Archon (27 page)

Too late. He was heading straight for them.

Troy fended the female off, spitting like some nightmarish cat.

“Just don’t whine that it hurts.” Kim tore the buttons from his coat sleeve, rolling it upward.

He set the knife to his skin.

God—the cut felt like a streak of fire.

A long red line appeared, followed by more crimson dripping slowly down his hand. Kim’s fingers slipped against each other, soaked with redness despite the rain. He began tracing the pentagram in the air shakily, hurried by panic.

“I said
do it,
” Troy shrieked again, hissing so loudly at the angel Kim’s ears throbbed in pain. She lunged, the bones in her hair rattling like a snake’s tail. “Throne,” she spit at the female. “Abomination. Back to your cage and leash, bastard crow. Better that you’d rotted in the depths of the Underworld, a chick without a hope.”

The female screamed wordlessly, but Troy’s insults kept her close and vulnerable. She flapped her wings, face-to-face with his cousin, both of them continuing their threat displays.

Troy bit for the angel’s throat, her teeth smashing together.

A Throne.

No wonder these angels fought like berserkers. For once, Troy had a challenge on her hands. When it came to fury and relentless murder, they were probably a closer match than even she felt comfortable with. But there was no doubt now that Israfel was nearby, probably right inside St. Mary’s, wreaking all kinds of havoc. These were his guardians, and most likely, some of the best that Heaven had ever produced. Thrones were the privilege of the high angels, the powerful personalities. And they were also—unfortunately—the first set of opponents if anyone dared infringe on their master’s interests.

Most never survived to tell about it—but Kim was hardly ready to settle for death.

The smile spreading across his face had the joy of hurting more than the angels behind it. “
Defende nos in proelio!
”

Troy stiffened against him, hardly able to bear his voice.

Kim’s blood remained in the air, the droplets holding fast to the invisible pentagram. His arm shook, and he glared directly into the male angel’s eyes. In a few seconds, they would be on top of each other. Behind him, the female moaned, her wings slowing as Troy’s also relaxed, both of them stricken. His cousin’s breath was like a ragged whisper.

“
Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium!
”

The pentagram blazed, its light like a red star.

Troy collapsed to the ground, panting, her nails scraping the stone.

“
Libera nos a malo! A malo!
”

The red light exploded, expanding in a circle of brilliance to the fringes of the courtyard, all the rain seeming to turn into blood. Within it, the Thrones shrieked with a chilling kind of rage, and then their own silver light flashed in front of the church, lightning that mixed with more lightning.

In an instant, they escaped into the next dimension and were gone, wounds still streaming, wings thundering faintly.

Troy’s gasps came slower, but the pain on her face was something Kim rarely witnessed.

Her ears flicked water away from her cheeks, and her glowing eyes hid under half-mast lids, dimmed by the spiritual oppression. Gradually, she folded her wings tightly against her back and clambered onto hands and feet, rising to sit on her haunches. Her face was uncharacteristically expressionless. Kim knew better than to talk. He knew better than to listen for a thank you. Instead, he watched the water roll along the white curves of her face.

If only the prayer had the power to kill her.

But Troy was a Jinn, and one of the toughest. His exorcisms could ward her off, temporarily weaken her, even send her back to Hell for a short time. But he’d never be able to kill her. It would take a demon, an angel, or something unimaginable to accomplish that.

“Do you want me to thank you?” she said, snarling coldly.

Fury spiraled down and landed on her shoulder, pecking at the earring near her neck, its metal crow’s foot scratching into her skin. Troy batted her away, and even in the wetness, her nails looked lacquered with bright red.

Angel blood.

She licked them clean and spat onto the cobblestones. Her entire body shook. “If—you—
ever
even think of using that ward on me—”

“Consider us even. A life for a life.” He stepped around her, eager to get inside the church and keep Angela from killing herself prematurely.

Whump.

