by Meg Collett
In the beginning, when she had set out with Clark, she assumed there would be a clear line drawn in the sand. But staring at Asz now, witnessing his agony, knowing it was in part her fault, sent a harsh wind scattering across that shifting line. What had been right before didn’t feel so right now. The refusal that slipped up the back of her throat seemed cowardly as she looked into his eyes.
She nodded.
Asz closed the distance between them and grasped Michaela’s other hand. “Thank you.” Michaela squeezed his back. She wished she could tell him all the words she needed to say. Instead, her throat swelled shut.
“Michaela, I have to ask one last thing of you. It’s a lot to ask, but you’re the only one I trust to do the right thing. You are the best of us all.” His voice broke. He swallowed, gathering himself. “You must kill Cassie.”
Michaela closed her eyes. Asz squeezed her hand, begging. He meant to convey to her his thoughts, his feelings, but nothing got past the barrier of their division. She nodded again.
Asz kissed her cheek. Clark pulled her arm again, and Michaela allowed him to tow her toward the bookcase. In one hand Asz held a dagger. In the other was a thin cell phone. As she watched, Asz slipped the bone dagger into the space between his ribs.
Michaela let out a small sound of agony and collapsed against Clark as he opened the door. She caught one last glance into the room.
Hundreds of white feathers floated up through the air and dissolved against the ceiling. Then the door swung shut, and she remembered the device Asz had held in his other hand.
“I think he…” Clark began but never got to finish.
Michaela was around him, and they sailed though the air as a series of explosions blasted away at the front of the club.
24
Clark was having a bad night. Actually, he’d never had a worse night. He panicked when he heard the sirens approaching the burning club, because the Descendants and likely the fallen wouldn’t be far behind.
No one in the swarming, screaming horde outside the inferno questioned why he stuffed an injured woman into his car, which proved to be a Herculean effort. Michaela was all wire and steel, her body rigid with pain. His fingers stuck to the burnt places of her skin. Grossed out, he yanked his hand away, which only ripped her skin more.
Scrubbing his hands on his jeans, he hurried around the car and jumped in. He revved the car to life and sped out of the parking lot. His foot jerked against the gas pedal; his hands were clumsy with the wheel.
He wove in and out of the traffic on King Street. Every few seconds his eyes darted over to Michaela. The smell of her burnt skin tickled the back of his throat until he thought he would puke. As they moved out from under the shadow of buildings, the moon shone through the windshield, and he saw the piercing sheen of her golden blood on his passenger seat.
The bumps along the road jostled Michaela’s head against the cool dampness of the window. Her eyelids fluttered, and a groan escaped her lips. Sweat slicked across her face even though she shivered. Clark didn’t know if it was the burns or the Siren’s poison making her sick, but he turned up the heat in the car.
“Gabe,” she moaned.
Clark’s gut went cold. He strung together a loop of curse words, repeating them over and over with increasing vehemence. He turned the radio off and drove in silence; he couldn’t stand one more sound in his aching ears.
The streetlights cast light into the car as he drove, illuminating the outlines of the language adorning his arms. It scrolled, looping and curving, dark and sinister across the paleness of his arms. Panic tightened his chest and turned his breathing into shallow panting.
He wove through the still dark streets with no purpose in mind but to make the burning, bright glow of the club diminish in his rearview mirror. He went east, then north, then doubled back, driving in circles. He swerved around a motorcycle and forced burning bodies from his thoughts.
He checked his rearview mirror again. A car caught his attention. It stood out, because he recognized its discreet style. Clark’s hands slipped on the wheel soaked in his own sweat. He eased the car a little faster, weaving through traffic. A light turned red, and Clark made a last minute turn onto a new street.
Clark’s eyes went to the mirror again to be certain the car was still behind him. He poked Michaela’s arm until she stirred; his eyes flickered from her, to the road, to behind them.
“I think someone is following us,” he whispered like they could hear him. She didn’t respond.
