The Wrong Enemy Read online

  Rachmiel backed off. Elizabeth mounted her bike and pedaled down the driveway. He steadied her as she wobbled to a start, then guided her tires over the gravel where the driveway met the main road. Tabris followed.

  Rachmiel streamed confusion. Tabris clamped down on his heart and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

  “I’m sorry I mentioned Sebastian. Was that why you’re upset?”

  Tabris shot ahead of Elizabeth down the road and moved a carpenter bee out of her path, then checked the road surface. He alerted Rachmiel to some loose gravel, then went high and scanned for oncoming traffic. A neighbor in a gray pickup truck would pass in a few minutes, probably after Elizabeth had veered off onto another road.

  He went in close again. You desert her far too easily. Rachmiel and Mithra lying to him, running to Raguel to tattle that he’d done what they’d told him to do, and wasn’t Tabris evil?

  Rachmiel whispered, “Tabris? What do you think I did?”

  With that sharp cut of a confirmed rumor, Tabris knew right then that Rachmiel had betrayed him after all. Demons could lie, but they told the truth when it was worse. This was worse.

  He had no time to collect his thoughts. No time to get his head together because Elizabeth was biking and it scared him half to death.

  It was almost—almost—bearable if he concentrated on the interlocking rhythms. Her pedaling motion, her breath, her heartbeat, the chain’s clicking. Up, down. In, out. Forward. Forward. They all looped together like an elaborate Celtic knot. He could get through this. He stopped scanning for dangers and just kept pace. Keep pace and ignore the question mark flying at his side.

  Until the moment Rachmiel burst with a warning, and Tabris focused too late on the trap: a demon shot across the road through the spokes of her tires. The front tire hit a rock and skidded. Elizabeth squeezed the brakes, and as the front tire locked, the bicycle flipped, catapulting her over the handlebars.

  Mid-dive to protect her, Tabris pulled back.

  She slammed into the ground, bicycle landing on top of her, her arm scraped, blood pouring over her right temple and cheek.

  Tabris blazed in pursuit of the demon, snaring him and then attacking with a ferocity he’d never neared when sparring with Miriael. With the demon down, he held out his sword and blasted him with soul-energy, leaving nothing but a slick demonic residue that Tabris gathered up and scattered in three different oceans. But his heart ached: the demon would reconstitute given time, and Elizabeth had been hurt anyhow. Hurt.

  Hurt.

  He’d failed her.

  Standing on an ice floe in the Arctic, Tabris tried to get calm enough to return to Rachmiel.

  One heartbeat later he realized that no, he had no need to return. He was much further than a few miles from Elizabeth now, but there was no dizziness, no numbness. The tether was broken.

  And so ended probation. They’d proven he was a failure. They’d released him from service. It was just a matter of time before a couple of Archangels dragged him to the Judgment Hall to finish his sentencing.

  But they would have come by now, surely, and he wondered if maybe he was just free. Free to go as far as he wanted from a girl sobbing on the gravel because her guardian angel had failed her. Tabris could sit on a mountain top, explore one of Saturn’s moons, bury himself in a star a thousand light years away, or even return to Heaven. He could go anywhere he wanted. Anywhere at all. Where did he want to go?

  Yeah. It figured.

  He returned to Elizabeth.

  Several angels had gathered. Elizabeth was on her feet, and the neighbor driving the pickup truck had given her a towel. The cut was at the top of her ear, Tabris realized with relief, not her forehead. The neighbor was chucking her bike in the bed of his truck.

  Tabris turned toward Rachmiel and got hit with his fury.

  “What did you think you were doing?” Rachmiel shot toward him, wings flared. “I thought you had her and then you backed off! What kind of guarding is that? Better if you’d just let her fall! Then at least I’d have gone after her, but you left her unprotected the first time she really needed you!”

  Tabris backed away, but Rachmiel followed. Shaking, he looked around as if there were an escape, but the disdain of the other angels surrounded him like ice. They could keep him from Elizabeth. They could pin him here with their will. They’d probably already called Raguel and this really would be the end. All the explanations died in his mouth, transfixed as he was by the red of Rachmiel’s eyes.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t—”

  “That’s right, you didn’t! You didn’t grab her, didn’t cushion her, didn’t make sure she fell well! You didn’t do a thing!” Flames curled through Rachmiel’s hair. “You’re great at deflecting snowballs, but where were you when she needed you?”

