Conduit by Maria Rachel Hooley
“It wouldn’t matter if Griffin were totally on board with you right now. You’re biggest dissenter has always been you, Lev.” Celia moved close behind and circled her arms around his torso. “I know this is harder than you ever thought, but I also know it’s worth it. As long as she is alive, we’ll find her.”
“That’s a big if. I keep hearing her in my head.” He straightened and glanced at his sister. “If I’ve been made entirely human, I shouldn’t be able to hear her at all, but I do. I do, and the way she screams my name terrifies me because I’m afraid that when all is said and done I’ll be too late. She’s going to die, and we’re going to be separated regardless because I’ll be stuck as a human, and she’ll go on a sojourn to her next existence. Without me.”
Lev had reached out and gripped both her arms in his hands, and he didn’t realize just how hard his fingers dug into her until he saw his forefinger pushing deeply into her skin with a strength that would probably leave bruises, or would have if she were human. And yet she paid no mind, probably because she didn’t feel pain like mortals. He tried to remember that kind of imperviousness and what it felt like but couldn’t. It didn’t make sense.
“You have to find your faith, brother.” Celia looked deeply into his eyes. “I know it’s there. It’s still a part of you. Granted, it’s probably been bogged down in all the emotions, but you haven’t lost it. You know what angelic power is capable of. Hold fast to that because even though you aren’t an angel anymore, you are among them. You have not been abandoned, nor will you be, for in as much as you love her, Evan and I love you still.”
Unsure what to say, Lev pulled her into his arms and tried to take strength from feeling the mystery and wonder of all she was. The light and breath that marked her as pure and supernatural yet dwelled somewhere inside him, and he knew Celia was right. If anyone could save Elizabeth, she and Evan could. They would find a way. They didn’t believe in giving up.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Celia smiled and slowly pulled away. “You should go back to sleep.” Since Elizabeth had been taken, he hadn’t passed a night in his room, and he probably wouldn’t again until she returned safely home.
Celia waited until Lev had lain down again before slipping back to her room. He tried to make things easy on her by acting like he was falling asleep, but his mind was spinning too fast.
For the next few minutes, as he lay awake, he listened to the house settle back into silence before he just couldn’t take it anymore. It was then that Lev made his move. He had to, considering just how much he felt the walls closing in all around, suffocating him. And maybe they should, he thought, considering just how right Griffin had been about his inability to keep Elizabeth safe.
No, he needed to take a walk and burn off some of this crazy energy. Or maybe a jog around the lake would be enough to tire him out. He was going to have to be stealthy about it, though, if he wanted to go alone. Then again, maybe Celia would be too wrapped up in watching over Griffin to pay any mind to him, thinking he’d gone back to sleep. No, that wasn’t logical, but Celia had always been the optimistic sort. She wanted to believe she could offer something reassuring when sometimes there really wasn’t anything to offer. Like now. No words that could touch the emptiness lurking inside him.
Lev took a deep breath and sat up and grabbed his shoes, grateful he’d left them so close. The less noise he made, the better. He’d been under the microscope since becoming mortal, and part of him wondered if it had been such a disaster because so many people had such a vested interest in whether or not he could actually deal with being human.
He’d once believed becoming human was the answer. Now he knew better. Maybe there was no answer, but there had to be something besides this mess. There had to be.
Once he’d slipped on his shoes, he stood and stole to the front door. He waited a moment or two to see if someone were going to get up and ask him some inane question, but no one did, so he took that as his exit cue and slipped out into the crisp night air.
Lev struggled to keep his attention from wandering. Part of him knew he shouldn’t be out at this hour, especially not by himself, but he simply couldn’t breathe. It had all been just too much. He slipped his feet into his shoes and stared into the night, well aware he didn’t need any light for the path he planned to take. He had it memorized because of all the times he’d walked it with Elizabeth, and while he had never planned to head down it alone, he couldn’t wait until it was just he and Elizabeth again.
As he stepped off the porch and headed toward the lake, he stared at the full moon and tried to remember when it had been more than some soft yellow ball overhead, but the longer he was human, the less he could remember the celestial life when for centuries he had sojourned so many souls, all of which now seemed a dream.
Suddenly the weight of this life seemed almost unbearable, and once he had started walking, he upped his pace until he was running. His feet knew where to fall, and he made his way effortlessly, taking comfort in the way the air felt rushing past. It was the only thing which seemed to calm the frantic unsettled feeling. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and suddenly he felt so painfully alive that it took his breath away, leaving him raw and exposed.
He arrived at water’s edge before he’d realized it and stopped suddenly, looking out at the water beneath the moon, still save for the occasional breeze rippled the surface.
The world was so silent he could hardly bear it, so he spoke the only word he knew: “Elizabeth?” His voice was quiet, barely a whisper, but too loud all the same, the weight of it sending him to his knees.
It was his fault—all his.
“Elizabeth.” He said it again, almost as though he were having a conversation and thought she might suddenly appear to offer an answer to his unspoken question. When that didn’t happen, he screamed it, his voice echoing loudly almost like gunshots.
