Angel's Honor (2 page)

He stood up and padded to the
dresser, his only clothing a pair of loose boxers. The lines on his skin
stretched up over his arms and down his back. The humans he’d met assumed he’d
had elaborate tattoos inked onto his skin, but they weren’t. Every one of the
People had been born like this. And every single one of his own formerly pale brown
marks was now ebony. Ebony tipped with gold. He looked for another few seconds,
then
shook his head. He had to see if what he
suspected was true.

Clenching his fists, he loosened
the tight band of control in the center of his body and let go. Air wafted
through the room as his wings unfolded from his body and stretched out, almost
too large to fit in the small space. He stared at them in the mirror,
trepidation and joy twining in his gut as the gold-tipped ebony feathers
rustled in the glass. He
swallowed,
fists still tight.
Maybe I really am still asleep
, he
thought, and then the door to his bedroom opened without warning.

“Gabriel! Do you want to
come
flying with me?” his sister barged in, clearly
expecting to wake him. She came to an abrupt halt as soon as she saw him in
front of the mirror.
“Oh my God!”
She stared. “Oh my
God,” she repeated, this time in a whisper.

He folded his wings, but did not
shift back to human. He turned to her, not sure whether he should feel happy or
upset. Not sure what she would say. He really, really wished he wasn’t wearing
his underwear. His sister would tease him about that for years to come, he knew
it.

“Oh my God,” she repeated, staring
fixedly at his wings.

“You keep saying that,” he managed,
voice low.

“Gabriel, your wings,” she
breathed, coming closer. She reached out a tentative hand and he flinched.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, dropping
her arm down, afraid to upset him, he could tell. He never wanted his sister
afraid of him, not for any reason. He grabbed her fingers and brought them to
his wings, letting her trail her palm down the edges.

“They’re real,” she said. Her eyes
were wide.

Gabriel nodded, glancing back into
the mirror. What had been pale brown eyes, so like his mother’s, were now more
gold than brown. He stared at himself, trying to wrap his mind around what had
happened. His hair was still short, still ordinary. He was still six feet tall.
Muscular.
Inside, though, everything felt different.

“You knew this was coming, didn’t
you?” Ariel asked softly. She let her hands fall. Gabriel’s eyes tracked her
arms. Her marks were still light brown, barely visible. When she shifted, her
wings would spread behind her, brown with traces of white at the tips,
perfectly framing her heart-shaped face and kind blue eyes.

His own wings were no longer so
comforting or normal.

He sighed. “I suspected. Dad told
me it might happen.”

“How the hell would he know?” she
asked. “He never said anything to me.”

Gabriel decided to tell her about
that night when he was eight. “When I was little, I had nightmares all the
time. One night, Dad came in to help me get back to sleep, and he told me a
story about our family. He said we used to be the leaders of the People before
Samael’s forbears wrested it away from one of our ancestors. He said that he
suspected we’d be leaders again.” He shook his head. “It was just a story he
told, to make me feel better. I’d been dreaming about demons.” He turned away
from her, stomach roiling as he remembered those distant nightmares. “He didn’t
mean anything by it, but I always felt different, after that night. I don’t
know how to explain it.”

Ariel pressed her lips together. “This
is a good thing.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Samael
needs to be deposed. We all know it. We’ve known it for years.”

His wings fluttered without him
consciously moving them and he had to concentrate to get them to settle.
Thinking about their leader made anger trickle through his gut. Samael had been
abusing their trust for years and everyone knew it, but overthrowing their
hereditary leader was not as simple as holding an election.

“I know,” he said eventually. “The
People are dying.” This was true. They’d been losing people for years. Fewer of
them were being born and many of their Old Ones were fading away, flying into
the mist in despair.

She looked at him. “Not anymore
they aren’t.”

He felt her words in his bones and
looked once again into the mirror. He knew what she was implying. There was no
way to hide this. God had given him His favor and Gabriel couldn’t refuse it,
not when it meant he could help the People survive. Thrive. He spread his wings,
the ebony flashing dark and strong in the early dawn light. “No. They aren’t.”

