I tried to keep my composure. “Special trick of archangels?”
“Let’s just say I’m more powerful than you think.”
Pepper swung one short leg over the boat, balancing his foot on the driver’s seat. Before he could bring his other leg over, I slammed my body against the side of the boat, rocking it forcefully away from the ramp. Pepper stood one foot in, one foot out, with the gap of air between his legs widening.
He reacted instantly. He shot into the air, hovering several feet above the boat. Flying. In my split-second decision to unbalance him, I’d forgotten he had wings. And not only that, but now he was clearly furious.
I dove overboard, swimming hard for the center of the river, hearing shots being fired into the water from above.
A splash sounded behind me, and I knew Pepper had dived in after me. In a matter of seconds he would catch me and fulfill that promise to put a hole in my foot—and probably a lot worse. I wasn’t as strong as an archangel, but I was Nephilim now, and I’d trained with Dante . . . twice. I decided to do something either incredibly stupid, or incredibly brave.
Planting my feet firmly on the sandy riverbed, I pushed up with all my strength, vaulting straight out of the water. To my surprise I overshot, soaring above the treetops crowding the riverbanks. I could see for miles and miles, past the factories and fields, to the highway strung out with tiny cars and tractor-trailers. Beyond that, I saw Coldwater itself, a cluster of homes, shops, and green-lawned parks.
Just as quickly, I lost velocity. My stomach flip-flopped, air skidding over my body as my direction reversed. The river rushed up at me. I had the urge to pinwheel my arms frantically, but it was as if my body wouldn’t stand for it. It refused to be anything less than graceful and efficient, tucking into a tight missile. My feet crashed into the boat ramp, smashing through the planks of wood, plunging me back into the water.
More bullets whizzed past my ears. I scrabbled out of the debris, lunged up the riverbank, and took off sprinting for the trees. Two mornings of running in the dark had given me some preparation, but it didn’t explain why I was suddenly running at speeds that rivaled Dante’s. The trees passed in a dizzying blur, but my feet leaped and bounded with ease, almost as if they could anticipate the necessary steps a half second before my mind.
I raced at top speed up the walkway, flung myself inside the Volkswagen, and floored it out of the parking lot. To my amazement, I wasn’t even out of breath.
Adrenaline? Maybe. But I didn’t think so.
• • •
I drove to Allen’s Drug and Pharmacy and slid the Volkswagen into a parking space nestled between two trucks that hid me from the street. Then I slouched in my seat, trying to make myself invisible. I was pretty sure I’d lost Pepper at the river, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. I needed time to think. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t go back to school. What I really needed was to find Patch, but I didn’t know where to start.
My cell phone rang, startling me out of my reverie.
“Yo, Grey,” Scott said. “Vee and I are on our way to Taco Hut for lunch, but the big question of the day is, where are you? Now that you (a) can drive, and (b) have wheels—ahem, thanks to me—you don’t have to eat in the school cafeteria. FYI.”
I ignored his jesting tone. “I need Dante’s number. Text it to me and make it fast,” I told Scott. I’d had Dante’s number stored on my old phone, but not this one.
“Uh, please?”
“What is this? Double-standard Tuesday?”
“What do you need his number for? I thought Dante was your boy—”
I hung up and tried to think things through. What did I know for certain? That an archangel leading a double life wanted to kidnap me and use me as incentive to get Patch to do him a favor. Or to quit blackmailing him. Or both. I also knew Patch wasn’t the blackmailer.
What information was I low on? Mostly Patch’s whereabouts. Was he safe? Would he contact me? Did he need my help?
Where are you, Patch? I shouted into the universe.
My cell phone chimed.
HERE’S DANTE’S NUMBER. ALSO, I HEAR CHOCOLATE WORKS WELL FOR PMS, Scott texted.
“Funny,” I said out loud, punching in Dante’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“We need to meet,” I said with an edge.
“Listen, if it’s about this morning—”
“Of course it’s about this morning! What did you give me? I drank an unknown liquid, and suddenly I can run as fast as you and soar fifty feet into the air, and I’m pretty sure my vision is better than twenty-twenty.”
