Angelus

by Sabrina Benulis

“Good-bye,” Kim muttered.

  And then he took his chance and sprinted, following his fears toward the exit Troy had undoubtedly found. It wasn’t until they’d found two angel statues and passed between them, stumbling into a colder underground passage that Kim thought of looking at his hourglass pendant.

  Somehow, almost all the grains had fallen to its bottom.

  Nineteen

  LUZ THE CATACOMBS 12 HOURS LATER

  Angela felt riveted to the stone as Kim emerged from the mists of the catacombs they stood within. Her chest ached, and a painful fire shot through her. What could she say to him after leaving Hell under such horrible circumstances?

  Her mind raced through all the terrible possibilities, lingering especially on how much she missed his touch, even his breath. Everything. His figure began to emerge more clearly. She could make out a long dark coat and the long hair near his neck.

  She caught her breath.

  At last the figure stepped into the bluish gleam of the souls lighting the darkness like fireflies.

  It wasn’t him. This was a different man wearing the long black coat of a novice—a priest in training. His hair was a deep brown and shorter than Kim’s, and his eyes were also darker. He held a rosary in his left hand, and a faint azure aura outlined his body.

  Angela froze. She instinctively moved to step backward but checked herself.

  Juno stopped growling. She straightened and peered at the priest. “It’s a human soul,” she said to Angela.

  So he was merely one of the numerous souls filling the catacombs. Angela balled her hands into fists. She knew there would be little time to act—he was coming closer—but something told her to not behave too rashly. A sour smell hit her now. Her stomach turned. A sense of danger swept over her, summoning a wave of nausea in its wake. Then the priest paused in front of her, staring straight into her eyes. The enchanting music around them was even more melodious.

  Leave this place.

  Angela focused harder. Those thoughts weren’t her own. He was speaking to her in her mind.

  Why? she demanded.

  She wanted to explain it wasn’t so simple. She and Juno had gone through a lot of trouble to find the angel supposedly living in this terrible place. Turning around and retracing their steps wasn’t high on her list of priorities.

  Because you are too late.

  The priest pointed down at the pool of water beneath them. Angela hadn’t looked at it since walking with Juno over the narrow rock bridge.

  A pale shape could be seen at its bottom center. The corpse resembled a Hound but was pure white and absolutely immense. Its beautiful, well-shaped hands had curled in agony. Blood tainted the water around it, spreading like an inky cloud from its body. The angel’s brilliant wings had been crushed. Angela couldn’t look much longer. The being that was the sole reason she and Juno dared the canals now had the look of a winged mouse squeezed to death by a snake. She peered up at the stone bridges above them. What Angela thought had been water dripping now was clearly blood. She fought another wave of nausea.

  Someone had murdered Kheshmar, and her body had plummeted to the bottom of the pool.

  Angela forced herself to speak. “When did this happen?” she asked the priest.

  His face changed at her question. He didn’t seem to understand.

  Fear churned inside of her. She’d learned that Lucifel had been stealing human souls with the Vatican’s permission. So why were so many sequestered beneath Luz? “Are you the souls that Lucifel took from Memorial Cemetery? Please answer me.”

  The priest shook his head. No, we’re different. We’ve been trapped here for centuries.

  “Why not leave now?”

  His face became even graver. The Devil will find us if we try to enter Luz . . . she will use us to destroy you . . . so . . . we cannot leave anymore. Please understand, time is different in this place. This is a point in existence that connects to every other Realm. It is Luz’s firmest connection to the other worlds, and it existed before the city.

  But Angela didn’t understand. How could this place exist before Luz? “Are you saying this place is like the Netherworld?” Because that had also been connected to Luz when it existed.

