Chapter 40: Chapter Forty: Angel

Helaine

Wind whipped my face as Valek flew through the air, but I could hardly feel it.

I hardly even remembered being taken from my childhood home. Everything after my body had erupted with that dark blast of energy felt unreal, like everything around me melted away in the inferno of the pain that racked my body.

But in whatever conscious part of my mind that still struggled to hold on, I knew that Evan was still at my father’s house, left so far behind that there was no way he’d ever find me.

What would he do? What would Frank do?

Valek had frozen Evan and cast him off as easily as if she were flicking away an ant that had crawled onto her deathly pale skin. The only thin assurance I had that he was even alive was that in some strange way, I could feel him.

Maybe it was like Lilith said—his damned soul was bound to me. I would feel it if he’d been killed.

I hoped.

There was precious little I could feel in this moment other than the searing torture my body was enduring.

But he had to be alive—he was the only person I could trust to help me through this . . . if I survived at all.

The bitter truth was that I wasn’t sure.

Through the haze of agony and inky black tears, I could tell that we were deep in a forest, so far away from civilization that I’d have no hope of finding my way home, even if I survived whatever the fuck was tearing my body apart.

If she was taking me this far, there was no denying that Valek had plans for me. I highly doubted that she would bother taking me so far out into the middle of nowhere just for me to die.

If she wanted me dead, she could’ve killed me just as easily in my father’s house. She made her power perfectly clear when she brushed off my attack and took down Evan as though we were nothing to her.

So the manic fascination she had with me didn’t make sense . . . unless she intended to mold me into something so much worse. 

My body hurdled toward the ground when Valek let go of me, but I hardly felt the impact in comparison to the screaming pain in my back.

Digging my nails into the cold soil, I writhed on the ground, my spine twisting at unnatural angles as bones popped and flesh stretched to the point of tearing inside of me. I screamed, and my inhuman shrieks pierced the air as Valek landed beside me.

“That’s it, Hell Daughter,” she encouraged as she paced around me like a mountain lion surveying its next meal, her excitement like an ice pick to my brain. “You’re almost there, let them come!”

My body lurched and stretched to try and accommodate the unnatural shifting within me, like something foreign was desperate to escape.

It felt as though some great and terrible beast had grabbed me by the shoulder blades and was pulling me apart like a fresh cooked rotisserie. 

A guttural gag ripped through my throat and a hideous black bile splashed the ground as I vomited harder than I ever had in my life. The ichor bubbled and hissed, killing the grass beneath me as I continued to spew.

The ache in my back only burned hotter with each painful heave, ripping through me so violently that I thought I might die.

Would she even let me?

“Breathe through the agony,” she purred, weaving her fingers through my hair, her cancerous touch almost soothing before she suddenly yanked me upward, onto my knees so I had to look into her pitch black eyes. “You must survive the birthing pains if you are ever to be your true self.”

My true self?

My first instinct was to fight her with all I had, to defend myself and my identity, but there wasn’t anything left inside to fight with. She took my hands, and all I could do was squeeze hers as I shrieked in her face.

In a pitiful twist of fate, she was my only lifeline as my already indescribable suffering seemed to increase tenfold.

“Yes!” Valek cried, her face splitting into a toothy smile of rapturous joy. “They’re coming!”

Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, the pain spiked as my flesh tore open like a blister, and all at once a numbing release washed over my feverish, broken body.

But even in the midst of my immense relief, I could feel that something was wrong. My body felt all together too heavy, like a weight had been anchored to my back.

“Oh, Hell Daughter,” Valek gleefully sighed, her smile never fading as she openly stared at me. “They’re beautiful.”

Answering her was impossible—I couldn’t form words in my state of exhaustion, even if I’d wanted to. 

She must have taken note of the confusion written all over my face though, because she leaned forward, unexpectedly gentle as she took the edge of a feathered wing, wet with blood and viscous fluid.

It was only when the appendage flinched away from her that I realized the wing belonged to me.

My lips parted as if to speak—to protest this impossible situation, to beg to wake up from this nightmare—but instead of words all that came forth was a harsh sob that made my whole body tremble.

Valek stroked my hair as I wailed like a newborn babe, and I couldn’t do anything but let her. She cradled me in her arms, cooing softly against my ear.

“This is a joyous day.” She pressed a kiss to my hair, and the cold intensity of the gesture contrasted so heavily with the warmth Evan always held me with that it gripped my heart with sheer terror. “Today, you are who you were born to be.”

I could only cling to her as I sobbed, pulling my wings tightly against my back as though if I tried hard enough, I could suck them back in and pretend none of this had happened.

But even if I could, it wouldn’t change the simple fact that I’d been running from since Lilith first told me I was the anti-christ.

I wasn’t human, and no matter how hard I tried to cling to my old identity, there was no denying that.

“My dad—no, Frank—was right,” I forced with raspy breaths, barely able to choke out the words. “I don’t belong in this world.”

There was no use fighting the facts. I could never go back to my old life now, not like this, with these wicked wings trembling against my back like they were desperate for the warmth they’d known when they were inside of my body.

Had they always been there? Had they been kept small and vestigial until I triggered their development when I unleashed that dark energy?

There was so much I didn’t understand, so much I never could have hoped to understand.

So much I didn’t want to.

If Frank Fairgrieve had never taken me, if my mother had raised me, maybe someone would’ve warned me this would happen. Maybe I could have been prepared for it.

But then, if my mother and her coven intentionally birthed the anti-christ into this world, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she’d have raised me to embrace my dark purpose. To crave it.

Maybe the world would have been better off if Frank had killed me when he had the chance, before I became . . . this.

“On the contrary.” She held me at arm’s length, beaming as her eyes raked over my ruined form. “You were born for this, to choke this world with your tainted grace and begin anew. It was always ordained.”