Chapter 34
When light returned and we stopped moving, I leaned against a tree and vomited into the snow; then I waited for the horrible, spinning nausea to stop.
“Are you all right?” Nin asked, helping me stand up straight. And when the ringing in my ears stopped, I looked around us to see where we were.
We stood near a grave in front of a squat stone church with a wooden belfry. Dozens of graves dotted the rolling hills around the small chapel. It was hard to tell how far the burial grounds stretched, but it felt like the church was a refuge surrounded by death.
Arched windows were dark, and there were no signs of life inside or out. A wooden stable with several empty stalls stood against one side of the flagstone building.
“Is he here?” I whispered, still trying to will my dizziness away with the power of my mind.
Nin’s brow furrowed. “Somewhere. Or he was here? I cannot…” He shook his head and looked at the church with dread in his eyes. “Do not leave my side, whatever happens.”
“Never,” I said fiercely, meaning it.
He clasped my hand, and we walked toward the church’s front door. A thick metal sign had been bolted into the nearby stone:
OLD DUTCH CHURCH
1697
Somewhere in the corners of my mind, I recalled Mrs. Culpepper mentioning a church as one of Riverbend’s few neighbors. I had never thought I’d be traveling this far.
A broken padlock lay on the ground in front of the door. Was Kesh here? What did he want from Nin? Judging by the fraught look on Nin’s face, he didn’t know the answer to that either.
He pulled open the door, and we stepped over the threshold into the cold, dim light.
We stood in a narrow vestibule, peering through to a humble sanctuary.
Unvarnished floorboards stretched beneath three neat rows of pews that all looked toward an altar flanked by two arched windows.
An ornate wooden pulpit floated several feet above the congregation, with access provided by a small, curving set of stairs.
No one else was here. No one I could see. “Where is he?” I whispered.
That answered itself when glass exploded.
I screamed in terror.
The dark silhouette of a man leapt into the church from the broken window, clearing the windowsill with ease and skidding among shards of glass and swirling snow.
He wore no top hat now, but I recognized him instantly.
“Brother,” he called out happily. “You got my message.”
“Hard to miss,” Nin called back.
Kesh brushed away snow from his coat. “I do like to make a statement.” He smiled darkly in our direction. “Bet you it’ll take months for anyone to find Lavina’s latest body, good riddance. I’m thinking you owe me a favor for that, as much as you must despise her right about now.”
“I owe you exactly nothing.”
“How about that human of yours?” He ducked to see around Nin’s head until his eyes caught mine. “There you are, little nurse. You may thank me for your freedom any way you’d like.”
“You didn’t free us,” I said, hoping I sounded braver than I felt.
“Didn’t I?” Kesh straightened and reached for something strapped to his back. “That’s funny. You both seem to be out of the protection of the aegis. Let’s see just how free you are without our father’s protection.”
Kesh held what he’d retrieved, and from where we stood across the pews, I couldn’t make out what it was…
Until he held it up to his shoulder and nocked an arrow against it.
Bow. Before I could shout a warning, Nin pushed me all the way behind him. The arrow flew over the pews and made a sickening landing in Nin’s shoulder.
The same one that I had worked to heal.
His scream of pain nearly knocked me backward. “What have you done, Kesh?!” he shouted at his brother.
“Just made the playing field fair,” Kesh called back as Nin bellowed in fury while pulling the arrow from his flesh.
The tip had gone in, but it hadn’t been strong enough to pierce through his entire shoulder—and for that, I was grateful.
With a wet, sucking noise, the arrow came loose.
Nin groaned and tossed it to the floorboards, dripping blood.
“You have made an enemy of me, Brother,” Nin barked through clenched teeth.
“You’ve been my enemy since the day your ugly body slid out of your mother and defiled our home. My real brother is gone because of you and your mother.”
“She’s your mother too.”
Kesh shook his head. “She’s a charlatan, just like you. Neither of you deserve to step foot in my home, yet there you both are, pretending at being gods.”
“So be it,” Nin said.
Panic ballooned inside my chest. Nin doubled over, straining. I tried to talk to him, but his arm shot out to stop me.
Something was happening to him. Something big.
I backed away as he bent low, groaning and straining…
“What have you done to him?” I shouted back at Kesh.
“Nothing you can fix. This is who you’ve pledged yourself to, little nurse. Behold the beast that is my little brother.”
A shadow spread across the floorboards. I slowly turned back around and gasped at what I found.
