Chapter 22 Galilee
Galilee
Her mother was a demented angel. Her father was an archangel, or a gutted fisherman, or both. There was a high-pitched whine
ringing in Gali’s ears, the thunder of blood thudding underfoot, the rivers pounding frantically through her flesh. Lucifer’s
eyes were a black galaxy burning, and Deziel—her mother—was a quiet smirk that vanished into nothing. Words floated around Galilee, pinching and pricking at her skin. Sleeper agent. Weapon.
Nana Darling’s memoryscape had shown the baby covered in blood, in too much blood from just a birth. None of the Kincaids
had smelled the human she’d been washed in—how could they? Gifty Williams had simply been rinsed off in a creek as Deziel
had walked away, and then the Kincaids had taken Galilee home, while Gifty became nothing more than a swirl of discolored
water rushing past a heave of rocks. The poor man—possessed by an angel and used for his seed, a man who’d had so much love
to give even afterward. That was the point, wasn’t it? Love, not blood. That was why the Kincaids had taken her in, and if
Galilee couldn’t grieve for this fisherman, then what kind of Kincaid was she?
Galilee couldn’t feel her body anymore. She wasn’t sure she had one.
She was just power and light, rage and hurt.
That’s how this game was played, right? If you had the power, you could do whatever you wanted to whoever you wanted.
You could trick a naive girl and plan to take her soul, fuck her until she handed it right over.
You could kill a man, take an old woman’s most precious memories, cast glamours left and right like people didn’t matter.
Galilee no longer cared about the hellgate or the Devil or his princes.
They wanted to kill her. They wanted to steal her soul. They were her enemies.
She was not like them. She was becoming a pillar of light, and it purged her of feelings, of the human stickiness; it made
her into something pure, something beyond any glory she’d ever touched. It was the most seductive thing she’d ever experienced,
and all it wanted was everything, which right then was easy to give. The Devil had betrayed her, and an angel was whispering
in her ear.
Galilee Kincaid screamed and stopped existing.