Dark Hope (45 page)

All of this would be so much easier to understand if I could jump on the Internet and search. Once again, I banged up against the harsh reality of my captivity.

I felt a hard lump in my throat. At times, it was so tempting to forget, just to pretend that Michael and I were on this quest together voluntarily. But it wasn’t altogether true. And now, as we started to close in on the object of our search, it was even more important for me to remember that.

I need to sleep, I realized with a start. This might be my last chance. Tucking the paper with the Prophecy under my pillow, I huddled under the covers and willed myself into a dreamless rest.

When I woke up, Michael was sitting on the chair, staring at me.

I sat up like a shot, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “How did it go?”

He smiled, grimly. “I don’t think we have to worry about Ana and Jimena’s safety anymore. They’ll face no more danger than that of your average young girl in that hellhole of a town.” His face contorted with rage as he spat his next words. “It should be wiped off the face of the earth.”

He could do that, I realized with a start. “Like Sodom.”

He frowned. “Yes, like Sodom. But that is not my job—not right now, anyway.” He made a great effort to wipe the anger from his face and nodded at the bed where I sat. “I take it nothing out of the ordinary came up while I was gone?”

I gulped.

What are you waiting for?
Henri prodded.

I looked intently at Michael. “I didn’t see any of the Fallen Ones, if that’s what you mean.” I chose my next words carefully, watching for his reaction. “But I think I may have figured out what the Key is.”

He gaped at me, wide-eyed.

“How?”

“It doesn’t matter how,” I insisted—it seemed better, again, not to tell him about my dreams. My voice was rising, the words tumbling out of me as I rushed to share the secret I’d discovered. “Remember how the Prophecy talks about brother fighting against brother? And turning child against father? I think it’s talking about Cain and Abel.”

The color drained from Michael’s face. “The rock.”

I nodded excitedly. “I knew it! See, you knew what it was before I could even tell you.” I dug the crumpled piece of notebook paper out from under my pillow where I’d tucked it away for safekeeping, and I smoothed it out on his lap, pointing to the relevant passages. “I don’t understand it all—I mean, why would it be called the Key
of Righteousness? And I don’t understand how it is the rock’s fault that Cain turned on Abel, but the rest makes sense. He killed his brother and turned his family against him. It has to be the rock.”

Michael touched the paper as if he was afraid of it.

I looked up into his worried face. “You’re not saying anything. Am I right?”

He pressed his lips together before nodding curtly. “You are correct.”

I jumped up and did a gleeful dance. “I knew it!”

He eyed me warily. “This isn’t some game of trivia you are playing, Hope. What you’ve discovered only increases the danger.”

I stopped mid-strut, his words sending a chill through me. “I know,” I whispered.

“I don’t think you do. Please sit.” He gestured toward the bed. I perched on the edge, watching the lines of worry that seemed to etch themselves into his skin before my very eyes. He smoothed out the Prophecy again, his fingers wandering over the words as if reading them again would somehow change their meaning.

“I’ve been so blind,” he said, his hand coming to rest at last on the ancient words of the Prophecy. Without looking up, he resumed speaking.

“The rock has a very long lineage as a relic. It was the instrument of the first sin committed by mankind after leaving the Garden. Imagine that. Your race falls, and yet it is penitent and resists its nature for all that time, only to fall prey to the most heinous of crimes one could imagine.

“You rightly question why the Prophecy says the rock perverted Cain. It is an inanimate object, after all. And yet as he held it in his hand, it seemed to Cain as if it throbbed with life, as if it were speaking to him, goading him into taking what was his: the rightful
place of honor that his brother, Abel, had so thoughtlessly stolen from him. And when he held it later, dripping and glistening with the life force of his brother, it almost seemed to mock him for his weakness. The rock was the instrument of his temptation, and thus it earned its status as a perversion.”

“You talk about it as if you were there.”

“I saw it all,” he said, sorrow tingeing his voice.

I imagined him watching from afar, unable or perhaps too proud to intervene when mankind, which he had defended so mightily, proved unworthy of his faith.

He lifted his head and smiled sadly. “Just as money could be the root of all evil, this rock compelled your race down the path of its own destruction. It broke open the dam that had been so precariously built to save you from yourselves. After Cain struck down Abel, there was no hope of turning back.”

I squirmed where I sat, suddenly aware of how weak he must think mankind. How disappointing we must be to him. To God.

He shrugged, as if reading my thoughts, and continued.

“The angels who resented God’s creation of humanity seized upon this sin. Proof, they cried, that mankind is soiled and rotten to its very core. Proof that the cause of mankind is hopeless. Wishful thinking. The right thing to do, they declared, the righteous thing, was to wipe out man’s existence on Earth before he sullied anything more in God’s creation.”

He paused, his eyes far away, his fingers twitching over the scroll as he remembered the ancient argument.

“But you fought for us,” I whispered, the realization dawning on me suddenly.

His eyes snapped back into focus as he looked me full in the face, a look of amusement dancing across his gray visage.

“So quick with your intuition these days, aren’t you? Yes, I
defended you. My band held off those who would have exterminated you all, and I led Cain away to safety, where he lived out his life as an exile.

“So why is it called the Key of Righteousness?” he pondered almost to himself. “I have never heard of it referred to in that way—if I had, I would have immediately recognized it in the verses.” He busied himself with refolding the paper. “I suppose it is because the self-righteous angels, consumed with jealousy, seized upon it as their proof, their justification, for that which they wished to do.”

