CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
The angel’s gaze was steady, and his eyebrows rose in a nearly imperceptible movement. “You are not a wolf, Lady Sworn.”
I frowned. Tears blurred my vision, and I blinked them away, praying no one had seen them. “What am I, then?”
Michael turned, as if he’d heard something I hadn’t. Collith and Laurie were looking in the same direction. A moment later, I felt it—power. Teeth-grinding, tingling power that was as visceral as a charge in the air. I recognized it instantly, and dread gripped my bones as I followed that pull.
Lucifer stood nearby.
And Oliver stood behind him.
We’d waited too long, I thought with a jolt of terror.
I’d waited too long. In the auburn glow of dawn, the devil looked even more like something that had come from another world.
He stood with his back to the horizon, sunlight and red desert air streaming all around him.
My gaze fell to the sword he held loosely at his side, and apprehension gathered in my throat, blocking out anything I might’ve said.
Lucifer hadn’t come for me, anyway. He smiled at Michael and said, “Hello, brother.”
I glanced over at the angel, unsure what to do.
His expression hadn’t just reverted to its earlier glacial state—looking at him made my insides quake.
I was reminded, as though I could ever forget, just what he was.
Michael might have been wounded and earthbound, but he had as much power as Lucifer, maybe more.
He was a true immortal, and the way he looked at Lucifer made my own power rise instinctively.
I imagined gathering it around me like a shield.
“Hello, Lucifer,” Michael said.
As if he’d been given a silent command, Oliver moved.
Collith and Laurie reacted, readying to launch into action, but Oliver was only dumping out the contents of a bag.
Pieces of something fell to the ground between all of us.
I stared at them for a beat, then realized what I was looking at.
It was the Horn, broken in half. Practically crumbled.
The thought sent a chill through me, because I realized exactly what Lucifer was saying with this little message of his.
It meant the devil only had one shot.
“That’s right. I’m back at my full strength, brother,” Lucifer said, holding out his arms. “Now, shall we do this the easy way, or the hard way?”
The taunt confirmed what I already knew—that I’d made Lucifer into an original angel again. He was basically as unstoppable as God.
I felt a flood of terror and guilt, and my fingers twitched as I longed to reach for the gun at my hip. But I’d only brought it in case we ran into a Fallen creature that was actually susceptible to holy bullets. They wouldn’t even slow Lucifer and Oliver down.
Michael raised his arm in a wordless response to his brother, and a sword materialized in his hand, beautiful and deadly looking with its bright edges and considerable size.
The fact that he didn’t speak to Lucifer, and yet he’d just been talking to me, sent a message to all six of us standing there.
There was no contempt in the angel’s expression, but it hung in the air, somehow.
“The hard way it is, then,” Lucifer sighed.
There was another breath of stillness, like the hush that fell just before something terrible happened. Then the brothers flew at each other.
Both of them moved faster than any creature I’d ever seen.
Collith pulled me back as dust shot up everywhere, clouding around the battling angels.
Watching Lucifer and Michael fight, I realized I would’ve been zero help.
I tried to track their blocks and blows, but they were practically blurs. At first, they seemed evenly matched.
But Michael was wounded, and Lucifer was desperate.
I didn’t see what actually happened—one moment, the angels were battling, and the next Michael stumbled back, a ray of light bursting from his gut.
He didn’t make a sound as he fell to one knee, a hand going to his wound.
Lucifer approached him at a leisurely pace now, and he lifted his sword to run his tongue along the blade.
A repulsed shudder went through me. I expected Lucifer to vanish, since he had what he wanted, didn’t he? He’d just needed Michael’s blood.
All of us waited, and the air thrummed with silent, breathless tension. Michael’s head turned, and his gaze found me again.
They are connected, his voice whispered in my head. What happens to one happens to both.
I stared at him in confusion. Did he mean Lucifer and Oliver? Why tell me this now?
“Goodbye, brother,” Lucifer purred.
When he lifted his arm, I finally realized what he was about to do.
Too late, I rammed against the devil’s mental defenses, hoping to catch him unawares.
But I bounced right off, and his sword finished its sweeping motion.
