I considered what Tom said. I saw Raphael around every corner. I had to stop doing that or it would paralyze me.
Chandra leaned against a column at the landing of the stairs with her arms folded. Her hair was tied back, and her brass knuckles were secured to her belt. When she saw me, she grimaced, unhinged herself from the column, and walked away.
She didn’t like me before, but after what happened to Alex, she’d never forgive me.
Adrianna, Kiran, and Nash chatted on the sofa in the living room. I stopped behind the wall and watched their reflections in the mirror opposite the room.
“It was that damn cat,” Kiran said.
“It always tried to bite me.” Adrianna looked at her nails. They were painted red and made her emerald green eyes pop. “I should have known something was wrong with it. Animals love me.” She smiled.
“What are we going to do now?” Kiran’s curved sword rested in its black sheath invisible against his pants except for the silver hilt.
“I haven’t figure that out yet.” Nash bent forward and rested his forearms on his legs. “But we can’t go after the other angels, not yet. We need another strategy.”
“I’m ready.” I stepped through the archway and into the room.
Kiran and Adrianna gave each other an awkward glance.
“Good.” Nash stood. “Let’s go. Wait. Where’s Chandra?”
“Here.” Chandra walked into the living room. Did she see me eavesdropping on their conversation?
I looked at her. She didn’t look at me. She avoided my existence. I was glad she ignored me. The only alternative relationship we could have had was one a lion has with an antelope.
Nash held out his hand and opened a portal. The edges of the portal glowed like a hole burned through the space and showed what lie beneath.
Chandra climbed through followed by Adrianna and Kiran. They disappeared onto the other side.
I clenched my locket, which protected the photographs of my parents. The only ones I had left. Letting my feelings out never helped me so what was the point of all that effort? Sometimes, I couldn’t help it.
Despite what you might believe, bottled emotions aren’t the dangers. The fear is that if you bottle up your emotions, they come out in a rush to meet you and not in the best of ways. But perhaps the true danger wasn’t the emotions themselves and the consequences of the rush, but the very practice of keeping them quiet. If you keep them silent long enough maybe you become numb.
Numb was the opposite of what I felt with Nash.
“Go ahead,” Nash said.
“What?” I asked.
“The portal.”
“Right.” I approached the glowing circle. I turned to Nash. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything that happened. I’ll never leave again, not until this is done. And I’m sorry about Sim too. I ruined everything.”
“It threw things off course,” Nash said, “but you didn’t know about the cat. How could you? I’ll figure out what needs to be done. In the meantime, stop blaming yourself. Self-pity doesn’t look good on you.” He nodded to the circle.
He was right. I couldn’t let the thousand little thoughts in my head stop me from doing what I needed to do. I can’t change the past, so let’s start working on the future.
I stepped through the portal, ready to take a breath of clear, moving air. I breathed in a deep lungful. Dust tickled the back of my throat. I bent over, feeling like I might cough up my insides.
The air smelled of mold. The walls were gray blended with vomit green. Cracks ran through the plaster. Dim light struggled to get through the dirty paned glass window above the second landing.
I stood on the stairs. Black iron bars supported the stair rail. Cobwebs showed their wispy patterns between the bars. Light invaded the stairway through a small window on the front door. Someone had nailed boards to the doorframe.
The stairs groaned. I didn’t want the distressed wood to give under my weight, so I rushed up to the landing before the next flight of stairs.
Chandra, Adrianna, and Kiran looked down at me from the second floor. Adrianna gestured for me to join them. Their weapons were drawn.
Nash’s warmth suffused my back. He stood close behind me. I didn’t hear him on the stairs. The portal must have sent him straight to the landing.
Strange. Portals changed location on Earth so quickly, but at least it kept us from running into each other.
We met the others upstairs.
The hallway walls ended in dirty baseboards. Cracked picture frames failed to protect the photographs inside, covered in thick layers of dust. The doors were ajar to two of the three rooms on the second floor.
