The Siders Box Set

by Leah Clifford

  Three Bound appeared, coming toward her, two on one side, one on the other. A sputter, and there was another behind her. She jerked, pointing her weapon at each of them in turn as if the threat would be enough to hold them off. Panic shook her hands.

  “I need some help down here!” she called over her shoulder just as she felt someone press against her back.

  “I’m still here,” Rachel said.

  They circled, back to back. A quick movement caught Kristen’s eye just in time. She ducked a fist, but the motion split her from Rachel.

  “Stay back,” Rachel commanded, but the angel only laughed at her. He disappeared for a moment and then came into form again behind her. Kristen buried her blade between his shoulders, the cartilage of his spine crunching as she drove the knife deep. His scream was deafening. Rachel slit open his throat, ending the cry.

  Kristen swiped at a splotch of blood on her arm. “Well, that was—”

  “Behind—” was all Rachel had time to yell before arms wrapped around Kristen.

  Flailing, she kicked her heels into the angel’s thighs, but his grip only tightened, constricting. Rachel was already barely fighting off another. The angel holding Kristen threw her against the wall.

  She slammed hard and dropped to the floor. The angel was on her immediately, flipping her over. He raised his fist above her chest.

  Thwack. The Bound’s mouth dropped open in surprise. He stared down at the hilt of the knife now buried in his chest. His arm went limp as he crumpled forward. Someone grabbed her under the shoulders and dragged her roughly out from underneath him.

  “How’s revenge going?” Luke growled in her ear.

  She collapsed against him, relief spilling through her. Squeezing his arm, she said, “I owe you one.”

  “Kristen,” he chided. “Have you learned nothing about using those words?”

  As she turned enough to see him, the smile forming on her lips stalled.

  Luke was carnage. His cheek was split wide, ear to chin. Sweat soaked his curls, bits of gore and dirt stuck to his face. His irises swirled, black, hungry, and mad with violent frenzy. She recoiled, but only for a moment.

  “You wanted me at your side when you got your revenge. Do you still?” he said as he reached to rip his blade free of the Bound’s chest.

  Strangely, she didn’t need to consider it. “Always,” she said.

  “Good answer,” he said, lacing his fingers with hers. He kissed her knuckles. “Because things are about to get messy.”

  Chapter 32

  Eden kicked hard, but one of the Bound had her by the ankle and was dragging her down the hall. Skin scraped off her back where her shirt had pulled up. Splinters gouged into the heels of her hands as she tried to gain some hold on the uneven floorboards. She grabbed for one of the ornate metal spindles lining the walkway that surrounded the empty center of the building. Nine floors down, she saw Jarrod and Sullivan cross the open space in a mad dash before they ducked out of sight under the first tier.

  The Bound let her ankle go and she scrambled to wrap her arms around the spindles. A hand clamped down on her neck and pulled her up.

  “Please, no!” she screamed as he pushed her against the railing. The open space seemed to spin as it yawned before her. She’d taken enough Touch from Rachel to survive a few injuries, but a fall like that would end her.

  “Climb over or be thrown,” the Bound said, his voice oddly calm.

  Her lip quivered as she searched for Az and found him across the way, two floors down. Michael swung on him, Az’s knife coming up just in time to block the blow.

  “He’s not likely to help you,” the Bound said as he read her thoughts. “Now move.”

  Shaking, Eden lifted first one leg over and then the other, keeping a death grip on the railing. A dozen scenarios burst through her mind of swinging wildly onto the balcony of the floor below her and to safety. Movie stunts.

  The Bound exerted just enough backward force on her that her foot slipped. She scrambled, her heels hanging over into nothing. He gripped her upper arm.

  “Please,” she begged. “Cured. We can be cured.”

  “Gabriel!” the angel bellowed.

  Eden hadn’t seen Gabe, but a moment later he appeared next to the angel that had her, his hands held out in front of him. “Let her climb back over, Raphael,” he said.

  Raphael turned to him. “We burdened you with opportunities to kill this Sider. You used a promise against us, turned the words into protection for this girl.”