  The priest held out his hand, as if pleading with her. No. This place is deeper and yet also higher than the Realm of the Dead—it is what angels call an “outer darkness.” A century ago, a few of my colleagues and I chose to come here to find the angel that had chosen to dwell in this timeless place. We shouldn’t have been so proud and foolish. Now I can never return. Now I too am one of those swallowed by time. Because, you see, the Cherubim that lived here ate time. That is how all Cherubim exist. They feed off space and ether, not flesh and blood. They helped balance what remains of the universe. Then, some of them were taken by higher-ranking angels and turned into Thrones. This Cherubim was the only one of her kind to exist on Earth by her own choice. Her twin, Azrael, dwelled in the Netherworld. They once belonged to the Supernal Raziel before his death.

  Now they belong to death itself.

  Leave before it is too late. I stayed and spoke to the angel like too many before me. By the time we had finished talking to each other, too much time had passed on Earth and we could not return. The Cherubim then devoured what had been left of our life spans . . . now our bones are all that remains of us. But though she is gone, some of her aura remains, and time continues to move . . .

  The implications of what he said punched Angela in the gut.

  She’d sensed something odd about the twin angel statues marking the threshold of the Cherubim’s domain. Now she knew that by crossing that invisible barrier, they’d crossed beyond time. There was no telling what Luz would be like when they returned. How much time had passed in this place while they stood here?

  She glanced down in horror at the Cherubim’s teeth glistening below the water. She tried to imagine the angel eating someone’s time—and couldn’t. She tried to fathom how any place could exist where a passing second equaled an hour elsewhere.

  “All these bones . . .” she whispered.

  . . . are the bones, the priest finished for her, of every unfortunate who has wandered below Luz—or been thrown down here.

  There were thousands. Men, women, and children. Too many to count.

  “We have to go,” Angela managed to say in a hoarse voice. Horror had destroyed her sense of purpose. The Cherubim was dead. They’d come all this way only for someone to beat them and arrive first. Who? Why? Angela stared at the Cherubim one last time, and a reflection seemed to cross the water. Within it, she saw the angel locked in a bloody struggle with a gigantic black and violet serpent.

  Oh no, she thought. Angela’s arms and legs shivered. No . . . not Python. Please.

  “How do we get back to Luz? There’s no way to go back to our time?” she frantically asked the priest.

  That is why you must leave. You have a chance . . . the Cherubim is dead. It cannot forcibly steal your remaining time if it wishes. You are still alive . . .

  Go!

  “But where will we go?”

  Back the way you came.

  “Hurry,” Angela said hoarsely to Juno. A sense of dread propelled her faster than she’d ever thought possible. Juno tried to call after her, but Angela didn’t hear anything besides the song and her own heart slamming within the walls of her chest.

  The souls were the source of the music. They chanted its sweet melody over and over, and Angela thought her brain would melt with it by the time she and Juno crossed over the threshold, and she stumbled past the angel statues and their uplifted lanterns. Angela skidded to a halt, nearly slipping on a half-thawed seam of ice in the floor.

  Superficially, nothing had changed. The water churned and foamed at the shore. The boat they’d climbed out of back onto land waited, bobbing in the water.

  Even so, Angela felt like her stomach had bottomed out.

  “What’s a good way out of here?” Angela turned to Juno.

&n
bsp; Juno’s ears flipped back into her hair. She sniffed the air and then listened. “This way,” she said.

  Angela followed her in a daze. What could have happened to Sophia? To Kim and Troy? To Nina, Fury, and Israfel? How much time could possibly have passed in those brief minutes they’d spent in the cavern?

  “I should have never come here,” Angela whispered to herself.

  The answers she’d been searching for had eluded her in the end anyway. Or so it seemed at the moment. Angela had believed that her only chance at survival had been to enter the canals, far from people who wanted to kill her. But it appeared at least one of them had caught up with her already. Where was Python? The thought of him in Luz haunted her.

  “We’re going back to the surface,” Angela said to Juno.

  Juno didn’t argue with her this time, but she didn’t seem thrilled, either. Her ears flattened. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I understand why you want to return now,” Juno said. The young Jinn paused and turned to look at Angela. Then they entered a long low tunnel that seemed to form part of Luz’s sewers.

