Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (53 page)

“What’s wrong, Uriel?” Clark asked. He crouched in front of her.

Uriel didn’t answer right away. She pulled her left wing around to her lap, so that the feathers draped over her legs. The massive plumage dwarfed her. This close, Clark could see that even her feathers were gray and washed out. Lifeless. Uriel studied her wing for a long moment, her bony fingers probing through the dull feathers.

“Are you too weak to fly?” Camille asked. She crouched next to Clark, ducking her head so that she could see Uriel’s face.

“Do you want us to take you somewhere?” Clark offered. “Maybe your wings aren’t working right?”

He had the horrible thought that her wings were dying. That she’d somehow starved them like she’d starved herself. Maybe Zarachiel’s death was going to kill her too. Clark was ready to reach into his mind and look for some magic to help her when she shook her head again.

“No,” she whispered. “I understand now. And I need…I need…”

“What do you understand, sweetie?” Iris asked from next to Clark. They were all crouched around Uriel, ready to do anything to help her.

“
Him
,” Uriel said. The word was a little louder. She licked her cracked lips and swallowed heavily. “I understand him now. I know why he didn’t want you to fix him.”

She directed this last part to Clark. The muscles along his spine tensed. He felt a warning ping up the back of his skull.

“I want to show him that I understand.” Uriel shifted, pulling her wing tighter around her body. Something shiny glinted through her feathers.

Clark barely had enough time to get out of the way before Uriel swung her sword. The blade sang as it arced through the air, narrowly missing his chest.

Uriel didn’t scream as she cut off her own wing.

Chapter Ten

I
t wasn’t a clean cut.

The sword hit with a jarring impact that ricocheted through Uriel’s body, but she held on tight and started sawing when she didn’t make it all the way through. Clark gagged at the sound of bone filing away beneath the blade. Camille stayed where she was, her unwavering gaze on Uriel’s wing, like she was both transfixed and repulsed.

“I want to show him I understand now,” Uriel said through gritted teeth. Her face was sweaty from the pain, her shoulders shaking. She bit her lip in concentration. “I never had the courage before. I wanted to show him, but I couldn’t make myself come down here and do it. I kept putting it off, telling myself that I just needed to prepare myself. But now it’s too late. So this is my sacrifice to him.”

“Uriel,” Iris whispered, horrified.

The smell of copper filled the air. Blood, dark and shimmering in the night, seeped out from under Uriel, turning the ground beneath her to mud. There was so much of it that there was nowhere for it to go. The first bit trickled toward Camille. Clark wanted to pull her back, but he didn’t dare move. Was there a major blood vessel in an angel’s wing that Uriel could hit? Was she killing herself right now and they were too stunned to do anything about it? He couldn’t tell if her sword contained bone or not. If it did, she was already dead.

It had to hurt like hell, but Uriel held onto the sword until she’d hacked clean through. Her wing fell to the ground, leaving a jagged stump behind that reached past her shoulder and oozed marrow and blood. It was too long and awkward. If Uriel was going to live through this, she’d have to have the remnant shaved down to a manageable length.

Clark gagged again.

Finally, Uriel showed the pain she must be feeling. She swayed and had to reach out a hand to steady herself, her palm sinking into the blood-soaked earth. She was so pale that Clark swore he saw what little blood she had left percolating beneath her skin.

This wasn’t right, but it was too late to stop her. The damage was done. Clark couldn’t help but feeling like he’d already failed Zarachiel. Uriel was helpless, and Clark had let her down by not understanding soon enough what she was capable of.

Through half-closed lids, Uriel looked up at Camille. Her eyes had once held so much anger and bitterness that Clark had been impressed such a little person could contain such wrath. But now, her eyes were just wide, dilated black pupils filled with pain and heartbreak. “Can you help me with the other one?” Uriel asked, her voice cracking and swaying. She was asking Camille, but Clark was already shaking his head.

“No!” he said quickly. “We need to get help. We need…” He looked around. But that was silly; he was the only one that could help her. He forced himself to kneel in front of her. He didn’t want to touch her wing, but he knew what he had to do. “I can fix it,” he said, gulping down the hot vomit rising up his throat. “I can put it back on.”

“Don’t!” Uriel screamed when he went for her wing. She jerked back, raising her sword shakily and pointing it at him. “That’s not what I want. I want to show him I understand.”

Camille made a hushing sound, drawing Uriel’s attention toward her. “It’s okay, Uriel,” Camille said calmly. “I know. I get it. Give me the sword.”

Uriel looked at Camille’s offered hand for a long moment before she handed over the blood-slick sword. Drops dripped off the metal and down onto her detached wing, which was flickering mutely under the moon’s light. When he’d repaired Camille’s wing, it had only been splintered, but still attached at the important parts. If he had any chance of fixing Uriel, he had to act now.

“Good,” he whispered to Camille, who held the sword in her hand now. He crouched back down. “Keep her calm. I’ll need to focus.”

“No, Clark,” Camille said, her voice strong and steady. “I’m going to help her. She wants me to help her.”

“What?” he hissed. “She’s delusional! I need to put her wing back on, and we need to get her help! Like,
mental
help.” He reached for the sword, but Camille stood and walked to Uriel’s other side, where her right wing laid limp and exposed. Clark’s eyes widened with shock. Camille was really going to do it.

“She doesn’t need help. She knows exactly what she wants.” Camille knelt beside Uriel, putting her hand on Uriel’s bony shoulder in solidarity.

Clark cursed some more. “Don’t make this about us, Camille,” he hissed. “She deserves better.”

“She deserves to have her wishes honored.” Camille narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re right. This isn’t about us, so stop acting like you have to fix every damn thing. They’re just wings.”

“They are not, and you know it!”

