Beneath (Heven and Hell #3.5) Read online

  I began to wonder if I was in the right place. Nothing looked disturbed and I didn’t see the body. But then I came upon the spot where he fell, and there were tracks in the dirt. I followed them, marveling at how far the beast and I had actually rolled. When the marks on the ground stopped, so did I. I looked down, but there was nothing there. So I turned, remembering we had rolled once more, bracing myself for the sight of the body.

  But it was a sight I wouldn’t see.

  I could have told myself I was in the wrong place. But that would have been a lie. There in the grass and curling leaves were spots of blood, blood that was still fresh…

  But where was the shifter, and where was my dagger?

  Gone.

  * * *

  Sparkling clear water spouted joyously from the fountain. It rose into the air with great enthusiasm and then gently turned and cascaded back into the round pool, creating a melody all its own. You would think that the rest of the water in the pool would be full of ripples from the gentle splashing, but it wasn’t. It was still and calm, so clear it looked like glass, and I would often sit on the edge to peer down at my reflection. I’d always thought I was a little too dark looking to be an angel. My hair was shiny like the sun, but it was dark like the earth. My eyes were clear as crystal, but the color of a storm cloud. I was thin, but my frame wasn’t willowy like a flower blowing in the breeze, but strong like a tree that had put down roots.

  Sometimes I wondered how I fit in with the other angels, who all seemed lighter, brighter, and more graceful than myself. I once asked my Father about this and where I fit in, and he merely smiled. A feeling of complete and utter belonging flowed into me before he even spoke. “My child, all my creations are beautiful in their own way. Each one of you has something specific and special to offer. Do not doubt my love for all my children or your place among them. If you doubt your place, be utterly certain that in time you will know where it is.”

  From that day forward I never worried about the way I looked, but lately… actually, since the day I saw the shifter, I’d been worrying about not how I looked, but how I felt. Why was I drawn to Earth? Why did I find its unexpectedness so appealing? In many ways, I felt guilty, like I was betraying heaven, like I was betraying my Father.

  I told myself it wasn’t true, that my love for my Father was singular and all encompassing. But still, sometimes in the two weeks since I’d left Earth, I found myself thinking of that shifter… and of the man I met by the stream.

  I didn’t know which one unsettled me more. Surely it should’ve been the shifter. I mean, a man shifting into a great, hulking beast? That should be no contest to a mere human with a fishing pole. Yet it was his eyes that I sometimes pictured when I closed mine. It was his rough skin that I still felt against the smoothness of mine.

  My thoughts were interrupted (thankfully) by someone approaching me from behind. I saw the white blond of his hair reflected in the fountain and then the rest of him slowly revealed the closer he got. He wasn’t a huge man, but he wasn’t small, either. His muscles were corded and stretched into a long and lean frame. He looked nothing like the wider, bulkier man by the stream. His hair was nearly white, glittering in the perfect sunshine, and there wasn’t a strand out of place. It was nothing like the dark mess of waves that absorbed the sunlight and probably had never even seen a comb. The angel smiled at me, his wings were three times the size of him and so brilliant and white that I might’ve been breathless had I not seen them a hundred times before. You’d think that a man dark as night and wide as a house, who has the misfortune of having no brilliant wings, would never compare. You certainly wouldn’t think that his looks would surpass the perfection standing in front of me.

  But they did.

  “Why so serious?” he asked, grinning, his perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth flashed (no chip in sight).

  “Sinead!” I declared and jumped up to give my favorite angel a hug.

  “I saw you sitting over here by yourself and wondered what that was all about. Usually, you’re off somewhere causing trouble.”

  “Am not,” I said, sticking out my tongue.

  He chuckled. “Well, you’re certainly never sitting around the reflecting pool… reflecting.”

  I shrugged and sat down next to him at the edge of the water.

  “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “My last mission to Earth… I saw something.”

  “Earth is a primitive place,” he said like he had something distasteful in his mouth.

  “I think it was a shifter.” The words rushed from me before I could stop them.

  His eyes grew round and he grabbed my wrist. “A shifter!” he demanded, his eyes narrowing.

  I nodded. “I was… I was dallying by a stream after I completed my mission, and I saw a man, so I followed him, thinking there was something off, but he was gone and I was attacked by a giant black beast.”

  “You were attacked?” he echoed, his skin losing just a bit of its luster.

  “I stabbed it with the dagger that you told me to carry, and afterwards it turned into a man…”

  “How big was it?”

  “Huge.”

  “Did it speak to you?”

  I shook my head. “I thought it was dead.”

