by Joy Nash
“You—” Luc swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “Are you saying you...rescued me?”
“Yes.”
Son of a bitch. “Why?” Luc asked. “How? Who the hell are you?”
Amusement glinted in the stranger’s eyes. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful?”
“It’s better than being dead.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Luc snapped. Whoever this creature was, Luc didn’t trust him. He wasn’t eager to test the stranger’s fighting skills though. “Who do you think you are, anyway? My fucking guardian angel?”
The stranger laughed at that, his white teeth glinting. “There’s a thought.” His gaze rested on Luc’s neck for a moment, and his expression sobered. “I couldn’t remove the collar. It’s a pact between Nephilim. I have no power over it.”
Luc stiffened. “What do you know about the Nephilim?”
“More than I wish I did. And yet, somehow, it’s not enough.” He gestured toward the street. “See that building? Go there. Top floor, number 622.”
Luc glanced over his shoulder. “Why should I—” The question died when he looked back at the stranger.
He was gone. Just like that, as if he’d never been there at all. Maybe he hadn’t been, Luc thought, rubbing his temple. Maybe he was hallucinating. Or insane. Or maybe he was dead after all, existing in some inexplicable space between life and Oblivion.
With nothing better to do, he walked to the end of the alley and stepped out onto the sidewalk. As he eyed the building the stranger had pointed him towards, a red double-decker bus rolled by. King’s Cross, the destination sign read.
What the—? Luc’s gaze followed the bus until it turned at the corner.
“Jesus, mate! Get out of the bloody middle of the walk.”
Luc stepped back to let the irritated pedestrian pass. Not Houston or Dallas. But...London? What was he doing in London?
He crossed the road. The apartment building wasn’t locked. He pushed the street door open and walked past a gauntlet of bicycles. No elevator. He took the stairs.
Number 622 was at the very end of the corridor. It was occupied. He could hear someone pacing behind the door. He paused, his apprehension growing. He tried looking through a peephole only to find it blocked on the other side. Finally, with a shake of his head, he knocked and braced himself.
The pacing halted. He heard a faint metallic scrape—someone had uncovered the peephole, he guessed. He stared a challenge at it.
The door flew open.
“Luc!” With a cry and a flurry of long limbs and blond hair, a woman threw herself into his arms. “You’re alive! He found you in time!”
He stumbled backward, his arms closing, his heart pounding so hard he thought his ribs might crack. It was only after a long moment that he grasped his sister by the shoulders and eased her back. Their eyes met. A beat of silence ensued.
“Cybele,” he said finally. “What the goddamn holy fuck is going on?”
***
Michael’s moral compass spun like a top.
A profound sense of shame pursued him as he glided over London, keeping to a higher elevation than the demon horde. What in Heaven’s name was he doing, aiding and abetting a cursed race? Lusting after one of their females? Ignoring Raphael’s orders just so he could save her? And he’d hadn’t stopped there. He’d let her talk him into snatching her Nephil lover from certain death. And then he’d saved her brother, a bare instant before he ended his own miserable life. Stars above. If Raphael ever discovered even half of Michael’s sins, Michael’s ass would be toast.
So why was it that he had only to picture Cybele’s green eyes, snapping with passion, to know he didn’t regret any of it?
For the first time in his millennia-long existence, Michael understood the temptations the original Watcher angels had faced when they lived on Earth. To make matters worse, Cybele was only half-human. Her other half had its origins in Heaven. It was hardly her fault that her Watcher ancestors had fallen.
Dear God Almighty, what was he saying? He couldn’t rationalize his behavior on such specious grounds, no matter how many loopholes the situation was riddled with. Cybele was a cursed being. A Nephil. A demon. Michael had been wrong to save her. The deed was done, however. He just wanted to put the whole sorry episode behind him.
He fished his cell phone from his back pocket. Raphael was right. The human device was an abomination. If Michael’s attention hadn’t been snared by all those videos of human copulation, each one more depraved and more compelling than the last... He jerked his mind back to the present.