“It’ll wear off. To sustain those speeds, you’d need to drink the blue stuff daily.”
“Does the blue stuff have a name?”
“Not over the phone.”
“Fine. Meet me in person.”
“Be at Rollerland in thirty.”
I blinked. “You want to meet at the roller-skating rink?”
“It’s noon on a weekday. Nobody there but moms and toddlers. Makes it easy to spot potential spies.”
• • •
I wasn’t sure who Dante thought might be spying on us, but I had an uneasy feeling fluttering around in my stomach that whatever the blue stuff was, Dante wasn’t the only one who wanted it. My best guess, it was a drug of some sort. I’d witnessed its enhancement properties firsthand. The powers it gave me were surreal. It was as if I had no boundaries, and the extent of my own physical prowess was . . . limitless. The feeling was exhilarating and unnatural. It was the latter that had me worried.
When Hank was alive, he’d experimented with devilcraft, summoning the powers of hell to his advantage. The objects he’d enchanted had always cast an eerie blue hue. Up until now I’d believed that the knowledge of devilcraft had died with Hank, but I was beginning to have doubts. I hoped Dante’s blue mystery drink was a coincidence, but instinct told me otherwise.
I got out of the car and walked the last few blocks to Rollerland, checking over my shoulder often for signs that I was being followed. No strange men in dark trench coats and sunglasses. No overly tall people, a dead giveaway of Nephilim, either.
I swung through Rollerland’s doors, rented a pair of size-eight roller skates, and sat down on a bench just outside the rink. The lights were low and a disco ball scattered shades of bright, saturated light across the polished wood floor. Old-school Britney Spears played through the speakers. As Dante had predicted, only small children and their moms were skating at this hour.
A shift in the air, snapping with voltage, alerted me to Dante’s presence. He lowered himself onto the bench beside me, dressed in dark tailored jeans and a fitted navy polo. He hadn’t bothered to remove his sunglasses, making it impossible to see his eyes. I wondered if he regretted giving me the drink and was experiencing some degree of moral conflict. I hoped so.
“Going skating?” he asked with a nod at my feet.
I noticed he wasn’t carting skates. “The sign said you have to rent skates to go beyond the lobby.”
“You could have mind-tricked the counter attendant.”
I felt my mood darken. “That’s not really how I play.”
Dante shrugged. “Then you’re missing out on a lot of the perks of being Nephilim.”
“Tell me about the blue drink.”
“It’s an enhancement drink.”
“So I gathered. What’s it enhanced with?”
Dante leaned his head toward mine and spoke in a whisper. “Devilcraft. It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he assured me.
My spine stiffened, and the hairs at the back of my neck tingled. No, no, no. Devilcraft was supposed to be eradicated from Earth. It had disappeared with Hank. “I know what devilcraft is. And I thought it was destroyed.”
Dante’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “How do you know about devilcraft?”
“Hank used it. So did his accomplice, Chauncey Langeais. But when Hank died—” I caught myself. Dante didn’t know I’d killed Hank, and to say that
it wasn’t going to help my rapport with the Nephilim, Dante included, if my secret got out, was the understatement of the year. “Patch used to spy for Hank.”
A nod. “I know. They had a deal. Patch fed us information on fallen angels.”
I didn’t know whether Dante intentionally left out that Patch had agreed to spy for Hank on one condition: that he preserve my life, or if Hank had kept those details private.
“Hank told Patch about devilcraft,” I lied, covering my tracks. “But Patch told me that when Hank died, devilcraft went with him. Patch was under the impression that Hank was the only one who knew how to manipulate it.”
Dante shook his head. “Hank put his right-hand man, Blakely, in charge of developing devilcraft prototypes. Blakely knows more about devilcraft than Hank ever did. Blakely has spent the past several months holed up in a lab, enchanting knives, whips, and studded rings with devilcraft, transforming them into deadly weapons. Most recently, he’s formulated a drink that will elevate Nephilim powers. We’re evenly matched, Nora,” he said with an excited glint in his eyes. “Used to be it took ten Nephilim to every fallen angel. Not so anymore. I’ve been testing the drink for Blakely, and when I take the enhanced drink, the playing field consistently tilts to my advantage. I can go up against a single fallen angel without any fear that he’s stronger.”