A roach darted in front of me and scurried into a crack in the baseboard. Don’t worry. We aren’t taking you to Hell.
Chandra pointed to the room at the end of the hall. The door was closed. We crept toward the room with our weapons drawn. Chandra turned the knob and swung the door open.
I held my breath. Fallen angels get a burst of adrenaline right after they fall. The angel who attacked me in my bedroom didn’t need his Grace to crush me like a monkey does a coconut.
The room was empty except for a curtain that floated in the breeze, which came in through the broken paned glass window. Holes blemished the torn, gray curtain.
“It’s the only room we haven’t checked,” Chandra said.
“She must be downstairs.” Kiran looked to Nash.
He nodded.
If I was a fallen angel, and I heard movement upstairs, impossible not to hear in this creaky, old house, I’d have made a run for it. We would have heard boards being torn from the front door if that was the case.
To my right was a closet with dingy, white folding doors. As I approached the closet, I squinted.
Low breathing came from behind the slats.
“Lia, what are you doing?” Adrianna asked.
“Shh! Listen.” I stepped closer.
Dad always said I had excellent hearing despite all the Metal concerts I’d been to.
I imagined black eyes as they peered at me from the closet shutters. Imagining what waited for me wasn’t hard to do. So many things jumped out at me from the dark. But I never got used to them. My skin crawled, and goose bumps erupted across my flesh.
I clenched the hilt of my sword.
My hand shook as I reached for the doorknob. Before my hand touched the knob, the door burst open. I jumped back.
The fallen angel emerged from the closet. She wore a dirty, shapeless dress. Her skin was pale and eyes as dark as the Pit. Her dark gray hair was in stiff tangles. Her bony, featherless wings rose in the air above her head. Black cuts patterned her exposed skin.
She screamed and rushed us. Dark blood dripped from her mouth.
Adrianna grabbed her wrist and pinned her arm back, right between the bones of her wings. “You need to come with us.”
The angel screamed like a wild animal and tried to pull away from Adrianna, but Adrianna’s hold was firm.
The angel gritted her teeth. She forced herself forward and pulled until the loud crack of a bone breaking filled the room. She slipped from Adrianna’s grasp and scooped a piece of broken glass from beneath the window.
The angel held up the piece of glass. The shard cut into her palm, and fresh blood dotted the floor. Her other arm rested limp and mangled at her side.
Kiran whipped his blade, and the sword flashed in front of the angel. The sword cut into the arm that held the glass. The shard and her hand fell.
The bloody stump was still raised to us in a grim salute.
The floor creaked and groaned and splintered. The floorboards gave.
My back hit a flat, hard surface. Plaster and dust fell on top of me. Despite the pain, I rolled over so nothing heavy could hit me in the face. I choked the dust out of my lungs and forced myself up. I sat on top of a dining room table.
Adrianna lay under a pile of floorboards and sheetr
ock. I moved the stuff off her as she came to.
Debris shifted across the room. Black bones angled out from beneath cracked floorboards and ceiling dust. Like a rabbit caught in a garden, the angel’s eyes quivered.
She ran. I climbed over the debris and raced after her. I fell and grabbed her ankle. She struggled and plummeted. I grabbed my dagger from its sheath and plunged it into her calf. She howled.
The dagger pinned her leg to the floor. I climbed up her body, straddled her back, and held the joints of her wings down so she couldn’t move the featherless, sharp bones. Indents were gouged into the bones as if she tried to cut them off like Nash’s.
Blood speckled my hands. I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.
Nash and the others met us in the hallway. Sheetrock dust powdered their dark clothes.
“I got her.” My lips tightened into a cruel smile.
Adrianna’s eyes were wide. Chandra grinned like she had gotten me to eat a poisoned apple.
Nash approached me and offered me his hand. His face was expressionless. I took his hand, and he helped me up.
