Fallen Series 04 - Rapture (31 page)

You are all right. You have to be. For Daniel.

Steven held open the door and led them inside. The small hut had a dirt floor and straw roof, a heap of blankets and rugs in one corner, a crude cooking stove near the fire, and a square of four rocking chairs in the center of the room.

Standing in front of the chairs was Francesca—

Steven’s wife and the other Nephilim teacher at Shoreline. Phil and the other three Outcasts stood alert along the opposite wall of the hut. Annabelle, Roland, Arriane, Daniel, and Luce all crammed into the firelit warmth of the house.

“What now, Daniel?” Francesca asked, all business.

“Nothing,” Daniel said quickly. “Nothing yet.” Why not? Here they were on the fields of Troy, near the place where Lucifer was expected to land. They’d raced here to stop him. Why go through everything they’d gone through this week just to sit around a cabin and wait?

“Daniel,” Luce said. “I could use some explanation.” But Daniel only looked to Steven.

“Please have a seat.” Steven steered Luce to one of the rocking chairs. She sank into it, and nodded thanks when he handed her a metal cup of spicy Turkish apple tea. He gestured around at the hut. “It isn’t much, but it keeps the rain and most of the wind out, and you know what they say—”

“Location, location, location,” Roland finished, leaning on the arm of the rocking chair where Arriane had curled up across from Luce.

Annabelle looked around at the rain wailing on the window, at the cramped room. “So
this
is the Fall site? I mean, I can kind of feel it, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m trying so hard. This is
weird.
” Steven was polishing his glasses on his fisherman’s sweater. He slipped them back onto his nose, resuming his professorial tone. “The Fall site is very large, Annabelle. Think of the space required for one hundred and fifty million, eight hundred and twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one—”

“You mean one hundred and fifty million, eight hundred and twenty-seven thousand,
seven hundred and
forty-six
—” Francesca interrupted.

“Of course, there are discrepancies.” Steven always humored his beautiful, combative wife. “The point is many angels fell, so the impact site is vast.” He glanced, very quickly, at Luce. “But yes, you are sitting in a portion of the place where the angels fell to Earth.”

“We followed the old broad’s map,” Cam said, poking at the fire in the stove. It had burned down to cin-ders, but his touch brought it roaring back to life. “But I still wonder how we know for sure that this is it. There’s not much time left. How do we
know
?”
Because I’m seeing visions of it,
Luce’s mind suddenly screamed.
Because somehow, I was there.

“I’m glad you asked.” Francesca spread a scroll of parchment on the floor between the rocking chairs. “The Nephilim library at Shoreline has one map of the Fall site. The map was drawn at so close a range that until someone could determine a geographical location, it could have been anywhere.”

“It might as well have been an ant farm,” Steven added. “We’ve been awaiting Daniel’s signal since Luce came back through the Announcers, tracking your progress, trying to stay within reach for when you needed us.”

“The Outcasts found us at our winter home in Cairo just after midnight.” Francesca drew her shoulders together, as if warding off a shudder. “Luckily, this one had your pennon or we might have—”

“His name is Phillip. The Outcasts are with us now,” Daniel said.

It was strange that Phil had posed as a student at Shoreline for months and Francesca didn’t recognize him. Then again, the snobbish angel teacher paid attention only to the “gifted” students at the school.

“I’d hoped you would be able to make it in time,” Daniel said. “How were things at Shoreline when you left?”

“Not good,” Francesca said. “Worse for you, I’m sure, but still, not good for us. The Scale came through Shoreline on Monday.”

Daniel’s jaw clenched. “No.”

“Miles and Shelby,” Luce gasped. “Are they okay?”

“Your friends are all fine. They couldn’t find anything to charge us with—”

“That’s right,” Steven said proudly. “My wife runs a tight ship. Above reproach.”

“Still,” Francesca said. “The students were very alarmed. Some of our biggest donors pulled their children from the school.” She paused. “I hope this is worth it.”

Arriane shot to her feet. “You bet your bangles it will be worth it.”

