Archon

by Benulis, Sabrina

  There was no anger in her though.

  Just a callous, emotionless spite that took pleasure in his pain.

  The shield erupted in a second. Less blood than energy, it took all of Stephanie’s soul to throw it at him, a red wall that blocked his progress. Israfel fell back, pained by its contact. Kim crumpled onto the floor, grasping to pull himself out of Israfel’s reach. The angel’s reaction was far from human.

  Rage. Never had she seen it expressed so purely in the eyes of any creature.

  Then she whispered the fateful invocation, and the blood sword formed, and she leaped for Angela, swinging the weapon wildly.

  Angela shouted, dodging by a hairsbreadth.

  It wasn’t enough to take her out of harm’s way.

  Stephanie followed her with a twist of the foot, swinging in the opposite direction. She cut through air, but seconds later a chandelier snapped from the ceiling and smashed in front of her, forcing them both to throw themselves to the ground. She tumbled amid the glass and stone, still in agony, but fueled by such a mysterious energy that it no longer mattered. Stephanie clasped the sword tight, nearly losing her grip from the liquefied blood on her hands, breathing in shuddering gasps.

  “Come on, you useless witch.” Her throat was hoarse from screaming. “Come on. Come on!”

  There. Behind her.

  Stephanie pivoted to her right, slicing cleanly through a chunk of wood Angela had grabbed as a shield. Angela shouted at her, but the words no longer held any meaning for Stephanie. Nothing mattered now besides Angela’s head, rolling like the archbishop’s had rolled, and the more she thought that, the more she hacked at her, again and again, fended off every time by her escape, or another makeshift shield.

  Then Angela ran out of them.

  She tried to run one last time, but Stephanie snagged her blouse, tearing it open near the neck.

  An Eye hid underneath.

  It was unlike any other. Green with life, but piercing, terrible, unfathomable.

  Stephanie understood instinctively that she should look away, but she grabbed for the pendant anyway, insanely possessive, hardly astonished when its chain snapped with a violent tug of her hand and Angela fell against a mound of rubble.

  The force shoved Stephanie backward.

  The Eye on its chain hung, suspended, in the air.

  A brilliant flash of white light raced in on her. Naamah shrieked, sounding to be in as much agony as her daughter, and Stephanie forgot all else, turning to the single person who could understand the abyss she had seen and could never forget.

  Troy shut her eyes tightly, hissing away the pain.

  The light was blinding, excruciating. She collapsed shortly before her toes could brush the tile, curling into a ball, her spine contorting from the impact on her nerves. Naamah shrieked in the background, obviously wounded.

  Stephanie’s voice echoed with her, equally pained, and a crimson shield exploded into life, blazing like fire behind Troy’s eyelids.

  Then everything stopped. A gentler pulse of light signaled Naamah’s escape deep into the lower Realms, her curses resounding even after she’d left. Stephanie must have escaped with her—the girl’s scent had vanished along with the light—but Troy remained curled up like a spider, shivering from the horror of Israfel’s attack. Her sore muscles soaked up the chill of the tiles. Her wings twitched, their tendons and ligaments exhausted by the intensity of the battle and the draining power of Naamah’s ghosts.

  Sariel’s voice was an unwelcome addition to the pain.

  “You can get up,” he said coarsely. “They’re gone. All of them.”

  His shoe scraped the side of her wing and she bit at him, mad with frustration.

  He cursed even more savagely than usual, and then did the stupidest thing possible, pushing one of her wings sideways and stooping down to stare directly in her face. Troy would have lunged and chewed his eyes out, but there was a strange look to him that kept her suspicious and docile.

  He was crying.

  She watched the water slide down Sariel’s cheekbones, mesmerized. From what she had learned, humans cried when they were angry, upset, or hurt. Judging from her cousin’s face, he was all three at once.

  “Gone where?” she muttered.

