No Angel

by Helen Keeble

  “You’re not the only one who moves in mysterious ways, Raffi,” Ms. Wormwood said, flicking the sword away. It stuck point-first into the ground behind the possessed teacher, well out of reach. “And now, it’s time for you to die.”

  “Faith, fly!” Even as her mouth opened in protest, I shoved her away from me. “Just don’t think about it, you can do it!”

  Faith leaped into the air and hovered there for a second, looking rather startled. Before I could even attempt to spread my own wings to follow, icy bands clamped them shut. “Not this time, Raffi,” Ms. Wormwood snarled. Her tentacles wrapped around me like an octopus embracing its prey, winding through both the normal world and Hell-space. Their chill sapped what little strength I’d managed to regain. I was frozen, even my halo dimming, unable to resist at all as Ms. Wormwood hauled my limp body toward her. “You aren’t getting away from me again.”

  “Raffi!” Faith dove, her halo blazing around her head with the force of her fury. “Let him GO!”

  “No, don’t—!” I was too late. Without angelic vision, Faith couldn’t even see Ms. Wormwood’s tentacles, let alone avoid them. A contemptuous slap from one of them knocked her spinning out of the sky. She hit a tree with a heart-stopping crack.

  Ms. Wormwood seemed to gain strength, her movements once again smooth. She even smiled her usual flirty, let’s-all-be-best-friends smile as her tentacles dumped first me, then Faith at her feet. “At least there’s one good thing to come out of all this mess,” she said in satisfaction. “I get to kill someone. It’s been too long.” She tapped her finger against her chin. “But do I dare . . . oh, why not. The Prince will be furious, but she can take the blame. She’s the one in charge of this debacle.” She hauled Faith’s limp form up, one hand around her neck. “And I am sick of your stupid, sappy love letters.”

  “Don’t!” I croaked, grabbing at Ms. Wormwood’s boots. “Please!” I scrabbled to think of something to offer her. “I’ll be your—your willing sex slave! Anything! Just let Faith go!”

  “Sex slave?” Ms. Wormwood dropped Faith like hot potato. “Sex slave?” She stared at me for a moment as if unable to believe her own ears . . . and then burst out laughing.

  Okay, that was adding insult to injury.

  Still chuckling, Ms. Wormwood lifted me up effortlessly with one tentacle. “Little boy,” she crooned as I dangled, feet kicking. “I’m a succubus. I’ve done things your sweaty mind can’t even imagine. And you actually think I want you? Believe me, you were just a job—if I hadn’t been ordered to distract you from the precious princess here, I would never have tried to seduce you. Not that it worked. You’re the most oblivious, obdurate male I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.” She pursed her lips. Her fingers tightened around my neck. “Actually, you spoiled my perfect record. For that, I think I’ll kill you first.”

  I choked, clawing desperately at Ms. Wormwood’s iron grip. Her vicious, delighted eyes filled my vision. “Struggle, Raffi,” she purred. “Extend the agony. No one’s coming to rescue you this time.”

  “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio!”

  Water hit me in the back of the head. It splashed onto Ms. Wormwood too, and she screeched like a thousand nails running down a blackboard, flinging me aside. For a second, all I could do was wheeze, both my hands clutching at my bruised throat.

  “Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium,” continued the strident voice. The veil of black stars clouding my vision finally cleared, just in time for me to dodge out of the way as Ms. Wormwood stumbled back. “Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur!”

  Next to me, Faith’s eyes fluttered open. “Michaela?” she said dazedly, looking around in confusion.

  Michaela didn’t spare either of us so much as a glance. She had an empty plastic bottle in one hand, with a tiny amount of liquid left sloshing at the bottom. Ms. Wormwood eyed it, and her wary expression twisted into a sneer.

  “Really, Dante? Taking me on with just a cupful of holy water? After all your caution?” Ms. Wormwood’s tentacles darted at Michaela, who twisted with perfectly timed precision to avoid them. The two circled each other like fighting cats, Michaela always keeping her own body between the demon and Faith. “You can’t bind me. You don’t know my name. You don’t have a circle. You don’t even have your sacred weapon. You have nothing.”

