Fallen - Lauren Kate [67]
But the hallway was dark, and her eyes were still watering, and she couldn’t make out the twisting shadow shapes anymore. Maybe they were gone.
Then there was a jagged stroke of light, something that looked like a tree trunk with branches—no, like a torso with long, broad limbs. A pulsing, almost violet column of light hovering over them. It made Luce think, absurdly, of Daniel. She was seeing things. She took a deep breath and tried to blink the smoky tears from her eyes. But the light was still there. She sensed more than heard it call to her, calming her, a lullaby in the middle of a war zone.
So she didn’t see the shadow coming.
It body-slammed into her and Todd, breaking their grip on each other and tossing Luce into the air.
She landed in a heap at the foot of the stairs. An agonized grunt escaped her lips.
For one long moment, her head throbbed. She’d never known pain as deep and searing as this. She cried out into the night, into the clash of light and shadow overhead.
But then it all became too much and Luce surrendered, closing her eyes.
ELEVEN
RUDE AWAKENING
“Are you scared?” Daniel asked. His head was tilted sideways, his blond hair disheveled by a soft breeze. He was holding her, and while his grip was firm around her waist, it was as smooth and light as a silk sash. Her own fingers were laced behind his shirtless neck.
Was she scared? Of course not. She was with Daniel. Finally. In his arms. The truer question pulling at the back of her mind was: Should she be scared? She couldn’t be sure. She didn’t even know where she was.
She could smell rain in the air, close by. But both she and Daniel were dry. She could feel a long white dress flowing down to her ankles. There was only a little light left in the day. Luce felt a stabbing regret at wasting the sunset, as if there were anything she could do to stop it. Somehow she knew these final rays of light were as precious as the last drops of honey in a jar.
“Will you stay with me?” she asked. Her voice was the thinnest whisper, almost canceled out by a low groan of thunder. A gust of wind swirled around them, brushing Luce’s hair into her eyes. Daniel folded his arms more tightly around her, until she could breathe in his breath, could smell his skin on hers.
“Forever,” he whispered back. The sweet sound of his voice filled her up.
There was a small scratch on the left side of his forehead, but she forgot it as Daniel cupped her cheek and brought her face nearer. She tilted her head back and felt the whole of her body go slack with expectation.
Finally, finally, his lips came down on hers with an urgency that took her breath away. He kissed her as if she belonged to him, as naturally as if she were some long-lost part of him that he could at last reclaim.
Then the rain started to fall. It soaked their hair, ran down their faces and into their mouths. The rain was warm and intoxicating, like the kisses themselves.
Luce reached around his back to draw him closer, and her hands slid over something velvety. She ran one hand over it, then another, searching for its limits, and then peered past Daniel’s glowing face.
Something was unfurling behind him.
Wings. Lustrous and iridescent, beating slowly, effortlessly, shining in the rain. She’d seen them before, maybe, or something like them somewhere.
“Daniel,” she said, gasping. The wings consumed her vision and her mind. They seemed to swirl into a million colors, making her head hurt. She tried to look elsewhere, anywhere else, but on all sides, all she could see besides Daniel were the endless pinks and blues of the sunset sky. Until she looked down and took in one last thing.
The ground.
Thousands of feet below them.
When she opened her eyes, it was too bright, her skin was too dry, and there was a splitting pain at the back of her head. The sky was gone and so was Daniel.
Another dream.
Only this one left her feeling almost sick with desire.
She was in a white-walled room. Lying on a hospital bed. To her left, a paper-thin curtain had been dragged halfway