Michael’s head toppled from his body. He died in an explosion of blinding, howling light.
And I was standing closest to the blast.
The second it hit me, it felt like my body came apart.
As I cried out in agony, I saw the alarmed look in Collith’s eyes.
I saw Laurie’s mouth form my name. The world tilted, and I lost any sense of where I was or what else was happening.
There was only the pain. A bright, blazing excruciation the likes of which I’d never known before.
And then there was nothing.
I flew upright, as I had the countless other nights I’d woken from a bad dream.
But this wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t sure how I knew, I just did.
It didn’t have the feel of one. Even though, in some ways, this place certainly did remind me of the dreamscape.
I searched the vast spread of hills around me, my brow furrowed with bewilderment.
I definitely wasn’t in the desert anymore, and there was no sign of Michael, Lucifer, Collith, or Laurie.
Where was everyone? How had I gotten here?
I was too dazed to panic. My mind continued to work slowly.
The last thing I remembered was getting hit by that blast of screaming power, and a level of pain I had never experienced before.
It was what I imagined getting burned alive would feel like.
In those final moments, I’d been convinced I was about to die.
I looked down at myself to search for injuries.
I frowned when I discovered only smooth skin and whole, unbroken limbs.
But I felt … different. Off-kilter. Desperate for answers, I turned my head to search for the others again.
My eyes stopped on a figure kneeling nearby, and a whisper of shock went through me.
Olorel had never been real to me—not really. I’d seen him briefly in Lucifer’s memories, during the Battle of Red Pearls, but even then, he had seemed like nothing more than a character from a story. A legend. A figure from the past.
Now he was actually a person. As Olorel drew something on the ground, I studied the angel that was still celebrated by his descendants thousands of years later.
He wore what I suspected were animal skins, and he looked younger than I’d thought he would.
His hair hung past his shoulders, longer than Laurie’s, and part of it was tied back with a piece of leather.
His beard was thick but trimmed, his body hard and corded.
I watched the muscles in his arm flex as he finished whatever he was drawing in the dirt.
Without looking up from his task, Olorel called out, “Why are you here?”
I would’ve panicked, but I knew the fallen angel wasn’t talking to me.
Because this was a memory, I realized in a rush.
Michael’s memory. I could feel him now, all around me, his thoughts and his essence cool and subtle, like the flow of water.
I was still me, but I was also Michael, too.
His words were mine as he said, “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Ulesse went for a walk.” Olorel still didn’t look up from the shape at his knees.
Ulesse, I repeated to myself. The name stirred a memory. Then I remembered—Nym’s bloodline. The Time Walkers.
“And what did he see?” Michael asked. Both of them were speaking in Enochian, but I still understood as if they were speaking clear, perfect English.
Olorel straightened and tipped his head back. “He saw death. And pain. And fire. It has already begun, Michael. Some of our brothers and sisters have slipped through the tear she made.”
I mentally froze on those words. The tear she made.
Because I was sharing a mind with Michael, I knew that Olorel meant Persephone, and the brothers and sisters he was referring to were demons. My thoughts raced so fast that I almost missed it when Olorel replied, “Which is why I must close it.”
Close it?
Michael was calm as ever, but from my hiding place, I felt a rush of adrenaline.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Lucifer during my time in the underworld.
He’d told me the story of Persephone. How they had met and fallen in love.
How they had been separated and then, years later, had found their way back to each other.
Persephone did it? She actually got to Hell? I’d asked Lucifer.
She survived for three days.
Holy shit, I thought. If I’d had my own heart, it would’ve been thundering in my chest. A Nightmare had created an opening to another dimension, allowing demons to come through. And if a Nightmare could open a Door, it stood to reason that I could close one, too.
Lucifer himself had given me the key. He’d told me how it could be done after I’d brought him into my world. If a Nightmare is powerful enough, she can bring her dreams to life. She just has to believe it can be done, or feel something strongly enough that a part of her believes.
“You shouldn’t interfere,” Michael warned, his voice cutting through my own memories. “The imbalance will right itself, and the cost—”
“The cost will be my life,” Olorel said calmly. He got to his feet, his fingers smeared with dirt. He did nothing to wipe it off.
