Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (65 page)

“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.

Maya. Maya. Maya.

Dead
, Clark thought.
Dead like Z.

“Just tell me!” Lucifer shouted. He slumped in Michaela’s hold. She struggled to hold him upright. No one came forward to help her. No one wanted to be close to Lucifer when he heard the truth. Everyone knew what would happen.

War.

Lucifer would kill them all for Maya. For her death.

“Tell me,” Lucifer said again, his voice quieter this time and thick with tears. “Is she dead? Just tell me. Please, Clark. Is she dead?”

Clark looked up, meeting Lucifer’s eyes. Clark didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t think of a single word. But his face said enough, apparently. Lucifer roared, his voice rattling the trees around them. The sound threatened to rip apart the sky and the earth. Rip out their very hearts.

Maya was dead.

A war would start today.

But a long, long moment passed after Lucifer had gone quiet and instead of flinging Michaela off him and launching into battle, he simply said, “No.” Deep lines formed between his brows. And deep in his black eyes, a lightness spread. Clark blinked, watching the hazel filaments flare through Lucifer’s black irises.

“No, what?” Michaela asked.

“No, she’s not dead.”

“Lucifer—”

The fallen angel had never looked so sane. Not even when Clark had met Lucifer in Hell. Not even when Lucifer had stepped into the holy fire.

“She can’t be, don’t you see?” Lucifer looked around at them, his eyes bright and ever lightning. A smile—one of relief and sheer joy—spread across his face. His eyes met all of theirs, like he was trying to convince them all. “Don’t you see?” he repeated, a laugh bubbling up his throat.

“What is it?” Clark asked, stepping forward, the first to move. “What do you know?”

Maya’s body pulled at him from behind his shoulder, but Clark didn’t look away. Michaela was frowning, her hold loosening on Lucifer. She seemed to be lost in thought, searching for something inside herself. But Clark focused solely on Lucifer.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Lucifer said, like the words were the greatest revelation. He was still laughing and smiling, and Clark felt like they—not Lucifer—were the crazy ones for not understanding. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to rip this world apart. If Maya were dead, you all would be too. Because my heart, my soul, and any goodness inside of me would be dead too, dead with her. But I don’t want to kill you. That little part inside of me, the good part, is still alive. So she is too.”

* * *

The blackness.

The end.

It was brightening.

Maya groaned, feeling a flash of pain up her side. She opened her eyes and blinked, a gasp working through her lungs. Above her, she only saw trees, but that wasn’t right. She was supposed to be crushed under rocks. She’d felt herself hit the ground. The impact had killed her.

But she was alive.

With a grimace, she sat up and looked toward the gorge’s cliff. Behind her came the sounds of angels running toward her—Lucifer’s fallen angels. But they were still far away. Her eyes landed on the spot where she should have fallen.

The rock clearing at the base of the cliff was only a few yards away, but Maya was hidden in the tree line. Shifting to look around the tree trunks, she managed to see the spot where the boulders had hit the ground.

There was a lot of blood.

And beneath a boulder, she saw a small hand. She knew that hand.

Maya cried out and tried to crawl forward, but her side protested, her ribs likely broken.

Dante’s body was beneath the rock.

The impact she’d felt was him colliding with her in the air. Like a missile, he’d redirected her fall, sending her plunging into the woods, and breaking her ribs from the collision. But he’d taken her place beneath the rock, because he hadn’t been fast enough to save them both with his little bat wings. He’d died so that he could save her.

A sob escaped her mouth, followed by countless more. She knew she should crawl forward and signal up to the others that she was alive. They’d probably seen the blood and assumed the worst.

Dante had saved her.

So she cried. Cried for her friend. For his sacrifice.

“Maya?”

At her name, Maya looked up. Michaela stood over her, her black hair backlit by the sun, making her look like she was wearing a halo. Michaela crouched down in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“He saved me,” Maya choked out.

“Who?”

“Dante. The demon. He saved my life.”

“That was very brave of him,” Michaela said kindly, even though she didn’t know Dante.

Maya sniffled and looked up at Michaela. “Is it bad? Did Lucifer kill everyone? You should go back and stop him. Tell him I’m alive. Just give me a minute though. My ribs hurt and I want…I want to be with Dante for a bit, okay?”

“I understand,” Michaela said, reaching for Maya’s hand. But she made no move to go to Lucifer. Maya frowned.

“What happened? How long was I out? Did he kill them all?”

“No, Maya.” Michaela smiled down at her and squeezed her hand. “No one died but your brave friend. Lucifer is waiting up on the outcropping. You did it. You did the impossible. You saved him. The devil himself loves you. And you love him.”

Maya let out a little breath of air. “He’s okay?”

“Yes. No one is fighting today. Today we will celebrate Dante’s life, but his life will be the only one. You saved us all.”

Chapter Ten

T
hey buried Dante, along with the stone that had killed him and the blood that had pooled inside the divot the boulder had created. Maya spoke a few words as Lucifer held her close. He hadn’t let her go even once since Michaela had brought her back up to the rock outcropping. Clark was happy to see the way they looked at each other. Their love made him feel like some of this fighting was worth it. That Z hadn’t died in vain. That Camille’s pain was just a stepping-stone they needed to cross in order to get here.