Troy landed in front of him, blocking off his escape. She was very close, her yellow eyes almost hypnotizing him with their inner fire, and her breath blew back in his face, pushing the wet hairs from his cheeks. “For now,” she said, through lips tinted with the blood from her nails, “you live and speak your mind. But remember that your miracle won’t happen more than once. I could have let them kill you, Sariel.” She smiled cruelly. “But my pride couldn’t stand seeing anyone else’s teeth in your spine.”

“And if Israfel beats you to it? He is a Supernal.”

Troy paused, her ears perking. She’d either heard something he could not, or Israfel’s name had a unique way of disgusting her.

Then she regarded him again and laughed. She was beating her wings, ready to enter the cathedral at the moment when she’d be least expected or wanted, which seemed to be every other second of the day. “I’d worry more about your mates tearing each other apart. It will be entertaining, at least.”

He gripped his knife, heading for the doors of St. Mary’s. It was going to be very entertaining when she saw how mercilessly he could clip a bird’s wings.

Kim licked his blade clean, relishing the blood in spite of himself.

Especially a bird of God.

Twenty-six

Most beautiful of all creatures, was the Star of the Morning. And the eye that gazed upon him already grasped its heart’s desire.

—
U
NKNOWN AUTHOR,
A Collection of Angelic Lore

I
srafel was staring at Brendan like they’d never met before.

His eyes were so large and beguiling, Angela clenched Sophia’s hand in a death grip, afraid she would abandon her soul for the sake of another kiss.

Sophia must have sensed the conflict. Breathing heavily, she yanked Angela closer, like they’d belonged to each other for years.

The angel regarded them both with a quick glance, a lovely smile.

Then, for Brendan, his face became unexpectedly apologetic. Thunder and rain erupted through the broken windows, merely highlighting the soft strength of his voice.

“I’m sorry, Brendan.”

Angela’s brother stopped laughing, and he became so still, Naamah could have killed him already. The demon, too, was in shock, as if Israfel had just told her he was ready to kneel at Lucifel’s feet and kiss them.

“What do you mean?” Brendan said, his voice cracking. He was sweating, almost writhing in between words, like Israfel’s mere presence was enough to make him lose control. There was an unnerving wantonness to it all. “Israfel—my angel—”

Israfel didn’t react.

“Kill her. Do it. Burn her.” Brendan pointed at Stephanie. “
The witch! Burn her!
”

Stephanie stood still, blank in the face and silent. Israfel could snap her neck with a blink of his eyes, and yet he was turning on the person who’d brought him there in the first place. Then, a silvery light circled the angel’s head in a halo of energy. His ears changed, their upper rims growing, slipping between his hair and lengthening into delicate but feathery sickles. Wings. These were another pair of wings, and he tested their muscles, fanning air through the white tendrils near his cheeks.

When he spoke again, his voice was resigned. “Are you ready to go?”

“You promised.” Brendan sank to his knees, but Naamah kept a grip on his hair. She seemed as disturbed as everyone else, her hard eyes never leaving Israfel. “I gave you
MY SOUL. MY SOUL
.”

The echo could have lasted forever.

His
soul
? Kim had warned Angela about that kind of idiocy.

Now she was witnessing it firsthand.

Israfel’s loveliness seemed to grow, like he’d calculated it the best way to torture Brendan even further. Angela could see it with a detail that struck her painfully inside. She had envisioned those eyes for so long, the slightest change in them stood out like ink on snow.

“You shouldn’t be afraid,” Israfel said with a measured gentleness. “Of course, I can always bring you back in a new body, whenever I feel like it. And then another. And another.” His pink lips mouthed the words too softly. “So why fear death? You’re going to be happy now, Brendan. An eternity of slavery to me, just as you wished. And you’ll have a million bodies with which to enjoy it.”

Sophia shuddered next to Angela, like her own execution had been pronounced.

Brendan will be just like her. Dying over and over, only to wake up in a new body—all to wait for a different kind of death.

Somehow, Brendan had pissed Israfel off. Now he was going to pay for it dearly. For eternity. “Why?” her brother gasped, almost lunging out of Naamah’s lethal grip.

