Angels Falling

by Harriet Carlton

  “Now!”

  Imorean pushed off, back into the air. Vortigern screeched at him and dove. Faster. Dig deeper. He had more than this. Deeper seemed like the easiest wealth of strength to find. Imorean raised his sword. A column of flame leaped from it, striking Vortigern across the chest. Imorean banked as Vortigern was hurled off his dive. Vortigern pulled up hard, eyes blazing. Imorean turned in the air. Where was Inmerael? He couldn’t take his eyes off Vortigern to look for him, though. Vortigern launched upward. Imorean dove to meet him. Against the dark sky, he could just see tongues of fire blazing across Vortigern’s wings. His targets. White flashed in Imorean’s vision as he raised his sword again. His weapon met Vortigern’s with a crash that shook his bones. Block him, block him. Imorean held, held with all the strength he had. They were falling. Imorean reached out and grabbed hold of one of Vortigern’s flaming wings. He screamed. His hand burned, black fire searing his skin. In spite of pain, Imorean jerked and twisted, feeling fine bones snap under his fingers. Vortigern howled. White overtook the black feathers. They curled, shriveling, and burned away. Ground not far. Imorean pulled off, sliding on the black sand. Vortigern smashed into the dark earth. Imorean pushed himself upright and caught his breath. His hand was scorched, but Vortigern was down, wings ruined. Waste no time. Imorean pushed down emotion. There was no space for it here. Vortigern rose halfway off the ground, his eyes blazing, tongues of gray flame clinging to the periphery of his face. Imorean didn’t stop. He lowered his sword and swung. Metal met feather, blood and bone. He skidded to a halt a few paces behind Vortigern. Vortigern was stock still, frozen in his half-risen position. Imorean stopped. The ground behind him had turned to glittering glass. A seared, black wing fell from Vortigern’s shoulder, sliced away at the joint. Dark droplets of blood were barely visible against the glass.

  Silence. Then a wail of agony. Vortigern pushed up, tottering on his feet. Imorean locked eyes with him, the fallen wing twitching on the ground between them. Vortigern spun his sword. Imorean gathered his strength and pushed, more power pounding through his veins. Vortigern broke into a sprint. Imorean checked his stance. Defend. Vortigern was nearly on him – only feet away now. The black sword swung for an upward attack. Imorean prepared to block. He was ready. Fractions remained. How much longer would Vortigern keep going? White rippled the corners of his vision. A presence landed in front of him. Imorean stumbled, knocked half a pace off balance. Inmerael. Imorean saw Vortigern’s eyes widen in something like horror. But he was already too far into his attack. Dark air parted around the black sword as it plunged, flaming, through Inmerael’s chest. Vortigern froze.

  Stillness. Imorean couldn’t move. He couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to. Vortigern stood stock still in front of him, his mouth moving in silence. In that moment, he looked small. Imorean could have sworn he saw him trembling. Inmerael settled a hand on Vortigern’s shoulder. A small smile crossed his face. Apology flashed through the air. Then Inmerael’s fingers dug into Vortigern’s shirt and his knuckles turned white.

  “Take him, Imorean.”

  Murder. Deliberate murder. Kill Vortigern. Imorean pushed his hesitation away. There was no time for it. Not here. He gathered any power, any heat, any light he had remaining in his soul. White-bladed sword came alight, tongues of flame returning. Then he was there, next to Inmerael. Vortigern turned to him, emotion rushing expression. Imorean closed his eyes. Look into Vortigern’s as he killed him? Even after everything, he couldn’t do it. Flaming metal met target, piercing skin and muscle, rupturing organs, shifting bones. Yet there was no resistance. No retaliation. The tip of his sword cleared Vortigern’s back, returning to open air, the handle buried against Vortigern’s shirt.

  Imorean gritted his teeth and stepped back, maintaining his grip on his sword handle. The weapon exited Vortigern’s chest. Vortigern’s eyes shifted out of focus and he stumbled back a step, out of Inmerael’s grip. Then he fell, gray eyes fixed on the dark sky overhead. Imorean flinched as Vortigern hit the sand. His second murder. But had it really been murder? Had it been vengeance? Had it been both? He took a deep breath, desperate to steady himself. Next to him, Inmerael groaned low in his throat and collapsed against the sand. Imorean dropped to his knees. Heterochromatic eyes raised to meet brown. Imorean trembled, heat in his veins extinguishing. He was the only one not dying – fading from all existence.

