Snagged the pic above from Google ^^ you know, its really darn hard finding fallen angel pictures that aren't super creepy or obvi fake.
Hey guys! No spoilers for others please! I'll delete all the ones I can find, but that can take a while and be rather tedious. Please just avoid them.
This chapter is extra long than usual, but I felt like splitting it in half would have been mean XD
Sorry for any grammar and editing mistakes!
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Enjoy!
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Chapter 28
I was going to throw up.
I shot away from the stone slab like it was electric wire, my flashlight flinging out of my hand as I did. The light flickered as it crashed against the wall and sputtered out. The soft warm glow of the torches was the only thing lighting the cavern now. I pressed my back against the far wall, my hands gripping at my chest as my breathing turned into hyperventilating.
No.
No, no, no, no! This wasn't happening! It wasn't real!
There—There's no way. This wasn't real.
There was no way.
It was just a dream, a nightmare! I would wake up any minute, in his bed, in his arms.
This wasn't real.
My back slid down the rocky surface of the cave as I pulled viciously at my hair, my stomach twisting in nausea. I officially lost it. I was crazy, insane. The town succeeded in screwing holes the size of walnuts into my brain. And now everything was shit.
"Larkin."
I was still hyperventilating when the sound of his voice reached my ears. Adriel stood at the entrance of the cavern, my Adriel. The human one I left back at the manor to pack up our cars so we could get the fuck out of that town. Not the one that was half dead and sleeping on that slab. Those dark blue eyes flickered between the demon's body and mine before he took an unsteady step forward. Air wouldn't enter my lungs, and I couldn't speak as I watched him.
"I know..." He paused and wrung his hands together nervously as that gaze scanned my face. "I know how you must be feeling."
I rolled over and threw up everything in my stomach.
He was there in an instant, one hand pulling my hair out of my face while the other was rubbing soothingly down my back. I wanted to shove him away, but I was dry heaving too hard to do any of that.
"It's okay, just let it out—"
"Get off me!" I was able to stop heaving enough to gasp out. I shoved him away and crawled like a literal toddler to the far corner of the cave, making sure to steer clear of him and those bones. Not the best idea, backing myself into a corner, but I wasn't exactly thinking very clearly right then.
"Lark, I can explain—"
"No! Stop! I don't want to hear it!" I curled my knees into my chest in the tightest ball my body would form and shoved the palms of my hands into my ears. "This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real." I repeated out loud over and over again, until it would become true.
I was pressing my hands so hard into my ears it felt like I was trying to squeeze my brain out through my nose, but I didn't care. I could feel Adriel walking in front of me, but I refused to look. Because this wasn't real. None of it was.
"It's just a dream. It's just a dream. It's just a dream."
He didn't touch me, but I knew he was close. I could practically feel him sliding down the slab's raised legs until he was sitting directly across from my ball-like form. Waiting for me to stop chanting and look at him. Well, he would be waiting for a fucking while because I was doing this until I woke up.
A soft touch on my shin made me jerk tighter into myself and start chanting louder. I didn't realize I had let go of my ears to wrap my arms tightly around my knees until he spoke again. "Larkin..." There was no denying the concern in his voice, or the plead to get me to look at him, but it just made the insanity that much worse. I wasn't sure if I was hyperventilating anymore, but I was for sure sobbing and air just wouldn't enter my lungs. "Angel, you need to calm down—"
"Don't fucking call me that! Do you know how fucked that is!" I tore my gaze away from my knees to snap at him, though I wish I hadn't. The look on his beyond handsome face was so heartbreaking it only made the madness worse. He was leaning back against the base of the slab, his long legs sprawled out before us. A blatant gesture that I couldn't run, even if I tried.
Even now, when I was officially losing my shit, and the world was falling apart, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful he looked. Deadly beautiful.
"You're him, Adriel! T-That's not even your fucking name! Oh my God." I had to let go of my knees to press my hands against my stomach.
"That is my name—"
"I'm going to be fucking sick again." He started to spring forward, like he was ready to get my hair out of the way again if he had to, but I just held my hand up and pushed myself further away.
