“Then why now?” Ronan spit. “Why wait eighty years to avenge her? If you loved her, then you’d have killed Ivar decades ago.”
“Emelia would have died anyway. She was human, Ronan.”
The other vir sat heavily back in his chair and crossed his thick arms over his chest. He shook his head and his mouth turned down in disgust. “You’re a cold bastard. Just because she had an expiration date, then it meant nothing for her life to be snuffed out?”
Cadan’s hardness broke then, giving away his emotions through his eyes. He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “Please, Ronan. Tomorrow we can fight this out. Tonight I just need your cooperation. It’s not for me, it’s for her.”
Ronan made an ugly noise and his gaze settled on me. “This little thing? A replacement for Emelia? or have you finally a discovered a taste for human flesh?”
I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. “You talk about me as if I’m a scrap of food and you only insult Emelia’s memory by doing so. Was she just a ‘meat-bag’ to you too?”
Ronan lunged across the table for me, talons sprouting from his fingertips, vicious fangs springing from his gums. My instinct was to lean away from him and call my swords, but before I did either, Cadan was on his feet, reaching over me, and he grabbed Ronan by the throat and shoved him back down into his seat. Yet again, I’d almost just blown my cover, and Cadan reiterated this fact with a frustrated glare in my direction.
He turned back to Ronan. “I’ll tear your esophagus right out if you make a move for her again. Are we clear?”
“Like glass,” Ronan hissed, baring his fangs before they shrunk back into normal-sized teeth.
As Cadan sat down again, I tried not to notice the many pairs of eyes now focused on the three of us. My heart began to thrum harder as my nerves got to me. This plan wasn’t going well. I wanted to just get out, but we needed this information. I had to save Will. I had to see this through.
Ronan studied my face and tilted his head curiously. His shoulders rose and fell as he tried to calm his rage, but the more he stared at me, the more anxious he became. “I think I know what’s going on. I hear all about you, Cadan, and what you’ve been up to.”
“For the last time, this isn’t about me,” Cadan replied firmly.
“No, it isn’t, is it?” Ronan asked, his lips pulling into an unpleasant grin. “Nobody brings humans in here, and I know you don’t reap any more than I do. I know who she is.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cadan said, dismissing Ronan’s accusation. “Where’s virgil?”
Ronan’s eyes went wide and his head fell back as he laughed. “That confirms it! You want to know where a Grigori is? Your pet isn’t who you say she is.”
“She’s human,” Cadan snarled. “Don’t do this. I am begging you. I love her, Ronan.”
Ronan’s dark smile widened. “And you brought her right into the wolves’ den. You must be in love with her if you want her dead.”
Cadan’s body went stone-stiff. “Let’s go,” he said to me in a low, rapid voice. “This was a mistake.”
I started to push my chair back when Ronan spoke again. “I know why you want a Grigori, little lamb. We wolves have big ears. How’s the mighty Hammer? Boiling from the inside out, is he?”
Cadan was already standing as I froze and stared at Ronan.
“Ellie.” Cadan tried to drag me to my feet, but I sat bolted to the chair.
“Your Guardian’s dead,” Ronan taunted. “Just as the worthless, self-righteous bastard ought to be.”
Cadan swore, but he had no power to stop me as I exploded and the world moved too slowly to keep up with me. My energy detonated and I flipped the table up with my hands. Ronan was on his feet, but I had already leaped airborne, flying over the midair table, my swords shimmering into existence and bursting with angelfire. One blade slashed down Ronan’s chest in a flash of blood and white fire, shredding his shirt and skin. He roared and staggered back, clutching his bleeding chest as I landed.
The club erupted into chaos.
Demonic reapers charged at me from all sides and I unleashed my archangel glory. Cadan took one look at me and ducked for shelter behind the flipped table. Snarling faces and blazing eyes were drowned by the blinding white divine light that was even more deadly than my angelfire. Bodies exploded into flame and ash as my glory swept through the crowd, drenching them in burning light. I lost track of Ronan as I spun and swung my Khopesh swords, the white flames lighting up about a dozen demonic faces—all that was left of the horde after I released my glory. As one blade swept through the neck of a reaper and the second blade buried into the ribcage of another, I had to remind myself that Cadan was out there somewhere, fighting with me. He wasn’t Will, who was immune to my angelfire. My weapons were just as deadly to Cadan as they were to my enemies.
