While everything in me said that flying was impossible and that I should be terrified, I wasn’t afraid. The wind carried us so high that cars buzzed like fireflies on the streets below, and across Elliot Bay, the freighters and boats could have easily been toys. Michael swooped low over water reflecting distorted city lights and we glided under the West Seattle Bridge. His wings beating against the wind currents, we looped around and ascended again over the tall buildings of the downtown core.
The wind kicked up colder and whipped my hair against my face, and yet in his arms I was surprisingly warm. My blood thrummed through my veins. I looked at Michael’s face again and realized he was completely in his element, completely at ease. Flying was as much a part of him as breathing was for me. I was safe, and with his heart beating against the side of my ribs, the strength and warmth of his arms around me, I felt closer to him than ever.
After making another wide sweep of the harbor, we glided effortlessly back across the water to the beach at Lincoln Park. Although his landing was smooth and graceful, as soon as my feet touched the ground my knees buckled. Michael quickly grabbed my elbows to steady me.
“You okay?” He furled his wings securely behind him. “Did you have fun?”
I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out, so I nodded my response. My heart pounded wildly in my chest and I realized I was shaking. My whole body hummed with adrenaline; I had to remember to breathe.
“You’re sure?” He released my elbows and backed away from me. “You can stand on your own?”
I had foal legs, but I could stand. The edges of his halo shimmered as he tucked it around himself, and his wings shifted to their blue outline as though he had sheathed them with the air.
“It was amazing!” I said once I found my voice. My heart hammered against my ribs.
“Walk a bit. It’ll help you adjust to being on the ground again.”
He took my hand, dispelling any cold from the night air, and we strolled along a dimly-lit path that followed the rocky shore. His wings stretched out behind us as iridescent as starlight, visible only to me. Since it was the first clear night in days, there were a few other people on the path and Michael adjusted his wings to avoid touching them.
“How do your wings work?” I asked after I’d fully recovered from flight. “I usually see them as a blue outline, but when we were flying they were more real.”
“They’re inter-dimensional.”
“They’re what?” I asked in disbelief.
“They exist in another place, a different dimension so to speak, and I bring them into this one when I fly.”
I was completely baffled.
“It might be better if I show you,” he said, walking us out onto the beach, away from the street lights, out of the view of the ferries and houses in the distance. “We’re going to be invisible for a bit. Best to not attract attention.”
His halo tingled as he extended it around both of us, its phosphorescence rippling against the dark sky. A golden light glimmered behind him, extending from his back, and the blue outline of his wings flickered. Then, soundlessly as morning snow, his wings appeared, as though pulled from an invisible sheath.
He unfurled them, and such a sense of peace and stillness came over me. Full and white, they were glorious. Observing them filled me with a sense of wonder, as though I were witnessing something profound and exquisite, so much greater than myself. Their presence humbled me, made me realize that everything I’d ever known or believed was a tiny piece of a greater, more magnificent whole, and I was honored to even be a part of it.
Studying my face, Michael closed his wings and took a few steps toward me. “This isn’t too much, is it?”
I smiled at him and fought the strange urge to cry. It wasn’t from sadness but more the way a beautiful sunset might affect you if you’d been blind your whole life and were suddenly able to see it. Silently, Michael retracted his halo and slid his wings back to their usual placement, all the while observing me as though expecting me to freak out.
The wind picked up, blowing through my hair. Not wanting it to tangle further, I finger-combed it and tied it into a braid, wishing I’d done that before we went flying. I had a few tangles but was lucky it wasn’t a mass of knots. Not having an elastic band, I used a piece of my own hair to secure the end and then tucked the mass into my collar. It wouldn’t last long, but it would have to do.
Michael leaned against a nearby rock, still watching me. With the orange-cast light from the street lamp playing off his skin, shadowing the muscles of his shoulders and arms, and the flickering of golden light his halo cast around him, he looked positively heroic, like a statue of an ancient god.
“Where to now?” I asked, approaching him.
The wind had swept his hair into a tangle of curls splayed in every direction, forming a dark, shadowy crown of their own. I reached over to smooth it, like doing so was the most natural thing in the world, and he brushed his hand up my spine. Even through my jacket, a burning heat coursed through me. Touching the back of my head, he found my braid and pulled it out from my jacket. He twisted it between his fingers, examining it, then looked up at me, his gaze open, unguarded, his pupils as wide and black as the night sky. A flush warmed the back of my neck and I stood there mesmerized by him, unable to look away.
Arcing his other arm around me, he pulled me toward him and whispered, “I shouldn’t,” against the side of my face, as though it were a confession. Then, his lips cool and salty from the sea air, he kissed me with such tenderness it made my chest ache.
But I didn’t need tenderness. I needed him. Since the last time we’d kissed, I’d been so careful around him, trying not to cross the invisible line that would either damn him or scare him away. I couldn’t be careful anymore. Gripping the front of his shirt, I pulled him closer, and he locked his arms around me like I’d always wanted him to, like maybe he’d never let me go. Sitting on the rock, he gathered me into him, sliding me onto his lap. My thighs straddled his hips and he let out the softest of moans, his lips grazing my throat, the side of my neck, the line of my jaw, before returning to mine.
With a sharp inhale, he tensed and stopped kissing me. His eyes flashed a warning look
“We’re not alone.”
Chapter Twenty
An oily film of darkness rolled in like a black fog above us, extinguishing the street lights and stilling the air. The breeze from the water stopped, and even the waves themselves seemed to slow their undulations against the rocky shore.
Michael clenched the fleece of my jacket, in obvious pain. Behind him, something black and formless landed on his wings. Only it wasn’t formless at alclass="underline" it was something whose shape was so terrifying my mind couldn’t process it. It was shiny, fanged, and blacker than the night itself. I’d seen hellhounds before, and minions that fed on negative thoughts and made people do terrible things, but this was different. Somehow it was even more frightening.
“Are you okay?” I asked, unable to keep the alarm out of my voice.
He nodded, but winced as another shapeless creature landed on him.
“I thought these types of things couldn’t get across the halo.”
“My defenses were down.”
The kiss! So it was my fault.
“Can you fight it?” I asked. My throat was so tight I barely made a sound.
“If I move right now, it might come for you.”
I started to back away, but he gripped my arms so I was planted to the spot.
“It hasn’t seen you yet,” he said. “I’ll let you know when to move.”