The Fallen Sequence (86 page)

He loved her.

She couldn’t think about that right now. While everyone’s eyes were drawn to the reflection, the real Luce retreated two steps and hid inside the shed.

“What’s happening?” Cam barked at Daniel.

“I don’t know!” Daniel whispered hoarsely.

Only Shelby seemed to understand. “He did it,” she said under her breath.

The Outcast swung his bow around to aim at this new Luce. Like he didn’t quite trust the victory.

“Let’s do this,” Luce heard her own voice saying in
the middle of the yard. “I can’t stay here with them. Too many secrets. Too many lies.”

A part of her did feel that way. That she couldn’t keep going on like this. That something had to change.

“You will come with me, and join my brothers and my sisters?” the Outcast said, sounding hopeful. His eyes made her nauseated. He held out his ghostly white hand.

“I will,” Luce’s voice projected.

“Luce, no.” Daniel sucked in his breath. “You can’t.”

Now the remaining Outcasts raised their bows at Daniel and Cam and the rest of them, lest they interfere.

Luce’s mirror stepped forward. Slipped her hand inside Phil’s. “Yes, I can.”

The monster Outcast cradled her in his stiff white arms. There was a great flap of dirty wings. A stale cloud of dust stormed up from the ground. Inside the shed, Luce held her breath.

She heard Daniel gasp as Luce’s mirror and the Outcast soared up and out of the backyard. The rest of them looked incredulous. Except for Shelby and Miles.

“What the hell just happened?” Arriane said. “Did she really—”

“No!” Daniel cried. “No, no, no!”

Luce’s heart ached as he tore at his hair, spun in a circle, and let his wings bloom out to their full size.

Immediately, the fleet of remaining Outcasts spread
their own dingy brown wings and took flight. Their wings were so thin, they had to beat frantically just to stay in the air. They were closing in on Phil. Trying to form a shield around him so he could take Luce wherever he thought he was taking her.

But Cam was faster. The Outcasts were probably twenty feet in the air when Luce heard one final arrow loose from its bow.

Cam’s arrow wasn’t meant for Phil. It was meant for Luce.

And his aim was perfect.

Luce froze as her mirror image disappeared in a great bloom of white light. In the sky, Phil’s tattered wings shuddered open. Empty. A horrible roar escaped his mouth. He started to swoop back toward Cam, followed by his army of Outcasts. But then he stopped midway. As if he’d realized there was no more reason to go back.

“So it begins again,” he called down to Cam. To all of them. “It could have ended peacefully. But tonight you’ve made a new sect of immortal enemies. Next time we will not negotiate.”

Then the Outcasts disappeared into the night.

Back in the yard, Daniel barreled into Cam, throwing him to the ground. “What’s
wrong
with you?” he yelled, his fists wailing down on Cam’s face. “How could you?”

Cam strained to stop him. They rolled over each other on the grass. “It was a better end for her, Daniel.”

Daniel was seething, tackling Cam, slamming his head into the dirt. Daniel’s eyes blazed. “I’ll kill you!”

“You
know
I’m right!” Cam shouted, not fighting back at all.

Daniel froze. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know anything now.” His voice was ragged. He’d been gripping Cam by the lapel, but now he just slumped to the ground, burying his face in the grass.

Luce wanted to go to him. To fall on him and tell him everything was going to be okay.

Except it wasn’t.

What she’d seen tonight was too much. She felt sick from watching herself—Miles’s mirror image of her—die from the starshot.

Miles had saved her life. She couldn’t get over it.

And the rest of them thought Cam had ended it.

Her head swam as she stepped forward from the shadows of the shed, planning to tell the others not to worry, that she was still alive. But then she sensed the presence of something else.

An Announcer was quivering in the doorway. Luce stepped out of the shed and approached it.

Slowly, it broke free of a shadow cast by the moon. It slithered along the grass toward her for a few feet,
picking up a dirty coat of dust left by the battle. When it reached Luce, it shuddered up and rose along her body, until it hovered blackly over her head.

She closed her eyes and felt herself raising her hand to meet it. The darkness fell to rest in her palm. It made a cold sizzling sound.

“What is that?” Daniel’s head snapped around at the noise. He raised himself from the ground. “
Luce!
”

She stayed put as the others gasped at the sight of her standing in front of the shed. She didn’t want to glimpse an Announcer. She’d seen enough for one night. She didn’t even know why she was doing this—

Until she did. She wasn’t looking for a vision, she was looking for a way out. Something far away enough to step through to. It had been too long since she’d had a moment to think on her own. What she needed was a break. From everything.

“Time to go,” she said to herself.

The shadow door that presented itself in front of her wasn’t perfect—it was jagged around the edges and it stank of sewage. But Luce parted its surface anyway.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Luce!” Roland’s voice reached her at the edge of the doorway. “It could take you anywhere!”

Daniel was on his feet, jogging toward her. “What are you doing?” She could hear the profound relief in his voice that she was still alive, and the sheer panic that
she could manipulate the Announcer. His anxiety only spurred her on.

She wanted to look back to apologize to Callie, to thank Miles for what he’d done, to tell Arriane and Gabbe not to worry the way she knew they were going to anyway, to leave word for her parents. To tell Daniel not to follow her, that she needed to do this for herself. But her chance to break free was closing. So she stepped forward and called over her shoulder to Roland, “Guess I’ll just have to figure it out.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel rushing toward her. Like he hadn’t believed until now that she would do it.

She felt the words rising up in her throat.
I love you
. She did. She did forever. But if she and Daniel
had
forever, their love could wait until she figured out a few important things about herself. About her lives and the life she had ahead of her. Tonight there was only time to wave goodbye, take a deep breath, and leap into the dismal shadow.

