Celestials

Jude shook his head at me. He was desperate for me to go. I would love to if I could a) figure out how to wake myself up and b) save him.

Moira tugged on my arm. “Why is he in a cage? I thought he was your friend.”

Her eyes were wide and innocent. She looked terrified as her eyes traced a path between me, Jude, and the menacing figures of Uriel and Gabe.

“It’s okay, Moira,” I told her. Either she was the most amazing liar ever or she wasn’t trying to trick me.

The problem was, if I gave myself up, I didn’t see how this was going to benefit anyone.

You need to get out of here, Jude’s voice floated into my mind. Hmm….apparently that still worked up here.

The only way to do that is to wake up, I mentally retorted. And so far I haven’t been able to do that.

He sighed. It was like his whole body sagged in defeat. His dark eyes looked at me pitifully.

If I was out there, I could do it, he said. His voiced was laced with sadness.

That was it! He needed to be out there to wake me up. I didn’t know how long it took to get from here back to my body on earth. But if he could there before I got in the cage, then he could wake me up.

“What is this all about?” Micaela’s voice roared. From where Micaela was sitting, she couldn’t see Moira and I in the entrance. Her voice had roared from above us.

Jude looked up at her, standing up taller. “Nothing!” he shouted.

At the same time, Gabe and Uriel caught sight of me.

“Certus!” Uriel said the same time Gabe called, “Rory!”

Well, the cat was out of the bag now. The crowd of angels around us roared deafeningly. Suddenly, a flutter of wings descended in front of me. Micaela’s eyes blazed greedily, while looking me over.

My mind reeled. I needed my plan to work.

How long does it take you to get back to my body? I asked Jude.

His eyes flashed to me in confusion. What?

If you get out of that cage, how long will it take you to get back to my body? I demanded.

I can vanish there in second.

I nodded. That should be enough time. It had to be enough time. I just needed to keep myself in the entrance as long as possible.

Good, I told Jude that. Do that and immediately wake me up.

Alarm hit my gut. I could see the worry in eyes.

No! His voice screamed in my head.

I turned to Micaela. “The Oracle brought me back.”

She smiled widely. “We have her blessing.” She sounded so sure of herself it made me angry. The crowd roared again.

“No,” I told her after they died down. “The opposite actually. But her messengers can’t go anywhere else besides here and…hell.” I stumbled a little on that. I didn’t actually know what they called the places they lived. I only knew what I called it.

“No matter. You are here. Gabe!” she called. “Put her in the cage!”

“Wait!” I told her. “I’m here. I’m yours. There is no reason to keep Jude here. We all know if I die here, his fight won’t matter anymore. Let him go.”

Micaela actually laughed. “We don’t need of your permission to keep you here. We greatly outnumber you.”

I swallowed. “I know. But think about….”

“The torture,” Moira jumped in where my words faltered. Of course, torture wasn’t where I was going with this. When I looked down Moira squeezed my hip.

I didn’t think it possible for Micaela’s smile to widen anymore but it did. “Oh, little one, I am thinking of the torture.”

Moira shook her head. “No. Anyone can see he is in love with her.” My eyes flew to Jude’s but he wouldn’t look at me. Was it true or was she saying that to help me set him free? “I think it would torture him more to let him walk on earth, see the suffering of the humans at his girlfriend’s hands. He was always partial to humans too.”

When had Moira suddenly aged a million years and grown a vocabulary. Her small hand just patted my lower back like she knew what I was thinking. If we got out of this and I could see her, she had some answering to do.

Micaela smiled. “That sounds nice, but I think it would be more fun for us to torture him here.”

Moira shrugged. “Not the way he punishes himself. Pain of the body doesn’t bother him…pain of the soul does. Watching him on earth, seeing humans hurt, living without his precious Rory – that would truly torture him.”

Micaela looked to Jude. His face was pale and it was evident Moira’s words were hitting him. Moira read Jude exactly right. It would be more miserable for him to see that than be eternally tortured. Was this a good idea? He would be emotionally tortured for all eternity and I was going to start a war.

No! He was going to get out and wake me up.

Micaela turned back and looked at me. “You have a deal, certus. I will release him.”

There were boos from the crowd but she waved them away impatiently with her hand. Micaela grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the cage. I stumbled and almost fell. The adrenaline pumping through me had me forgetting my pain. Now that my body was being tossed around it came back full force. I sucked in a breath and stopped. I just needed to stop the intense pain.

Rory? Jude’s concerned question probed my brain.

Just wake me the hell up, Jude.

