Chapter Thirty-Eight
“WE HAVE SEEN THE POWER OF THE HERALDS MANIFEST DIFFERENTLY IN EVERY SAINT, AND IN THESE DIVINE GIFTS, WE WITNESS A HINT OF THE GREATNESS THAT AWAITS US AT THE GATE OF HEAVEN. YET IN THE REFUSAL OF THE EARLIEST SAINTS TO ANSWER THE HERALDS’ CALL, WE HAVE ALSO WITNESSED THE DEVASTATION OF THEIR CORRUPTION AND HOW, IN THE END, THERE WAS NO OTHER CHOICE BUT FOR THE HERALDS’ ARCHANGELS TO DESTROY THEM. ”
I count six, seven, eight Archangels before I drop my gaze back to the ground, my brain spinning, trying to calculate how much time we have, how many of them will actually come down here.
We can’t fight this time. There’s too many of them, even if Orion and Dani had more tricks up their sleeves. Which they don’t.
Orion groans as he pushes himself up to sitting, one hand pressed awkwardly to the gash on his mid-back. I drop down beside him, trying to support him, although my eyes keep straying upward, watching the metal angels circling high above.
“Are you okay? Can you move?”
Orion grimaces. “Not sure about that. My ankle feels pretty messed up.”
My chest tightens, squeezing every breath I’m trying to take.
The number of Archangels coming after us now is going to make it a hundred times harder to run and hide, even with my ability to phase.
It’s going to take so long to try to shake them, to get clear from their searching, glowing eyes and cannon arms.
If we can even shake them at all. And all of that will take me farther and farther away from my goal of getting up to the Gate.
Dani jogs through the smoke, dropping our packs onto the ground and taking a knee on Orion’s other side. “How bad is it, Skywayman?”
“I’m alive.” He nods at her. “Nice shot.”
I can’t stop watching the sky. There are more than eight Archangels up there now, probably a dozen or more, and they seem to be starting to peel away from the Gate and shift into a synchronized line.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen so many of them flying together, but something about the way they move strikes me for the first time.
“Their wings…” I grip the front of Orion’s shirt, drawing his eyes up to me. “You and Liren studied the Archangel back in Concord. They’re not using their wings to fly. What do they use?”
He frowns, his eyebrows crinkling. “Some kind of device in their feet, hooked up to their hearts.”
Before he’s even finished speaking, I’m dumping the contents of his pack onto the ground and snatching up the circular saw he used on the aqueduct walls.
I pull my mask up over my mouth, guarding against the lingering haze of burning niter as I phase back over to the Archangel wreckage.
I don’t let my gaze stray to the remnants of the saint inside it.
If I stop to think about what I’m doing, whether I’m hurting them, I’ll hesitate, and our time is too short for that.
I haven’t gotten this far just to risk my friends’ lives and fail to get any answers.
As quickly as I can, I find the parts I think he’s talking about and cut them free from the metal frame with vicious slices.
I rescue its mechanical heart, too, gathering the whole mess of metal pieces and veins dripping naphtha and phasing back over to them.
I drop everything on the ground next to Orion. “Did I get it all? Will this work?” I ask, half breathless as I snatch up his soldering tool.
Orion exchanges a wary look with Dani and clears his throat. “Val, tell me you’re not doing something supremely idiotic right now. I need to be reassured.”
“They’re designed to collect saints. They’ll follow wherever I go.” I look straight into his eyes, my jaw set. Decided. “You know I’m right.”
There’s a heavy pause between us, and then:
“Dani, help V solder those foot pieces on tight so they don’t fly right off.” Wincing, Orion reaches over and plucks up the naphtha veins, sorting them out and connecting them together with quick, sure fingers.
I chance a quick glance at the sky. The Archangels are spread out now and descending, heading for our area of the garden. The Gate is so far up, and they seem to be moving more slowly, methodically. Like a search party. Even so, my best guess is that we have three minutes.
Four, at most.
Dani leans over me, soldering metal pieces together into cages around my feet. The devices are wide and platelike, gleaming oval discs underneath the soles of my boots.
“This is ridiculous,” she mutters angrily. “You’re just going to end up shooting yourself into a wall. Or worse.”
I smile a little at that, watching her dark-purple hair fall like a curtain across her profile. I’m tempted to reach over and tuck it behind her ear, but I keep my hands to myself. “Like you’d be so lucky.”
