True to his word, Corban did not lift his voice to the god. He held my body tightly to his and sang the piece to me. I felt the melody surge inside my skull, charge down my spine, bivouac in my elbows and knees. His voice was a confident baritone—foggy on some of the higher notes, from having gone so long unused—but rich and bright and warm. If I had been a god, I would have given him anything he asked for.
He sang the prayer straight through four times, and each complete rendition took about ten minutes. By the end of the second round, I thought my feet had turned to ice and sheared off and plummeted to the ground. By the end of the third one, I thought that the only part of my body still hoarding a small flame of warmth was probably the center of my rib cage. By the time he was almost done with the fourth performance, I was numb all over. I had resigned myself to a frozen death. As if to underscore my fate, the air around us began to coalesce into icy chunks, and slivers of wicked sleet burned my skin as they hissed past my cheeks.
Corban finished the fourth song with a musical flourish, decorating the last note with an unnecessary trill. I waited in desolate silence for him to begin the prayer for a fifth time, but he shouted, “That’s done it! We can go back now.”
That was when I realized that the hailstorm around me wasn’t ice, but pellets of medicine being flung to the ground. Corban might have sung to me, but the god had answered.
It was even harder to explain away the angel’s presence once he had stepped forward in such a spectacular fashion. The ground around the school was littered with hard granules; students and teachers spent all day scooping the grains up and racing to carry them back to the infirmary for Judith to dispense. All the patients responded remarkably well to their healing powers, even David recovering quickly enough to sit up in bed two days after he had swallowed the first pill. Alma, too, was soon on her feet, eating and drinking normal food, and apologizing for the inconvenience she had caused.
I was back in the kitchen, fending off more questions, acting as if I was as astonished as everyone else. It turns out the angel is blind! That’s why he’s been here all this time. But Judith asked him if he could pray for drugs, and he said he would if someone would go with him. Yes, I was terrified to be so high in the air! And it was so cold! But I would do anything for Alma, you know—and all the others, too, of course.
Not surprisingly, the other workers—especially the women—began fighting for the chance to visit the Great House, whether to check on Alma or carry up supplies or bring the news that the headmistress was finally returning at the end of the week. The students, even the teachers, looked for excuses to stroll along the line of fencing that overlooked the hill, and one or two enterprising boys actually snuck up to the house and climbed the ivy to reach the roof and wave down at the rest of us.
I tried to convince Corban that he should visit the school and introduce himself to his many admirers—perform a concert some night, perhaps, or at least hold an informal session where students could pepper him with questions. He wasn’t ready for the human contact yet, but he was willing to put on a remote show in daylight. He came out to the roof once or twice a day and took off in a low spiral, staying close enough that he could always hear the bells and chimes that would guide him home. The whole school turned out for these maneuvers—classrooms emptied out, dust mops and cook pots were left unattended so that everyone could watch the angel glide and dive through the scented spring air.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before these displays no longer satisfied Corban. He was still distrustful of his god, but he was remembering what it felt like to be an angel in Samaria—a creature of grace and glory and allure. He would figure out soon that he was almost healed; he would realize that there were many other places he would rather be. Places where he could use his gifts and exploit his strengths. Places where he belonged.
Therefore I wasn’t surprised, the day before the headmistress’s return, to find him pacing on the rooftop, deep in thought. I had continued to visit him every night, and we had shared a great deal of laughter in between the moments we slept and the moments we made love. But I could feel him pulling away, and I knew, when he turned to me so eagerly, what he was about to say.
“Moriah, I have something very important to discuss with you,” he said, taking my hands and clasping them against his chest. The gibbous moon made a skewed halo behind his head.
Once again, I was glad he was blind and couldn’t read the heartache on my face. Now the trick was to keep it from my voice. “What could it possibly be?” I asked in a voice of exaggerated breathlessness.
He laughed. “You think you know, but you don’t,” he informed me.
“Let me guess. Your triumph a few days ago has led you to realize that even though you can’t see, you’re still an angel. You can still carry out all the tasks the god set aside for you. And you’ve realized you can’t perform these tasks while you’re hiding away in some musty old mansion. You need to return to an angel hold—the Eyrie, at a guess.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, a little smug.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Cedar Hills, then.”
He shook his head. “I thought about both of them, but neither one will do. Because you won’t come with me if I go to an angel hold.”
I stared at him in wordless astonishment.
“See, I did surprise you. You’re right that I realize it’s time to leave the Gabriel School. But I don’t want to go by myself.”
“Corban—”
He raised his voice to drown mine out. “And now you’re going to tell me that I don’t really know what I want. You’re going to tell me not to confuse gratitude with love. You’re going to say, ‘You think you can’t function without me, but once you’re back in the world you know, you’ll find me an inconvenience or an embarrassment. You need to go on to your new life without me.’”
I had nothing to say; he had got it right, almost to the word.
“But I know what I want, and who I want, and what I need to go forward from this point,” he said in a persuasive tone. “I know you won’t lie to me. I know you won’t let me lie to myself. I know you won’t fail me, no matter how hard things get. I know I love you.” He still had my hands wrapped in his, but now he overlapped his wings behind me and with their insistent pressure drew me closer to his body. “And I believe you love me.”
