“Sure. You can get me a new body.” Seraphim cringed again as she got a look at her ruined wings.
Alan searched for words that weren’t in his vocabulary. Saying “thank you” just didn’t seem like enough after what Seraphim had sacrificed for him. Still, he needed to say something. “I don’t know how to thank you. If you hadn’t jumped in when you did, I’d be dead.”
Seraphim brushed his gratitude aside with a request. “You can start by getting me some water.”
Alan nodded as he stumbled past his weariness and moved for the door. Of course she’d want water. He kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. How could he be so dumb?
Alan reached for the door and drew it open with one quick motion to Artemis standing there in her pink shirt. She handed him a pitcher of water with one hand and a glass with the other. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said. “You have a lot going on.”
“How did you—” Alan let his question trail off. Instead of asking it, he accepted the pitcher and the glass with a nod of thanks. Before he turned to go back inside the room, he paused. “Artemis?”
The little girl looked up at him with large brown eyes. “Yes?”
“Can you read my mind?”
The little girl gave him a sly grin. “Of course not. That would be crazy.”
“Then how did you know Seraphim would ask for water?”
The girl shrugged. “If I was all burned up, I’d probably be thirsty, too.”
Alan mulled over her words as she waved a good-bye. It was hard to argue with her logic.
“Did you travel to a stream to get that water?” Seraphim asked.
Alan ignored her jab at his standing there, and instead, poured her a glass. He placed the pitcher on a small table near her bed, then moved to help her sit. She was lying down on her back, eyeing him with as much amusement as she could despite her pain. “What? You’re going to prop me up and nurse me, too? Here”—she motioned with her hand and a wince of pain—“give me the glass.”
Alan could see how much discomfort even the small motion of beckoning to him for the water had caused. Seraphim had masked it well, but Alan knew better. “Just let me take care of this.”
Indignation flashed through Seraphim’s eyes. “I can handle a glass of water. I’m not that helpless.” She pushed a raw, pinkish-colored elbow underneath her and tried to make it to a sitting position. With a grunt of pain, she fell back onto the bed.
“Why do you always act so tough?” Alan asked as he placed the water cup onto the table. Without asking permission, he gently gripped Seraphim’s shoulder, and in one smooth motion, he propped her up to a leaning position.
Seraphim looked shocked that someone had just manhandled her so easily. She shot daggers at Alan as he recovered the glass from the table and pressed it to her lips. “Here, drink. And stop looking at me like I just kicked your puppy.”
Seraphim didn’t stop boring holes through Alan with her stare; however, she did accept the water. What was left of her wings fluttered and rustled as she drank down the cool liquid.
“There you go,” Alan said. “Now isn’t that better?”
Seraphim’s stony gaze lessened a bit. “You don’t have to stay here with me.”
“I know.” Alan refilled the glass and again brought it to the Death Angel’s lips. “I don’t have to do anything. I’m here because I want to be.”
Alan could tell Seraphim wrestled with his words. After another glass of water, her gaze dropped to her body and, more specifically, to her ruined wings.
Even though she refused to voice her thoughts, Alan could imagine what she was thinking. “Danielle did everything she could. They said that Gabriel shouldn’t have been able to inflict this much damage.”
Seraphim remained quiet. Her left wing was almost entirely intact; patches of burned feathers and scorched skin underneath spoke of a long recovery process, but it would heal. Her right wing, on the other hand, was almost totally ruined. It’d been the section of her body that had borne the brunt of Gabriel’s unjust attack. The wing was nearly half its former size, with virtually all the of dark feathers charred off or singed beyond repair.
“You’re going to be okay,” Alan said, wishing he thought of more fitting words for the moment they shared. “You’ll be stronger.”
Seraphim shook her head. “No.” No regret or pain in her voice; only facts. “Wings don’t regenerate. That’s why the Fallen will never have theirs again. They were stripped off when they were cast to Earth. My wings are gone, as well. I’ll never fly again.”
