Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton

  I spun back around as the first reaper reared onto her hind legs, swinging her head in a rage, and I slammed my sword through her ribcage. As the fiery blade struck her heart, she crumpled to al fours. She wheezed and gagged just before her shuddering body erupted into flames and she was gone forever.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF--NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Children's Books

  ..................................................................... 6

  I PICKED THE BLADE UP AND WIPED IT CLEAN ON my jeans. Wil watched me with careful, darkened eyes.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Are you going to black out on me again?" he asked, hoisting his sword over his shoulders as if it weighed nothing. Now I got a better look at it. The blade was wide and almost as long as my whole body, and the hilt was incredibly beautiful, with its sleek silver and gold curves molded into what looked like a wing.

  "No, I'm okay," I said. "Sort of. So then--I did black out last night?"

  "Yeah. You hit the ground pretty hard afterward."

  Heat crept into my cheeks. "Thank you for getting me back to my room."

  "I wasn't just going to leave you there," he said. "So, you're remembering then?"

  I shrugged. "The fighting part has come back to me and my swords appeared when I cal ed them. I felt like I knew what I was doing." What freaked me out the most was that I didn't real y need to think when I fought. My body just kind of knew what it was doing, and I was only along for the ride.

  "You've had a lot of practice."

  "But everything else," I said distractedly, looking down at the vicious swords in my hands. "It's so fuzzy, stil . It's strange, because I know it's al there, but I just can't dig it out. I don't know what I am."

  "You are the Preliator," Wil declared with an edge of authority to his voice.

  "I know who I am," I said. "I can remember that, but I don't know what I am. And I don't know who you are."

  Hurt crushed his stony resolve, surprising me. "I am your Guardian, your servant. I'm here to protect and guide you. That is my duty, and that is al that I am."

  "How old are you?" I asked, studying his face.

  "Six hundred."

  My head grew foggy. "How old am I?"

  "I don't know exactly. A few thousand years, maybe. We have records of you predating ancient Rome."

  I crumpled to the ground next to my car. I looked up at the enormous gashes and the dent in the Audi's fender. My parents were going to kil me.

  "This is al real, isn't it?"

  "Yes." Wil crouched down in front of me. He wiped at my cheek. The touch was soft, kind, familiar. His gaze was firm but gentle. "You had blood on your face."

  I nodded toward my weapons. "Those swords are so strange looking. Why am I able to just make them appear out of thin air? Why do they light on fire? How? "

  "They are Khopesh, an ancient weapon," he explained. I recognized the name from my nightmares. "They are exceptional blades--meant for slashing, not stabbing, but they get the job done. We are both able to cal our swords through our power with angelic magic, but once they appear, they are here. We can't conjure new ones, so you had better not lose either of them. We can wil them away also, when we are holding them in our hands, or when we die. They disappear until we cal them again."

  He held his sword out straight, and it vanished right before my eyes with that same shimmering light. He opened his palm and conjured the sword once more to show me how simple it was, and then he wil ed it away once more.

  "The fire around your swords is angelfire, the only thing effective, catastrophic enough to destroy reapers besides decapitation. Or destruction of the heart--that's what those hooks on the back of your blades are for."

  I examined my swords. Sure enough, the tip of the blunt edge of each blade curved back into a hook that I imagined could do an extreme amount of damage if lodged in soft flesh. I swal owed hard, picturing what had happened to the first reaper's heart when the hook had grabbed it.

  "If a reaper dies by means other than angelfire," Wil continued, "its body turns to stone instead of burning up. Silver also burns, which is why our blades are made of it, but it doesn't have the permanent effects of angelfire."

  I nodded. "That's what happened to the second reaper. Can you make the angelfire appear?"

  "No. Only you can, because you are the Preliator."

  I held both swords up and wondered how I'd made them light up before. They had done it just because I'd wanted them to. Could I do it again, outside of battle? I watched the blades. Was it like an on-off switch? I let one word cross my mind and concentrated. On. Flames erupted around the blades, leaving the handles and my hands unscorched. They didn't feel warm and they didn't burn anything. I touched the fiery swords to my pant legs and felt no heat. I touched the flat side of a blade to Wil 's arm. He looked at me oddly but otherwise did not react. Off. The flames vanished. "Cool."

  I examined one of the blades closely. Etched in the silver, just above the helve, was a series of strange, whirling, beautiful markings. "What does this mean?"

  I looked up at him, and his gaze met mine.

  "It's Enochian," he explained, his attention flickering to the sword. "The language of the divine, angelic magic. You once told me that it's a prayer of power, but I can't read it myself. We've tried re-creating the writings on other weapons in order to make them as powerful as your Khopesh swords, but so far they are the only weapons able to light with angelfire."

  "That's pretty cool," I said. "Who engraved the prayer onto my swords?"

  He sat down on the ground next to me, his back up against my car. "You did."

  I blinked in surprise. My fingers brushed the strange words, the edges of the markings scraping my skin softly. I felt a sense of nostalgia, but it was distant, like the memory of a wonderful dream. The more I admired them, the more I remembered. "Just like the tattoos on your arm. I put them there a long time ago."

