My ears still couldn’t believe what they had heard. “My father?”
For my entire life his existence had been a secret, save for a few pictures lingering around our house. I purposely kept him locked up in the back of my mind to keep from requesting explanations from my mother, explanations I knew would rip her heart open, revealing a wound I was sure had never healed. She loved him long ago. I, on the other hand, held no emotional ties to him. He was a stranger in my universe. Even now, I felt nothing.
“Are you all right?” Concern shone in Garreth’s eyes.
He was forever watching out for me.
“Why is this up to me?” I was having trouble breathing.
This was not what I had expected when I envisioned my Saturday with Garreth.
He looked at me as we slowly began our trek back to the car. “Only a human with an Archangel bloodline can undo the havoc wreaked here. Only the pure of heart can stop this.”
“I’m not that pure of heart. I hate Brynn Hanson, remember?”
“Nice try, Teagan.” Garreth shook his head and laughed. “Seriously, what’s expected of you is important. Don’t you feel the slightest bit special?”
I looked at him sideways. “Is that a trick question?
Because I’m not finding anything special about this.”
The sun no longer peeked through the trees overhead but instead cast shadows at an angle that could only mean late afternoon. Between glances at my shoes, I looked up at Garreth in hopes of deciphering something, anything. I continued walking, picking up my pace. I was anxious to get away from all this green and clear my head. All this responsibility was unnerving me.
“I’m still trying to understand the “bloodline” thing. I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head.
Garreth paused for a moment to find words that would help me grasp this. “It’s the essence, the spirit, that is transferred to the human being guarded. It’s not blood, nor does it mean you’re related in any way. Think of it simply as a succession, like an inheritance being passed down through generations.”
I let it sink in. “He had something to do with my father’s disappearance, didn’t he?” Garreth opened the passenger door for me when we reached the car and I climbed numbly up onto the seat. “Maybe he knew too much?”
“Your father certainly understood that angels, light and dark, existed. Perhaps that was reason enough for your father to be a threat. Either way, something happened to allow Hadrian to turn like he did. Perhaps it was simply a show of power to Lucifer.”
Garreth had said the essence of an Archangel flowed through my veins like blood. That I was the only hope for the Guardians. I shook my head in despair. I was barely passing French class. What hope could I be?
There was just enough clearing to turn the Jeep around, allowing us to head out to the main road. We were both quiet as Garreth seemed to respect my need to let my thoughts churn. He took my hand and I sighed. I didn’t want to leave him just yet, especially now that I knew we only had a few days left. What made it worse was that I sensed these last days together were not going to be pleasant; they would, in fact, be the darkest days of my entire life.
“Is my mother in on this?” I couldn’t help but wonder if this was perhaps a family legacy.
“No. Fortunately, she has no clue what exists outside the human world. Teagan, your father was very heroic b ut you are stronger. The power of the bloodline increases with each generation. You have to believe in yourself. At the end, your father was left to fight alone against his own Guardian, one who used everything he knew about your father as leverage to destroy him.”
To my surprise, I felt sad and angry. How strange that I would share a bond so significant with someone I never knew and that my mother could never be a part of it.
Garreth slowed the car to the side of the darkening street and turned to me. Even after spending the entire day with him, the sight of him made me weak yet powerful at the same time. I knew at that moment that whatever I faced, whatever was expected of me, I could handle, as long as he was by my side. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Garreth.
Today, a door had somehow opened, allowing what was meant to stay myth or phenomenon to be more real than the world I knew, and now I was facing the impossible. If it were true, could I do the impossible?
Could I, me, an ordinary girl, defeat a dark angel? My hands were hot with sweat as I thought about how my father, an adult, failed at this. And now it was up to me.
“Can I ask a dumb question?”
“Sure, but I doubt it’s dumb.” He was rolling the windows up now against the evening chill that was descending, and once again I caught a whiff of that beautiful incense.
“Is it normal for an angel to have a last name?”
Garreth’s brow rose in stunned curiosity. “You go from talking about your father vs. darkness, to angels with last names?”
“I’m just trying to understand all this. It’s too much and this is how I deal with it, okay?”
“Let me explain. This hasn’t exactly been done before.
No Guardian, other than me, has been granted this type of request. For a Guardian to appear like a human is no easy task. We may look the part but we are not like you at all, and in order to create a human identity for myself, I had to adopt a name, for enrollment purposes. Carver High School frowns upon single names. It confuses their filing system. Unless you’ve reached celebrity status, which most of us haven’t yet.”
“Don’t tell Brynn Hanson that, she’ll freak,” I interrupted.
His laughter echoed within the space inside the car, erasing the tension.
“I simply chose a last name suitable for what I had been granted. Adam was the first man created by God.
”
“And you’re the first angel to become human on earth?”
“Not human in the true sense. Lineage within our race is nothing like a human’s. Guardians simply aren’t created the same.”
I noticed we were racing back to my house at a speed I never would have attempted. Trees and houses zipped past in a blur.
“Hey, I thought angels were all about safety and preventing accidents. Do you realize how fast we’re going?”
Garreth looked at me, the gleam returning to his eyes after all the seriousness of the last few hours. “I’m taking on the daunting task of appearing like a normal teenager. Might as well enjoy it.” He reached his arm over and pulled me into his side where I rested my head against his chest. I closed my eyes for a second, wishing later would never come.
We pulled up to my house and I was grateful my mother’s car wasn’t there. I climbed down out of the seat to the sidewalk, and Garreth was already there, waiting for me. He led me by the hand up the steps to my porch, away from prying eyes. It was dark, private, the moment utterly ours. He cradled my cheek in his hand and I felt a tingling sensation against my skin.
Puzzled, I pulled my face away, noticing the octagram in his skin glowing faintly. With a flash, it burst into a brilliant white light, much brighter than the night Garreth appeared to me in my room. He held it high over my head, the magical blue of his eyes sparkling silver in the glow as the light showered over me, protective and pure. It sank into me, its warmth running through me like white blood as it spread down my legs and into my feet. I watched it seep through me, watched it under my skin as it crept within me, encasing me brilliantly before it faded and dissipated under my flesh.
“Your name means light, and it’s almost as if you’re giving yourself to me.” I held my arms out in front of me, staring at them in wonder.
“I’m giving you all that I am, but it may not be enough.
Over the next few days the light that shines from me will grow faint. You need it more than I do right now.” He pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head, letting his lips linger in my hair while I let my arms weave around his waist and pressed myself into his chest.
“What do you mean your light will grow faint? I don’t understand.”
That look returned to his eyes. The look of deep longing, of finding and recognizing something that had been lost, but it was changed now. Different.
“Eight days was my given limit. It’s uncertain if that’s enough time for me to return.”
Why would that be bad?