---
“Get her away from me.”
Michael looked over his shoulder at Ardat, who stood quietly in the corner of the poorly lit interrogation room. Or this place inside the Temple that passed for an interrogation room. When asked where they could question a prisoner, Artemis showed them to another well-kept guest room. Even now, Michael fought back a grin as he recalled the small girl’s reaction when they’d explained to her what they wanted.
They’d finally settled on what looked like some kind of stage room, with a single torch burning in the corner and a wooden table directly in the center. Their prisoner sat in a chair with one of Gideon’s collars around her neck, her hands chained, as well as her feet.
The woman’s gaze had settled on Ardat, and she refused to look away for a second, even as Michael walked around the room. She was so fixated on Ardat, it was as though she were afraid that as soon as she looked away, Ardat would somehow make a move to end her life.
“She stays,” Michael said as Triana prepared another outburst. “If you want her to leave so badly, why don’t you tell me what I want to know?”
Triana leaned back in her chair, lips pressed in a solid line of unmoving silence.
“How did Gabriel increase his strength? What did he do to allow supernaturals to damage and kill one another? What has he been up to all these years?”
Triana didn’t even honor Michael with a look; her eyes moved from Ardat to the center of the table.
Michael let out a sigh. They’d been at this for almost a half an hour. Triana refused to answer any of his questions.
Ardat shifted in the corner of the room. Triana was so terrified of the woman, even the smallest shift in Ardat’s stance brought a look of fear into her eyes. As much as Michael hated using scare tactics, Triana wasn’t leaving him much of a choice.
“Listen,” he started again, “I know you feel a sense of loyalty to Gabriel. But if you refuse to talk to me, we’re going to have to try … alternative methods to get the information we need.”
The first emotion Triana made besides defiance—and fear of Ardat—was insolence. She spread her lips into a smile and rolled her eyes. “Please, Michael, stick to motivational leadership speeches. We all know you’re not going to torture me. You don’t have it in you.”
Michael held her gaze and weighed her words before he responded with a nod. “You’re right, Triana. I don’t.”
Triana’s smile grew bigger as she gave herself a mental pat on the back.
“But,” Michael said with a sideways glance toward the looming form of Ardat in the background. “Ardat does not share my same philosophy when it comes to the treatment of prisoners.”
Ardat shifted from the shadows, the darkness practically following her as she moved to stand next to Michael. Though she remained quiet, there was no disguising the promise of pain her eyes spoke.
“Gabriel—he’ll kill me,” Triana said with a shudder. The smile that had split across her lips only a moment before had vanished. “I can’t tell you.”
“Leave the room, Michael,” Ardat said as she flexed both hands, allowing a cruel gleam to enter her eyes. “You won’t want to see this.”
Triana’s widened eyes moved to Michael in disbelief that he’d actually leave the two women alone.
“I’m sorry, Triana. I really am. You should have been more cooperative,” Michael said, doing his best not to smile. He had no intent
ion of letting Ardat harm their prisoner, yet Ardat was doing such a good job of intimidating Triana, she was almost fooling Michael.
Michael turned his back and walked to the door.
“No, wait! Wait!” Triana shouted. “What do you want to know?”
Michael faced Triana. “Everything. I want to know everything.”
Chapter Eighty-Four
“It’s never worked before, but it did now? Besides using the celestial weapons, the supernatural race cannot kill one another; harm yes, yet still not kill. You did this?”
Gabriel looked down at the dark-skinned man with a nod to his question “We did this. I could have killed that Death Angel; I could have killed them all, if I chose. The time’s too soon. The burns I’d inflicted on the leader of their most feared warrior clan will serve to remind them of how easy it is for me to crush their mightiest warriors. And you? How is the spell progressing?”
The shaman leaned over from his spot on the earth. He sat cross-legged on the ground, an assortment of mixtures and artifacts surrounding him like a turtle’s shell in his wooden hut. The close quarters made Gabriel feel a bit claustrophobic.