Never. Again.
Before he could lose his nerve, he tossed the phone over his shoulder. The hellfiends and ash quickly consumed it. He felt a pang at its loss, but he hardened his heart against it. It was time to get back to the purpose for which he was created: righteous vengeance.
Where was Raphael? After a brief search, Michael found his brother occupying a spot over the English Channel, midway between Dover and Calais. Wings aloft, scything right and left with his golden sword, Raphael cut a wide swath through a field of fiends.
Unfortunately, the field was much, much wider than Raphael’s reach.
With a flick of his wrist, Michael’s switchblade snapped into his palm. He dove down and took up a position at his brother’s right side.
Raphael shot him a glance. “Where in Heaven’s name have you been?”
“I was unexpectedly detained,” Michael said. “But I’m here now.”
Hellfiends were dirty little creatures, formed by the eternal malice of damned souls. Grimly, Michael set to killing as many of the mindless demons as he could. It didn’t take long for him to realize the effort was futile. There were just too many of the things, with more arriving every second.
They smelled god-awful.
“This is crazy,” he told Raphael. “We’re never going to get rid of them this way.”
Raphael skewered three at once. He lowered his blade and the carcasses slid off. “You have a better idea?”
“Yes. Wake the Almighty.”
“No.” Raphael’s sword came up with a vicious slash. Five hellfiends died shrieking. “Not an option.”
“That’s your pride speaking.” Michael decided not to point out that pride was a deadly sin, just as much as lust was. Who was he to throw stones? Executing a half-lunge, half-dive, he skewered a red-potato body. Its lumpy head exploded. Fetid remains splattered his coat. Ugh.
“We’ll never kill all of them in hand-to-hand combat,” he said. “Even if we keep at it from now until the End of Days.”
“I know that,” Raphael conceded. He spun a circle, golden blade flashing. Demon heads went flying.
Michael slashed right and left. Six fiends tumbled earthward. They splashed into the channel far below.
“We need another plan,” Raphael said.
“Which is?” Michael inquired.
“I’m working on it.”
TWENTY-TWO
The rasp of Arthur’s breathing combined with the sound of Luc’s pacing made Cybele want to scream. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was terrified.
It’s the waiting, she thought. I hate waiting. She fingered her touchstone, once again safe in her possession. She’d found it in Arthur’s pocket. Where and when he’d come across it, she didn’t know.
“Could you please stand still? Just for two seconds?”
Luc halted. “Sorry.”
The last two days were a blur. They’d showered and dressed in the clean clothes they’d found stashed in the bedroom dressers. While the guys’ clothing provided was basic enough—jeans, t-shirts, boxers—the feminine items had been more personal. The jeans were her favorite brand, in exactly her size. The blouses were the flowery, flowing kind she loved. And there’d been cute panties and bras. Not racy, but still. Had Michael picked them out for her? If so, just when, exactly, had the archangel done it?
She and Luc had taken t
urns sleeping and watching over Arthur. At the moment, they were both awake, standing on opposite sides of Arthur’s bed. If not for the scant rise and fall of his chest, punctuated by the occasional rasping inhale, they might easily have been looking at a corpse.
Maybe he won’t wake up. No. Michael said he’d wake. Surely the archangel knew what he was talking about. But if Arthur wasn’t dying, he wasn’t improving either. His face was ashen, his body lifeless.
The room’s single lamp, positioned on an old dresser, cast a half-hearted glow in the direction of the bed. Cybele took up the pacing her twin had abandoned. Luc moved to the window, his expression grim.
The new day had dawned cold and gray and had only grown darker as the morning wore on. It was now past noon. The sky was turbulent. A steady drizzle fell. Pedestrians scurried by with open umbrellas. They looked harried but not unduly panicked. They must think, Cybele realized, that what was in the sky was just weather. Stupid humans had no idea that a horde of hellfiends was streaming over their heads.
“I should leave.” Luc looked like hell. He had dark circles under his eyes and several days’ growth of beard on his jaw. His hair, straighter and a darker shade of blond than Cybele’s, was in dire need of a brush.