Micaela pulled my hand again. Moira ran over and threw her arms around me.

“I thought this would work,” she whispered in my ear, back to her six-year-old self.

I hugged her, despite my torso protesting. “You did amazing, Moira. I need one more favor.”

“Anything.”

“Before they put me in the cage, I need a tantrum. An enormous child-like tantrum that they are locking your playmate away. I just need enough time for Jude to wake me up. Can you do that?” I saw Moira’s scared eyes meet mine. She nodded imperceptibly before they dragged me away.

Gabe unlocked the cage and roughly pulled Jude out. He tossed him to the ground. The crowd booed him again. Jude just watched me as I was dragged toward the cage.

Get out of here and wake me up! I yelled to him in my mind.

He nodded and disappeared just as my hand hit the outside of the cage. A small body wrapped itself around mine and started dragging me in the other direction.

“No!” Moira yelled. “Not my friend. I want her to live with me!”

Apparently, Moira often fluxed between small child and adult because no one seemed surprised at her outburst. The angels in the stadium laughed at her display.

Suddenly a cool hand was on my shoulder. My mother was looking over Moira’s body at me.

“It really is for the best,” she told me.

God, what was her deal. “I can’t understand you, Mom.”

Moira stopped her yelling and looked between us both. “This is yar mum? She’s not the one I talk ta. She looks like her but she’s different. She doesn’t feel right.”

I looked at down at her. “What do you mean?”

“Moira, let her go,” Gabe scolded her.

Moira shrugged while still pulling me away from the cage. “Her energy is different. Ya know we can make ourselves look like anyone we want, don’tcha, Rory?”

“Moira, stop!” Gabe pulled the little girl off of me. Her hand digging into my skin felt like knives skewering across my torso. The pain doubled me over and onto the ground. I couldn’t move and at this point, if it killed me it was okay.

“She’s not right!” Moira yelled, as Gabe pulled her away. When I looked up at my mom she was glaring at Moira. Or was she my Mom?

Breathe, Rory. Stop the pain.

Someone picked me up and started dragging me toward the cage.

C’mon, Jude. Where are you? C’mon. My eyes closed in defeat. It wasn’t enough time.

And then a warm mouth was attached to mine. A tongue was inviting itself into my mouth and I was responding enthusiastically back to it. Warm hands were gently cradling my head and my back. I moved closer to the body. The tingles that were zinging everywhere were the most pleasant sensation I’ve had since playing in the snow with The Oracle. The need pooled in my gut and I tried to get closer to him.

When my chest touched his chest I shouted. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a sexy, animalistic way. It was in a painful, incredibly agonizing way.

“Rory!” Jude breathed, holding my face in his hands and inspecting me. “Are you okay?”

I tried to catch my breath and try to stop the pain from radiating out of my torso. I attempted a smile. “You woke me up, Lancelot.”

Jude smiled back warmly. It didn’t reach his eyes completely because he was worried. “I figured it worked before.”

I nodded, trying to breathe the pain away. Was it going to be like this forever? Hah. Forever was only a few short months…or maybe even weeks for me.

Jude was watching me suspiciously. “What’s going on?”

“It’s happening,” Willa’s voice came from behind Jude.

I peeked over Jude’s shoulder and saw Willa and Tanaka standing at the door. Great. We had an audience during our little make out session. When I looked back to Jude his eyes were staring into mine. Their dark depths were filled with hurt and fear.

“It started?” he asked me. I nodded, knowing full well he was talking about the tearing. “Since when?” I looked down at my pajama clad body, avoiding his eyes. His voice lowered so only I could hear him. “Is this why…before you projected, you just wanted to…uh, go to sleep?”

I nodded and then looked up at his face. A blush flushed his cheeks. “I knew you would freak out.”

“Damn right I would freak out!” He roared. So much for embarrassed Jude – I kinda liked him. “How far along are you?”

I shrugged helplessly, sarcasm defensively kicking in. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s like pregnancy, where it’s a nice nine month timeline, Jude.”

He growled in frustration. “I mean how far has it spread?”

My eyes grew wide. Spread? As in all over my body? “How far will it spread?” God, the pain everywhere would kill me – and not just literally. If it was going to hurt like my torso hurt, I didn’t know if I could take it.

“Rory!” Jude yelled, breaking me from my panic. “How far?’

One hand hovered over my body a couple inches below my belly button, the other hand hovered near my collar bones. From the way Jude’s eyes widened, I could tell he had just noticed the marks above my pajamas. “From here to here,” I told him.