  Eyes clenched, Tabris fought the images, fought but couldn’t stop the overflow he knew was streaming from him: a boy on a bicycle, a boy flipping over and over, a boy lying dead in his hands with a bicycle jackknifed between his legs. A snap that broke the world, broke the child, broke Tabris’s connection to everyone around him and to God above.

  Tabris fled. He shot away from Rachmiel without thinking, and he landed face-down on Elizabeth’s bed, fingers clutching the mattress springs. He walled up the room with a Guard and then doubled it. Two kids, two guardianships, two disasters, and he was done for. Something was wrong with him, something he needed to hide. You desert Elizabeth far too easily, except that all along, he should have deserted the first one. Or he should have deserted Elizabeth earlier than he had. It was all over.

  Still. Just go still. Stay here. Don’t move.

  He felt another angel in the room. Scared. Sorry. Tabris curled around himself, but a hand touched his shoulder, and the other angel projected that he should stay still.

  Rachmiel.

  Again from the other angel: be still. Reassurance. Nearness.

  Tabris tried to pull away, but Rachmiel leaned over him, and their heads touched. Rachmiel covered Tabris with his wings, and Tabris shuddered. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  More calm from Rachmiel, followed by a sense of peace. They breathed in unison, and Tabris tried to clamp down on that grief, shove it to the bottom of his soul, but Rachmiel wouldn’t let him. Instead, it chewed on him until Tabris felt very much like fear, only it was something worse, something hot to the touch and sharp with teeth, weighing down in his grasp like tons of ballast.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Prayer: Rachmiel was praying. For himself. For Tabris. Asking God to forgive and ease his own anger, then asking God to comfort Tabris. No, no comfort, Tabris thought. How could there be? That could never be. It just wasn’t right. He couldn’t ask for what he’d never deserve.

  I’m sorry.

  Rachmiel wrapped around the grief, the thing with spines and thorns, trying to gentle it away from him. Tabris clutched it, and the weight tore at his hands, but then Rachmiel was supporting it too. The weight eased; the stabbing diminished. The grief ebbed, and Tabris let it wriggle away to swim into the darkest corners of his soul. Relief. Coolness. Softness.

  He wanted to ask Rachmiel why he’d done that for him, needed to tell him how sorry he was, but his mind was too sluggish to form the words, and then he gave up trying.

  Rachmiel sat away from Tabris, still tingling with God’s touch. Tabris lay asleep on the bed.

  Leaning against the wall, Rachmiel shuddered as the vestiges of the Guard faded off the room, its creator unconscious. God had gotten him through the Guard. He’d never have made it in otherwise, at least not until Elizabeth had entered.

  He sent a question to God.

  She’s fine, God replied. One of the angels on-site had offered to spot him while he went after Tabris. He didn’t know how much the others had picked up when that projection ruptured out, but enough to know Tabris needed him more.

  Ten minutes later, he heard Elizabeth in the hall, then in
the bathroom with her mother. Rachmiel imagined the routine: the wash cloth, the antiseptic, the Band-Aids. Then Elizabeth’s steps neared her room, and Connie brought her in holding an ice pack, told her to stay still with the ice on her ear. Bandages decorated her elbow and hands, and there was a rip in her new jeans.

  The other angel returned her care to Rachmiel, and Hadriel stared at Tabris. Rachmiel waved them away. Connie left the room, shutting the door at her back.

  Naturally unaware of Tabris, Elizabeth laid down on the bed, curled sideways with the ice pack balanced on the side of her head, and picked up a book.

  The wind breathed over the outside of the house, and Rachmiel watched the clouds. Elizabeth was reading a sad story, one of those small gifts you were never quite sure God had given you. If she picked up Rachmiel’s emotions, she’d attribute them to the book. As images came to him from her reading, they mingled with those horrifying projections from Tabris: Sebastian, the bicycle, the angel curled over the boy as they flipped over, and the snap of a life extinguished.