The small hut was a picture of ordered chaos. So many artifacts and herbs sat on shelves, hung from the ceiling, and lay on the ground, it was a wonder how the man could even walk around the cramped space.
The shaman gave Gabriel a demented smile that would have sent a shiver down anyone else’s spine. “It is nearly ready, as you have commanded. The fact that supernaturals are able to cause serious harm to each other is already a testament to the success of our undertaking. Are you sure you can contain the spell?”
“Thanks to the Ancient Wonder, I am ten times stronger than I have ever been. I am confident that when you finish the spell, I will be able to wield its power.”
The shaman’s eyes narrowed on Gabriel as he stood. Watching the man stand was like witnessing an ancient tree swaying in the breeze. Gnarled hands and knobby knees shuffled to a wooden chest on one of the many shelves in the hut.
The box he reached for was as ancient as he was, and the unadorned wooden lid opened with a creak before the shaman reached inside. “Fate is already twisting. The stream of time is altering its course to counteract the unnatural events that are now occurring. The power you possess is nothing this Earth has ever seen, and the laws of reality are bending to deal with the changes you are making.”
Gabriel needed the ancient shaman on his side or else he’d have snapped the blathering windbags’ thin neck a long time ago. He was forced to stand and listen to the old one’s ramblings like a student trapped in their least favorite class.
The old man drew out his hand, holding a bronze medallion on a simple leather strap.
Gabriel’s eyes focused on the prize. With the medallion, he’d be master over fate itself. He’d be capable of creating or breaking the laws that they’d all been forced to play by since the beginning of time.
The shaman shuffled over to Gabriel and offered him the crude necklace.
Gabriel reached out an open palm, and the medallion was placed into his hand with one final warning. “The power you’ll need to use this is immeasurable. It will leave you spent and exhausted whenever you call on its power. Take care to use it only when you must.”
On the outside, Gabriel gave a short bow with his head. On the inside, he wasn’t heeding a word the old man had said. The shaman spent so much time alone on his little godforsaken island, it was a wonder he wasn’t mad. Or maybe he was and the words he spoke now were nothing but gibberish. Either way, the job was done.
Gabriel lifted the medallion to get a closer look at the carvings in the afternoon sky’s waning light that drifted in from the hut’s single window. The medallion was just smaller than his fist in circumference, with a bronze color that nearly matched the leather strap on which it hung.
Six tiny symbols had been etched into the outer ring, a seventh placed directly in the middle. Gabriel made a mental note of the symbols representing the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
“With this,” Gabriel said more to himself than the shaman, “I will change how history will be written. I will make the rules, and neither the Creator nor the Usurper will stop me.”
---
“Why don’t you ask her?” Triana said, venom lacing her voice as her fear of Ardat turned into hate. Once Triana was sure Michael wasn’t going to leave her alone with Ardat, she became bold. “She knows everything. She tried it herself. In a way, you could say she’s the reason Gabriel’s doing this in the first place.”
Michael crossed his arms over his chest and raised a questioning eyebrow in Ardat’s direction.
Ardat’s heart raced. On the surface, she kept her face expressionless. She needed to navigate this situation just right for Michael to understand. She couldn’t disappoint him again, not when things were finally looking up. “What this piece of filth is referring to,” Ardat started, skewering Triana with a stare, “is a spell I was researching to alter fate. It was impossible. I couldn’t find a member of the Fallen race with the knowledge to cast the spell, and even if I could, the power it would take to actually use it is unimaginable.”
“What exactly would this spell do?” Michael asked both women.
Triana kept her lips sealed. More than anything, Ardat wanted to vault over the table and rip the expression right off her smug face. But the woman she was trying to become—the woman that had a future with Michael—held her in check. Her temper boiled as she looked at the captive who’d been spying on her, on Gabriel’s behalf, for so many years.