Orion finishes rigging up the heart, and I feel the devices warm against my feet as the power starts to flow. He frowns deeply but still hands the heart over to me, pointing to a flat crystal affixed on the bottom.
“This is the only option you’re going to have as far as control. Twist left for more power, right for less.” His gaze traces my face, his expression softening with concern. “Val—”
I clamber awkwardly to my feet, cutting him off before he can get any farther. We don’t have time for whatever soft thing he’s about to say that might make me waver. “Get to better cover. Get out if you can. Don’t wait for me.”
And then, before either of them can stop me, I phase away.
I go as far as I can, straight up into the sky, before I come back together, gasping, and gravity immediately starts to pull me downward.
I fight to keep my feet beneath me, fight to suck breath into my lungs, as I fumble for the crystal and twist it—nope, wrong, other way—and naphtha floods the tangled veins and the devices flare to life.
There hadn’t been enough time down there to consider what it might be like to have rockets attached to the bottoms of my boots, but I’d had at least the vague idea that they’d work in tandem.
They don’t. The momentum nearly tears me apart as my feet are pushed in different directions and I’m whipped through the air in a wild flail.
The world spins around me, my body half crushed by the pressure; I can’t even figure out which direction the ground is in, and just as I’m about to be torn into pieces, I phase.
I hang in and out of existence, molecules in the air.
When I pull myself together again, it’s with my body straight and locked into position, muscles straining to keep my legs and feet practically glued together.
It works. I shoot forward like pulse fire from a pistol, and this time I’m able to angle my body toward the glowing orb of the Gate.
The Archangels spot me almost instantly and change direction, back up into the air.
I glance below and fight the cold shiver down my back.
My breath comes sharp and quick; I lost a lot of air in those initial, flailing moments, and it’s tough to get it back this high up.
It’s making me lightheaded, and the wind whistling past my ears half drowns out Trinity’s song, so I don’t even have that to ground me.
Two Archangels pull in front of me out of nowhere, throwing their wings up like a wall, and I’m so startled that I nearly lose control of my body again. I keep my head enough to phase, angling up and over their wing tips.
I reappear, suck in a desperate breath of thin air—
Another Archangel dives at me from above, clamp-like hands outstretched.
I throw my legs behind me and twist the crystal hard, flooding the naphtha veins with power.
The sharp metal tips of its wings slash across the side of my right leg as I shoot by, and I bite down on the cry of pain that rises to my lips.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, vibrating against my rib cage, as two more Archangels come for me. I spin the crystal shut and drop past them before they can react, then phase back up as high into the air as I can.
I’m used to a rhythm as I phase, a pattern of breath and movement that I can sink into, but all of that is upside down up here and it’s all I can do to keep going, keep reacting, keep staying just out of reach as I work my way closer and closer to the Gate.
Light emanates from every facet of stained glass, but I’m moving too fast to make out the scenes or images they’re depicting.
I’m almost there. I have no idea how I’m going to get in, but I can figure that out.
I just need—
An enormous blast of heat bears down on me. I twist and phase away an instant before it wraps around my body, trying to get my bearings again as I snap back together. All around me, the Archangels’ masks are spinning around—benevolent to malevolent—and their arms are rearranging into cannons.
Shit.
Opening up a flood of power from the naphtha heart, I shoot straight for the Gate, phasing between bursts of cannon fire, slamming into the glass side of it with my clothes pocked by tiny embers and trailing smoke.
There’s hardly any purchase out here, and I have to quick-phase up the side, gasping in air, dodging the Archangels’ hungry fingers.
They don’t shoot at me anymore, though. Not when their cannons might smash a giant hole into the side of this thing.
I cut the flow of naphtha once I make it to the top of the Gate and drop to all fours, panting hard, my muscles shaking with exertion as I try to form a plan because there doesn’t seem to be a door or window or anything I can use to get inside. And the Archangels are still coming.
One of them cuts downward, glowing through its wrathful face, and a desperate idea forms in my brain as I clamber awkwardly to my feet.
When the angel gets close enough, I vanish and then reappear right above it, head down, feet pointed toward the sky as I crank the power flow all the way open.
The naphtha heart flares, flooding the web of veins, rocketing me into the Archangel’s frame.
My momentum propels both of us straight down into the glowing sphere.
In a tangle of limbs and metal, we crash through the top, shattering glass in a multitude of colors as we fall into the heart of the Gate of Heaven.