She said there were consequences for using the Grail. Maybe she was talking about my feelings.
“She looks so peaceful,” Nina whispered.
Angela shifted uneasily in front of the oak. The blood was making her sick. Her own thoughts were making her sick. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For not doing it when I first met her. She was suffering so much . . . Those priests were such bastards.” Angela’s fingers curled into fists. The Eye pulsed inside of her palm, throbbing with her heartbeat. “ ‘I make the rules.’ That’s the thought I keep hearing and feeling, over and over in my head. But I wonder—does a thought, no matter how convincing it feels, justify this?”
Nina’s irises brightened to Mikel’s red. Apparently, her agreement with the angel involved them sharing space equally. When one gave way to the other, eventually there would be a reversal. “That depends on who’s thinking it.”
“Right.” Angela sighed, stepping away from Tileaf. “I guess.”
“There’s no time to mourn, Angela. You must enter the Netherworld or Tileaf will have died in vain.”
That’s the problem. I’m not mourning at all.
Angela gestured at the trees. “That would be a lot easier if there was a way in.”
“Underground.” Nina’s voice again. She weaved her away around the roots that separated them so they stood side by side, and then grabbed Angela by the arm, tugging her nearer to a large gap at the oak’s base. It was a huge hole, gaping from beneath a tangle of roots thick as her body, their surfaces gnarled and knobbed with grotesque whorls. “You have to dig. The tunnel should emerge clearly and then—”
“And then?”
“The door.”
“You’re saying I crawl through a tunnel of dirt and push through a door?”
“It’s the only way for a mortal to access the Underworld from Earth without dying. This is why Luz exists. This is the gateway to the other dimensions, whether higher or lower. To Heaven or Hell. But first, you need to get around Azrael.”
Tileaf had mentioned the same name. “Who is that? An angel?”
“You’ll see.”
Angela wasn’t keen on seeing anything at all. This situation was far from what she’d been expecting. A dazzling portal of light, maybe, or a gaping staircase in the earth. Instead she was going to breach the world of the dead through a worm tunnel, and Nina—or more correctly Mikel—acted like they were strolling out to buy bread. Tileaf had said that she needed to die for Angela to enter the Netherworld, but except for the trees’ branches and leaves crashing down, nothing had changed. “She lied to me, didn’t she?” Angela knelt beside Nina, following her lead and scooping dirt out of the hollow. “Tileaf didn’t have to die for us to find this.”
Nina glanced at Angela, her irises back to their dull darkness. “That’s not true. She was blocking the way in.”
Angela sank her fingernails into the dirt, clawing, pulling through fibrous roots and soggy bits of mulch. Worms and wood lice spilled out of the hole, scattering beneath other roots or burrowing down below the leaf litter. Angela slid across a few of the worms, almost certainly squishing them in the grooves of her boots.
“Tileaf herself, not the tree, kept the creatures underneath from emerging above, and vice versa. Now that she’s gone . . .”
“The door’s just sitting there,” Angela finished for her. She wiped some of the mud off her hands and onto her skirt. It was beyond salvation at this point anyway. “So what does that mean? Could creatures from Hell eventually make their way into Luz?”
Nina sighed. “What does it sound like to you? But that’s not the issue right now.”
“What bothers me is”—Angela reached in with both arms, churning through the dirt, spitting out the mud that crept its way into her mouth—“the idea that angels and demons could just come to Earth in droves. They could stamp us flat.”
“But that’s the mistake people make. Earth is an important place for humans, but angels couldn’t care less about it.” Nina rocked back on her heels, letting Angela punch through the last layer of dirt and rocks that had blocked off the tunnel. It was large enough for at least one person to slide inside. The land within dropped at a slow angle into the earth, thousands of roots dangling from its ceiling in webs and tendrils. “To them this planet is only what you’re sifting through. Dirt.”
