I woke up to the sensation of fingertips trailing down my spine. When I felt it, the light flooding in through the windows of the motel room suddenly felt a lot brighter, and my eyes squinted as they opened. There was skin beneath me. Odd.
Oh wait.
Grey and I fucked last night.
Never-mind, not odd.
I propped my chin on his chest and looked up at him. His hair was disheveled, as per usual, his eyes watching the windows as his fingertips trailed up and down my spine. He turned to look down at me, his cerulean eyes glimmering in the early morning light that filtered through the curtains.
"Good morning," he hummed lowly, the corners of his lips curling upwards in a devious smirk. His fingertips brushed some of my hair that laid on my back to the side.
"Good morning," I replied softly. "I didn't realize I was this clingy when I slept- sorry," I chuckled slightly, looking back over my shoulder at our intertwined bodies.
"Don't apologize. I could get used to this," Grey murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Hmm. So beautiful."
I shook my head and tilted my head, pressing my lips against his chest, before rolling over and getting out of bed.
"Where are you going?" Grey grumbled in annoyance.
"Not me. We. We are going to Colorado. And we gotta get a move on before Hell catches up to us," I replied, pulling on the bodysuit we'd been provided.
"So impatient. I'd so much rather just stay here. With you."
"Maybe someday when this all blows over we can," I shrugged, walking over to the bathroom to brush my teeth and pull my hair back into a braid.
"Once Heaven gets a hold of your soul, you won't be able to be with me, love," Grey sighed as he walked into the bathroom as well, running his hands a few times through his hair.
"And we will convince them otherwise. I'm not going to live without you, Grey. I thought I'd made that perfectly clear by giving up not only my life, but my soul, to keep you alive," I rolled my eyes.
"I don't know that they'll give us much of a choice," he murmured back, brushing his teeth next to me.
"Then they won't get my soul. Simple," I shrugged, walking out of the bathroom. Grey started to say something, but was interrupted by a knock on our door. "I'm gonna grab the door, can you put on some clothes?"
"Why? Don't wanna share?" Grey poked his head out of the bathroom, eyes narrowed and lips pulled into a condescending smirk.
"Just put on your damn clothes, dumbass," I retorted playfully, walking over to the door and swinging it open.
"Hey, you guys ready?" Siena asked, her shoulder bumping into mine as she walked into our room with Allison in tow.
"Good morning to you too. Grey's just getting dressed and then we can head. Do you know the flight pattern for today?" I asked.
"Yeah, but flying over the Rockies will be tricky. They're really high so they tend to create their own weather patterns- lots of random updrafts and downdrafts and rapid storm formation. We're going to have to stay in a tight knit diamond shape today, otherwise things could turn dangerous. No excursions today, I'm afraid," Siena frowned slightly.
"It's okay. Another time, I guess. I've hiked through them, I guess it's now time to see what they look like from above," I shrugged.
"Are your wings sore?" Allison asked, tilting her head slightly to the side.
"I don't know, I haven't pulled them out since yesterday. Are yours?" I asked, furrowing my brows slightly. She pulled her lips into a thin line and nodded.
"Apparently you're supposed to work up to long distance flying. These next few days are gonna be brutal," she mumbled. Grey walked out of the bathroom, running his fingers through his hair again, his eyes flicking between all of us before landing on me.
"Okay. Same formation as yesterday, Siena you lead. No flying off on your own today, it's too risky," Grey added, glancing to me. I huffed and folded my arms, but nodded in resolution. "Once we get to Colorado, we will be staying in another motel as far east as we can get."
"Why can't we all just stay at my house? I'm sure my parents wouldn't mind, we have extra bedrooms," I offered.
"If we stayed at your house, any Demons on our trail would come across your parents house and likely slaughter them," Grey explained, clenching his jaw slightly. My mouth formed a small 'o' shape in realization and I nodded.
"Okay, sounds good. Let's get going. This is already later than we should've left," Siena narrowed her eyes at Grey and I.
Oh.
Looks like she knew why we had to sleep in a bit.