He nodded, like that information meant something to him. “We need to work fast.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, panicked again. “Fast like we need to figure this out in a few months or fast like we need to figure this out in a few weeks?”

Jude looked to Willa and Tanaka, neither of which looked at me. This was bad. A few weeks. Okay, we could figure this out in a few weeks. Sure.

“No matter,” Tanaka told us. “We can fix it before then.”

I nodded, as did the others. We all wanted so badly to believe him. Instead of dwelling on the fact that I only had a few weeks, a few pain filled weeks, left, I looked to Willa. “Where is Jerrick and Marco? Are they still up there?”

Willa nodded, but I could see the fear in her eyes. “They’ve been going up there since you’ve been gone, looking for you.”

“I know. Moira told me.”

Willa giggled. “The little girl giving them messages? She seemed adorable.”

I nodded. “Or really scary. She’s brilliant.”

“Saved my ass,” Jude mumbled.

“Speaking of your ass,” I started only to get raised eyebrows from Tanaka and Willa. I rolled my eyes at them. “How is it that you ended up with the angelus anyway? I thought you couldn’t get up there.”

Jude cocked his head to the side. “If you didn’t think I could get up there, then why did you send Moira with the message that I needed to come up?”

That was a very good question. Why did I do that? I know I just wanted Jude to help me. I knew he would. There was no doubt in my mind that Jude would have done anything to save me. I looked into his eyes and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

He smiled gently, like he was enjoying an inside joke. “I thought you knew something I didn’t. That’s why I tried going up. I thought you knew a trick or something.”

“So you just…vanished up there?” I asked. “And it worked?”

“Yeah.”

“Duh!” Willa piped up. Both Jude and I whipped around to her. “This has been my theory all along. You keep saying you’re neither angelus or everto, but I think it’s the opposite. You’re both. Your ability to travel to both proves it.”

“What happens if you tried to go to ‘heaven’ and you were a demon?” I wanted to know. “Or the other way around?”

“Worst headache you can ever imagine. Like being blocked by a mental wall,” Tanaka told me. “And then that wall bashes you over the head for the next three hours.”

“Sounds fun,” I said sarcastically. Then I looked at three of them. “How long was I gone?”

Willa came over to the bed and sat next to me, cradling my hand. “Over two weeks.”

“What?! It felt like it was a few days, a week at the most.”

“Time moves differently in those places,” Tanaka told me.

Then I turned to Jude. “How long were you up there?”

He shrugged. “A little less than a week. I think I arrived right after the Oracle’s messengers took you. They didn’t catch me until right before you came back.”

“I was there a week?” I asked, incredulous. It seemed like I was at the Oracle’s for a few hours at most. That reminded me. I needed to tell them what the Oracle said.

“Hold up!” Willa almost yelled, bouncing off the bed and pacing the floor. Her arms wildly gesticulated when she talked and her eyes were bright with excitement. “You went to see the Oracle? No one has ever seen the Oracle. What was he or she like? What did they look like? Where do they live?”

I laughed. “She looked like my grandmother, but only because I wanted her to look that way. That’s what she told me, anyway. I guess the Oracle is a She. I’m not sure.” I went on to describe where the Oracle lived and the snowball fight.

“Wow,” Willa breathed when I was done. “That is amazing.”

Jude moved closer, touching my shoulder to get my attention. “What did she want with you?”

I breathed out a sigh. “Well, she said I’m the one in the prophecy but that if we interpreted it differently we could solve our problems.”

“If we interpret it differently?” Tanaka asked.

I nodded and explained what the Oracle had told me about interpreting the prophecy. “So she can’t help us exactly, but she did say that it didn’t have to end with the world being destroyed and a major celestial war.”

Willa wrinkled her nose in disappointment. “We just have to figure out how to re-interpret the prophecy. Riiiiight.”

Suddenly a loud noise crashed in the living room. Tanaka and Willa took off toward it, while Jude threw himself protectively in front of me. A moment later Marco and Jerrick rushed into the room followed by Willa and Tanaka. The two angels were out of breath, like they had been running.

“We have to go – now!” Marco told us.

“They’re coming. They know we came here!” Jerrick told them.

Immediately, everyone jumped into action gathering their packs. I stuffed anything I might have had lying around the room quickly into my pack and tossed it over my shoulders, thankful it didn’t touch any of the marks. In less than two minutes we were all gathered back in the living room.

“We should separate,” Jerrick told us. “It will be safer for the moment.”

Tanaka looked at his watch. “We’ll meet in Vegas in two days. No contact until then.”

