Become by Ali Cross

Author:Ali Cross [Cross, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, young adult, lucifer, demons, angels, urban fantasy, desolation, ali cross, choice, choose, become
Publisher: Ali Cross
Published: 2011-11-06T17:43:51+00:00

I felt a hand on my cheek and cringed, afraid of being seen, afraid of being known.

“Desolation,” Knowles said, and my name sounded so sweet in his voice. Like a lie. Because I was desolation, and there’d never be anything sweet about it.

I shrugged away from him and opened my eyes. I lay curled in a ball on the cold cement floor. Blood streaked my arms, the floor, and the Door, though I didn’t feel injured. Fear bit into my heart. “No.” Pleaseohpleaseohplease don’t let me have hurt anyone.

Knowles crouched awkwardly in front of me and tipped his head so I could see his face. “The blood is your own.”

I let out a rush of stale air and took a deep breath for the first time in too long.

“One such as you can bleed. I’m afraid though, you will most assuredly recover.”

I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest, but couldn’t lean against the wall with my wings spread behind me. Why they hadn’t gone away, I didn’t know, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

“A demon, you mean.” I filled the words with hatred—I figured Knowles would understand.

“Oh, no Desolation—is that what you think?” A dry choking sound escaped his lips. It might have been a chuckle. It might have been sorrow. “A demon, you are not.” He shook his head, a sorry expression that spoke of something—regret, maybe. “Why do you think the Door wouldn’t open for you?”

I looked from him to the Door—dented and scratched, blood smeared across the surface, but closed shut against the world. Against me. Shouldn’t it have opened if I were a demon? Did my father’s subjects ever find the Door shut to them?

“But . . .” My mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood and disappointment as I tried to shape the words. “I Became.”

At first Knowles didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, sadness shadowing his eyes. “Ah, child. You have Become—”

I hung my head, tears rising with a crushing, strangling sob.

“But what you have Become—I cannot say. Something unheard of in all the passages of time.” He leaned forward and put his thick finger under my chin, just as Michael had done—how long ago now?—before . . . before all of this.

“Look at me,” he said, and reluctantly I met his gaze. I watched as he let the muted blue of his eyes be overcome with the black, fathomless orbs of a demon. I watched as my own image came into focus, reflected in the endless black.

I saw myself—shaking and bloody, desperate and alone. I saw myself—one jet black wing and one as golden as the rays of the sun. The wing of an angel.

I gasped, lunging back from Knowles and pressing my wings against the cold cement wall.

“So now you know,” Knowles said, slowly rising to his feet. “You are not a demon, Desolation. You are something entirely different. You have Become what no one else ever has. And so the choice is more yours than it has been for anyone in the history of time—in all the worlds.

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