“No.” She left Arthur’s side and went to her twin. She wanted to touch him, put a hand on his arm, but something in his expression stopped her. “No,” she repeated. “Don’t you dare even think about leaving.”
His lips compressed into a harsh line. “Every minute I stay here makes it more likely that Mab will find us.”
“Let her look. As long as you don’t use magic, she can’t track you. And this apartment is safe. Michael promised—”
“That’s another thing I’m having trouble with,” he said. “You and that fucking archangel.”
“What about him?” Cybele asked warily.
“You can’t possibly trust him.”
“Why not?” she said. “He saved me. He saved Arthur. And you.”
Luc turned to lean against the wall, his arms crossed. “It’s got to be a trick. Some game he’s playing.”
“It’s not.” She shoved a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Michael isn’t like that.”
“You some kind of expert on archangels now?” He expelled a rough breath. “What he’s done makes no goddamned sense.”
No. It made some kind of sense. The archangel’s got a hard-on for me. She imagined saying those words to Luc. Forget it. It would sound preposterous, not to mention unbelievably conceited. Anyway, it probably wasn’t strictly true. Angels couldn’t get hard-ons. Could they?
Maybe Luc was right. Maybe Michael’s assistance was part of a larger heavenly plot against the Nephilim. That certainly wouldn’t be surprising, given her race’s prior experience with Heaven’s finest.
But the fact remained that he’d helped her, and not in a small way. “Arthur’d be in Oblivion right now if not for Michael,” she said. “I’d be on my way to being Dusek’s thrall, and you’d be dead.”
“Okay. Fine. I can’t argue with any of that. But I still think you’re a fool to trust him.”
She shrugged. “I probably won’t ever see him again, anyway.”
“Let’s hope not.” His eyes strayed to Merlin’s staff. The two pieces lay on the dresser. Leaving the window, Luc picked up the top half and peered into the crystal. “So. Arthur pulled Merlin’s lost staff from a rock and opened a portal to Hell.”
“He didn’t mean to. If he’d known what would happen, he never would’ve done it.”
“Maybe,” Luc said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You said Dusek was dragging you off. If Arthur thought the staff was his best chance to save you, he’d have grabbed it no matter what the consequences.”
Cybele looked at Arthur’s face, his sunken eyes and dry lips, and knew Luc spoke the truth.
“I really doubt,” he continued, “that an archangel would just hand over Merlin’s staff to the only Nephil who could destroy the Earth with it. We’re missing something here.”
“Michael said Arthur might be able to use it to send the fiends back to Hell.”
“I can’t believe the archangel is so naïve as to trust Arthur to do it. With Merlin’s staff, Arthur could become the most powerful being on Earth. Hell, he could probably use it to enslave all humanity.”
“Yeah, well, Arthur has no interest in enslaving humanity.”
“No man knows what he’ll do,” Luc said quietly. “Not until he does it.”
His voice was flat, his eyes bleak. Cybele bit back her retort. Not for the first time, she wondered what crimes Mab had forced Luc to commit since he’d become her thrall.
Luc glanced at her. “Not even an archangel can predict what Arthur will do with the powers of Merlin.”
“Well, at this point,” Cybele said, “it’s all conjecture anyway. The staff’s broken.”
Luc fitted the pieces together, and then separated them again. “Maybe your archangel left it here to taunt us. Now that I could believe.”
“Well, I can’t. And I told you, he’s not my archangel.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up Arthur’s hand. Cold. Her heart constricted. “I just wish he would wake up. I love him, Luc.”
“Hardly a newsflash,” he said dryly.
“I know. But that’s not all. Arthur and I—we’ve pledged a life bond.”
His eyes widened. “Mab will never recognize it.”
“Arthur and I are rogue. Mab can rot in Oblivion.”
“I wish I could send her there for you,” he muttered.
