When I woke up the moon and stars were gone. I could feel the soft feathers of Gabriel’s wing, covering me like a blanket. I tried propping myself up but I flinched in pain when my leg rubbed the ground. I pushed Gabriel’s wing aside and the frigid morning air hit my skin. I could feel the bones in my wings rattling as I shivered. I got past the cold eventually and stood up; the gash on my leg was bandaged. Gabriel must have gone to get this in a complete panic. I turned to face where he was still lying on the ground, he looked so peaceful, and I could hardly believe that he was the one who erupted like that yesterday. I watched him for a while longer. I had to wake him up because my parents were going to have an entire panic attack if I didn’t get home by six. I kneeled down beside him and gently shook his shoulder to wake him up, ignoring the painful throbbing in my leg. He did not wake up. I shuddered from the cold and the memory of last night. I decided that since moving him wouldn’t wake him up I would have to use our new skill. I concentrated on speaking to him, I whispered to him in my head,
‘Gabriel, wake up we have to go. You and I need to go home.’
He stirred and blinked himself awake.
‘Are you okay Angela? I was so worried about you last night I wasn’t able to think about anything.’
‘It’s okay Gabriel; it just hurts when it touches something.’ I was lying but it was one of the first lies that I told to protect someone else. Gabriel sat up and looked around.
“Angela, how long have we been here?”
“Long enough to have fallen asleep on the ground. I really think that we should go home.”
“Angela, you can’t walk on that leg, much less land on it. My sister thrashed around so much it tore some of your leg muscle.”
“What are we supposed to do then?”
“I don’t know yet, if I drop you off at your house and your parents are home then they’ll kill me. If I drop you off at a hospital, things will eventually go bad too.”
“That didn’t answer my question Gabriel. What are we going to do about getting home?”
“I guess I could carry you.”
“Not with my parents ready to tear my heart out and roast it on a stake you’re not!”
“Let me put it this way, either I carry you or I let you walk the whole way to your house and eventually lose the use of your right leg and never fly again.” He had a point, but I didn’t want him to get in trouble. My parents have been known to attempt getting rid of the Risen thoroughly. Now that I’ve met Gabriel, I see that all the Risen aren’t bad. However, his sister is another story. But, since Jake is just as bad, I can’t see why the Risen would like the Fallen any more than we like them.
“Well what can we do?” he hung his head in his exhaustion of ideas.
“What we can do is get me to the hospital, if I bleed any more I’ll pass out from anemia.” Gabriel sighed and he lifted me in his arms, I regretted making him do this, but I didn’t want to spend all day on the edge of a cliff. After what seemed like a long time, I spoke to him through thought.
‘Gabriel?’
‘What?’ he peevishly replied.
‘I can fly you know, it’s just the landing I can’t do right now.’
‘No, you lost too much blood, you need to rest, and let the muscle heal itself.’
‘I said that I can fly! I won’t have you strain yourself from this! I-‘
I never finished my thought; Gabriel kissed me again, with greater passion than the previous kiss. When he let go of my lips, he blurted aloud,
“I love you, from the first time I had seen you I knew that I loved you, every time I see you I love you more, my heart stings in my chest when you disappear. I won’t lose you.”
“Gabriel…”
“I will never let anything get in the way of that.” By this time, we had gotten to the hospital. He landed lightly but didn’t put me down. He walked straight in through the front door, and filled out the paperwork to reserve a spot for me. He didn’t even put me down for that, he held me up with one arm. Only after he had made sure that the hospital would get to me he put me in a chair, he did it so delicately, as if I would shatter if he made a mistake. I broke the silence first.
“Gabriel, you never had to do anything to help me.”
“I did it because I felt like it. I will never lose you, no matter what happens.”
“I never asked you.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Angela, the doctor will see you now.” Chimed in the nurse who appeared ten seconds ago, I jumped at her voice, my wound throbbing. Her nametag said Calandra; she had flaming red hair and purple eyes. I expected to see wings, but my eyes didn’t tell me so. Had hers been amputated or had she been born without them? It suddenly it hit me, she never had wings because she was a Non. There are other couples of mixed races and couples of Hybrids? I’ve always been told there never were any.
“This way please.” She signaled for a wheelchair but Gabriel was already carrying me. We began traveling down the sterile white hallway. The open back of her nurse’s uniform that was meant for angels with wings made it obvious that she hadn’t had an amputation; she had no trace of a scar. She didn’t look much older than we are. Jake and I had turned seventeen almost seven months ago. In Gabriel's sub-conscious during that strange phenomenon last night, I found his age. He and his sister will be eighteen in a couple of months.
“You don’t have to stare.” Calandra said.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’ve just never seen…”
“A Non?” how does she know this?
“You’re probably wondering why I answer many of your questions before you ask them.”
“Yes I am.” Gabriel has still said nothing.
“Since I am a Non, it entitles me to one special talent. Mine is telepathic abilities, there are other Non nurses here who have different abilities, but we are all disguised as normal angels. Fake wings and everything. The head nurse has a talent for disguises through telepathic trickery. How is it you saw through it?” do I tell her or say that her disguise wore off? Before I decide, Gabriel pipes in and tells Calandra our secret.
“Do you know about the phenomenon in the cosmos last night?”
“What does this have to do with you seeing what I really look like?”
“I think that Angela and I gained a talent like yours, we can communicate through thought.” Calandra froze.
“What?”
“I said that we can communicate through thought due to the arrangement of the cosmos last night.”
“You’re the two from the legend...,” she whispered.
“What?” I nearly shouted at the top of my lungs.
“You two are from the legend of the ancients.” Calandra whispered. “You are from the legend of time…”
“What are you talking about?” Before she could answer, a doctor appeared from around the corner and Calandra pretended like nothing was wrong and showed us to the room I would stay in until the doctor showed up. Or my parents, I shuddered at the thought.
‘What’s wrong?’ Gabriel startled me again.
‘You should leave before my parents come.’
‘Why?’
‘They have killed the Risen before. I want you to live.’
‘I’m only leaving because it’s the best thing to do right now, I will not stay away forever.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ Without another word he left, his head hung low and his wings drooping low enough to drag on the ground. Almost ten minutes later, my family came in, my mother in a semi-panic.
“Angela, what happened?”
“I um, kind of sat on a broken bottle. I didn’t see it until I felt it.”
“Sounds just like you sis.” I wanted to smack that stupid grin off his face but I didn’t, he stood there, grinning that eerie stupid grin that ticks me off every time. I was about to punch him when the doctor walked in.
“Good morning everyone, I will be seeing to Angela today. I will have to ask you to wait out in the lobby.” My family said nothing; they just walked out and left me with a strange doctor who I knew nothing about. He undid the bandages, and I thought it hurt before. This was hell. Blood rushed to my calf and it began bleeding violently, with every throb the stream became stronger. I could feel the weak tissues that had formed there overnight tear open with every pulse. I screamed with a fury of pain that I would never wish on anyone.
‘God make it stop!’
I screamed in my thoughts along my incoherent shrieks. The pus pockets burst open and hot needles stung my exposed, infected flesh. I screamed in pain once again.
‘Gabriel!’
“Nurse! Nurse! I need a nurse in here! We have an emergency!” Calandra rushed in and brought with her two more nurses, one was another Non girl, and the other a male Hybrid nurse. I didn’t get a chance to see what he looked like until later. I succumbed to the quiet and painless space of unconsciousness.