Kiran pulled my dagger from the angel’s leg. He and Nash grabbed her by both arms and lifted her.
She continued to struggle.
Nash jerked her arm. “Who gave you these cuts?”
She looked at him. “I did.”
“Why?”
She stopped struggling and craned her head over Nash’s shoulder to look at his back. “Don’t you hate yourself?” Her eyes met his. “I do, every day, since I turned into this monster.”
Nash furrowed his brow. “There’s a place in Hell where you will be punished.”
She ground her teeth. “I don’t want to go to Hell. I want to die.”
“You already have,” Nash said, “and now, you have to come with us to die again and again.”
“Please, I can’t go there. Please.”
She begged, begged not to go where Lucifer sent angels, where she sent Adriel. After all he had done for us, I couldn’t let him suffer in a place angels begged not to go.
Nash turned away from her.
Her head dropped to her chest, and tears marked the floor. She lifted her head and looked for a savior. Her eyes rested on me. She blinked as if her eyes deceived her. “A human? Who are you?”
She recognized me the same way demons did. A light in my eyes signaled my humanity and distinguished me from the poor costumes demons choose to wear.
“Don’t worry about her,” Kiran said. “Are you opening the portal?” he asked Nash.
“What are you doing with demons? You’re the girl Michael talked about.”
“Michael? The Archangel?” I asked.
“The one and only,” the fallen angel said. “He knows Raphael is looking for you.”
Nash’s face turned dark. “We have to leave. We shouldn’t stay this long. We have her, let’s go.” He let go of the angel’s arm and opened the portal. “Lia, come on.” He waved me over.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Just go through the damned portal. We’ll talk later.”
I climbed through the portal. I waited for the others. Chandra and Kiran stepped through with the fallen angel. Blood ran down the angel’s leg where I drove the dagger in.
I don’t know what came over me. Was the dagger necessary?
She struggled on the ground. One arm mangled. The other a stump. She would have had a hard time getting back to her feet. I could have easily climbed on top of her without stabbing her through the leg.
Adrianna and Nash followed. The portal blinked out of existence.
Nash’s mouth formed a hard line. “Handle the angel. Lia and I need to speak with Lucifer.”
I hadn’t seen Lucifer in a long time, but I wasn’t itching to meet with her again. The chill from our first meeting never left my bones. But another Archangel was after me, and the thought of that left me colder.
The world is a drum, and its song is thunder.
TWO
THE skyscraper disappeared into the clouds. Lucifer was at the top, the highest point in Hell. The smell of burned leaves tickled my nose. The air grew misty and cold close to the building, colder than other parts of Sheol, at least, colder than the parts I had seen.
Other darker, deeper parts of Sheol existed that I hadn’t visited, like the Circles and the depths of the Pit. I had no intention of seeing either.
But with two Archangels after me, I might not have a choice but to visit the deepest and darkest places of my nightmares. Michael and the other Archangels coming after me made sense. They had to stop Raphael from doing what they believed was against God or their inaction would condemn them.
Nash walked with me through the sliding doors.
“Is he working against Raphael?” I asked.
“I know as much as you do,” Nash said.
At the welcome desk sat one of Lucifer’s clone secretaries. They weren’t mirror images of each other, like identical twins. But they dressed alike, had the same wide smile, and wore their hair in the exact same way. They walked to the same rhythm, like they listened to the same song in their heads too. However, I doubted the clone secretaries ever listened to music.
The secretary’s hair was pulled back so painfully, it stretched the corners of her eyes toward her hairline. She gave us a toothy smile as Nash and I walked to the elevator.
I didn’t look back at her. I feared she turned her head to follow our movements. I didn’t want to see her staring back at me with that creepy smile plastered on her face.
“We should have questioned her,” I said. The fallen angel may have known more than she told us, right? What motive would she have for giving us the whole story?
“We couldn’t do that at that house,” Nash said. “Besides, if I chose to keep this from Lucifer for any longer than the time it takes us to get here, she’d have my head.”
