exposed all the terrible aspects of myself I’d tried to hide away.
“You’re not gonna want to hear this, but I’m going to tell you anyways.” Michael rubbed his hands together. “You took Gabriel’s place in the cosmos, and you’re of his direct bloodline. Notice how quickly you changed?”
I nodded, trepidation rising to the surface. He’d asked me how quickly it took for the transmutation to begin.
For me, it’d been less than a week. Almost the instant I ripped Gabriel’s head off I’d felt something crack and shift inside me; within days I’d noticed the tinier changes in the mirror and turned my back on them, determined not to see them.
“So that made you the perfect vessel to take his place. Instead of having to re-mold the raw material to suit the power, the raw material was already primed for it. Having his blood just made it easier for the grand plan of the universe to transfer it all over to you.”
I got what he was saying. “So I’m going to be exactly like him.”
Michael’s face was set, intense. “Not exactly. You don’t have to be like him, get me? But you’ll have the powers he did. I was made from the heat of the sun, Lucifer was made from the first rays of dawn and the death of the day, and Gabriel was woven from the light of the moon. When it rises, you’ll rise with it.”
It made sense. Every archangel, a primal power in themselves, was created from a different universal force. “Will I still be cursed with Nephilim rage?”
My teacher hesitated, just for a second. “I don’t know. I’m not going to lie to make you feel better about this. You could still have it and never know until it shows up again. But I feel pretty confident in saying that after giving the power a few centuries to settle in, it’ll vanish for good.”
Great. Just a few centuries to remain an inherent danger to my mate. No problem.
Michael reached up on the table, felt around with his fingertips until he found his tankard, and pulled it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he was finished, staring at me over the rim of the mug the entire time.
“Now let’s see what you can do with what you’ve got.” Michael slammed the empty tankard now. “Hold out your hands. It’d be easier if we were under the moon, but you should still be able to pull it right out of yourself.”
Unlike Melisande, Azazel, and Belial, I’d never had inherent magic. The Nephilim rage and placing the mate mark on Melisande were the closest I’d come to touching it, but one was innate, and the other a power that was brought about by sheer force of will.
I did as he told me, holding my hands in front of myself and feeling a little like an idiot sitting there with my fingers splayed open.
“Now reach for it,” Michael instructed. “It’s in there. The transmutation is weaving it into every cell of your body, turning you into the moon made flesh.”
His back-and-forth from drunk angel to ancient instructor was giving me whiplash. Moon made flesh, my ass.
I looked at my empty hands. Nothing happened. I didn’t feel so much as a twinge in my fingertips.
“Not from your fingers, kid.” He pounded his chest. “From in here. This is the core.”
Michael held out his hands like he was going to weave a cat’s cradle, but instead of strings, he seemed to pluck white-hot threads of light from midair, forming them into a ball.
Soon he held an entire miniature sun in his hands, the light warmer-toned, hotter and more vivid than Lucifer’s piercing golden rays.
“Pull from the core,” I muttered. I had no business messing with magic. Weapons had always been my forte, the place where I was not just comfortable, but nearly flawless.
I searched inside, feeling more foolish by the second. There was nothing but flesh and blood in my chest. My lungs, my heart…
I finally found it. It was almost shocking, a visceral sensation of something else curled up inside me like a snake in waiting, but it was a snake woven of moonbeams and lightning, cold and bright.
It slithered through me, making my veins itch as the power flowed towards my waiting fingertips.
“There it is!” Michael crowed, pounding me on the back so hard I almost fell over, which was saying something.
I opened my eyes, ignoring the cold sweat beading on my forehead.