  “Exactly!” Gabe said. “She’s just a girl. If you’d listen—”

  “No. Long past is the time for excuses. Take my place and let her fall. Look away if you must. The drop will be enough.” Raphael adjusted his grip and Eden let out a choked cry. “If she dies by my hand, your promise is broken and—”

  Gabe sucker punched him. “Not happening!”

  Raphael managed to stay standing for a moment before his eyes rolled slowly back. His hold on Eden weakened. Her toes slipped as the angel let go and went to his knees.

  “Help me!” she screamed. The barest tips of her fingers curled for purchase on the railing as Gabe dove for her.

  “I’ve got you!” he yelled, grabbing her forearm. She swung wildly as he clasped her arm. “Give me your other hand!”

  His grip slipped to her wrist. Eden flailed to reach him, afraid to look down. “Don’t let me go!”

  She was level with the floor as he fought to hoist her up. She saw Raphael on his knees, shaking off the punch. He took in the scene, joy flooding his face.

  “She’ll die at your hands yet, Gabriel.” He leaped for Gabe’s legs and knocked him aside.

  “No!” Gabe screamed as he lost his hold.

  Eden fell.

  Her ankle hit the next floor down, sending her into a somersault. Just before she smashed into the ground, a blur of white slammed her. Wings.

  Az.

  She groaned in pain. Everything hurt, but he’d taken the brunt of the landing.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, shuddering. Her ankle throbbed, but shock and adrenaline numbed the worst of it. Under her, she felt his heart beating wildly.

  “I caught you,” he choked out.

  She got a hand beneath her. Pressing her palm into a puddle on the floor, she tried to push herself off him. The puddle spread slowly out from underneath Az, dark red.

  Eden scrambled up. “Oh God, you’re hurt!”

  She looked down and saw the wound on his chest where Michael had sliced him. It swelled from ribbon to rift with each rib it carved across. On either side of him, his wings shivered and twitched. The feathers smeared delicate threads of crimson. He’s hurt, her brain screamed. Bad. Deep.

  Eden rocked her head back and screamed, “Gabe!”

  “It’s bad,” Az gasped. “Michael. You were falling and . . .” She heard the rattle of each erratic pull for air.

  Eden brushed back his curls. “Don’t try to talk,” she said.

  She tore the sleeve of her shirt and pressed it against the wound. There was a pop beside her.

  Gabe dropped to his knees, horror on his face as he took in Az. “Oh no,” he whispered.

  “Fix him,” she said. “Quick. I think they’re coming. None of us have a weapon.” The words tumbled over themselves, struggled out nightmare slow.

  A wet cough broke up Az’s words. “Eden. Where’s Eden?”

  “She’s still here,” Gabe told him. “I’m going to try to help you, okay?”

  “Don’t kill her, Gabe.” Az moaned in pain, and Gabriel’s face fell. “Don’t kill her, please.”

  Eden could hear the tears in Gabe’s voice. “I’ll get her out of here. You just hang on.”

  This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.

  She heard a rhythmic scraping noise—his foot, kicking out and back in a spasm. We’re losing him. She pushed down harder on the already soaked bandage. “He’s bleeding too much! We have to stop it!” Her fingers were slick. His
eyes drifted closed. “Az?”

  He opened them again and smiled up at her weakly. “They’ll make you mortal again. You’ll have a shiny new path and—” He cut off as the last of the blue in his eyes tarnished to a washed-out green. “I love you, Eden.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, clutching his hand in hers, using it to add pressure to the wound. “You stay with us. I think it’s slowing a bit.” In her relief, she glanced up at Gabriel, saw the tears spilling down his cheeks. “No, it’s going to be okay. He’s going to be fine.” The bleeding had slowed to a trickle. “See? It’s stopping.”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel said quietly. “It’s stopping now.”

  “We’ll get you out of here, Az, okay?”

  “Eden.” She hated the way he said her name, the way it shivered out of him broken, split and separate.

  “No!” She gave up on the useless bandage and gripped Az’s hand tighter. He opened his lips as if he were going to say something more and then he stilled. “Az, please,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”

  He stared up, eyes wide, unfocused. And then Eden felt herself, too, go still. She looked up at Gabe.

  Two tears raced down to his jaw. With every blink his irises flashed redder, bloodshot and glowing.