No answer. Had he truly expected one?
In pain, he looked up again at the heavens, “Why? Why did you let her be taken from me? Why make me human and strip away the one person I sacrificed everything for?” Fury boiled through him, and even so, he knew there was no answer.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Evan alighted silently before him. His wings seemed almost blue in the light, and they quickly began to fade until Lev couldn’t see them anymore. His shoulders tensed as he thought of what it had been like to have his own wings, but that was now a distant memory, weak and faulty like the rest of him.
“It doesn’t seem to matter where I am, does it?” Lev snapped.
“That’s what you think? And what happens if the dybbuks suddenly appear here? I’m willing to bet you aren’t even carrying your weapon.”
Evan stepped forward. “We’re not alone. We should get inside.” He slipped his arm around Lev to guide him back to the house.
“Did you deliver my request?”
“Yes,” Evan said softly.
“And?”
Evan’s bowed his head. “The answer was no.”
“Of course it was. Why am I not surprised?” He tried to jerk free, but Evan refused to let go.
“Okay, so this isn’t what you wanted to hear. Still, it’s not the end of things, Lev. At one point, you wanted more than anything to be human.”
“Yeah, that was when I had a reason to be human. That reason is now missing, and all I am to her like this is dead weight. I can’t save her. I can’t even save myself, so what’s the point?” He glared at Evan, open hostility on his face.
“Maybe that’s what you have to figure out. There’s a reason for everything, remember?”
This time Lev did jerk away. “Yeah, so maybe there is a reason for taking away the human who changed me from an angel who didn’t care about humans to one who realized what compassion was. Maybe there was a reason for that, but you know what? I don’t care.”
Lev charged forward, back to the house, knowing Evan would just follow him. He just couldn?
“You can’t just go running off like this anymore, Lev,” Evan called.
“Why not?” Lev growled back, whirling. “With any luck, maybe I’ll save everyone a whole lot of grief and get myself killed. Wouldn’t that simplify everything?”
Evan rushed to him and grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t even think that,” he hissed. “Don’t make me shadow your every move. All that will do is slow down any efforts I could put into finding Elizabeth, and that’s not something we want. Time isn’t on her side. We need to find her now, not later. So don’t give me a babysitting detail and think I can’t follow through on it.”
The two glared at one another, and while Lev thought he could stare his father down, he saw the anger and hurt in those blue eyes and suddenly felt a fresh wave of shame wash over him. Evan wasn’t making a promise he couldn’t keep. He would protect Lev at any cost, even that of Elizabeth’s life, which was a price Lev could never afford, regardless of how stupid he might presently be.
“I’m sorry.” He hung his head. “I never thought it would be like this. I expected when I became human my supernatural days would be over.”
“I know that. We all did, but when you became human, none of us knew how things would change. “I’ve never met an angel who had taken human form permanently, and I’ve been around much longer than you. But I still have faith there is a reason for all of this, and you can’t let your human emotions get the best of you. You have to keep faith in spite of how dark things seem.”
“I know.” Lev looked at the sky in time to see a shooting star, and in that moment he made a blind wish.
In silence they made their way to the house, side by side. Lev couldn’t help but see that Evan was constantly looking at the sky, searching for dybbuks, yet nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Lev unless he counted the gaping hole in his heart.
Chapter Eight
The next day, Lev found himself in a small cemetery just inside the city limits. Normally, it would have taken longer for planning the service and all, but as time was of the essence, Evan had used his powers to persuade the funeral home to work more quickly and the investigating officers to let things go. Evan rarely did that—manipulated humans that way—but considering they needed to find Elizabeth as soon as possible, he hadn’t had much choice.
In silence, Lev waited for a preacher to complete the last leg of Jimmie's human journey. Naturally, it was a rainy day, cold in the sudden bluster of the storm which so unexpectedly rolled through. Mud caked his dress shoes, and he felt stupid in this getup--like he presenting himself at some formal dance, not this horrible place.
While Lev had attended other funerals, this was his first human experience with such things, and he found he hated every moment of it. Although he'd known much about humans before he'd ever been one, the thing he could never have prepared himself for was the way the physical form itself seemed to be in constant conflict with the spiritual one, making it much harder just to keep his faith in the things he, as a former angel, knew to be valid and true. As such, it should not have been such a struggle to accept Jimmie's passing, but he was no longer an angel capable of grasping the infinite nature of the soul, just a human struggling with the mortality of the flesh.
The empty feeling of the cemetery graveside service only made Lev feel that much worse. He now wrestled with a dozen demons. His whole body stiffened under the imaginary wings pressing down on him.
Even though a waterproof awning sheltered them from the downpour, Lev still felt rain blow in from the sides, soaking into the white button-down shirt he wore. Perhaps he should've kept the jacket on, but it had felt so confining. As an angel, he'd never paid much mind to how tight human skin felt because he'd always known it would only be temporary. It had always just been a disguise, not whom he’d really been...until the day he'd woken in the hospital and found out what had been temporary had suddenly become permanent.