****

Raphael stood in the clearing,
shaking. He clenched his bare toes around the rock and clenched his fists, too,
as though that would help. He was in the middle of a valley, in the midst of an
ancient rock field just after dawn. He’d gone flying alone before the sun rose,
like usual, but as soon as the light had peeked over the horizon and touched
his wings, he’d felt the change.

He reached out and scooped up the
long edge of his left primary, pulling it over to look at the feathers again. “Dear
God,” he murmured, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. What had been
ordinary dark brown wings, common among the People, had changed to snow white
feathers tipped with gold. He let them fall and hugged himself, shivering. He
knew what this meant. This was why Suriel, damn him, had sent him here. He
wondered if his brother had known his ‘feeling’ would take this form, or if he
had just trusted that his magic was true. Whatever the case, Raphael had the
evidence of his body to prove that his brother was correct, as usual. Raphael
was an Omega.

“Except I’m not a woman,” he said
aloud. “So this makes no sense.”

He’d come to study the People’s
origin at the seat of their primary clan six months ago. He was a graduate
student.
A historian.
He’d been raised in Maine, by a
small clan of angels, close-knit but isolated, and never expected to have the
opportunity to study with the archangels, but when Suriel had told him he had
to go, he listened. He rubbed his hands over his face and looked up at the sky.
“Remember why you’re here,” he said to himself.

Ever since the disastrous
revelation of their existence among the humans a little over thirty years ago,
the People had been alternatively worshipped and vilified. Raphael simply
wanted to document their history as a sentient people, parallel to the humans.
Of course, nothing was ever that simple.

“And somehow, I’m supposed to become
the mate of their leader?” he said, hoping the words would seem less
preposterous spoken aloud than in the silence of his mind. They weren’t. He
extended his wings, letting the feathers unruffle in the light breeze.

“White wings, healer of minds.
Omega,” he muttered the old saying. “Ebony wings, leader of angels.
Alpha.”
He deliberately untwisted his arms and stretched,
wings reaching out to the winds. His feet left the rock and he floated as the
People’s magic filled his bones and lifted him up. “What the fuck,” he said,
letting a rising thermal carrying him higher. “The leader of the people is gay?
That’s impossible.” He’d never heard of such a thing, not in all the oral
stories, nor in the scrolls, nor in the carvings of their sacred spaces. The
true leader was always a man, mated to a woman.

He twisted in the air, swooping
back down to the rock field. His landing was rough, but he didn’t care. Around
him, the forest
woke,
birds and small mammals rustling
among the leaves and branches. He stood there, contemplating Samael, the
current leader. No. No a thousand times. That man was
not
his mate. The man was evil. Even if Raphael was truly Omega,
the leader’s destined mate, he refused to even contemplate touching Samael, let
alone tying himself to the man for eternity. “Just because I’m gay, that doesn’t
mean I’m weak or lacking free will,” he said aloud. He crouched down and leaped
up, letting the air carry him to the skies.

Chapter Three

Gabriel flew, relieved that this,
at least, was the same. The ridgeline below him was the same one he’d been
flying along since he was a boy. His sister, Ariel, was near, swooping
ecstatically on the wind, and that, too, was the same. They’d been flying
together their whole lives. What wasn’t the same was his increased stamina. He
had more strength. He could go higher and still breathe. The magic of the
People was strangely luminous—when he closed his eyes, he could feel the air
currents with his skin, but he could feel even more now. Flying had never been
so effortless, so joyful. He grinned at Ariel and she smiled back, diving backwards
and daring him to follow. He swooped down after her, about to tickle her foot
when her cell phone rang. The tension that had faded from his spine slid right
back into place at the base of his neck. He made a grumpy face at her.

She made a grumpy face back,
slowing so that she could glide along a thermal. He shot past her, irritated,
then
circled around.

