She cried out, grasping frantically for the edge of the stairs as the rest slid away from her, leaving half her body dangling in the air. Angela’s muscles felt like jelly, her head like a throbbing drum.
But she held on, knowing that to let go would be the end of everything.
Lucifel was already standing over her, ready to step on her fingers and send her plummeting. Then she must have changed her mind, and she stooped down for the Grail, plucking the blade from where Angela had hitched it into the stairs. The Supernal didn’t even seem to notice the black blood streaming from her hand as the Glaive bit into her vaporous flesh.
“Time to share the toy,” Lucifel said, her voice thunderously loud.
Oh, but it wasn’t hers anymore.
Angela willed the Glaive to collapse, and the blue blade responded, its blood dribbling from Lucifel’s fingers. The angel stared at her, not angry, but certainly annoyed.
They both knew what was coming next.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Angela muttered.
She willed the Glaive to re-form.
It congealed instantly around Lucifel’s hand, plunging through it straight for her chest.
The Glaive resisted for a single second, straining against Lucifel’s considerable power—but soon pierced her back into a buzzing mass, and then sliced through what was left of it, sweeping her away like dust. The Supernal was speaking, but her words contorted along with time and space. Her amused laughter was now the only intelligible exchange between them, and while the Devil’s shadow began to disintegrate, and Angela’s grip finally slipped, the snow stopped, the lightning ceased to strike. A great shudder took over the atmosphere, like an enormous weight was being lifted.
Air screamed in Angela’s ears. Blue blood fell around her like rain. The wind was a torment.
Lucifel had found her anyway, and she gathered her shadow one last time beneath her, taking the shape of a gigantic fly made of a million others.
Its red eyes burned into Angela like bloody flames.
A horrendous buzzing sound overwhelmed her.
There was a final round of laughter, painfully triumphant. Seconds later the dark cloud exploded, taking the Ladder with it.
And the first words in Creation were a song.
—
U
NKNOWN AUTHOR
Were you there in the Garden of Shadows?
Were you there when the Father took wing
. . .
Angela had given up her dreams.
That made this hallucination all the more precious. Her vision had blurred, and her body felt like its energy had drained through her wrists, her legs, her feet, her brain. She could very well have been dying. Yet in a resurrection of her old reckless self, she didn’t care. If dying meant that Israfel would always hold her like this, if it meant that she would always be cupped by the softness of his wings and stare into his sapphire eyes, she would welcome it with all her heart. They were falling together, the white clouds of his pinions slowing their descent, his song warming and seducing her back to life every time she threatened to close her eyes and sleep forever.
Did you sigh when the starlight outpoured us?
When the silver bright water could sing
. . .
He rubbed something in the palm of her hand.
For a split second, his fingers dug at it painfully, eager to tear that part of Angela away.
Then he simply stared back at her, still blurry, but with a gentle twist to his lips suggesting pensiveness. He was trying to figure something out, perhaps thinking the answer hid in the curves of her hand. The wings that were his ears folded back in an elegant sweeping motion, vanishing inside pockets impossible for her to see. Then Israfel leaned in close, and his beautiful face drowned out all her other thoughts, all the agony trying desperately to end her life. He never had looked so much like a woman, with those long lashes, and that feathery hair.
Their kiss was hesitant but searching.
He was looking for a mystery inside of her and trying to figure it out simultaneously.
She barely felt him pull away as the world closed around her, his voice breaking through this new blackness and peace.
It sounded as petulant as he often looked.
“How . . . when you were never enchanted at all . . .”
Enchanted? No. She’d loved him too long for that. And she tried to tell him so before every sensation stopped.
T
he gun had misfired.
Angela tossed it onto the floor, cursing in the way her parents often cursed. Her head throbbed where the muzzle had jolted against her skull, but that was all she had to prove she’d even tried. That and the acrid smell filling her bedroom.
Once again, she’d been disappointed. Thwarted.