  “You thought?”

  I told him about how I went to wash away the blood and realized I’d left my dagger behind. “When I went back, the man and my dagger were gone.”

  He leapt to his feet. “Shifters are very resilient. Some possess self-healing powers like us. You probably didn’t kill it, just wounded it, and then it got up and ran away.”

  “It’s still out there… killing people?” I asked, horrified.

  Sinead leaned down and peered into my face. “Gemma, what color were its eyes?”

  “Red. They were red.”

  He shot straight up. “A hound,” he murmured.

  “A what?”

  “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I am?”

  He glanced back at me, a little sheepish, and smoothed out his already smooth features. “I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You’re not.” After rolling around the forest with this supposed hound and then stabbing it with a dagger, I hardly think sitting beside a fountain, talking about it would scare me.

  “Of course not. This is heaven. There’s no room for fear here.”

  I smiled.

  “Can you show me where you saw it?” he asked, catching me by surprise.

  “Show you?”

  “What you are describing is a hellhound. A creature, evil and twisted, that is so depraved that Lucifer himself cast him out of hell. If it is indeed roaming around on Earth, then it’s likely leaving behind a trail of blood and destruction. I must find it and kill it.”

  Sinead was a Guardian, one of the angels who were dispatched to cut down the evil that roamed Earth. If anyone could find and kill the beast, it was him.

  “I can show you. I remember exactly where it was.”

  “We will leave at once,” he said, pulling me along with him toward the pass-through to the InBetween.

  We weren’t in the vast, white space for very long before Airis appeared. She was blond like Sinead, only her hair was more gold than white. She always dressed in white, as most of us did, and I never saw a pair of shoes on her feet. (I never wore shoes either). As a Guide angel, Airis was assigned the task of guiding people who needed assistance on their journey with the Lord, and she also served as the go-between for us and the rest of the world.

  Sinead spoke softly but quickly to Airis, explaining the situation and that I was to help lead him to the area. She seemed unsure about allowing me passage at first but bowed her head gracefully when Sinead told her he didn’t expect to see the hellhound so there would be no danger to me—a Messenger angel—who wasn’t trained in the art of battle.

  It seemed to me I held my own the last time I was pitted against a giant threat, but speaking up would be c
onsidered disrespectful.

  After Airis bid us good luck, we were granted passage and before I knew it, we landed on Earth in Rome, near the Vatican. Even without the Vatican nearby, we would’ve known instantly where we were. Angels have a sort of built-in compass that allows us to know where we are at all times.

  “Where?” Sinead asked.

  “Maine, in the Unites States,” I replied and held out my hand. “I’ll lead the way.”

  He grasped my hand and within seconds, I flew us to Maine. We landed on the hill above the stream. It was just as magnificent as I remembered, with sunlight filtering through the trees and giving everything beneath a warm sort of glow. I could hear the splashing water in the near distance, and I resisted the urge to go to the ledge and look down.

  Sinead glanced at me and I nodded, tugging on his hand in the direction that we needed to go. Then I took off, half running, half flying through the forest. When we reached the area where I fought with the shifter, I stopped, veiled my wings (for precaution), and tiptoed through the leaves.

  Sinead laughed lightly and I looked at him. He was watching me. “You hardly make a sound. I don’t think there’s any need for tiptoeing.”

  I grinned but continued the movement. I’d never helped track a hellhound (or anything) before and it seemed that it called for sneaking silence.

  Sinead shook his head and then seemed to completely forget I was there as he took in all of our surroundings. He breathed deep and studied things like tree bark and the dirt underfoot with great attention to detail. When he came to the spot where I was almost sure I’d stabbed the shifter, his eyes rounded just a bit and he looked at me.

  “Here?”

  I nodded, chewing my lip as I watched him, wondering what he saw that I clearly did not. I gave up trying and took a seat nearby on a fallen tree. A few long moments went by and then suddenly Sinead’s head whipped up and he spun toward me.

  “Get out of here!” he said urgently.

  I scrambled to my feet. “What is it?”

  “The hound—it’s nearby.”

  “I can help you,” I argued, looking around, but it was nowhere in sight.

  “Go, you’ll only distract me. I’ll find you when it’s dead.”

  I used my wings to carry me just slightly into the air, about seven feet off the ground, and took off in the direction that Sinead signaled I go. He must have some kind of sense to tell him which direction the beast was coming from. I didn’t dare go any higher in the air for fear that something on the ground would see me.

