Angela might have been possessed by an angel. But she wasn’t an angel herself.
Sariel didn’t understand, partly because he didn’t have the nose of a full-blooded Jinn. Angela was all wrong, twisted and warped, and her soul’s scent resembled both the freshness of a spring-fed pool and the most oppressive darkness Troy could remember. Worst of all, she’d known how to consummate a Binding, which wouldn’t have been such a miracle if it were on any other Jinn. But Troy, as the Underworld’s most skilled hunter, its High Assassin, had more than enough power to ward off such a trick. Angela might as well have clipped her ears and caged her—which was absolutely unthinkable. Yet she’d been forced into a bond she’d never wanted, leaving her in a numb state that would turn into a rage hell-bent on killing for killing’s sake.
If she couldn’t snap Angela’s neck, someone else would have to die. That was for damned sure.
Troy tucked away her next angry hiss, feigning indifference.
Angela sat next to Kim on top of one of Tileaf’s roots, her possessed friend resting behind them in the leaf litter. Often, she would stare at Troy, intensely interested in what she was writing, and then Troy would merely spread her wings, turning them into a mantle that blocked her view.
This was more than spite.
The bitch had also taken Lucifel’s Grail.
It had been a miracle more heartstopping than surviving Troy’s attack. But it also left unsettling questions lingering in its wake. If Angela wasn’t the Archon, then why could she stare into the Eye without disaster? Troy wanted answers now as badly as Sariel and the angel who’d possessed that frazzled human, Nina Willis. Troy now remembered hunting her once, but turning away in disgust when she saw how broken her prey was inside. Depression was the worst seasoning for any meal.
“Done,” she snapped, lifting off from the ground to recline on a nearby tree limb. She settled her wings back into place, ruffling them slightly beneath the cool rain.
Sariel stood beneath her tree, gazing up at Troy and her hand dangling over the bark. Her left leg had bent beneath her a little—a cushion.
She couldn’t stand the sight of him. “Now what do you want?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Whatever do you mean? I don’t quite follow,” she said. His danger would be obvious from her tone of voice.
“The sigils mean nothing without blood, Troy.”
The muscles in her ears and wings tensed. “Then tell Angela to use her own. She seems competent to me. Full of shit and water. So, likely full of blood.”
His teeth set. “You and your foul mouth.”
“Oh, I have plenty of reasons to curse.” She bounded from the branch, landing beside him, spraying leaves in every direction. How empty she felt without the Grail around her neck. For the Jinn it was a privilege even to look upon it, and yet despite their race’s legendary toughness, there were few who could tolerate its watchful presence. Troy had been one of those few. Her sister, the other. “If I had known you’d brought that meat sack to Bind me, I would have killed you both the moment you entered the room.”
“I didn’t bring her to Bind you. I brought her to look at the Grail, Troy.”
“Yes,” she spat back at him, “and now she’s stolen it.”
“Taken it.”
“She’s not the Archon.”
“We don’t know what in hell she is right now, and if you don’t awaken Tileaf before Naamah weeds this garden, we might never know. That Circle would bleed us dry. So why can’t you just cooperate and slit your damned wrist, and then, by all means crawl back beneath the rock you slid out of.” His smile was intended to infuriate her. “Back to your real Hell.”
“And yet,” she clicked her teeth at him, “mine is only temporary.”
Now Sariel’s smile wavered.
Troy shoved him out of the way, stomping over to the Circle and the carefully arranged patterns in the dirt. Once she was standing in their center, she reached for the obsidian dagger strapped to her thigh, slid it from its sheath of rags, and cut a long but clean wound up to her elbow. Her blood dribbled into the circle, outlining her furrows with a red that bordered on black.
She cleaned the injury, licking her teeth for Angela’s sake.
“. . . why the blood?” Angela whispered to Sariel, doing her best to avoid eye contact with Troy, probably hoping she couldn’t hear.
Oh, but she could hear.
“You have to think of the Fae as carnivorous plants . . .”
