Fallen Series 04 - Rapture (10 page)

Luce leaned into Daniel. “Can we talk
alone
?”

“Yes, of course,” Phil answered for him, rising stiffly again and nodding to the other Outcasts. “Let us all take a moment.” Forming a line behind Phil, the others disappeared behind a swinging wooden door into the apartment’s kitchen.

As soon as they were alone, Daniel rested his hands on her knees. “Look, I know they’re not your favorite—”

“Daniel, they tried to kidnap me.”

“Yes, I know, but that was when they thought”—

Daniel paused and stroked her hair, working out a tangle with his fingers—“they thought that presenting you to the Throne would atone for their earlier betrayal. But now the game has changed utterly, partly because of what Lucifer did—and partly because you’ve come further in breaking the curse than the Outcasts anticipated.”

“What?” Luce started. “You think I’m close to breaking the curse?”

“Let’s just say you’ve never been this close before,” Daniel said, and something soared inside Luce that she didn’t understand. “With the Outcasts’ help fighting off our enemies, you can focus on what you need to do.”

“The Outcasts’ help? But they just ambushed us.”

“Phil and I have talked things over. We have an understanding. Listen, Luce”—Daniel took her arm and whispered, though they were the only ones in the room—“the Outcasts are less of a threat with us than against us. They’re unpleasant but they’re also incapable of lying. We will always know where we stand with them.”

“Why do we have to stand with them at all?” Luce leaned back hard against the zebra-print pillow behind her.

“They are armed, Luce. Better-equipped and with more warriors than any other faction we will face. The time may come when we need their starshots and their manpower. You don’t have to be best friends, but they are excellent bodyguards and ruthless when it comes to their enemies.” He leaned back, his gaze settling out the window, as if something unpleasant had just flown by.

“And since they’re going to have a horse in this race re-gardless, it might as well be us.”

“What if they still think I’m the price or whatever?” Daniel gave her a soft, unexpected smile. “I’m certain they still think that. Many do. But only you get to decide how you will fulfill your role in this old story. What we started when we first kissed at Sword & Cross? That awakening in you was only the first step.

All those lessons you learned during your time in the Announcers have armed you. The Outcasts can’t take that away from you. No one can. And besides”—he grinned—“no one can touch you when I am at your side.”

“Daniel?” She took a sip of the grapefruit soda, felt it fizz down her throat. “How will I fulfill my role in this old story?”

“I have no idea,” he said, “but I can’t wait to find out.”

“Neither can I.”

The kitchen door swung open and a pale, almost pretty girl’s face appeared in the doorway, her blond hair swept back in a severe ponytail. “The Outcasts grow tired of waiting,” she sang robotically.

Daniel looked at Luce, who forced a nod.

“You can send them in.” Daniel gestured at the girl.

They filed in swiftly, mechanically, assuming their former positions except for Phil, who drew nearer to Luce. The yogurt eater’s spoon knocked clumsily against the side of his empty plastic container.

“So he has convinced you, too?” Phil asked, perching on the arm of the love seat.

“If Daniel trusts you, I—”

“As I thought,” he said. “When the Outcasts stake their allegiance these days, we are fiercely loyal. We understand what is at stake when we make these kinds of . . . choices.” He emphasized the last word, nodding unnervingly at Luce. “The choice to ally yourself with a side is very important, don’t you think, Lucinda Price?”

“What is he talking about, Daniel?” Luce asked, though she suspected she knew.

“Everyone’s fascination these days,” Daniel said tiredly. “The near balance between Heaven and Hell.”

“After all these millennia, it is nearly complete!” Phil sank back into the love seat opposite Luce and Daniel. He was more animated than Luce had ever seen him before. “With almost every angel allied with one side, dark or light, there is just one who has not chosen”—

One angel who had not chosen.

A flash of memory: stepping through an Announcer to Las Vegas with Shelby and Miles. They’d gone to meet her past-life sister, Vera, and ended up at an IHOP with Arriane, who said that there was going to be a reckoning.

Soon. And in the end, when all the other angels’ souls had been accounted for, everything would come down to one essential angel’s choosing a side.

Luce was certain that the undecided angel was Daniel.

He looked annoyed, waiting for Phil to finish talking.