  “I don’t know,” he said, hissing like a Jinn himself. “But they’re gone. Angela, Israfel, and that resurrected bitch Sophia.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes,” he said, biting at his lip. “Now get the hell up and help me arrange some of these bodies. Without gnawing on them, if you can even help yourself.” He shook his head, the tears continuing to glisten, his teeth bared. “What a goddamned fine mess this is.”

  “The witch and her demon escaped to the Underworld,” Troy said. “I’d call that a victory.”

  “Of course you would,” he whispered. “Chaos amuses you.”

  He stepped over a corpse, its arm splayed sideways across the floor.

  Troy laughed. She was so tired, the noise came out of her cracked and broken, but it was so obvious to her why Sariel was distraught. In the end, he was no different from his father, from any other male Jinn who’d suffered the loss of a mate, especially a faithless one. Angela must have chosen the angel over him.

  Her cousin glared at her, his pale face white like his collar, and she continued to laugh, blissfully licking a cut on her hand.

  When Troy paused, it was only to state the obvious.

  “You are a ridiculous fool.”

  Twenty-nine

  I have often debated which Supernal is the greatest among the Three. But perhaps the better question would be: which is the most dangerous?

  —BROTHER FRANCIS, An Encyclopedia of the Realms

  It had felt like a dream.

  Stephanie, racing for Angela, swiping at her with that hellish sword of her own blood; a vision more frightful than Troy, if only because Stephanie was human. Thinking about the danger she’d so narrowly escaped, Angela had only two things to be truly grateful for. One was that Stephanie had been too distracted by Naamah to actually steal the Grail. The other was that Israfel had kidnapped Angela and Sophia far away from everyone and everything else.

  Kim’s amber eyes haunted her, even more than the Eye suspended near her face.

  The Grail swung like a pendulum in front of her nose, beckoning her to take it back. Instead, Angela stared at Sophia until a breeze entered the church through the open ceiling, blocking her vision with thick strands of hair. She pushed them aside, sighing at the sudden awkwardness, the difficulty of dealing with people—even things that merely looked like people—and the pain they caused her.

  She actually is a doll, and now I’m afraid.

  Sophia was Raziel’s toy. His walking, talking creation. “It can’t hurt me,” she said, indicating the Grail. “Because of what I am.”

  Her voice sounded horrifically tired.

  Angela shook her head, examining a blackened pew. The church seemed so quiet compared to the last time she’d entered, searching for Israfel. But that of course had been because the world felt that much more alive.

  Sophia grabbed for Angela’s palm, her own skin strangely clammy and moist.

  “No.” Angela held her at arm’s length, wrapping Sophia’s slender fingers around the Eye again, blocking its terrible vision. “It’s better off with you right now.” She took a step backward and fingered the vicious slash in her blouse, cringing at the texture of shredded fabric. A red line, sticky to the touch, swept across her chest at a diagonal; one more scar to mix with the others. “I don’t need him to see it. I don’t need any more problems. Or anything else to—”

  To come between us, she wanted to say.

  Thankfully, the words stopped at her lips.

  It was almost too much—the enormity of what had happened only an hour ago. Here, in this abandoned shell of a church, the carnage felt as far away as a true dream. Yet it had been all too real, because Angela was still suffering from Israfel’s manner of tra
veling, especially traveling such a distance in a short space of time. He’d grabbed both her and Sophia, and there had been a roar, the intense rush of wind, and a light that could have melted her eyes. Then, nothing. Until she stood in the church at his side, dazed, disoriented, and sick to her stomach. He’d left her alone with Sophia in their little alcove, leaving for some room that connected to the altar, visibly disturbed by how nauseated she looked. Whether it was because he cared or not—that hadn’t even entered into her thoughts. Maybe because she’d had none. For what felt like forever, she and Sophia had simply sat side by side in silence.

  Leftovers of the storm rumbled overhead.

