Angelus

by Sabrina Benulis

  “What is your name?” the angel asked.

  “Marie,” Angela lied.

  The angel seemed to sense she wasn’t telling the truth. He stepped closer, his height and handsomeness even more intimidating. Israfel’s presence oozed elegance and grace, and the sight of him had always made Angela hunger desperately for more. These angels, though, reflected a hardness in their expressions that spoke of Lucifel’s influence. Now Angela noticed that one of them held something black and feathered by its wiry legs.

  The angel thrust it in Angela’s face.

  Kim gasped softly behind her.

  “Tell me, human,” the angel said too quietly. “Does this creature look familiar to you?”

  Angela stared at the bird. Its body hung unnaturally stiff and its wings refused to close. Its eyes held no fire at all, but she didn’t sense it was dead. Though she was very sure it might be at any second.

  A sensation of dread clamped down on her like a vise. Her eyes watered and the world blurred.

  “This is a Vapor that we caught soaring around the Academy last night. Interestingly, it arrived shortly before you were found climbing out of the canals beneath Luz. A strange detail and a strange coincidence, don’t you agree?”

  “It’s not familiar to me,” Angela croaked. But of course it was. Angela felt her knees weaken. Her breath threatened to vanish.

  “That’s interesting,” the angel continued. “Because as we gazed into its soul, we clearly saw someone who looks exactly like you. Indeed, that’s the reason we found you right now. The Vapor’s soul is calling to you. It led us to this place.”

  Angela couldn’t tear her gaze away from the crow. This had to be either Fury or Nina.

  “You don’t want to talk?” the angel said. He nodded at his companion with the crystal dagger.

  The other angel pressed it to the crow’s throat. Suddenly, the bird came to life, powerfully flapping its wings. The black-haired angel held on to its feet, but he gritted his teeth, obviously struggling.

  Angela couldn’t watch much longer. She could see the frustration in the angel’s eyes. Finally, that frustration broke the surface as dangerously as she feared.

  “Do away with the disgusting nuisance,” the angel’s other companion said. “It’s trouble enough. We found what we were looking for—”

  The dagger-wielding angel set his blade to the struggling bird again.

  Angela broke away from Kim, grabbing for the crow. The angel with the dagger was still at work, and he slipped, fighting for a moment with Angela.

  She shrieked as the blade cut across her arm and blue blood streamed down to her fingers. The crow exploded out of their grip. Now she saw the older, telltale rattiness of its feathers. It was Fury.

  Escape while you can! Angela shouted to Fury mentally.

  Fury screeched and flew for the doors at the far end of the hall. People screamed and some fell to the floor, covering their heads. The angel with the crossbow notched it and aimed at Fury, but Angela was just as quick.

  Angela willed her blood into her hands, light washed over her, and she summoned most of the Glaive. Its wickedly curved blade absorbed the light in the room, throwing it back in an ethereal shade of blue. The souls trapped in their lanterns began to dance. Noise exploded around them, and song, just like in the catacombs.

  Angela took down the angel with the crossbow first, ramming him hard in the back with the Glaive’s haft.

  He fell, and she turned on his companions. One lost a hand still clutching his dagger. Kim screamed for Angela as the black-haired angel grabbed for her.

  She sliced half his wing off.

  Blood splashed everywhere. The angel screamed in agony and slammed to the ground. Angela forced the Glaive to collapse and slipped on all the blood as she turned and ran with Kim. Dizziness swallowed her. She was still too weak to use the weapon to its full potential. Now they were vulnerable, and even though no one tried to stop them yet, Angela knew it was only a matter of time before they were caught.

  But what choice did she have at the time? They were going to kill Fury.

  I’m not worth more lives lost . . .

  Angela clutched her bleeding wrist and ran for the double mahogany doors they’d used to enter the hall. They flew open, revealing an enormous group of priests, novices, Academy officials, and even a few angels, at the head of the throng.

  Before Kim and Angela could take another step, the angels notched their bows and aimed arrows sparking with energy at her head.