He knew they would come. The Descendants were an order of blood not oath. You were born into it; death brought the only vacation time allowed. The process left little for the imagination. Clark just hadn’t expected them to come for him now.
What luck.
Clark eased the Chevelle onto the interstate’s ramp while he watched the sedan glide into place behind him. The road spread open before him, and the urge to floor it, to flee, stifled him. The cars around him parted to let him merge. The sedan slipped back a few spots as Clark shifted over to the fast lane. With a deep breath, he floored it.
The surge of the car brought immediate relief, and Clark was able to think clearly. The sedan followed him easily, but the other cars bunched around them. The blur of the night sky and the city lights around his was tantalizing, but Clark wouldn’t escape on the interstate even if his car was faster. If he could time it right though, he might shake them.
Clark yanked the wheel, veering into an impossible space between a semi-truck and a minivan. For a moment, all Clark saw was headlights. The car bounced and fishtailed beneath Clark’s hands as he cranked the wheel back toward the exit ramp at the last moment. Michaela’s head cracked against the window, waking her once again.
Clark made it; he whooped and Michaela grimaced. Horns blared behind him. The speedometer hit ninety miles per hour up the ramp, and Clark grinned like a fool.
He looked behind them. “Suck on that mother—” But the Descendant made it too. Clark’s heart sank. He looked at Michaela, whose eyes settled closed once again.
“Oh shit. Oh shit. Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.”
Clark rocketed up the exit ramp and skidded back onto King Street. He hopped a curb and sent the car rocking beneath them as he cut down a smaller street.
Clark was desperate. The yellow light of a large intersection turned red. He made it across to a violent harmony of skidding tires and twisting metal. The car bounced over a sidewalk and narrowly missed the sign for a cemetery. He’d lost a side mirror in the process, but the Descendants’ car was still back there, unflinching and unyielding.
“Michaela, wake up!”
***
Michaela opened her eyes and expected to see Clark. Instead she saw Gabriel hunkered deep into the filthy corner of a small holding cell. The ceiling was low enough that an angel would be forced to constantly bend. It was no wider than the width of wings. The floor was grimy and cold; the air was damp and wet. Michaela wrinkled her nose at the smell.
His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowed. Welts zigzagged across his shoulders. An assortment of gashes, bruises, and dried blood the color of copper collided in a ghastly mess across his chest. His fist clenched the hilt of a heavy sword like he expected to use it. Gabriel seemed to focus so hard on channeling her that he didn't even notice when he succeeded.
"Gabe?"
Gabriel’s eyes flew open. He rushed across the cell to where Michaela slumped against the bars."Michaela! I heard. Are you okay?"
"I'm tired."
But she began to wake up, and her awareness grew as she transitioned into Gabriel’s dream. She expected pain, but none came. Gabriel had channeled her again, but through his own dream. It was an ability—to completely control another’s sleeping subconscious—that took incredible skill.
Michaela’s voice rasped. A faint hint of smoke lingered in her nose. She sat up a little straighter. Gabriel crouched beside her; his eyes scanned her body.
“How bad are you hurt?”
"How did you know?" Their words jumbled together. Michaela blinked in confusion. Slowly, the moments right before the explosion came back to her.
"Answer me," Gabriel commanded.
“Not bad.” She shifted against the bars. Her back felt fine. “The explosion was close. I'm already healing."
With a sigh, Gabriel pulled her closer and tucked her under his chin. "The guards heard. They said you were inside.”
“We were. Asz was there too. He killed himself and blew the place up with a timed bomb. It was Clark who realized Asz was going to blow the place with all those poor people inside. For a second, I thought I could just grab Clark and fly up into the sky," Michaela said into his chest. "Then I remembered…I hesitated. That’s why I’m hurt. I could have gotten us out of the way if I hadn’t paused.”
“What did you see?” Gabriel asked.
“A Siren nearly kissed the soul completely out of a man, and then it took his blood when he was unconscious.” Her voice wavered.