"You lied to me. It's all a lie. Everything is a lie." I tried to suck in some much-needed air, but the damn thing was dead set on evading me.
"No, not everything." He tried to reach for me again, but one sharp look had him pulling reluctantly away. "I never lied about loving you."
"Don't. Oh my god, don't." There were tears on my cheeks now, hot wet tears falling to match the sobs they created. "You used me!"
"I have never used you, nor will I ever."
I wrapped my fingers into the top of my hair and shook my head so viciously I could almost feel my brain rattle. "None of this is real." I choked out, though my voice sounded more like a strangled whisper than the strong steady tone I was going for.
"You don't know how badly I wish that was true." His tone didn't waiver from that soft, concerned, Adriel-like tone that he used to calm me down so many times before. Now it was just a vicious knife stab to the chest.
"You're lying." I shook my head again and closed my eyes. "What the fuck is happening?"
I wanted to believe that complete remorse in his voice, and the worried, heartbroken look in his eyes, but I couldn't. He was a lie. One big, fat, massive fucking lie. It all was. All his sweet words and gentle touches. All those nights he pulled me from nightmares, that I was now pretty sure he created, and all those lazy weekends spent together. It was all a lie.
"No, I'm not. I didn't want you to find this place. I want to leave just as badly as you do."
"Yeah right." I scoffed which was pretty hard to do around the hiccupping that had replaced the sobs. "You're him. The only thing you ever wanted was to get me here and wake you up. That's all this ever was." Every quiet promise, every night we spent together, all that fucking touching. It was all for this. To get me here. The one person I loved more than anything in this world wasn't real.
"Larkin, I was literally packing up the SUV so we can leave when I found out you were here. I was going to leave all of this behind for you. It was always more than getting you here. Always." I could feel those eyes staring holes into the top of my head, but I refused to glance his way.
I didn't know what to say to that. He had been packing and telling me to make sure I was back by noon when I left. Or was it all just a trick to manipulate me into staying? I didn't know what to think anymore. The world was no longer round—It was square, and Adriel was a lie. My entire life just got tossed down the drain and shredded by the garbage disposal.
"You tricked me." The tears had stopped falling, but now my throat felt like I swallowed one of those torches hanging on the wall.
I leaned my head back heavily against the damp rock and glared holes of my own into those sad blue eyes. Though it was a lot harder than I was making it seem. All I really wanted to do was crawl in those inviting arms, close my eyes and wait for this awful nightmare to be over.
Adriel/not-Adriel shook his head and flicked away a pebble that had been resting beside his leg. "No, I would never trick you, especially not into doing any of this. It had to be your choice, and I thought..." He paused and glanced away, his breath leaving on a heavy sigh before he continued. "I thought the only way we could be together was with my real body. That's why I had to get you here."
"I don't want to hear it." My heart felt like it had been torn to shreds, ripped out and pulled apart. I don't know what the hell he was going for but that sure as fuck did not make me feel any better.
"I need you to understand. Please let me explain." I could tell he wanted to reach out for me again but thought better of it. I stayed quiet as those dark eyes searched my face.
"I thought it was the only option, Larkin. It's the only reason why I would ever bring you back here. By the time I found out there was another way, that I could be with you like this." He gestured down to his body and pulled at his clothes. "Like regular humans, it was too late." I sucked in a sharp breath at the resilience shining in his gaze. "I never wanted to hurt you, I only wanted to be with you."
Tears swelled in my eyes again, but I shook my head and tried to force them away. This was too much. I didn't believe it. I couldn't. There was no way the one person I had in this world was an entire lie.
"I'm not a lie, Lark."
"Oh, great!" I let out such a harsh laugh that it hurt my throat as it passed my lips and sounded more like a bark. "You really can read my fucking mind."
The sad expression that had been plastered on his face the entire time fell slightly away to a sheepish smile. "Not really, only sometimes... When you're screaming at me."
"I'm thinking, not screaming, and that is such a massive invasion of privacy I could throttle you." Well, that and about five hundred billion other reasons.