Lucifer had her thumb on Nash. But, at the same time, she trusted him. He was the only fallen angel she allowed to roam around the Outer Region. But why? What was it about Nash that none of the others had?
I made a mistake and looked back.
The secretary’s grin took up half her face as she leaned over her desk to watch us. Her hands clasped in front of her like she was trying to hold onto a fly she caught.
The urge to run zinged through my body like sharp steel.
“Let’s not talk about this here.” Nash pressed the button for the elevator.
The elevator dinged as the doors opened. I stepped inside, and my heartbeat quickened. The doors closed on her face, and I shut the image away.
My heart sank in time with the sudden drop. It’s funny how elevators create that falling sensation when they’re going up. Must I fall first before I succeed?
“Are you okay?” Nash asked.
I gripped the railing. My sweaty palms made the steel slippery. “Define okay.”
Ever wonder how a wild horse feels in a pull trailer? A moment of panic when you don’t know what’s going on and you’re not sure if you’re going to be okay, that’s what I felt. But I had some degree of control over my own destiny.
“I don’t think it’s hit me yet,” Nash said, “what that fallen angel told us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The elevator stopped.
Nash pressed the button for the top floor, but the button wouldn’t stay lit. Nash jabbed it a few more times, but it didn’t glow at all.
“What’s going on?” I tried the button myself.
“I don’t know.”
“Are we stuck?”
The elevator moved up again.
Nash furrowed his brow. “I guess it was nothing.”
The elevator zoomed ahead twenty more floors and jolted to a stop. This time, the doors slid open.
Nash paused. “Strange.” He pressed the button to close the doors, but they remained open. “Well, I guess we aren’t being given a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,”
I said. “I could get on your shoulders and pop the top to the elevator shaft. We could climb up or down.”
Nash narrowed his eyes.
We entered a hallway. The walls were cream-white with ornate arches evenly spaced. Candle-lit chandeliers hung from the ceiling and lush, white carpets rested against the dark, hard-wood floors.
“Where are we?” I touched a statue of a cherub that sat on a pedestal. The cherub was a fat baby with curly hair and wings that reached the top of his head.
Cherubs don’t look that way. They are full-sized angels with four faces. I guess they needed all those faces to guard Arcadia, the place in Heaven humans went to when they died.
“Bob lives here.” Nash strode to the door at the end of the hall.
I followed him. “Bob? I wonder why the elevator stopped here.”
“I wonder the same thing.” Nash opened the door that stood three or four inches below the tall ceiling.
The door opened to a dining room. Burgundy red paint colored the walls. To my left was a floor to ceiling depiction of a forest painted in dark greens and pale yellows. To the right was an archway that led into another room. On the ceiling hung a chandelier. A red lampshade covered each light.
In the center of the room was a table for ten. The table was of a dark wood, and the chairs were padded with white fabric. On the table were platters of food: a roast turkey, slices of bread, cheese, a rack of lamb, a whole roasted pig, sausages, biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, pasta, and fruit. No part of the table was untouched.
At the head of the table sat Bob, or should I call him, Beelzebub, the demon of gluttony and right-hand man to Lucifer.
A white napkin was tucked into his collar. He held a fork and knife. He wore his traditional black, fitted suit and red tie. His hair was slicked back as usual with a thick layer of grease. His Rolex watch gleamed in the light.
Was he going to eat all this food by himself?
He smiled at me and Nash. “Good morning.”
I narrowed my eyes. You have to be careful when snakes slither on the ground.
“You’ve made quite a feast for yourself,” Nash said.
“Well, you know I didn’t make this myself,” Bob said. “You should invite me for dinner sometime.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have enough food in the kitchen to sate your appetite.” Disgust laced Nash’s words. I wasn’t sure if the disgust was over the meat or the excess.
The Wings of Heaven and Hell (The Arcadian Steel Sequence Book 1) Page 27