Everyone nodded their agreement. I nodded along with them, though I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. Suddenly, Willa appeared before me. She slipped a leather cord around my neck. Hanging from it was a leather pouch with a purple crystal on the outside.

“Don’t take this off ever. It’s a protection spell. It will help keep you safe. The crystal is to contact the rest of us.” With that, she lifted a similar crystal hanging on chain from beneath her shirt. “We all have them. Hold onto the crystal, think of the person and the message you are trying to send. We’ll get it.” Then she threw her arms around me, crushing my already abused body. “Be careful.”

There was no time for other goodbyes. We all nodded solemnly at each other. Tanaka and Marco held hands and vanished and then Jerrick and Willa did the same. Jude turned me to face him and clipped a belt from his pack onto mine on either side of us. We were trapped in between the packs on our backs. He held me loosely and tipped my head down.

“I don’t want to pull you too close because I don’t want to hurt you. But it’s probably a good idea to hold onto me and don’t open your eyes,” he told me.

I nodded and wrapped my arms loosely around his waist, burying my face in his chest. My torso stayed a few inches from his body. I figured this would be fine. For the first time in a very long time, I felt safe. I let out a sigh and felt us spin out of the room.

When I opened my eyes a moment later, all I saw was t-shirt. My head was buried so far into Jude’s chest, it’s amazing we were still two people. I had my arms braced so my torso wouldn’t touch his, but my hands were digging into his waist. I turned my head to the side. At least I wasn’t dizzy.

“Where are we?” I asked, when all I saw were rocky walls.

“In Powell, Wyoming,” Jude answered, setting me away from him. He walked to the bit of light that was coming from an opening amongst all the rock.

I looked around. We were in some sort of cave. “Why here? Shouldn’t we be inside an electric station or something?” I asked nervously. They would find us.

Jude shook his head. “No. they’ll expect us to go somewhere with high electrical energy and I’m not sure how safe our safe houses are now.”

“I thought you guys were the only ones able to get in them.”

He glanced back at me and I could see the worry in his eyes. “That should be the way it is. But Jerrick and Marco seemed sure that the angelus were able to get into the last one. I don’t know if they were able to attach themselves in some way to Jerrick and Marco or if they figured out a way into our safe houses. So we’re here.”

I nodded and then looked at him skeptically. “But why here?”

“A couple hundred feet above us is an ancient medicine wheel. We’re also harder to track in areas of high natural or spiritual energy. I hoping they’ll be so busy looking in higher electrical areas, they won’t check these type of places until we’re gone,” he explained.

I dropped my backpack and walked over to stand next to Jude. Silently, we both looked out at the foliage that surrounded us. It must be the end of October or maybe November already. With being in ‘heaven’ and time going so much faster up there, I wasn’t really sure.

We watched a raven swoop down and pick up something in its talons. Then it glided into a tree with its prey and disappeared. Something about it unnerved me. Maybe because I associated with the prey instead of the sweeping, majestic bird.

“This is the end, isn’t it?” I asked. My eyes never left the foliage before me but I could see Jude turn towards me out of the corner of my eye.

“No. Why would you ask that?” His voice was vehement, but I also sensed an acute sense of failure. Jude knew it was true. I opened myself up to him like Marco had told me. Instantly, I was assaulted with his fear and failure. He knew it was the end and we were going to lose.

“You know it too. Don’t lie to me. I can feel it.” And then I felt his anger. Whatever. He wanted the whole protector bond thing.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed at me.

I snapped my head around, my anger growing. “Stop lying to me! You feel like you failed. You know it’s the end.”

“Yes, I feel like I failed,” he retorted, “but not for the reasons you think. This isn’t the end, Rory. We will figure this out. I don’t care if it’s the last thing I do. I only wish it was the last thing I could do.”

He turned his back on me and walked into the cave. What the hell? Did the guy have a death wish? Ugh, he couldn’t even die.

“What are you talking about? You sound suicidal,” I told him. “But you can’t be because you can’t die…or you’re already dead. You know what I mean!”

His hand rubbed the crease inbetween his brows. If he was human, I would say it looked like he had a monster headache coming on. I don’t think the angelus and evertos, and whatever Jude was, got headaches though. When he looked at me his eyes were sad – so devastatingly sad.

“It’s not easy to keep watching people die. Watching people that you care about get put in danger, die, and then inevitably turn into an angelus or everto and eventually turn against you. I’m just trying to set things right and I just keep fucking it up and never more than with you,” he said. Jude slumped down against the wall. He leaned his elbows on his bent knees and cradled his head.

