My Angel, My Devil (unfinished) - Tamara L. Garcia (summer reading list txt) 📗

at one another, and then looked at Salvage. I tried to avert my eyes, but to no avail. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m drooling-no, better yet, pulsing with want over this stranger. All I know is his name and nothing else. Yet I felt a raw desire to be next to him.
Red and Fate sat back down, and Salvage took long strides to the dark coffee table where the couch and loveseat was pointing to, and sat on it. I couldn’t help but notice how his strides looked dangerous and set out for me. My heart pounded loudly in my chest, and I was almost dumfounded. But the feeling didn’t quite reach me, and flew off to somewhere out of my reach. The heat I was feeling vanished slowly and again I was frustrated with myself for not feeling what I should.
Then I waited for my want for Salvage to go away, but it didn’t. It was the only thing that stayed.
Salvage sat down in the middle of the table then Red and Fate got up to sit by his side, their eyes trained on me. Not one pair of eyes left me. I almost felt nervous, but that feeling was squished by me. No time for those thoughts. They’re about to give it to me. Salvage spoke first. “Christopher,” he said. His deep lulling voice tingled all over my body when he spoke my name. That feeling didn’t go away either. “Have you ever heard of the supernatural? Things like mythology?”
“Yes,” to my surprise, my voice was calm and my face was blank, but relaxingly so. The poison was gone from me. I felt nonchalant, as it showed on my body language. The only thing out of the ordinary was the feeling he gave me.
He leaned forward, his arm muscles rippling as they were propped elbows on his legs, hands folded. His head was steady as he looked at me as if it were a spell to keep me calm, to keep my mind open. “Good, this will make explaining easier.” Then he shifted to a more intense demeanor, which I had thought impossible until just now. “Everything you’ve ever heard about monsters, demons, angels, and everything in between-it’s all false. They have never looked or thought like the stories you’ve heard when you were a child. Nothing you’ve ever heard has any truth to it. It’s all wrong.” He paused.
I let it sink in, and after a few moments all that surfaced was a big question mark. It must have been apparent on my face because Fate began to speak. “You know the stories of the boogie man you’ve heard when you were just a little girl? Prayers to the angels, and God? Everything was fabricated by humans a long time ago because they needed something to hope and dream for. They wanted someone more superior than them to bring everything into order-less killing, more kindness. To balance everything out. It was subconscious for them to want something like that, but it struck our race as something tremendously amazing.” He sighed.
Fate then looked at Red, while I was still processing this. Red continued for him. “It was amazing so much so that we appeared to them even more than we sought to be before. It was so amazing because the God they spoke of resembled the firstborn of our race, Detacher. He is the most powerful of us all, and he still lives to this day. He can part the seas and the sky itself. Human society was built on his power. More accurately putting it, it was like the humans took him and just changed his name, and claimed he did a lot of things that he didn’t. He didn’t create the human race, but inherited them from the one who created him.”
“So technically speaking,” Salvage said. “We’re Demigods. If you put it in human perspective. There are few of us, and Detacher has meant for things to be that way. But you, Christopher, are something else. You weren’t created by neither our Detacher nor the Evil One. No, you were especially hand crafted by the Great One who created Detacher. You’re a God from a human’s perspective. Well, technically speaking a Goddess. And the first one, to boot.” A few minutes passed, and it still made no sense. I wasn’t religious at all, but still. Wouldn’t that be like yanking the whole world out from under someone who is?
And the ‘Great One’-isn’t he God? He created Dispatcher. Dispatcher inherited the humans from the ‘Great One’. So that must mean that he’s God. What they’re saying makes no sense. Isn’t the definition of God the one who has created us? And how would I be a Goddess? As if reading my mind, Salvage spoke. “The human’s idea of their God is that he must be feared and loved by all so that they may join him in the afterlife. It doesn’t work like that with the Great One. He wants them to be good as natured as possible, so that in their afterlife or beforehand they don’t get corrupted by the Evil One. The Great One does not wish to be feared or loved-he simply wishes to save the human souls from the worst possible end.”
Salvage ran his big hand through his hair, his long beautiful fingers combing his dark abnormal hair. “The Evil One makes the human’s Devil look like a sweet walk in the park. Bottom line, you don’t want to even hear his name. This is why we call him the Evil One.” His gaze bore through me, and it shook me in a way nothing else could. “Come with us, and you will get answers to all of your questions and more.” He looked at me, expectant of my answer.
