Archon (22 page)

“For there is only one Archon . . . but there are two who can be the Ruin.”

The clouds boiled, saturating the atmosphere with a new and painful blackness, taking the life that remained to the souls below her and turning their spirit bodies to ash. A violent wind gusted through the valley, and their symbolic selves dissipated, disintegrating in the new breeze blowing through Tileaf’s mind. Little by little, the terrible image stripped away into tatters, tearing off to reveal the same space where the Book had lain next to Angela, alone.

But now Tileaf stood before her, beautiful and untouched by the priests’ greed.

Her lovely face held the bleakest expression, and she stepped softly toward Angela, holding out her hand.

She didn’t have to ask.

Angela slipped the chain over her neck and handed her the Grail, now more an Eye than a stone. Green, and horribly alive.

“This,” Tileaf said, cradling the Grail in her palm, “must never find its way back to Lucifel. Whether or not it was a lover’s gift, Raziel eventually gave it to the Jinn, and thus to the true Archon, for a reason, and once it finds Her hands, it must never leave them. It is cursed, certainly, but also important, though only he might have known why or how . . .”

Angela nodded, accepting the Eye as it was passed back to her.

“If you yourself are the Archon, when the time comes to use the Grail, remember that it cannot be handled without consequences.”

“And what about Israfel?”

Angela’s heart ached, almost to the point where she could cry. Seeing her beautiful angel so clearly, she’d wanted him more than ever, and more than ever, the possibility seemed nonexistent. The danger was obvious. If she didn’t ignore this corner of her heart, the thirst would eventually kill her on its own. Israfel took up her world; he always had. Only for a few days had someone stood before or beside him in the space of her affections. Kim had enough pleasure to offer, enough beauty and charm, but could a relationship built on danger last? Besides, if Angela proved to be nothing more than what so many had suspected—insane—then he’d kill her.

How alone she was. Unable to trust even her own feelings.

“Israfel . . .” Tileaf sighed deeply. “As I said, he vanished into the highest dimensions of Heaven. Raziel’s death affected him powerfully. And no one has seen him since that fateful day. He may no longer even be alive.”

That couldn’t be. It simply could not. Besides, Mikel had
said
he was alive.

Though she could have been lying from the start.

“How can I find him? I was hoping that maybe I could summon him to Earth like other angels, but—”

“No.” The Fae’s voice hardened. “He is a Supernal. They are angels. But they are also on a much higher plane of existence. Israfel is not the type of being who entertains demands.”

“Then what do I do?”

“You can hope. It is what we’ve all been doing since Raziel died and took most of what little hope remained with him . . .”

“And that’s all?”

Tileaf lifted her hand, thrusting with it as if she were pushing Angela away. They began to separate with the same slow intensity with which they’d first come together, and a grim knowledge entered into Angela’s awareness. This was the last time she and Tileaf would speak on equal terms. The next instance they’d encounter each other, Angela would have to be the Archon to survive it, and she would have to keep her promise and kill someone who otherwise wished her dead.

“Yes,” Tileaf said, sounding more resigned than ever. “That’s all.”

Twenty-two

His voice is unlike any other. A music that torments the soul.

—
U
NKNOWN AUTHOR,
A Collection of Angelic Lore

Were you there in the Garden of Shadows?

Were you near when the Father took wing?

Did you sigh when the starlight outpoured us?

When the silver bright water could sing . . .

Angela rolled over onto her side, sighing, trying to wake up, though her brain was crawling from sleep with infuriating sluggishness. Someone was singing to her, such a haunting, incredible song. She recognized this voice—she’d heard this melody before . . .

Have you drunk from a river of amber?

Or eaten the nectar of dreams,

Where thoughts linger determining eons,

And time stretches apart at the seams . . .

Who? Who was this?

The voice was like pure birdsong and the gentle ring of a chime, yet with all the force of a rushing tidal wave. Angela moaned out loud, half awake, turning aside in a mound of what felt like dead leaves. They crackled underneath her, her back hit an iron-hard root—and her eyes popped open, revealing the unearthly decay of Tileaf’s grotto.

She sat up, groggy and unusually tired.

Kim lay beside her, his arm flopped across her skirt. He looked so different, fast asleep like this. Innocent, his hair thrown back from his face and neck, completely unlike the cold, professional persona he projected, his lips gently parting as he breathed and mumbled what sounded like Latin. Troy, though, was gone, perhaps because dawn was almost upon them. She’d either escaped deep into the undergrowth or had left entirely, unwilling to watch over the two people she hated most as they curled beside each other.

