Chapter 55
ANGEL
I found myself in the storage vaults of Xavier’s collections, digging through boxes in the low light.
I’d started looking for a manual for the haunted printer, something, anything that could explain how it connected to Jude, but that search quickly spiraled into something more frantic.
I was looking for a miracle. A thread. A way to bring him back.
The sun rose. I only knew because the guards changed near the elevators. No one stopped me. Keanan and Sylas had appeared briefly, shadows in the doorway, then vanished. Xavier knew I was here. He just didn’t care. Or maybe he knew my search was futile.
Luca appeared, looking tired and hesitant. He held out a mug of coffee.
“Is it drugged?” I asked, taking it. I sniffed, it smelled sweet, like the kind Jude used to drink.
Luca raised a brow. “Do you want it to be? I can ask Xavier. I’m sure he can source something that would put even a dragon to sleep.”
I glared.
“You could use some rest,” he tried again, softer. “Food first, maybe. Then sleep.” His eyes skimmed over me, and I realized what he saw; still half-dressed, blood-stained clothes, hair a mess. I looked like I’d barely survived an explosion. Because I had.
“What would you do,” I said, voice low, “if you lost Skye?”
He flinched.
Good.
I turned back to the shelves. There had to be something. A book. An amulet. A spell that didn’t end in and the soul departs forever. “Is there anything on necromancy in here?”
“I’d have to check the logs,” he said quietly. “But if there is… it’ll be in the magic vault.”
The one door I couldn’t open.
“Open it,” I said, without turning.
He didn’t move.
I spun, ready to snarl, to rage—
And found myself face to face with Victor. Luca vanished into the elevator, and the doors slid closed behind him.
“What the hell,” I bit out. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“And long past yours,” he replied, voice calm as stone. “Have you slept at all?”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“How will that help Jude?”
“He’s dead.”
Victor sighed, a slow, weary sound that scraped against my nerves.
Something in me, the part that was all claw and fang and shattered bond, snapped.
I lunged. My hands fisted in the impossibly fine silk of his shirt, and I drove him back.
His body hit the stone wall of the vault with a solid, jarring thud.
A nearby shelf of crystal artifacts wobbled, then toppled.
The sound of shattering glass rained sharp, glittering pieces across the floor.
“Don’t you dare,” I snarled, my face inches from his.
“He’s gone. I can still feel him in here—” I slammed a fist against my own chest, the impact aching through my ribs.
“—like a phantom limb that won’t stop bleeding.
And every time I close my eyes, I see him unraveling.
For us. For me. I see that monster tugging on him like he’s a gods-be-damned puppet, and me having to sever his life…
” I was shaking with exhaustion, with fury, with a pain so vast it felt like it would tear me into ribbons. “It was me. I killed him.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted to live that way,” Victor said, voice soft.
“You didn’t know him at all!” My voice broke, the shout tearing through the vault’s heavy silence.
The anger turned into something ragged and desperate in my throat, clawing its way out.
“You left him there, Victor. The other half of me, after I was the one who…” The words dissolved.
I couldn’t say it. After I was the one who cut his thread. After I killed him to save him.
Victor’s expression remained unreadable, but his eyes held a glint of understanding, and somehow that was worse.
“Angel.” A voice from behind me, soft but frayed with its own grief. Wade’s hand landed on my shoulder, heavy and warm. “Breathe.”
I shrugged him off violently. “Fuck you both!”
Victor absorbed the violence without a flinch, his body relaxed against the wall as if waiting for a storm to pass. But his gaze didn’t waver, and in its depths I saw a flicker of pain.
“We would have retrieved him,” he said, voice low, “if it had been possible.”
“The demon dragged what was left of him back through the tear,” Wade said, stepping closer.
His voice was calm, but the strain showed in the tight line of his jaw.
“We had no way to follow it. The tear sealed behind him like a wound stitching itself shut.” He paused, watching me.
“But you said the Reaper took Jude’s soul, right?
That should mean he’s… free. That he’s not with the demon anymore. ”
Reaper… Nat.
The name turned like a cog in my chest, giving me a heartbeat of hope.
Was Jude free?
My grip on Victor’s shirt loosened. The silk slipped through my trembling fingers. I took a step back, the fight draining out of me, leaving a hollow, airless chill.