I cut through the wall of reapers, my skin splitting against sharp nails, and my ears filled with animalistic screeches and snarls. Hot blood dappled my face and arms, caked my clothing, smeared through my hair. I split a reaper from navel to neck and caught Cadan’s eye through the flames. He yanked his sword out of a vir’s heart and kicked the body away from him. At his feet was an ever-increasing pile of rubble.
A hand closed around my neck and jerked me around. More hands grabbed my arms, halting my sword strikes, and they yanked the Khopesh swords from my grip. I thrashed against them, but at least three reapers had hold of me—there were just so many bodies, so many that I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. I could only move and throw myself around. Gabriel was coming, I could feel that part of me swimming to the surface from black depths. I could see the reflection of my face in the glossy black eyes of the demonic reaper choking me. My own eyes were filling with white as I began to lose myself to my power, but I couldn’t let that happen. I tightened my entire body, straining to keep hold of my sanity, to stay here. If I let go, I was sure I could destroy every last one of the reapers in the room—but that included Cadan.
Cadan.
He was there, appearing out of nowhere, slicing the head off one of the reapers holding my right arm. Now that I was partially free, I locked my gaze with the reaper squeezing my throat. I slammed my hand into the weak point on her arm, right into her elbow joint. Bone snapped and she released me as she threw her head back and screamed in pain and rage. I smashed my palm into her face, shattering her nose, driving bone and cartilage so deep into her skull that she turned to stone immediately—dead.
I turned to the last reaper holding my other arm and I buried my knee in his gut, making him double over with a grunt. A shadow fell over both of us and I looked up, gasping, with just enough time to dive to the side as Cadan slashed his sword through the reaper’s neck, nearly taking my own off with it. The reaper’s grip went slack and he crumbled to stone in front of me.
Demonic energy exploded in my face, sending me flying across the room like a kicked doll. I landed hard on a table, pain shooting up and down my spine, wood cracking under me. I looked up and stared into the face of the vir as she came down through the air. I rolled off the table and hit the floor just as she hit the table, shattering it beneath her weight. I scrambled toward my swords. She tore at me, claws hooking my clothes as my hands found the silver helves. I bounced to my feet and reeled on her. My sword disappeared into her chest, slipping under her rib cage and shredding her heart. She screamed as her body went up in flames, and another demonic presence flashed behind me. I swung my body around with a cry of desperation, my blade sweeping up toward a bare throat—and I stopped, my sword barely an inch from taking off Cadan’s head as he locked eyes with me. I gasped and the angelfire went out. I lowered the Khopesh and he swallowed hard with a deep breath.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, embarrassed that I’d nearly just killed him.
“No sweat.” He looked around uncomfortably, but we’d destroyed every demonic vir. The female was the last of them—besides Cadan, at least. I took a moment to realize that I had never expected to find
myself fighting alongside a demonic reaper. But he’d had my back, very much like Will had always done.
Then I remembered why we’d come here. “Ronan,” I groaned, and searched the club in a panic.
I spotted him darting for the door at the same time Cadan did, but he was faster than me. He moved with ultra reaper speed, vanishing from sight and reappearing in Ronan’s path. He slammed his palm into Ronan’s chest with a rush of demonic strength and sent him soaring through the air. His body crashed through tables and chairs as he hit the floor. Ronan thrashed and was on his feet in moments, but Cadan grabbed his throat, lifted him off his feet, and smashed his back into the floor, shattering tile.
“Stay!” Cadan roared into the other reaper’s face.
Ronan loosed an angry groan of pain, squeezing his eyes shut, fangs lengthening in agony, and Cadan backed off, letting me approach. Ronan looked up as I shoved my foot into his throat and poised a flaming Khopesh at his face. Slowly, he raised his hands in defeat.