“I don’t understand.” He wasn’t making any sense. Jude was hopeful that I would survive and we would fix this current problem but he failed in everything else? I find that hard to believe.

Jude let out a tired sigh. “I know you don’t.” His eyes opened and looked at me. “We’re going to get you out of this, Rory. We’ll figure this out. I’ve just failed a lot of people already, you included. There was a promise I made. I don’t think I fulfilled it.”

I sank down so I was kneeling in between his feet. The need to comfort him was so strong, I couldn’t help but place my hands on his. “You didn’t fail me. You saved me from imprisonment with the angelus. You’ve done nothing but risk everything you and your friends have to help me.”

Jude shook his head, his eyes not quite meeting mine. “It’s not enough.”

I laughed mirthlessly. “How could you have done more?’

This time Jude looked me directly in the eyes. His dark gaze was intense and serious. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. “The angelus should have never gotten you. You shouldn’t be tearing. You shouldn’t even be in this position!”

“You had nothing to do with any of that!” I argued when Jude’s voice raised. “I’m the stupid certus who projects accidentally and won’t take sides so is tearing and basically giving myself pain but I’m not going to choose sides because I refuse to let them win, so really, I’m doing this all to myself and I don’t see how you can possibly take any of the blame for this or see anything you could have possibly done differently.”

Jude sighed and looked at me. “I lied when I said the only reason I was helping you was because of a promise I made myself. I do help all the certus because of that reason. But there’s a reason I found you before anyone else. I made a promise to watch out for you and keep you safe. So when you also happened to be the certus I knew about it first.”

His words had all the makings of a confession, but it didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was confessing. And what about promising to watch out for me? I was pretty sure anyone I know would have remembered Jude hanging around. “I don’t understand,” I told him. “Who did you tell you would watch out for me?”

Jude squeezed my hand for a moment and my heart sank. Whatever he was going to tell me, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like. “Your mom.”

“My mom?” My voice squeaked out the sentence, full of incredulity. How could he have possibly promised my mom that? There was no one but me around when she died. And the stranger at our gate.

I looked up into his warm, dark eyes. Dark eyes that carried the same note of sadness, the same need to help and comfort me as the stranger’s had twenty years ago. He must have noticed my realization because Jude’s hands tightened on mine.

“Let me explain.”

“You were there that day. You didn’t look like you, but you were there,” I accused him, trying to pull my hands away from his.

He nodded, still holding tight to me. “Yes. I was there. The man at the gate was me. We can change our looks.”

“Why? Why were you there? Why did you leave me there?” The tears were starting to well in my eyes. I tried to keep them in, but I couldn’t help it. He could have helped my mom. He could have helped me. He might have been able to stop her and instead he did nothing.

“I couldn’t have stopped her,” he said softly. “She made sure of that.”

I wretched my hands away but couldn’t move away from him. “What does that even mean?” I asked, furiously wiping at my eyes. I would not let him see me cry.

“Just listen before you say anything, okay?” I made some sort of noncommittal, annoyed noise. “Please, just hear me out and then you can hate me all you want.”

“Fine,” I agreed, angrily sitting with my arms crossed and all the petulance of a pissed off six-year-old. I wasn’t even sure what I was mad about.

Jude looked like he was about to reach out to me and then dropped his arm back on his knee. “Your mother was the certus.”

“When?” I asked. She couldn’t have been. I would have known, wouldn’t I? I mean, she had been acting weird the last six months of her life. Everyone said she was becoming mentally unstable. Was it really because she was the certus? It had certainly made me feel crazy, especially when I didn’t know what was going on. Or trying to hide it from people. Shit.

“When she turned twenty-nine, she became the certus. I found her a few months after her birthday. She was struggling with it. Thought she was crazy and didn’t want to scare you, Boreas or your dad.”

“So it’s like a family thing?” I asked. “My family is cursed with being the certus?”

“No,” Jude replied, shaking his head. His eyes looked into mine earnestly. “It’s never a family thing. When the certus dies, the spirit of the certus, if you will, passes on to the next person. It can be anyone, anywhere in the world and it doesn’t show itself until that person reaches twenty-nine. It baffled everyone when it passed to you.”

“So what did my mom do?” Maybe her decisions would give me some insight into what I should with this whole mess.

He smiled lightly. “Her reaction to the whole thing was very much like yours. She didn’t want to choose.” Then his face became sad. “She just wasn’t as strong as you. I think she worried about your family. The indecision, the visits from the angelus and everto, they scared her. She was afraid they would hurt one of you.”