  Rachmiel reached with his heart for God. I should have trusted his judgment. When he’d gone off in pursuit, he’d expected to find Tabris at the pond, but instead he’d run here. Run for home.

  Five minutes later, with Rachmiel still numb, Raguel appeared in the room. Rachmiel regarded him, dull. Raguel crouched alongside the bed and touched Tabris’s hair. “What exactly happened?”

  Elizabeth stopped reading and stared out the window.

  Rachmiel couldn’t meet his eyes. “You didn’t tell me Sebastian died on his bicycle.”

  “I thought Tabris would tell you everything you needed to know.”

  “He didn’t. I told him to watch Elizabeth biking, and she fell.” He looked up. “She’s hurt, but not because he hurt her. He didn’t touch her at all. That’s why she got hurt. I was angry at him.” Rachmiel swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what else to say.”

  The clouds drifted past, and Elizabeth watched them. Rachmiel watched too, letting them drift over the memory of a fallen bicycle. Two fallen bicycles.

  Raguel sighed. “I’m sorry this happened. Call me as soon as he’s awake. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Actually—” Rachmiel shook his head, but he didn’t look away from the clouds. “Let me do it. I was the one he talked to. I’m part of the reason this happened. If I can’t handle it, I’ll call, but let me try.”

  Raguel assented, and then he vanished.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. Rachmiel touched the scraped elbow, noting as he did how Elizabeth and Tabris had cuddled against one another, as though consoling each other for a common loss.

  Well, in a way, that happened. Rachmiel traced a hand over the girl’s arm. Tabris lost his charge, and she lost—

  Rachmiel’s heart pounded.

  —her husband?

  He shot off the bed to the far wall, staring at the pair. Their souls fit with one another perfectly—perfectly, fitting to one another for their differences the same way he and she were bound through their similarities. She and Sebastian would have fit to one another, and now—oh, and now it made sense why he felt so linked to Sebastian: because he should have been. They were all supposed to be together, and now they were, except one of them was missing.

  He huddled up, tears in his eyes for Elizabeth, Elizabeth who deserved every good thing the world could have given her, first among those someone to love with all her heart. And instead this? Because of Tabris—widowhood? Permanently single in a world of families?

  She and Sebastian would have fit together the same way he and Tabris did. They’d have met, maybe in college, and Tabris would have sized her up, hand on his sword, but over time the two angels would have talked on the rooftops, planning for each other, working things out, helping the kids work things out, and now—none of that. Nothing at all.

  And in all this, Tabris kept up the charade that he wanted to do right by her, when in reality—

  Tabris doesn’t know, said God.

  Rachmiel trembled. Didn’t know? So why does he think he’s here? And he felt inside that Tabris thought he was with this family because the guardians were such a strong unit.

  Terrific. Rachmiel huffed. So in twenty years when he wonders why no one wants to marry her, do I tell him then?

  God’s touch came again, and Rachmiel relaxed as God soothed him: His plan wasn’t a projection into the future, a long list of occurrences that might or might not take place, with a single goal at the end. Rather, God had designed a dynamic scheme. They weren’t puppets acting out a script.

  Well, that made things marginally better. Years from now, Elizabeth would hold another man in her arms, and she would tell him they belonged together, that God had planned them for each other. Only it wouldn’t be true. The man God intended for her was dead.

  What about their children? Rachmiel asked. If Elizabeth and Sebastian should have had children, would they still be able to be born? Could the father be so easily substituted? Would she suffer decades of infertility because of Tabris?

  Again came God’s reassurance: Elizabeth could still have children. She could still be married well. Tabris had crossed the Divine plan, but he could never destroy it.

  Rachmiel touched Elizabeth again, looking at her and an angel both healing from their injuries. He kissed her forehead. So young and already robbed of a husband.

  So many people had been hurt. Sebastian himself. Elizabeth and her unconceived children. The boy’s parents. His friends.

  Anger coiled like a wire around his heart, and he fired his disgust at Tabris, knowing that while asleep Tabris wouldn’t feel it. But awake, Elizabeth moved.