Luckily for Kim, she also must have had an aversion to murdering anyone unconscious. Jinn must have had the morality peculiar to hunters. Twisted morals, but still, morals.

Thump.

What was that?

Angela turned around, her heart pounding.

A branch had fallen from Tileaf’s tree into the dirt. She too was gone, silent, back to dying alone—just as she seemed to prefer it.

Now the coffin of spirits awaits us.

Now the sliver of life it escapes us . . .

“Hello?” Angela stood up and crunched through the leaves, stepping over another large root. She was still wobbly and tired and her head felt foggy. It was hard to see, though that was thankfully improving. The trees caged the entire grotto in darkness, but between their black limbs the slate-colored sky was appearing in the early morning light. And it was an uncommonly pallid and dirty light. Clouds scudded by with the wind, their tufts boiling with a menace peculiar to Luz, threatening another deadly storm. Strangely enough, it had only been last night when Angela, Nina, and Kim—when they’d survived lightning bolts, and rain that could cut into your skin. “Hello?” she whispered.

Nothing. Just the scraping of twigs and leaves.

It’s in my head. The voice is in my head. No one else can hear it.

Kim continued to sleep, rolling over and resting his arm against his forehead. If the voice truly came from an outside source, it was certainly loud enough to have awakened him by now.

If we tarry in this place.

If we take not the chance to taste . . .

Whoever was singing, was calling
her
.

Angela left Kim behind, slowly walking through the same tunnel of foliage that had led her to Tileaf and a thousand dreadful images, most of which lingered in her mind. Her boots crackled through leaves and dry twigs, splashed through mud, and tapped against old stone. The weeds on either side of the path shivered, as if saying farewell; Angela patted the Grail resting in its cold lump beneath her blouse and slipped her fingers through a space between the buttons, stroking its smooth surface. Without warning, it struck her—perhaps Angela had never heard this song or this voice before. Perhaps it had been tailor-made to seduce her. As if whoever was singing knew exactly what she wanted to hear, offering it to her along with all her dreams and hopes, if she would simply—

Come to me.

Bushes rustled nearby.

Angela froze, frightened, then relaxed in relief.

Revealed by the moving bushes, Nina shifted her sleeping position against a tree trunk. Her blouse had been torn by a patch of thorns. Otherwise, she looked too peaceful for someone possessed. But if Angela tried to wake her up, she might only end up speaking to Mikel.

Angela shuffled past her, slowly following the path out of the park and up to the immense wrought-iron gate. As always, the return journey seemed shorter than the arrival, and she stepped out onto the cobblestones tentatively, like someone might catch her, hear her, and force the trees to snag her back inside.

Now where do I go?

A long wet street escaped into the fog ahead, and on either side stretched the avenues and tunnels Kim had used to get them to the Park in the first place.

Instead, Angela chose the route the song—or her heart—suggested. A narrow alley directly to her left. The verses repeated themselves, throbbing inside of her like a heartbeat, and soon she was obeying, entering the most dilapidated section of the Academy’s Western District, its buildings more like vacant shacks hoisted too tightly against one another. A rat skittered across the street and over her boot.

Come to me.

Luz passed her by, little more than a blur of black and gray.

Grates that covered the ocean began to line both sides of the street, water churning beneath them, frothy and ice cold. But the melody pounding through her head drowned out both the sea and the threat of its unusually high waves, their tips licking the grate’s lower edges. And somehow, she knew where to go, despite distractions, despite guilt—

You were there in the Garden of Shadows.

You were there when the Father took wing.

And my words will remind you of pleasure . . .

She paused, backpedaling to a stone church, its perimeter surrounded by barbed wire. Whoever owned the incredible voice was inside the building, waiting, and the instinct carried her like a dream, one foot after the other pushing her up the stairs, and then hand by hand over the fence and the barbs that tore into her skirt and her tights. The Vatican had closed off this church to the public and to students for good, for forever, perhaps because it stood too near Tileaf’s tree, and so, too close to secrets. Time and acid rain had both done their share, and once-impressive stone reliefs had been worn away to featureless lumps. Most of the stained-glass windows had been cracked or shattered, and the wooden doors had warped from constant rain. Locked or unlocked, a hard push would snap them open, but Angela tried the handles anyway.

