Chapter 42
THEY’RE FLYING.
Dez knew Rafe could fly, but she hadn’t allowed herself to dream of what it would feel like to be in the air with him. She looks up but can see no sign of the wings lifting her skyward. She knows they’re there, though, as surely as Rafe’s strong arms are wrapped around her.
The spires of Acheron dwindle below. She sees the labyrinth’s baroque symmetry, then the landing strip covered by sleek obsidian jets.
The mountains stretch in all directions, filling the horizon with cold glistening peaks.
Dez feels too alive and free to have only minutes ago been trapped in Moriah’s office, lectured to and threatened and treated like a child.
How can there be anything but this?
“Hold on,” Rafe says. “We’re crossing the barbelo.”
Dez’s arms tighten around his neck. As before, on the night Dez first came to Acheron, crossing the barbelo brings a jolting shift in gravity.
First comes a blinding flash of light. Then Rafe drops in the sky like a wounded bird, just as his jet had done.
Dez stiffens, terrified until she hears the mighty whoosh behind her and knows that Rafe’s wings are lifting her up again, like a boat’s sail filling with the wind of life.
On the other side of the barbelo, the sky around her blooms—still night, but everything is different. She gasps.
It’s not so much black but a deep, dark, brilliant, midnight blue. The real sky over Colorado. The constellations twinkle, moving on their ancient paths, closer than Dez has ever seen. The moon’s a lovely crescent, lying lazy on its side.
“Oh,” Dez says under her breath. She missed this. To be in the natural world again, no filters but the clouds.
She remembers that Rafe’s wings are visible outside the barbelo. She turns again to look, this time catching his eye. He’s watching her, pleased, as if he wants her to see him. As if he’s showing off for her. Looking past his warm, cobalt eyes, she sees them.
Angel wings, glittering against a dark expanse of clouds.
They’re the most magnificent things she’s ever seen.
Massive, golden, limned with light, sweeping out behind his shoulders to span thirty feet.
Feathers twinkle, then fade into their surface.
Nothing about them stays the same. They seem to be made of some iridescent, radiating substance from another world.
“Can I touch them?” she whispers.
Rafe closes his eyes as if the question elicits deep pleasure. He’s never been so glorious, so sexy as he is right now, riding the sky with her.
“When we land,” he murmurs.
“No. Now.”
“I won’t be able to fly if your hands are on my wings.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sensitive.”
“Are we there yet?” Dez says, pleading. She doesn’t know how far they’re flying or what they’ll do when they get there. She only knows she needs to put her hands on Rafe’s wings.
“Almost,” he says. “Try to enjoy the ride.”
And Dez does. The view in every direction is staggering. Snowcaps punctuate dramatic mountains. Canyons curve around mountains. Rivers wink in silver moonlight. Everything smells like petrichor, and the cool clouds dance across her skin like silk sheets.
“Do you see that?” he asks, nodding toward a dense white cloud above the tallest mountain peak.
“That cloud?” Dez asks, squinting as they descend. “Is that the Distribution Department?”
“Right now I’m the Distribution Department. That cloud is the Veil—part of it anyway.”
“The Veil between life and—”
“Yes, death,” Rafe says as they draw nearer. “The Veil changes size and shapes, traverses the sky much like a normal cloud, but inside, it’s how mortal souls cross over, and before that, it’s how the angels reach the dying.”
Soon his feet touch down on a stone ledge at the highest point of the mountain, a tooth set in the ancient jaw of the world.
The Veil is close enough now that Dez can almost reach up and touch it. Up close, it emits a soft, symphonic sound. She tilts her head back, watching it above her, as patterns, shapes, and then finally scenes flicker into view along the Veil’s misty underbelly.
It looks like a shimmering movie screen, airing a million films at once:
A sunrise. A flood. A broken arm. A wedding. A toothless baby’s smile. A downhill bike ride toward the sea. Sex. Trophies. Seeds sprouting in soil. Candles on a birthday cake. One hand grasping another.
“Scenes from our films,” Rafe explains.
Dez points at a portion of the Veil, a scene where an actor takes a bow in the center of a stage. It’s from a film she made that afternoon, for a man from St. Louis named Odin Day. “That’s—”
“One of yours?” Rafe asks, taking Dez in his arms again. “Let’s go see him.”
“What do you mean, go see him?”
“It’s just about time for your film to air. Missouri, right?”
“We’re going to Missouri?” Dez says, confused.
“Through the Veil,” Rafe says, “we can reach the dying swiftly.”
He beats his wings, and they enter the cool mist of the Veil. Dez sees a blinding flash of light as they dive down an incredible depth at an incredible speed.
Then they’re in a small dark bedroom facing a man Dez has never met but would know anywhere.
Odin Day. Rafe sets her down near a window facing the woods.
Odin and his wife, Penelope, whose love story Dez traced like a great novel’s plot, lie sleeping side by side under a red woven quilt. Rafe presses a finger to his lips.
“Stay where you are,” he says, “and watch closely. But do not interfere with what you’re about to see. These people can’t perceive me, but if anyone wakes and finds you here, they will freak the fuck out. Understand?”
Dez nods as Rafe moves to Odin’s bedside. He bows at the waist as if he might kiss the man’s sleeping cheek. But no, Dez sees he’s whispering something she can’t hear.
Next, he unties the belt of his black trench coat and opens the left side, and Dez stares at what’s within.
Sewn into the inner lining of his coat there must be hundreds of tiny syringes.
He takes one out from the center of the collection, holds it up to the window.
He flicks it, as a nurse would, with his middle finger.
It’s filled with nacreous smoke, which Rafe carefully injects into the base of Odin’s neck.
Dez stares as an iridescent shimmer rises off the man’s skin.
“His soul,” Rafe explains. “We can’t stay long.”
As Rafe lifts Dez in his arms again, she can’t wrest her eyes from the dying man receiving the Life Review she made for him.
She hopes it’s enough, those scenes she placed together.
Working on it in the Vault, she could almost feel the softness of his newborn skin becoming worn and cancerous twenty-seven short years later.
There were casting calls and understudy roles.
Agonizing self-doubt. Arguments like geysers with Penelope, and laughter and long kisses in between.
The serenity of a fishing rod in his hand.
Bringing home the day’s catch to see her face light up when she opens the door.
Then it strikes Dez.
This is what it’s all for. The work she does at Acheron. The lives these people live. It’s the most beautiful and the most heartbreaking thing there’s ever been.
Mortal love.