I tried to keep my arms stiff against his chest, resisting as much as I could, though we were only inches apart. “Well, I’ve tried not to love you,” I said in a mutinous voice. “Everybody falls in love with angels, and I wanted to be different.”
“But you didn’t succeed.”
I sighed and stopped pushing myself away from him. Instantly his wings brought me closer, and he dropped a kiss on my mouth. “I didn’t succeed,” I admitted.
“And you have no particular reason to stay here at the Gabriel School.”
I knew he could feel the movement as I shook my head. “I told myself no more running—I had found a good place here and I should be grateful—but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay once you had gone. It would be too dull. And there would be too many memories.”
“So where did you think you might go?” he prompted.
“Someplace I could find work. Maybe start my own business. Now that I know the angels—and the Manadavvi—aren’t looking for me, I thought I could go to one of the bigger cities. Semorrah or Castelana.”
He shook his head. He was smiling. “That’s not where you want to live.”
I laughed up at him. When had all the stars come out? The night sky was dense with gaudy sparkles, like a tradesman’s wife overdressed for a fine occasion. “What city do you think I’d choose?”
“The most beautiful place in all of Samaria,” he said. “A city where I can write music—and perform it—a city where every merchant prospers and every artist flourishes. Both of us can do what we like and be happy there.”
There was only one place like that. “Luminaux.”
“Yes.”
“But Corban—”
Again he kissed me, just to make me stop talking, I think. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to the holds. I don’t want to take up that old life. I am not yet ready to forgive Jovah for what he did to me. But I do want to go somewhere an angel is appreciated and where a musician can hone his craft. So the only question I have left is—”
“Will I come with you?” I interjected. If he could speak for me, I could speak for him.
“Yes. Will you?”
It was a risk. He might think he loved me unconditionally, he might believe he would never tire of me, but two people had a tendency to wear on each other, and I was more wearing than most. But I could bear it if he left me, as long as he left me in Luminaux, I thought. And maybe he wouldn’t leave me. I guessed I wouldn’t know unless I made the experiment.
“Yes,” I said. “Just let me get my coat.”
Ascension
Meljean Brook
CHAPTER 1
A demon had moved into Riverbend.
Judging by the amount of anger and despair that Marc Revoire could sense ravaging this community, the demon intended to rot the small Illinois town from the inside. A lot of work, a lot of whispers, a lot of doubts to sow. The demon might gain the pleasure of watching a few humans die in the process—but from Marc’s vantage point, it seemed easier to wait for a cold snap and watch the male half of Riverbend’s teenaged population freeze to death instead.
Though a good four inches of snow had fallen since noon, most of the boys coming out of Riverbend’s high school and into the parking lot wore T-shirts and cargo shorts. Some had the sense to pull on a stocking cap and a long-sleeved shirt, but they still shivered and hunched while scraping the snow from their windshields. Apparently, the girls had less to prove. Bundled in coats and scarves, only a few wearing short skirts bared their legs to the cold.
Marc expected the foolish clothing. He also wasn’t surprised that they completely ignored his presence, as if a man in a dark suit and with a badge tucked into his belt waited at the building’s rear exit every day. After fifty years of watching over the Midwestern states, he’d become accustomed to seeing all kinds of teen behavior, from shy to rebellious, ignorant to insightful, clever to outright stupid.
He was less accustomed to watching a bunch of kids leave school on a Friday afternoon, and not a one of them projecting relief or anticipation for the coming weekend. Instead, Marc sensed resignation, dread. Where those emotions hadn’t taken hold, a heavy dose of apathy resided.
Demons usually didn’t bother with kids. Teenagers didn’t have much power and rarely possessed any money—and though some demons destroyed human souls simply for the pleasure of it, most preferred to gain influence or wealth on the side. If the emotional rot in Riverbend had trickled down to these high schoolers, the bastard had gotten his claws in deep.
As a Guardian, Marc was on a mission to rip those claws out. As a man who’d seen too many lives ruined by too many demons, he’d enjoy every second of it.
One and a half centuries ago, a demon had destroyed the community where he’d lived, too. Sixteen years old and human, Marc hadn’t been able to psychically detect the festering seeds the demon had sown, but he hadn’t needed to—he’d seen the hate and distrust tearing everyone apart, splitting the community into factions. At the demon’s urging, resentment had eventually erupted into violence, and Marc had died after taking a bullet meant for his father. Later, he’d learned that his death had shocked the community so deeply that they’d all taken a step back, tried to untangle all of the lies the demon had been spreading. Not every rift had healed, but they’d begun to move forward again.
Marc had gone on, too. His sacrifice gave him a chance to become a Guardian, a warrior given angelic powers, and it was a chance that he’d taken. After a hundred years of training in Caelum, the Guardians’ heavenly city, he’d returned to Earth and begun hunting demons. Some were easier to find than others, their arrogance shining like a psychic beacon through a town—but this demon was proving to be the clever, hidden variety.
Eventually the demon would reveal itself. They always did, but Marc didn’t plan to wait that long . . . and maybe he wouldn’t have to.