And then a horrible thought struck me. It was so awful that I almost couldn’t vocalize it, but it was out before I could sensor myself. “Is that what made me kill her? Did one of them convince me to do it?”

Jude was on his knees and cradling my face in his hands before I could get any more out. “You didn’t kill your mother.”

I shook my head and this time the tears leaked out. “You don’t know that. No one does.”

“I do.” He gently wiped my tears and looked into my eyes. “I know that. You didn’t do anything. Satan’s gates, have you been carrying around this guilt the whole time?”

I tried to contradict him. Instead, I lowered my eyes. I couldn’t believe that I killed my mother. The only thing I remember feeling for her was unadulterated love. But it was hard not to listen to what people were saying. It was hard not to doubt sometimes. Especially when I remember waking up with blood on my hands.

“I don’t think I did,” I whispered. But I could never be a hundred percent sure. If I did nothing wrong, why couldn’t I remember it?

Jude gathered me in his arms and rocked me. “You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”

When my tears subsided slightly, he set me back. His hands were still reassuringly on my shoulders and his eyes bore into mine. “You didn’t hurt your mother. I was there.”

“What?” My voice was barely a whisper. I wanted to shout or scream or something, but nothing came out.

He sighed. Jude was not exactly excited about telling me about this. He looked weary and sad. “Your mother wouldn’t make a decision about evertos and angelus. Her reasoning was very similar to yours. But she was worried about them coming after your family.” He looked at me painfully. “And she had started tearing. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hide it if she was tearing.”

“Why didn’t you run with her? Why didn’t you try to help her figure it out like you are with me?” Jude could have saved her!

He stood up and started pacing. The frustration ran off of him in waves. “I tried. I told her to come with me until we figured it out. I wanted to help her. Satan’s gates, it shouldn’t have ended that way!” Jude’s vehemence surprised me.

He stopped pacing and stared at me. I could see the anger in his eyes. When I opened myself up to him, I could feel the utter frustration at not being able to help my mother. The only thing that rivaled it was the sadness that he didn’t save her and that he was somehow failing her.

“She didn’t want to leave your family. She refused to leave. She said she never wanted you and Boreas to think she abandoned you,” he told me.

“Instead she let the town think she was insane and either killed herself or her daughter was a psycho killer?” I asked.

Jude shook his head. “She didn’t mean for that to happen. She said she would rather the town think that she was mentally unbalanced than you and Boreas think she didn’t love you.” He sighed. “You were supposed to stay up in your room until your dad came home. You were never supposed to find her.”

“Are you blaming me for that?” I don’t know why I was taking such offense to everything he was saying. I couldn’t help it.

“No, Rory. Your mom just didn’t take into consideration how curious you were and how much you always wanted to be with her. Angel’s lightning, you followed her around wherever she went and always mimicked everything she did. Of course, you weren’t going to stay in your room if you thought you could get a few minutes alone with her.” He ran a hand through his hair and started pacing again.

“How do you know that?” That was my childhood. Myself and people in the town would have remembered Jude being around.

“I was there, Rory! I saw it!” He burst out. “I watched her with you and your brother. I watched her with your Da because that was my job, to keep her safe. And it didn’t work. And not only didn’t it work, but those fucking people you live with think the worst of you and now you’re the certus.”

Then it clicked. My heart dropped down to my stomach. “You were the guy. The one hanging around Mom…people said when her insanity got worse that she might have been having an affair. You were the guy.”

I never wanted to believe that my mom was having an affair. I couldn’t. It never fit with what I saw of my parents’ marriage. I could stomach it even less that it had been with Jude. Pangs of jealousy shot through me. Then I caught myself. If they had slept together, she would have turned – that’s what Jude said. Ugh! I shook my head trying to get the disgusting image out of it. I was not jealous of my mother.

He nodded. “She wasn’t – having an affair, I mean. Or crazy. She was just scared and unsure and trying so hard to protect you and Boreas.”

I nodded. That was something I understood. There is no way I would subject a family to this insanity. There was just one thing I didn’t understand. “Why did she do it?” I asked softly.

Jude lowered himself across from me again, taking my hand. Unconsciously, he stroked my knuckles. “She was worried and when she started tearing she knew it would scare you guys and bring down the angelus and everto worse. She knew death would bring more challenges for her, but that you three would be safe.”

I nodded. I could better understand why she did it. I knew I could never tell Boreas or Da, but I hoped she knew I understood. I looked at Jude. He was looking at me like I might fall apart and break at any moment. I wouldn’t break, but I needed to know. “What happened that day?”