Cool, tarnished brass met her hand.

She turned her wrist.

The door gave way, creaking open.

And imprison your soul in a ring.

Gray haze veiled the altar.

Numerous puddles surrounded the pews like moats, reflecting the brick of the nearest towers in a collage of brown and russet. Ragged holes had been torn in the walls near the ceiling, leaving most of the floor naked to the rain, but Angela followed the central aisle, picking her away around the water, wondering at the moldy tapestries and the stench of mildew. Then the mist receded, revealing one window still intact. Angela stopped to examine the stained glass, dulled beneath its film of grime. Its image was barely discernible: an angel handing a lily to a frightened young woman.

“She carried a treasure in her body.”

A soft voice. A real voice. Just like the one that had been singing to her.

“That’s the legend, or so I’ve heard . . .”

The pitch sounded gentle but too deep to be female. She forced herself to turn around, heart working overtime, everything seeming to happen in slow motion, as if time were in the very process of freezing—

To come face-to-face with absolute Beauty.

She could only stare, drinking in the ivory of his skin, the pink of his lips; losing herself in his lined, sea blue eyes, so large and so bright. Even his star-white hair seemed to shine, dispersing the gloom with an ethereal brilliance, with the scarlet ribbons woven through the tresses near his shoulders and graceful neck. His perfection was overwhelming, staggering. It erased the memory of Kim’s face in an instant. It made Tileaf look like an ugly duckling desperate to be a swan.

This was Israfel. Her beautiful, beautiful angel.

But he was no longer a dream or a vision or a memory. He was now a solid, flesh-and-blood reality, standing in front of her, his embroidered coat dazzling her eyes with its silver thread, his own shock looking supremely out of place. Israfel backed away from her, actually seeming afraid. His smile hardened the same as in her dreams, whenever he was upset. “You—”

His voice cut off.

Perfect. It’s perfect even when he isn’t singing.

Neither of them moved.

“You,” he said the words reluctantly, as if she’d pulled them out of his mouth herself, “you look like the—”

Like what? Like Raziel?

She shouldn’t let him touch her—not yet—but he was already doing so, fascinated like she was fascinated, losing all his caution to melt any trace of fear with his slim fingers. The longing inside of her grew like a living thing, threatening to burst out in all the wrong ways. How many times had she kissed his portrait, painted another picture, or sketched a scene from one of those ephemeral dreams, aching and sighing and pining away inside? How many scars had she inflicted on herself in the insane suicide attempts, all so that she could rest in the circle of his bronze wings?

They had yet to appear, though. Even more troubling, his hair and eyebrows were pearlescent white, not the bronze she’d seen in Tileaf’s memories and her own detailed visions. But his face, his slender figure, his graceful movements, even the soul gazing back at her through those languid blue irises—those were all the same.

It wasn’t until he leaned in closer, and the soft light from the towers grazed his features again, that she saw how heavily the kohl circled his eyes. How thickly he’d painted his eyelashes a deep shade of black.

Their roots were white as his hair.

“You heard my song,” he whispered to her.

“Yes.” Anything she said sounded foolish compared to the way he spoke.

“Is it you? Have you come back to me?”

He means Raziel.

“I don’t know.” That sounded even stupider.

But more than anything she wanted it to be the truth. When he cupped her face and drew her in close, she gave in with a delicate sigh, returning the pressure of his soft, insistent mouth, overwhelmed by a warmth that burned every other thought away. She sensed him testing her, tasting the deepest part of her soul and liking what he found, whether or not it was what he truly wanted. So much emotion, so fast. Insanity. Danger. This angel, a creature of such power, could crack her spine with a snap of his fingers, and yet Angela had fallen into his embrace brainless and lovesick, an idiot without equal, just like she had imagined over and over and over again. Kim’s face reappeared in the depths of her mind, protesting, but then he sank back into an abyss where she could no longer see him.

There would be no salvation. Because these feelings began somewhere else, long, long ago.

They broke apart, and Israfel licked his lips, as if still savoring the taste of her.

He stroked her hair, running its blood-red strands through his fingers, just as Kim had done. How right this felt, though. So impossibly right, yet in a way so different from the rightness Kim made her feel. He’d been passionate enough for her, but the sensation was ultimately far from the same.