Chapter Twenty-Four - Lucifer #3
A gigantic shockwave of gold exploded out of her, so violent and sudden it knocked everything in sight backward. I felt it hit me like the breath of a star, hot and immense, and I had to drive my heels into the bridge to keep from being thrown.
Michael went skidding sideways. Gabriel lost his footing. Raphael was slammed back into a column so hard the stone split. And The First Light staggered. He actually staggered.
The colonnades nearest us cracked and collapsed in shrieking cascades of white stone and gold.
Bridges all around split down their centers.
Whole sections of cloud bank tore loose and began to disperse, unraveling into shining vapor.
Screams rose all across the realm as citizens were thrown to the ground, as pavilions tilted, as terraces buckled under the force of it.
And over all of it, something even worse began to happen. Darkness. But it wasn’t clouds or night. This was a true and ancient darkness that began to descend over Heaven, seeping in from the edges of the realm like ink dropped into water.
All that perfect brightness faltered under it. The golden light dimmed. The sky above the cloud banks bruised at the edges and then darkened further, as if something sealed and hidden had finally cracked open and the light had no idea how to survive the exposure.
The First Light looked around in stunned disbelief. For the first time since I had known Him, He looked visibly rattled and small.
And I knew in the same instant what this was—our chance. I began to move before the thought had fully finished forming. I caught Evie around the waist again and hauled her back into me as the bridge shuddered beneath our feet.
“Hold on,” I said.
Then I launched us into the air.
She clung to me without hesitation, arms locking around my shoulders as I drove upward, wings beating hard through the collapsing brightness.
Below us, the bridge gave another violent crack.
One of the outer colonnades toppled completely, crashing into the cloud bank beneath it.
People screamed and scattered in every direction.
Above the chaos, I could hear Michael shouting orders, Gabriel calling for containment, Raphael trying to restore some kind of structure to the unraveling mess.
It was too late.
I looked toward the outer edge of the realm, toward where the Lattice was located. I knew the others would have seen. They would know. And if they had any sense at all, they’d already be falling back to the seam.
Az wasn’t far behind me. I could feel him in the air before I saw him, a hard, violent streak cutting through the gold-dark sky, taking out anything stupid enough to come close to us.
Now I needed only one thing. Speed. I tightened my hold on Evie and flew harder toward Heaven’s gate while the kingdom tore itself apart behind us.
The Lattice came into view through the darkening sky.
It wasn’t far, but far enough. Its luminous threads were already stretched across the tear in the air like a harp strung by a sadist, bright and waiting.
Around its edges, the Riftspinners swarmed in the thousands, a frantic clicking halo, more of them now than before, drawn most likely by the damage Evie had done to Heaven like maggots to an open wound.
They knew the realm was breaking. They knew what mattered now. Seal the tear, and trap us inside.
“Lucifer!” Topher’s voice hit from the left.
I wheeled hard enough to feel the drag in my shoulders and saw them all converging toward the seam, exactly where I’d prayed they’d be.
Topher had Destiny in his arms. Her face was white, jaw tight, both hands locked around him hard enough to bruise.
Vespera and Liora were just behind them, Vespera wild-eyed for once, all her polish stripped off by the collapsing sky.
Morathis was higher, pale and steady, Her arms raised as She forced reflected false-lines over the Lattice wherever it tried to tighten.
Thyronis still hung at the tear itself, claws sunk into the wound in reality, holding it open by sheer authority while every thread in Heaven tried to remember how to close around Him.
Az came up at my right shoulder like a thrown blade. “They’re thickening,” he snapped.
I saw it. The Riftspinners weren’t just circling now.
They were gathering in bands, clicking so fast the sound had become one long machine shriek.
Their bodies flashed white-gold in the darkening air, little needle-limbed horrors hooking themselves to the edges of the seam, firing strand after strand into the threads.
Morathis became a prism of living mirrors, Her whole form breaking light into cold, fractured reflections. The Lattice slackened for one beautiful half-second as it saw its own lie thrown back at itself.
“Move!” Thyronis barked.
Topher went first, shooting toward the opening with Destiny clutched against his chest and Liora carrying Vespera close behind, angling above them with her wings driving hard.
I had Evie locked to me, her arms around my shoulders, her face tucked against my neck for one precious second before she twisted to look.
That was when the Riftspinners hit. Not just a couple, but a swarm of hundreds.
They peeled off the seam in a dense white wave and fell on us all at once, clicking, stitching, clawing, their tiny bodies fast and hideous and relentless.
Azazael slammed into the first cluster with both arms wide, tearing three off the Lattice and hurling them into open air before they could anchor.
I drove straight through another band, fire bursting from my free hand, not enough to kill, I remembered almost too late, just enough to blast them off course.
Morathis threw a mirrored shimmer over the opening again, but the spinners were learning. The Lattice was learning with them.
“Don’t let them close it!” Topher shouted.
Everyone was trying.
I saw one of the creatures latch onto Vespera’s shoulder and jam a filament into the seam beside her.
Az ripped it free before the stitch could take.
Liora cut a second out of the air with a black wing and sent it spinning.
Raphael’s name flashed through my mind for no reason except that healing and butchery had always looked too similar in Heaven.
We were almost there. Topher hit the threshold. Thyronis snarled and widened the tear by brute force, claws dragging bloodless light from the edges as He held it open another fraction. Destiny ducked her head against Topher’s chest as they crossed into the seam.
Then she cried out. It was small at first. More shock than pain. A sound of sudden wrongness.
I looked. A Riftspinner had gotten through.
No, not one. There were three. They’d slipped under Topher’s arm and clung to Destiny’s side, her thigh, the back of her shoulder, tiny needle-limbs dug into fabric and flesh.
Silver threads were already running from them, not into her skin, but into whatever held her together. The air around her had begun to fray.
My stomach dropped. “Topher!” I shouted, throwing a ball of fire towards the spinners.
He looked down, and I watched the moment comprehension hit his face.
“No.” The word tore out of him.
He grabbed the nearest spinner and ripped it off her. It split in his hand into two smaller ones, both clicking faster, both diving right back toward her. Another had already anchored itself near her ribs, the filament drawn taut between her body and the Lattice like the beginning of a seam.
And Destiny—God. She was unraveling. There was no blood.
Her matter was just unraveling. Fine lines of light began to leak from her in shining threads, little strands lifting from her clothes, her hair, the outline of her arm, as if her body had suddenly become fabric and a simple tug could take her apart.
She screamed then, for real, and the sound punched straight through the whole battlefield.