Victor straightened slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.
“It would be better,” he said, watching me, “to retrieve his remains. Regardless of where his soul resides, the physical anchor is a vulnerability. Until the body is completely destroyed, the demon could still… tug on the connection. Perhaps use his powers.”
Wade’s gaze sharpened. “Like some sort of doll?”
“Especially after death,” Victor replied quietly. “Without a soul, there’s no resistance to being used. It’s why the military had been directed to destroy the remains. If Erlik had left the body, the military would have it.”
The air in the vault seemed to grow colder. The glittering shards of crystal on the floor looked like fallen stars, useless, broken lights in the gathering dark. Like pieces of my heart shattered and crushed by reality.
“Even gunfire would leave…” Wade began, but stopped.
He trailed off, his face tightening. He’d been too young for the last war.
He hadn’t seen what Victor and I had. The pyres, the spelled flames, the way a practitioner’s remains could twitch and whisper even in death if not purified by fire.
He’d never watched teams sweep battlefields, gathering every fragment, every drop, to burn until nothing was left but ash.
Victor’s silence said everything. There were protocols for variants now; cremate and scatter. All to keep the dead from becoming weapons. And Jude’s body wasn’t in a certified SED incinerator and returned to me in ash to cherish. It was in the hands of a demon who didn’t follow rules.
“I’m not certain the military having him would be any better,” Victor said, his voice low and tired. “Or that they would follow protocol if they thought they could weaponize what’s left.”
I was painfully aware of exactly how bad it could get.
I’d seen the black sites, the cold rooms where ‘assets’ were stored and studied.
Was it better that he’d been taken by a demon?
The military would want to take him apart slowly, learning how to replicate him, how to control what he was and use him for war.
The demon and the military weren’t all that different, and I hated the idea of either of them having him.
I took a few steps back from Victor, my boots crunching over the broken crystal.
The room tilted, the shelves leaning, the shadows stretching.
The air felt thin, starved of oxygen, or maybe it was just me, unraveling from the inside out.
Grief, rage, and a grinding, helpless fear spun together into a dizzying haze.
Wade was watching me, his eyes steady. “We’ll find him.” His gaze darted to Victor. “Take care of the remains like they should be.” He swallowed hard. “Make sure he’s free.”
A wave of unease passed through me, spiking my heart rate and adding to the dizziness. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t be in that moment because something else was flooding into me; cold, sharp, and alien.
Fear, but not mine, Jude’s.
How? I grasped for the fading sense of our bond, threads pulled tight, and caught only the barest hint of him. The smell of books and burning firewood trickled through the bond. What the hell?
“Jude?” I breathed, hand on the wall to keep myself upright.
“Angel.” Victor’s voice cut through, but it sounded far away.
I turned toward the elevator, needing to get to Jude. The world swam at the edges of my vision, a watercolor blur of stone and shadow, but the goal was a fixed point in the haze. Find Jude. Somehow we were still bound, and I could drag myself across the universe to find him.
Keanan and Sylas materialized from the shadows flanking the elevator entrance.
They stood as twin pillars of quiet resistance, shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the way out.
Keanan’s expression was flat, unreadable stone.
Sylas’s was etched with faint annoyance, as if I were a stubborn piece of furniture that needed relocating.
“Move,” I said, the word more growl than speech.
“We can show you back to your apartment,” Sylas offered, his tone artificially light. “Get you cleaned up.”
“You should rest,” Keanan added.
“Sleep will clear your head,” Sylas echoed.
“Out of my way.” The demand came out sharp and part snarl.
“Xavier’s orders,” Keanan stated, his voice devoid of inflection. “You don’t leave the building.”
“Back to the apartment,” Sylas repeated, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Remain close to the kitten. Or you can stay here and cause more of a mess for Luca to fix later.”
Asshole. As if weaponizing my guilt over the mess would suddenly make me turn tail and run. And Ivan was well-protected in the confines of Xavier’s domain. He didn’t need me. He needed to know I’d done the right thing for his brother.
“I need to find Jude,” I said. The panic through our link faded, scent and touch vanishing as if it had been a dream.
“You need sleep,” Victor said from behind me.
“I agree,” Wade said. “I think we all need some rest.”