"It's not like I purposely tried to." He defended weakly, though the guilty expression crossing his face proved he wasn't that great at lying. "Sometimes you get so loud it just get through. I'm sorry."
"That's honestly the least of my problems right now. You're a demon." I tried not to 'hiccup' out loud, since that would only keep proving how upset I was. "Your kind tricks humans all the time. I know the stories. How can I every believe a word you say?"
"I'm not a demon, and you have a soul. Even if I wanted to trick you, which I don't, I can't. Your will is your own. The choice is always yours."
"Your choice, Lark. Always your choice."
Oh God, how long had he been telling me that very same thing?
"Then why didn't you tell me from the beginning?"
He scoffed which was quickly followed by a dark, unamused chuckle. "Right, because telling you I'm actually an angel you put to sleep over five hundred years ago, and am still infatuated with you, would have gone over so well."
"You could have said something when I started freaking out about red eyes and all that other shit!" I felt rage start to boil inside my chest and I grabbed onto it like a lifeline as it pushed away that all-consuming despair. At least if I was angry, I wasn't crying. "How many times did I tell you about what I was seeing? Or dreaming? And you just pushed it away like I was making it up!"
"I told you, I thought the only way we could be together was in my real body. I wasn't planning on you falling in love with this me." He pulled at his flannel, his eyes blazing desperately as my breathing rose. "I was only going to help you—to keep you safe while Luke was supposed to do his fucking job. Be your friend, introduce you to everything slowly, and see what your decision would be. How fucking hard is that?"
Something dark flashed across his gaze, something I had only seen a few times before. Like the day he went down to my old softball coach's office or threatened to hunt down anyone that had ever hurt me. But he knew Luke... of course he did! They were probably best buds with bets over who could fuck with my mind the fastest!
"We weren't supposed to get close." Adriel/not-Adriel continued like he couldn't tell how badly I wanted to beat his face in and pound against his stupid chest. "We were never supposed to... I hadn't planned on us sleeping together. I didn't know that we could."
"I-I can't. I'm sorry, I can't do this." His words from that first night we spent together raced through my mind. Maybe he thought he really couldn't.
Fuck-face let out a disgruntled sigh. "That night, when you kissed me, I felt it. I can't feel things well like this, my mind goes in and out and sometimes it's hard to control. But I felt you, and I thought everything was fucked." His expression grew close to longing, and those blue eyes looked so remorseful that if my heart was still working it would have broken.
I felt my anger slowly die away, which was so not good. I shouldn't have listened to any of this. How could I ever believe a word he said?
"Then there you were, all sad and packing like you were going to try and leave me again, and I just—I couldn't stay away from you." He shook his head, those dark eyes glancing off into the other corner of the damp cave as if he couldn't meet mine. "It changed everything. I didn't need my body anymore, and by the time I realized how the town was affecting you, it was too far in to tell you the truth. I thought I was doing the right thing."
"The right thing..." I spoke those words on a low sarcastic laugh that hurt my chest, and let my knees fall to the floor. I leaned against them heavily. "Half the time we were here I spent losing my mind thinking that I had gone insane, while the other half I was worried sick that something might happen to you and Raffie because of who I was. And there you were getting off on the fact—oh my god, Raffie!" The thought hit me like a sucker punch to the stomach, and I suddenly went dizzy.
"Oh God, did you steal her from her real family or something? What about her parents? Did you kill them—"
"Larkin." The way he said my name made my voice die on my tongue, or maybe it was the sudden look of guilt swarming in his gaze. "She isn't real."
"What?"
Adriel/not-fucking-Adriel let out a long sigh and scrubbed a heavy hand down his stupid handsome face. "The power they used to trap me isn't the best, it has holes. I can get through if I try hard enough. It's how I'm able to be like this." He gestured down to himself once again. "It's how I created Shelby, Dave and Rafael."
She wasn't... real?
