A deep shudder of outrage and anguish moved through every inch of her being.
She scanned the row of cells to her left as her captors pushed her toward one of the doors marked by a pitted brass lock.
A woman with thick, deep red hair watched Angela from her position on a worm-eaten wooden bench. A young red-haired girl clung to her voluminous skirt and had hidden her face deep in her mother’s colorful shawl. It was Gloriana Cassel and her daughter, Tress.
Angela had almost forgotten about the feather Tress had given her. Thank God, Angela had remembered to hide it in a safe dry spot no matter what clothes she wore. It lay against the skin near her leg right now, safe and sound.
A nasty push sent Angela reeling into the cell. Kim followed shortly behind. He was a man with dark hair, but he was also obviously her accomplice and their murderers seemed to want them together for a reason. Angela couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn’t been separated, but something within her sounded a sharp warning anyway. She looked at Kim, trying to speak to him with her eyes, but he refused to meet her gaze.
Instead Kim immediately walked to a corner of the cell, where he crouched and sat with his head buried in his knees.
“So we meet again, Archon,” Gloriana whispered the second the cell door slammed shut and the lock turned. “But our reunion will be brief. They’ve only put you here while they prepare the altar. This is the cell reserved for their next victims.”
“How long have you been here?” Angela choked out.
Tress shifted in her mother’s arms, and she turned slightly, revealing that she was in fact asleep. Dark circles ringed her young eyes.
“Two weeks,” Gloriana said sadly. “I managed to keep myself and my daughter safe by bargaining and making myself useful to these monsters. But servants of the Devil are hard to please. Eventually, we were slated for removal to the towers here. By coincidence—or perhaps fate—we were moved to this cell only yesterday. And now you’re here.”
“I won’t let them take you,” Angela snapped.
Gloriana sighed and shook her head. “Unless you open the Book of Raziel, our deaths will be soon to come regardless.”
Angela had nothing to say to that.
“But don’t blame yourself,” Gloriana added. “I know that if you could open the Book, you would. That much was clear after I spoke to you. And though I’m not sure what obstacles you are encountering—I’m firm in the belief that you will overcome them.”
Angela couldn’t say that her roadblock was her love for Sophia. So she lowered her head, and a tight pain tore through her chest and heart.
“The Cherubim below Luz . . .” Angela began hesitantly.
Gloriana straightened, and her face became even more serious. “You found her, then? Kheshmar?”
Angela nodded. She glanced at Kim, who still sat unresponsive. “Yes . . . we both did. We learned that if the Book of Raziel can’t be opened, there is still a way to save everyone. I would need to create new stanzas and notes for a song called the Angelus . . .”
Angela trailed off as Gloriana shook her head.
“What?” Angela said. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s impossible,” Gloriana continued. “The Angelus is the song of creation. Changing the notes would mean a new order to things—a—a revolution of some kind.”
Angela felt her eyes widen. Sophia had mentioned a revolution once before, shortly before Lucifel nearly beat Angela to death while they were trapped in Hell. She’d mentioned it in connection to the dire prophecy that Angela’s choices were long supposed by so many to be the ruin of humanity and of all living things. But—Sophia had added—perhaps it would not be so much a matter of ruin, as it would be a revolution of the established order to the universe.
“It doesn’t matter,” Angela said softly, though her mind had started to race. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing such a thing.”
“It wouldn’t be possible here, certainly,” Gloriana said. “To do that, you would have to approach the foot of God’s throne, just like Raziel did.”
That meant going to Heaven, the home of the angels. Angela didn’t see how that was even remotely possible at this point.
“Kim,” she ventured, looking right at him.
He and Gloriana were now in the same room, and Angela still didn’t have it in herself to tell him the truth: that he wasn’t the only half-Jinn in existence.
If only he would look at her, and somehow see everything for himself.
Kim still didn’t answer her. His face remained on his knees and half hidden by his arms. Angela tiptoed closer to him and he didn’t stir. She reached out and brushed the long bangs from his eyes. He was asleep, just like Tress.
“Who is he?” Gloriana said, studying Kim keenly. If she noticed anything unusual about him, she didn’t seem about to mention it.
“He’s . . . a friend,” Angela said.
She turned to the barred window and its view of the dark and mirrorlike ocean. An eerie glow danced across the water as the angelic city shone down like a gigantic moon on Luz. Angela stared and stared at the placid expanse before her. She thought of the Mirror Pools and their salty taste. The ocean was said to taste salty, though she’d never actually swallowed a mouthful, even accidentally. Angela had never been allowed to play on the shore or mingle with other children when her parents were alive.
“Do you know what some religions have said about the ocean?” Gloriana said. She stood by Angela’s side, sighing and gazing with her out over the star-speckled scene. “They say,” Gloriana continued, “that water is the blood of the gods. Sometimes, they took it one step further and mentioned the earth as the corpse of a god.”
Blood is salty too, Angela thought in spite of herself.
But Angela looked at her and said, “That sounds ridiculous.”
