Page 4 of Grave Revelations

Rebecca winced as pressure built in her head. She looked around at the smooth white stone bathed in soft light. “The world… it was bleeding, and there was a huge meteor shower and a tidal wave.” She glanced down at her dry clothes. “I should be dead.”

She sat up, wincing at the headache building at the base of her skull, giving herself space from the cool, unnatural feel of Gabriel’s swirling onyx skin. He tucked his wispy wings behind his back, revealing blue skies.

Rebecca pushed to her feet, ignoring his proffered hand, and leaned over the patio wall, staring down at sparkling azure waves. Even from this height, the water was so clear she could see the white sandy bottom far below.

“I don’t understand. A wave that big would have unsettled everything. I should have drowned. And it was rainingblood.”

Gabriel peered over the edge of the wall, hovering insufferably close.

She stepped back, stretching her neck up and up. “Were you this tall before?”

His brows dipped into dark slashes over his even darker eyes. “My form was not bound before. I chose to appear however I liked. Now, I am more confined in some ways, yet freer in others.”

Rebecca gave him another once over, trying not to linger on the part that had captured her attention before.

His lips ticked up at the corners, a lopsided grin creasing one cheek.

“Please, explore,” he said, stretching his muscled arms and lacing his fingers behind his head.

Rebecca choked on a retort, backing up further. “What happened to you? You were never… likethis.”

“I spent a few months in the bowels of the Forsaken’s realm, tortured a few lost souls, and was relieved of my insufferable righteousness.”

Rebecca turned away from him, gazing across the expanse of blue to a cluster of green in the far distance. “I guess you didn’t find them,” she whispered to the sea.

Cool fingers brushed along her arms, making her shiver, but she didn’t turn, didn’t want to look at what he had become.

She held a hand up, shielding her eyes as she searched for any sign of life beyond the horizon. Were they out there? She’d heard Sophia and some of the other witches in the dark cellar, too. But Elizabeth had saidhedied. She hoped desperately it wasn’t true.

“Your reash did not survive, Rebecca.”

She turned, narrowing her eyes and glaring into his swirling orbs. “You’re lying.”

“I don’t lie.”

A tiny fissure split down the middle of her heart, stealing her breath. It was true. Gabriel never lied. Her vision blurred, and she swiped her eyes. But this wasn’t Gabriel.

“Maybe Gabriel didn’t, but you’ve changed.

“You would know if I lied, Light.”

“What does that mean?”

“You can sense a lie the same as any seraph.”

Nephilim. The word clanged through her mind. So much had happened in Elizabeth’s dark lair that she’d nearly forgotten the moments after he’d arrived. He had called her Nephilim and, as if saying it aloud was its own form of magic, she had simply reached down and broken her spelled bonds. No human could have done that.

But she was no angel. She had human parents and siblings. They had all lived and died, she more than once. She gasped.

“Is that the real reason I keep coming back?”

He shook his head, his wings shaking with the movement. “The reincarnation was your father’s spell. A nasty bit of dark magic that kept you from me for nearly a century.” He reached for her, wrapping cool fingers around hers.

She stared down at their contrasting hands, hers slender, warm, and pale, his cold and several times larger. By human standards, he would have been classified as a giant. She looked up, cataloging the similarities between the Gabriel she knew and Azazel.

“Why did you change your name?”

“I didn’t.”

---