  “I have the only thing I need.” Michaela’s voice was rock steady. She never took her eyes off the demon. “Faith.”

  “Also this,” I added. “Michaela, catch!”

  I flung her the sword. Ms. Wormwood grabbed at it, but Michaela was faster. She snatched the spinning sword out of midair, twisting to redirect the momentum. In one smooth, fluid movement, she drove the blade straight through Ms. Wormwood’s chest.

  The demon spat blood into Michaela’s face. “That all you’ve got?” she said, grinning.

  Michaela’s mouth curved in an answering feral smile. “Not quite,” she said—and then, speaking so fast the syllables all ran together, “Princeps militiae Caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo divina virtute in infernum detrude and for God’s sake don’t get in the way, Rafael, Amen!”

  Michaela’s demon plummeted out of the Hell-sky like an air strike. I flung myself flat, throwing a wing over Faith to press her down too, as it screamed over us in a white-hot blaze, invisible to normal eyes but blinding my angelsight. A bolt of lightning leaped from the burning feathers, haloing Michaela and running down the blade still embedded in Ms. Wormwood’s chest.

  She blew apart into ash.

  Dead demon was probably not a healthy thing to inhale, but none of us had much choice about it. We all spent a moment coughing before the cloud started to settle. “Thank you,” Faith said, waving a hand in front of her face. “I think. What on earth just happened?”

  Michaela was bent double, leaning on the sword as she panted for breath. I answered for her. “Her demon destroyed Ms. Wormwood.”

  “My what?” Michaela wheezed. She straightened, holding the sword so that the blade pointed directly at my heart.

  “Sorry!” I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry to you too,” I said to the apparently-not-a-demon, who was now hovering in the Hell-sky above Michaela’s head and looking, if a huge burning ball of eyes and wings could be said to have an expression, mortally offended. “Uh, no insult intended. I just don’t know the politically correct term for whatever the hell that thing is.”

  “Not hell,” Michaela said icily. “Heaven.” She lowered the point of the sword. “And the correct term is guardian angel.”

  Chapter 27

  Let me get this straight.” Krystal pushed her glasses farther up her nose, squinting through them at Michaela. She’d been in bed when I’d turned up at her window and flown her to my room with a quick, garbled explanation. She was still blinking myopically and looking as if she suspected this was all a dream. “You’re a demon hunter?”

  “I’m from the Order of Dante.” Michaela sat next to Faith on my bed, her daggers resting in her lap. From the way she kept fingering them as she eyed me, I was beginning to regret giving them back to her. Her guardian angel hovered on motionless wings above her in Heaven, its burning eyes half-lidded and lazy. “We’re dedicated to seeking out and destroying any demons that manage to escape from Hell.”

  “Well, you guys suck.” I gestured at my still-glowing head. I was steadily munching through chocolate bars as we talked, but I hadn’t yet been sufficiently gluttonous to put out my halo. “How could you mistake me for a demon?”

  “You turned up out of nowhere and started acting suspicious!” Michaela retorted hotly, her fists closing on her daggers. “And you reacted to my warding pentagrams. It was only when you managed to defeat my guardian angel that I started to suspect you weren’t just a demon possessing a human body. But I never dreamed what you really were. Nephilim—half-breeds—are incredibly rare.” She gestured from me to Faith. “To e
ncounter two at once is unthinkable.”

  “You knew I was a nephil too. Even if you suspected Raffi was an agent of Hell, you can’t have thought I was!” For once, Faith was actually, genuinely, completely pissed off. Her own halo flickered and died as she glared at Michaela, her hands balling into fists. “I wondered how the rumors about me and my father got started. It was you, wasn’t it? You made everyone think I was crazy, when you knew I wasn’t. You made my life a living hell for an entire year!”

  Michaela’s air of cool superiority slipped a little. She avoided Faith’s eyes. “I’m sorry. But I had to drive you away from here, or at the very least stop you from meeting your boyfriend at the Ball.” She took a deep breath. “You’re right, I do know your father’s plan for you. Gabriel Dante told the Order everything in his letter.”

  “Who’s Gabriel Dante?” I asked, my voice slightly muffled by caramel.