My parents and two sisters were announced dead not even a week ago, and now my two remaining brothers were missing. I couldn’t grieve for them because I felt no loss, which frustrated me. I couldn’t shed a tear or wail out to release the sorrow I’m so frustrated I don’t even have. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t. I wanted my parents and my sisters and my brothers. But I couldn’t have them.
I was in a corner. I was being picked up by three crazy hot boys-that were crazy in the mind too, to boot. And so was I. I believed them.
I felt the familiar frustration roll all over me because I couldn’t seem to reject what they were saying. And when they said that the human’s God didn’t exist, it seemed correct. Like I couldn’t deny it no matter how hard I tried. It just seemed to fit.
I sighed and decided I had nothing to lose. Not anymore. “Okay, fine. But this better end with me knowing my brother’s whereabouts.” I got up and motioned for them to lead the way. Then I remembered something. “Wait, I’m a Goddess? How does that work?”
“All in good time,” he said. He smirked. “Something tells me you won’t mind the life you will lead in the future.” A sort of darkness pulled itself over him while he looked at me with a secret in his abnormal eyes.
I could only hope that what he just said was true. And that my life ahead included my remaining family.
Chapter 5
It was like I was a ball of stress each time I almost felt afraid of falling off the great black beast that steadily galloped to our destination. It was neither a dog nor a bear, though it looked bigger than a bear. It was a fox. Or at least it looked like one; Salvage said it was one of the Night Beasts. Humans had mistaken them long ago for a dog the size of a bear that preyed on humans; what we define a werewolf. In fact these particular ‘Night Beasts’ prey on a certain type of demon-just one type of the Evil One’s minions. It had looked at me with inquiry in its eyes, and just made a sound that was quite a bit similar to a snort, or maybe a scoff.
Fate said they could be tamed by demigods, and quite a few have tamed one. Only one person has tamed more than one, and it was someone who was in the A class, the group especially trained to handle me. I didn’t even attempt to dote on that last part. I’m riding a black fox the size of a bear, if not, bigger. Plus there’s the transforming in the hotel thing to worry about, plus the whole humans-are-wrong-about-God thing.
My inner babble was interrupted by the beast executing a large jump over a cliff. When in the hell did we get to the forest?
My stomach clenched and I held on for my life, releasing a piercing scream. I could feel the beast rumble beneath me, as if it were laughing at me. I wouldn’t doubt that theory.
It landed, and I was shaken with shock. It looked way deeper from the beginning. I mustered up the strength to look down, and saw that there was still a long fall. I looked up.
We had only fallen about fifty feet or so, and we had landed on a rock. It looked stable enough, but I know better to trust things just based on looks. The beast coiled, and then proceeded jumped with great strength straight downwards. My stomach clenched into a tighter ball and my scream became even more strained as I realized there were no more ledges to land on.
An explosion of light blinded me, and after a while everything went black. I’m sure I’m still conscious, though.
Yup, you’re pretty conscious alright!
Oh boy. Forgot about that.
I ignored the voice, and after a few seconds my lungs were burning for air. I realized then that the beast was on top of me. And it weighed about a million and a half tons. I made grunting noises and pushed against it (it was only bound to be futile, I may add), but it didn’t get off until I was on the verge of passing out.
I breathed in the sweet, sweet air and coughed a little. That beast stinks like nobody’s business. I turned my glare to the beast, and it looked like it smiled. This is really how far I’ve sunken? I’m being mocked by a freaking over sized fox!
A small light illuminated and gave out a sudden burst, nearly blinding me. This is probably the third time this has happened this week. Well, at least I know I can count on them for something other than nearly freaking me out and looking really nice doing it.
I was nearly crushed by a few dark figures and one blazing red figure falling from above, but I quickly jumped out of the way. Red, Salvage, and Fate landed on their feet automatically, but with extremely accidentally looking grace. The two giant foxes they were riding also landed on their feet with a bored expression.
I’m assuming that the one I was riding did that on purpose. To confirm this, I looked at it. It was grinning. My eyebrows immediately went down. I was biting my lip in a scowl. The fat bastard fell on me on purpose.
I rolled my eyes, and froze for a second. I wasn’t really aware of where we were until I saw the intertwined green and the greenery bursting from the flowers and fruits that didn’t even look like real fruits. They didn’t look like plastic though.
The flowers made the ones I’ve seen before look like haggard, withered weeds. They were all odd shapes and designs, some forming a circle, others forming swirling motions when the wind blew. And those were only the stems.
I observed a flower