Early to Death, Early to Rise

Four

Nakita stood beside me in her designer jeans and trendy sandals, her black toenails catching a glint of sun. Her eyes darted from the sky to the rustling fields on both sides of us. Her amulet was blazing a violet that sent purple flashes of light against the darker shadows in the corn. Hair swinging, she spun in a circle, scanning the sky.

“Barnabas, where are you?” she said, and I shivered. Gone was the hesitancy, the awkwardness. She was an avenging angel, and nothing would get past her. “Perhaps we should leave without him. I’m hiding your amulet signature, but if Barnabas can follow the echo of your thought here, then Chronos can, too.”

I didn’t move, listening to the wind rattle the papery leaves and scanning the heavens and my aura for any prickling of energy. Damn it, if Ron knew we were here, it would make everything more difficult.

“Barnabas,” Nakita breathed as she fixed on something I couldn’t see, and I had a thought that it was probably the first time she’d been glad to see him.

My own shoulders eased, but I still felt queasy as I remembered being in Ron’s head. It had to have been him. If I could reach his thoughts, then he could reach mine. And who was the guy with him? His replacement? My future adversary?

Ron—or Chronos, as he was formally called—was slime. Yes, he believed in choice over fate, as I did. Yes, he sent light reapers out to stop dark reapers from culling souls from bodies too soon, as I would have liked to. If things were different, we’d be working toward the same thing. But he had lied to me about who I was when I’d been killed. He kept from me that I was a timekeeper until it was too late and my body had been hidden away by Kairos, forcing me to accept my dark-timekeeper status in order to stay alive. He had betrayed me and Barnabas both and lied to heaven in his attempt to shift the balance of heavenly power on earth to his favor. And he was supposed to be the good guy.

Nakita’s sandals scraped against the pavement, worry etched deep into her brow. “Soon as Barnabas gets here, we leave. Neither of us can stand up to Chronos,” she said, visibly upset. “He can stop time.”

I edged closer to her, wishing Barnabas had landed already. He was just a spot of white in the otherwise blue sky. “It’s okay,” I said, as if trying to convince myself. “Even if Ron does freeze time, he can’t kill me.”

She turned to me, her eyes shifting silver for an instant as she touched on the divine. “But what if he takes you where I can’t follow?”

Swallowing hard, I shrugged. “Why would he? We’re just out here standing on a road. Maybe he’ll simply send a reaper to check it out.” But it was more than that, and we both knew it. Once Ron knew what we were up to, he’d simply slap a guardian angel on Shoe and I’d lose.

I looked up when the light was eclipsed for an instant, only to blind myself when a pair of white wings blinked out the sun. In a gust of air, Barnabas landed before us, his brown eyes shining with delight. “Madison, you did it!” he said, his wings arching up, the tips crossing an instant before they vanished. Striding forward, he exclaimed, “I knew you could. When your thought slipped into mine…I am so proud of you!” But then he jerked to a halt upon noticing Nakita’s and my worry. “What’s wrong?”

Nakita took a firm stance, eyes on the sky again. “Her message echoed into Chronos’s mind as well as yours.”

“He’s probably coming,” I said miserably.

“How?” Barnabas said, looking confused. “His resonance isn’t anywhere near mine.”

Nakita’s eyes were darting everywhere. “They are both timekeepers,” she said. “You don’t think the seraphs created them such that they could talk if they wanted to?”

“I saw through his eyes,” I added.

“Sweet updrafts!” Barnabas cursed. “Are you shielding her?”

“Of course I’m shielding her, you broken feather!” Nakita snapped. “But I’m sure he got a glimpse of where we are before I got my shield in place. You did, didn’t you?”

Barnabas grimaced. Taking my elbow, he pulled us off the road, almost into the hissing cornstalks. “Fine. We leave,” he said to Nakita. “Let’s get out of here before he does show up.”

Nakita nodded and her amulet blazed as she shrugged her shoulders and her wings appeared. In an instant, I was between two angels, one with light wings, one with dark, both worried. “Why can’t I ever do anything right?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but when I got scared, I talked.