“And, of course, there are still the Outcasts.”

“What do you mean?” Luce said. “The Outcasts haven’t chosen a side? I always assumed you were on Lucifer’s.”

“That is only because you do not like us,” Phil said, completely deadpan. “No, the Outcasts do not get to choose.” He turned his head as if to look out the window and sighed. “Can you imagine how that feels—”

“You’re preaching to the wrong crowd, Phil,” Daniel interrupted.

“We should
count,
” Phil said, suddenly pleading with Daniel. “All we ask is that we matter in the cosmic balance.”

“You don’t get to choose,” Luce repeated, understanding. “Is that your punishment for indecision?” The Outcast nodded stiffly. “And the result is that our existences mean nothing in the cosmic balance. Our deaths, too, mean nothing.” Phil lowered his head.

“You know this isn’t up to me,” Daniel said. “And it certainly isn’t up to Luce. We’re wasting time—”

“Do not be so dismissive, Daniel Grigori,” Phil said.

“We all have our goals. Whether or not you admit it, you need us to accomplish yours. We could have joined with the Elders of Zhsmaelim. The one called Miss Sophia Bliss still has her sights trained on you. She is misguided, of course, but who knows—she might succeed where you will fail?”

“Then why didn’t you join them?” Luce asked sharply, coming to Daniel’s defense. “You had no problem working with Sophia last time when you kidnapped my friend Dawn.”

“That was a mistake. At that time we did not know the Elders had murdered the other girl.”

“Penn.” Luce’s voice cracked.

Phil’s pale face pinched. “Unforgivable. The Outcasts would never harm an innocent. Much less one with so fine a character, so refined a mind.”

Luce looked at Daniel, wanting to convey that perhaps she’d been too quick to judge the Outcasts, but Daniel was scowling at Phil.

“And yet, you met with Miss Sophia yesterday,” he said.

The Outcast shook his head.

“Cam showed me the golden invitation,” Daniel pressed. “You met with her at the mortal racing track called Churchill Downs to discuss going after Luce.”

“Wrong.” Phil rose to his feet. He was as tall as Daniel, but sickly and frail. “We met with Lucifer yesterday.

One does not turn down an invitation from the Morning Star. Miss Sophia and her cronies were there, I suppose.

The Outcasts sensed their muddy souls, but we are not working with them.”

“Wait,” Luce said, “you met with Lucifer
yesterday
?” That meant Friday, the day that Luce and the others were at Sword & Cross discussing how to find the relics so they could stop Lucifer from erasing the past. “But we were already back from the Announcers. Lucifer would already have been within the Fall.”

“Not necessarily.” Daniel explained, “Even though this meeting took place after
you
returned from the Announcers, it still took place in
Lucifer’s
past. When he went after you in the guise of that gargoyle, his setting-off point was half a day later, and hundreds of miles away from
your
setting-off point.

The logic made Luce’s brain hurt a little, but she was clear on one thing: She distrusted Phil. She turned to him. “So you knew all along that Lucifer was planning to erase the past. Were you going to help him, as you’ve now pledged to help us?”

“We met with him because we are obliged to come when he calls us. Everyone is, except the Throne, and”—

he paused, a thin smile spreading across his lips—“well, I don’t know any life force who could resist Lucifer’s call.” He tilted his head at Luce. “Could you?”

“Enough,” Daniel said.

“Besides,” Phil said, “he did not want our help. The Morning Star shut us out. He said”—he closed his eyes and, for a moment, looked like a normal teenaged boy, almost cute—“he said he couldn’t leave anything else to chance, that it was time to take matters into his own hands. The meeting adjourned abruptly.”

“That must have been the moment Lucifer went after you in the Announcers,” Daniel said to Luce. She felt queasy, remembering how Bill had found her in the tunnel, so vulnerable, so alone. All those moments she’d been glad to have him at her side, helping her on her quest. He’d almost seemed to like being with her, too, for a while.

Phil’s blank eyes fixed on her, as if examining a shift in her soul. Could he sense how flustered she became whenever she thought about all the time she’d spent alone with Bill? Could Daniel sense it?

Phil was not exactly smiling at her, but he did not look as lifeless as usual. “The Outcasts will protect you.