That little nine-year-old who gave me more hell than anyone I had ever met, which only made me love her that much more, wasn't real? Her big, blue, doe eyes that looked so much like Adriel's flashed in my mind, and I felt what little heartstrings I had left snap. I fell back against my heels, pressure building behind my eyes once again.
Was anything real?
"I didn't want you to find out—"
"Did you cause the accident?" My voice came out as whisper, because there was no physical way I could make it any louder.
"What?"
"The accident that killed them, Adriel—or Avidus—or whatever the fuck your name is. Did you cause it?"
"No! I would never do something like that to you! It wasn't supposed to happen—"
"No, you just brought me to the town that wanted to kill or use me." I tried to scoff, but all my energy had been drained away. "I think they're skipping you for boyfriend of the year. Sorry."
What little relief came at the knowledge that he didn't cause the crash that killed his 'parents', was short lived. I was still nauseous, my head was spinning, and my heart felt like he ripped it out of my chest, stuck it in a paper shredder and tried to give it back. "You were my everything." I felt like I was falling. Falling through a dark, cold, endless abyss with no escape.
"Don't say it like that." His voice was suddenly a beg as he drew his knees underneath him so he was sitting like I was. "Like I'm not anymore." I didn't jerk away as he placed his hands on my upper arms, but my whole body felt like Jell-O. I wasn't sure I could move if I tried.
"Larkin, I love you. You are the only thing that matters to me." Those hands shook me once as I lifted my eyes to his. "I don't care about this place, I don't care about the Immortals, I don't even care about my fucking body, okay? I only need you."
"You put those dreams in my head." It felt like we were having two different conversations, one where my mind was trying to process every single thing that has happened since he came into my life, and another where he was trying to convince me he wasn't a sack of lying demon shit.
He let out a heavy breath and loosened his grip on my arms, though he didn't let go. "Only the good ones, never the nightmares. I tried to be there to wake you from every single one those."
That was true at least. He was there nearly every time I woke screaming and crying, or just in a state of pure panic. He always chased those dreams away. "The other ones..." I left the sentence hanging, just daring him to finish it for me.
"I told you I didn't think we could be like this. The other ones were me wanting you more than you could possibly imagine. When I found out we could be together without my body, I didn't need to send them to you anymore. I didn't need my body anymore."
That was true too, I guess. I hadn't had one of those erotic dreams since the first night we slept together, but I had just chalked it up to being sexually satisfied and not needing to think of some sexy dark stranger. Just another fucking thing I was so completely wrong about.
"So, what?" I asked sarcastically and tried not to sway limply back against the wall, though I don't think his hands would have let me get very far. "You figured out you can still get hard and you no longer want the demon body?"
"I'm not a demon."
"So, everyone keeps telling me, but you sure as hell aren't a fucking angel."
"Larkin, I..." He sighed, shook his head and glanced away. "I want my body. I want a lot of things, but I only need you."
"Because you love me."
"I do love you." He laughed then, and the sound was so strange in our current situation it made my shoulders tense. "Of course I love you. How the hell do you think those fucks were able to get me down here in the first place?"
I reached under his arms to rub my palms against my heavy eyelids as I let out a long, tired sigh. "Because you're the greedy guy that got pissed at the white-wingies and fell for always wanting what you can't have. You wanted to fuck me, but couldn't, so you chased my ass here, and boom sleeping angel." My interpretation of Shorzin's lesson didn't seem so bogus now.
"You always have such a way with words." This time his chuckle was light and eased some of the tension strumming between us. "And that's not exactly what happened."
I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation, not caring that he was still holding onto me, and made a 'hrmph' noise. "Well then please do tell me what really happened. Because that's so fucking important five hundred years later!"
"It is important. You weren't just a prison a bunch of old human fucks prayed for. You were created for me." The dark look shining in his eyes pulled at my heart. "They had planned on tricking me into a tomb, miles beneath the surface, but they knew they needed more than their silly little spells for it to work. They needed a soul." He finally let go of my arms to sit on the dirt floor directly in front of me. Now unsupported, I found my limp body leaning heavily back against the damp cavern wall.
