Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (50 page)

Zarachiel was on the ground, propped up on an elbow as he tried to inch away from Grace with his hand pressed against his stomach, his body curled into himself. It took Clark a second to register the paleness of Z’s face, the agony in his tiny movements, the way his feet dug at the ground like he needed the traction to help him scoot away. Only then did Clark understand the glimmering gold on Z’s hand, how it pulsed out, spilling down the front of the angel’s jacket and pants.

“No!” Clark shouted. He started toward the stairs, but Grace fired again.

Clark gasped, drawing up short. The shot had hit the ground beside Zarachiel’s shoulder. “Don’t come any closer!” Grace screamed. The gun was steadily pointed at Zarachiel’s head now. “I’ll shoot him in the head if you take another step. And keep your mouth shut. No angel magic!”

Clark cringed. How did she know about his abilities? He nodded his head and held up his hands like he was surrendering. He looked at Zarachiel and met the angel’s gaze. Z’s breathing was fast and labored, his nostrils flaring with the effort. He gave Clark a slight nod, but Clark had no clue what it meant.

Camille stepped around Clark, making Grace jump again. “Stop! Keep your wings tucked! I swear if anyone comes closer, he will die right now!”

“What are you doing, Grace?” Camille asked. Her voice was even and calm, but Clark heard the undercurrent of violence, like a dark promise, in her tone. His eyes darted back to Grace.

“Angels are devils! Angels are wicked! We must kill them all if we want to reclaim the Earth for our race!” Grace shouted. She never blinked. Her eyes never wavered. Her smile shifted, became almost sensual in its slow, curving twist. “I’m going to make him proud of me.”

“We saved you, Grace. We helped you.”

“There was nothing to save me from. It was a trick,” Grace said. “We made it look like I was hurt so you would take me in and trust me. We’d been following you for days. We knew of the Archangel and the possessed man,” she said, nodding toward Clark as she said the last. “This is my first assignment. He said he gave me the best one, because he loves me.”

Camille stiffened beside Clark. In the cold, goose bumps pricked along her skin, but she didn’t shiver. “They really hurt you, Grace. Just so it would look real? Did they really rip out that man’s throat too just to make a good story?”

Grace cringed. The Loyalists had clearly broken her, convinced her of her assignment, and then raped her to make it look good. Clark gritted his teeth.

“I was willing!” Grace shouted back, her voice still unwavering. “I want to kill angels for him. I’m going to make him proud!”

“Who? God?”

“No!” Grace laughed. “Jimmy! The leader of the Loyalists. He loves me. He’s proud of me. He wants me for himself, he said. When we take back the Earth, we can be together and live in peace.”

“You have it!” Camille called back. The frustration was seeping into her voice. They could both see that Zarachiel was bleeding a lot. He was still trying to crawl away, his free hand reaching out and clenching the frozen ground, pulling himself away an inch at a time. Grace stalked his every motion out of the corner of her eye, but she kept her main focus on Clark and Camille. There was no way either of them could make a move that she wouldn’t notice instantly. “This Earth is yours! It always was. The angels don’t want it.” Under her breath, Camille added, “There’s not even enough here to defend it.”

“We will avenge it!”

“Fine. Whatever,” Camille said. Clark shot her a look, but she ignored him. “So you want to kill angels. That’s great. But why don’t you start with someone else? Someone bigger?”

“He’s an Archangel,” Grace said with narrowed eyes. “He’s my primary target. I kill him, then you. Take out the important one first, Jimmy said.”

“He’s hardly important. Look. He doesn’t even have wings.” Clark cringed at the contempt in Camille’s words, but they were having an effect on Grace, who darted a quick look down at Zarachiel. “Will that really make Jimmy proud? Possibly. But what if I said I could get you the greatest angel of all? I could bring her here for you. Just for you to kill all by yourself. That would really make Jimmy love you. You would be the greatest among the Loyalists for killing this angel.”