My chest heaved as I caught my breath. “It’s over,” I told him. “You’re the only one left. There’s no one coming to save your ass now.” The club was annihilated. Ash and rock littered the floor as if there’d been a landslide. Tables and chairs were shattered, couches shredded, the floor cracked and uprooted. I looked down at Ronan, who didn’t dare let his gaze wander from mine.
“You…are mighty, Gabriel,” Ronan gasped. “I see why he follows you.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant my Guardian or Cadan. That didn’t matter now. “There doesn’t have to be any more blood on this floor. Will you help me freely, or do I have to force you?”
“Not all of us are warriors for Hell,” the reaper replied carefully. “Some of us just want to live.”
I lifted my chin and looked down my nose at the demonic reaper, tapping into Gabriel’s fierceness, giving Ronan my best scary archangel face. “You seem to have been deceived by my mortal vessel. Because you are a demonic reaper who does not reap, I am willing to demonstrate the mercy of Heaven instead of turning you to fire and ash. If you wish to live, then you will tell me what you know. Where can I find the Grigori angel known as virgil?”
“I’m sorry, Gabriel,” Ronan said, his gaze faltering for an instant. “But I have bad news. virgil is dead. He was killed, along with several other Grigori in the past few weeks, presumably by the beast that Bastian unleashed.”
“Sammael,” I snarled, tasting something bitter on my tongue. “He’s wiping out the Grigori.”
Ronan nodded. “I’ve heard that he’s trying to take out anything even remotely angelic that may be a threat to him. Once he’s strong enough, he’ll go after the Cardinals.”
“Do you mean the Grigori lords?” I asked. “Of the North, South, East, and West?”
“Yes. The Watchers may be chained to the earth, but they’re the closest thing to an archangel’s power in this realm—besides you, of course.”
Cadan let out a frustrated breath. “He’ll go after Antares, the Lord of the West, first, because she’s the closest. She’s bound to the mountains, up in the Rockies.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Can the Cardinals be killed?”
“Anything made by divine power can be unmade by divine power,” Ronan spoke up. “All things are limited by the balance.”
Which included archangels—and even Sammael himself. Sammael had once been an angel. If he’d been created, then he could be destroyed. That gave me a flicker of hope. We had a chance at saving one of the Grigori lords from Sammael. And once Will was healed, we could take Sammael down for good before he could kill any more of the Watchers.
“Virgil is dead,” I repeated, thinking aloud. “Are there any other Grigori nearby, Ronan? Any that could cure a demonic reaper’s venom?”
“Again,” Ronan replied, his voice small, “I am sorry, but I have nothing that could help you. I wish you luck, truly I do. Sammael can’t finish what he’s started.”
I released Ronan and let my swords disappear while he climbed to his feet. “Cadan.” I sighed, turning to my friend. “We have to find Antares before Sammael does. If he kills her first, then there’s no way to save Will.”
He closed his eyes. “We can find anoth—”
“No!” My screech echoed through the empty club, making the two demonic reapers jump and startling even me by its sharpness. I took a deep breath to calm myself, but my lips wouldn’t stop trembling. “We have to do this. If you don’t want to help me, then I’ll find her myself. Sammael has the grimoire and I have no leads on the missing copy Nathaniel made. If Antares gets hostile, then I’ll fight her!”
“Ellie,” he protested. “Let’s spend the rest of the night think—”
“We don’t have time to sit around and think anymore!” I cried. “The Lord of the West is just a few states away and we can get there in just a few hours. Don’t you want to help me? Don’t you want to save Will?”
“I don’t care about him!” Cadan shouted, his fire opal eyes flashing blindingly bright. “I care about you! I will help save his life for you, because you love him. It’s all for you!”
Tears poured down my cheeks and I buried my face in my hands. Maybe this was too much to ask and it wasn’t right using him the way I was. We’d fought at least a dozen demonic vir minutes ago, and he’d even saved my life.
“I’m just hurting you,” I whimpered. “I’m sorry.”