Ardat would have her vengeance, there was no doubt about that; however, this was neither the time nor place. Instead of acting on her instincts, Ardat smoothed down her cloak and answered Michael’s question. “In theory, the spell could bend the rules of the Apocalypse. It could change how things are done with the Four Horsemen. I dismissed the idea once I knew it was beyond anyone’s knowledge to create, much less use.”
Michael stood silent for a moment. Ardat could tell his mind was racing to find answers to his questions. “It seems as if Gabriel has found a way to become powerful enough to use this spell. The two questions we have to answer are: Where did he get the power, and was he successful in finding someone to create the spell?”
Ardat followed Michael’s eyes, and the two stared at Triana.
“What?” Triana turned her head from one face to the other. “Listen, that’s all I know. I know his plan was to do those things, but I don’t know how he actually pulled it off.
Ardat caught Michael’s eye in the dim light of the room, and a mischievous smile crossed his lips as he gave a slight head tilt in her direction.
Ardat didn’t need another hint. She stepped around the table and took a position behind Triana, hands resting on the woman’s quaking shoulders.
“Wait,” Triana said. “Wait, that’s all I know. I swear! He doesn’t tell me everything. I swear that’s all I know.”
Ardat let a disapproving sigh escape her lips. “You shouldn’t swear in front of angels, Triana.” Her hands traveled to the woman’s throat. “They don’t appreciate the act.”
“Okay, okay,” Triana said, shaking so hard in Ardat’s grip, Ardat thought she would choke herself. A cold sweat surfaced over Triana’s body, moistening Ardat’s hands with her fear. “So I know he did find some way to become more powerful, something about the Wonders of the Ancient World. And I know he found someone to create the spell, but I don’t know who. I swe—”
Triana thought twice about her word choice and cut off her sentence with an abrupt halt.
Ardat was sure she was telling the truth. That was all the woman knew. She was too scared to be lying, and it was what Ardat would expect from Gabriel. None of his underlings would know the whole truth for this exact reason. If they were captured, they wouldn’t be able to give away his plan.
Although they could squeeze no more information out of the prisoner, Ardat allowed her hands to continue t
o rest on the woman’s shoulders just so Triana knew she could still kill if she chose. While Ardat was lost in her thoughts—might as well kill the woman anyway to tie up any loose ends—Michael’s voice brought her back to the moment.
“Thank you, Triana. I do believe you.” His eyes shifted to Ardat, and he shook his head as if he knew what she was thinking.
“What?” Ardat asked with the sweetest smile she could muster, removing her hands from Triana.
---
“Are you kidding me?” Artemis said through a huge mouthful of peanut butter and jelly.
Alan lifted his head with a laugh as he sat in what passed as the kitchen in the underground Temple. Kyle was holding his hands over his stomach, tears running down his cheeks as he laughed out loud.
Alan pushed blond hair out of his eyes as he confirmed his story. “Yeah, I can’t believe you’ve never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before.”
Artemis’ mouth looked like a chipmunk’s, smuggling nuts in either cheek. She shook her head again, trying to get the words out past the sticky goodness in her mouth. “I know, me either.”
Alan almost felt guilty for laughing while Seraphim lay in a room down the hall recovering, but he couldn’t help himself. It felt great to laugh.
A rough night’s sleep found Alan in the kitchen with Kyle and Artemis while they looked for breakfast. A passing joke between Kyle and Alan about eating peanut butter and jelly sparked the initial conversation.
A few minutes later, the three unlikely comrades were sitting around the kitchen table with huge servings and large glasses of milk. Alan wiped his mouth and looked around as they continued to eat and enjoy Artemis’ innocent antics.
The kitchen inside the Temple was strange, to say the least. Not only was the entire place underground, but it was also fully stocked with every kind of food one could want. Silver cooking utensils with pots and bowls to prepare food, plates, and even a table to sit at and eat made the Temple feel like a home more than an ancient, supernatural location.
The Complete Archangel Wars Series: A Shared Universe Series (The Archangel Wars) Page 32