  "Yes."

  I traced the spiraling symbols of the tattoo with my finger. His arm tensed under my touch and his breaths became slower and steadier. "It's so strange," I said. "I can't believe that what I'm saying out loud isn't something I made up. I remember tattooing this into your arm. I meant for it to protect you."

  "It's an Enochian spel , like the one on your swords."

  I noticed he was watching my fingers on his skin, and I pul ed back shyly. "Wel , you're stil here, so it must work. Why don't I have one?"

  "The spel is ineffective on human skin."

  How inconvenient. "How did you find me? Do you always know where I am?"

  "Yes. I can sense you above al others. I always know where you are, and I try never to be far away. I found you again a few years ago, and the reapers found you more recently."

  "Are they hunting me now?"

  "Most don't. They're too afraid. But yes, some wil hunt you. Be glad it's only a few. Most of them try to stay under the radar, and the weakest ones wouldn't even know you until they saw those swords light up."

  "Wil , I'm so confused," I began. "How can I be that old when I know exactly where and when I born? I have baby pictures. I'm only seventeen."

  "When you die, you are reincarnated," he explained. "Your body and soul are reborn over and over in the same human form. I find you again, usual y when you're just a smal child, and guard you as you grow up. When you're seventeen and ready to face your true identity, I wake you."

  "When you find me as a little girl, how do you know it's me?"

  I caught the slightest glimmer of a smile. "I've known you for a very long time. I can always tel when it's you."

  I let my head fal back against the car. "Then I'm not immortal."

  "Not in the way that I am."

  "Does that mean you can't die?"

  "I have never died, but I am not invincible. I just don't age."

  "You're so strong," I noted. "You punched that reaper so hard and you picked her up just by her neck. She was as big as my car. How can anyone be that st
rong?"

  Wil 's expression turned very serious. "You're stronger than I am, El ie."

  I shook my head tiredly. "I don't understand how it's possible--how any of this is possible. What are they? The reapers?"

  "They are monsters in this world," he said with an edge to his voice that forced shivers through my body. "They hunt humans for their flesh and their souls, which they harvest in order to restore the armies of Hel for the Second War between Lucifer and God--the Apocalypse. The reapers are immortal and come in many forms; they are most effective kil ing machines."

  "I don't understand how there can be creatures that big and no one knows about them. How come I've never seen any of them until last night?"

  "The reapers don't like to be seen," Wil explained. "They spend most of their time in the Grim, where they hide from human sight. Powerful psychics, however, can sense them like the ground rumbling as a train passes by and can enter the Grim at wil . Beings within the Grim can see and even interact with objects and people in the mortal world, but they cannot be seen or heard through the veil. The reapers have had many thousands of years to perfect their hunting. They've been seen a few times by ordinary humans, but these sightings are rare and are usual y happen only because the reaper was being careless. It's even rarer for reapers to intentional y al ow a human to see them and not kil them, but some like to do that for sport. There are legends about them in virtual y every religion, with al the legends identifying them as harbingers of death. But instead of guiding people to the afterlife, the reapers eat them, their souls get one-way tickets to Hel ."

  "So there are no studies of them, even though there have been sightings?" I asked. "Never? People believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, and I see documentaries about expeditions to find them on the History Channel al the time--

  not that I watch that channel much or anything. There's no proof that either of those exist. Yet the reapers leave bodies behind like Mr. Meyer's and no one ever stops to wonder?"

  "Reaper attacks are usual y blamed on animals or psychotic humans. Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster aren't real."

  "The reapers obviously are! Why hasn't there been some hysteria over sightings?"

  Wil took a breath and spoke slowly. "There've been many reported sightings of reapers. The most famous are the ones that resemble humans, hence the legend of the Grim Reaper."

  My eyes shot wide. "There are human reapers?"

  He nodded, watching the ground. "Yes, there are humanshaped reapers, cal ed the vir, and they are the most powerful. They're also the cockiest and the most likely to show their faces to humans. The other forms, like the ursid, the lupine, the nycterid, and others, have been mistaken for other monsters, because the humans don't know what they're seeing. Like your Bigfoot, dragons, or even werewolves. The reaper you just fought was lupine."

  I remembered my daydream about the snowy forest in France. I remembered that I'd been in the Le Gevaudan region, a place where the vil agers were ravaged by a wolflike monster. Historians blamed the hysteria on moldy bread, but I knew better. I felt like I had real y been there.

  "You keep talking about the Grim," I said. "What is it?"

  "The Grim is a dimension paral el to the mortal plane," he explained. "Supernatural creatures live there unseen by mortals and are able to cross over into this dimension. Most humans cannot enter the Grim, unless they are true psychics or creatures like you and me. Last night, you entered the Grim unwittingly so you could see the reaper hunting you, but you did that by pure instinct."

  "How was I created?"

  "We don't know what you real y are. Your body and soul are human, but your power . . . it's something very different. There are a lot of things about you that we stil don't understand."

  "By we, do you mean you and me? Does anyone else know about me? Is there another Preliator?"

  "No, you are the only one."

  "Are you my only Guardian?"

  "Yes, but before me, there were others who protected you."

