Covenant (30 page)

Thirty-six

No one can hide from me. To my eyes, the darkness is bright as day. To my ears, a whisper is a roar.
—L
UCIFEL

The universe shuddered. The gray angel's gaze pierced into Angela wordlessly.

Their souls met like two bolts of lightning, twining together. Lucifel broke the spell to look beneath her as the shackles on her arms opened with bursts of light and fell away to the earth, resting with the web of chains that had surrounded her legs. Kim stared up at her in a trance of awe and terror.

With a gesture faster than thought she reached down and grabbed his hair. Kim's face drained of even more color. He looked at Angela with fear and pain, and then his eyes rolled back in his head.

He collapsed to the ground with a heavy
thud,
seemingly dead.

Angela screamed. She ran for Lucifel almost blindly.

Lucifel waved a hand, and an invisible blow threw Angela back against the wall.

The pain was excruciating. Angela screeched, and her bones threatened to shatter. Coughing, she crawled to her knees. Without another thought, she changed tactics and hobbled toward Sophia.

Another wave of Lucifel's hand, and the ether rippled.

Angela fell and rolled, her head throbbing. Lucifel swept her arm sideways, and a rock seemed to sock Angela in the stomach. She groaned, frozen with agony as Lucifel approached steadily and stopped to stand over her like a shadow. Slowly, Lucifel reached down and grabbed Angela by the throat, wrapping cold fingers around it. A horrible buzzing sound filled the air, like the noise of a million flies. Black specks dotted Angela's vision. She stared back into Lucifel's blood-red irises and found nothing there but icy disregard.

Sophia's cries were heartrending.

Angela tugged at Lucifel's hand around her neck, her legs kicking the air.

“Well done,” Lucifel said, her voice scratchy with misuse, but echoing. She opened her hand, and Angela collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Angela coughed in surprise, clutching at her throat. Her body groaned like it had been crushed and remade again. Pain needled her everywhere. “You—you won't kill me?” she gasped. “After all the trouble you took to get me down here?”

Lucifel's face showed little emotion. “Kill you?” She shoved Angela toward Sophia with the edge of her foot. “You are the only one who can open the Book. I would be a fool to kill you just yet.”

“No one knows how to open her,” Angela said, turning back and glaring at Lucifel. “So in the end, you're not winning anything. You're free. But for what? For the demons who serve you to imprison you again?” Angela almost laughed through her pain. She glanced at Kim and tried to wish away her painful tears. Her soul ached and burned with agony. “So much for your Revolution. Even Raziel didn't—”

“
Quiet,
” Lucifel hissed, snapping her fingers. A flicker of anger crossed her face.

Angela's mouth sealed shut against her will.

Lucifel shoved her toward Sophia again. Angela grunted, trying to catch her breath. “I'm not the one who brought you here, Archon,” Lucifel said softly. “So save your spite, and spare me your lectures. That snake called Python thought he could outsmart me. Perhaps he had reason to. He played you and your ragtag friends for idiots, gaining your trust and betraying it by turns, all so that he can put you on my Throne as a puppet, with his slippery fingers pulling your strings. He's typical of his generation: naive and ambitious—and dangerously bored. I hope you enjoyed his labyrinth. I've let him play within Hell for too long. Very soon, it will be time for the snake to lose his den . . . forever. Besides, he was wrong about the most crucial thing of all . . .”

Lucifel leaned down.

“ . . . you're not going to win.”

Even if Angela's mouth hadn't been forced shut, she would have gone silent.

She
was
a fool.

Troy had been right to mistrust Python, and Angela had actually believed his lies long enough to think he really did want her as his new ruler. Of course, now his actions revealed themselves for the deceptions they were. Python had deliberately separated Angela from Troy, Nina, and Juno. He'd thrust Angela into his mother's dangerous ball to force visions out of her head. And he'd helped her get to Lucifel, only so that when Angela hopefully destroyed the Prince of Hell, he could fawn at her feet before turning his treacherous fangs on her as well.

Python's mocking laughter sounded in her ears all over again.