  A dead silence overcame everyone. Angela could only wonder: what might have happened if she’d allowed Fury to die? But she had no regrets. She refused to.

  A sharp exchange of words passed between a few Vatican officials, including a man in a red robe and hat who Angela knew as Bishop Kline. They gestured in her direction. She looked at Kim as four priests walked toward them and tugged their hands behind their backs, cuffing them. Kim said nothing. His grave face could have been chiseled from marble. Was he, too, agonizing inside over their failed escape, their inability to save the other red-haired women now that they’d been caught?

  Yet behind his eyes Angela saw what she undeniably felt: a fire that she’d be damned they could bleed out of her.

  Twenty-one

  Nina perched on an icy ledge below one of the Emerald House’s gabled windows. She tapped furiously with her beak on the pane, praying Sophia would hear her and lift the sash. Snow lay heavily on the deserted streets, but angels were certainly patrolling the nearby turrets. Nina folded her wings and tried to wait patiently, the cold air biting her like fangs all the while.

  Finally, the pane slid open.

  Nina glided inside, maneuvering around Sophia. She landed in front of the warm glow of the fireplace and shook out her feathers, relishing the sensation of the velvet area rug beneath her frozen feet. The rest of the house sat in a gloomy darkness strewn with cobwebs. It was clear that no one had resided here since Sophia said she and Angela had entered Hell, and in that time the Academy had barricaded the mansion’s doors for good.

  That made it the perfect place for Nina, Sophia, and Fury to hide as they waited for some sign that Angela was safe and, they hoped, nearby. In the meantime, Sophia had tasked herself with taking in and protecting as many red-haired female students as possible. The bloodlettings in the Academy were an ill-kept secret by now all throughout Luz, but Sophia had been sure that as long as she, and Nina, and the others kept a low profile, none of the angels would suspect their presence for quite a while.

  She’d been right so far. But their luck could run out at any time.

  Now that Fury had been captured . . .

  Nina shifted into her customary human shape, but she could only stare at Sophia and the more trustworthy members of the Vermilion Order gathered in the den. Her mouth opened and shut again. Why was it so hard to tell them what had happened? Was it because she felt like a failure?

  If only she and Fury hadn’t let their guard down at such a crucial moment. The good thing was that Nina had seen Angela. She was alive, thank God. But Angela was now also in the clutches of the Academy officials, and Fury had been captured by angels—a terrible turn of events that was sure to mean trouble for them all.

  Nina could still feel one of the angel’s arrows whistling by her, ruffling her feathers with its wind and dazzling her eyes with its light.

  It was hard to believe it hadn’t struck her right in the heart. The breathless chase afterward would have been enough to make it burst anyway if Nina hadn’t managed to lose the angels in a tangle of leaning Academy towers.

  Only now did she realize her chest hadn’t lost a fraction of its terrified tightness.

  She slid to her knees, suddenly feeling dizzy.

  “Were you spotted?” a red-haired young man with glasses and a long coat said as he stepped forward.

  He was just one of many more blood head students and Vatican novices sitting in the shadows. Some had claimed the velvet upholstered armchairs; a few
took the mahogany dining chairs, or nestled on the brocade sofa; and then there were those who’d claimed the warmest spots at the foot of the fireplace. But Nina didn’t see any of the female students they’d rescued so far. Perhaps they were still sleeping upstairs or recuperating from their horrible ordeal.

  “Yes,” Nina said softly, but her words felt so heavy. “I was spotted. And Fury was captured by angels.”

  Groans of dismay took over.

  Sophia had followed Nina from the window and then seemed to disappear. She must have gone to the kitchen, because now she knelt down in front of Nina with a glass of water. Nina took it gratefully, savoring each drop. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stay sane as the next words left her mouth. “I also saw Angela.”

  Nina had been handing her glass back to Sophia.