Nina closed her eyes, coughing like the smell of the blood stifled her. More likely it stifled the angel.
“Blood provides nutrients they must otherwise live without . . .”
It began.
Twigs snapped, scratching against rough bark. Wood creaked. The trees were coming to life under a strong, supernatural breeze, waving and dancing, and Troy raced up the nearest trunk for a safer view, clinging to a thick branch while it groaned beneath her. A dim green glow flashed throughout the great clearing around Tileaf’s tree, highlighting every crumpled leaf.
Shortly afterward, the Fae materialized. She was a ravaged mess with a leash of light wrapped around her slender neck, her spring green wings and voluminous hair disheveled from constant pain. Like all angels she had been imposing once, perfect as only they could be perfect. But now, blood streaked her spider-silk train, most of it her own, and her feathers either drifted into the dirt like her leaves or quivered pitifully, twisted from the priests’ ritualistic cruelty.
“You,” she said, her words thick with hatred.
She’d spotted Sariel almost immediately.
“You have your leaves, priest. What do you want from me now?” She swayed, dizzy from awakening, but energy snapped around her body nevertheless.
Miniature lightning bolts rocketed in his direction.
They crackled against the barrier Troy had set up, dissipating into harmless tendrils, the force behind them fanning Sariel’s longer hair behind his neck. Troy opened her eyes wider, no longer pained by the light, happily gloating at the sight of Angela, aghast. This was not the type of faerie she’d obviously expected. Not a bird with its wings broken by her cage, lashing out at them desperately. Tileaf groaned, as if the barrier had wounded her more than Sariel’s survival, and she slumped against the trunk of her tree, heaving for breath.
Nina stood up, more anguished than Angela. “Vevaliah,” she said sorrowfully.
Tileaf regarded her with agony, gasping. Then she noticed Nina’s red eyes and stiffened with dawning comprehension. “Who are you?”
“Mikel. One of Raziel and Lucifel’s chicks.”
There was a long and strange silence.
“That . . .” The Fae whitened in her face, seeming afraid. “. . . that cannot be.”
Mikel lowered her head, shaking it. “What have they done to you? Were you not Israfel’s favored one? Why did you defect?”
“That heaven was a hell,” Tileaf whispered shakily. “You of all angels should know that . . .”
“More than here?”
The Fae shut her eyes. Her mouth twisted with anger. “If you can’t kill me, then leave. I have so little time left. So little of everything. They’re gone. All of my children. I am the last.”
Mikel stepped forward, her hands uplifted in supplication. “Then, please, show them! Show them what you remember of the Supernals. There must be others to remember for you, Vevaliah, when you have passed on. The moment is a crucial one, you know this.”
Tileaf closed her eyes again, behaving like the merest mention of the past crushed her. When she reopened them, she gazed intently at Angela, almost hopeful. “Are you Her?”
Her tone left hardly any room for a no.
“The Ruin . . .” Angela turned aside, growing more and more upset by the sight of the shattered faerie standing in front of her. “I—I don’t know. But I have memories of these Supernals . . . Two of them. And”—she lifted the Grail into the open—“this—”
&
nbsp; Troy cursed under her breath. The stone was not for the curiosity of others.
“—whatever it is.”
The Fae’s eyes widened, reflecting the green of the more watchful Eye in all its terrible beauty. It spun in front of her, glinting and almost intelligent. “Lucifel’s Grail.” Her words were heavy things, escaping her with a visible effort. “She gave it to Raziel as a gift, shortly before the Celestial Revolution in Heaven. It is a dreaded object . . . cursed from spilling the blood of countless angels. Put it away, now. It should never be out in the open for long.”
Angela tucked the Eye under her shirt, troubled. “Spilling blood?”