  "Why don't I have any others?"

  "Now it is my duty alone."

  "How long have you been my Guardian?"

  "Five hundred years."

  I blushed and looked away from him. "You've been fol owing me around for five hundred years?"

  "I'm your soldier, your protector. And I don't fol ow you around al the time."

  "So I'm not human, am I?"

  "Not entirely."

  "Am I a psychic, like the ones who can see the reapers?"

  "No."

  "Then, how can I see them?"

  "I don't know. You're the Preliator."

  I remembered my torn arm. "How was I able to heal so quickly?"

  "Your power regenerates your body when you're injured,"

  he explained.

  "Then how do I die, if my body just fixes itself right away?"

  "Some injuries are too traumatic for your body to heal. I am the same way, and so were your previous Guardians."

  "Are you human? Or a psychic?"

  He paused before he answered me. "No."

  "Then what are you?"

  "Your Guardian."

  "That's not a straight answer," I said, frowning. "Is Wil your real name?"

  "Of course."

  "So, what are you?"

  "Your Guardian."

  I frowned. I had a mil ion more questions, and I had a feeling he'd dodge as many of the good ones as possible. It should al come in time, right? There were flashes of images, of terrible things, battles and blood, scattered across my memory in distorted fragments. I looked down at the reaper's blood on my hands and I felt very sad. How could I adapt to this? I wasn't dreaming anymore. My skin felt raw from when I had hit the ground. My arm ached where it was cut. Dreams never hurt you. This was real. My nightmares had become real. I was frightened, and I didn't want to have to deal with this. Wasn't it enough worrying about getting into col ege?

  "Why can't I remember?" I asked. "This isn't normal, is it?"

  Wil shook his head. "No, this has never happened before, but it's been a very long time since you were last alive. Usual y your reincarnation is almost immediate and you are reborn somewhere in the world, but this time you took four decades to become the Preliator again. I don't know why."

  "My memory should return in time, right?"

  "It wil ."

  "When you touched my face, everything became so clear. My strength, my purpose . . . How did you do that?"

  Wil leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees.

  "Because I'm your Guardian, I have the ability to awaken your power. You were a normal girl until the moment you turned seventeen, and it's my duty to restore your power and memories and defend you in battle from that moment on."

  I suddenly remembered my lit paper and scrambled to my feet, looking around for my purse. I spotted it lying beside my backpack, right where I'd dropped them. My car had been moved two parking spots away from where I had left it. I paused, realizing the impossibility of what I had done.

  "I did that, didn't I?"

  "You can do a lot more than that with your power."

  "Is it telekinesis?"

  "No, your power can only push things, not pul them. It's like an immensely strong gust of wind made of pure energy, of life force."

  "That is insane," I mumbled, retrieving my lost items. I dug my cel out and checked the time, then shoved my phone back into my bag. It was after ten. Fantastic. I'd never be able to get anything written on my paper and wake up with a working brain in the morning. Strangely, my homework seemed quite insignificant.

  "I need to get home. My parents are going to flip when they see what that thing did to my car. What do I tel them?" I stroked the deep claw marks in the Audi's fender. It would have to be repainted, probably replaced. How would I explain it, though?

  "Tel them someone hit your car and drove off. Your insurance should cover the damages."

  "They'l never buy that."

  "You don't have another option."

/>   I made an ugly noise and scowled. My dad was going to slaughter me no matter what. Distracting my thoughts from my likely fate, I remembered something the first reaper had said. "Did you hear the reaper say something about an Enshi?"

  He stared at me. "Enshi? What exactly did she say?"

  "She said, 'We don't need the Enshi,' because she'd just kil me herself. Do you know what that word means? And who are 'we'?"

  "It's Sumerian," he said thoughtful y. "Lord of . . . something. I'l need to check exactly what - shi means."

  "You speak Sumerian? Who speaks that? Seriously."

  "Can you meet me at the library after school? We should look into it."

  "I have too much homework," I said. "How about Saturday afternoon? Three o'clock?"

  "That wil work. Tomorrow night we need to train. Your skil s need to come back to you faster than they are."

  "But it's Friday night. That's our Movie Night."

  "Otherwise you won't last."

  "You mean I'l die." It wasn't a question.

  "Yes."

  I shrugged. "Wel , we don't want that, but my friends and I always go to the movies Friday night, so it'l have to be later."

  "I can wait. The night is long."

  "I'l give you a cal when we're done. What's your number?" I started to get my phone back out to punch in his information.

  "I don't have a phone. You won't need to cal me."

  I looked at him quizzical y. "No one can survive without a cel phone. Are you going to be stalking me at the movies, too?"

  He seemed unaffected. "I've been your companion for five hundred years as your Guardian, your bodyguard. During the day, while you're at school, you're safe, so I'm usual y home until dusk. I need to rest too. I'm not fol owing you around constantly, but I can sense if you're distressed or frightened. If you're attacked, I'l know. It's part of the bond we share."

  I wondered if he had sensed my fear during my hal ucination in the bathroom earlier at school, and if that was why he had come to find me. "So while I'm at school, how do you keep yourself busy? Got any hobbies?"