"They used their stupid little chants and spells to call up my big bad brother, sitting all high and mighty on his throne of bull shit in Heaven, and begged for help." Adriel, because I refused to call him anything else, mocked sardonically, and rolled those blue eyes. "But Michael isn't an idiot, and he knew no man-made prison could hold an angel, fallen or not. So, he gave them the one thing that could trap me forever—you."
His gaze flickered to mine as the words slipped past his lips, but I couldn't find it in myself to look at him. "The mortals thought my lust would get the better of me, and I would chase you here as you've been told. Michael knew better, he always had a knack for being one step ahead of me. It's fucking annoying."
Yeah, I knew how that felt.
The tone that filled his voice was one of such annoyance and disdain that he could only be talking about an older sibling. And that broke my heart, because it wasn't Raffie speaking about him.
She didn't exist.
"He knew the only way to really get my attention was for a soul to call to every part of my own—the dark and all. Then you were there, watching me curiously across the stone courtyard of the town, and everything changed." Adriel's voice took on a faraway note, and his eyes grew distant like he was thinking of that time all those centuries ago. Where he fell for a girl that no longer exists.
"That was Michael's prison for me, the true reason he decided to help. I no longer cared about power, or that fucked up line I kept crossing. He knew I would stop it all and go away willingly, if you asked me to."
"So, you didn't chase the girl down here?"
His head tilted curiously to the side at my question, like he wasn't sure why I phrased it that way. "I would have chased you anywhere. I still would, but no, I didn't. I knew what they were planning, you didn't bother trying to hide it from me for long. I went because I wanted to."
My brow furrowed at that and I rubbed my hand across my forehead like that would dull the ache there. "Why?"
"You asked me to." I lowered my hand and blinked. He was staring at me with such a vulnerable, sad, loneliness that it only made everything inside me hurt more. "Like I said, Larkin. It's your choice. It always has been, and always will be."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him more than anything, but how could I ever trust him again? Everything he said from day one was a lie, from the moment the Markos took me in, to fifteen minutes ago. That was two years of deception and betrayal. I revolved my entire world around them. Every plan I had for the future I changed for the Markos—for him.
Not that I had a lot of plans, but still.
"So, if I wanted to leave right now, get in my car and drive as far from this town as I could and never look back, you would let me?"
"If that was what you wanted." But I could see the hesitation flashing behind his eyes, like he was desperately hoping I didn't pick that option. "Is that what you want?"
I sighed and dropped my gaze to my hands that were resting limply in my lap. "I don't know. This morning the only thing I wanted was for us to leave this place. I wanted you and Raf. Now I don't have either."
"Yes, you do." He reached forward again, and I didn't pull away as his hands wrapped securely around my wrists. "Raf is still there, at the house waiting for us. We can still leave, still pile into the SUV and get as far away from here as you want. None of that has changed."
"You're name's not even Adriel."
Another sigh passed his lips and I watched with tired eyes as he lifted my hands to press a soft kiss against my palms. "It is. Michael loves stripping our true names when we fall and give us new ones that represent the sin we committed. Adriel is my real name, Avidus is the shit one he deemed me worthy of. I couldn't stand the thought of you calling me something besides Adriel, especially not anything related to that fucking insult."
I think this was the most I ever heard him swear in one conversation, and I was somewhat relieved by that. If he had been all proper and arrogant, like he usually was, I would probably be throwing up again.
I sucked in a shaky breath and tried to force down the complete mind-fuck my poor brain was going through. "So, what do we do now?" I asked heavily and pulled my hands from his so I could scrub them down my face.
"What we were going to do this morning." Adriel stood slowly to his feet, his eyes never leaving me as he did, like he was afraid I would freak out again at any moment. I didn't flinch away as he reached down, hooked his hands under my arms, and pulled me easily to my feet. "We leave. We get in the SUV and we can drive as far away from Deshua as you want."
I studied his pleading gaze carefully, almost expecting to see a flicker of that black that had haunted my dreams, or for a dark demonic air to stream off him now that I knew. But there was nothing. Just my normal, everyday Adriel—pleading with me to believe in him. I wasn't sure how I felt about that anymore.