Tileaf nodded and leaned her head back against the tree trunk. “Using the Grail, Lucifel would conjure the Glaive. Her most terrible weapon, though she probably had no need of it. It was rumored to have the power of cutting through anything . . . anything in the universe, even substances that could not otherwise be cut.” The Fae’s expression became more distant and haunted. “Why she gave such an object to Raziel was beyond our understanding, though many said it was a lover’s gift. He then handed it to the Jinn shortly before his . . . death. It can only be used by those who carry the spirit of the Supernals—”
Making Angela’s strangeness all the more discouraging—as there were only three.
“Raziel,” Tileaf continued, “Israfel, and Lucifel.”
“What is it though? A stone?”
Tileaf shivered all over. “Perhaps. But I am glad it is no longer before me.”
Angela stood with Kim, her face bland, but her stance firm. “Show me. I need to see them for myself. The Supernals.” She edged nearer to Tileaf, fascinated by her beauty, but with all the foolishness of any other human, her fingers aching to touch or stroke. “I’m sorry about what happened to you here. I am—”
Tileaf swallowed, pained. She could barely disguise her disgust. Angela was human, a member of the race responsible for more than half of the Fae’s earthly torments, and she had less than little to offer for this kind of service. But the spirit inside of Nina was right. This was also Tileaf’s last chance to pass on memories that few angels had survived to record, and perhaps to the person who could help her most. So she eventually looked at Angela again, making it clear that Angela and Angela alone had a place in her consideration. “You will not understand all that you see.” Her words were like a dire warning. “You will be entering my memories and thoughts, and because I am not human . . . this experience will be very unlike what you’re probably expecting. It might affect you for quite a while.”
“That’s fine,” Angela said.
“Yet, before we continue,” Tileaf said as her fine brow creased, “you must promise me something in exchange.”
“All right.”
“If you are truly the Archon, as soon as you are granted the opportunity—you must kill me without any hesitation.”
Silence.
Angela covered her face with her hands and took a deep breath. Another. Time passed and Sariel began to move nearer to her, perhaps fearing she’d fainted from shock. But then, with all the suddenness of a sparking flame, her face reappeared between the screen of her fingers, and her expression was one of steely resolve. “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. It’s only fair.”
Troy flicked her ears, unable to hide her interest in where the conversation had turned.
Sariel had wisely stepped back into the background for the time being, but now he glanced at Troy with an eyebrow raised, echoing her surprise, both of them putting aside their mutual hatred long enough to quietly concur that whatever Angela might be, she was more than either of them could have hoped for or suspected. It couldn’t make up for the indignity of a Binding, but it was at least enough to earn the tiniest measure of respect.
Tileaf’s expression was eagerly keen as she beckoned to Angela. “Then we are agreed. Now come here, as close as you can. We must be touching . . . for this to work.”
Her disgust, it seemed, would have to rest for now.
Angela reached out, stretching her hand toward the Fae, Troy’s barrier shimmering like water as her arm passed through it. They were inches apart. Less than a breath.
Then their fingertips met, and she dropped to the ground, senseless.
Twenty-one
I am a demon. I have willingly gone down into darkness. Yet there is an Abyss that even I have not dared peer into.
—THE DEMON PYTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM The Lies of Babylon
First there was a void.
Then there were three thrones. And three Angels sat upon them.
The first and highest, seated above the others and above all the stars that spread into the sky, was Angela’s beautiful angel. He was more dazzling than in any dream she could remember, though right now she could remember none, and his hair and wings gleamed with a bronze that put the purest of metals to shame. His large sapphire eyes, like pools bluer than the richest seawater, considered everything below him with delicate pride, and his lips, pink and thin, filled her with want and endless desire. On top of his head, he wore a crown that resembled a vertical halo of crystal, its spindles likened to silvery rays, and below, near his winged ears, glass serpents dangled tongues of ruby.
He was dressed in crimson, the fabric hiding his body from ankles to neck to wrist, and yet all was revealed, because she wanted all.
For the briefest second, he opened his mouth and sang, and Angela sensed things around her connecting and reshaping themselves into other, more perfect things. He was the Creator Supernal, that was what Tileaf’s memories were saying, and he ruled because all who loved him wanted him to rule. And they were the majority.