Yikes. That's slightly awkward.
Grey rolled his eyes and gripped Siena's arm, dragging her out of the motel room with Allison and I following. Siena let out a curt little laugh in response and shook off his grip. Once outside, we all extended out our wings. Allison was right- mine were a little sore. Not necessarily like muscular sore, but like when you walk for too long and your feet start to hurt. I dunno. It was kind of odd.
I took one last look around the sleazy motel before beating my wings down and shooting upwards into the sky. Once my momentum slowed, I extended my wings out further from my body to slow down, and gently beat them to hover in place while the others got into the air. Once we were all up, Siena nosedived slightly before banking left and soaring down across the buildings by the pier. She then beat her wings forcefully, propelling her up into the clouds above the skyscrapers. Don't really know how she did that so fast and made it look so effortless, but whatever, it's not like I was jealous or anything (I was totally jealous).
I wanted to be as strong a flier as she was. I wanted to be as strong as she was in general. I'm sure a lot of her skills could be attributed to age and experience, but that didn't change the fact that I was impatient and wanted to be a badass now.
We got into our diamond formation once we reached altitude and began to soar easily across the city. It quickly passed us by, turning into desert hills, and then into reddish mountains with the occasional forest, and then back into desert. Even as high as we were, you could tell how much higher the temperature was here as compared to the beach. If I weren't a dead supernatural being, I'd probably be sweating up a storm right now. I remembered that Lucifer, or Riel as I'd known him then, had said something about Angels being able to regulate temperature really well, some total bullshit about 'inner light' or whatever. Obviously he's a liar, but I wondered if he was telling the truth about the whole temperature thing, because I felt like regardless of how hot or cold it got- I was fine.
As we flew over the desert, I began to get super bored. Deserts are kinda boring. There's nothing to look at. Everything is orange. The entire time we were flying over Nevada I remember trying to figure out how to occupy my mind because everywhere I looked seemed the exact same. Look to the left- orange. Right- also orange. Straight ahead- still orange. And I couldn't exactly just have a casual conversation with any of my Angelic companions- seeing as we flew about 100 feet apart at all times. I didn't really feel like shouting over the wind to ask their opinions on a new Netflix movie.
Once we hit Utah, it became slightly more interesting. However, all of the mountains in Utah were north of where we were flying, so while I could look at those, I was looking at them from hundreds of miles away.
Hitting Colorado made me happy, though. The familiar rocky peaks jutted upwards like the Earth had decided it wanted to be an Angel too and touch the sky. As we flew over them, I recited the names of the ones I knew in my head, recalling either climbing them or hearing about the route to take in order to climb them. Siena was right about the updrafts, though. Several times, I was caught in one and struggled to remain at the same level as the other Angels. Once, I even hit a downdraft so strong, it sent me plummeting a few hundred feet towards the top of Longs Peak. Could've ended badly. Glad it didn't.
Colorado past the mountains looked like any other state- flat and comprised of either cities or suburbia. So, I occupied myself by looking back over my shoulder at the mountains. However, we didn't make it as far east as Grey would've liked. Allison had fallen back a bit, probably due to her wings, breaking up the diamond formation, just as we flew over Fort Collins, a college town north of Denver. Siena was then forced to land because of the broken formation, and we found another quaint motel to stay in for the night. Siena did the Angelic suggestion this time. Probably wise, given what happened last time.
By the time I hit my bed, I was exhausted, and I knew my wings would be totally sore tomorrow. However, we were one step closer to Bryn Athyn, and Paris. I just hoped Grey was wrong about us. I hoped Heaven would let me continue loving him. Because if they didn't- well then it wouldn't be Heaven at all.
HELLO. Sorry, this is kind of more of a filler chapter, I'll publish some more this week. I had a busy week this last week, so I wasn't able to. It's the end of the semester, so I got a ton of midterms like all the time and I'm just absolutely dead by the time I'm done with school. But, this next week is easier for me, so I'll try to publish a more interesting chapter or two by the end of the week.
Ok. I'm tired. I'm going to bed. I love you all.
-TJ