“Your age?Or…?”
“Or a Hell of Fucking?” A sly grin grows across his face. “Take your pick.”
“Nope. I’m good.” I spin back around, ignoring a nefarious chuckle from him. “There’s the back gate over there. Make sure the coast is clear in the kitchen window before coming up to the door. Donotbe seen or heard.”
He gives a sarcastic salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
5
Minutes later, I’m ushering Malak into my bedroom, making sure to shut the door behind him before he gets the chance to start chattering.
I count his strides as he glides into my room, hands in his pockets, and amusement dancing along his lips. He moves casually, yet methodically, without a single imperfection in his gait.
“So, this is where you live.” His eyes scan my room, catching on every single idiosyncrasy of mine he can find. It makes me feel like I’m under a microscope—a larger-than-life microscope that doesn’t belong in my little haven.
“Only for the summer.” I shift on my feet as he makes his way from one side of the room to the other, taking in my perpetual state of organized chaos. He’s not even being subtle in his nosy curiosity.
Like a dog with a bone, he leans in towards my array of small pictures, clothespinned on zig-zagged yarn on the wall above my desk. “Do you ride horses a lot?”
“Until recently, yes. I’ve ridden horses my whole life. Competitively, too.” My eyebrows furrow when he picks up my hairbrush, looking at the copper-brown hairs caught in it. “Could you please not touch my things?”
It’s a fucking hairbrush, angel. It’s not that interesting.
Nonchalantly, he sets my brush back down, taking one last look at my picture wall. “Why did you stop?”
“What, horseback riding?” I blink. “College demands all my free time. And even if I hadn’t already quit, I’ve been abittoo sleep-deprived to function well enough for just about everything lately. Which, mind you, you still owe me an explanation for. So why don’t you start there?”
Malak slips his jacket off and promptly plops onto my queen bed, right in the middle, like it’s the most natural place in the world for him.He even has the unparalleled gall to make himself comfortable, repositioning and settling his head on my satin pillowcase. “Ask away.”
“Oh, no.” I sit down at the desk across from Goldilocks, trying my best to ignore the disturbing familiarity of his position. “I’m notasking.You’reexplaining. And start from the beginning.”
“I think that’s covered well enough in Genesis.” He cracks a smile at his biblical joke, but I’m not in the mood for it.
“You’re testing my patience, angel man.”
“Fine, grumpy girl.” When he rolls his eyes, his dark eyelashes flutter like little angel wings. They’re so starkly contrasted to everything else about him, it’s like he’s wearing mascara. “Again, we’ve known for quite some time that a star would fall from Heaven and give the power to open the Abyss to someone. Unfortunately for you—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—that star picked yoursoul, and now you’re the Abyss’s gatekeeper.”
“What the fuck even is the Abyss? Don’t you mean Hell?” I pause, mentally kicking myself. “No, stop making me ask questions. You need to do a better job at explaining. Aren’t you supposed to be a messenger? You’reterribleat delivering messages.”
Malak laughs far too loudly, warranting a hurried shush from me.
His voice drops to a rolling low tone, barely louder than a whisper. “Look, I’m trying, okay? Why do you think messages from angels always seem to be so cryptic in the Bible? We’re awful at this, yes, but I’d like to seeyoutry to deliver the word of God and make it come out crystal clear.”
I rub my hands on my face. This is only giving me more questions than answers, and he hasn’t even begun to explain my source of misery lately. “Go back to the part where you gave me nightmares for months before cornering me in the parking lot of my work.”
“Iamsorry about that. The prophecy didn’t exactly specify who the star would fall on, and finding the faintest hint of it among eight billion human souls is an extremely difficult endeavor for anyone.”
Surely there’s a better word thanstar. If a star fell here on Earth, we’d all be dead. Unfortunately, semantics aren’t the most pressing issueright now. “So you’re saying I started having nightmares after this ‘star’ thing happened? What does that even mean? How did you know to come find me?”
“To even begin to explain, I would have to get into the entire concept of souls and the tethers connecting them all. Just know sleep disturbances are common during the process. I’m sure you’ll be fine now.”
I don’t care for his dismissive tone, nor the fact that he only answered part of the question. “You know they weren’tmerelynightmares, right? They were prophetic, hyper-realistic visions from Revelation when I hadn’t even read the damn book yet. Every single night, too. Until last night, I haven’t slept peacefully in months.”
“No, actually, I did not know all that.” Though it’s subtle, his voice sounds genuinely surprised. “But since you’re not exactly a normal human, you could have easily suffered abnormal effects. Or perhaps the Creator simply wanted you to have the same visions John did all those years ago. Regardless, the origin changes very little. It’s in the past, and now that I’ve finally found you, it’s time for you to go to the Abyss.”
“If you want me to doanythingfor you, then answer all the questions I’ve already asked you, for Heaven’s sake, and quit making me ask more. The Abyss. What exactly is it, where is it, and why must it be opened?”
The angel clears his throat. “Right. The Abyss is not Hell. What you know as Heaven and Hell are unreachable for the living—and angels not assigned to them, like myself. The Abyss is commonly confused with Hell because of its similarities to the Hell mythos. It’s a celestially forged hiding place, an underground city holding an army of hideous creatures.”