  Rats chittered from holes in the walls, but the dampness was receding. They climbed higher in a strikingly short amount of time. At first, Angela had been too upset to note the path Juno led them on. Now she realized the air had grown colder again. Within the Cherubim’s domain it had been so much warmer. Angela wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering. Her breath left her in frosty plumes.

  She didn’t even want to know how pathetic and disheveled she probably looked.

  “Wait here,” Juno said softly. She slunk ahead into the darkness and returned so speedily, Angela jumped with surprise. “There’s something up here you should look at,” the Jinn said breathlessly. Her eyes were like flashlights in the blackness.

  Angela followed Juno until a square shape loomed before them. Its metal body gleamed beneath a strange shaft of light peeking through a grate in the ceiling.

  “Is that . . .” Angela whispered to herself.

  She approached the rusted body of a carriage car. She’d heard the Vatican had an underground system of transportation in Luz. By now it had been out of use for over a century, but they’d never bothered to dismantle the tracks or get rid of the old cars. Angela walked up to the carriage car and slid her hand against its ice-cold body. The paint had worn away long ago, and her fingers rubbed against a pockmarked surface.

  The vehicle probably linked to another one in the darkness ahead of them, and after that yet another. She couldn’t feel the tracks, but when Angela moved to the left her heel hit something hard sticking up from the ground. There they were.

  The holes that used to be windows set in the carriage car’s back stared at her like empty eye sockets.

  Angela looked away quickly and then examined the strip of light in the ceiling again.

  She and Juno must have been very close to the surface already.

  “What do you think?” she said to Juno and pointed at the opening responsible for the light.

  Juno’s nails screeched across metal as she scrambled up the side of the car and stood on its roof, getting a better view. Her silhouette blended almost entirely into the shadows. She returned just as quickly.

  “This is our best chance to leave,” Juno whispered.

  Angela noticed the Jinn’s hushed tone. “Wait—what’s wrong? Why are you talking like that?”

  Juno folded her wings against her back. “I don’t know. I can sense something is different, but . . . I’m not sure what.” She licked her upper teeth nervously. “It might be best to speak quietly.”

  Angela took a deep breath. Her nerves felt frayed to threads. She had no idea what kind of Luz waited for them up there. Maybe too much time hadn’t passed. They were all still in existence anyway. That meant the Realms hadn’t collided yet like the angel in Hell had warned her. “Is that grate an opening into Luz?” Angela asked Juno.

  “I would say so,” Juno said. “Although it’s hard to tell for certain.”

  “Why?”

  “The light,” the Jinn said with a cool hiss. Her wings shivered slightly. “It hurts my eyes.”

  That was odd. Luz had been wrapped in celestial darkness for so long, and Angela deeply doubted that a lantern of some kind would hurt Juno’s eyes. Her insides began to tie into a fearful knot. Yet she also had to make a choice. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Angela worked her way over to the metal car and began to slowly scale it to the roof, using pits and holes in the metal as footholds. Juno stayed where she sat, staring at their exit with an uncertain expression that didn’t change the closer Angela came. Angela struggled a little more, and her hands recoiled at the contact of the icy metal. Her fingers had numbed over when she reached the roof. Yet her time spent in survival mode while in Hell had paid off and she was standing next to Juno quicker than she’d hoped. From her new vantage point, Angela could see the cracked and missing tiles set in the arched ceiling and the other carriage cars curving off into the dark distance of the rail track.

  She looked up at the grate. It was more corroded than she had originally thought and there was a ledge beneath it. If Juno helped hoist her higher, Angela could definitely hunch on the ledge, and then kick or push the filigreed bars of the grate out and emerge onto the surface.

  “Can you support my feet?” Angela said, remembering to whisper.

  Juno nodded and her chalk-white hands held Angela’s weight with surprising steadiness as Angela used them to launch herself toward the ledge. She barely caught it, almost losing her balance entirely. With adrenaline setting her heart to a gallop, she pressed against the cobblestones in the wall.

