The Fallen Sequence (87 page)
Read The Fallen Sequence Online
Authors: Lauren Kate
But the motions were still in him, buried in his wings or his soul or his heart. He moved quickly, peeling the Announcer off his own shadow, giving it a quick pinch to separate it from the ground. Then he threw it, like a piece of potter’s clay, onto the air directly in front of him.
It formed a clean, finite portal.
He had been a part of every one of Luce’s past lives. There was no reason he wouldn’t be able to find her.
He opened the door. No time to waste. His heart would take him to her.
He had an innate sense that something bad was just
around the bend, but a hope that something incredible was waiting in the distance.
It had to be.
His burning love for her coursed through him until he felt so full he didn’t know whether he would fit through the portal. He wrapped his wings close against his body and bounded into the Announcer.
Behind him, in the yard, a distant commotion. Whispers and rustling and shouts.
He didn’t care. He didn’t care about any of them, really.
Only her.
He whooped as he broke through.
“
Daniel.
”
Voices. Behind him, following, getting closer. Calling his name as he tunneled deeper and deeper into the past.
Would he find her?
Without question.
Would he save her?
Always.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Tinderbox Books, LLC and Lauren Kate
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
WWW.RANDOMHOUSE.COM/TEENS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89718-4
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v3.1_r1
FOR M AND T,
HEAVEN-SENT MESSENGERS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Impassioned thanks to Wendy Loggia, who envisioned this crazy book and whose sane support carries the series. To Beverly Horowitz, for her wisdom and style. To Michael Stearns and Ted Malawer, for making things soar. To Noreen Herits and Roshan Nozari: my gratitude for all you do deepens with each book. Special thanks to Krista Vitola, Barbara Perris, Angela Carlino, Judith Haut (I’ll meet you at the Cheese Dip Festival in Little Rock)—and to Chip Gibson, whose trickle-down Chipenomics explains why everyone at Random House is so damn cool.
To the friends I’ve made around the world: Becky Stradwick and Lauren Bennett (fellow Lauren Kate!) in the UK, to Rino Balatbat and the folks at National Book Store in the Philippines, to the whole enthusiastic team at Random House Australia, to bloggers near and far. I’m honored to work with every one of you.
To my tremendous, loving family, with a special materteral shout-out to Jordan, Hailey, and David Franklin. To Anna Carey for the hikes and more. To the OBLC, whoop. And to Jason, my muse, my world, it just gets better all the time.
Contents
Chapter Four - Time Wounds All Heels
Chapter Five - Off the Straight Path
Chapter Six - The Woman in White
Chapter Eight - Watching From the Wings
Chapter Eleven -
Coup De Foudre
Chapter Thirteen - Star-Crossed
Chapter Fourteen - The Steep Slope
Chapter Fifteen - The Sacrifice
Chapter Seventeen - Written in Bone
Chapter Eighteen - Bad Directions
Chapter Nineteen - The Mortal Coil
Chapter Twenty - Journey’s End
Failing to catch me at first keep encouraged
,
Missing me one place search another
,
I stop somewhere waiting for you
.
—W
ALT
W
HITMAN
,
Song of Myself
PROLOGUE
DARK HORSE
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY • NOVEMBER 27, 2009
A
shot rang out. A broad gate banged open. A pounding of horses’ hooves echoed around the track like a massive clap of thunder.
“And they’re off!”
Sophia Bliss adjusted the wide brim of her feathered hat. It was a muted shade of mauve, twenty-seven inches in diameter, with a drop-down chiffon veil. Large enough to make her look like a proper horseracing enthusiast, not so gaudy as to attract undue attention.
Three hats had been special-ordered from the same milliner in Hilton Head for the race that day. One—a butter-yellow bonnet—capped the snow-white head of Lyrica Crisp, who was sitting to the left of Miss Sophia, enjoying a corned beef sandwich. The other—a sea-foam-green felt hat with a fat polka-dotted satin ribbon—crowned the jet-black mane of Vivina Sole, who sat looking deceptively demure with her white-gloved hands crossed over her lap to Miss Sophia’s right.
“Glorious day for a race,” Lyrica said. At 136 years old, she was the youngest of the Elders of Zhsmaelim. She wiped a dot of mustard from the corner of her mouth. “Can you believe it’s my first time at the tracks?”
“Shhh,” Sophia hissed. Lyrica was such a twit. Today was not about horses at all, but rather a clandestine meeting of great minds. So what if the other great minds didn’t happen to have shown up yet? They would be here. At this perfectly neutral location set forth in the gold letterpress invitation Sophia had received from an unknown sender. The others would be here to reveal themselves and come up with a plan of attack together. Any minute now. She hoped.
“Lovely day, lovely sport,” Vivina said dryly. “Pity
our
horse in this race doesn’t run in easy circles like these fillies. Isn’t it, Sophia? Tough to wager where the thoroughbred Lucinda will finish.”
“I said
shhh
,” Sophia whispered. “Bite your cavalier tongue. There are spies everywhere.”
“You’re paranoid,” Vivina said, drawing a high giggle from Lyrica.
“I’m what’s left,” Sophia said.
There used to be so many more—twenty-four Elders at the peak of the Zhsmaelim. A cluster of mortals, immortals, and a few transeternals, like Sophia herself. An axis of knowledge and passion and faith with a single uniting goal: to restore the world to its prelapsarian state, that brief, glorious moment before the angels’ Fall. For better or for worse.
It was written, plain as day, in the code they’d drawn up together and had each signed:
For better or for worse
.
Because really, it could go either way.
Every coin had two sides. Heads and tails. Light and dark. Good and—
Well, the fact that the other Elders hadn’t prepared themselves for both options was not Sophia’s fault. It was, however, her cross to bear when one by one they sent in notices of their withdrawal.
Your purposes grow too dark
. Or:
The organization’s standards have fallen
. Or:
The Elders have strayed too far from the original code
. The first flurry of letters arrived, predictably, within a week after the incident with the girl Pennyweather. They couldn’t abide it, they’d claimed, the death of one small insignificant child. One careless moment with a dagger and suddenly the Elders were running scared, all of them fearing the wrath of the Scale.