My thoughts spun wildly. Devilcraft was thriving on Earth? The Nephilim had a secret weapon, being fabricated in a secret lab? I had to tell Patch. “Is the drink you gave me the same one you’ve been testing for Blakely?”
“Yes.” A crafty smile. “Now you understand what I’m talking about.”
If he wanted accolades, he wasn’t getting them from me. “How many Nephilim know about the drink or have ingested it?”
Dante leaned back on the bench and sighed. “Are you asking for yourself?” He paused with meaning. “Or to share our secret with Patch?”
I hesitated, and Dante’s face fell.
“You have to choose, Nora. You can’t be loyal to us and Patch. You’re making an admirable go of it, but in the end, loyalty is about taking a side. You’re either with the Nephilim or against us.”
The worst part of this conversation was that Dante was right. Deep down, I knew it. Patch and I had agreed that our endgame in the war was to come out of it safely together, but if I still maintained that that was my only goal, where did it leave the Nephilim? I was supposedly their leader, asking them to believe I was going to help them, but I really wasn’t.
“If you tell Patch about devilcraft, he won’t sit on the information,” Dante said. “He’ll go after Blakely and try to destroy the lab. Not out of a lofty sense of moral duty, but out of self-preservation. This isn’t just about Cheshvan anymore,” he explained. “My goal isn’t to push fallen angels back behind some arbitrary line, such as stopping them from possessing us. My goal is to annihilate the entire fallen angel race using devilcraft. And if they don’t already know it, they’re going to figure it out soon.”
I sputtered. “What?”
“Hank had a plan. This was it. The extinction of their race. Blakely believes that with a little more time, he can develop a prototype of a weapon strong enough to kill a fallen angel, something that was never even considered possible. Until now.”
I jumped off the bench and began pacing the floor. “Why are you telling me this?”
“It’s time to make your choice. Are you with us or not?”
“Patch isn’t the problem. He isn’t working with fallen angels. He doesn’t want war.” Patch’s only goal was making sure I stayed in power, fulfilled my oath, and came out alive. But if I told him about devilcraft, Dante was right: Patch would do everything he could to destroy it.
“If you tell him about devilcraft, it’s over for us,” Dante said.
He was asking me to either betray him, Scott, and thousands of innocent Nephilim . . . or Patch. A heavy weight roiled my stomach. The pain was so sharp, I nearly doubled over.
“Take the afternoon to think about it,” Dante said, rising to his feet. “Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll expect you to be ready to train first thing tomorrow.” He watched me a moment, his brown eyes steady but holding a shade of doubt. “I hope we’re still on the same side, Nora,” he said quietly, then walked out.
I stayed in the building several minutes, sitting in the semidarkness, surrounded by the bizarrely cheerful squeals and laughter of children trying to do the Hokey Pokey in roller skates. I bowed my head and hid my face in my hands. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to call off the war, declare a cease-fire, and walk away from it all to be with Patch.
Instead Dante and Blakely had plowed ahead, picked up right where Hank had left off, and raised the stakes to all or nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think Dante and Blakely, and all Nephilim for that matter, stood a chance at annihilating fallen angels, but I suspected that devilcraft changed everything. And what did it mean for my half of the deal? If the Nephilim waged war without me, would the archangels still hold me accountable?
Yes. Yes, they would.
Wherever Blakely was holed up, undoubtedly guarded by his own small and vigilant Nephilim security detail, it was clear he was experimenting with more powerful and more dangerous prototypes. He was the root of the problem.
Which put finding him, and his secret lab, at the top of my priority list.
Right after I found Patch. My stomach somersaulted with worry, and I sent up yet another silent prayer for him.
CHAPTER
10
I WAS A SHORT DISTANCE FROM THE VOLKSWAGEN WHEN I saw a shadowy figure taking up space in the driver’s seat. I stopped, my thoughts taking an initial dive into Cowboy-Hat-back-for-round-two territory. I held my breath, debating the wisdom of running. But the longer I debated, the more my overactive imagination waned, and the figure took its true form. Patch crooked his finger, beckoning me inside. I broke into a grin, my worry dissolving instantaneously.