Ow. What the—
A sharp sting creased through Angela’s palm. She pulled back her hand, examining the Eye. Flesh had closed over it like a lid, protecting it from the humus and the soil. Either it had a mind of its own, or her body was working on some crazy angelic instincts. She sucked back the sour nausea creeping into her head, dizzy. The sky rumbled faintly overhead, but otherwise there was too much quiet. Too much heavy silence.
“Remember what I said,” Nina pushed her toward the tunnel. “Be strong about this, Angela.”
“Hold on,” Angela went down on her stomach, peering into the musty gloom, “I don’t see a door.”
“You have to crawl.”
“How far?”
Nina shrugged, ruffling a hand through her frizzy hair. “God. I don’t know.”
“Does Mikel?” Angela snapped at her.
“She said she’ll meet you inside. Once you pass through the door.” Nina’s irises began to redden at the corners. She crossed her arms, suddenly glancing at the sky like it was a predator out for the hunt. When she turned back, her smile was more one of farewell than encouragement. “Because from what I’ve learned, you’ll need all the help you can get.”
Angela scooted through the tunnel, her fingers curling into mud and mounds of decay. Insects dropped on her back from overhead, and the gloomy light of Memorial Park disappeared fast. This felt too much like being locked in a closet or spending a day in the crawlspace of her parents’ basement, both of which she’d experienced as punishment.
But that was the one good thing she’d inherited from her time at the institution—a way to make her brain melt away her most traumatic memories in favor of others.
And when she couldn’t do that, Angela simply accepted them and choked down the pain, quarantining it inside the part of her soul that grew angrier by the day. The part of her that found freedom in the arms of Kim—or Israfel, even if she had to imagine the angel’s embrace, even if half of his feelings had been a dream.
But he was real. And the time for dreams was officially over.
Angela took ragged breaths, inching on her elbows through the darkness, determined to focus on anything other than the wall of earth surrounding her.
Israfel . . . He has Sophia now. What if he finds out how to open her?
Tileaf had mentioned a Key and a Lock, both missing. Yet that strange detail didn’t make Angela feel any better. Israfel was Raziel’s brother, a Supernal, and one of the only creatures in the universe who could open the Book without going mad. If Israfel knew where to look and how to use what he found, there was a chance, however slim, that he would act in the best interests of himself and not so much everyone else. Otherwise, why would Raziel go through the trouble of reincarnation to open the Book himself? There must have been a reason—a very good reason—why Sophia couldn’t simply blab every little secret inside of her. And also why Raziel wanted as few people as possible to hear those secrets.
That’s why the demons want the Archon on Hell’s Throne. It has to be.
To manipulate Her. Use Her as a puppet to open Raziel’s Book, and then—
Then they’ll murder Her. Whoever is in charge under Lucifel will kill the Archon, take the power inside of the Book—inside Sophia—and rule in Her place.
My place.
But they couldn’t do that if Lucifel murdered the Archon first. Or opened the Book first. Because it was rather obvious that if Angela was the Archon—and with every passing second, she felt more strongly that this was the case—then Lucifel would torture her until she found the Key, the Lock, and everything that went with it. When it came down to it, Angela now had two very powe
rful and very real enemies. The gray angel she’d grown so reluctantly fond of after years of memories and dreams, and the demons who either wanted Lucifel gone or wanted a figurehead they could murder with much greater expediency whenever the time arrived.
Too bad they didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Angela hadn’t forgotten about punishing Stephanie for Brendan’s death. Instead, she now felt vengeance was her absolute right.
Her breath huffed out of her, stifled. The tunnel could have been losing all its air, and now the earth would swallow her like a gigantic snake, its roots and sticky strands of what could have been spiderwebs or moss sliding across her cheeks, hair, and shoulders. Angela fought with the panic scorching her nerves, the heaviness tugging on her brain, the sweat trickling down her neck. There was no turning back. And this could go on for a long time. Hours, days, a week. And she hadn’t brought any food, or water, or even better clothing so that the centipedes didn’t crawl across her skin. Why couldn’t she have been Troy, just for one brief second? If what Kim had said was true, the spaces Troy scampered through were even narrower.