He rose slowly to his feet, his movements those of an ancient and weary soldier rather than of the young man he appeared to be. He turned to the window. “What Cain did split the angels into two camps, permanently. Many who had been obedient to God’s will before that were appalled at the ugliness his creation had unleashed upon the world and chose to side with the ones who would exterminate mankind.”

I crept up behind him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “And they blamed you for stopping them.”

He stiffened, but he did not shrug off my hand. “They blamed me, and they sealed their own fate as the Fallen.”

He turned around, bringing himself within inches of my body. Every bit of me was vibrating with energy, longing to close the space between us, to be even closer to him. But I could not move, did not dare move. I looked up into his face, unable to breathe. His eyes were sad. Resigned.

“It all comes back to the war between you,” I said.

“If they win their way back in, everything will change.” As he said the words, his entire countenance changed, breaking the spell he seemed to have on me. His eyes glinted with steel and his back straightened; he was the warrior once again. “It won’t be Armageddon. It will be much, much worse.”

“What could be worse than Armageddon?” I whispered, numb with fear.

“Armageddon ends with the holy in Paradise. There will be no Paradise if the Fallen Ones have their way. We must find that Key before they do.” He brushed past me, walking purposefully about the room, gathering up his things in a knapsack that I hadn’t even noticed before. I let the shock of his words settle softly about me like folds of cloth, insulating me from the horrible reality of the danger we faced.

Don’t just stand there. Ask him where it is
, Henri urged, frustrated.

“What happened to it? The Key?” I breathed, trying to stay calm as I watched Michael pack. “Did you take it with you when you helped Cain escape?”

He snorted, shoving something into the bag as if he would punish it. “What would I do with that? Better to have thrown it into the sea where it would never be found.” He stopped his packing and looked at me curiously. “You honestly don’t know where it is?”

I shook my head. “I don’t. It all kind of clicked for me last night, but knowing what the Key was is as far as I got.”

Michael mumbled something under his breath and resumed shoving things into the pack with a vengeance.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “But to answer your question, the rock in question was seized upon by some misguided humans who wanted to preserve it. Because of my association with the incident, I have had the misfortune of having it linked to me on occasion.”

“I don’t understand.”

His jaw tightened in frustration, and he threw his pack down onto the rumpled bed. “I expected you to be able to keep up, what with your sudden burst of insight.”

I felt my face redden. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that was called for. I’m just trying to understand.”

He blew out a long breath, raking his hand through his hair.

“They started treating it as a relic. Humans. They put it in shrines, toted it out for blessings and miracles and the like. Most of the time it was locked up in crypts inside churches that were dedicated to me: the defender and savior of mankind,” he added bitterly.

“Then you must know where it is!”

Michael threw his arms down in frustration and looked at me. “How convenient that would be,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his words. “But no, I have not been blessed with such knowledge. I haven’t seen it in centuries.” He walked off toward the tiny bathroom.

Panic started building inside of me; whether it was from his sudden change of mood or the feeling that we were lost once again, I wasn’t sure. I trailed after him, trying to reason with him.

“When did you last see it? Maybe we can start from there.”

He turned in the hallway and loomed before me. Once again, I was reminded of how small I was.

“Why must you torture me so?” The vein in his forehead was throbbing again, and I couldn’t help noticing that he was gripping his hands into fists, restless, I supposed, to fight.

I took a deep breath and willed myself not to shrink back from his anger. “I’m not trying to torture you. I’m trying to help you find the Key. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

He stared morosely at me before, with an effort, he relaxed and moved away from me. “It was in Turkey. Before the Crusades.”

I didn’t speak, but I urged him on with my eyes.

“There was a shrine there dedicated to me, built around a spring. It has been destroyed for a long time. There is nothing to see there now.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “That’s something to go on. Before the Crusades, you say?”

He nodded tersely, his body still filling up the tiny hallway. An idea popped into my head.

“Maybe it’s on one of the pilgrimage routes. Maybe someone spirited it away to keep it safe, and it is in one of your churches along the way. Surely there are other churches in Turkey, where it could be hidden?”

Michael rolled the idea around in his brain, nodding slowly. “It could be. People had certainly gone to great lengths to preserve it before.” He eyed me suspiciously. “This idea—it just came to you? Just like that, out of thin air?”

Henri snorted.
He doesn’t like having the tables turned
.

Confused, I ignored Henri’s comment. “Yes, it just seemed to make sense. Anyway, it’s the only idea I have. Do you have anything better to go on?”

Michael rolled his eyes. “No. No, I do not.”

He turned away and walked out into the hallway, not stopping as he stated, “Get yourself ready. We’re going to Turkey.”

The door slammed behind him, leaving me to wonder what I had done wrong this time.

I jumped when Henri, unbidden, answered my question.
He’s afraid he has lost his gift of intuition
.

“His what?” I asked.

Michael always operates on hunches, remember? That feeling he has that guides him to be in the right place at the right time
.

“Yes,” I said, not understanding. “Why is he afraid he has lost it?”

God’s little joke
, Henri chuckled.
On the off chance someone actually survives an—ahem—inappropriate liaison with an angel, God has arranged it so that the lucky human gets a bonus prize. They drain a little bit of that angelic energy out of their lover, gaining
angelic qualities at the very time they strip away what made the other special
.

“You mean—” I let my voice drift off as Henri’s words sunk in.

Your miraculous healing, your sudden realization of what the Key is—those weren’t accidents, Hope. You were only able to do those things because you’ve taken away some of Michael’s powers. The very powers he relies upon to fulfill his role as Archangel
.