He frowned at the papers, then raised his gaze to Abaddon with a blank expression.
Then did it again, and the crease above his nose deepened.
Abaddon lowered the flashlight. “What?”
Gabriel picked up a sheet of paper and turned it toward him. “What is this?”
Abaddon approached to see it better in the dim light, but his hand shook when he met the eyes on the printout of a missing person poster. They were gray and surrounded by long, dark lashes, like two shards of steel embedded in a face so pale it could have been sculpted in fine marble. The young man in the photo—still a boy, really, had dark hair falling right past his shoulders and stern features that didn’t belong on someone his age.
Abaddon’s throat pulsed as if the artery at its side was about to burst. Because he was looking at his own face, only about a decade younger.
“No.”
“Adam fucking Benson?” Gabriel raised his voice, staring at Abaddon with eyes wide as saucers.
“That’s not me,” Abaddon said despite the evidence to the contrary, because the boy in the picture, while much younger, couldn’t have been anyone else.
Gabriel grabbed another piece of paper from the drawer and stared at it. “Who is it then? Your twin brother?” He took a step back, clutching the page. “I’m gonna be sick…”
Abaddon’s legs bent under him, and he stumbled forward to grab the desk for support, but despite breaking his fall, he was diving ever deeper into the chaotic edges at the back of his mind. Sweat dampened his T-shirt as he glanced Gabriel’s way.
“Maybe… maybe I was simply given his body? You know who I am!”
Gabriel shook his head, clutching the side of the page with one hand. “This is dated from ten years ago, asking for any tips on your whereabouts. You’re Mrs. Benson’s son, the one she’d… lost! What the fuck are you doing to me? What was the fucking plan here? We murdered people!” He backed away with every shaky word coming out of his mouth.
Fear struck Abaddon like a lance to the heart, but as he reached for Gabriel, the boy recoiled as if the hand were a torch blazing with fire.
No. No. No. Not Gabriel.
“I was born from the ground,” Abaddon rasped with exasperation while the room around them blurred. “You saw where. You saw my feathers.”
“Don’t touch me! Why would you look like him then? I’ve been lied to half my life… I can’t believe I’m still so gullible.” Gabriel’s face, white as bone, expressed a mix of terror and disappointment so deep Abaddon could fall into it and never see the light of day again.
And no matter how thoroughly he wracked his brain for answers, he saw no life before his birth in the forest.
His lungs stung as if his chest were full of wasps, and when he opened his eyes, there was only darkness. Stabs of pain came from every direction. His body moved on its own accord, spurred by panic.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
Gasping for air, he pushed out from under cold ground, so relieved to fill his lungs it felt as if the earth had given birth to him, not tried to suffocate him in a shallow grave.
Every tendon, every muscle ached under oversensitive skin, but as dirt crumbled and rained down his face, the buzz of insects rose to a loud droning all around. As if they were welcoming him to the world.
It was cold, and the thin T-shirt he wore left his arms exposed to the icy air, but as he sat back in the hole that had kept him hidden away for God-knew how long, dawn bathed him in its faint, bluish glow.
The sun wasn’t yet up, but the golden hue on the horizon predicted its imminent coming. And a new beginning.
But of what?
There was something important, something that he should know yet couldn’t remember.
Something.
Something…
A black feather spiraled through the air and dropped into his denim-clad lap.
There were so many of them scattered all around. All of them dark as the night itself. As the insides of a shallow grave.
He picked up the feather to examine it for clues about his new reality, but instead, a symbol on the inside of his wrist caught his attention. Blood shot to his face, and the world blurred as the black ink became his sole focus.
Drawn inside a circle, the seal featured an anchor of sorts, triangles, and an arrow, and while there were intertwined rings and eyes inked all over both of his forearms, something about the mysterious seal made his mind buzz as if it were swarming with locusts.
Recoiling when sudden pain shot through his chest, he fell forward, clutching at the cold earth and feathers, but no matter how far he crawled away from the hole in the ground, reality dimmed in favor of robed shadows. Gathered around him, they were chanting. Their faces hidden. Their hands cruel, holding him down as the symbol was being etched into flesh. They were calling his name.