Inception Read online

  She was very aware that she could still feel Lucas.

  I can’t sense anyone else and know for certain it’s them like I can with Lucas. Why?

  It was very unusual. She was used to being able to pick up on her brethren, even those who had fallen. And, once she met them, she could always recognize them when they were near.

  Gabrielle was no closer to an explanation when class ended. Lucas waited at her desk while she organized her things, and they left the room together. Gabrielle found herself sneaking glances at him when he wasn’t looking as they made their way into the hall.

  She didn’t want to admit that something seemed off to her about him. She felt sure she was supposed to help him, and at the very least, she knew she was supposed to meet him.

  So, what does this mean?

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Gabby,” Lucas said as they were about to go separate ways for their next class. “Unless you plan a second attempt on my life in the parking lot after school.” A hint of his crooked smile returned.

  “Very funny,” she responded with a smile on her face and in her tone.

  He was about to say something else, but a slender and very attractive girl, her hair almost as long and dark as Gabrielle’s, cut between them to greet Lucas with a big hug. The girl hung on a little too long, and Gabrielle suddenly felt something that made her more uncomfortable than anything she’d felt in this body, so far.

  Gabrielle wanted the girl to get off Lucas and was more than willing to take care of that physically if needed. She wasn’t sure, but she thought this feeling was probably jealousy. And she now understood why it made people less than reasonable. She wanted to smack the smile off this girl’s face and turn her flirty cooing into sobs of pain. The urge was hard to resist. It would do nothing but make her look like some crazed, jealous teenager. But that was pretty much what she was in this body. Only she was The Angel of Karma, and that made her a crazed, jealous teenager capable of causing this girl a ton of problems.

  Wow … jealousy. This is certainly a first.

  Lucas looked at Gabrielle with surprise and embarrassment. Gabrielle tried to smile to make him feel a little better—maybe herself, too—but she bet it looked more like a grimace.

  “Lucas!” the girl gushed. “I’ve been looking for you all day! If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding me!”

  Lucas’s jaw tensed, and a scowl furrowed a deep channel between his brows. Gabrielle was sure she could see anger, or possibly contempt, raging in his eyes.

  “If I was trying to avoid you, Mara,” Lucas began, “it would require me to think about you. Which I haven’t.”

  His demeanor suddenly became frigid. The warmth and ease he’d had earlier abandoned him. It was noticeable in the girl’s reaction that it wasn’t what she hoped to elicit from him.

  “Ooh … feeling a little testy, are we? Are you having a bad day, Lucas? I can make it a lot better for you if you want me to.” Mara was still very close to Lucas. As she spoke to him, she played with the collar of his shirt then traced her finger slowly up toward his ear.

  Gabrielle began clenching and unclenching her fists. If she was in her true form, her color would be turning a deeper crimson the longer that girl continued to hang all over him.

  Yes, this is definitely jealousy.

  Gabrielle did her best not to remove Mara from Lucas. Thankfully, Lucas quickly grabbed Mara’s hand, moving his head away at the same time.

  He glared at Mara.

  “My day was fantastic until about sixty seconds ago. Now, keep your hands off of me. You lost the right to get this close.”

  He was harsh in both expression and tone. Gabrielle wondered what Mara could have done to make him this angry.

  “Fine,” Mara said coolly. She turned and looked at Gabrielle. More like shot daggers out of her yellowish-green eyes—the eyes of a camouflaged demon. Gabrielle’s breath stopped as Mara looked her up and down with a venomous smile. Gabrielle’s irritation at being caught off-guard by one of the Fallen burned through her body. She finally began to feel her stomach’s reaction from being so close to a demon—a reaction that should have come much sooner.

  This is unacceptable.

  She needed to be able to see a demon coming before they were so close. Between the Aegis Veil and a demon’s, she was having difficulty knowing when they were around, especially when distracted by human sensations and thoughts. Now, she really wanted Mara to get away from Lucas.

  The demon is lucky that we are in a school full of witnesses.

  “Who’s your new … friend, Lucas? She’s as pretty as an angel.” Mara’s eyes locked with Gabrielle’s. Gabrielle could do nothing to the demon unless she put a human or her own life in danger, and Mara knew it. “Are you going to be rude, or are you going to introduce us?”

  Gabrielle fought the profound desire to turn this demon into ash.

  Lucas looked at Mara and then at Gabrielle. He reached for Gabrielle’s hand and pulled her away.

  “Mara … I’m feeling a bit on the rude side right now.” He began moving away from Mara. “I don’t think I’ll give you the chance to be a bitch to anyone else. At least, not around me.” He hastened Gabrielle down the hall.

  Gabrielle looked over her shoulder toward Mara just as they were about to turn the corner. Mara’s eyes had turned solid, shiny black. Gabrielle’s glare made sure Mara would be aware that things would have turned out differently if she wasn’t bound by Yahuwah’s laws. This wasn’t the first time she’d wished she had the free will humans enjoyed, and she was beginning to think that it wouldn’t even be close to the last.

  Is this why I’ve been having visions of him? Because he’s involved with a demon?

  But there were a lot of humans who were unknowingly mixed up with demons. She couldn’t understand why that would make him so important.

