Here we go again.
JACKIE
Malak sighs, “Please try to trust me for five seconds.”
“Why? What are you doing?” My eyes widen as he starts to slip his t-shirt off. “Who the hell do you think you are—HOLY SHIT!”
The motherfuckingangelshrugs, his glimmering white wings fluttering all over the place in the process. “Accurate assessment, actually.”
“Those are… You’re…” Stunned, I drop to the couch. “I just pulled a gun on an angel.”
“You sure did.”
“I’m going to Hell, aren’t I?”
“Mmm, I think you’ll be pardoned for that. The circumstances were appropriate enough. Plus, it’s not like you could have really, truly killed me.”
My eyes cut to him, my mouth gaping open.
This is insanity.
And yet… it also makes sense.
I’ve been plagued for months, trying to figure out what’s going on with Kae, and I could never put the pieces together. Her dreams, her very sudden departure, the strange warnings in her letters, going to Israel… But most of all, Kae’s fuckingdreams. Is that where this started? She must have known, somehow, that something supernatural was happening.
“Were Kae’s nightmares real? She told you about them, right? Is the world ending?”
He hesitates. “Well… Yes, actually. It is. Sorry.”
I lean my head all the way back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Crazily enough, this actually explains everything. Better than anything else I’ve come up with. “And she’s kept this big secret from me this whole time.”
More telling hesitation from him.
More profuse swearing from me.
“You know, this is already a lot to take in,” Malak eyes me, his wings folding in like he’s a fucking pigeon. “Maybe we should take it one step at a time.”
“You can take that patronizing tone of yours and stick it up your asshole,” I snap, venomous. “Is Kae a prophet?”
“Eh…” He trails off, rubbing his neck again. It must be a nervous tell. Good to know. “Not… not necessarily, no. ‘Prophet’ is a loaded word nowadays, and she’s nothing like any Intuit I know. She’s quite unique, really. An exception.”
I rub my hands down my face, pulling on my cheeks. I’m not familiar enough with the Christian lore to know what questions to ask, let alone the right words to use. “Just explain.”
Malak’s wings disappear in a flash of light, baffling me yet again, before he slips his shirt back on. As if it never even happened, he slides down onto the couch next to me.
I involuntarily scrunch my nose, trying not to cough. Whatever vanilla-floral cologne he’s wearing, it’swaytoo strong. He smells like a flower shop, and not in a good way.
“Kae is the key to opening the Abyss,” he starts. “Which, not coincidentally, is where she’s been. I originally came here and convinced her to go there. We became… we were… a bit more than friends. But I cannot give her what she deserves in a relationship, so we just became just friends, and I helped train her.”
Hearing his thoughts on their little situationship is not at all my priority in this conversation. “Malak. Focus. What is the Abyss? Andwhat were you training her to do?”
“The Abyss is a… special kind of Hell. Not really, but it feels like it. It’s… it’s this underground city where a bunch of mutant soldiers are waiting for Armageddon so they can help the angels take out the bad guys, but first they need Kae, in specific, to let them loose.”
“Uh-huh.” I’m not impressed with his answer, my tone flat and accusatory. “And how was she supposed to do that? What kind of training did you give her?”
“Let’s see.” He lifts his fingers to count things off like they’re accomplishments. “We’ve done weightlifting, hand-to-hand combat, sword fighting, challenge and obstacle courses, shooting and throwing all sorts of weapons, various metaphysical things involving the soul that are hard to describe, and how to direct pure extracorporeal energy into an impact point without it being a superheavy neutron star that could collapse into a black hole... I don’t think she’s made any progress on that last one yet.”
I stare blankly at him. “What the fuck.”