  Her chest ached. Her head throbbed with tears she wouldn’t let herself cry. “If I had been a regular girl with a normal path, I wouldn’t have been able to be with him. And Jarrod wouldn’t have met Sullivan and . . . Gabe, we’re all going to be mortal again and he wouldn’t have been able to be on my path.” She swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t have left him. I wouldn’t have!” she sobbed, falling against his shoulder.

  “But,” Gabriel said carefully, his voice breaking, “now you will. Because we’re going to save the Siders.”

  She stood and took the first few steps backward, her eyes locked on Az, every fiber of her body screaming against leaving him.

  I love you, she thought. And then she turned. “We’re ending this.”

  The building was oddly quiet. No one fought anywhere that she could see. She and Gabriel took the stairs up a floor, had to climb over a body on the landing. A knife stuck out of the chest. Eden pulled the weapon free and took it with her.

  He stopped them at the base of the stairwell. “Ready?” he asked, but she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be ready for.

  She kept the knife at her side and followed him down the balcony. Another body blocked the way, and suddenly she realized Jarrod and Sullivan weren’t with them, that she hadn’t seen them since the brief glimpse over the balcony railing. “Gabe?” she called softly.

  He raised a finger. Barely audible voices came from a room ahead.

  As they got closer, she could hear muffled whacks. “Release her to us!” someone yelled.

  “No!” The voice that answered was so full of venom, she almost didn’t recognize it as Jarrod.

  Gabriel’s hand was on her shoulder, anticipating her reaction. Hurry, she thought at him desperately.

  Gabriel burst across the threshold. “I demand cessation!”

  His voice thundered through the room. Eden couldn’t see past him, but she heard the shuffle of feet, the rustle of fabric as the angels turned toward him.

  “What have you done?” Gabriel demanded. Eden squeezed past him. Jarrod was the first thing she saw. Doubled over on his knees, he’d been stripped of his coat. A wide V of Bound spread out from him on either side, packed into the room. His white shirt was striped with dirt and grime. A few of the streaks were red at the edges where blood had soaked through. Even from the door, she could see the way he trembled. Under him, protected from the worst of the blows, was Sullivan.

  The angel closest to him held a baseball bat‒sized chunk of wood.

  “Who allowed this cruelty?” Gabriel snarled. “Let them up! Now!”

  “No one will do such a thing,” a voice called out.

  “Gabe.” Eden held up a shaking hand when she spotted Michael. The angel swiveled to her, his gaze heavy and without pity. “He killed Az,” she said.

  Everyone’s eyes were on her.

  On the floor, Jarrod slowly uncurled, his face contorted. Every movement was stiff, his shoulders pulled back in pain. He dropped his head again as if he couldn’t take the effort, whispered something to Sullivan. To Eden’s relief, she stirred.

  Gabriel moved slowly toward Michael.

  “It’s true,” Michael said simply. “Azazel offered me his life in a promise Upstairs. When that promise went unfulfilled, Azazel was ended by my hand with mercy in my heart.”

  Eden waited for some sort of reaction from the other angels, didn’t understand when no one moved. “Why aren’t they doing anything?” she cried.

  Gabe kept his eyes on Michael. “Is that how he got out of the cell you all were keeping him in?”

  Michael’s crimson irises lightened, yellowed. “And now I fear our Gabriel has been tainted by these cursed creatures.” His voice rose and sharpened. “Gabriel chose to surround himself with temptations. He has a history of giving in to sin. He failed a mission he never should have been trusted with!” he said, glaring down Eden. “He is impure and unloyal. The Sider plague is being eradicated, and Gabriel consistently stands in our way.”

  Gabe’s arm shot up, pointed at Michael. “I accuse you of having hands that shed innocent blood,” he spat.

  Michael gave a dramatic sigh. “Innocent blood! Azazel was not innocent.”

  “Not Az,” Gabriel said. “Another.” He trembled but kept going. “At Kristen’s, you found someone on the back stairs. Do you remember her?”

  “I do.” Michael broke eye contact as a silent tear ran down Gabriel’s cheek.