Since then, he'd become far more selective about what he wore because he felt he couldn't breathe in certain clothes, and days like today, he'd rather feel the rain rushing in at him.
Evan stood to one side of him and Celia on the other, with Griffin standing close to her. Since the sparring incident, Griffin head been wary of him, and Lev couldn't blame him. Just another of Lev’s failings as a human.
"Where's the preacher?" Lev asked, scanning the grounds, which wasn’t easy considering the endless rainfall. He squinted, struggling to make out anything through the sheet of rain. Lightning arched across the sky—a violent, jagged lance of searing light—and the thunder boomed around them.
"On his way, I'm sure," Evan replied calmly. "The storm may be causing traffic delays."
Griffin shook his head. Although he, too, preferred much more casual clothing, considering the jeans and t-shirts he usually wore, the black suit, obviously expensive, fitted him well.
“Lizzie should be here,” Griffin muttered, his gaze alighting on the coffin. “It’s going to kill her when she finds out Jimmie’s gone. She never got to say goodbye.”
Celia grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “No one feels worse about her not being here for this than Lev does.”
“Yeah, right,” Griffin scoffed. He might have said more, but the sudden appearance of the preacher, suited in a heavy black raincoat, silenced him.
Part of Lev wanted to make some comment about how stupid it was that Griffin could be sarcastic in front of angels but not a man of God--it seriously made no sense—but Lev knew it wasn’t worth it. As such, the silence continued as the preacher—a man in his fifties with grey hair and blue eyes—tried to shake the water off. Taking them all in, he offered a solemn nod.
“Will there be others attending?” he asked in a parched, cracked voice.
Evan stepped forward, taking it upon himself to speak for the group. “No, Reverend, this is all. We are a very tight-knit and private group.”
“I see. Very well then. Let’s get started before the storm gets worse.”
Evan looked at the sky again, and Lev couldn’t help but feel that he saw more than the rain. Were there dybbuks hovering close at hand to finish the damage they had already done? If Lev were still an angel, he’d be able to tell but not like this.
The preacher pulled a Bible from where he’d tucked it inside his jacket, and taking a deep breath Lev listened to the preacher praise a man he’d never known, probably using words Evan had provided him. The sentiments about Jimmie were true. That was one way Lev understood where the words had come from, and, like Griffin, he wished Elizabeth were here to say goodbye to the man who had, for all intents and purposes, been her father.
Although Lev tried to focus on the words, they all slurred together like the endless rain, and all he could really think about was Elizabeth, wondering where she was and hoping she was safe.
As the preacher read from his Bible, Lev stared into the open grave. He wondered what he would say when she finally came back and asked about Jimmie. Then again, part of him wondered if they would get her back at all. He wanted to believe it would happen, that a miracle would occur and they’d come to know how to save her, but so many mistakes had been made, and so many more to be made. The question was, when would they stop? Would they?
While staring at the grave, Lev thought he saw the lid moving, almost as though it were being pushed to the side—something which definitely shouldn’t have been possible considering it had hinges keeping it in place. It wasn’t built to open like that, yet there it was, the lid sliding askew right in front of him to reveal the casket’s lined interior. Lev’s eyes widened as he saw not Jimmie’s body but Elizabeth’s.
He sucked in air, reeling at what he saw. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
“Lev, is something wrong?” Celia asked.
Although he opened his mouth to answer, nothing came out because her eyelids slowly flutter
“Please don’t let me die,” she moaned. He shouldn’t have been able to hear her over the preacher and the rain, but he did. In fact, her voice was all he could hear save the violent beating of his heart.
“Elizabeth?” Her name came out a soft, desperate breath. He blinked, trying to drive away what was right in front of him, but it refused to leave. Part of him knew she wasn’t there, but that didn’t convince the rest of him.
Evan turned to him, trying to gauge what was going on and how serious it was. “What’s going on?” he whispered, leaning close.
Although he heard Evan, Lev ignored him and kept staring. He felt sweat beading on his forehead, and he shivered from a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. He felt each breath become more labored until he could scarcely breathe at all and the world around him tilted, taking on a surreal amusement park feel he couldn’t shake. What was happening to him?
Lev felt everyone staring at him, even the preacher, who had suddenly ceased speaking, shaking his head slightly and no doubt trying to puzzle out what was going on.
“Is there a problem?” the preacher asked, his voice now soft and soothing as though it alone might help deal with the crisis which perhaps he felt was imminent, waiting to calm Lev if needed. He lowered his Bible, one hand resting on the inside of the open pages.
“Lev?” Celia whispered. “You have to snap out of this.”
Her words might have been able to get through to him had Elizabeth’s eyes not been so plaintive—so pleading—and, at the same time, so accusing.
“I have to get to Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth?” the preacher repeated, confused.
“That’s a friend we’ve recently lost as well. He’s not over her,” Griffin offered, his voice heavy with forced neutrality as he refused to look at Lev.
“She isn’t here, Lev,” Evan said, his voice slow and deliberate. He tried to make his son look at him, but couldn’t.