  Sophia gasped at the news. Her grip slipped and the glass smashed on the floor. Her eyes looked pitch-black in the flickering candlelight. “Don’t tell me the bloodletters have her?” Sophia said. Her voice almost cracked with horror.

  “They do,” Nina managed to say.

  Sophia’s mouth tightened to a line. She stared into the golden fire, seeming to think. Questions flew at her from all directions, but Sophia said nothing, only turning back to everyone after a long while.

  The noise died down. Every face turned to regard her.

  None of them knew Sophia was the Book of Raziel. Even the novices had bought the story that Sophia was a Vapor like Nina and Fury, only more special. They knew she’d been a close familiar of Angela Mathers and that was all.

  “We’ve reached the crucial moment,” Sophia began. She looked at each face in turn. “Eventually we knew the angels would find us, though we hoped it would be at the world’s end if it came down to it. Luckily, we’ve escaped notice until now. But mark my words, the angels will see into Fury’s soul and be upon us soon. So we don’t have much time.”

  “We can’t just leave,” a red-haired novice clasping a book in her hands said fearfully. “Where else will we go?”

  “That’s just it,” Sophia said, turning to her. “We do have to leave. At least—some of us do.” Her tone grew even more grave, and Nina felt her heart thrum and burn. “Angela is humanity’s—the universe’s—last hope for survival. If she dies, so do we all. So I’m going to ask some of you to come with Nina and me to rescue her—or to try. Of course, you might not return. Yet I won’t judge anyone who chooses to stay behind. There are girls ranging in age here from five years old to eighteen and they need people to care for them while they heal.”

  Murmurs and whispers rippled through the people gathered in the room.

  “I ask anyone willing to help us to come up here and stand with me by the fireplace.”

  Now everyone except one strawberry-blond novice with thick braids left their seats close to the fireplace. She stood and walked to Sophia’s side, joining the male student with his thick glasses, two more female students, and a male novice who kept his gaze fixed on the floor, as if he’d found his fate there.

  Sophia spoke in whispers to those who’d gathered near her. Then she turned back to everyone else again. “Thank you. I sincerely hope you feel in your heart that you made the choice you feel is best. Good luck, and pray for our success.”

  Nina walked over to join them and heard Sophia whisper to her little crowd, “Follow me . . .”

  They trudged up the staircase nearby as a group.

  Darkness overtook them. Nina slid her hand against the florid wallpaper that ran the length of the staircase up into the upper hall. Only one candle glowed in its sconce at the top of the stairs. Oddly, Sophia paused to blow it out.

  A deep silence overtook everyone as they walked down the long hallway to a narrow door at the far end. Dust lay heavily everywhere. Their shoes tapped with uncomfortable loudness against the wooden floors.

  Nina was last in line, but she swore she heard a heavy trotting sound behind her.

  She turned in time to spot phosphorescent yellow eyes, a mane, and long bestial legs traveling within the shadows as if they were a living part of them. An echoing snort reached her, though no one else seemed to hear or notice. Nina paused for a moment and watched in dumbstruck amazement as the winged Kirin Angela had ridden out of Hell emerged into full view only to disappear into a pocket of black and empty space again, as if it had jumped from one dimension to another. If she hadn’t been looking in the right direction, she might have missed the beast entirely. It was following their group, and Nina had the strong sense she spotted the creature only because she was a Vapor.

  Nina folded her arms and shivered a little anyway, stopping with everyone else at the narrow door.

  She looked back into the darkness again.

  The Kirin’s great eyes flashed once and disappeared.

  “Before we enter this room,” Sophia said to their group, “I want everyone to promise me that they will stay silent about what they’re going to see. Please don’t say a word, and let me and Nina do all the talking—otherwise you can be certain you might find yourself in real trouble.”

  Sophia’s gaze met Nina’s.

  She set her petite hand on the knob and turned it with a nasty creaking noise.

  The door seemed to swing open on its own. In reality, Sophia was pushing it with the edge of her slipper. She peeked inside, and then gestured for their little group to file in one by one. Nina noted, though, that Sophia was careful to be the first to actually step over the threshold.