Phantasmic black wings erupted from Nin’s shoulder blades. They ripped holes in his jacket and shot out from him like a speeding train emerging from a tunnel, spreading down his spine and blooming across his shoulders.
Until they were bigger than him.
Bigger than both of us.
“There he is,” Kesh said as black wings erupted from his own shoulders. “Now we can fight fair.”
Shock rooted my feet to the floor. Nin’s wings were ghastly, with missing feathers and bloodied bones showing through in places.
They looked like the wings of a vulture who’d been half mauled and left for dead.
But when he lifted his head, the wings flapped.
His arm reached for me and encircled my waist, and in one quick movement, he jerked me off my feet to hold me against his chest. Then his big wings expanded, and he leapt into the air with me. Wind rushed past—
And we were flying! Flying!
Twined thrills of excitement and fear zipped through me while Nin’s wings flapped ferociously, lifting us higher and higher… It was astonishing how fast we moved, and I had nothing to compare the sensation to but sledding in Central Park after a heavy snowfall.
But sledding was on the ground, and this was…
Something altogether more heart-pounding.
My stomach dipped as Nin ascended over the church pews. I wrapped my arms around his stony torso as he flew toward the rafters and then dove through the broken church window.
Sunlight glittered in my eyes as we flew upward, into the cold of the sky. It had started to snow again. I buried my face in Nin’s neck, briefly dizzy and overwhelmed. When I dared to open my eyes, I saw the white of the snow that blanketed the area, and then we touched down.
On the roof of the church.
Nin’s grip loosened. I slid down his body, and he dropped me onto my feet.
I nearly slipped right off the roof. And when he caught me, he nearly went over too. I finally got my balance and saw that we were at the front of the roof, where the bell tower stood. A small bell hung inside a wooden cupola that had been painted white.
A moment later, I heard great wings flapping. A shadow rose, and Kesh appeared, setting down in the middle of the roofline.
“Isn’t this better, Brother?” he called out.
Nin was stoic. “Tell me, Kesh. Why did you enter into a bargain with Lavina Vermeer?”
Kesh smiled at us. “Everyone bargains. You need something, they need something. It’s called sharing, Nin.
But you wouldn’t know about that, sitting all alone in your sad little castle by the sea.
” He comically exaggerated a frown. “If you understood the concept of sharing, you might enter into bargains too.”
“Not one with Chaos.”
Kesh looked surprised—but only for a moment. He quickly recovered his confidence and said, “At least he has ideas, unlike Father. He wants to remake our worlds, to leave the old laws behind and create something messy and big—and, oh! How I’m bored with the old laws.”
“What laws?” Nin asked.
“The ones that say I cannot kill unless a human asks me to. The ones that say you and your mother must live in my home and take over duties that belonged to my mother, to my brother—not you. And Chaos knows where my mother and brother are. He knows, and he’s going to help me get them back.”
Nin rolled his hurt shoulder. It was clearly bothering him, and I desperately wanted to help him. “That is all quite touching,” Nin called out to his brother. “I’m sorry you miss your mother. But she is the one who left.”
“She didn’t leave—Father drove her out with his cheating. He destroyed our family.”
Nin remained calm. “And Chaos is telling you that he can restore it. What do you have to do for him in return?”
A slow smile lifted Kesh’s lips. “Kill you.”
“NO!” I cried out in anguish, but my voice was lost in the snowfall as Nin leapt off the roof and flew into the air with Kesh.
Agony gripped my chest as the brothers rushed toward each other, and I watched them helplessly with my face to the skies.
When they collided, it sounded like a train crashing.
“STOP IT!” I screamed, but no one seemed to hear me. The brothers were too intent on ripping each other to pieces.
Wings flapped furiously. Arms tangled. The brothers bellowed and exchanged hard-hitting blows that made me wince. Nin slammed into Kesh so hard, his bow fell to the roof, bounced, and slid off to hit the snowy graves below.
I backed up against the bell tower, gripping a wood post as the wind stirred up flurries of snow.
Panic rose inside me, again and again. I felt both trapped up here and impotent to help Nin.
I could barely look at them, but I also couldn’t take my eyes away.
It was all happening so fast. One moment, they were grappling furiously, and the next, Kesh dove, caught Nin off guard, and landed a terrible blow to Nin’s leg.
Nin howled, and it hurt my heart. Then his wings gave out, and he spiraled, falling and falling…
“NIN!” I screamed as his body fell toward me.