  “Your mortality would be of use now,” panted Inmerael, breathing labored, blood welling at his side.

  “How …? Is Vortigern …? Why did you get in the way?” asked Imorean. He shivered. “You didn’t need to. We could have both come out of this.”

  Inmerael laughed quietly, then pressed a hand to his abdomen. “No, Imorean. We were never coming out of this together. We both know that. I had to be the key to his defeat. Only one of us could have ever slipped inside his guard. To harm me again … that was his downfall. Just as to be faced with harming you was almost Michael’s.”

  Imorean looked over his shoulder at Vortigern. Breath, rapid and shallow. Gray eyes were on him. No, not looking at him, but through him, at Inmerael. Imorean widened his senses. Desperation. Pleading. Fear, thick and dark, stretched the air. Inmerael groaned again. Imorean realized with a jolt that there was no fear in Inmerael – only acceptance. Perhaps a touch of relief. Vortigern was the one afraid.

  A worn hand rested on Imorean’s, and he looked up as Inmerael broke eye contact with Vortigern. “It is time for you to go home. Your hour is nearly up. Imorean, will you take my immortality in exchange for your mortality?”

  Imorean hesitated. Humanity. The chance at something normal after this – if he accepted immortality, that would be gone. If he didn’t, they would all be trapped here. Him in this underworld. Inmerael dying for the rest of eternity. No. Immortality was the only way. A dark, charred wing landed on the strip of black glass between Vortigern and Inmerael. Reaching.

  “Please, Imorean. I cannot let him go into the abyss alone.”

  Imorean took a breath. This was it. “Yes. I told you I would. I stand by that.”

  “Thank you. Tell my brothers that I watched for as long as I could.” Inmerael’s grip tightened and fell slack.

  Imorean rocked back on his heels. An untarnished, white wing met Vortigern’s dark one on the ground, black and white feathers merging together. Imorean looked over his shoulder. Gray eyes slid closed and every feather on Vortigern’s remaining wing fell flat. Afterlife ebbed away.

  “Wait for me. Imorean …”

  Imorean swallowed, turning back to Inmerael. “Yes?”

  “I made the right choice.”

  Heterochromatic eyes closed. White feathers stilled over black, both wings limp. Silence. Darkness. The air shivered. Imorean did, too. Then he fell backward. Energy. Hot. It flowed into him, inexorable – the wealth of a lifetime. Senses came alight. Awareness surged into him. Fire bled through his veins. Darkness glowed and burned with its own light. The world was a treasure. Imorean gasped and breathed. The air had its own sweet tang. The universe stretched ahead of him – unending and eternal. He could see its beginning. Stars died and gave birth in front of his eyes. Life began. Waves rose and fell on an endless ocean. He could feel everything and nothing. Power. Capability. The atmosphere sang. Time folded, pulling apart and melding back together. The world fell to pieces. The universe ended. No stars. No light. Only a faint hue of orange remained. Orange, pulsing and moving. Alive and not alive. Then orange burst. Color streaked Imorean’s vision. Green, purple, blue, yellow. Rainbow. Warmth bloomed in his chest, digging down beneath his skin. Reality sheared through him. The precipice of existence. Life itself. In his mind’s eye, he stepped forward. Return to the world.

  Brown eyes opened. Imorean pushed up and panted. He felt as though he had just run a marathon. Skin rippled. He was alone. Alone with no way out. No hint of how to get home. Then movement. Before him, Inmerael burst into white, feather flame, sweeping over the small arena and lingering over Vortigern before fi
ltering up into the air, creating light in this darkest of places. Imorean paused and looked back. Empty. Inmerael and Vortigern were gone. Imorean felt a gentle brush of thanks. Bright light broke the sky above, dousing glittering stars and beaming down on him like a spotlight. It spun like a disc, widening and rumbling as it moved in the darkness. White glowed down on him, gray lingered on the fringes. Imorean looked up into the white light he was so familiar with. He knew what he had to do. Inmerael had provided his way home. He laughed and pulled the object Michael had pressed into his hand an hour ago from his pocket. A coin. Identical to the one Inmerael had given to Charon. He balanced it on his thumb and flipped it, letting it drop down into the sand.

  “I’ve got my own ride, Charon. Mom, Roxy, Michael, I’m coming back.”