Barnabas stretched his wings again—they ran from one edge of the road to the other. “It’s not right or wrong,” he said, gathering me close to carry me into the air. “You did it, and now you need to learn how to focus. Why do you expect yourself to be perfect the first time? I’d have you try it again right now, but we have to stay shielded from here on out, and a shielded mind is a closed one.”

Silent, I leaned back into him, breathing in the smell of sun and feathers. Although he said it was okay, it would still be my fault if Ron figured out we were up to something.

“You did well,” he said as his arm slipped around me. “You’ve worked hard for this skill, and you should be happy.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling slightly better as I stepped back onto his feet.

But he didn’t move. Actually, nothing was moving—not Barnabas, the wind, or the corn—and I jerked when I felt a nebulous something touch my amulet and claim a portion of it.

Instinct kicked in, and drawing on hours of practice, I brought up my inner sight of my amulet, placing it among the fabric of time.

The “now” was a shimmering line stretching to infinity. On it was my soul sending out thoughts into the future, pulling me along as they fastened me to the future an instant before it became the present. Behind me in my inner sight I could see my past, interweaving heavily with Barnabas, Nakita, and even the bright silver thoughts of Ace. But it wasn’t just my thoughts that were attaching my amulet to the present, as was normal. There were someone else’s.

Ron, I thought in a panic, wiping a theoretical hand over the fabric of time to destroy his amulet’s ties, and only his amulet’s ties, to me.

I opened my eyes…. The entire process had taken less time than a bubble bursting.

“Barnabas?” I quavered, seeing his arm still around me. I slid from his unmoving grip. Panic slipped between my thought and action. Ron had stopped time. Son of a puppy.

Heart pounding, I turned in the absolute stillness of stopped time. There, right in the middle of the road, was Ron.

Ron wasn’t a tall man, not much more than my height, which wasn’t surprising, since he was born a thousand years ago. I think his height bothered him. His tightly curled graying hair had once been black, and his complexion was dark. His eyes shifted color upon his mood, and I wondered if mine did now, too. He was wearing the same light-colored outfit that I’d seen him in moments ago in my head, sort of Greek-looking. Seeing him standing ten feet away with a shocked expression gave me a flash of satisfaction. Maybe he hadn’t expected me to break his hold so easily.

“Stop it,” I said as I gripped my amulet. His trying to take my amulet wasn’t likely, since he couldn’t use it, but it was still hard for me to let go of the warm stone.

Ron squinted down the long road behind me. “Congratulations,” he said, “both on breaking my hold on your amulet and learning how to converse silently with it. I know Barnabas didn’t teach you. He has the imagination of an earthworm. Did the seraphs? Maybe you could use your inside voice next time? You were shouting.”

He was being sarcastic, and I flung a hand out in warning when he took a step forward. Stopping short, he put a hand on his hip to look at me like someone might look at a yapping dog behind a fence. “What are you doing out here? Isn’t it a school day?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” I said, backing up to be side by side with Barnabas and Nakita. “Let them go.”

He smiled. I remembered when I believed in it. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Madison. I won’t hurt you. The seraphs would kill me. You’re their next big hope.” He shook his head, almost laughing at me.

“There are worse things than being hurt.” And I bet you know all of them, I thought, wishing I had Barnabas and Nakita to back me. Jeez, it was weird having them silent and unmoving behind me. With a sudden thought, I brought up the nether sight of my mind, searching the fabric of time for the violet glow of Nakita and the brilliant green of Barnabas. Finding them, I wiped all the threads that were connecting them to Ron’s amulet.

Feeling it, Ron swore, dropping back as Barnabas and Nakita both came to life.

A surge of excitement washed through me, and I wavered on my feet with the effort of trying to divide my attention between the now and the next. The minute I quit wiping Ron’s amulet’s threads, they would be frozen again.

“Leave her alone, Ron!” Barnabas shouted as he caught me, and I felt an odd sensation tingle through my aura. Nakita stood between us, and I wanted to cry. I had freed them! I wasn’t so helpless after all, even if Barnabas was keeping me from falling down.

“It’s not me,” Ron said darkly. “She’s just not good at what she’s trying to do.”