Gabriel rubbed small circles on her back while he waited for her to get it all out. His hand crossed the ridges of her scars through the thin fabric of her shirt. She would have more after tonight.
“The blood is important, but I can't figure out why. The Sirens didn’t take the souls.”
“Michaela.” He shook her gently until she looked at him. His gold eyes were warm and patient just like the old Gabriel. “Why was Asz there?”
“To destroy the Apocrypha.” Her breaths came in hitches.
Gabriel’s eyes weren’t disappointed or upset with her. So she went on. She spoke of blood and souls. She told him about Cassie and Lucifer and the Apocrypha. She demonstrated how the book came alive and poured from the old pages onto Clark’s skin. Asmodeus’ last few days with Cassie were laid out between the two angels and filled the air between them with a sinking sadness. Gabriel listened quietly as Michaela struggled through the part where Asz found Cassie drinking human blood and pulling out her feathers.
“What was she doing?” Gabriel asked, pulling Michaela closer to him.
“Asz said she was making monsters of the fallen. But I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant.” Michaela shook her head. She would never tell Gabriel how badly Asz’s memories of Cassie scared her. Instead, she only said, “I’m worried.”
“Michaela…” Gabriel pressed his face into her hair.
“As soon as I get better, I am going to find the place Cassie was doing her work,” Michaela said with resolve.
“I don’t think you should.”
Michaela looked up at him, frowning. “If I don’t, who will?”
“At least wait a day or so,” Gabriel said. “I’m serious, Michaela.” He took her face in his hands and turned her face to his when she didn’t answer. “You need to lay low for a bit.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I mean for the sake of the Descendant with you. With those words on him now, the fallen and the Aethere will have another reason to find you both. You need to keep him out of sight.”
“Asz had a few details in his memories that I can try to track down,” Michaela said. “He said when he followed Cassie that she went downtown to a large building with an angel on the sign. It can’t be that hard to find. I’ll be careful, but I can’t stop now.”
Gabriel pressed his lips into her hair. She turned to wrap her arms around his chest. His blood smeared across her shirt and along her arms. The air shifted in the cell. The tension poured from Gabriel’s body.
She raised her head. His eyes were closed, clenched against the changing feelings she felt in his arms. Michaela understood. Everything was different now. Whether it was being human, or Gabriel influenced by Hell, the air between them grew thick with desire.
Michaela felt the power of Gabriel’s need through the pressure inside her head, the almighty flip of her belly. When he opened his molten eyes, he’d given up resisting. His mouth pressed against hers, and she dug her fingers into the muscles of his back.
Gabriel’s arms banded around her waist and leaned her back against the floor, supporting her weight in his arms until her back was on the cell’s floor. They should stop. Michaela wished they could. Then she opened her mouth to him and all thought of stopping was lost.
Gabriel’s hands raced across Michaela’s bare skin beneath her t-shirt, leaving fire in their wake and making her belly quiver. She moaned into his mouth at the sensation she hadn’t known existed. She felt his touch a million times over. He pulled her shirt off and then it was just her skin against his.
Gabriel rocked his hips against her as his tongue worked around her mouth, sucking and biting on her bottom lip. Bright lights exploded behind her eyelids when Gabriel undid her jeans. Her head fell back, and she moaned, waiting. His breath was hot against her neck as he trailed scorching kisses down her throat and across her collarbones.
Michaela knew what they were about to do. The realization made her dizzy with a wild mixture of emotions: longing, confusion, guilt.
His hand slipped into her jeans.
Through her smoke tinged nose, Michaela caught the scent of something that set off alarms in her head. She sat up, pushing Gabriel to the side. “Do you smell that?” she asked.
“What?” Gabriel asked. His chest was heaving, and his dilated pupils made his eyes black, which unsettled Michaela even more.
She stood up, head bowed against the ceiling. She closed her eyes and started trying to wake up.