Israfel looked to Angela.

Brendan followed his gaze, horrified.

“No need for two in my confidence,” the angel whispered. “It simply wouldn’t be fair.”

Angela’s brother was suddenly a mess, his hair tangled in front of his eyes, his face contorted with anger. “You,” he said to Angela. “You!” He pointed at her, shrieking at the top of his lungs. “
It wasn’t enough to ruin the family? To ruin my life? And here I scraped and slaved my way into this seminary, and yet you enter Luz simply because you’re a blood head—
”

He was raving. Israfel had pushed him completely over the edge.

Angela lunged to grab him, to rescue him from the danger that loomed more menacingly every second. But Sophia yanked her back just as swiftly, her fingers like an unbreakable vise.

“
—but you can’t have HIM, Angela. He’s MINE. MINE—
”

“Brendan,” she said, trying to say more with her expression than her words—

Shut up. Shut up before it’s too late.

“You sound like a crazy person. You sound like—”

Sophia held on tighter. Painfully, impossibly tight.

“
You’re crazy! You’re going to be the ruin of us all! Why didn’t they just kill you that night—when we were born—LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO ME
—”

Sophia turned away, her eyes squeezed shut.

As if this was her cue, Naamah gave a slight flick of her wrist.

Brendan’s throat slit open like a ripe fruit. He gurgled, slipping in the mess of his own blood, flailing out of her reach and onto the floor, clutching at his wound. Angela didn’t even realize she was screaming until Sophia twisted her arm, shocking her back into a dreamlike, semiaware state. But no one could save her brother. And Stephanie, his former lover, simply watched, her mouth set in a line and her expression stony. Brendan crawled for the angel, spitting more blood as he tried to talk.

Israfel stood over Brendan, judging him like a god but not saying a word. Her brother grasped the angel’s foot, his skin paling to chalky white, his eyes round with shock. An exchange of thoughts seemed to pass between him and Israfel, ones that brought shivers to Brendan’s body.

He collapsed a second later. Dead.

Naamah breathed heavily, wiping her dirtied blades in a fold of coat fabric. “He was uncommonly loud for a priest,” she said, muttering. Then she laughed at Israfel, certainly overjoyed to see him distressed by her violence. “I wouldn’t be too upset. He also wasn’t a fitting toy, am I right?”

“Angela,” Sophia was saying, as if from very far away. “Angela . . .”

But she was becoming one with the audience trapped inside the church, dazed and overwhelmed. That raving mockery of humanity hadn’t been her brother. Yes, he and Angela might have been estranged for years, but even so, the thought was the only support that was keeping her from losing her last precious thread of self-control and collapsing inside for good.

Her reaction, though, was a universal one.

Everyone else who’d been left alive to watch her brother die stood in the same dull kind of silence, as if the bloodshed no longer meant anything. Some of the novices had huddled in the darkest corners they could find, and out past the dim light of the candles there were the reflections of hundreds of eyes, the ragged breaths from hundreds of mouths, the prayers whispered half in fear and half in the hope of escape.

I can
’
t just curl up and cry. It won
’
t change anything.

Despite her resolve, the tears trickled down her face.

No. Angela knew she had to help. She was one of the only people who could.

But how? And without killing herself?

You should have never Bound her to you . . .

Troy. Angela could actually use that terrifying creature and she was nowhere to be found.

But if you are nearby,
she said to herself,
you’d better come.

Members of the Pentacle Sorority had sat still in their pews, protected from the mayhem until Israfel’s arrival. Now they rested on the tiles, their knees tucked up within the circle of their arms, watching Stephanie and Angela like they were two gods on the verge of battle.

Perhaps they weren’t mistaken. Stephanie shouted at Angela, breaking her trance.

“—and I think it’s time we finished this. Naamah—”

The demon wasn’t moving. Instead she narrowed her eyes knowingly at Stephanie, dark with concentration as Israfel approached with the same grace he’d used to enter the church. Stephanie backed away from him, screaming, but the angel silenced her with a sharp gesture of his hand.