  To the more ordinary humans among them, the room was probably pitch-black. But Nina’s new eyes could make out most of its hidden features. It was a spare bedroom with a thick queen-size bed, a set of wooden dressers, and heavy drapery that blocked out almost all the light from the angelic city on Luz’s skyline. Nothing seemed unusual—until she noted the wiry shadow in the room’s farthest, darkest corner. It moved slightly, revealing a single sickle-shaped wing. Yellow eyes like the Kirin’s flashed from the darkness.

  The male novice balked. He grabbed Nina because she happened to be standing closest to him, and his fingers felt like claws.

  “A Jinn,” he whispered.

  The yellow eyes rested their gaze right upon him. He stiffened with terror.

  “Then . . . you’ve found her,” a voice hissed from the direction of the deep darkness, and the gaze attached to it left the novice and returned to Sophia.

  “Yes,” Sophia said tersely. “It’s time to get Angela back.”

  Chilling laughter nailed them all to wherever they stood. “I’ve been waiting for this,” Troy said, as she slunk nearer to their group. She licked her nails, as if relishing what they were about to do. Nina could make out the cold flash of Troy’s teeth as she grinned. “Those angels laugh at death as they inflict it on others,” Troy said.

  Her voice held a dire prophecy.

  “That’s because they never met me.”

  PART THREE

  Regret

  Two Days until the Great Silence

  Demons equate love with foolishness, and thus

  they are fools themselves.

  Twenty-two

  LUZ THE ALTAR OF THE BLOODLETTERS

  Angela’s journey to her execution began with nightmarish cold, escalated with the frenzy of a mob as she was paraded through the streets surrounding Westwood Academy, and ended only when she and Kim arrived at the great iron-clad doors of the institution that Luz’s most-feared witch, Stephanie Walsh, had eventually called home.

  They were at the edge of the highest sea cliff in Luz, and though the waves had died long ago to an eerie and glassy calm, dampness still seeped into the many-armed tower and oozed from every pore of its mortared stone and bricks. Its windows resembled blank eyes. Angela tried to imagine how many students had already lost their lives behind these unforgiving walls.

  She looked up at the stars and noticed the silhouettes of angels perched like birds on the Luz Institution’s turrets.

  One or two of the angels rustled their wings an
d shifted position.

  She and Kim looked at each other. They were close enough to whisper at least.

  “So this is how it ends,” he said bitterly. But Kim gritted his teeth, and a spark of his old mischief brightened his eyes. Maybe he had a plan.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Angela muttered. “We’ll find a way out of this.”

  Kim sighed and didn’t reply this time. His expression dropped its confidence and took on a haunted aspect.

  Most of the crowd around them had started to disperse. The bone-chilling cold chased away all but the staunchest individuals after a while. Angela’s fingers and toes were already numb, though her captors had made sure she was warm enough to stay alive and for her blood to flow freely. Before she could say another word, rough hands took her by the shoulder and guided her up and into the forbidding building. Kim followed behind her, suddenly wordless and deadly again. Their footsteps met the stone with ominous clicks. Angela sniffed, recoiling at the stench of mildew.

  Even if the women imprisoned here managed to survive the bloodletting, the cold and dampness were sure to kill them anyway.

  Maybe I can at least get a glance at the other people . . . I want to engrave their faces in my mind. How dare these officials and administrators take their lives so easily . . . These are people, not objects—

  “Faster, blood head,” a gruff voice said in Angela’s ear.

  She turned to regard her newest tormentor, but met with a harsh shove up the next stairwell instead. Their group spilled out into a wet hallway lined with cells crosshatched by barred windows. Unlike Stephanie’s portion of the institution, which had boasted some degree of civilization and whitewashing, this section of the building could have been constructed during the Middle Ages. Black crosses had been tacked above each cell, though very few of the blood heads trapped inside happened to be praying. Some clung to the barred windows available to them, staring at Angela with large forlorn eyes.