  “Faith’s father.” Michaela put one of her daggers down next to Faith’s sword, which was resting between them on the bed. The resemblance between the two weapons was obvious. “Gabe Jones used to be Gabriel Dante. He was expelled from the Order for heresy. He thought he’d discovered a way to close Hellgates.”

  “He did.” Faith straightened up, lifting her chin proudly. “I’ve read his notebooks. He meant for me to close one at the Ball, with my one true love.”

  “I know what he intended for you,” Michaela said grimly. “And it had nothing to do with the Ball or ridiculous notions about love. You see, we Danteans learn how to channel a tiny fraction of our guardian angel’s light in order to banish demonic darkness. But Hellgates are a deeper and darker darkness than we can illuminate, flawed mortal mirrors that we are. Gabriel thought nephilim would be able to channel an angel’s full power.”

  “Can we?” I asked. “Would that really work to close the Hellgate?”

  “Possibly.” Her mouth twisted. “If you didn’t mind dying to do it. Nobody, human or otherwise, could withstand that much power.”

  Faith went white. “No. My dad would never have meant to hurt me. If he thought I could do it—”

  “He was wrong, Faith.” Michaela shook her head. “In order to channel an angel you have to become like them. Perfectly selfless, acting only for the greater good. We Danteans train for years to be able to attain that pure, egoless state of mind, and it’s dangerous even for us. An untrained, unprepared person, full of ordinary doubts and sins . . . at the very best, you’d have been crippled for life, terribly burned. That’s why Gabriel couldn’t persuade an angel to come help him, no matter how hard he prayed. They aren’t like demons, who’ll happily trick people into binding with them. No angel would ever channel light through someone who hadn’t accepted the link willingly, in full knowledge of the risks.”

  “If Faith’s dad was kicked out of your club, why’d he send you a message about where he was?” Krystal asked. “He must have known you guys would try to stop him.”

  “Because, as I said, he couldn’t summon an angel himself. He was growing desperate. He knew that even if we didn’t help him in his heretical scheme, we’d at least make sure Faith was safe.” Michaela’s hands clenched on her daggers. “You see, the forces of Hell have their own plans for you, Faith. Plans that come to fruition at the Masked Ball.”

  “Plans?” Faith said blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re being groomed to accept demonic possession,” Michaela said flatly. “And not for just any demon. A Demon Prince, one of the seven Lords of Hell, so powerful that mere mortal flesh would be destroyed by its touch. Demon Princes can only possess nephilim. That’s why Hell needs you.”

  Faith jerked back. “I would never agree to bind to a demon!”

  “Yes, you would. Willingly.” Michaela’s voice softened. She shifted position, leaning toward her. “There’s nobody at Winchester called Billy-Bob, Faith. We checked.”

  “But . . . he texts me. All the time. We’ve been friends for years.”

  “You’ve been communicating with a demon already here on Earth, in possession of a mortal body. It’s been acting as the Prince’s harbinger, preparing the way for his arrival. It would have drawn a pentagram for him at the Ball, so that he could appear as a beautiful young man for you. And you, expecting to meet your true love, would have immediately pledged your eternal devotion to him.” Michaela stopped, swallowing. “You wouldn’t have been giving your heart away at the Ball. You’d have been giving away your soul. And setting unimaginable evil loose on the world.” Michaela’s self-possession cracked for a moment, betraying the shame and fear underneath that cold mask. “I was ordered to stop that from happening, at any cost. Even if I had to kill you to do it.”

  “For God’s sake!” Krystal yelled in exasperation, as Faith looked as if Michaela had just shot her through the heart then and there. “Drama queen much, Michaela? Why did you grab a gun when you could have just opened your mouth? Why didn’t you tell us any of this stuff earlier?”

  “Because I didn’t dare. Not even Gabriel dared to tell Faith the whole truth.” Michaela’s black eyes were fixed on Faith, steadily. “Faith, do you know what nephilim are?”

  “Of course,” Faith said, brow furrowing. “We’re half angel.”

  Michaela let out a bark of startled laughter. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “What? My mum was definitely an angel.” I reached for another chocolate bar. “Don’t look so skeptical, Micheala. If you’d ever met her, you’d have seen straightaway how amazing she was. Hell, maybe you did meet her. She died rescuing kids from your old orphanage.”