She clutched at her throat, still spewing words no one could hear.

Turning to Naamah for help, finding none, whatever pride she was holding on to melted with the shattered look on her face. She whimpered, like a child begging for protection.

Sophia grabbed Angela’s wrist, squeezing it again. Her voice was fainter than a breeze. “You must not let him see the Grail.”

How does she know I have it?

Angela’s blouse was loose enough to keep it hidden. But she obeyed without questioning any further, realizing that her instincts had been correct all along.

The Grail would be a reminder of Lucifel.

She clamped her hand over the Eye, almost wishing it could fuse to her body rather than swing from her neck.

“Is it you?” Israfel was saying to Stephanie.

She was calming down, entranced. But her hands remained balled into fists, and she shivered all over, responding to his closeness like the threat that it was. Then Israfel reached down and lifted her chin, leaning in for a familiar kiss. Stephanie struggled with him at first, but soon gave in, and Angela bit her lip, feeling it bleed. In an instant, her grief was forgotten. Instead, it was taking everything in her—and Sophia’s fingers clamped into her skin like cold iron—not to repeat Brendan’s mistake and start screaming like a maniac.

Israfel broke away from her quickly. “What is this?”

Stephanie shook out of her short possession, panting. Naamah’s expression had changed to one of sudden and unexpected anguish. His reaction had told her something important, maybe devastating.

“That taste,” Israfel said, practically spitting her out of his mouth. “Like you’ve crawled out of the Abys—”

Boom.

Thunder resounded through the cathedral.

The rosette window at the front of the church exploded into a million shards of color.

The double doors of the church slammed back open, their locks cracking with a burst of crimson light. Students, teachers, novices, priests, and civilians flooded out of the disaster into the storm, into Luz, as above them, the city’s notorious serial killer winged her way through a new rain of glass. Troy seemed to descend in slow motion, every flap of her feathers sounding more forceful than a million growls and hisses. Lightning raced across the open sky above the cathedral, highlighting the little razors that were her teeth, and she landed on all fours with a grace that matched the sleek beauty of her wings and ears.

Then she ripped into a student who stood in her way. He fell with one swipe of her nails. In seconds, she was racing in Naamah’s direction.

She came. Why? Because she’s Bound to me? Because she heard my thoughts?

Troy passed Angela, giving her a glare that confirmed everything.

There was no time for explanations.

Stephanie screamed for the demon, the other sorority members taking their chance at escape. Only Sophia wasn’t going anywhere.

Israfel seemed to have materialized out of the air, pulling her out of Angela’s reach.

Sophia glared at him with surprising hatred. “Let go of me, Israfel. Or you’ll be sorry for it.”

She knows him too. Oh, God, why can’t I hate him for this? For letting Brendan die? For anything?

Angela grabbed her back, yanking her close.

The church continued falling to pieces around them, glass smashing and plaster cracking. “What are you doing?”

Israfel ran his fingers through Sophia’s curls. “That careless demon saved me a week’s worth of searching. Who’d have thought they’d leave such a precious item lying around?”

“But that doesn’t make sense . . .” Angela’s body trembled, her insides freezing over. This was surreal. It simply
didn’t
make any sense whatsoever. “Israfel,” she forced herself to sound firm, “you’re making a mistake. Sophia is just a friend of mine, she—”

She’s a person who already died, and you’re going to kill her again? Not today . . .

Unlike Brendan and his repressed lack of morals, Sophia hadn’t done anything to justify another punishment. Angela felt her first spark of anger, staring at Israfel’s kohl-rimmed eyes and stainless perfection. Whatever enchantment he’d used on Brendan, her feelings must have been too genuine for that to matter. She wanted to slap him across the face, like she’d been tossed into the middle of an argument between two lovers and was now forced to pick a side. She actually felt stronger than him, even when he laughed and the noise sounded lighter and farther away than the stars. The wings that were once normal ears flapped and folded again, hiding beneath his hair. “Friend? Excuse me, but someone has put silly ideas into your head.”