“What have you done?” I cried.
“I didn’t have the strength to keep them from taking you,” he said. “So I went and got the strength to get you back.”
“By becoming a beast!?” I yelled.
“By becoming something more than human, something that existed in your world.”
“In my world?” I said, horror dawning through me.
“Now nothing can keep us apart.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Hellhounds are not part of my world. They are prey for my kind.”
“Hellhound?”
“That’s what you are, is it not?”
“I was told I was a hound. There was no mention of hell.”
“You’re a fool!” I snapped. “Whoever made you into this was not someone of God; that I can assure you. What did you promise in exchange?”
“What I promised doesn’t matter,” he argued. “What matters is that you’re safe.”
“You shouldn’t have come for me. The loss of your humanity wasn’t worth this.”
He rushed toward me, grabbing my hand and shoving it against his chest. “I’m still the same man. Look at me. Feel me.”
Indeed, I felt the steady beating of his heart. He did look the same. He did sound the same. But deep down I knew the changes within him couldn’t be seen. They were lurking within his very soul.
“You don’t understand,” I whispered. “Hellhounds are evil. They kill. They are a creation of Lucifer himself. You have turned yourself into something that is the complete opposite of what my kind stand for.”
His heart skipped a beat.
I slid my hand out from beneath his and used it to brush away a tear trailing down my cheek.
“No,” he denied, shaking his head. “I’m not evil.”
“How many did you kill tonight, Callum?” I asked, looking once more at the thousands of feathers lying around us.
“I only did that because of what they did to you,” he said, hard. “They deserved it.”
“That wasn’t for you to decide! You do not get to choose who lives and dies!”
“I do when it comes to you.”
I shook my head, unable to say another word. I did this—me and me alone. What would become of him now?
I looked back at Callum, standing there with this look on his face… this look of utter isolation… this sense of realization, as if what he’d done was just now sinking in. “Gemma…” he said, voice cracking before completely falling away.
I went to him, closed the distance between us, and took his face between my hands. “It doesn’t matter,” I said passionately. “This doesn’t have to damn you. What you did… you changed… out of love, not out of darkness. That is what will save you. That is what will save us.”
“Us?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’m going to help you. I won’t leave you like this.”
He pushed my hands away. “I don’t want you because you pity me… out of some sense of warped responsibility.”
“That isn’t what this is,” I denied.
“Then what is it?” he demanded, almost daring me to respond.
I guess this is where I made my final choice. This is where the two parts of me that were torn mended together and created the rest of my eternity.
“Love,” I whispered, clearing my throat. Then, louder, I repeated, “Love. I’m with you out of love.”
His eyes did that flashing thing again, which was actually kind of unsettling, but then he scooped me up and pressed me against him, practically squeezing all the air from my lungs. He felt the same as he always had. We were going to be okay.
Someone made a slight sound behind us and we spun, Callum stepping in front of me, blocking my body from sight. But whatever he saw must not have threatened him because while his shoulders remained tense, there was no sense of alarm anywhere about him.
“Hello, Gemma,” said a familiar voice.
I stepped around Callum to see Airis watching us. “Airis,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
But I already knew. Moments ago I’d made my choice and now it was about to become official.
“I’ve come to collect your wings.”
Shock harpooned through me. “You’re going to take my wings?” I thought they’d merely turn black, that their brilliant white would fall prey to shade.
“What? No!” Callum said, holding out his hand to keep me from going any farther.
Airis glanced at him with barely concealed dislike. “Did you think she would be allowed to keep her wings? Her status? You have damned her to the same kind of existence as those black wings you just murdered.”
He recoiled from her words, from the truth behind them.
“I don’t understand, Airis. Won’t I become a fallen?”
“Yes. You have already taken on the status of fallen.”
I glanced behind me. “But my wings are still white.”
“Instead of turning into a black wing and being banished to hell, you are being stripped of your wings, of many of your powers, and will be left to spend your eternity here on earth.”
Callum made a sound, but I didn’t look at him. This wasn’t about him. It was about me and the choices that led me here. It really was more than I thought I would get. In fact, I was confused. I’d never heard of an angel being stripped of his wings and being left on earth.
Airis continued to speak as I worked it all out in my mind. “You will no longer be allowed access to heaven, to the InBetween, or to God. You have betrayed him. You, an angel, were supposed to love him and only him, hold him in your highest esteem.” She glanced at Callum before looking back at me. “But you allowed another into your heart. Another who has made a deal with hell, a deal with darkness.”
“He did it only to save me.” I pleaded, not wanting her to think badly of Callum.
“If you had followed the commands of our Father, then he wouldn’t have done it at all.”
My shoulders slumped because she was right. Airis approached me, and Callum took a step forward, but I held up my hand. “Stay back,” I told him. “This must be done.”
I didn’t think he would listen, but he moved no farther and I turned back to Airis. She lifted her hands, creating a ball of intense, bright light in her palms and then threw it at me. It hit me in the chest. The impact swayed me on my feet and then a searing heat jolted me and I fell to my knees.