“Does it?” Gloriana said. “Yet the ocean is the source of all life on Earth, and who knows where else water might be found throughout the universe, waiting to give life to creatures? Not too long ago, people stopped believing in angels and demons too. They called such notions superstitious nonsense. Now they know better. In the end, there is so little we know about why we exist and where we are going after death. I once asked an angel what happens to their kind at death. He told me that an angel’s spirit returns to its original home. He had no answers for me beyond that. Honestly, I don’t think he knew the truth either.”
Angela pondered Gloriana’s words. The more she stared into the stars, the more she seemed to see. Her left eye burned, and suddenly she felt like she had crossed space again to stand before the Father’s bleeding corpse.
They looked so much alike. It could have been her, winged and dead, streaming endless rivers of blue blood.
“Do you ever get the feeling,” Angela said, “that you’ve experienced something before? That perhaps you’ve made certain choices in—well, let’s say in a past life, for instance—and now you’ve been given one more chance to set everything right?”
Gloriana’s gaze burned into her. “No,” she said after a while. “But if I did, the first thing I would ask myself is ‘what went wrong?’”
Gloriana returned to her daughter and unfolded her shawl, laying it over Tress’s sleeping form. Angela continued to stare out at the sea and the stars, entranced by their peacefulness until her eyes began to feel heavy. Then, with a final glance at Kim resting serenely in his corner, she allowed herself a moment to relax.
And that was when she fell asleep.
Morning soon arrived, and though Angela had awakened, she wondered if this was all just one long and endless nightmare. But the scene before her never changed.
For a second, she wished for the relative comfort of their jail cell all over again.
The altar to Lucifel used by the bloodletters had been hastily constructed from any available materials, but Angela shivered at the eerie likeness of the Supernal in the statue erected above the long stone table that might be Angela’s
deathbed. The proud angel’s arms outstretched in an almost merciful gesture, yet her marble-smooth face and apathetic expression emphasized her otherworldly loveliness to devastating effect. Her great wings had been reconstructed with black crow feathers. Some kind of red stone had been used for her crimson irises.
The bloodletters had chosen the pinnacle of the Luz Institution’s highest tower to commit their murders, and besides the cold altar, there was nothing but mortared stone composing the walls and ceiling, flickering candles set high in the eaves to stay out of the reach of any possible wind, and large windows without bars or glass of any kind.
This must have been a bell tower for the Institution at one time. That alone explained the openness of this room to the elements.
The two priests who’d dragged Angela and Kim from their cell now forced them to kneel on the unforgiving stone. Angela struggled, but the combined strength of two pairs of hands was enough to make her collapse. She skinned her left knee, wincing with the pain.
Footsteps approached them from across the room.
Father Schrader emerged from the shadows, dressed in a long woolen black coat. His eyes shone a terrifying shade of red.
Kim’s face twisted with shock. His tone became furious. “It’s you?” he spat indignantly.
“Unless you want things to move faster, you’ll stay silent from this point on,” Father Schrader said with dangerous softness. Yet his speech was uncharacteristically lilting. Angela recognized it: this was the angel Mikel’s sweet musical voice. She’d possessed Father Schrader, as if confirming the worst of Nina’s fears about him.
Visions of pain and sorrow raced through Angela’s mind.
She’d suspected Mikel had betrayed them all, and she’d been correct. Yet the reality of it was infinitely more horrible with the angel here in front of them.
“Mikel,” Angela whispered back. “Why?”
Mikel knelt in front of them. “You ask me ‘why,’ yet your eyes are judging me,” she said with a hint of real pain in her voice.
Angela let out an ironic and pained laugh. Though she couldn’t move, inwardly she recoiled from Mikel in disgust. “What choice do I have? You’re a traitor. You told me when we first met that you wanted to help your father, Raziel, and here you are, doing the Devil’s dirty work. Do you realize how much blood you have on your hands?”
“This would never have been necessary if Israfel hadn’t conspired with my brother to imprison me. I . . . I could have found another way to end my life.”
“End your life?” Angela shouted. “That’s what this is all about? You want to commit suicide?”
“As if it makes me any different than you were once upon a time,” Mikel shouted back. “As if you of all people can’t understand what it is to be born in an unfair world. I didn’t ask to be what I am—and I’m not like the other angels, Archon. I can’t die like they can, whether from illness or accident. My mother alone—only Lucifel—can end my misery. If that means an end to this universe, so be it. But I’ll be damned if you try to stop me like Zion and Israfel did.”
“You are already damned,” Angela hissed at her. “Do you hear yourself? How selfish can you be?”
This was unbelievable. Angela felt like any at second she’d wake up from this nightmare, and yet she knew with equal conviction that it was never going to happen.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mikel shot back. “I don’t need lectures from a human who caught the fancy of my dead father. You don’t know the real truth. We—all of us—have been down this road before. It’s time to put a stop to it once and for all. The world no longer needs to suffer for the sake of your redemption, Angela Mathers.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Angela snapped. “You’re just as insane as Lucifel.”
“Wrong,” Mikel said, breathing into her face. “You are the real source of our misery. You are the very reason my father died. You are the reason the cycle of death refuses to end. Well—my mother is determined to put a stop to it, and I’ve decided to help her. My final wish to end my pathetic existence is only a bonus.”