“The second Will wakes up, he will try to kill me,” Cadan said breathlessly. “I will help you save him and I won’t stop him when he comes for me.”
I stared at him. “I can’t let you throw your life away like that.”
His gaze matched mine. “And I can’t let you throw away yours, either.”
I’d completely forgotten that Ronan was still there, that we were still in that club. Cadan didn’t make a move to touch me, but he was shaking as if he was fighting himself with everything he had.
“I’m going to find Antares with or without your help,” I said at last. “But it’d be a hell of a lot easier with your help.”
His eyes searched mine and we were again trapped in that fragile silence, balancing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for a gust of wind to blow one of us over into the abyss. “I want to help you. I’ll go with you.”
“Thank you,” I said to him, shaking.
“Antares will know what is needed to heal Will,” he said. “She will know everything we need, because she…She is the original author of the grimoire.”
“Antares wrote the grimoire?” I almost shouted.
Cadan nodded, letting his gaze fall.
“Then we have to go to her,” I said, my heart lifted. “She knows everything about divine magic. Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you try to find another Grigori before her? She’s the one we need!”
I was turning wild with hope, and he held my face with his hands to steady me. His eyes drove into mine. “Because Antares won’t give up the information willingly. If she doesn’t just kill us, then she’ll name a price and I don’t know what it will be.”
My hands smoothed over his and guided them down. “Anything. I would give anything to save him.”
He drew in a long breath and let it out just as slowly, his eyes closing for a moment. “Ellie, a Grigori isn’t like you, or Michael, or Azrael. They’re still Fallen angels. They’re trapped here. Earth is their prison. Antares is one of only four Cardinals in the entire world and the most powerful of their kind. They are the Watchers and they are bound to the place where they fell.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he began, “that Antares fell before time began and she’s trapped there. The Cardinal Watchers are practically mad, Ellie. They’ve been forced to watch the world go by with little to no contact from anyone for so long they have become elemental. And you…You’re an archangel. You put her there. I don’t know what she would do if she saw you.”
Did I have the strength, in my human body, t
o fight her if she attacked me? What sort of price would she demand from me for Will’s cure?
“He’s right,” Ronan said from behind us. “I’ve heard stories, but Cadan is the only person I know who’s met one of the Lords. You’d be wise to take his advice.”
I turned to face him, narrowing my gaze. My hands trembled and I tightened them into fists to hold them steady. “I don’t have time to be wise while my Guardian is dying. I have to do whatever I can to save him. Wouldn’t you have done the same for Emelia?”
His eyes brightened almost imperceptibly. “If I’d been as crazy as you, she might still be alive.”
“Sometimes crazy is a surprisingly successful last resort,” I replied. Cadan and I headed for the exit.
“Cadan,” Ronan called, and we looked back at him. “If you love her, then let her go. You know you have to.”
Cadan’s teeth clenched, but he made no move or response to the other vir. I put my hand on his arm and guided him with me.
“Let’s go,” I said softly. “He doesn’t have anything else to say.”
He let me lead him from the club and we walked to his car in silence. Too many thoughts ran through my head for conversation, and I assumed the same for him as well. We both knew that I was using him, but he was willing to put his life in danger to help me. I couldn’t process what was happening. All I could think about was Will, dying on a kitchen table.
I climbed into the seat, fastened my belt, and leaned back. My eyes fluttered open and shut as Cadan got in the car and turned the ignition. He glanced at me.
“You should try to sleep,” he offered, his voice quiet.
I shook my head, fighting to keep my eyes open. “I can’t sleep.”
And then I did.
3
BEFORE I OPENED MY EYES, I FELT THE COOL MOIST air on my face and it smelled like the sea. The wind was chilly, combing through my hair and pulling at my clothes. I opened my eyes and stared at the ocean in front of me—and the next second I realized in horror that the ocean was hundreds of feet below me. Giant waves crashed upon jagged rocks at the foot of the cliff I leaned over. A sharp gasp escaped me and I flailed back, my heart pounding against my rib cage.