  “The Circle of Trust,” Michaela whispered, going very still. “So that’s how you knew that name. But you said you knew the truth about that place.”

  Something about her tone made me stop in midbite. “What truth?”

  “The Circle of Trust orphanage was a Hellgate.” Her face was absolutely expressionless. “Controlled, as they always are, by a single powerful demon. It would occasionally summon one of its brethren through, when it managed to groom a child to accept demonic possession. The embodied demons would go out into the world, but had to return periodically to pay a tithe to the master of the Hellgate.” There was no emotion at all in her voice. She might as well have been reciting ancient history or the weather. “Father Dante himself led the cleansing mission. He rescued me from that hellhole. He and his guardian angel destroyed all the demons with holy fire.”

  There was a long, long silence.

  Krystal’s hand crept into mine. “It doesn’t matter,” she said angrily. Her fingers tightened, a sole point of warmth against my blank, cold numbness. “I don’t care what you say about Raf’s mother. He’s not evil.”

  “And anyway,” Faith said, “even if Raffi’s mother was a demon, that has nothing to do with me.”

  “Yes it does,” Michaela said. “Faith, angels don’t possess people like demons do. They’re too pure, too powerful. They can’t have children.” Her face was set and grim. “The Headmistress is a demon.”

  Chapter 28

  Hey, Raffi!” Debbie plunked her dinner tray down next to mine uninvited. She glanced at the empty chair on my other side. “Why’s Faith been avoiding you all day? I thought she’d be excited to see you again. Have you two had a fight or something?”

  “Something.” I moodily stirred my bowl of lentil sludge, elbow on the table and my head propped on my hand. My eyes stayed fixed on the teachers’ table, just in case the Headmistress conveniently decided to reveal her true nature. Unfortunately, at the moment, she was just demonically eating some peas. “We had a disagreement. About our families.”

  “Oooh. That’s tough.” She ran her tongue over her top lip. “Well, you know, if you’re not chasing around after her anymore . . .”

  “I am.” I sighed, dropping my spoon into my now cold soup with a clink. “I mean, I have to. It’s kind of a higher calling.”

  “Pity,” Debbie said, though her expression softened as if I’d just produced a fluffy kitten ou
t of my jacket. She nudged me with her elbow. “Well, don’t wait too long to make up with her, ’kay? The lists go up tomorrow!”

  “Lists?”

  “You know, for picking your partner for the Ball.” Debbie sounded as if nothing in the world could possibly be of more interest than this. I was pretty sure she’d still have held this view even if she had known there was a demon sitting twenty feet behind her, now demonically spooning sugar into a cup of tea. “God, I hope my Peer Assessment results are good enough to get me a Winchester boy. According to what the older girls used to say, they’re always superhot and totally romantic. So if you want Faith, you better get groveling. She’s going to have her pick of the Winchester studs.”

  I could hardly explain that I had bigger worries than who was going with whom to some stupid dance. Faith hadn’t spoken to any of us since she’d fled my room last night in tears. Judging from the way the Headmistress was calmly eating dinner, at least Faith hadn’t gone straight to her to tattle on us . . . yet.

  I stared down at my untouched food, anxiety churning my guts. If my mother had still been alive, and I’d found out what she really was . . . I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I’d have gone over to her side. No questions asked. Sure, my mum had been special, while the Headmistress had the maternal instincts of a frozen haddock . . . but she was still Faith’s mum.

  Movement caught my eye. The Headmistress had stood up. Any normal person would have had to call for attention to quiet the room, but all she had to do was sweep her gaze over the crowd, and the entire hall went dead. “I have an unfortunate announcement to make,” the Headmistress said into the waiting silence. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Ms. Wormwood is, as of last night, no longer employed at this school. A replacement will be found as soon as possible. In the meantime, I will personally be taking over her role as form tutor. Any final-year students with personal difficulties should report to me directly.” She turned to address the rest of the teachers at the top table, who were collectively looking uneasy but unsurprised. “There will be a meeting for all teachers in the staff room in one hour’s time to further discuss this issue. That is all.”