She crashed back into her bed, sobbing uncontrollably for half an hour, thoroughly wetting her ratty pillow sham. It wasn’t until the room had darkened and the moon gazed sympathetically through her window that she noticed a weight at the end of her bed.
She hadn’t heard a door open.
Angela lifted her head from her arms, astonished to see an angel with blood-red hair and blue eyes just like her own sitting down at the edge of her bed near her feet. Half his body was hidden in the shadows, but she could see the great red wings folded against his back, and the others topping his delicate ears, their arching curves lined with tiny white jewels.
They were like miniature stars, matching the stones set into his dark blue coat.
His face, at least what she could see of it, was gentle. Wise. But he had all the presence of a ghost.
“Why do you always stop me?” she whispered.
Somehow, she knew he was the One, and her bitterness felt like poison.
His voice was softer than she’d thought it would be. “Because I need you, Angela.”
“No one needs me.”
More bitterness.
“Oh,” the angel said as he smiled down at her, “but that’s not true. He needs you. That’s why you’re running from everything, isn’t it? To find him.” When she stared back at him, his voice became gentler. “This is your world, and you make the rules. Anything can be yours if you want it badly enough.”
“Are you talking about the angel with the bronze wings?”
He said nothing at first, and Angela realized he could have been talking about someone she hadn’t even met yet. Then the angel stood from her bed and he was tall and infinitely sad. “You must stay alive, Angela, whether you want to or not. And even if you forget this moment, remember this: a heart can bleed long after it’s been broken. I will be counting on you to mend that heart.”
She knew he was referring to the same person, but she could only stare more, confused and in pain.
At last Angela found her words again. “So you think I’ll forget about this?”
It seemed impossible. How could she forget this pain in her head, and this angel in her room? How could she ever forget, or think it was only a dream, when his red wings took up the world?
“Yes,” he answered her gently, “you will forget.”
A cloud covered the moon and he vanished. Now there was only her reflection in the cracked dresser mirror.
“But not for forever.”
All angels can regret or forgive. Very few do so gracefully.
—
V
ENERABLE
M
AXIMINA,
Lost Writings and Annotations
K
im found Naamah near the tree line.
She cradled Stephanie as they lay together on the ground, her wings shivering, her dark eyes scratched into pools of blood. The pain was affecting her strength, leaving her weak and gasping, and when his shoes stopped next to her head, there was no etheric blast, no flick of her fingerblades. She merely flinched.
The black rain that had welcomed Lucifel had scorched through the demon’s remaining feathers like fire. Their leftovers twisted from her wing skin, half melted. Much of her neck and chest was redder than usual, coppery with burns.
The tattoo on her neck had faded to a faint tracery.
She could have hidden and kept herself from suffering like this. But it was obvious that Stephanie’s deranged moaning had called her, and Naamah had dragged herself toward the sound of her daughter, wrapping what was left of her wings around their suffering.
A sharp sob cracked through the silence. Stephanie—crying out in her pitiful, fetuslike position. She hadn’t stopped shaking since she went insane.
Kim could only stare, empty inside even as he looked at her.
Feelings lingered, despite his disgust. That must have been why he’d risked hovering over them.
“You ignorant . . . half-breed,” Naamah said.
She must have recognized him by the sound of his footsteps. His breaths.
“All your promises and oaths of loyalty . . . for what?” She spat at his feet. “The Book unopened—Israfel returned . . . you should have died in your mother’s womb. Better that than ruin my happiness.”
He stooped down and whispered in her ear. “Should I have taken a wild guess about the Archon then? Yes, Israfel is gone. Back to the upper Realms.”
“And . . . the Book?” Her fingers twitched pathetically.
“Here. He won’t carry baggage that can’t help him. Not when it’s officially Angela’s job to open it.”
But Kim knew there was more to it than that.