“Really?
You brought your phone
with you?” he said as he flew back to her, slowing to match her speed.

She grimaced apologetically, digging
her cell out of the pocket of her shorts. “I always bring it with me. I
promised Mom,” she explained.

Gabriel sighed.
“Of
course.”
His mom worried about them. She hadn’t asked him to bring his
phone, though, probably because he was a lot bigger and stronger than Ariel.
Not much could damage him. Ariel, however, was smaller, though no less tough.
She just
looked
fragile.

She slid her finger across the
display and answered the call. As she glided, she batted at Gabriel’s leg
absently as he flew back and forth in her path.
“Hi Mom,
what?
No, we’re flying, like we always do when it’s not pouring. Wait,
what? Are you sure? You’re not joking?” She glanced at Gabriel, eyes going
suddenly somber. “Yeah, okay. We’ll be down in a sec.”

“What is it?” he asked, knowing he
wasn’t going to like what she said.

“Mom says we need to get back.
Samael is looking for you and he’s out for blood.”

****

Ten minutes later they spiraled
down into the clearing in front of their old farmhouse. It had been in the
family for longer than he’d been alive.
Longer than their
father had been alive.
Gabriel had moved back in after his death five
years ago and Ariel had never moved out. Their mom, Anahita, needed them, and
Gabriel wasn’t afraid to admit that he’d needed her and his sister, too. He’d been
twenty-three at the time, but even so, the hole his father left in their family
hadn’t been easy to deal with. Angels weren’t supposed to die so young.
Historically, their lifespan had stretched across several hundred years, but
these days they only lived as long as the humans—maybe eighty or ninety years,
and no one knew why. When his father had been killed decades earlier than that,
well… Gabriel shook off the bad memories. His mother was okay. He was okay and
so was Ariel. They would always be there for each other. And Gabriel was lucky
that he could do most of his work from home. Business consulting was lucrative
and irregular, but he enjoyed it. It augmented the family inheritance and
allowed him to spend as much time with his family as he wanted.

“Mom, what happened?” he asked,
walking up to the porch. Her eyes were fixed on his wings. Oh, right. She
didn’t know about them yet.
She does now
,
he told himself.

“Oh Gabriel,” she breathed, eyes
filling. She reached out for him and he hugged her.

“It’s okay. I’m okay, Mom.” She
felt so fragile to him. He was careful not to squeeze too hard.

“I know you’re okay. I’m just
surprised,” she said, pulling back and smiling.
“And happy
for you.
Happy for our people.”

He grinned. “Oh.”

“So, what did Samael want?” Ariel
asked sourly, stepping onto the porch behind him.

Anahita’s smile dropped away. “He
told me that he was expelling Gabriel from the People, for conduct unbecoming,”
she said angrily. “He has no right.”

Ariel snorted.
“No
way.
I’d like to see him try it,” she said, running a hand down Gabriel’s
wings.

He shivered and stepped away. “Don’t
do that. It disturbs me. You know that.”

“You’re so sensitive.” Ariel rolled
her eyes at him and then her face fell into the curiously taut expression that
told him she was about to shift. A moment later her light brown wings
disappeared and she stood there, an ordinary young woman in a pink halter top. “Where
is Samael?” she asked her mother.

“He said he’ll be here any moment,”
Anahita answered. She traced the outline of her feathers on her arms, light
brown like
Ariel’s,
in the nervous tic she’d had since
their father had passed.

“He’s coming here?” Gabriel asked,
disbelievingly. “How dare he?” It was Samael’s direct negligence that had
killed his father. If he hadn’t been high and stupid and belligerent with an
unfriendly Angel-hating crowd of humans, their father wouldn’t have had to take
the bullet meant for him. Human and Angel relations were still somewhat strained,
especially in the parts of the country where the humans believed they were
demons. He hated those little pockets of fanaticism. His wings moved
restlessly. He’d be damned if he’d shift them away though. He had nothing to
hide.