Barnabas’s grip on me tightened, and I slowly found my balance. “’S okay,” I said softly as dividing my thoughts got easier. I had practiced wiping threads before, but I hadn’t done it in a while. Even so, that time I had been destroying the threads my amulet was making, not another’s. This was…hard, and I couldn’t concentrate on everything.

Nakita slowly eased out of her instinctive crouch, knowing Ron wasn’t bent on hurting us. He just wanted to know what we were doing. I wasn’t going to tell him, and he looked unhappy as I slowly stood under my own power. All we’d have to do was leave, and he’d get nothing.

“What do you want?” I said, though it was obvious. And who was that with you in the desert? Finding enough time to teach him, are you?

Ron spread his hands wide as he tried to look reasonable. “To know what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s not a scything, or I would have flashed forward by now.”

Nakita shifted to put her slight form between me and Ron. “So you can just go, yes?” she said, but he ignored her, looking at Barnabas instead.

“Killing those you once pledged to me to save,” Ron said caustically, and I realized that the two hadn’t spoken since I’d become the dark timekeeper and Barnabas had left him. “I gave you your amulet. You were my best, Barnabas, but I wouldn’t take you back now if you abased yourself on a rock for a thousand years. Consorting with the same dark reaper you fought against? Look at her, with her black nails and shiny purse. She’s no warrior. You’ve yoked yourself to the inept and foolish. You have truly fallen, angel.”

“You didn’t give me my amulet,” Barnabas said tightly. “Your predecessor’s predecessor did,” he said, releasing his amulet to let the purity of the neutral green shine forth. Nakita and I exchanged a wondering glance. Just how long had Barnabas been at this? “I still believe in choice,” he went on stoically. “Times changed. You didn’t. I owe you nothing. You lied to me,” Barnabas finished bitterly.

“You failed me,” Ron said, as if it didn’t matter. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. If you had, it would have gone perfectly and light reapers would be in control by now.”

“I trusted you to do what is right,” Barnabas said softly. “Now I trust Madison.”

Ron huffed. “So easily swayed into killing the innocent,” the light timekeeper mocked, trying not to look as if he were edging back.

“I’m not,” Barnabas said, and Nakita pushed past him.

“And the mark isn’t innocent,” she said hotly, a flush to her cheeks. “He’s deliberately going to allow people to die by his actions, then go on to do it again!”

Alarmed, I shot a look at her. “Shut up!” I exclaimed. She was giving everything away!

But the damage had been done, and Ron’s eyes lit up. “It is a reap,” he said. “But I’ve not flashed forward.”

Nakita struck a dramatic pose. “The seraphs see farther than you.”

“Will you shut your mouth!” Barnabas shouted.

“And no worries, Chronos,” Nakita boasted, undaunted. “I will kill him before you can set a guardian angel to protect him to his dying days. You won’t sully the seraphs’ perfect vision this time!”

Great. Just great. This wasn’t going well, and I looked into the frozen cornfields as I stood in the middle of an empty road, the sky holding an unmoving sun. “Ron, will you just back off?” I said, knowing he wouldn’t. “Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save someone.”

Barnabas made a strangled noise, and I turned to him. “What, like he hasn’t already figured out it’s a reap?” I said sourly. “Nakita kind of sank that boat.”

Nakita winced with a wash of chagrin, only now realizing what she’d done.

“You,” Ron said, pointing a finger at me, “are a murderer for allowing a blood-seeking, avenging angel to scythe the innocent. I tried to save you from it, but you threw your own chance to make a difference in the dirt!”

My eyes narrowed, and I stepped forward until Barnabas’s touch stopped me. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t lied to me, I might see things differently!” I exclaimed, shaking off Barnabas. Yeah, I was working for the dark reapers, but I was trying to change things, make what the seraphs wanted mesh with what I believed. Ron, though, would never understand.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” I said. “I’m trying to save someone’s life. Why don’t you just go away?”

Smiling, he slid his gaze to Nakita. She was there to kill Shoe if I failed, and a calculating gleam came into his eye. No matter what, he would always see me in a bad light—chained by what he had believed because it was all he had known.

“You’re trying to save someone,” he echoed, mocking me. “With a traitorous light reaper who’s gone grim and a dark reaper beside you in case you fail.”