“Skipping school for roller-skating?” he asked as I dropped inside the car.
“You know me. Purple wheels are my weakness.”
Patch smiled. “I didn’t see your car at school. I’ve been looking for you. Can you spare a few minutes?”
I handed him my keys. “You drive.”
Patch drove us to a gorgeous luxury townhouse complex overlooking Casco Bay. The building’s historic charm—deep red brick mixed with stone from a local quarry—placed it well over a hundred years old, but it had been completely renovated with gleaming windows, black marble columns, and a doorman. Patch pulled into a single-car garage and lowered the door, leaving us in cool darkness.
“New place?” I asked.
“Pepper hired a few Nephilim thugs to redecorate my studio beneath Delphic. I needed a place on short notice with upgraded security.”
We exited the Volkswagen, climbed a narrow set of stairs, walked through a door, and came out in Patch’s new kitchen. Wall-to-wall windows offered stunning views of the bay. A few white sailboats dotted the water, and a picturesque blue fog shrouded the surrounding cliffs. Autumn foliage ringed the bay, burning in vibrant shades of red that seemed to set the landscape to flame. The dock at the base of the townhomes appeared to be valet-access.
“Swanky,” I told Patch.
He handed me a mug of hot cocoa from behind and kissed the back of my neck. “It’s more exposed than I’d like, and that’s not something you’ll hear me say often.”
I leaned back against him, sipping my drink. “I was worried about you.”
“Pepper surprised me outside the Devil’s Handbag last night. Meaning I didn’t get a chance to talk to our Nephilim friend, Cowboy Hat. But I made a few calls and did some legwork, starting with looking into the cabin he took you to. He’s not very smart. He took you to his grandparents’ cabin. Cowboy Hat’s real name is Shaun Corbridge, and he’s two years old by Nephilim count. He swore fealty two Christmases ago
and willingly enlisted in the Black Hand’s army. He has a short temper and a history of drug abuse. He’s looking for a way to make a name for himself and thinks you’re his ticket. His proclivity for stupidity goes without saying.” Patch kissed my neck again, this time letting his mouth linger. “I missed you, too. What have you got for me?”
Hmm, where to start.
“I could tell you how Pepper tried to kidnap me this morning and hold me hostage, or maybe you’d like to hear how Dante secretly fed me a drink enhanced with devilcraft? Turns out Blakely, Hank’s right-hand man, has been tinkering with devilcraft for months and has developed a high-performance drug for Nephilim.”
“They did what?” he growled in a voice that couldn’t have been more enraged. “Did Pepper hurt you? And I’m going to rip Dante to pieces!”
I shook my head no, but was surprised when tears sprang to my eyes. I knew why Dante had done it—he needed me strong enough physically to lead the Nephilim to victory—but I resented his approach. He’d lied to me. He’d tricked me into consuming a substance that was not only forbidden on Earth, but potentially dangerous. I wasn’t naive enough to think devilcraft didn’t have negative side effects. The powers might wear off, but a seed of evil had been embedded inside me.
I said, “Dante said the effects of the drink fade after a day. That’s the good news. The bad news is I think he’s planning to introduce it to countless other Nephilim soon. It will give them . . . superpowers. That’s the only way I can describe it. When I took it, I ran faster and jumped higher, and it sharpened my senses. Dante said that oneon-one, a Nephil could outfight a fallen angel. I believe him, Patch. I got away from Pepper. An archangel. Without the drink, he’d have me under lock and key right now.”
Cold fury burned in Patch’s eyes. “Tell me where I can find Dante,” he said crisply.
I hadn’t expected Patch to get so angry—a major oversight, in retrospect. Of course he was seething. Trouble was, if he went to find Dante now, Dante would know I’d told Patch about devilcraft. I needed to play my hand carefully. “What he did was wrong, but he thought he had my best interests in mind,” I offered.
The Complete Hush, Hush Saga Page 100