Fallen Angel
HEATHER TERRELL
For Jim, Jack, and Ben
“How art thou fal en . . .”
Isaiah 14:12
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Eternity
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
I watched my curtains bil ow in the early autumn wind that wafted through my opened bedroom window. The night beckoned to me. And I answered its cal .
Lifting the bedcovers off me, I walked over to the window and floated out into the darkness of midnight. The wind surged behind me, as I flew through the shadowy streets of my town. Weaving between the familiar shingled homes of my sleeping neighbors, I reveled in the sheer pleasure of flight and the secrecy of my journey.
I was so lost in the sensation that the tal steeple of my town’s eighteenth-century church loomed before me unexpectedly. The church’s spidery, whitewashed spire stopped my progress, momentarily forcing me to drop and hover in midair in front of the church’s circular stained glass window.
Although the window was colorless in the night sky, I swear it stared at me like a preacher from the pulpit. Judging me. Why had I never noticed the window before? In my other dreams?
Without warning, the wind picked up speed and whipped at my face. It was cool and damp, and smel ed of the sea. Suddenly, the church and the town structures and even the streets felt confining, and I longed for the openness of the ocean.
My shoulder blades lifted and expanded. I streamlined my limbs to gain speed. Taking a sharp left away from the church, I headed toward the bracing—and freeing—air of the nearby sea.
Civilization disappeared as I raced along the jagged cliffs and rocky beaches of the Maine coast. The ebb and flow of the great ocean waves crashing on the shore below began to lure me farther and farther out to sea.
A bright flash on a rocky promontory caught my attention. The light burned brightly—and inexplicably—in the deep darkness of the moonless night. Tearing myself away from the hypnotic enticement of the tide, I swooped down to the promontory to inspect this unanticipated deviation in my recurrent dream.
As I neared the stony outcropping, I saw that the light on its surface wasn’t a fire or a lamp. It was a man. What looked like a light was the shimmer of his blond hair, so white it gleamed even in the scant il umination of the night.
The figure stared out at the sea, hands in his jeans pockets. He looked young, maybe around my age of sixteen. I flew a little closer, but not too close. I wanted to see him, but didn’t want to be seen.
Although his face was hazy in the dim light, I felt a powerful connection to him. An attraction. He had green eyes and surprisingly suntanned skin.
With such pale hair, I expected that he’d be fair.
He adjusted his position, and I could better see his almond-shaped eyes and cleft chin. But the more I studied his face, the more it changed. The eyes looked blue instead of green. The nose lengthened just a touch, and the lips fil ed out. He no longer looked young like me, or old like my parents, but sort of ageless. His features became more perfect and angular, and his skin grew paler and paler, almost as if his human flesh was turning to smooth, cold marble. Nearly as if a master sculptor had fashioned a human being into an ethereal creature.
Then he turned and stared at me, as if he knew I’d been there al along. And he smiled a horrible, knowing smile. His perfect face no longer seemed the sculpture of an angel but a demon, and I knew I looked into the face of evil itself.
I opened my mouth to scream in terror. And then I fel .
Chapter One
I fel to earth with a thud. Or so I thought.
I opened my eyes and saw my bedroom. I was lying on my tal sleigh bed, with the weak sun of early morning starting to stream through my blinds.
The dream had been so real that I half-expected to find myself sprawled out on the promontory instead of back at home under my warm covers.
Stil , the dream clung. Rubbing my eyes to wipe it away, I heard a familiar voice cal up the stairs.
“El ie.”
I stil felt kind of drugged by the dream. I moved my lips to answer but couldn’t get out much more than a croak.
“El speth? It’s time to get up.”
The spel of the dream lifted the moment my mom’s voice got louder and she used my ful name. She only cal ed me El speth—my old-fashioned given name, which she knew I hated—when she was real y irritated with me. My voice returned, and I responded to my mom. “I’l be down in a minute!”
Disentangling myself from my sheets, I slid off the bed and padded over to my dresser, where I’d laid out my clothes for the day. I shivered; I could actual y see my breath in the air. Why was it so cold?
I looked around the room and saw that my window was ajar. Just a crack, but enough to let in the chil iness of the Maine autumn morning. I didn’t remember opening it before I went to bed. Odd, but I could be a bit absentminded at times.
I closed the window, gathered up my clothes, and headed down the short hal way to my bathroom. Shutting the door behind me, I turned on the water—hot. Then I lathered lemony soap onto a damp washcloth, and took my first look into the mirror.
I ignored the pale, almost translucent, blue eyes looking back at me as best I could: their odd, unsettling color had brought me nothing but stares for years. Instead, I focused on the things I could control. I studied my face, wondering for the mil ionth time just how I’d tame my unruly, obstinately straight black hair. Picking up my brush, I began the long, painful process of undoing al the knots, yawned, and slowly awakened to the sunny morning.
Its brightness drove away the creepy ending to my dream and lifted my spirits a tiny bit. I thought maybe I’d be able to make it through my first day at the upper high school after al . Then again, I’d probably stil wish I could fast-forward through al the nonsense—past the hal ways and classrooms ful of social posing and gossipy distractions from schoolwork—and go straight to col ege.
Within the hour, I was careening through the hal ways crowded with al -too-familiar seniors and juniors. I approached my newly assigned locker with a single, silent prayer on my lips: “please, please, for once let Piper’s locker not be near mine.” In an unfortunate twist of fate, I was regularly subjected to the uber-popular Piper Faires both at home—where she was my next-door neighbor—and at school. Our last names—Faires and Faneuil—doomed me forever to be Piper’s locker neighbor as wel . The fact that Piper routinely ignored me at school, while stil acting like my friend at home, made the whole situation very awkward. Although I had to admit, our unavoidable in-school proximity and neighborhood friendship had benefits: they brought me a certain immunity from her group’s petty little games.