“I am not a traitor to what I believe!” Barnabas said, and I lifted my chin high.

“We’ll find him first,” I stated.

Ron chuckled, starting to fall back with a slow toe-heel, toe-heel motion. “We’ll see,” he said knowingly. “You don’t know who you’re looking for. You’ve not flashed forward, either. I can tell. You’re far too confident. The seraphs giving you information? Good luck with that. They are so farsighted that they can’t see what’s under their stuck-up noses. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

“Yeah?” I shot back at him, ticked. “Whose fault is that?”

A huge smile came over his face. “Mine,” he said, and still looking at me, he vanished.

The world jumped into motion with a whoosh of sound, and I started, shocked by the sudden burst of new light and noise. My focus blurred as I found myself trying to wipe threads from an amulet that was no longer there. I’d seen him go this time, folding in on himself to vanish in a bright, soundless pop. I’d never be able to do that.

“God help you, Nakita,” Barnabas said as he strode out to the middle of the road. “Why didn’t you just draw him a picture of who we’re trying to save?”

Nakita spun on her heel. “You’re still laboring under the assumption that I’m trying to save Shoe,” she said, pointing her purse at him as if it were a weapon. “If I so much as see a black wing, light reaper, or guardian angel other than Grace, I will kill him. I will not have that cretin of a timekeeper put a guardian angel on such as Shoe!”

“Ron is not a cretin!” Barnabas shouted, still feeling a smidgen of loyalty, apparently.

“Yes, he is!”

I sighed, sitting down in the middle of the warm road with my back to them, waiting for them to finish yelling at each other. At least Ron had left thinking we didn’t know who was marked.

“You are not going to kill Shoe!” Barnabas said. “I won’t let you!”

“Careful, Barnabas,” she mocked. “Your grim is showing.”

That was low, and I turned to see her with a hand on a hip, standing inches from him. He was scowling, feeling the shame of the derogatory term. Barnabas wasn’t grim. Sure, he had left Ron, but he wasn’t a vigilante who existed only for the thrill of killing someone.

“I won’t allow a guardian angel to be gifted to Shoe,” she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the unseen town. “From the moment he chooses to kill, he will cause only pain to the world. There is no grace in a life lived like that!”

“Funny, isn’t that what you do? Kill people?” he shot back at her, and she made a muffled scream of frustration.

“Shut your singing hole,” she hissed at Barnabas. “All this arguing is going to get Madison in trouble. The seraphs are watching.”

“Then you shut up,” he huffed, but I felt a new worry mix with the old. I’d forgotten that. The seraphs were watching, and if I couldn’t get a light and a dark reaper to work together, then this would never work.

“Barnabas,” I interrupted, not looking up from my view of the cornfield. “Does Ron’s knowing what we’re doing make this impossible, or just harder?”

Finally they stopped arguing. Barnabas’s steps were silent in his faded sneakers as he came to stand in front of me. His wings were gone, and he looked haunted. Clearly Ron had shaken him. “Until Ron can identify who the mark is, I think nothing has changed,” Barnabas said, and Nakita snorted. “We’ll need to be more circumspect to keep him from following us. One of us needs to stay with you and hide your amulet’s resonance.” His gaze went behind me to Nakita. “It’d be easier if you’d simply agree not to kill Shoe.”

“I have not killed him!” she protested, stalking forward. “But I will before I let Chronos or one of his reapers put an angel on him to protect him from his fate. An angel is forever, and with heaven’s mindless protection, he could do untold damage.”

I wondered how many of history’s recent dictators had been the result of Ron’s sending a light reaper to uphold a soul’s right to choice. Getting to my feet, I sighed. “This is really weird,” I said as I brushed my black tights off. “I like both of you, and I don’t know why.”

Nakita blinked, her attention diverted from Barnabas. “Because you’re the dark timekeeper,” she said, as if it were obvious.

Sighing, I looked up and down the road, wanting to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. “What do you think he’s going to do?” I asked Barnabas. “Ron, I mean. You know him best.”