One hundred and fifty years of combined training and hunting demons had taught Marc to listen to his instincts, and right now they were telling him that something had just changed. Something he was seeing, hearing, or smelling wasn’t as it should be, but his brain hadn’t figured out what his senses had already noted.
Tense now, expectant, he cocked his head. No unusual scents floated on the air. He could account for every footstep he heard, every voice, every heartbeat. He glanced up at the roof, the school windows, scanned the parking lot again. Everything appeared all right, no one moving too fast and everyone breathing, unlike a demon who might have forgotten himself. His gaze skimmed the snow, slipping over the drifts, and stopped.
The play of darkness and light was wrong. Cloud-diffused sunlight cast a faint, long shadow of the school building over the parking lot, but the long edge didn’t match the straight lines of the roof. Marc looked up.
No one. But now he saw the depression in the snow at the roof’s edge, as if someone had recently crouched there. Perhaps he’d heard the snow crunch—and even as he watched, the depression deepened slightly, as if shifting beneath someone’s weight.
As if someone was still crouching there. Tricky as demons were, they didn’t possess any powers of invisibility, and Marc only knew of one person who could project such a powerful illusion.
Though that person was also a Guardian, his tension didn’t ease. Of the few people in the world who might seek him out, Radha was the last woman he expected to see.
Of course, he wasn’t seeing her yet.
“Your shadow,” he said quietly.
A frozen puff of air betrayed her exasperated huff of breath. When he’d known her, Radha had been frustrated by any holes in her illusions, had constantly striven for perfection. Apparently those small mistakes still irritated her.
Marc knew that if he turned to look now, those shadows would appear exactly as they should. He continued to watch the roof instead. “And you breathed. If I wanted to shoot your head, I’d know exactly where to aim.”
“Now you’re just rubbing it in,” she said, and the illusion concealing her dropped away, revealing her narrowed brown eyes, her wry smile.
He should have looked the other way. He should have given himself that break. But it would have only been delaying the inevitable punch to his chest, the sensation of staggering while standing in place. It didn’t matter when he saw her, or how often—which wasn’t often. A few minutes every few years. Never speaking with her, only hearing the lilt in her voice from afar, a lilt that bespoke of English learned over two centuries ago and half a world away.
But she was here now, rising from her crouch at the edge of the roof. Thick black hair tumbled to her waist. The long, curling strands and a few wisps of orange silk formed a scanty covering for her breasts. Scarves knotted at her left hip flirted with her inner thighs, hinting at but never revealing anything other than smooth expanses of skin that she’d dyed indigo.
Behind her, white feathered wings arched over her head. She must have still been concealing herself from everyone else. Even apathetic kids would stop and stare at an almost-nude blue woman with wings standing atop a school building.
He couldn’t stop staring, either. Couldn’t stop remembering that he’d once unwrapped those scarves. That he’d buried his hands in that impossibly thick hair before burying himself in her body.
She’d left without a word the next day. When he’d tried to discover why, the door he’d knocked on remained closed. The note he’d sent returned unopened.
He hadn’t tried again. He’d been young, and damn stupid in those days, but her message had been unmistakable: Leave me alone.
So he had. And afterward, he’d realized that Radha hadn’t been the w
oman who’d gotten away, but the one who should have never been his in the first place. Friends, yes. During those early years of training in Caelum, she’d been a companion he valued and trusted, until he’d given in to lust that he never should have felt. That had been the end. A friendship ruined, and Marc had never been certain whether he’d been blessed for simply having known her or cursed for having lost her.
But he’d done his best to put his feelings away after she’d put him aside, and Radha hadn’t spoken to him in almost a hundred and forty years.
Yet now she sought him? Not without reason—and that reason likely had nothing to do with him or one awkward sexual experience when he’d been an overeager virgin.
Spreading her wings, Radha stepped from the roof. She gently glided to his side and landed soundlessly. God, she hadn’t been this close to him in so long. He’d almost forgotten how small she was, the top of her head only reaching his shoulder, a waist small enough to span with his hands.
A thin gold chain circled her bare belly instead, with a ruby pendant filling her navel. More gold ringed her slim fingers, and the tip of her right forefinger was capped in a sharp gold claw.
Her gaze lifted to his. Flecks of gold lightened the brown of her eyes, outshining the rows of gold loops in her ears, the small diamond stud piercing her nose.
“Hello, Marc.”
“Radha.” Putting her aside had also taught him to put everything else away, to focus. “Has something happened?”
“To whom?”
“To anyone that would explain why you’re here. Do you have news from Caelum?”
Bad news, probably. It seemed that the only news from Caelum of late had been of that kind, beginning a little over a decade ago when thousands of Guardian warriors had chosen to ascend to the afterlife, leaving far too few of them left to fight demons. Half of the remaining Guardians had been killed by the bloodthirsty nosferatu, and a year later, one of their only remaining healers had been slain after a vampire betrayed another Guardian. To save them all—to save everyone on Earth—the most powerful Guardian, their leader, had sacrificed himself and had been trapped in Hell. There had been victories along the way, too, but nothing seemed to make up for the loss of so many . . . and the bad news just kept on coming.
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