“There’s no way I can be the cause of everyone’s misery,” Angela shouted. “How can you blame one person for everyone else’s fates and circumstances?”
“You tell me,” Mikel said. “You helped set the wheels in motion eons ago. You don’t remember? How convenient. But that doesn’t change the facts. Even if you’re the only god this world has, it’s better that it doesn’t exist at all.”
“That makes no sense!” Angela said. A painful quiet took hold of her. Once again, she was on the verge, ready to tip over into something that frightened her more than she ever thought possible.
“I’d be a fool to give you any more to work with,” Mikel said. “It’s enough for you to know that at least these other girls won’t have to bleed to death now that we have the blood necessary to open the Book.”
Mikel stepped away from them, gesturing for the priests to come closer. They grabbed Angela by the shoulders and dragged her toward the stone table. She struggled violently while Kim remained eerily still and silent. His gaze had riveted on Mikel and a frankly contemptuous smirk touched his lips.
“And you, half-breed,” Mikel said too sweetly to him. “You should be happy I’m allowing you to stay by the Archon’s side in Her final moments.”
A priest with long and tangled dark hair quickly set a knife to Kim’s neck.
“Yes, I should thank you, Mikel,” Kim said to her gently. “This was an entertaining game to play, after all. But I think there’s another hand that has you in checkmate.”
Mikel—though residing in Father Schrader’s body—paused, with the look of a frightened child on her face. She glanced at the drained hourglass pendant resting near Kim’s chest.
Suddenly, Angela could barely see. Her head slammed against the table and stars pinpricked her vision. Hands fought with her as more hands gripped her ankles. Angela kicked and squirmed as her captors tried to wrap ropes around her limbs.
A deathly hissing sound echoed through the air.
Everyone froze. Hands lifted from Angela’s body. She lay on the table for a second, breathing hard. The hissing sound continued to echo, and a chill shuddered through her.
A creaking, crumbling sound took over. Stones now tumbled from the ceiling and clattered onto the floor. Angela shot up onto her elbows, and the ropes wrapped around her waist and wrists slid to the rock. The priests who’d been hard at work tying her down stared at an enormous shadow circling the round chamber outside. It resembled living smoke, but the more Angela focused, the more it condensed into a solid mass of muscle and glittering black and violet scales. A gigantic serpent was busy encircling the tower. It hissed again, sending a fiery dart of fear right through her.
Two of the priests tripped over metal urns at the foot of the table in their effort to get away. Sluices ran from the table to their dull iron insides, probably the most efficient means they had right now to collect Angela’s blood.
The tower groaned, as if in pain. More stones dropped and smashed against the floor.
The priests ran for the doors that were the only safe exit available.
Instantly, the snake’s coils smashed through the far wall. Rocks sprayed everywhere. Angela screamed and ducked, using her arms to protect her head and face. She rolled and found herself close to Kim. The eerie smile was still on his face, but then he saw Angela and he shook his head, as if clearing it. He’d been in a trance.
He turned and glanced around in horror. The tower was now close to collapsing.
Angela looked at the exit. It was open, but the priests had been crushed to death like mice pressed in a vise. She clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to contain her nausea. Mikel remained in Father Schrader’s body, staring defiantly at a gigantic snake’s head that slipped through an open window and swayed dangerously above her.
Python had arrived in his true form as a feathered serpent. The plumes on his head flutter
ed majestically and he yawned, displaying his enormous teeth.
“What are you doing here?” Mikel shouted at him.
I’ve merely come to collect what belongs to me, Python said. His voice shivered through the walls and floor that remained. It’s just unfortunate you happen to be standing in the way. So please step aside. I would hate to see your little mortal worshippers suffer any more casualties.
“You have no claim on anyone here, serpent.”
On the contrary, I happen to have the only valid claim left. Let’s face it, you’re not exactly in a position to argue. I wouldn’t have traveled out of Hell, biding my time, if it weren’t for a very good reason, little chick. Taking control of Luz is a bonus on its own. I think it’s high time for you and the other angels to soar back home for now.
As if to emphasize the point, Python coughed up two mangled, severed wings. Mikel jumped back as they landed at her feet in bloody lumps. She looked up at him with a nasty expression.
“Why is Python doing this?” Angela asked Kim.
Kim shook his head, and then he grabbed his pendant. “He’s come to claim my soul,” he whispered. “And God knows what else . . .”
“What do you mean he’s here to claim your soul—”
Kim clasped Angela’s face. “Because I sold it for your sake.”
“That was the deal you made with Python? Are you insane? No, that can’t be—” Angela felt herself shaking.
“It is. It’s true.”
“Kim!” she screamed at him.
“I won’t let him hurt you, Angela. If he tries to make me harm you in any way, I—I’ll—”
But how in the world could you stop Python from doing anything? Angela wanted to scream back at him. But she only stared at him in horror, suddenly aware that Mikel and Python were still talking.
“I’ll make sure Lucifel sends an entire army after you, snake,” Mikel was saying to him.
Python laughed.
Now Mikel turned away. Thud. With that sickening sound, Father Schrader’s body dropped to the cold hard floor.
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