“Who?” Grace asked, clearly interested.

Camille smiled. “The Angel of Death.”

Grace’s mouth fell open. “How can you do that?”

“We know how to summon her,” Camille answered, smoothly lying. If they knew how to summon Michaela, this would all be over by now.

“You can bring her here? Right now?”

Camille nodded. “Right now. We could distract her.”

“Why would you do that?”

“For our friend.” Camille jerked her chin toward Zarachiel. “Let us help him.”

“No.” Grace shook her head quickly. “No, he has to die. Now.”

“What if you killed the Angel of Death first? Then Zarachiel,” Camille said. Her voice cracked slightly, drawing Clark’s attention.

He felt the sway in her body beside him, and her skin was starting to grow clammy even in the cold. She breathed through her nose like she was trying not to throw up. Her body hadn’t completely healed yet. She wasn’t ready for this, and she certainly couldn’t fight. But Clark couldn’t use holy fire with Zarachiel so close to Grace, and if he put it in the ground, it would burn them both.

He needed to find some other way, but he worried that if he even opened his mouth, Grace would shoot Zarachiel.

“You’re all going to die! The order doesn’t matter!” Grace looked around, nervously shifting her weight and adjusting her grip on the gun. With every snap of a twig, her attention would dart toward the woods. She was obviously searching for someone.

He darted a glance at Camille, but she’d noticed it too. “Are they supposed to come and help you, Grace?”

“I’m not telling!” But she gave it away: she was supposed to have backup.

They didn’t have much time, and they couldn’t wait any longer. If other Loyalists came, there would be no way out of the situation. Clark turned his attention to Zarachiel and met the angel’s eyes.

Z’s breathing was so shallow that Clark couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his chest. He’d been trying to move away before, but the angel was now still, his legs splayed weakly in front him. He was still propped up on his elbow, but he used both hands to staunch the blood flowing from his stomach wound. But it wasn’t enough. Even as Clark watched, Zarachiel was disappearing before his eyes.

Camille kept talking to Grace, but Clark ignored them both. He moved his eyes up to Grace’s gun hand and then back down to Z. He repeated it a few more times until Zarachiel realized Clark was trying to tell him something. Z’s eyes flickered up to gun. He studied Grace for a moment from the corner of his eye, obviously judging the distance. It was a long way—she was careful to stay just out of reach. Clark didn’t know if Zarachiel had enough strength left to get to her, but it was their only option.

Zarachiel met Clark’s eyes again, and the pain in his face slipped away. His eyes cleared. And he smiled.

Clark knew what that meant, and he changed his mind. Zarachiel couldn’t do this. Clark wanted to shake his head and tell Z to abort the plan, but he couldn’t give anything away. Camille was still distracting Grace, who’s voice was growing more excited as she prepared herself to start shooting, knowing her backup could be here any second. Camille couldn’t keep her distracted any longer.

Zarachiel waited another moment. Clark saw the angel draw a deep breath, his eyes never wavering from Clark’s. Ever so slightly, Clark lifted the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t a smile. It was the saddest expression Clark could ever recall making. It wasn’t enough, but it was for Zarachiel.

Z exploded from the ground.

A blast of wind gusted around Clark, and he was temporarily blinded by the surge of light from Camille’s wings.

The gun went off again.

Chapter Seven

C
lark had spoken. The magic had come to him like an old friend. The words felt familiar. He’d used them once before.

There was a very still moment—the span of a heartbeat—where Clark felt like he was in a frozen world.

Camille was in the air above him, her feathers skimming his back as she beat her wings downward, where they hovered in this slow motion movement. Grace’s mouth hung open in a scream, but the stillness captured the sound, like a fist around a butterfly. The gun in her hand bucked upward from the recoil. But Clark hadn’t been fast enough.

The bullet had already lodged itself deep into Zarachiel’s chest, right as he collided with Grace.

