Mom, I love you.
I want you to think of Tucker now.
Mom, I’m so sorry.
Now! she insists. Her kicks are getting weaker, her wings drooping against her back. Close your eyes and think of Tucker NOW!
I close my eyes and try to focus my mind on Tucker, but all I can think of is my mother’s hand going limp in mine and nobody is going to save us now.
Think about a good memory, she whispers in my mind. Remember a moment when you loved him.
And just like that, I do.
“What did the fish say when it hit a concrete wall?” he asks me. We’re sitting on the bank of a stream and he’s tying a fly onto my fishing rod, wearing a cowboy hat and a red lumberjack-style flannel shirt over a gray tee. So adorable.
“What?” I say, wanting to laugh and he hasn’t even told me the punch line.
He grins. Unbelievable how gorgeous he is. And that he’s mine. He loves me and I love him and how rare and beautiful is that?
“Dam!” he says.
I laugh out loud, remembering that. I let myself fill with the delight I felt in that moment. The way I felt that day in the barn, kissing him, holding him close to me, being one with him and every living being on earth.
I suddenly know what my mother wants. She needs me to bring the glory. I have to strip away everything else but the core of me, that part that’s connected with everything around me, that part which fuels my love. That’s the key, I realize, the missing part of glory. Why I lit up that day with Tucker in the barn. There’s nothing else but love. Love. Love.
There, Mom says in my head. There it is.
I open my eyes and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the intense light, which is coming out of me now. Blaring off me. I’m lit up like a torch, the light rippling and sparkling off me like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
The Black Wing flinches. I’m still holding on to his arm, and where I touch him his skin disintegrates, like I’m digging through that part of his body that’s false, that human suit he wears, and grasping the creature underneath. Heat blazes from my fingertips.
“No,” he whispers in disbelief.
He releases my mother and she crumples facedown to the ground. I let go of her hand and grab the angel by the ear, which he doesn’t expect. He pulls back, but I hold on easily. His great strength is gone. I grip his ear tighter. He howls in pain. A misty smoke pours off him like what comes off dry ice. He’s evaporating.
Then his ear comes off in my hand.
I’m so shocked I almost lose the glory. I drop the utterly gross ear, which explodes into tiny particles the moment it hits the ground. I reach for the angel again, thinking I might catch him in the neck this time, but he twists away. The skin on his arm where I’m clutching him is dissolving too, like ash in the rain. No. Like dust. Like dust scattering in the wind.
“Let go,” he says.
“Go to hell.” I push him away from us. He stumbles back.
There’s a ripple in the air, a cold blast of wind, and he’s gone.
Mom coughs. I drop to my knees and slowly turn her over. She opens her eyes and looks at me, opens her mouth but no sound comes out.
“Oh, Mom,” I breathe, taking in the darkening bruises on her throat. I can even make out his handprint. The glory starts to fade away.
She reaches for my hand and I take it.
Don’t let it go yet, she says in my mind. Hold on to me.
I lean over her, bathing her in my light. As I watch, the wounds on her head and neck fade and disappear. The hair that had burned grows back. She takes a breath like a swimmer coming up for air.
“Oh, thank God.” I feel limp with relief.
She sits up. She looks steadily over my shoulder at something behind me.
“We have to get out of here,” she says.
I turn. The fire the Black Wing started has grown into a real, crackling, honest-to-goodness forest fire, wild and unstoppable, eating up everything in its path, including us if we stay here more than a moment longer.
I look back at Mom. She climbs slowly to her feet, moving carefully in a way that reminds me of an old person getting out of a wheelchair.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m weak. But I can fly. Let’s go.”
We spiral up together, holding hands. When we get up far enough I can see how big the fire has gotten. The wind picks up. It catches the fire and suddenly it’s twice as big as it was a minute ago, a wall of flame moving steadily down the mountain into Death Canyon.
I know this fire. I would recognize it anywhere.
“Come on,” says Mom.
We start toward home. As we fly I try to wrap my exhausted brain around the fact that this is the fire from my vision, and now, after all of this, I’m going to have to fly off to save Christian. Funny how the vision never specifically included a Black Wing. Or hell. Or any number of things that might have been useful.
“Honey, stop,” Mom calls to me. “I have to stop.”
We come down at the edge of a small lake.
Mom sits down on a fallen log. She’s panting with the exertion of flying so far, so fast. She’s pale. What if the Black Wing hurt her in some way that glory can’t heal? I think. What if she is dying?
I suddenly remember my phone. I pull it out of my pocket and start to fumble for 9-1-1.
“Don’t,” Mom says. “I’ll be fine. I just need to rest. You should go to Fox Creek Road.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“I told you, I’ll be fine. Go.”
“I’ll take you home first.”
“There’s no time for that.” She shoves me away from her. “We’ve lost so much time already. Go to Christian.”
“Mom—”
“Go to Christian,” she says. “Go now.”
Chapter 21
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
I beeline it for Fox Creek Road. I’m so frazzled by all that’s happened, but I just fly and my wings seem to know the way. I drop onto the road right in the spot where my vision usually begins.
I look around. There’s no silver Avalanche parked along the road, no orange sky, no fire. Everything looks completely normal. Peaceful, even. The birds are singing, leaves are rustling gently on the aspens and all seems right with the world.
I’m early.
I know the fire is on the other side of the mountain, moving steadily toward this place. It will come here. All I have to do is wait.
I move off the road, sit down against a tree, and try to focus. Impossible. Why would Christian even be here? I wonder. What could possibly bring him all the way out to Fox Creek Road? Somehow I have a hard time picturing him in hip waders, flicking a fishing line back and forth over the stream. It doesn’t seem right.