Page 95 of Not Today, Satan
I tilt my head and furrow my brow. “Think about it, though. Losing his wings made Father fall, and you lost yours when you had me. Which means if I get rid of them, I’ll no longer be part angel, and I’ll finally be the demon Nate needs to save him. Now get out of my way. I need to see what I’m doing.”
Her eyes widen. “Don’t do it, Devica. Those wings are a part of you.”
“And what if I don’t want to be me anymore?” I peer over her shoulders at my reflection. The girl scowling back resembles the one from the mirrors in Lot Eleven—hard and frenzied. No wonder Nate was terrified of her on that bridge. I should be afraid of her, too. But she’s stronger than me, and able to do what I can’t.
“Let’s talk about this,” Mom says. “Maybe we can figure out something that doesn’t involve disfiguring yourself.”
“All we do is talk.” My legs tremble, my stomach muscles clenched as tight as my jaw. “And it’s accomplished nothing.”
I raise the sword and smash it down. She grabs my arm, stopping me before the blade touches my feathers. Screaming, I shove her off me. She flies into the mirror with a cry, shards raining around her. Then she slumps to the floor.
The smash of the glass breaks me into the present. I drop the sword and fall to my knees, my breath wheezing from my chest. “Mom, are you okay?”
She moans and grabs her face. Blood runs from a gash on her forehead and streams through her fingers and down her cheeks. The same shade of glittering blue as mine. Angel blood. I reach for her, but she backs into the mirror, her eyes wide with fright. She holds up her blood-splattered palm. “Get away from me. You’ve done enough.”
“I’m sorry,” I say through the lump in my throat. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I don’t know what came over me.”
“I know exactly what came over you.” She clutches at her cheek. “You’re afraid of your angel side, but it’s your father’s genes that did this. You didn’t have to cut off your wings to become the devil. It’s part of who you are.”
Her words rip through me like a whip through human flesh, and I flinch.
No, I’m nothing like him. He chooses to cause pain. This was an accident.
“Don’t say that,” I whimper.
She backs farther into the mirror, not meeting my eyes. “I know you’re in pain, and I’ve done everything I could to help, but instead of thanking me, you hurt me. I knew I was taking in a teenager when I let you live with me, but I forgot how much ofhimis in you. He taught you well, Devica. You both know how to hurt people in the deepest way possible.”
The sting of her anger and fear cuts deeper than the shards of broken mirror digging into my knees. I clutch my chest with a tightened fist. “If that’s how you feel, maybe I should go home.”
Mom raises her head. Above the still-bleeding cut, her eyes are a deep amber, eerily dark against her bright skin. “Maybe you should.”
My throat closes, and I back away from her, wincing as glass crunches beneath my boots.
She doesn’t want me, either.
I thought she left me behind all those years ago because she was afraid of what I am. But it turns out that she wasn’t afraid at all—until she met me.
My body deflates against the wall in her hallway, and I bite back tears. I finally understand how lost Nate felt when he realized what I’d brought him home to.
I can’t stay here, and I can’t go back to Father. I don’t belong anywhere.
The sunlight glints off Mom’s car keys sitting on the kitchen table, and I stare at them before grabbing them and rushing out the door.
I don’t know where I’ll go.
Anywhere but here.
XLV.
The familiar Ferris wheel of the Santa Monica Pier looms into view, and I release a breath as I park crookedly between two lines in the lot.
I managed to get here with only a few near-collisions and a handful of drivers cursing at me. Though I barely heard them over the images and voices in my head, replaying the moment I threw my mom into the mirror and the sadness in her words as she told me to leave.
I’m lucky I made it here at all.
As I make my way down the pier, I keep my head low, trying to block out the chattering and laughing that surrounds me. These humans are so happy, unaware of what they’ve lost with the death of Nate, what I’ve lost. They can’t see how my insides are splayed open and I’m walking around with a gaping wound that won’t heal because a piece of me is missing.
I hate them more than I did in Hell.