  “What was that about?” Gabrielle asked.

  Lucas mumbled something.

  “Lucas … seriously. What is it with you and that girl?”

  Lucas didn’t answer.

  Gabrielle jerked her hand away and planted her feet. Lucas stopped, turned, and as if he realized at once that he’d been inconsiderate, his expression relaxed, and he stepped toward her.

  “I’m really sorry, Gabby. I hate that you were there for that, but I promise she isn’t anyone to worry about. She’s—”

  “I’m not worried about her, Lucas,” Gabrielle interrupted. “I’m just really surprised by the way you reacted to her. What happened between the two of you?”

  Before he could answer, the final bell for class rang.

  “There isn’t time to explain right now. Just trust me on this one. Stay away from Mara. She’s bad news. We’ll talk more later. I have to get out of here pretty quick right after school, so I probably won’t see you till tomorrow. So … can we talk more then?” Lucas looked a little unsure of himself, and Gabrielle found she wanted to reassure him—surprised by how the foul mood Mara caused rapidly disappeared and calm took over.

  “Absolutely.”

  Lucas smiled. For the second time that day, he jogged away.

  Gabrielle slowly made her way to her next to last class thinking about the day’s events—meeting Lucas and the twins, the confusing and difficult emotions, and the oddity of being able to feel Lucas’s presence. But one thing in particular kept coming back up over and over—Mara. Gabrielle needed to know more about her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GABRIELLE ~ THAT OTHER SIDE

  When her last class was over, Gabrielle made her way to her car as fast as she could without looking like a lunatic. All she wanted to do was get out of that place and away from examining eyes. When she finally slid into the leather seat of her car, behind the dark tint of the windows, and drove out of the school’s lot, she began to feel better. But real relief came when she pulled into the driveway of her brick townhouse.

  It wasn’t the safe-haven Heaven was, but she didn’t have to hide who she was
when she was there. It was really only for appearances and to have a place for her human body to rest. It was cozy, and Gabrielle felt her tension leaving as she looked at the red front door. She placed her forehead on the steering wheel, filled her lungs with air, and pushed out a heavy sigh.

  “What a day.”

  She hadn’t been so tired since she began this pursuit two months ago and was looking forward to not being a teenager for the rest of the day—to just being herself. In the years prior to this decision being made, she would have never suspected being human was this taxing. She had sorely underestimated the difficulties she would face daily, and today had been the most exhausting so far.

  Gabrielle needed to talk to Amaziah about the way she was feeling toward Lucas, but she was more than a little worried about his reaction. She knew she wouldn’t want to do what he would surely suggest even if leaving Lucas alone was the right thing to do. Gabrielle had known Lucas for less than a day though all the visions she’d had made it feel like much longer. It was the only explanation for why she already found herself wanting to be around him more. And that desire was going to present a huge dilemma.

  “I don’t need this distraction. He’s not why I’m here.”

  Something tugged at her thoughts after she said those words, though. Something that made her wonder, even if it was only for a brief moment, if he was the reason she had been allowed to come here, after all. That maybe, he was the reason Amaziah and Yahuwah had allowed her to come and take on this task.

  Gabrielle didn’t fight her brows pulling together as the tension came back. The longer she considered it, the more the thought turned into an insistence that Lucas played a larger role in the decision than she knew.

  Going over it again and again in her mind didn’t seem to help. All that came of her contemplation as she sat silently in her car, heating rapidly in the afternoon sun, was frustration and another sweaty back. Gabrielle decided to let the possibilities simmer.

  After gathering her things and getting out of her car, she made her way up the front steps, entered her temporary residence, and gladly shut the door behind her—locking out the rest of the world for just a few moments. Standing there, leaning against the door, she let the cool air in her home bring her body temperature down, letting her mind drift. She’d have to check in with Amaziah, Sheridan, and her troops soon.

  I need to try to clear my mind so I can focus on my job.

  Reluctantly moving her body off the door, she put her things down on the round table that sat in the middle of her large foyer and made her way into her human home.

  The townhouse was decorated erratically. Some would phrase the description more diplomatically and call it eclectic, but Gabrielle was well aware it was nothing more than a hodge-podge of all the things she had found herself fancying while seeing the world for thousands of years. She’d spent a lot of her time, while learning to be human, picking these things up all over the world.

  The walls were painted in a soft yellow so she would always feel like she was outside in the warmth of the sun and to remind her of the warm, soft glow that continuously came off everything in her eternal home. The color also set off the wide array of craziness that was her furniture, pictures, rugs, and especially, art. Gabrielle was accumulating too much, particularly since she discovered black and white photography. She’d even picked up a DSLR camera and several lenses so she could take some pictures herself. She had no idea what she was going to do with all of it when she had to leave in four months.

  “Just four more months,” she said through a sigh.

  She felt a pull at her chest with the thought. She wasn’t going to like leaving even though she loved her eternal home. She loved it here, too. A different kind of love, for different reasons, but she loved it just the same. Maybe it was harder to think about leaving this place because, unlike leaving Heaven, the departure would be forever. She’d still have to come to Earth from time to time but not like this—not living like this. When she left Heaven, she always knew she’d be going back, sooner rather than later.