  White wings opened and Imorean pushed the ground away, his vision filming over as he soared upward. Home.

  Chapter 75

  Roxy wrapped her fingers around Ryan’s as the distant figures of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel took their places around the summit of Mount Erebus. They had flown to Antarctica in what must have been record time, Michael teleporting them more than half the way. Roxy raised one hand and wiped her eyes. To cry here, the tears would freeze to her face. Imorean. Imorean was gone. He had been dead four days now. A sob worked her way up her throat unbidden. Her best friend. Dead. She would never get the sight of him lying on the ground – sword sheared clear through his body, held in Michael’s arms – out of her head. Or the way his body dissolved in a burst of white. There hadn’t even been anything to mourn. To bury. Just gone. As though he had never existed. She looked up as Ryan’s grip tightened on her hand.

  “It’s okay, Roxy,” he said. “They’re … they’re going to make this right.”

  “It doesn’t change what’s happened, Ryan,” she said, trying to steady her voice. Was grief allowed? They were still on a mission. Could she possibly allow herself to grieve for the best friend she had ever had? The friend she had become so distant from.

  Thunder crashed overhead. Roxy swallowed. Michael had decided that since Zeus could not provide the lightning they needed, he would do it himself. Roxy shook her head and turned her face into Ryan’s shoulder. If only she hadn’t left Imorean. She could have helped him. She should have stayed. He put an arm around her and Roxy choked back another sob.

  Imorean. Amelia, Rachel and Isaac. The two parts of the family would never see each other again. Roxy closed her eyes. Amelia, Rachel and Isaac were here, too, but guarded by several of Raguel’s team at the Antarctic angel base, Sunderholm. Roxy closed her eyes, her chest tight. Rachel and Isaac had been found hidden away in ruins, only a few hundred yards downhill from where she, the squad, Raguel and Gabriel had found Imorean. Roxy rubbed the back of her hand. A few grooves still lingered on the skin after Rachel had scratched her. Isaac had stared at her with sheer hate in his gray eyes. Roxy pressed her face into Ryan’s chest as he pulled her close. The utter hate in their eyes. It was unnatural. The emptiness in Amelia’s. It wasn’t … it wasn’t right. Everything was wrong. Imorean wasn’t supposed to be dead. His family wasn’t supposed to be ruined. Nothing was right. Roxy raised one hand and gripped her hair hard, trying to fight tears. Agony. This was agony. Splitting and furious. Nothing was right. Her best friend was dead. Nothing would ever be right again.

  Thunder rumbled from the summit of Mount Erebus. Roxy turned. It registered only in the back of her mind that Kadia, Colton and Baxter had joined them. One of Baxter’s arms was bandaged and held in a sling. Colton was wingless once again. A patch of bandage covered Kadia’s cheek. Roxy raised her gaze to the top of Erebus. Dark clouds swirled above it like a hurricane. A flash of neon green caught her eye. Then purple, blue and yellow. Snow crunched as Sariel arrived next to them. Roxy glared at him. Raphael, Uriel and Sariel had arrived in Greece not long after the battle had finished, but they had been much too late to be of any help to Imorean. She could have sworn she had caught Sariel smiling at the Temple of Apollo. If he noticed her glare, he gave no indication of it. His blue eyes were riveted to the top of Erebus.

  “They aren’t strong enough.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ryan.

  Sariel turned. “This process requires five Archangels. It’s why they’ve never attempted this. Each Archangel presents an element of the blockade – that’s why we needed five elements – to match the number of true Archangels. Michael’s taking the weight of his own place, Zeus’s element and Imorean’s place. This isn’t going to work.”

  Kadia shuffled her wings. “Can’t you help them?”

  “I’m not an Upper Archangel. Imorean was the only one who could have helped.”

  Roxy looked back up at the summit. Purple, blue and yellow glowed against a black sky. The bellies of the clouds lit murky green. Another rumble of thunder broke the sky. Sariel’s eyes darted from side to side and he took half a step toward the volcano.

  “Come on … come on,” he urged, voice a whisper.

  Neon lightning crashed over the volcano summit. Purple, blue, yellow. Colors skewed, imploding outward. The clouds above the volcano burst with light, shattering like stained glass. Lightning erupted haywire. Some inverted, furrowing back into the clouds themselves. Bolts struck the summit haphazard. Control was gone. A fragment of the summit exploded, great chunks of stone flying through the air. Sariel cried out. Roxy raised a hand to her mouth. Yellow, Uriel, blinked out as green lightning crashed into the summit. Blue, Raphael, disappeared, obscured by an explosion of snow. A flash of purple went down, vanishing under the hail of distant stone.