  “All right, here goes nothing,” Angela muttered.

  She steeled herself and gave the grate a powerful kick. She winced and her leg ached like mad, but the already weak metal bent in the middle. Angela kicked harder, and then harder. She kicked so hard she had nearly given up from the pain when the grate exploded onto what must have been the street above them.

  Angela squirmed out of the opening onto her hands and knees, her face almost dragging against the bricks set in the street. She smelled salt water—they must have been much closer to the ocean than she thought. This was probably one of Luz’s lowest levels. Yet there was no sound of waves crashing against the supports far, far beneath them.

  The air was shockingly cold, as if a million needles pierced her lungs.

  Angela’s teeth chattered as she surveyed her surroundings. She couldn’t move. She was now face-to-face with the glassy sea.

  She stood on a level of Luz with a street that wrapped around its farthest side like an enormous balcony. Behind her lay the grate and openings into a few small alleys layered with trash. Snow and ice hid the railing that could protect her from plummeting over the side into the sea. In front of her, the ocean glimmered like a silver plate spread in all directions, while the stars above reflected in the water with rainbow hues. But the light was what really took her breath away. A powerful glow had lightened the sky from black to a deep shade of marine blue. Angela whirled around, looking up past the towers and half-broken turrets of Luz.

  The angelic city revolved menacingly in the sky, so close that Angela felt like she could reach out and touch it.

  It was much, much closer than before. Enough to take up half of her view.

  The silence suffocated her. She couldn’t stop looking at the Realm where Raziel had met his death. It shimmered like a glorious galaxy, but all Angela could see were the feathers and blood that had filled her visions in the past.

  Suddenly, voices echoed back to her. People were approaching.

  Angela searched desperately for a place to hide. There was none. The only choice she had was to escape back into the grate, and the strangers were coming closer. Now she could make out long black robes. Voices shouted now—they saw her. She had so little time. But how could anyone know where she’d been and what opening she’d used to emerge again into the city?

  Ang
ela dashed back to the grate and began to slide inside.

  Too late.

  Hands seized her. She struggled and screamed for Juno, but the voices were louder than hers. Something struck her hard on the head, her body slammed to the ground, and an image of Sophia and then Kim flashed before her eyes.

  Had everything she’d suffered through and accomplished been for nothing?

  With her last conscious thoughts, Angela knew she’d find out too soon.

  Twenty

  LUZ WESTWOOD ACADEMY

  Angela awakened slowly.

  She lay on a soft bed in a room that could have been lifted from the Emerald House she and Sophia used to share as a dormitory while in Westwood Academy. This was definitely another mansion owned by the Vatican officials who supervised the school. A large tapestry depicting angels with black-and-gold wings hung over the window to her right. Mahogany dressers took up the wall opposite and a flickering candelabra hung from the ceiling. Angela patted her legs and arms and realized she was still in the same stolen clothes she’d used to enter the canals.

  Thank goodness, though, Sophia’s pendant still rested against her chest.

  Angela clutched it, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and slipped to the ground. Her shoes were gone, but at least now she wore warm knee-high socks.

  She walked to the door and tested the brass knob. Locked.

  Angela bit back a frown. She jiggled the knob harder and pounded on the heavy door with her fist. “Hello? Hello!”

  Met with silence, she resigned herself to climbing back into bed. Exhaustion tugged at her again, and Angela’s eyes started to close once more when she heard footsteps echo down a hallway outside.

  Now the lock on her door turned and someone entered the room. Suddenly nervous, Angela chose to keep her eyes closed as the footfalls approached her bed. Weight pressed against the mattress by her side.

  “Angela,” a low and familiar voice whispered.

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Angela turned over slowly and opened her eyes to find Kim sitting on the edge of her bed. Like the days that seemed so long ago when they’d first met, he wore the long black coat of a Vatican novice and his hair had been cut shorter. His amber eyes glistened with the light of the candle he held in his hand. Angela was pretty certain this must be a dream. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, but he was still there.