It was so ironic. For years, Angela had wanted nothing more than to kill herself.
Now, death actually frightened her. Because now, she wasn’t trying anymore.
And if it’s not deliberate . . .
Then it could very well happen.
She reached out to pull herself forward—and stubbed her fingernails against metal. Angela hissed back the pain, taking a moment for her digits to stop throbbing. Then she searched in the darkness again, soon scraping her fingertips across a cool metal hatch. It had a ring for a handle, and on its surface someone had embossed what felt like a Tree surrounded by flames or clouds. She pulled, hard, groaning with the effort. Eventually realizing her error, she pushed in the opposite direction.
The hatch opened, smoothly and silently.
Angela paused for a moment, letting the sweat dribble into her mouth. Gathering her courage, she bit her lip and stuck her arm through the opening.
Air. Empty space. And a dismal, vacuous smell that came from everywhere at once.
“Nina!” she shouted. “Nina! What do I do now? Just go through this thing?”
No answer. Her voice sounded hollow. Lifeless.
Angela attempted to squirm backward or to turn her head more. “Nina?”
A hand wrapped around her wrist, tugging her toward the hatch. Angela screamed, instant fear shooting through her. She jerked backward, almost smacking her head on the dirt ceiling, and struggled fiercely, cursing, digging her heels into the soil and the roots. And then another hand wrapped around her other arm, and its strength was ten times greater than before.
With one swift tug she was sliding, falling. Plummeting in the grasp of a person, or a thing, that she couldn’t see.
Down and down into some dark and endless grave.
Thirty-six
Their brutality, from what I have seen, is far from human understanding. Worse yet, they believe themselves to be kind.
—BROTHER FRANCIS, An Encyclopedia of the Realms
Troy killed eight novices in less than a minute.
Her savage efficiency, the speed she’d summoned to cut their throats, bite their faces, and claw their chests, had been a spectacle of both pure horror and a macabre kind of beauty. Like all Jinn, Troy’s instincts and reflexes were honed to such a fine point that human beings trailed behind her like amoebas. But unlike most Jinn, Troy was the High Assassin, the hunter of hunters, answering only to their Queen, and she had the commanding fierceness and utmost agility to adorn the title.
Maybe she’d performed for Kim’s sake more than her own.
He was covered in blood that had spattered onto his shoes and soaked into his coat sleeves. Blood from men and women who’d tried to stand in his cousin’s way, desperate to save the lives of their fellow colleagues. He was a murderer eight times over now, having sacrificed his former friends to her evil.
Troy’s mouth and hands were painted with crimson, and she licked her lips often, probably tasting her satisfaction.
But her eyes were solely for Kim. The second Troy found the Book, the millisecond she determined the Archon’s identity, Kim’s heart would rest between her teeth. It was frustrating when he stopped to think about it. Humanity always thought small, fearing werewolves, vampires, and ghosts instead of what was truly real, what truly mattered.
Jinn lived off creatures weakened by that kind of ignorance and anxiety. The former they took down swiftly, the latter, slowly and cruelly, like cats playing with their mouse.
They were devils with a perverse code of honor, clannish and vengeful.
Yet, after witnessing Troy’s dance of death firsthand, Kim couldn’t help but admire what he’d seen. He could hate her, but he could never say she was inefficient or untalented.
Fury screeched overhead, her voice echoing out over the city.
Kim paused at the entrance to a dank tunnel, catching his breath and resting his legs. Troy paused with him, instantly growling and hissing. Her ears had folded back like fleshy daggers against her skull. “If only you’d inherited some useful traits,” she snapped at him, nastier than before. She shook her head, and the bones tied to her hair rattled ominously. “I should have left you behind with your dead friends. Who, by the way, tasted like watered-down acid. How fitting that you acquainted yourself with spineless cowards.”
“Try not to be too much of a bitch,” he said, almost snarling with her.
Troy’s eyes narrowed, their light softer. “It’s difficult when I’m suddenly the one leading the way. Tell me, Sariel, do you even know where to find the angel?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “We’re headed in the right direction, aren’t we?”