“Friends are only friends when they find you useful,” Lucifel murmured. “And so Python was your friend as long as you cooperated with his plans. Now where is he? You see, Archon . . . promises can be broken, just as easily as they can be made. Right and wrong depends on the eye of the beholder, and love is a feverish dream.” Lucifel paused beside Angela again.

Angela fell at Sophia's knees. Sophia glared at Lucifel with pained, red-rimmed eyes.

“From the very beginning, I've been planning my moves,” Lucifel said gently. “Python couldn't know that his game ultimately suited my purposes. You should pity him. He's as much a victim as you are. Without him, perhaps you would have never made it down here to the Book's side. But now I am free, and you have nowhere to go.”

Lucifel snapped her fingers again.

Angela touched her lips as they opened. She was free to speak again. She rocked to her knees, gasping. “You . . . you don't know how to open Sophia. So it doesn't matter . . .”

“Oh, but I do,” Lucifel said. “And I plan to watch. It's what you both deserve, after all. For believing that something as ludicrous as friendship is worth dying for. In my world, that's a cardinal sin. I call it blindness.”

“No wonder,” Angela hissed. “Because you don't have any friends, right?”

Lucifel kicked her hard in the side. For the briefest second, inner pain flashed behind her eyes.

Angela fell, blood dripping where she'd bit into her lip. “You suffered in chains and let millions of angels die all because Israfel . . . wore the crown you wanted.” Her breaths almost refused to pass through her aching ribs. She forced herself to breathe deeper. “But I think . . . there's more. I find it hard to believe you'd destroy the whole universe just because you're still feeling jealous. You show the world an icy demeanor—but I'd bet it's all . . . an act. I would love to know who broke your heart so badly . . . the entire universe now has to suffer for it . . .”

Lucifel stooped down and pulled Angela by her necklace. The chain dug like a rope of fire into Angela's neck. She coughed.

They stared into one another's eyes.

“You're perceptive,” Lucifel whispered. “But don't think your pathetic glimpse into the past was enough to figure me out. You can't even begin to fathom why I started that Revolution. You don't know a thing—and here's the best proof of your staggering ignorance. I'm not the one about to let the universe fall apart, Archon. You are. At least, that is, if you refuse to open the Book. Then, I suppose Ruin will be upon us as promised long ago. And by now, I certainly welcome it.”

Lucifel gestured and Sophia's cloth fell from her mouth.

“Stop it,” Sophia immediately said between her tears. “Stop it, Lucifel. It's not worth it—”

“I have no desire to be preached to by a ‘thing,' ” Lucifel said quietly. “Stop wasting my time, Sophia, and break the spell of this pathetic friendship. Tell Angela Mathers what she must do to open you. Raziel refused to do it a year ago. How much better for you to speak for him.”

Sophia swallowed. She tipped back her head and shut her eyes. “No,” she said in a small voice.

“How clever my brother was,” Lucifel said. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes as well. “He told me there was much more to Sophia than locks and keys. That she was better than a box to be cracked. And then, much to my surprise, I learned that to open Raziel's treasure, she needed to be broken after all. But the weapon that breaks her . . . the Key.” Lucifel shifted her position, behaving eerily patient. “Tell Angela, Sophia. Where is the Key that opens your Lock—the seal on the Book of Raziel? And just where can the precious Lock be found?”

Sophia shook her head violently.

“
Tell her,
” Lucifel said, her voice still low yet resounding eerily like thunder.

“What is she talking about, Sophia?” Angela said, fear creeping into her, stealing away her heartbeats. “Breaking a treasure to open it? What does that mean?”

“I—” Sophia stammered. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Angela, I'm sorry—I told you not to enter the door! I told you not to follow me . . .”

“I had to,” Angela whispered. “We're friends.”

“Yes. Friends.” Sophia squeezed her eyes shut.

“Tell her now,” Lucifel said, glaring at Sophia with threatening eyes.

“No,” Sophia said again.

“Now.”

“NO.”

The ground shivered. Sophia's eyes widened. She looked around with abrupt sadness, as if seeing the devastation for the first time. Finally, she hung her head. “It's my body,” Sophia said so softly it sounded like a breath.