We know that your enemies are numerous.” He looked at Daniel. “The Scale is also on the move.” Luce glanced at Daniel. “The Scale?”

“They work for Heaven. They’re a nuisance, not a threat.”

Phil lowered his head again. “The Outcasts believe the Scale may have . . . come unhinged from Heaven.”

“What?” Daniel suddenly sounded winded.

“There is a rot among them, the kind that spreads quickly. Did you say you had friends in Vienna?”

“Arriane,” Luce gasped. “And Gabbe and Roland. Are they in danger?”

“We have friends in Vienna,” Daniel said. “In Avalon as well.”

“The Scale is spreading through Vienna.” When Luce spun around to face Daniel, he was unfurling his wings. They burst forth, lighting up the room with their glory. Phil didn’t seem to notice or care as he took a sip of the red liqueur. The other Outcasts’ empty gazes bore into Daniel’s wings with memorized envy.

The french doors to the bedroom opened and the hungover Italian girl Luce had shared the bed with spilled from them, stumbling barefoot into the room. She glanced over at Daniel, rubbed her eyes. “Wow, groovy dream!” she mumbled in Italian before disappearing into the bathroom.

“Enough talking,” Daniel said. “If your army is as strong as you say it is, spare a third of your force to drive toward Vienna and protect the three fallen angels you find there. Send another third to Avalon, where you will find Cam and two more fallen.”

When Phil nodded, two Outcasts in the living room unfurled their own drab wings and darted out the open window like enormous flies.

“The remaining third of our force falls under my jurisdiction. We will accompany you to the Mount. Let us take to the air now and I will gather the others on our way.”

“Yes,” Daniel said quickly. “Ready, Luce?”

“Let’s go.” She drew her back against Daniel’s shoulders so he could wrap her in his arms, leap through the window, and soar into the dark sky over Venice.

They touched down in high mountain desert just before dawn. Light banded the sky near the eastern horizon, haunting pinks and golds dusted with ocher clouds, healing the purple bruise of night.

Daniel set Luce down on a flat rock plateau, too dry and unforgiving to support even the toughest desert scrub. The barren mountainscape stretched out infinitely around them, dropping steeply into darkened valleys here, rising into peaks of colossal tawny boulders resting at impossible angles there. It was cold and windy, and the air was so dry it hurt to swallow. There was scarcely room for Luce and Daniel and the five Outcasts who’d traveled with them to stand on the rock plateau.

Fine sand whipped through Luce’s hair as Daniel pulled his wings back in to his sides. “Here we are.” He sounded almost reverent.

“Where?” Luce pulled the neck of her white sweater higher to cover her ears from the wind.

“Mount Sinai.”

She sucked in a dry, sandy breath, pivoting to get a panoramic view as fine golden light lengthened over the sandstone mountains in the east. “This is where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments?”

“No.” Daniel pointed over her shoulder, where a line of doll-sized backpackers were ascending more forgiving terrain a few hundred feet to the south. Their voices carried across the cold, thin desert air. Their soft peals of laughter echoed eerily from the silent mountain summits. A blue plastic water bottle tilted into the sky over someone’s head. “
That
is where Moses received the Ten Commandments.” He spread his arms and looked at the small circle of rock where they were standing. “This is where some of the angels stood and watched it happen.

Gabbe, Arriane, Roland, Cam”—he pointed to one area on the rock, then another, where each of the angels had stood—“a few more.”

“What about you?”

He faced her, taking three small steps forward so that their torsos were touching, the tips of their feet overlapped. “Right”—he kissed her—“here.”

“What was it like?”

Daniel looked away. “It was the first official covenant with man. Before then, covenants had taken place only between God and the angels. Some of the angels felt betrayed, that it disrupted the natural order of things.

Others thought we’d brought it on ourselves, that it was a natural progression.”

The violet in his eyes blazed a little brighter for a moment. “The others must be on their way.” He turned to face the Outcasts, whose dark silhouettes were outlined by the growing light in the east. “Will you stand guard until they arrive?”

Phil bowed. The other four Outcasts stood behind him, the frayed edges of their soiled wings undulating in the wind.

Daniel drew his left wing across himself and, shielding his body from view, reached inside it with his right hand like a magician reaching into his cape.