  “Her name was Madeline,” Gabriel said to the crowd, “and she’s the one who helped me when I was Fallen. When every other abandoned me, she stood by my side. We learned so much about the Siders from her, and from Kristen and Eden and her friends, whom you’ve beaten.” He paused. “Did you kill Madeline?”

  A murmur passed through the crowd.

  Eden felt a presence behind her just as Kristen’s hand touched her shoulder, her sympathy silent.

  Gabriel’s voice boomed. “I accuse you, Michael. Do you deny it?”

  Michael said nothing.

  Luke gave a low whistle from beside Kristen. “Formal accusation? I haven’t seen one of those since…mine.”

  “What is it?” Eden tightened her grip on the knife at her side.

  Luke slid closer. She could smell the metallic tang of the blood drenching him but couldn’t look at him. He smelled the same as Az had. “Sins need to be spoken,” Luke said. “Gabe accuses and then Michael must answer.”

  Michael sneered. “I was sent to exterminate the Siders.”

  “That wasn’t an answer,” Gabriel said. “Luckily, I wasn’t finished.” It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Gabriel’s gaze was trained on Michael. “I accuse you of shedding innocent blood. Of savagely ripping Madeline, sinless, from a path she’d just started upon.” The words strained out. “And doing so knowingly. You knew she was mortal, did you not?”

  Even from where she stood, Eden could see the betrayal sink in, Michael slowly shaking his head. “Gabriel, why?”

  “You could Fall for that alone,” Gabe said. “But I have more. How did the Siders start, Michael?”

  The last of the color drained from his face.

  “You were always stubborn,” Gabe said. “Jealous. But the last few years, you’ve become cruel and hateful. Sometimes you hide it well. Others…” He gestured to Jarrod, the bloodied dirty shirt he wore. “Not so much. I know how it felt to keep my sins inside for mere months before I Fell. I can’t imagine what it feels like to keep them for years.”

  Raphael pushed his way through the crowd. “Gabriel, what’s the meaning of this?”

  Gabriel didn’t waver. “The Siders aren’t just some plague that happened into being. I met the first Sider today. A girl who told me about a chance meeting with Az.”
/>   The annoyance in Raphael’s tsk wasn’t reserved to him alone. Others grew restless. Eden shifted the knife.

  “And again, Azazel had gotten involved when he shouldn’t have. It does not bode well to speak ill of the dead, Gabriel,” Raphael scolded as if Az hadn’t been any more than an acquaintance to Gabe, instead of his best friend.

  It took Gabe a second to recover. “You wanted a way to get rid of Az, make it so he didn’t need me anymore. And so you stole away the path of a girl you thought was in love with him. You took her future. But that potential, that life force built in her still. You thought she was dead, so you left her body to rot, but she became a Sider. She spread Touch on to others until their own futures became so confused and crumbled that their paths, too, disintegrated. Michael, I accuse you of starting the Sider plague.” He turned to Michael and uttered two words. “Deny it,” Gabriel said, his face dark.

  The room took a collective breath. Disbelief fluttered through the gathered angels when no denial came.

  Michael glanced away for a split second before he struggled back, like looking at Gabe was a punishment he endured, a penance.

  When Michael finally spoke, his voice was small, like that of a child. “I loved you, Gabriel. Always more. And never was I chosen.”

  Eden saw Gabe’s cheeks flare red. “That’s not true.”

  Heartbreak shone on Michael’s face. “Azazel kept you away from me, don’t you see that?” he said, reaching. Gabe shook his head, moved his hand behind his back. Michael grimaced, but went on. “He made you believe only you could save him from Falling. I tried to give him a girl who wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t die, because then you could come Home. Then you could come back to me.”

  “The terrible part was, she didn’t even know Az. You made a mistake, Michael. You stole her life,” Gabe spat, shaking. “Just like you stole Madeline’s. I accuse you of taking mortal life, Michael.”

  Michael closed his eyes for a beat. “Even dead you choose Az, and now I’m nothing.” He turned to face the crowd, his head held high as his voice rang out, loud and clear. “I stole the path of a mortal girl. I did so for my own selfish gain. For love. And I took a mortal life. I am guilty.” His voice fell. “Forgive me, Gabriel.”