Barnabas looked to the spot of pavement where Ron had last stood. “Probably search the local time lines until he finds out where we’ve been, then try to identify the people we’ve come in contact with. But he won’t be able to actually act until he flashes forward and sees the future. That’s when he would send a reaper out. Sometimes the dark timekeeper flashes first, sometimes the light. It’s the person who flashes last who has the clearer picture of the mark, so it evens things out, I suppose.”

I nodded, thinking it made sense. The closer in time the flash was from the turning point happening, the clearer the timekeeper’s perceptions would be. Grimacing, I glanced at my watch. It was getting late, and it was going to take a while to get home, even by wing. “I have to get back to school,” I said, worried. “Check in with my dad. Get my assignments from Josh.”

“I’ll stay here,” Barnabas said immediately, and Nakita predictably bristled.

“Why you?” she asked belligerently, standing with her feet spread wide.

I met Barnabas’s eyes, telling him without saying a word that I’d handle this. She was mad enough at him already. “Because Barnabas won’t kill Shoe if Ron sends someone to watch us.” Nakita started to protest, and I got angry. “Look,” I said, letting some of my frustration show. “There are no black wings in sight. I haven’t flashed forward yet, and neither has Ron. Barnabas, can you reach my thoughts over that great a distance?”

“Not when you’re shielded,” he said glumly.

“Not a problem,” I said, running a hand over the back of my head to smooth my hair. “I don’t need to be shielded when I’m at home. Ron knows where I live, and if he sees me there, then he might give up on watching me at all. Nakita can fly me home and back again when my dad goes to sleep. You can let us know if something shifts in the meantime.”

It was a good plan, as far as I could tell, but Barnabas looked as excited about it as Nakita did. “I’ll call you if something changes,” he agreed, gaze downcast, and I realized it bothered him that his resonance had officially shifted down the spectrum. He could no longer be counted among the light reapers, no matter what he believed. His contact with me had stained him as much as it had damaged Nakita.

“Okay,” I said meekly, not liking to see him depressed. He had been a light reaper for a long time. He wasn’t ever going to fit in with the dark reapers, even if his amulet shifted as black as mine. He was going to be alone and apart for the rest of his life.

I edged toward Nakita, never having flown with her before but figuring that if Barnabas could do it, she could, too. For a moment it looked as if she were going to protest, but upon seeing how unhappy Barnabas was, she simply arched her wings to make the tips touch high above her head. I stared up at them, thinking they were beautiful, even if they didn’t go with her brightly colored clothes and sandals. I eyed Barnabas, feeling funny leaving him when he was like this.

“Are you able to fly with another person?” I asked her, and Nakita flicked her gaze to Barnabas and back to me.

“I’ll let you know in a moment,” she said, making me glad I was already dead.

Seeing us getting ready to leave, Barnabas mustered a smile. “Go,” he said. “I’ll get myself in a distant place where I can watch Shoe without giving away who I’m watching. I’d think we have at least until midnight for Ron to pick out Shoe’s resonance from the fabric of time.”

By his uneasy stance, I didn’t know if I should believe him. Sighing, I dropped back to stand with Nakita. Her arm hesitantly wrapped around my waist, and I stumbled as her wings opened, making us lift an inch and then drop. My heart pounded, and she shifted her weight.

“I’m sorry you’re different now,” she said to Barnabas. Her words were soft, but I knew he heard her as his shaggy mop of hair shifted. “She changes people,” she said, as if I weren’t standing right there. “Maybe that’s her purpose.”

“Maybe,” Barnabas said; then he ducked as Nakita pushed down with her wings.

I gasped as the corn around us flattened and we were suddenly airborne. The sudden air-pressure shift made me wince—not to mention Nakita’s wobbly ascent—and I looked down as Barnabas gazed up. He was standing in the middle of the deserted road, the impressions of Nakita’s wings making what looked almost like part of a crop circle around him. My stomach lurched, and I gripped Nakita’s arm holding me to her. She wasn’t as good as Barnabas in carrying my weight, but she could do it, and I relaxed, hearing her sigh in relief.

As she winged us back to Three Rivers, my mind kept swirling over the fact that Nakita had felt sorrow for Barnabas when she had once felt only disdain. I had changed her, too.

Devoting your life to the person who had accidentally put black wings inside of you to eat your memories and teach you the meaning of death could not be an easy thing to do.