He’d launched himself into the path of the gun, using his chest as a battering ram to knock her off balance. Even as his body jerked from the shot, he wrapped his arms around her and they fell slowly, embracing, faces pressed together.

Camille shouted something, but Clark didn’t hear that either.

Something happened on his arms. Deep in the magic, something stirred. Clark looked away from the scene in front of him and turned inward, wondering what was happening.

A seam opened inside him. It stretched along his spine and around his ribs so that he felt like he was being hugged from the inside. Hugged tightly. In the warmest embrace possible. He was on fire. And, just as suddenly, he was ice cold.

A chill swept up from the webs of his fingers, circled around his elbow, and dove right through the meat of his shoulder, where it latched onto his collarbone. It—the thing in him—swung to the base of his neck and started climbing up his throat. It used his tonsils like a rope to land on his tongue and knocked politely on the back of his teeth.

It was all so sane. So easy. Like if Clark had just allowed his magic to do bad things, it would have always answered his call. But he’d ignored his magic. He’d pushed it away and stomped it down. He’d done everything possible to keep it at an arm’s distance. Literally. He didn’t want to know it. Understanding it was putting too much faith in an evil breed of angels’ secrets and their wicked magic.

But Grace was right.

They were all evil. All the angels. All the humans. Evil and so very good at the same time. Right and wrong. Holy and fallen. It was all inside them: the capacity for both. It was the flip of the coin. The twist of fate. So simple and so horribly complex at the same time.

There was no line between the good and bad parts. It didn’t shift and sway. It wasn’t altered by events in a life. There wasn’t a side to choose. It wasn’t a decision because good could be evil. Holy could be fallen. What made an action, a thought, an event right or wrong was all in the mind of those experiencing it.

Camille had thought his actions evil when he saved her. He’d thought them good.

Grace saw the angels as bad, fallen, evil. He saw them as holy, good, right.

There was no way to discern the difference. He was human, Nephil, angel. He was good and bad. He was the dirty magic of evil angels. He was still the pink-haired kid who had fallen into a cave and found a broken angel. He was a killer and a saver. A reaper and a savior.

So he opened his mouth and let the word whisper itself into the air until he was moving through the stillness, walking to the spot where Zarachiel was still falling with Grace. He stopped beside them and looked back toward the cabin. Camille hovered in the air above the stairs, her wings caught in a downward beat. Clark smiled before he turned his attention back to the task at hand. Grace’s scream hung in the air like a solid piece of ice. Clark ducked around it and cleared the air of golden blood and ivory bone that had exploded from Z’s chest with a quick swipe of his hand.

The gun was loose in Grace’s grip. Clark reached forward and flicked her trigger finger off the metal grip before taking the gun from her. Strands of her red hair shifted in the building momentum of her frozen fall.

With the gun in his hand, Clark looked around. He’d done this before. In the club with the Watchers. He’d frozen time. Back then, he’d thought it was his cold hatred for the Watchers that had frozen a part inside of him too as he’d killed them all with a blind ease, with an icy distance between the action itself and his reaction to it, like even the consequences to actions were frozen.

Once again, everything was frozen but him. His heart moved, but not his feelings. He could act but not feel the reactions. He could stop time. Maybe even rewind it.

Go back
, Clark thought.
Bring that bullet out of Z’s chest. Bring Grace back inside the cabin. Bring Camille back to the Descendants’ meeting room after his exorcism. Bring Liam back. Bring Jenna back. Bring Lucifer back. Bring Sophia back.

Rewind it all back and start over when things were easier and less messy. Start from that point and fix it all. Make it right. Let time unwind again and everyone be saved. The world. The humans. The angels. The Nephilim.

Clark snickered. He could be the crazy old man that would tell tales about this future they’d almost had. People would roll their eyes and listen begrudgingly, having heard the silly stories, like fairy tales, of plagues and Angels of Deaths countless times before. But he would be the only one who knew, who’d lived it. Everyone else would be spared the bad. The evil. The wrong. The fallen.