  “He widowed you, and he injured you too,” Rachmiel whispered. “He doesn’t deserve—”

  He caught himself.

  God blossomed like a flower in Rachmiel’s heart. I love him.

  Rachmiel curled over Elizabeth, but he raised his wings so he didn’t touch Tabris. I’m sorry. And then, What he did was awful.

  This God didn’t dispute. Rachmiel opened his churning heart. You’d better take this anger away from me, or I’m going to hurt him more.

  Rachmiel opened his senses to take in the image of God within himself. He lost hold of time, suspended in a moment or in an hour—it made no difference because he was here, and He was here, and they stayed together. Rachmiel held out his anger to God, and God acknowledged it before Rachmiel let it go. He wasn’t the one injured. He would forgive before the anger distorted him.

  As the fury blew away on the wind, Rachmiel felt God offer him thanks, and a gift. Rachmiel accepted, and God allowed him a glimpse of Tabris’s heart.

  Rachmiel’s spirit brightened, fascinated by the spirals and twists of a crepuscular conscience, the sense of duty combined with the keenness of failure, and something else. A longing he’d never expected.

  As God closed away that glance, Rachmiel scrambled for more, but the vision retreated. That’s for Tabris to give you.

  Rachmiel breathed his thanks, then rested back into his sense of God in all. He imagined himself and God in the same position, knocking at the outer gate of Tabris’s heart while the inhabitant huddled inside at the back of his closet. But God could see through the walls; Rachmiel couldn’t—only once when the figure had thrown open the gates, shown himself mortally wounded, and then retreated.

  God eased Rachmiel out of the prayer, and Rachmiel found himself again crouching beside Elizabeth on the bed. He held up his wings as if Tabris were something disgusting he didn’t want to brush against.

  I’m going to need help, Rachmiel thought to God.

  I made you, God replied. I’ll be with you.

  Rachmiel traced a hand across Elizabeth’s forehead, lingering over the cut on her ear, and he breathed a blessing over her. Then, again to God, Thank you for her.

  From God to him: Thank you for you.”

  Fifteen

  The ice pack became a sloshy mess at about the same time Elizabeth got bored with
reading, but Rachmiel hesitated at the doorway when she went into the hall. Kyle started ribbing her about ditching her bike, and while she told him to shut up, Miriael approached Rachmiel.

  “I don’t want to leave him.” Rachmiel frowned. “Maybe I should call another angel to watch her.”

  “Or maybe you should ask me for advice.” Grinning, Miriael formed a miniature Guard between two fingers. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Useless?”

  “This is freedom. Ask me how.”

  Rachmiel folded his arms.

  “Fine.” Miriael laughed. “A Guard formed like this in midair won’t hold anything out, but you’d feel if it got jostled. Make a dozen and position them over Tabris so they’re close to touching but not quite. When he awakens, he’ll brush against them, and you’ll feel the Guards bump one another.”

  Rachmiel laughed. “That’s brilliant!”

  Miriael grinned. “Special Ops trick. A smart demon can detect those and avoid them, but you’re not trying to outwit a demon.”

  Rachmiel shook his head. “It’s a Godsend that you’re here!”

  Miriael nodded. “Tell me about it—I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

  Rachmiel formed a dozen grape-sized bubbles and positioned them over Tabris, Miriael showing him just how far apart to leave them so they’d collide if Tabris moved. That done, Rachmiel returned to Elizabeth.

  In the living room, she sat in the slanting rays of 3p.m. sunlight, looking through her sheet music. Heart trilling, Rachmiel sat at her side, noting her serious expression as she paged through her book for the piece she was supposed to be working on now. She set the book on the Steinway upright—used by both her father and grandmother—then warmed up for an entire thirty seconds before beginning the piece.

  Rachmiel kept her cupped in his wings while she played. Her skinned elbows were stiff, and he frowned, trying to ease them. Poor kid. Such a needless accident.

  She worked through the exercises until she got bored, changed pieces, then got bored again. Rachmiel closed his eyes and encouraged her to keep playing. She’d been taking piano for three years. Just a little longer and she’d be good enough that it was fun again.