“I’m going to help her,” Camille said. “So either look away or shut up.”

“She could be dying. Is that a bone sword, Uriel?”

“It’s not,” Uriel said, smiling softly like she was the one comforting him. “I’m not killing myself. I’m just making myself like him.”

“To honor him,” Camille added, and Uriel nodded.

“This isn’t honoring him. He wouldn’t want this.”

“It’s not about what he wants,” Camille said. “It’s about what she wants. This is how she’s atoning.”

Clark shook his head. “No, you’re doing this because of what happened between you and me.”

Camille growled, her face turning stormy. “I’m doing this because of what you should have done for me,” she snapped. “I’m doing this because you don’t understand.” Camille shoved Uriel’s detached wing away from them, sending it slipping across the blood-soaked ground. Clark quickly leapt out of its trajectory. “That damned thing isn’t the most important part of herself she lost tonight. Not even close. And it will never be important again. If her wings stay on her back, they will be a curse. And a reminder of all she lost.”

“I don’t deserve them without him,” Uriel added in a cracking voice. Camille nodded her understanding.

Snarling, Clark stepped away. He flung up his hands. “Do whatever destruction you want, but I’m not going to be a part of her mutilation.”

“I’ll take care of her. Afterward,” Iris said quietly, like it would make him feel better to know that Uriel wouldn’t bleed out in the front yard.

“Whatever.”

He left the scene behind and stalked through the woods. He wasn’t far enough away to avoid hearing the sickening hiss of metal swinging and the dull thwack of it striking bone. Uriel screamed this time. He stepped into a run and blindly fled through the woods.

He didn’t know how long he ran. He wasn’t even conscious of the fact that he’d eventually stopped. He stood numbly in the woods, staring up at the moon.

This is it
, he thought.
This is how it all ends.

The angels will finish tearing the world apart, lost in their vengeance. After all they’d been through, all they thought they’d overcome, for it to just slip away now was the ultimate waste. None of it mattered. None of the sacrifices, the deaths, the fighting. It was all lost in the void the angels had created.

He’d been right. This was rock bottom. He couldn’t sink any lower. He couldn’t see any reason to try to rise up again.

Overhead, the limbs rustled and a breeze stirred. Camille landed quietly beside him. He looked at her, noting her pale face and sweaty brow. She shouldn’t be flying in her condition. He shook his head at her, too unfeeling to speak.

Instead of saying anything, she took his hand. The contact would have shocked him if he wasn’t already so shaken. She met his gaze head-on, unwavering and unflinching. She was back, Clark saw. He might have saved her life, but Zarachiel had saved her in the only way that mattered. And somehow, helping Uriel had helped her too. He couldn’t comprehend that, so he didn’t try to.

“I know you don’t understand,” she whispered. “Because you care too much. You’re so similar to Zarachiel in that way.” She smiled at him for the first time in a long while. “I know you think that was about us, but it wasn’t. Uriel needed it. That was my way of fixing things. I can’t comfort people very well, but I can do the hard things for them so they don’t have to. That’s how I’m similar to Zarachiel. That’s how I honor him.”

“Okay,” Clark managed to say.

“Okay,” Camille echoed.

They stood like that for a long time, holding hands and staring into the dark woods. Neither of them spoke. In some way, they were tethering themselves to each other again. And Clark was too sick with grief to feel relief that he hadn’t destroyed Camille by saving her life. They’d found their way back to each other, just as he’d hoped. But once again, the price was too high.

After a while, Camille was the first to speak. Her quiet words sent shudders down Clark’s spine. “I hate Lucifer, you know.”

“I know,” Clark whispered back.

“But Z told me the same thing he told you about the helpless—”

“He did?” Clark asked, surprised. He searched Camille’s face and saw that it was the truth. Even as he was dying, Z had been saving them by uniting him and Camille in a common goal.

“Yes. And right now, Lucifer and Maya are the only two people standing between us and another war. We have to warn them before another war starts. Because it will, you know. More fallen angels will fight with Lucifer if Gabriel starts a war against their old leader. It will be bad and bloody, and we will wish the world had just ended when it had the chance to.”

“I know,” Clark whispered again. He looked back up at the silvery moon just in time to see an angel-shaped shadow fly in front of it, black wings glinting in its light.

He might not understand angels, but he understood war enough to know when they were crashing straight toward it.

Again.

GIVE THE DEVIL HIS DUE

A DAYS OF NEW SERIAL

VOLUME V

MEG COLLETT

Chapter One

S
omeone was screaming.

It was Lucifer.

Clark sat up and saw the fallen angel struggling in Michaela’s arms. He yelled and fought against her, but she held him back, her eyes locking onto Clark’s.

“What did you see?” Michaela asked, her question making Lucifer quiet. His attention, like burning black holes, pinned on Clark.

Camille walked to what little of the edge remained and looked down. Clark knew what she saw as she let out a wretched whimper and fell to her knees. Her body started rocking with sobs.

“No,” she gasped. “No, please no.”

Clark stood on shaky legs, eyes still on Lucifer.

“What happened?” he asked, voice cracking like he was the one who was dashed across the rocks below. “What did you see?”

Camille started to rock, her sobs growing louder until the sound was nothing but anger, pain, and horrible, unending sadness.

“Clark?” Michaela asked, still clutching Lucifer tight in her arms.

Behind her, Gabriel and his holy angels were frozen, they looked between Clark and Lucifer, but none of them made to walk to the ledge and see what had reduced Camille to hysterics.

“That was Maya falling,” Lucifer said. He started to tremble. “Why was she falling? What did you see?”

“She…” Clark didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He looked back over his shoulder, picturing the pool of blood spilling out from beneath the boulder and trickling out, drip-dripping down the rocks she’d landed on.