  Faintly, Brendan’s voice spoke amid the thunder, still screaming, still accusing her of every ounce of his suffering and every sliver of pain. But Angela knew it was only her imagination. Her brother was dead. Gone. The last person connecting her to the past, he’d been ripped out of her life just as quickly as he’d returned to it.

  Yet the tears wouldn’t come anymore.

  Despite her best efforts otherwise, she was also seeing Brendan’s face in his final moments. Without a doubt, it had been the face of a person lucky to be put out of their misery.

  “Angela . . .”

  Sophia glanced at the broken ceiling, her gesture too human to be anything else.

  Then she looked back at Angela, her eyes darker than the sky, grievously vacant, and all her tormented words about Hell and waiting for the Archon sounded clearer than what she said now. “I don’t mind. If you have to talk about your brother—”

  She cut off abruptly, noticing what Angela knew was an expressionless haze over her face.

  The silence seemed to go on and on even longer than before.

  “If you need me,” Sophia finally whispered, “I’ll be here.”

  There was a terrible loneliness in her voice, but Angela couldn’t acknowledge it. The shock was still too fresh. The pain of knowing Sophia’s true identity gnawed at her trust like a worm. Suddenly, her new friend seemed so much less helpless and so much more of a nightmare.

  Angela needed—wanted—space.

  “I’ll be here for you,” Sophia said again, as if she hadn’t heard. “I promise you that.”

  Without another word, she slipped into the shadows, disappearing like a ghost. She hadn’t been crying as she left, but a gentle sobbing mixed with the low thunder. A moment later, Israfel stepped beside Angela, and she instantly forgot everything else that existed, frozen by his proximity and the elation of a dream she’d always prayed to come true, now doing so ten times over. He kept silent, but forced her to face him directly, examining the wound on her chest. His fingers were smooth and unspeakably soft, like sculpted pearl touching the skin above her left breast.

  “Does it hurt?” he said at last.

  The music in his voice was subtle, but the disgusted look had left his face, replaced by what could have been concern.

  “No.” She nodded at the cut on his neck, remembering how he’d reacted the last instance she’d touched him without permission. “You?”

  His lips pursed together. There must have been pain, but not the kind he’d admit to.

  Israfel’s hair, already feathery, had become windswept and careless, wisping delicately at his shoulders. He took the strands and stroked them to the tips, his distinctly graceful movements somehow more comprehensible than Sophia’s. “You should have let me kill him and be done with it. Why did you stop me? Out of affection for him?”

  Angela kept silent.

  “Although I feel more grateful by the minute. The smell of his half-bred blood would have been less than pleasant on my hands.”

  No answer would have been a good one. Which was fine, because too many of her own questions took up space in her mind anyway.

  Why was perfection like him living in this horror at all? Israfel resembled a star thrown into a puddle of mud, so above everything surrounding him, that even light lost its luster next to his brilliance. Worse yet, he knew he had that effect. Angela strove to conquer her awe, desperate to pick out the real, though barely perceptible flaws, trying to remind herself to keep her head. He was beautiful, and it was very difficult, but . . .

  Yes. She’d found it again.

  There was that languid decadence in him that unnerved her somehow. Israfel was obviously used to everything in creation kissing the ground he walked upon, and it showed in the teasing way he toyed with her, with anyone, instinctively moving in ways designed to infatuate. It should have been impossible to resist him—but whenever Brendan’s face flashed before her—suddenly everything shone a little less divinely.

  Israfel had left her to sit in a nearby pew, his wings tucked away to give him room.

  Now he glanced at her again, and there was a sharper tone in his voice. “Why was the Jinn present?”

  He folded his legs, waiting for her to explain.

  Everything he did felt like an unspoken invitation for Angela to throw herself at him. But she’d been given a second chance to make a better, less idiotic impression, and she was definitely taking it. “Troy . . . She’s related to—the priest who held the knife.”

  Kim. God, why did it always have to be like this? It would have been so much easier if—

  If what? More people had died?