Roland stood up quickly and tugged Arriane back to her seat. Steven took Francesca’s arm and pulled her over to the window. Soon everyone was whispering and Luce didn’t have enough strength to hear more than Arriane’s loud “I got her big donation right here.” Out the window, the slenderest band of russet light hugged the mountains. Luce stared at it, her stomach knotted, knowing it marked the sunrise of the eighth day, the last full day before—

Daniel’s hand was on her shoulder, warm and strong.

“How are you doing, there?”

“I’m fine.” She sat up straighter, feigning alertness.

“What do we need to do next?”

“Sleep.”

She straightened her shoulders. “No, I’m not tired.

The sun’s rising, and Lucifer—”

Daniel leaned over the rocking chair and kissed her forehead. “It will go better if you’re rested.” Francesca looked up from her conversation with Steven. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“If she’s tired, she needs to sleep. A few hours won’t hurt. We’re already here.”

“But I’m
not
tired.” She protested, but it was obvious she was lying.

Francesca swallowed. “I guess you’re right. It’s either going to happen or it’s not.”

“What does she mean?” Luce asked Daniel.

“Nothing,” he said softly. Then, turning to Fran cesca, he said very quietly, “It’s
going
to happen.” He lifted Luce enough so he could slide into the rocking chair beside her. He wrapped his arms around her waist. The last things she felt were his kiss on her temple and his whisper in her ear. “Let her have one last sleep.”

“Are you ready?”

Luce stood beside Daniel in a fallow plot of farmland outside the white hut. Mist rose from the soil, and the sky was the sharp blue color of a heavy storm’s wake.

There was snow in the hills to the east, but the sloping plains of the valley exuded springlike warmth. Flowers bloomed on the fringes of the field. Butterflies were everywhere, white and pink and gold.

“Yes.”

Luce had been awake only an instant when she felt Daniel’s hand lift her from the rocking chair and out the door of the quiet hut. He must have held her in his arms all night.

“Wait,” she said. “Ready for what?”

The others were watching her, gathered in a circle as if they had been waiting, the angels and Outcasts all with their wings extended.

A cloud of storks crossed the sky, their black-tipped wings spread wide as palm fronds. Their flight darkened the sun for a moment, casting shadows on the angels’

wings, before the birds moved on.

“Tell me who I am,” Daniel said plainly.

He was the only angel with his wings concealed inside his clothes. He stepped away from her, rolled back his shoulders, closed his eyes, and released his wings.

They unfurled swiftly, with supreme elegance, blooming out on either side of him and sending back a gust of wind that swayed the boughs of the apricot trees.

Daniel’s wings towered over his body, radiant and wondrous, making him look unfathomably beautiful. He shone like a sun—not only his wings, his whole body—

and even more than that. What the angels called their glory radiated from Daniel. Luce couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“You’re an angel.”

He opened his violet eyes.

“Tell me more.”

“You’re—you’re Daniel Grigori,” Luce continued.

“You’re the angel who has loved me for thousands of years. You’re the boy I’ve loved back from the moment—

no, from
every
moment I first saw you.” She watched the sun play off the whiteness of his wings, yearned to feel them wrap around her. “You are the soul that fits into mine.”

“Good,” Daniel said. “Now, tell me who
you
are.”

“Well . . . I’m Lucinda Price. I’m the girl you fall in love with.”

There was a tense stillness all around them. All the angels seemed to hold their breath.

Daniel’s violet eyes filled with tears. He whispered:

“More.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

He shook his head.

“Daniel?”

“Lucinda.”

The way he said her name—so gravely—made her stomach ache. What did he want from her?

She blinked, and it sounded like a thunderbolt—and then the Trojan plain went black like it had the night before. The earth was marred by crooked fissures. Smoking craters stood where the field had been. Dust and ash and death were everywhere. The trees were on fire along the horizon, and a foul belch of rot rolled in on the wind.

It was as if her soul had hurled her millennia back in time. There was no snow in the mountains, no tidy white hut before her, no circle of angels’ worried faces.

But there was Daniel.