“What?” he asked again.
“Angels. I smell angels.”
***
Clark emerged onto a deserted and dark road running along a cemetery. Slowly the shapes of hundreds of graves came into focus from the shadows. The lights and sounds of the city had died away, and nothing moved but the trees as he raced by.
Michaela said, “They’re here.”
Seven angels from a choir Clark had never seen before were lined across the road less than a hundred feet ahead. Pure instincts had him hitting his brakes, but he wasn’t quick enough. The car skidded then struggled for traction in the melting asphalt beneath the tires. The brakes locked up, and the wheel twisted in Clark’s hands.
His head hit the steering wheel and cracked open before bouncing off the window. Michaela was slung halfway into his lap, straining against the burning, clenching of her seatbelt that yanked her brutally back. They spun in tight, spiraling circles that rocked his vision between the Descendants behind them—and the angels with bright, blood red wings in front of him.
25
A trickling trail of blood slowly made its way down Clark’s forehead. Michaela had one hand braced on the dash with her gaze narrowed on the angels in front of them. The car stopped spinning. Burnt rubber singed Clark’s nose as he listened to the car click and wheeze.
The angels’ narrow wings tipped in red stretched out to a span of nearly ten feet. Their faces were a harsh kind of beautiful with long chins and pointed noses. They glared at Michaela and Clark with light gray eyes. The angels walked toward the car, their shadows passing over the gravestones standing sentinel in the cemetery on both sides of the road. With a shaking hand, Clark locked the doors.
“Who is that?” he asked in a crackling whisper.
“Seraphim,” Michaela answered. Clark glanced over his shoulder as the Descendants got out of their car. They were trapped. Unless they wanted to run through a cemetery, which Clark did not.
“The good kind?” Clark asked. He wiped the blood dripping into his eye.
“Help me out,” she said. Confused, Clark watched as she undid her seatbelt, moving slowly and wincing in pain.
“Out? As in out there? You were unconscious like two seconds ago,” Clark said. “Let me talk to them.”
Michaela shook her head, breathing heavy from the exertion.
“Those are Descendants back there—”
“I know,” Michaela snapped.
“Well, they are probably going to take me back for deserting, so you need
to stay in the car and leave as soon as I distract everyone.”
Michaela’s hand clutched the door handle. She looked back at Clark with an eyebrow cocked and an are-you-so-stupid expression, which Clark noted she had learned from him. “That’s your big plan? Distract the Seraphim before you turn yourself over to the Descendants while I make a getaway?”
“Your plan it is,” he said under his breath as Michaela weakly opened her door.
The Seraphim and the Descendants drew within twenty feet of the car. He limped around to Michaela’s side and helped ease her out, his arm wrapped low on her hips to support her weight. The moon lit a path on the potholed pavement in front of Clark.
A seraph stepped forward, distinguishing him as their leader. He wore no shirt, only filmy black pants that floated around his ankles. He was slender, but every muscle on his body stood out. His hair was stiff and unnatural, slicked back from the wind. He pointed a long finger at Clark and Michaela.
“You both will be coming with us,” he commanded. The angel’s voice sounded too alien to come from the shape of a human mouth. The pauses between its words were clipped and awkward.
“Where are we going?” Clark whispered to Michaela.
“Heaven, he thinks,” she answered. Her eyes locked on the Seraphim, who clearly heard her because they returned her gaze with hated glares.
“How would they take me to Heaven?” Clark asked. His eyes shifted from Michaela to the Seraphim. His sweaty palms were leaving wet spots on Michaela’s shirt.
“Your soul,” Michaela answered.
“You are not needed. Leave now,” the seraph said to the Descendants. Clark looked over his shoulder. The Descendants looked more nervous than he felt, which made him feel slightly better.
“Sir, the human is a deserter. Our orders are to bring him back for trial,” one managed to say. Clark flipped him off.
“No. You aren’t.” The seraph’s words were final.