Kim resumed walking through the tunnel, his shoes clacking against the cobblestones, the sweat trickling down his neck and chest. Troy swept inside after him, latching onto the ceiling, her yellow eyes peering down at him with rabid disgust as she crawled ahead. Her mere presence had an oppressive effect on him now, as if she were constantly shoving a ticking clock in Kim’s face to show the hour of his death. Soon they emerged into the open again, and Fury glided down to the level of her master, both of them vanishing into the shadows of alleys and rooftops until they wandered down a crumbling stairway, squeezing through an alley too tight for three people side by side. Kim entered Memorial Park, somehow half dazed by the odor of the blood on his coat. It took another chilling hiss from Troy to reawaken him.
Silence lay heavily on the trees, the weeds, its thickness invisibly weighing upon the gate’s iron bars. Troy climbed a maple near the entryway and stiffened.
Fury stiffened with her, her stick-thin legs splayed firmly in the mud.
They were listening for something.
Then it passed, and Troy ruffled her feathers, clearly irritated. “There’s no one here, Sariel. Once again, your pathetic attempt at saving your life is a waste of my time.”
He turned on her, unable to hide the fact that her voice was more of a wound than her presence. Kim’s teeth gritted, clenched by his own irritation. “I simply followed the leader. If Israfel’s not here, he’s somewhere else. He won’t go far. He can’t—”
“Shut your mouth,” Troy said, her ears cocking forward.
She was listening more intensely than before. Cautiously, she lifted her head, smelling, and her nails slipped into wood, splitting the branch to mirror her unhappiness. “The angel. Mikel.” The name left her lips with the greatest displeasure. “That annoying woman—Nina—she’s still here.”
“You smelled her?” Kim said, laughing softly. “She would be filthy enough by now.”
“No,” Troy replied, baring her teeth at him. “I heard her breathing.”
He shivered, reaching into his pocket to touch a prayer ward. Whenever her voice took on that rasping, throaty quality, Kim always prepared for violence. But this time, her hunger faded fast, replaced by impatience. With
out another word, she scampered into the black branches, disappearing like the hint of a breeze. Kim continued along the pathway, imagining Angela by his side, cursing to himself as Fury took position and strutted confidently near his ankles. Her beak was like her master’s existence—a dagger that could end his life too soon.
Unless he ended Troy’s first.
Kim dared to smile.
That smile grew the closer he came to Tileaf’s tree. Despite the gloom, Nina’s figure took shape in the mist rising from the earth, her brown hair a tangle of wisps and knotted ends. Directly to her right, at the foot of the oak’s massive trunk, Tileaf lay sprawled in the brown moss, her silken dress as bloody as his coat. She was dead, her skin a mess of red and blue, the smell of her corpse resembling vegetable rot. Interestingly, Troy’s nose ignored plant matter of any variety, whether connected to an angel’s flesh or not.
Then he spied the open hollow, gaping at him below a latticework of roots.
Someone had entered the Netherworld Gate.
Angela. Kim dashed ahead of Fury, ignoring her angry cackles, dropping to his knees in front of the hollow as soon as he reached it, dirt and mulch spraying around his hands. His fingers met cold metal.
He shrank back from the chill, startled to see the Grail’s chain resting below his palm. Kim examined the links, glancing at Nina for answers.
She was lost in some kind of trance, her eyes wide and crimson. The same shade as the Devil herself. As that brief and unsettling flicker of Stephanie’s irises.
He licked his lips, already tasting the mustiness of the tunnel as much as he smelled it.
If he was quick, Troy wouldn’t see him enter the tunnel after Angela. Not that this would be the wisest course of action, or the most logical. But no matter how much it disturbed him that Israfel had suddenly disappeared, the situation begged for him to take advantage of it. He ignored Fury’s infuriated screeches, flattening to enter the hole, his shoes squishing into the mud.
The bird descended on him in a mad rage, her wings beating furiously. Claws scraped at his coat, scratched across his scalp, and sliced his cheek.
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