His wings shone through the dusty air. His bare skin was perfect, dewy, pink. His eyes glowed with the same intoxicating violet, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the sky. He didn’t seem to know that Luce was next to him.

Before she could follow his gaze upward, the world began to swirl. The scent on the air changed from rot to arid dust. She was back in Egypt, in the dark tomb where she’d been locked away and almost lost her soul. That scene played out before her eyes: the starshot warm inside her dress, the panic clear on her past face, the kiss that brought her back—and Bill flitting around the pha-raoh’s sarcophagus, already forming his most ambitious scheme. Her ears rang with his craggy laughter.

And then the laughter was gone. The vision of Egypt morphed into another: A Lucinda from an even more distant past lay prone in a field of high flowers. She wore a deerskin dress and held a dandelion over her face, picking off the petals one by one. The last one wobbled in the wind and she thought,
He loves me.
The sun was blinding until something crossed before it. Daniel’s face, his eyes brimming violet love, his blond hair sculpting a halo from the rays of the sun.

He smiled.

Then his face disappeared. A new vision, another life: the heat of a bonfire on her skin, desire burning in her chest. There were strange, loud music; people laughing; friends and family all around. Luce saw herself with Daniel, dancing wildly around the flames. She could feel the rhythms of the movements deep within her, even as the music faded and the flames licking the sky shifted from hot red to silvery softness—

A waterfall. A long lush drop of icy water down a limestone cliff. Luce was underneath it, parting a cloud of water lilies with her strokes. Her long wet hair gathered around her shoulders as she rose above the water, then dipped below. She came up on the other side of the waterfall’s torrent, in a humid stone lagoon. And there was Daniel, waiting as if he’d been waiting for her all his life.

He dove from a rock, splashing her when his body struck the water. He swam toward her, drawing her to him, one arm around her back and the other cradled under her knees. She laced her hands around his neck and let him kiss her. She closed her eyes—

Boom.

The thunderbolt again. Luce was back on the smoking Trojan plain. But this time, she was trapped in one of the craters, her body pinned beneath a boulder. She couldn’t move her left arm or leg. She struggled, crying out, seeing spots of red and shards of something that looked like a broken mirror. Her head swirled with the most intense pain she had ever felt.

“Help!”

And then: Daniel hovering over her, his violet eyes roving her body in unblinking horror.
“What happened
to you?”

Luce didn’t know the answer—didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there. The Lucinda of her memory didn’t even recognize Daniel. But she did.

Suddenly, she realized that this was the very first time she and Daniel had met on Earth. This was the moment she’d been begging for, the moment Daniel would never talk about.

Neither recognized the other. They were already, instantly in love.

How could
this
be the place of their first meeting?

This plagued dark landscape reeked of filth and death.

Her past self looked beaten, bloodied—like she had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

Like she had fallen from an unfathomable height.

Luce glanced at the sky. Something was there—a mass of infinitesimal sparks, as though Heaven had been electrocuted and shock waves would ripple from it for the rest of time.

Except the sparks were drawing nearer. Dark forms limned with light tumbled from an infinity above. There must have been a million of them gathered in a chaotic, amorphous band across the sky, dark and light, suspended and falling simultaneously, as if beyond the reach of gravity.

Had Luce been up there? She felt almost as if she had.

Then she realized something:
Those were the angels.

This was the Fall.

The memory of witnessing their fall to Earth ago-nized Luce. It was like watching all the stars fall out of the night sky.

The farther they fell, the looser their aimless formation became. Single entities became visible, autonomous.

She couldn’t imagine any of her angels, her friends, ever looking like this. More lost and out of control than the most destitute mortal on the worst day of his life. Was Arriane among them? Was Cam?

Her gaze traced one orb of light directly overhead. It grew larger and brighter as it approached.

Daniel looked up, too. Luce realized he didn’t recognize the falling forms, either. His impact on Earth had shuddered through him so thoroughly that it had erased his memory of who he was, where he’d come from, how magnificent he used to be. He watched the sky with raw terror in his eyes.