Into darkness.

Into her past.

EPILOGUE

PANDEMONIUM

“W
hat just happened?”

“Where’d she go?”

“Who taught her how to do that?”

The frantic voices in the backyard sounded wobbly and distant to Daniel. He knew the other fallen angels were arguing, looking for Announcers in the shadows of the yard. Daniel was an island, closed off to everything but his own agony.

He had failed her. He had failed
.

How could it be? For weeks he’d run himself ragged, his only goal to keep her safe until the moment when he could no longer offer her protection. Now that moment had come and gone—and so had Luce.

Anything could happen to her. And she could be anywhere. He had never felt so hollow and ashamed.

“Why can’t we just find the Announcer she stepped through, put it back together, and go after her?”

The Nephilim boy. Miles. He was on his knees, combing the grass with his fingers. Like a moron.

“They don’t work that way,” Daniel snarled at him. “When you step into time, you take the Announcer with you. That’s why you never do it unless …”

Cam looked at Miles, almost pityingly. “Please tell me Luce knows more about Announcer travel than you do.”

“Shut up,” Shelby said, standing over Miles protectively. “If he hadn’t thrown Luce’s reflection, Phil would have taken her.”

Shelby looked guarded and afraid, out of place among the fallen angels. Years ago, she’d had a crush on Daniel—one he’d never requited, of course. But until tonight, he’d always thought well of the girl. Now she was just in the way.

“You said yourself Luce would be better off dead than with the Outcasts,” she said, still defending Miles.

“The Outcasts
you
all but invited here.” Arriane
stepped into the conversation, turning on Shelby, whose face reddened.

“Why would you assume some Nephilim child could detect the Outcast?” Molly challenged Arriane. “You were at that school.
You
should have noticed something.”

“All of you:
Quiet.
” Daniel couldn’t think straight. The yard was crammed with angels, but Luce’s absence made it feel utterly empty.

He could hardly stand to look at anyone else. Shelby, for walking straight into the Outcast’s easy trap. Miles, for thinking he had some stake in Luce’s future. Cam, for what he’d tried to do—

Oh, that moment when Daniel thought he’d lost her to Cam’s starshot! His wings had felt too heavy to lift. Colder than death. In that instant, he’d given up all hope.

But it was only a trick of the eye. A thrown reflection, nothing special under ordinary circumstances, but tonight the last thing Daniel had been expecting. It had given him a horrible shock. One that had nearly killed him. Until the joy of her resurrection.

There was still hope.

As long as he could find her.

He’d been stunned, watching Luce open up the shadow. Awed and impressed and painfully attracted to her—but more than all of that, stunned. How many times had she done it before without his even knowing?

“What do you think?” Cam asked, coming up beside
him. Their wings drew toward each other, that old magnetic force, and Daniel was too drained to pull away.

“I’m going after her,” he said.

“Good plan.” Cam sneered. “Just ‘go after her.’ Anywhere in time and space across the several thousand years. Why should you need a strategy?”

His sarcasm made Daniel want to tackle him a second time.

“I’m not asking for your help or your advice, Cam.”

Only two starshots remained in the yard: the one he’d picked up from the Outcast Molly had killed, and the one Cam had found on the beach at the beginning of the truce. There would have been a nice symmetry if Cam and Daniel had been working as enemies right now—two bows, two starshots, two immortal foes.

But no. Not yet. They had to eliminate too many others before they could turn on each other again.

“What Cam means”—Roland stood between them, speaking to Daniel in a low voice—“is that this might take some team effort. I’ve seen the way these kids flop through the Announcers. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, Daniel. She’s going to get into trouble pretty quick.”

“
I know.
”

“It’s not a sign of weakness to let us help,” Roland said.

“I can help,” Shelby called. She’d been whispering with Miles. “I think I might know where she is.”

“You?” Daniel asked. “You’ve helped enough. Both of you.”

“Daniel—”

“I know Luce better than anyone in the world.” Daniel turned away from all of them, toward the dark, empty space in the yard where she’d stepped through. “Far better than any of you ever will. I don’t need your help.”

“You know her past,” Shelby said, walking in front of him so that he had to look at her. “You don’t know what she’s been through these past few weeks. I’m the one who’s been around while she glimpsed her past lives. I’m the one who saw her face when she found the sister she lost when you kissed her and she …” Shelby trailed off. “I know you all hate me right now. But I swear to—Oh, whatever it is you guys believe in. You can trust me from here on out. Miles, too. We want to help. We’re
going
to help. Please.” She reached for Daniel. “Trust us.”

Daniel wrested himself away from her. Trust as an activity had always made him uneasy. What he had with Luce was unshakable. There was never any need even to work on trust. Their love just
was
.

But for all eternity, Daniel had never been able to find faith in anyone or anything else. And he didn’t want to start now.

Down the street, a dog yipped. Then again, louder. Closer.

Luce’s parents, coming back from their walk.

In the dark yard, Daniel’s eyes found Gabbe’s. She was standing close to Callie, probably consoling her. She’d already retracted her wings.

“Just go,” Gabbe mouthed to him in the desolate, dust-filled backyard. What she meant was
Go get her
. She would handle Luce’s parents. She would see that Callie got home. She would cover all the bases so that Daniel could go after what mattered.
We’ll find you and help you as soon as we can
.

The moon drifted out from behind a mist of cloud. Daniel’s shadow lengthened on the grass at his feet. He watched it swell a little, then began to draw up the Announcer inside it. When the cool, damp darkness brushed against him, Daniel realized that he hadn’t stepped through time in ages. Looking back was not normally his style.