Michael was silent for a moment, and I felt the struggle in him.
He cared for Olorel, but he also cared about the law.
He had always followed it to the letter, even as his favorite siblings rebelled and fought and broke every rule like insolent children.
He looked down at what Olorel had drawn.
I didn’t recognize it, but Michael did—it was an Enochian symbol meant to repair, or undo.
“Even with the aid of the Word, your power will not be enough,” Michael said finally.
Olorel gazed back at him, his features still curiously blank. “No, it will not.”
Another shock went through me as I realized what was happening, what this memory was.
All of Fallenkind believed Olorel had sacrificed himself to create the Unseelie Court. But that must’ve been a lie. A cover-up.
Olorel was about to die trying to fix what Persephone had done.
Just as Michael began to answer, something made the angel pause. He looked over his shoulder, but Olorel didn’t move. He waited calmly. When Michael turned again, whatever he’d seen had made him go pale. His voice was low and urgent as he said, “Don’t do this, Olorel.”
Olorel gave the angel a small, hollow smile. In that moment, he looked so much like Thuridan it sent a startled jolt through me. “Careful, brother,” he murmured. “It almost seems as if you’re tempted to interfere.”
I would never know what Michael said, or what he’d been so afraid of, because the memory began to fade.
In the space of a blink, the angels were gone.
The sky went after them, its vibrant colors going from bronze and pink to white and gray.
No! I needed to know how Olorel had done it!
It wasn’t just my family’s lives that depended on it—it was everyone’s.
I tried to bring the memory back by picturing the vibrant sunset that had surrounded Olorel and Michael while they spoke.
It didn’t work. The grass started to go next.
“No! Please!” I dropped to my knees and envisioned the lush, golden hills, trying to imagine it between my fingers as I buried them in the dry earth.
It was no use, though. The grass had already vanished, and so had the clouds.
I leaned back, trying to hold back the sob rising in my throat. Damn it, damn it, damn it!
“Fortuna.”
I whirled at the sound of his voice, confusion tearing through me. My best friend stood there, amongst all the gray and empty air. He was my Oliver again, without any of the veins or wings or claws. He was even wearing his old white T-shirt.
“Ollie?” I whispered, my heart so full of hope that it ached. “How are you here? This isn’t my memory.”
“I’m using our connection to reach you. I saw you get hit by the blast. It’s time to wake up.” Oliver paused, his expression inscrutable. “Come on, Fortuna. The Dark Prince knows where the grave is. And … your faeries are worried.”
He meant Collith and Laurie, no doubt. Everyone else would be worried, too.
But I didn’t move. I stared out at the dimming horizon, which was also disappearing.
My hands were limp in my lap. So close, I thought.
I had been so close to finding out how to save them.
The Horn was broken now, which meant it would be impossible to summon another angel.
The knowledge of how to shut the Gate had died with Michael. I’d failed.
It would have been so easy to pretend this actually was a dream.
So easy to make myself believe Oliver and I were back in our secret place, with the sea glittering on the horizon, the old oak tree casting its shadow nearby, and the cottage off in the distance.
I thought of all those afternoons we’d spent there, me in front of the fire, Oliver at his easel.
I used to find so much comfort in watching him.
“Do you still paint?” I asked faintly.
If Oliver found the question strange, he didn’t show it. “No. Not anymore.”
“Why?” I asked.
Oliver paused again. “Because it hurts too much.”
I looked at him, then. I met my best friend’s gaze and remembered who we used to be.
Such young, silly creatures with carefree dreams and impossible hopes.
I’d never imagined it could turn out like this.
I’d never dreamed that sweet, freckled boy would become a Beast, or that sad, lonely girl would grow up to kill him.
“Tell me how to save you, Ollie,” I whispered.
“You can’t,” he answered, his eyes bright with pain and all the days we wouldn’t get to have. Then he said, his voice hardening, “Wake up, Fortuna. Wake up.”
“Oliver, wait,” I began to say, my own voice tinged with desperation. But it was too late.
Every dream had to end, and I was already gone.