Fallen Angel

☾CHAPTER TWO

☽ Luke

FUCK IT, I thought, climbing through the window and eternally silencing the voices in my head. I think I had expected this to be some kind of pivotal moment; that once I stepped inside the house, I would feel something take place inside of me. Something like life. Or maybe like death. Something like a twig being snapped in half. Something you can't undo. Like Heaven washing its hands of me.

But as I crawled through that tight-ass window, trying to be quick and quiet (and failing at both), I felt nothing new. I didn't feel like I'd lost a piece of myself. I didn't feel like I'd been snapped in half. I felt totally and utterly the same. And for some reason, that was even more unnerving than if I'd felt anything at all.

As soon as my feet touched the floor on the other side of the window, I shot down, creeping deeper into the shadows. JT came through a few seconds later, and she was a hell of a lot quieter than I had been. Show off.

She crouched down beside me, mouthing some words I couldn't make out in the dark. "What?" I hissed, and she smacked me upside the head. No joke.

"Shut the fuck up," she whispered, turning around to close the window and leaving a gap at the bottom that she could slip her fingers through. I raised my hands in surrender when she turned back around, and she rolled her eyes at me. Honestly, what was I expecting? This girl doesn't fuck around.

The house was almost entirely shrouded in darkness, but my eyes were slowly adjusting. To the right, at about 2 o'clock, a wooden staircase joined the main floor to the one above. It looked creaky as hell — bad news. Further into the house, I could just make out the entrance to a kitchen. Everything else was just a smudge of inky black. Great.

"So I can't say 'what' but you can say 'shut the fuck up?'" I questioned. "Something's not adding up."

JT fixed me with an Aggressive Stare that clearly said, "Bitch?" And I swear to God she would've punched me in the face if not for the loud creeaak that sounded. It seemed to come from somewhere upstairs, and I hoped and prayed that it was just the house settling. It certainly didn't help settle the wild beating of my suddenly pulsing heart.

This was something I had never felt before this prodigiously: a fear of getting caught. Maybe because this time, I wasn't afraid of getting caught by God or other Angels. This time, I was afraid of getting caught by the people in the house, or the police. Divine consequences, I could handle. But Mortal consequences? Jail? No thanks, I'll pass.

At any rate, we weren't making much progress hiding by the window, so I gave JT a little shove, and jutted my chin out. Surprisingly, she didn't punch me, and instead began tiptoeing forwards. Together, we sneaked towards the kitchen, quiet as mice, until there was a shuffle in the space just ahead of us, at about 1 o'clock. We froze in our tracks, but nothing happened. Just as we were about to continue, there was a mumble, just off to the right. Squinting into the darkness, I saw that the open space to the right was a living room.

And the floor was peppered with bodies.

I began to search for Grim, thinking that he must be around, or at least on his way. What had happened here? Were these people hurt? Were they dead? I counted about five in total, lying in a row on the ground. They seemed to be relatively small, and wrapped in blankets. Were they kids? Is that why God sent me here, to save these children?

Normally, I could tell when I was in the presence of the dead or dying, but this time I felt nothing. Was something wrong with my senses?

I was about to take off towards the bodies when a hand gripped my arm. I almost screamed, but of course, it was just JT. She looked alarmed, but not as shocked as I probably looked. Why wasn't she concerned about dead children? Just as I was about to shake myself free from her grip, she pulled me closer and whispered something in my ear, so faint I almost missed it.