Israfel must have tried to open Sophia—and failed. Otherwise, why would he have allowed his sister to try for herself? They were polar opposites, and yet frighteningly alike, using anyone and everyone to accomplish their goals without batting a proverbial eyelash, taking a maddening amusement in whatever obstacles they encountered, like toddlers solving riddles.
How true it was that mortals were toys for the gods.
Even if those gods had only the illusion of being divine.
Kim glanced back at Angela sleeping nearly comatose next to the ruins of Tileaf’s tree, her scarred legs and arms splayed pitifully around her body. Israfel had done his part to keep her alive, seeming to consider it some sort of favor on his brother’s behalf without even saying so, leaving with his disfigured Thrones after blessing Kim with advice.
It’s only a matter of time
until she puts you in your place.
Whether Israfel had been referring to Angela or Lucifel was beside the point. All Kim had cared about was that the Supernal’s last concern seemed to be killing him. Israfel was like the legends said, true to his word, confident that the Black Prince would eventually murder what he didn’t feel like touching. Like anyone else with delusions of godhood, he wouldn’t soil his hands with a half-breed’s unnatural blood—especially when that could displease the Archon and sway her from his influence. For a Supernal like Israfel, the insult was an ironic one. Killing Kim was actually quite beneath him. And Angela’s feelings wouldn’t allow it.
The stalemate continued.
“Now . . .” Naamah’s voice was soft with her pain. “Let me at least die in peace.”
“You won’t return to Lucifel?”
She laughed at the sarcasm in his voice. “Return? No, priest. There is no return for me. I’ve failed her, and she is well aware of it.” Naamah groaned, her wings flapping into snow, their metal struts creaking with her despair, insistent on moving when she could not be moved. “In her, there is no longer any pity or sympathy. Demons have some. She has none. She,” Naamah said, sighing painfully, “feels nothing.”
Her voice trailed off into soft whispers.
“But even so,” Kim said. “I’m going to let the blackbird out of her cage.”
Naamah didn’t respond, maybe no longer even heard. Instead she squeezed Stephanie one last time, whispering what sounded like a demonic prayer.
“Mother,” Stephanie whispered back, sobbing gently. “Did I do well? Are you happy?”
She could have been lucid for that brief moment, but Kim suspected otherwise.
The demon hushed her anyway, sweeping back the red hair from her face with a shaking hand. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling so that her teeth appeared, blindingly white. “You did very . . . very well . . .”
“And you’ll stay with me?”
“Always . . .”
Naamah stopped breathing.
The snow, of all things, had finally killed her.
The demon’s eyes would have actually grown back if given the chance. But the poison she’d used on so many souls, keeping it safe from her own veins inside the wicked blades overlapping her nails, had been in Lucifel’s deadly rain, its potency alarmingly high. The Prince’s venom had entered Naamah through the mess of her eyes, and from there to her brain. After that, she probably knew there wasn’t much time left.
So she’d decided to spend it with the human she’d grown to love.
Kim waited a few more minutes, and it began.
Slowly, her wings crumbled into fragments of bone and ash, framing her with their metal pieces still connected to skin. Now she was merely another young woman, exotic-looking, but singed and dead. He’d make certain to contact his foster father, Mastema, and send others for her body quickly. Lilith, her mentor, would have many questions that needed answering.
“
Requiescat in pace,
” Kim said, more out of habit than a desire to answer her request.
Stephanie must have recognized his voice somewhere in the tangle that had been her mind. She cried out his name, and then she resumed calling for Naamah, as if the demon could still answer.
Kim left her in her temporary coffin of branches and snow, walking past Angela to gloat over his other conquest. He deserved this one more than all the others, and he ached to glory in it with as much delight as the idea that Angela would speak to him long before she saw Israfel again.
Troy. Dead. Because of the same, miraculous black rain. All these years, and he’d never gotten close to killing her. His cousin was an object of hatred for both angels and demons, feared for being the hungry monster that she was. Jinn of the lower clans spoke her name with reverence bordering on dread. And yet, a fluke of nature had brought her down like a crow with an arrow through its breast.