  And whose deaths would have made it all better, Angela?

  No one’s, of course.

  Israfel rubbed the cut on his neck. “How fitting, then, that he was a demon in disguise.”

  Now it was her turn. She was still in too much shock to cry, but the more she talked with Israfel and remembered, the more terrible those memories became and begged for their own explanations. Angela worked up her courage, trying to hide the growing bitterness in her voice. “Why did you let Brendan die?”

  Silence.

  She’d either startled him or made him angry.

  Angela drew in nearer, eager to close off a new gap before it widened any further. “How did you even know each other?”

  “You would question my wisdom? When you’re only human?” He spoke softly, and with the slightest hint at her danger. But she already knew there was something keeping him from punishing or hurting her. Whenever Israfel looked at Angela, it was there behind his large eyes: recognition, and maybe by a long stretch, affection. She suspected both had more to do with Raziel than her own miserable self. “But I suppose you deserve that much for the trouble he caused you. He was your brother?”

  “Yes. He was.”

  Israfel smiled. “Well, I’m sure what you thought of him, and what he was, were two very different things. What is your name, girl?”

  “Angela,” she said, flinching at the irony of it, and at the idea that she was a girl to him.

  A child.

  He invited her to sit, careful to lean far enough away from her touch that she wouldn’t become overconfident again. “The universe can be an amusing place, can’t it?” He laughed delicately. “Actually, your brother mentioned you the first day we met. He had been eavesdropping on me for hours and hours. Can you guess why, Angela?”

  She arranged what was left of her skirt, trying not to feel so uneasy. That laugh always sounded like it hid more behind it.

  “Because”—Israfel blinked, the movement oddly majestic—“he wanted something from me.”

  “What could that have been?” she said, her mouth dry and scratchy.

  Already, the answer seemed to reveal itself in the way her heart hammered, her cheeks flushed. Either he hadn’t noticed, or he was even more encouraged by her reaction.

  Israfel smiled less rigidly and turned his head toward the altar, like a flower twisting in the breeze. “Yes. I gave your brother everything he wanted. But whether that was good for him or not was none of my concern. It was enough that he wanted it, and that I found his desires useful. So if you are smart,” he turned back to her, his gaze steady, “you will not mourn his passing. The fact remains that his soul was beyond saving. I simply exposed the darkness in him befo
re he did it himself.”

  She breathed hard, sick again inside, unwilling to show it a second time.

  “I understand, you see. I had a sibling who was much the same. Only I haven’t had the satisfaction of seeing justice done. Far from it.”

  He sighed.

  In it, Angela heard the whisper of Lucifel’s name echoing throughout the church.

  “But that, like all things, is only a matter of time.”

  Why couldn’t she speak anymore?

  Was it fear? Infatuation? The staggering power of his presence?

  Angela gazed at the kohl around his eyes, wondering at the sloping perfection of his nose. She sensed the honesty, the logic of what he’d said. Angela had never wanted to acknowledge it before, but her brother wasn’t nearly the saint her childhood memories made him out to be. Unfortunately, it had required a tragedy for her to believe it. Tonight, Brendan had shown his true colors in the worst manner possible. It was the how and why that bothered her, much like how she was taken aback by the Supernal’s self-satisfied pride. This was horrible. Her mind was turning in circles, and she barely noticed that Israfel was leaning in, closer and closer.

  Then his fingertips brushed her face.

  “Who are you?” he said, gentle as ever. “You have Raziel’s hair and eyes, but not his soul? Though I am appreciative that you’ve chosen to take your brother’s place in my service.” His breath was rich with a sweetness like honey, and he could have actually been caressing her with slight, but real, desire. Once again, she knew with a kind of stinging pain that he saw someone else. “It is only fitting, considering the torment we have endured tonight. For a few hours at least, we will enjoy ourselves, you and I.”

  Now she felt too exposed.

  Angela clutched at her shirt, shivering both from the breeze and the implications of his words.