“What about the twins?” Camille asked. No one had seen the harbingers of doom since Maya’s fall.

“Halfway around the world, I would guess,” Lucifer said, wrapping his arm around Maya’s shoulder and tucking her against his side, cradling her wounded ribs like she might crack apart at any second. Everyone else stood in a loose circle, warily watching one another.

“What are we going to do about them?” Gabriel asked. His holy angels and the other Archangels stood next to him.

“No more fighting,” Clark said at the same time Maya said, “Just let them go.”

Michaela nodded. “They’re right. It’s time for a change.”

“That was said after the war,” Clark said. “And look how that turned out.”

“No. For real this time. No more fighting. This is peacetime. It’s time to help the humans and repair this world. Truly.”

“How do we do that? This world is too changed for the Descendants to take care of things alone. Especially with the twins loose,” Camille said. She hadn’t moved from Clark’s side either. But unlike Maya and Lucifer’s proximity, Clark didn’t believe Camille’s closeness was due to love. She just knew that he had similar opinions, and she wanted to fight to make things right.

Clark didn’t want to think about what would happen between them when things were sorted out.

“I know how it’s done,” Michaela said. She stepped forward into the circle. Her shoulders were back, her chin high. She looked commanding and intimidating, like she had back during her General days in Heaven. Or, at least, how Clark thought she would have looked. He remembered the stained glass window in the meeting hall back at the Descendants’ compound. It had depicted Michaela as a warrior, leading the holy angels. She looked like that now. For once, Clark felt like things were under control. He could step back and let Michaela handle it.

“How?” Gabriel asked. “Will Lucifer get Clark’s magic?”

“I don’t want it.” Everyone looked at Lucifer, but he just shrugged. Maya pulled his head down and planted a long kiss on his lips. When he was free enough to speak again, he added, “I have all I need right now. But I can hunt down the twins if I need to.”

“How can you just give up all that you were fighting so hard for?” Gabriel argued.

Lucifer looked at the once-holy angel and smiled sadly. “Did you think about that when you signed your soul over to me so that you could save Michaela? In that moment, when you knew she could be dying, did you worry about the purity of your soul and all the morals you’d fought so hard to uphold all those years before?”

“No.”

Lucifer nodded at Gabriel’s reluctant admission. “It’s like that.” Lucifer turned to Michaela. “What is your plan for sorting this out?”

Michaela took a deep breath, her gold wings rippling in the wind. “We’ve been cowards,” she said, leveling her gaze at the Archangels. Raphael, in particular, cringed at her words. “You stayed in Heaven when you should have been down here. Now Zarachiel, our brother, is dead. I think we must atone. We must honor his memory the way he would have wanted.”

There was a long enough silence that Clark thought the angels would argue, but slowly, they nodded their heads in agreement. “You’re right,” Raphael said, putting his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “We were wrong to stay in Heaven. I speak only for myself when I say that I want to atone however you see fit, Michaela.”

“I’m not going to dole out punishment. I want each one of you to decide for yourself what you will choose. But there are only two options. No others. Because we’ve made too many mistakes. Those mistakes were caused because the lines between human and angel were blurred.”

“What do you mean?” Maya asked, speaking up for the first time since her fall. “Do you mean the Nephilim? And relationships between humans and angels?”

Clark was grateful for Maya sticking up for him and Camille, but he really didn’t think she needed to. Camille was beside him, but it felt like an entire ocean stood between them.

“No, I mean our—the angels’—involvement with human affairs. Like I said, this isn’t a punishment, but I propose that we decide, right now, where we want to remain. Those who want to atone and honor Zarachiel will remain on Earth with the humans. They will help repair this place and gather all the survivors. And they will remain on Earth. Forever. Those who decide to leave must never return. They will stay in Heaven and do the angels’ work for the rest of days. No more crossing back and forth.”

“How—”

“That’s not all,” Michaela said, interrupting Raphael. He quickly shut his mouth and dipped his chin, showing his submission to Michaela. None of the angels, Clark noticed, met her eyes. So it wasn’t just him who was feeling the intimidating vibes rolling off the Angel of Death. “Those who stay choose to atone. Their atonement comes at a price. Their wings.”

“What do you mean?” Camille asked, her voice sharp.

“Their wings will be removed. If you chose to stay on Earth, you will live amongst the humans and be like the humans in their ways. It is my hope that as the world repairs itself and time goes on, people will forget these days. From now on, these will be the days of new. Over time, the angels will be lost to memory. And those who remain will fall into obscurity, forgotten and unrecognized by the younger generations. We will scrub ourselves from the memories of this Earth. We will rebuild a world that is safe from us.”

A world safe from the angels.

This is what we’ve come to
, Clark thought. But it still terrified him. “Is that really necessary?” he questioned. “To take the wings of those who remain? Isn’t that a little bit of overkill?”

“No.” Michaela spoke the word and left little room for argument.

Clark couldn’t help but cut his eyes toward Camille. She wouldn’t look at him.