  Shockwave. Roxy cried out as she smacked against the ground. White ruptured over the summit, erupting even now in front of her eyes. Flashes of yellow, blue and purple crashed to the ground around her, hurled all the way from Erebus. The world hazed over and sound dimmed. Roxy lifted her head from the snow. Michael landed hard some distance behind them, unmoving. She groaned and rolled over to push herself up.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  White cleared from Imorean’s vision. Cold? An understatement. He was freezing. His short-sleeved shirt did nothing to block out the world. He rubbed his eyes a few times. Surely, he had cleared the white from the fringes of his eyes. Then he blinked. This wasn’t his unnatural white. Snow? He looked around. Endless freeze stretched on in every direction. A few faces of black stone showed through the powder blanket. He turned. The slope of a mountain stretched up into low clouds behind him. A smile broke across his face. Some instinct told him that this was Mount Erebus. Antarctica. Inmerael had brought him home – to his friends. A low groan made him turn again. His heart skipped a beat. Roxy. She was sitting halfway up, her eyes on him, filling with tears.

  “How … what…?” she whispered. She shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  Imorean bit his lip and caught her by the upper arm, pulling her to her feet. “Hey.”

  “You’re – but you were – oh my God.” Roxy fell against him, burying her face into his neck and sobbing. Imorean wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. His throat constricted. Breathing felt thick.

  “Imorean!”

  Imorean looked up, Roxy clutching his shirt. Colton and Kadia were on their feet, running to them. He stumbled as they launched on him, trying to reach every part of him. He pulled them as close as he could. Just beyond, Baxter limped toward him. Imorean smiled and reached out one of his wings, brushing Baxter’s with his own. Ryan and Sariel stared at him in shock. Imorean smiled at them both and dropped his chin to rest on top of Roxy’s head. Ryan shrugged and approached, a smile on his face.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m glad you’re back.”

  Imorean laughed. There would be time to tell them later.

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. Imorean turned. Gabriel stood behind him, a smile already on his face. Imorean let go of Roxy, who dropped her hold on him after a second of hesitation. He flashed her a smile, then laughed as he was pick
ed up in a hug.

  “You are brilliant!” shouted Gabriel, spinning around.

  “Put him down, Gabriel!” called Raphael, a breath of laughter leaving his mouth.

  Imorean stumbled half a step as Gabriel dropped him. Raphael approached, offering a warm smile. Imorean returned it, but faltered as Raphael’s died, eyes widening.

  “What have you done?”

  Imorean opened his mouth to reply, when Uriel tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. “I think someone’s looking for you.”

  A tiny smile pulled at the sides of Imorean’s mouth as he turned, eyes following where Uriel pointed. Colton, Kadia and Roxy shuffled out of the way. Michael stood just beyond them. Brown eyes met green. Imorean stepped toward him, Michael mirroring his actions. His steps felt light, like he was walking on air. Heat sparked in his chest. He stopped a pace away from Michael. Emerald eyes scanned his face, lingering on his and staring into them as though he might disappear at a moment’s notice. Imorean smiled and opened his mind. Fear. Hope. Apprehension. Uncertainty. Michael raised one hand. Waiting. A silent request. Imorean nodded and Michael pressed a hand to his cheek. One tear left Michael’s eyes and Imorean’s throat constricted as he found himself pulled into a bone-crushing hug. Imorean wrapped his arms around Michael in return and dropped his forehead to his shoulder. He drew a breath as he felt Michael lower them both to the freezing ground. Relief. Grief. Self-loathing. Shock. His emotions were a mess. A confusing tangle. Imorean pulled him as close as he could, pushing his own emotions toward him, trying to help Michael make sense of what he felt.

  Michael’s voice was a whisper. He was trembling. “I thought I lost you.”

  “You’d never get rid of me so easily,” said Imorean, resting his chin on Michael’s shoulder. A splash of damp landed on his shirt.

  “Do you understand what you have done?” asked Michael. “Archangel?”

  “I know. I know what this means.” Imorean swallowed hard. “Inmerael says he watched over you for as long as he could.”