Everything was fucked.
"You really don't want the demon body?" My voice came out far weaker than I wanted it to, but he didn't appear to notice, or care.
"You are the only thing I need." He said with a soft smile, even though his eyes flickered briefly to the stone slab and the body chained to it before looking back again. "I'll live the rest of eternity like this if that's what you want." He shrugged, like it was no big deal that he was giving up his own body.
"I don't... I don't know."
I felt completely and totally drained. I couldn't even cry anymore. Every emotion from hell to high water just raged through my entire being in a twenty-minute time span. This was all too much, it had been too much for so long. Everything was a lie, he was a lie. How could I just overlook that and move on?
"You don't have to decide anything right now. There's no deadline, it's not like this place will disappear anytime soon. I made sure of that." Adriel's smile was small, and reassuring, but it did nothing to ease the nausea still swirling around my stomach. Hearing Dri, my Dri, talk so causally about building the town bothered me.
"What do you want, Larkin?"
There was that question again. I closed my eyes and sucked in a shaky breath, too afraid if I stepped out of his grip that I would fall to the floor in a heap. "I want—to forget everything. I don't want this to be real. I want it to be a dream." My voice sounded breathless as it passed my lips, but that didn't change the words.
I wished this never happened. I wished the day would start all over again, and I would help him pack up the car, we would grab Raf, and be halfway out of the state by now. I wish I never found out about any of this. Better yet, I didn't want any of it to be real. Just an insane, very bad, nightmare.
I didn't pull away as he brought me into his chest and wrapped those oh-so-familiar arms tightly around my torso. He squeezed me to him and sighed heavily in my ear. "I can't give you that, no matter how badly I want to. Please believe that I would give anything to take this away."
I had a hard time doubting the sincerity in his tone. I had gotten so well at telling the difference in his voice and feelings that I thought I knew exactly when he was lying and when he wasn't. Turns out that was just a sick joke too.
"Let's just go, okay? We'll leave Deshua, and never look back." His hands curled into my hair to press me as close to his chest as was physically possible. "I only care about you." I felt that pressure start to build behind my eyes again, like the tears didn't get the notice about how emotionally exhausted I was. But despite all the turmoil raging through my head and chest I nodded against him. Adriel visibly relaxed against me.
I had no idea how the hell I would process all of this in the next few days, hell, I doubt I would be sane in the next few hours, but I knew staying here wasn't going to fix anything. I didn't think staying with him was the best decision anymore either, but it wasn't like I had many options.
I knew he wouldn't hurt me, but I had no idea if I could trust him. Never in my life did I think I would be saying that about Adriel, the only person who had ever made my life bearable. And he was one big fat lie. But if this was just one giant mind trick to get me to wake him, why was he so set on leaving? Actually, he was set on doing whatever I wanted.
I needed to think.
"I can't—I can't handle this, Adriel." I whispered as he eased me away from his chest.
Those dark eyes washed slowly over my face, and his hands left my hair to press against my shoulders and rub down my arms. "Yes, you can. You're the strongest person I know. You can handle anything."
I scoffed and actually rolled my eyes. Surprisingly the action made me feel better. "You need a dictionary if you think this is 'handling' it."
The corner of his mouth twitched up in that amused smirk I both loved and hated. It was such an Adriel reaction that I felt another punch sent straight to my stomach. He promised not everything was a lie. He loved me. Could I really believe that?
I watched silently as he grabbed onto my hands and raised them until his lips could press firmly against the back of both. "I love you. I know you don't believe me anymore, but I swear I will do everything in my power to prove it to you. Let's just get out of here first, okay?"
I nodded before I could think of a better response.
I let him hold tightly onto one of my hands as he turned to pull us away from the tomb, and the body waiting patiently to be awakened. He didn't glance back as we exited the dark, damp crypt, but I did. The torches flickered out as we walked away, but I caught one last glimpse of the fallen angel.
Would Adriel really turn his back on himself, for me?
-&-
:D
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Hope you enjoyed!