“Arthur will get rid of her. With or without the staff. When he wakes up. If he wakes up.” She rubbed Arthur’s hand between both of hers. “His skin is so dry, Luc. And cold.” Her voice trembled. “It’s like he’s dead already.”
“He’s not,” Luc said sharply. He eyed her. “But you know, you hardly look any better. When was the last time you ate?”
She tried to remember. Since she’d arrived in London, she’d been too upset to eat. “I—a couple nights ago, I guess.” With the Spencers. It seemed like a year ago. She thought of Jack, and a deep sadness passed through her.
Luc was talking, asking something. Cybele looked at him blankly. “What did you say?”
“I said, is there food in this place?”
“I think so. At least, Michael said there was. I haven’t looked.”
“Let’s go see.”
“But— I don’t want to leave Arthur.”
“He’ll wake up. Or he won’t. You sitting here staring at him is not going to make a difference.”
Reluctantly, she released Arthur’s hand. “I guess.”
The flat’s kitchen was tiny. The refrigerator was crammed full of food. So were the cupboards. Luc had carried the broken pieces of the staff with him from the bedroom. He propped them against the wall by the door. He started coffee in an old electric coffeemaker and proceeded to assemble a couple large sandwiches.
“I couldn’t possibly eat that much,” Cybele protested as they entered the flat’s main room, where a round dining table stood in one corner.
He set the plate down. “Try.”
After the first reluctant bite, she realized just how hungry she was. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” He consumed his own sandwich in large, efficient bites and washed it down with a swig of black coffee.
She concentrated on his face, on his hazel eyes. Not on the wooden thrall collar and its ruby. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You shouldn’t be. My presence is a danger to you.”
“I don’t care.” Cybele peered into her coffee cup. The liquid trembled. Her hand, she realized, was shaking. “I’m just so glad you’re away from Mab. And Luc—I’m sorry.”
His head went back. “Sorry? For what?”
She put down her cup, sloshing coffee over the edge. “For avoiding you, ever since...”
“Since my Ordeal.” His shoulders hunched. “I do
n’t blame you for that. You could hardly do anything else considering. Arthur warned me what it would be like. I refused to believe him. I was too much of a coward to go rogue.”
“You’re not a coward. If you were, you would’ve gone to Mab the instant I left Demon’s Hollow.”
“Didn’t you think I would?” he asked.
“No. Of course not. That’s the only reason I dared to run. But I knew she’d take it out on you. She did, didn’t she?” The sudden remoteness in his eyes was her answer. “I’m sorry, Luc.”
“Forget it.” He rose abruptly and crossed the room to the old television in the corner. The remote lay beside it on the stand. He picked it up. “I wonder if your angel got you a cable subscription, too.”
He’s not my angel. “Try it,” Cybele said.
He hit a button. The screen sputtered to life.
Every single channel had abandoned its regular programming to report on the situation in Wales. Cybele left the table and joined Luc in front of the set. A female reporter stood in a farm field, her sooty trench coat buffeted by a stiff wind. Billowing clouds, interspersed with jagged lightning, filled the sky.
“This is Brooke Markham, reporting from Swansea, Wales, approximately twenty-five miles from the site of the disaster. The previously unknown volcano came to life in the hour before dawn on Tuesday, rocking the countryside and sending a blast of ash into the sky. Two days later, the eruption continues unabated.”
“They’re saying it’s a volcano?” Cybele said incredulously. “In Wales? Who the hell’s going to believe that?”
“Most people, probably,” Luc said. “It’s a lot easier to believe in a volcanic eruption than a demon invasion.”
“Someone’s going to figure out the truth.”
“Yeah, a few nutjobs. The same guys who go for chemtrails and aliens. Who’s going to believe them?”
The reporter droned on. “... authorities have blockaded surrounding roadways. More than seventy persons are confirmed dead with many more missing. Injuries are overwhelming local hospitals. The public is advised to avoid the area. The ash plume represents a danger to air travel as well. All airports in the UK and Ireland have suspended operations indefinitely. Passengers are advised to contact their carriers for updates.”