This, she understood, was Israfel.
“In the ancient days of angelic history—”
Tileaf’s voice seemed to echo from an impossible distance, her words more like images that explained themselves through infusion.
“—God created three great children called the Supernals. Israfel, Raziel, and Lucifel. Creator, Preserver . . . and Destroyer. While all three shared equal power and influence, Israfel gradually rose to great favor . . . and was named Heaven’s first ruling Archangel. But although we refused to acknowledge a problem then, it soon became clear that a confrontation between him and Lucifel was inevitable. She had always been a solitary creature, but after Israfel’s coronation, an even greater and more impassable rift formed between them . . .”
But, like she had first seen, he was not alone.
Below him sat a shadow.
This shadow gazed up at him with open scorn and contempt, more disgusted than jealous, as if she could see flaws that no one else bothered to pick apart. This was Lucifel, the Devil herself before she threw down a third of the stars from Heaven, and she sat with a languid callousness that emptied the heart and the soul and spit it back into the void. Where Israfel was softness and sensual perfection, she was hard lines, her skin paler than fog, and her eyes redder than blood.
Gray.
Dust. She was ash, smoke, and vapor. The Destroyer Supernal’s wings and hair gathered about her like a mist, and her clothing was the opposite of Israfel’s, a careless swathe of fabric barely hiding her bloodless white limbs and shining feet. Around her neck, she wore the Grail, and the Eye seemed more alive than ever, blinking at the universe and sucking away its life.
Lucifel was living death.
There was a vacancy inside of her that was growing and no one knew when it would stop, and Angela could sense millions flocking to her because she had the power to take away life as if that were ecstasy, and they exulted in that darkness . . .
“. . . Raziel, who cared for them both, found himself acting as an intermediary. And so, the first step toward disaster occurred after his brief but unexpected absence. With Raziel gone, the civility he’d nurtured disintegrated rapidly. And by the time he reappeared, Heaven’s loyalties had been split in two. To be honest . . . a great many of us found Lucifel unapproachable, her ideas too heretical—and against Is
rafel’s powerful charisma she might have stood little chance. But he had changed after Raziel’s return . . . And when Israfel’s confident behavior faltered, so did the trust of thousands . . .”
One alone gazed at Lucifel with pity.
Angela herself.
Or rather, an angel with Angela’s large blue eyes and deep red hair. He was dressed in a coat of midnight blue, its silver embroidery seeming to be made of light plucked from the heavens, and jewels that resembled stars swept beneath his brow line and up onto the mysterious wings that were also his ears. His pinions were larger than Israfel’s and Lucifel’s, a beautiful blood red, and the stiff feathers over his wing bones drooped heavily beneath silver cuffs.
Gentleness shone in his expression, and he glanced from Israfel to Lucifel and back again with a sad premonition in his smile. Wiser than either of them, he seemed to know that his affection could never mend the hatred that was darkening Heaven.
This was the Preserver Supernal, and Angela felt all his stability and reassurance, relaxed in the blessing of his presence.
Until he did the unthinkable and flew from his throne, diving into the abyss . . .
“The situation only grew worse from there . . . for very soon afterward, Lucifel was found pregnant with Raziel’s chicks, and mating is forbidden between male and female angels, let alone siblings, unless the union has been approved. As you can imagine, Israfel did not take the news well. Not only had Lucifel betrayed his crown, she’d taken a brother away from him. And Raziel, by all appearances, had picked his ultimate side . . .”
Then a great horror appeared in Heaven: Lucifel, sweeping her Glaive—a dreadful weapon that seemed made more of blood than iron—and the stars blinking away into darkness beneath her lack of compassion. She walked among angels of all descriptions and genders, perfect or deformed, and those who refused to bow to her blade were cut down ruthlessly. Behind her, amid a sky that was green with evil storms and also black with their clouds, great serpents twisted through the ether, clearing vast flocks of angels with their fearsome jaws.
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