  When I came close to the ridge of the hill, I lowered my feet to the ground and stopped. I listened for long moments, wondering about my friend but hearing no signs of a battle or even a scuffle. Sinead was a Guardian; this was his job. I had every confidence he could take care of himself so my worrying would be for nothing.

  The urge to go look over, down toward the water, was very strong. It wasn’t because of the stream, though. It was because of him. I knew he wouldn’t be here. The fact that he had the last time was only a fluke. I went over to the ledge anyway, veiling my wings as a precaution, and peered down into the ravine.

  He wasn’t there.

  No one was there and so I stepped off the edge and floated down, my feet landing on a rock that the active stream splashed up over. I smiled when the icy droplets hit my toes. I knelt down, letting my fingertips trail in the water.

  “Where are you rushing off to today?” I asked. Of course it didn’t answer, but a small swell of water lapped up over my palm and I smiled.

  A branch snapped on the other side of the stream and I looked up sharply, half expecting to see a snarling black monster with red eyes.

  It wasn’t a monster.

  He was standing just inside the trees, wearing the same pair of jeans from before and a gray T-shirt. This time his hair wasn’t confined and it fell around his jaw and neck in dark, mysterious waves. I stood, smoothing out the white dress I wore as we stared at each other for long moments.

  I felt as if there was some kind of invisible string that stretched between our bodies and it was humming, trying to tug us closer together.

  Then he lifted his hand in a wave and the feeling of the string disappeared. As I waved, he moved forward, nimbly navigating some large rocks scattered through the stream until he landed on the same side of the water as me.

  I turned toward him as he came closer, a smile on his face. He still hadn’t shaved and his tooth was still chipped. I tried to tell myself that these things were clear evidence that proved he wasn’t nearly as beautiful as Sinead, but the case was lost. The pure fact of it was that he was beautiful.

  Imperfectly perfect.

  “I wondered if you would come back,” he said in that less-than-smooth voice.

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “I’ve come here every day for the past two weeks, hoping you’d be here too.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Why would he do that? “But why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  He laughed. “You left an impression on me.”

  “Aren’t you fishing today?” I asked, looking for his pole.

  He shook his head. “How do you hide them?” he asked.

  “Hide what?” I responded, the change of topic confusing me.

  “Your wings.”

  I glanced behind me without thinking to make sure that the veil I put on them had actually worked. My wings were hidden.

  “My wings?” I asked like I had no clue what he meant.

  “I saw them last time. Then they disappeared. I thought I’d been seeing things, but just now, you floated down from up there.” He motioned to the top of the ravine. “I didn’t see your wings, but I know they must be there.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  He shook his head. “I could never be afraid of such a beautiful creature. Are you an angel?”

  “Yes,” I told him. We weren’t supposed to interact with humans. We weren’t assigned to, but we weren’t supposed to lie either. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

  He nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “Gemma,” I said and then I heard Sinead calling for me. “I have to go.”

  “Wait,” he said, reaching out to grasp my hand. I looked down at where he held me and I watched, fascinated, as his thumb rubbed over the back of my hand. The texture of his skin was thrilling. “My name is Callum.”

  “Callum,” I said, trying it out on my tongue.

  “It sounds like a song when you say it.”

  “I have to go,” I said again, knowing Sinead would be worried if he couldn’t find me right away.

  Callum released me, and I flew up to the top of the ravine. Before trying to find Sinead, I looked over my shoulder. He was still there, looking up at me.

  Something felt funny in my stomach and so I rushed off, already wondering when I would be able to see him again.

  * * *

  I waited to ask any questions until we made it past Airis, through the InBetween, and were welcomed back into heaven’s grace. “What happened?” I demanded of Sinead the minute we weren’t in earshot of anyone else.

  “It must have been hanging out there in the woods. Perhaps it was hoping you would come back so it could get even for the dagger wound.”

  “So it was a hellhound?”

  He nodded. “First one I’ve seen in years.”

  “How do you know it was the same one I saw?”

  “They don’t run in packs like other shifters, and they’re fairly rare. I highly doubt there would be two in the same area at the same time.”

  I nodded, not totally convinced, but unwilling to challenge his knowledge and the training he went through over the course of many years.

  Sinead stopped walking and turned to face me. “Don’t worry about this. I killed it. It’s dead.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked, thinking I’d thought it was dead, too.

  “Absolutely.” He smiled a blinding bright
smile and it melted away all doubt in my mind. “Let’s go get something to eat. Our trip made me hungry!”

  He didn’t bring it up again after that. It was like it was completely gone from his mind. But for me, it was something I wasn’t able to forget.