  She stared at her things, thumbing through images of people, flowers, and random things she had found beautiful or compelling in some way and taken pictures of. She loved knowing that, even though these were subjects many people looked at every day, she saw them in a way someone else may not have. She smiled as she looked at her walls since she intended to add a frame to some of her images to hang them.

  “I don’t know where I’ll find a place for all of you. The wall’s real estate is pretty sparse.”

  Gabrielle put the photos back down on the ottoman and headed upstairs to take a quick shower in hopes of re-energizing herself. After shedding her clothes and climbing into the steaming stall, she let the liquid heat flow over her tense muscles. Her body reacted right away, and every second she spent there, she relaxed more. After washing her hair, she stood under the water again and let it take as much stress down the drain with it that she could, picturing Lucas’s face to make the peace really set in. It worked, for a moment. Then, another face flashed through her mind, and she sighed. Amaziah had arrived, early as usual.

  ‘Just once, I wish he could be a little late.’

  Of course, even if he was, Sheridan would show up early. As soon as she thought this, Sheridan’s face made an appearance behind her closed eyes, as well.

  She grudgingly turned the shower off, quickly dried, and grabbed sweat pants and a t-shirt from her closet—happy that with her brethren she didn’t have to worry about her human appearance.

  When Gabrielle made it downstairs, she found Amaziah and Sheridan in their human forms, sitting at the kitchen counter’s bar. They were debating something, as was normal for them.

  “Ahh, Gabrielle. So nice of you to join us,” Amaziah greeted her, doing so without glancing away from Sheridan.

  Sheridan simply looked up at her, then the debate resumed. They were always trying to convince the other one that they were right if they found their opinions at odds—which was often. Gabrielle chose to stay out of it most of the time.

  It was interesting to see them in human form. She especially liked the body Amaziah created for himself. He was fairly tall with short, dark hair, blue eyes, and quite handsome. Sheridan had a petite frame with green eyes and long, strawberry-blond hair. They were supposed to pass for her parents if the situation ever called for it, but both barely looked old enough to have a child of seventeen.

  She plopped herself on a stool on the other side of the counter and rested her chin in her hands. Patiently waiting for the eventual result of the debate—an impasse. It’s how it always ended, and Gabrielle learned a long time ago to not interrupt them. This was one area of angel lore humans had all wrong—they weren’t always peaceful creatures.

  Gabrielle certainly wasn’t. Today had been a perfect example in that regard. When she was waiting to start her day, sitting in the school’s parking lot, she felt so frustrated from the feeling that they were losing the war and there was something … coming, that she thought she might come unglued. Though it didn’t turn out as bad as she’d started out thinking it would be.

  Come to think of it, as soon as I met Lucas, I felt better.

  And that feeling seemed to carry on throughout the day. With one exception—Mara. But the anger she had felt from being caught off-guard and the demon having her hands on Lucas left quickly, too.

  I’ve never had a mood like that just lift off of me before.

  But if she couldn’t give out more good karma than bad today, she may not be so lucky tomorrow. Her mood could be rather unpleasant.

  Gabrielle loved her job. Though it was sometimes difficult, it’d been the most important part of her life since Yahuwah appointed her to the position thousands of years ago even if it sometimes had a nasty effect on her personality. Unfortunately, being in an edgy mood had been increasingly common for her over the last one hundred and fifty years.

  She was the one that gave herself the title The Angel of Karma. The
belief in karma’s cause and effect of past and present actions, and Yahuwah’s rewards and punishments, were pretty much the same. It was a lot easier than The Angel of You Reap What You Sow.

  Gabrielle made her way to the refrigerator to get some sweet tea—some very sweet tea. She looked over her shoulder at her brethren as she did. “Hate to interrupt, but anyone want something to drink?”

  All she got in response were two shaking heads, then they were back at it, causing her to smile. They were always going to argue, but she knew they respected each other. After filling her glass with iced southern sweetness, she let one cold sip slip down her throat and sat back down to continue to wait.

  Thoughts about her job consumed her own mind, and the thing she wondered about most was how she could have done it better all these years. If she had been more efficient, maybe the war being fought would be leaning more toward their side instead of Darkness gaining more of a stronghold on humanity.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have seen so many human souls lost and so very many Asarers die with them.

  She didn’t know most of the Asarers personally, but it didn’t make the cut any less deep or painful. Asarers were a huge step above a typical guardian angel—a sometimes deadly step. They could be from any of the Choirs. They were those of her brethren who chose, on top of their regular duties, to bind themselves to one human in particular. They didn’t have to be humans who were important or influential, just someone the angel was drawn to for any reason. It could be that they’d watched them grow from a child and had become attached, had seen them suffer a great loss, or any other reason. They put their own lives on the line, literally, as they try to keep that person they bound themselves to from becoming one of the Fallen’s, and thus Ramai’s, victims. If they failed to keep their human from Darkness, they would lose their own souls—their Divine lives—to Ramai, as well. Now, more than ever, performing her duties appropriately was vital to the outcome of the battle.