Angela's heart wanted to stop. Everything froze inside of her. “What?” she said weakly.

“My body is the Lock of the Book of Raziel,” Sophia said slowly.

Angela stared at her.

Sophia's misery was all-encompassing. “So to open me . . . the Key is . . .”

“No,” Angela said, a dreadful realization dawning on her. “That—that can't be true.”

“It is,” Sophia cried, shuddering.

“No.
No
.
You're wrong
.”

Sophia turned aside. Her personal torment was horrible to look at. Anguish misted over her gray eyes. Normally so deep and flashing, now they held a devastating tiredness.

Lucifel loomed over Angela. “It's simple, you see,” the angel whispered. “To open Sophia and save this universe, you will have to murder her with the Glaive, Angela. Why else do you think I would let you arrive on my doorstep? Because I suddenly feel nostalgia for our brief encounter last year? Sophia always knew—and Raziel made certain—that the Glaive is the only weapon in the world that can harm her. Irritatingly enough, he also made sure you're the only soul who can use it for its truest purpose. But can you be like me and stain your hands with the innocent blood of millions? To choose not to kill Sophia and open the Book of Raziel. Well . . . that would be a rather cruel fate for the dying universe wouldn't it? From what I remember, you don't share my dream of eternal silence . . .”

Angela pictured the Glaive in all its sharp beauty, cutting down so many souls throughout the centuries as it rested in Lucifel's hands. She'd always wondered why it existed in the first place. Now she knew. It had always been meant for one person only. Now all of the effort Lucifel had put into dragging Angela into Hell made sense.

This was why Sophia spoke of her own death. Why her anguished heart knew separation from Angela was inevitable. The earth groaned again. Angela fell forward, nauseated. The world seemed to twist and warp, turning back in on itself. She could barely think anymore, hardly breathe.

Lucifel never flinched. Her tall body swayed along with the earth. “Not much longer, and everything falls apart. If you choose not to open Sophia, Angela, and use what is within her to save this universe, you will be the Ruin after all, I suppose. Able to help, but unwilling to do so, you would be condemning every creature that lives to an irreversible fate. Including those you so faithfully call friends. How interesting that you'd find Sophia's soul to be the only one worth saving from utter destruction.”

Angela's heart twisted beneath Lucifel's words like it had been stabbed. She was sure something inside of her broke and bled.

“I am not the Ruin,” Angela said in a weak voice. “
The prophecy said there can be two who can be the Ruin
.”

“That's right,” Lucifel said. She smiled condescendingly at Angela. “Because even if you do use the Glaive to open Sophia—and your noble heart wouldn't dare do otherwise—we both know I'll take the power hidden within the Book a moment later and eradicate you. Then I will be free to use that power to end the existence you'll have so predictably wished to save. This universe may be dying—but it can also be resurrected. I alone can give it the silent revolution it truly needs. No more lies and pain. My new regime will be the longest and most peaceful of them all.”

“You
are
insane,” Angela croaked. She struggled to stay conscious and think. “Why would anyone want to destroy the universe? What can you get out of not existing!”

Lucifel regarded her with cool pity. “We've had that discussion before. We won't have it again.”

But it just didn't make any sense!

Then Angela's eyes widened. Time seemed to slow. She thought of her confrontation with Lucifel's shadow one year ago. Lucifel had clasped Angela by the face and said Angela's features strongly resembled someone dearly beloved. But Lucifel had been equally clear that mysterious “someone” wasn't Raziel.

Now Angela's mind jumped again to the immense creature who had murdered Raziel. The being who looked like her.
The Father
.

Is that what this is all really about? Lucifel's love was rejected by her Creator, so now she wants to end her life and everyone else's? This is all just a giant game of spite?

Angela didn't have any real proof yet. But she had her intuition, and now Lucifel's coldness and cruelty appeared as a mask over her pain.
It finally made sense.
The dead, apathetic look behind Lucifel's eyes was the same as Angela's in the darkest moments of her life; it was the same as Janna Hearst's when she tried to commit suicide off one of Westwood Academy's rooftops.