“You remember everything that happened up until you went in for your nap?” Jude asked. When I nodded, he continued. “She sent me away too. She said she needed some time alone to think about her future. I didn’t know, Rory. I swear, I couldn’t feel what she was going to do. She felt peaceful, so I wasn’t worried. It wasn’t until I could feel her pain that I came back. By that time…it was too late. She was gone.”

Jude’s sadness mingled with my own. Tears coursed down my cheeks, but I didn’t care anymore. We were in this together.

“What happened?” I asked quietly. I knew this was when I came out of the house.

“I came back to realize she was gone. You came running out of the house and threw yourself at your mom. You were so happy to have her all to yourself. She landed in the garden and her chair fell over. It was when you hit the ground that you realized…something was wrong. Angel’s lightning, Rory, I tried to stay out of it. But you were so upset, I just picked you up and held you until you stopped crying and fell asleep. Your mom always accused me of having a soft spot for you.” His mouth curled up in a faint half-smile.

Normally, I would have warmed at the thought that he always had a soft spot for me, but I couldn’t get the images out of my head. I didn’t remember Jude there at all. “Why don’t I remember this?”

“A little while after you fell asleep, I heard your dad’s truck pull in. I erased some of your memory. I tried to erase just the part about me. We were both bloody and people would have been asking questions. But I erased too much. I left you there. I didn’t think your dad would take so much time getting out of the truck. I didn’t have time to run you up to your room and your clothes were bloody anyway.”

“You left me there and erased my memory?” I let go of his hand and stood up.

“I thought your dad would come back and wake you up away from your mom,” he hastily explained. “I almost came back for you. You woke and when you saw her my heart broke for you. I know you saw me. I wanted to come back for you. I would have fixed it. But it was too late. Your dad got out of the car and it just spiraled from there. I’m sorry, Rory. I’m so sorry.”

“You left me there and erased my memory?” I repeated. “You could have saved me years of guilt and questioning and you left me there with an empty spot in my memory?”

Jude stood up and walked to me. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t have him touch me. Couldn’t have him near me. How dare he? He saw what happened and left me to wonder for years if I had killed my own mother. Even when I told him the story he said nothing. I rounded on him.

“Why? Why didn’t you say anything before? You let me pour that whole story out when you knew it better than I did!” I accused him.

“I know. I wanted to know how much you remembered. See if you healed,” he told me.

“Well,” I spat at him. “Does it make you happy to know I still don’t remember. I will probably never remember? And no, Jude, I haven’t healed. You know why? Because up until about two minutes ago I thought that I might have killed my mother and I couldn’t get over the guilt and the shame of it all, not to mention people would never let me forget about it and I was always considered that crazy Marquadt kid who killed her mom and the truth was that I never did any of that and you could have, at any point, during my life swooped on down and let me know about that but you chose not to even when you knew it was tearing me up inside. WHY?”

He stopped following my pacing and hung his head sadly. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and defeated. “Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

“Fuck off, Jude.”

“Rory,” he grabbed for me. When he saw my icy stare, his arm lowered. “I did check up on you throughout the years. I tried to help you heal as best I could. But I couldn’t tell you the truth. It wasn’t until you became the certus that I was able to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” I wanted my voice to be cold and hateful. But Jude had never looked more weary and defeated. Instead, it came out as a choked whisper. I would not feel bad for him. I would NOT feel bad for him.

“Because…I’m a coward. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it without you hating me. And I couldn’t…I can’t handle that,” he squeezed out. Jude sunk to the ground and put his elbows on his knees again. “I watched out for you the best I could. I really did, Rory. I tried to take care of you the way your mother asked. I never wanted you to get hurt.”

“What do you mean you watched out for me, took care of me? That doesn’t make any sense,” I spat at him bitterly.

He looked up at me with those eyes. His eyes and the eyes of the stranger the day my mom died, but they were something else too. Suddenly, it clicked into place – the reason he seemed so familiar.

“Mr. Fagan – that was you. You can change your appearance but you can’t change your eyes. They’re the same.” The realization dawned on me. Then I looked at him again. “Mary Marguiles. You were Mary Marguiles,” I accused him.

He nodded. “Please try and understand, Rory, I promised your mom. I didn’t know how to get close to you, how to help you without becoming someone you could trust. I needed to become those people who helped you understand you didn’t kill your mom. I thought they did, otherwise I would have kept creating new ones instead of watching out for you from a distance. I…I thought once you hit high school you didn’t think that anymore.”

“No, Jude,” I answered, sitting away from him. “I just stopped talking about it. Stopped letting people know it affected me. It was the only way I could survive.”

