Page 6 of Fated Angel

They turn from each other and face the tombs around them. They haven’t had a chance to look around, too busy eliminating the threat to take in where they actually are. Besides the blood and the fresh bodies, the masonry of these tombs is astounding. Wooden and stone sarcophagi line the walls, each in their own alcove. Over every resting place are symbols indicating who’s laid to rest here, while those of lower standing have had their skulls incorporated into the walls of the tomb.

“Amazing,” Colt murmurs, eyes tracing the remains of some long-departed man. “The way humans keep their dead always intrigues me.”

“I agree. Each corner of the world has their own practices. Learning them all would take a lifetime.”

“Only one or two, honestly. What takes the longest is when humans come up with new ways to bury one another and I have something new to study.”

“Look!” Gabby cries, pointing to where the first man to die fell.

Colt follows her line of sight and squints as the light seems to get brighter, bolder. “He broke the lid,” he murmurs, walking forward with Gabby just behind him. He peers over the casket and a grin splits his face. “It’s here!”

Gabby ducks under his arm, placing his chest to her back as she stands on her tiptoes and looks inside. Colt, unable to resist, places one hand on her hip as he grabs the dead man by the collar and moves him out of the way. Inside the casket, pulsating with brightness, glows an obsidian shard.

Gabby reaches forward, hovering her hand over the ribcage that’s encasing the shard. “Uriel hid it inside a dead body.”

She lowers her hand into the ribcage and as her fingers surround the obsidian shard, she jolts in surprise. Colt grabs her hips, steadying her as her eyes cloud over with a distant glaze.

“Gabby?”

She blinks. Then shakes her head, stepping back and into Colt’s arms with the obsidian held up in front of them victoriously.

“We have the first shard,” she says reverently, leaning her head back against Colt as he wraps his arms protectively around her. For a moment there, he was sure something had happened to her, but she seems to be fine now.

“Now, we find the other six.”

Back in the open air, Colt pulls the journal from his back pocket and watches Gabby. She’s cleaned the spear with a rag, and as she settles it back in the impossibly deep bag she’s smiling. She turns to Colt as she places the obsidian shard delicately beside it.

“What’s next?” she asks, the victory lighting her face.

Colt steps forward and hands her the journal, and she flips through the pages to her next instructions. “Blaise says that once the first shard is found, we recite the spell she’s written to direct us to the next place. Like she did, we’ll get a sense of its location immediately, and then we just have to go there and find the glow,” he recites from memory.

“Sierra wrote a note here,” Gabby says, smiling. “I knew you could do it. Now hurry up and come home to us!”

“She loves you very much,” Colt says, brushing her curls away from her face tenderly.

“Let’s listen to her then and get home safe.” Gabby turns from Colt, moving to a space clear of vegetation. She reads the spell a few times, lips moving though no words come out. “Okay, all ready.”

She hands Colt the journal and her bag and closes her eyes. Colt watches, in awe as always, as her wings expand and curl slightly around her. The spell on her lips starts quietly, and as she speaks louder, so does the power emanating from her lithe body. Her whole form seems to light up with it, her hair becoming weightless around her head like a halo.

As she finishes the spell, her eyes fly open wide.

“It’s close,” she declares. “So close it seems silly! Uriel is tricky, doing the last thing anyone would expect. It’s only a few hours away.”

Colt shoulders her bag and walks up to her with pride written all over his face. As he wraps his arms around her, her wings surround him like a cocoon as they kiss.

“Let’s go get it then, shall we?” Colt says against her lips.

3

Gabby

Gabby’s thrumming with energy. And she knows exactly what she’s going to do with it.

All is silence as she lands on hard stone, Colt right beside her. They snap their wings in simultaneously as they approach the Damascus Citadel, a towering fortress steeped in history, perched high above the sleeping city. Moonlight bathes the centuries-old stone walls and towers in a silvery glow, casting long shadows across the battlements.

The second stone is here.

Waiting to be reunited with the first one tucked into a small pocket of her bag.

---