She’d covered herself with both wings, half their feathers severely damaged by the snow, portions of her feet burned to a crimson red.
But she was frozen like the water.
Unresponsive.
He slid the obsidian knife out of his coat, already tasting his cousin’s blood on the blade. He had to finalize this himself. Drain the rest of her life out before it reanimated her like the nightmare she was.
He reached out, his hand shaking, and flipped her heavy wings open.
Her large eyes were closed. He’d never seen Troy asleep, or resting in any position that resembled it, and he stared down at her, as if seeing her paper-white skin, and bruised lips, and sharp, evil nails for the first time. Blood still touched her features here and there, and she could have been beautiful like her ancestors if it weren’t for those long ears and that wiry frame. Jinn were made for hunting even more than for breeding, and Troy’s more feminine attributes were characteristically undeveloped.
“I win,” he whispered, holding the knife above her heart.
It was like murdering his father twice.
She opened her eyes, letting out an eerie gleam of phosphorescence.
Her pupils riveted on him, hard and horrifically cold. “You spoke too soon.”
Rage, like always, propelled her in a frenzy of speed. She lunged for his face, raking him mercilessly across the chin, and then latched onto his chest with her toenails, her fingernails, slipping as he was slipping on the sudden stream of blood. They tumbled to the earth, Troy crushing him, Kim gasping for breath as her teeth aimed right for his jugular.
He swore, screaming, lodging his knife deep into one of her wings.
She howled, contorting off him with more hisses and deep-throated growls.
Kim turned and ran.
His shoes slid through the snow, and his lungs felt like they would burst, but Troy was nearly on top of him already. He was pulling ahead, out of range for a death grip, yet her nails sliced with evil suddenness into the skin of his back. A fluid warmth dripped down to his ankles.
There would be no running after all.
Kim wiped his palm across the blood dripping down his chin and spun around, flinging it in her face along with his words. “
Exorcizo te, spiritus immunde!
”
It was the best he could do. The droplets converged on her, glowing with a pain he only recently dared to inflict. She smacked into the crimson shield like it was a wall, her yellow eyes slits that barely opened in the brightness of the light. He’d never seen her so angry, enraged to the point where even the ache of the light meant nothing. Troy was a picture of absolute fury, her nails scrabbling across the shield’s illusory solid surface, spit slathering from her mouth and splattering off her teeth, dotting the inside of her prison with diamonds of saliva. The shield of energy and blood had become a bubble, but it also wouldn’t last for long.
“You
coward,
” Troy snarled at him, rabid.
Her voice was like the hiss of acid, and she spat at him again, a cobra with wings, teeth, and nails both sharper and stronger than steel.
“
You coward. I’ll find you.
” Troy’s pitch was as close to a roar as he’d ever heard it. “
Sariel. Not even the Archon can save you from this. I’ll put you in your place, demon spawn.
”
Israfel’s prophecy, it appeared, might have had another meaning entirely.
Kim’s entire body trembled, but he scratched Mastema’s blood crystal from the center of his cross, aware of Troy’s eyes narrowing even more evilly with recognition. He could only use the Call once, but it would be worth the sacrifice to hide from Troy in the abyssal depths of Hell. There, she could never find him. Never reach him. He stole a final glimpse of Angela, pining inside for her heat on his skin, and her lips touching his chest. The next time he found her, there would be a space just for them, a promise for him, and maybe a throne for her.
Whether she understood his reasons no longer mattered.
He smashed the crystal against an exposed rock, actually baring his teeth back at Troy, hardly ashamed at his slip. She’d understand the gesture better than words, and better than him explaining that the worst part of all this failure was leaving Angela behind.
Troy began to gnaw through the barrier, ripping through it with wet, fleshy noises.
Kim escaped in a dazzling burst of crimson. Mere seconds before she crawled through the hole for his soul.