Jude lowered his head, but his dark eyes never left mine. “I’m sorry. I don’t….I don’t even know what to say.”

I sighed and pulled a blanket from the pack. I wrapped myself up in it and sat against the rock wall. “I guess you’re going to have to figure out how to help me when you’re not someone I trust anymore.”

How the hell was I supposed to open my heart up to Jude when all he ever did was break my trust? The man lied to me more than anyone I had ever known. This was why I didn’t open up to people, why I didn’t trust people. They ended up hurting you. There were exactly three people in my life I could ever count on – Da, Boreas, and Margot – and it looked like it would remain that way.

Did I think Jude would take the proverbial bullet for me? Yes. Did I think he would do whatever it took to keep me alive? Yes. But did I trust him with my heart, with my secrets? No. Did I trust him to be truthful with me? No. He had lied to me too many times and I just couldn’t deal with worrying about heartbreak on top of all the other crap that was going on.

Whoa. Heartbreak? Why was I worried about that? I lusted after Jude. I mean, we had a romantic night in Paris, but I wasn’t ready to write out the wedding invites. Not that I would ever have wedding invites. Shit. I needed to stop thinking like that.

“You will survive this, Rory,” Jude told me, his voice strained with emotion.

“Shut up, Jude,” I retorted, without looking at him. “Right now I’m trying to forget you’re here, let alone the fact that you can sense my emotions. Just shut up.”

I heard him shift but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having me look for him. “Tomorrow night we’ll leave for Vegas,” he told me quietly. Jude walked over and stood in front of me for a moment. Silently, he slid an envelope toward me. It was yellowed with age and wrinkled like it had been carried around with him for a while. “Your mother wrote one of these for me too. I hope it helps.”

I nodded knowing full well he was watching me. When he walked away I slowly slid the envelope towards me. I took the single sheet of paper from the worn envelope and saw my mother’s familiar script in the beam of the flashlight. I would never forget the way she curled her g’s or dashed, rather than dotted her i’s. She had left all of us a similar letter on the table in the garden when she died. I read mine in the darkness of my room at night when I missed her.

Jude –

I know what I have done has come as a surprise to you and I’m actually shocked that I was able to hide my feelings from you. Though I know you will, please don’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could have done or said to save me from this. If you had attempted to stop me, I would have just tried again.

It’s not that I have a death wish. But I have a life wish for my children. The ones that are out to get me – the ones you say need me to make a decision – I can feel them closing in. I can feel how desperate they are. From what you’ve told me, human life is a casualty they bear lightly. I cannot have them hurt my family to force my hand. And they will. I know they will. So I’ve decided to fight them on their ground.

I know this will force my hand. I know that dying will force a decision. But you see Jude, the lives of my children are more important than who will rule the earth for the future. Humans don’t know about this war now, so why will my choice make much of a difference to them? I know this is a selfish way to look at it. But Rory and Boreas come first.

I’m sorry. I feel like I let you down in this decision. But you know how I feel about them. You can feel it with your protector bond.

I will always be grateful for everything you have done.

-Mary

Tears streamed down my face at her words. I’ve never doubted my mother’s love, but to have it reinforced in such a way was gratifying. My mother wasn’t insane. She was protecting us. Her love for us was so great that she gave up her life to ensure no harm would come to us.

I was about to fold the letter back up when I noticed a post-script on the bottom of the letter.

PS. I’ve seen you watching Rory. The way you take joy in all of her discoveries, how you laugh at her giggles, and feel sorrow when she is hurt. Since you’ve known me, you’ve watched her and I believe you’ve attached yourself to her. She’s such a delightful child, it’s impossible not to. I know it’s a burden, a lot to ask, but I’m hoping to prey on your soft spot for my little girl. Watch out for her. She’s always been more sensitive. Her heart is so big, it feels everything. She’s my little girl and although my death will hit them all hard, it will hurt her most. Be the friend to her that you have been to me.

I’ll look for you on the other side. – M

I clutched her letter to my chest, letting the tears run down my face. I couldn’t even comprehend everything I learned tonight. My brain swirled with pictures of my past and what Jude told me. There was a way out of this mess and Jude could help me, but I couldn’t even fathom trusting him to do it. I was going in circles.

After a few hours, my mind drifted off into nightmare filled sleep. My eyes opened again when light barely illuminated the mouth of the cave.

An imposing figure stood in the entrance staring at us. Suddenly, large bat-like wings unfurled from his shoulders and a none-too-friendly snarl ripped from his lips.

Shit. They found us.