense. It can’t matter right now, and yet, it does. Instead of messaging him, I scroll up as she looks around the massive yard for the huge horsemen to arrive any second.
She has sent him random things.
Asking how he’s doing at 1 am or asking him if he gets lonely at 10 pm. He always responds. It’s out of character. He hates her, doesn’t he? He always acts like he does. She betrayed me.
God, focus, Rayne. Send him a message and see if he’s okay. See if he’s in Boston. See if he made it out. He is your husband for god’s sake.
Instead, I press out of the message app. I dial his number quickly and hang up after the first ring. I pass her back the phone.
“No answer?”
I shake my head. I see her the way Mona does suddenly. Why would she text him? Him… the one person I love. Me, just me.
“What now.”
I swallow my hatred and anger, “You go on inside. I’m going to take a stroll and see if I can’t stir up some dust.”
She opens her mouth, but I shake my head before she can argue, “Trust me. Go back and keep Stella company. She is going to need it when she finds out her brother is in the garden.”
She smiles, but I can see the pain in her eyes. She knows I don’t trust her. “She knows already, Rayne. She knew he would never get out. She cried the first day you were gone, but she told me on the second day that she knew he was never coming back.”
I turn away from her and walk out into the garden. The cold wind is intense, but I think I’m dying inside so it doesn’t matter. I walk out to the cliffs, like I am Catherine Earnshaw on the moors. There is something especially tragic about cliffs in England. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like I will never escape the feelings bogging me down.
I slump down onto the mossy cliff and look up. “Please help me. I don’t know what to do. None of this is real. I don’t even know if you are real, or if I am in one sick version of Alice in Wonderland or a coma in a hospital.” The wind gets a bit stronger, and like a desperate psycho, I take that as a sign. I smile into the wind, “Just tell me what to do. Please.”
The wind dies down, and I see that like the people Willow told me about, the ones who will always look for God when they are desperate, I too have seen a sign that is not there.
My smile fades, as if the wind washed it away.
I think I am supposed to feel the hands of God on me, holding me, carrying me the way he is supposed to when times get hard. But I have never felt more alone.
The Pale Horse
“When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
Revelations
One
“How the hell could you do that to me?”
I open my eyes, smiling when I see him. He doesn’t look as happy to see me. Is it a dream? Do I ask that every time I dream?
Seeing Wyatt looking like he might strangle me, dripping on the carpet in the room and feeling nothing in my chest, makes me think it isn’t a dream. I can smell the salt water on him.
His eyes are red and burning. “Why would you leave me there?”
I scowl, “Are you really here?”
His nostrils flare and I leap off of the bed. I whisper into his chest, “You’re here?” I tackle him into the wall. He doesn’t move. I grab him, climbing his body. My mouth is on his; he tastes like the sea.
My legs are wrapped around him, holding him tight to me, before he has a chance to run away. I drag his soaked shirt from his body, tossing it to the floor.
“Not now, Rayne. I need a shower.” He walks, holding me in the air and carries me to the bathroom. His face seems wooden when I press my lips against his cool lips, mine are desperate and angry. He pulls back but I tear my shirt from my body as he holds me in the air. He is not responding the way I’d hoped. He’s pissed. He puts me down and steps back but I step to him. I start to laugh nervously against his face as I plant kisses on his cheeks, but he growls.
“I got mad, I’m sorry.” I pull back, there is fierceness in his face still. I run my hands down his cheeks, “I love you.”
He shakes his head, “You left me behind.”
I want to say that I didn’t, but I did.
His eyes burn down on me, “You keep leaving me. You are just never going to trust me, are you? I’ve backed way off on the controlling thing. I actively work at not bossing you around and dragging you all over. I let you call the shots, all of them. I let you bring me here, in some fucking stupid attempt at being with you and helping you with this.”
“You were texting Michelle? Why?”
His eyes narrow, “She texted me and I didn’t think it was a big deal. She’s your friend. I can’t believe you went through her phone.”
I can’t touch on any of it. I can’t. I’m guilty as hell of it. My face is red from the guilt of reading their texts, even if they were totally innocent. I shake my head to rattle my thoughts a bit. “How did you get here?”
He looks exasperated. He shoves me back a bit and turns the shower on. I can see more tattoos on his back. I scowl but he turns around, “I don’t know. Suddenly, I was in Boston. I was standing outside of some shitty old building; everything is burned out and ruined. Some guys chased me in a cop car, shooting at me. I ran for the sea and dove in. Nearly froze my balls off and begged the nixie to bring me back to you. They didn’t want to—some bullshit covenant that you don’t touch a claimed man.” His eyes are burning with rage, “But don’t worry, I let them know that was not the case. I had to prove it, but it worked. The nixie brought me back.”
“Is Willow pissed?”
He nods, “Yeah, Rayne. She can’t understand why you would be so hateful to her and Fitz and me. I explained that to her though, don’t worry about that.”
I can see myself in his eyes, in the hatred. It makes me hate myself.
He steps back again, “I can’t do this. I’ll shower in a different room.” He turns and leaves me there with his salt kiss still on my lips, in only my bra.
Stella comes running into the room, “Rayne, we have a major issue.”
I look at her, “Can it wait or is it major? ‘Cause I think my heart just fell into my stomach.”
She sticks her glossy red lip out, “I’m sorry, it can’t. Your father contacted Michelle. Constantine has been tracking her messages and she has a single one from Lucifer. She told him she thinks it’s him, it’s the same number as before when he was contacting her to betray you.”
“It’s so weird he uses a cell phone.”
“I know, that’s weird. Anyway, the last horseman is here, the pale rider. We have to find Lucifer, before he finds us. We think he used the message to her phone to track us down to the castle. Gretel has found the horsemen again, since they lost them the last time. She says that if you don’t end Lucifer before the last horseman does his ride, you cannot kill Lucifer. Whoever kills the horseman has the power.”
I sigh, letting my face fall into my hands, “Why does this have to be so hard? I seriously got excited when the devils were so easily killed.”
“Yeah well, apparently they were only the appetizers. You have to go get Constantine back.”
I nod, “I know.”
She takes my arms in her hands, “You have to dig around in there and find the girl I once knew. The one who didn’t let anyone tell her what she had to do.”
I look into her mesmerizing blue eyes, “I am so sorry about him getting stuck there.”
She shrugs, “It’s probably not a bad place for him to be.”
I wince, dreading the words I am about to say, but I have to. “I pulled the dagger from his chest.”
She looks stunned. Her face starts to turn red, but she doesn’t open her mouth. She points at me, pausing and pressing her lips together. I back up slowly. She shakes her head, closes her eyes and pounds her fist against her forehead. I turn and run for it.
“ELLIE!”
I don’t wait for her to catch up, I leap out a window, smashing the glass, diving out into the air. My wings burst from my back but she has my foot. I fly into the air with her climbing me like a tree, dragging her claws into me.
“His humanity, he traded his humanity for your freedom?”
I lower us to the ground. She shoves me down, “YOU FIX THIS!”
I shout back, “I CAN’T! HE MADE ME DO IT!”
She snarls, there is a flash of white, and she’s gone. I look up and Wyatt has her pinned to the ground. He snarls almost the same way she does.