Entice: An Ignite Novella (7 page)

He doesn’t seem to hear me. The spear twists in his grip, and I notice his lunging posture before he has a chance to strike. In a quick step forward, he stabs out with the spear, missing me by just a breath.

“Azael!” I call out, ducking away from his blade.

He does it again—a shuffle of feet followed by a barely missed hit—and I change tactics. Dropping to the floor, I swing out my leg, curling it around his feet so he smashes to the ground with a resounding thud. Two lungfuls of air leave him in an angry huff. He rolls over, fast, much faster than I’ve ever seen him move, and claws across the ground to me.

I scramble to slide away from him, but he catches me by my ankles and drags me back to him. Before I can get away, he steps on my hip, pinning me in place as he stands. The bones of my body grind painfully into the unforgiving ground. I swallow the agony. Screams fight for purchase on my tongue, but only strangled gasps make themselves heard.

“What the
hell,
Az?!”

He spins his spear between his hands just as I did earlier.
Shit.

Slowly, he lowers the point of the spear to my chest. It pauses again over my heart. Just when I think he’s about to plunge it through me, he moves the blade up to my collarbone and pulls the blade ever so carefully across the skin. It burns where my skin cuts open, stings like fire in my bone. I bite down on another strangled cry.

Do it
, I think quietly to myself.
Kill me. End it now.

The blade pauses at my right shoulder and he cocks his head. For a split second, I think he heard me. That thought disappears with a twitch of his lips as he twists the blade carefully into my shoulder, pushing the tip farther under my skin, burying it in my muscle. Blackness drowns my vision as I kick my legs below him wildly. Finally, I connect a hit.

He hisses and steps off of me, dropping his spear. “Dammit, Pen.”

I sit up, leveling my most threatening glare at him. “Really? You’re pissed that I
kicked
you?”

“Not pissed. Sore. That was my damn kneecap.”

I choke on a laugh. “Well, at least I didn’t almost carve you open.”

There’s a few small cuts on his arms and a small spot of blood staining through his shirt. “I think you got in a few blows too,” he says with a cavalier shrug.

My fingers trace the cut across my collarbone and a veil of blood falls from it like a wet curtain. I don’t answer him, don’t acknowledge that he’s talking to me at all, as my skin slowly starts to stitch itself back together.

“I wasn’t going to actually hurt you,” he says with a dramatic sigh. “You need to learn to take a beating anyway. If you let others smell your pain, your fear, they’ve already won.”

I look back at him, my mouth hanging open. “Lucky for me, I’ve already tucked away the experiences and scars from years of war as a reminder of that. Thanks, though. I appreciate the lesson from you anyway.”

The floor feels fragile under me, like this conversation.

“It’s fine, Pen. You’re overreacting.”

I want to push him further, yell at him and figure out what possessed him. Is this what he’s been training in? Mercilessness? The look in his eyes—it’s like he was able to separate himself from what he was doing. Like he could split
me
from the situation and identify me only as a threat.

No longer Pen, not a sister. A target. A target he would have been thrilled to fillet. Denial makes itself a stranger in the face of fact. How many angels has he tortured? What has Lucifer been filling his head with?

I study Az closer, trying to find something familiar, but everything is different now. He stands taller, holds himself tense and ready to fight. There’s a coldness in his eyes and the lines of his face that is only broken by a mirthless smirk at cruelty or pain. I wonder if the snide comments he makes are fully made in jest or if he has become as dark as his humor always was.

For the first time, I’m wary of Azael.

So instead of fighting him on the issue, of trying to scrape together the brother I remember from the remains that stand in front of me, I fold. In my mind, I turn to paper that I can bend and crease over and over into the strange shape of a warrior I’m now supposed to be. I ignore the darkness that I now notice creeping throughout Azael’s body, spreading across his features like a shroud. I pretend that everything’s fine. Because this is how it’s supposed to be now.

Dark, angry, bad. Heartless, if not yet physically, then mentally. And that needs to be fine.

“Sure, okay.” I tie my tongue around the unwanted gift I’ve burdened myself with—
caring
—and bury it in the pit of my stomach. “You’re right. I’m just overreacting.”

––––––––

B
ACK IN OUR DORM
, G
US
is waiting for us. He stands awkwardly in the center of the room, very careful not to touch anything or stand too close to either of our things. Azael slams the door behind us and immediately starts surveying his side of the room, looking for anything misplaced.

“You again,” he says after he’s satisfied nothing has been moved. “If you keep showing up in my room like this, people will start to talk.” Gus blanches, only encouraging Azael further. He leans against the wall and crosses his arms, his ankles. Grins. “Are you here to court me?”

I laugh and shove his shoulder so he stumbles closer to Gus, who somehow loses even more color and nearly trips over himself to get out of the way. “That’s awfully presumptuous, Az. He could be coming to court me.”

“Of course not,” Azael counters. “He already knows you don’t want to be... ‘handled.’ I think was how you put it.” He lies down on his bed, striking a pose that splits me in half with laughter.

It’s easier to pretend Azael hasn’t changed when he’s joking around like this. The easy humor makes the blackness filling him up seem benign. I can almost pretend nothing has changed. Almost.

“What do you say, old Gus? Which twin do you prefer? That surly, ink-stained beast or me, a finely tuned soldier with devilishly good looks? Keep in mind, I will take your answer very personally.”

Gus looks between us, backing toward the door and reaching to the handle. “If this is the kind of greeting I will receive every time—this is highly inappropriate—I am your
superior
, and you are not to speak to me as if...” He flounders for a word, motioning wildly with his one free hand, as if he can grab something coherent to say out of the air.

Before he has a chance to stammer away the rest of his vocabulary, I pull out a slim blade from my bedside table and, with a flick of my wrist, send it flying at him. He barely registers the blurring dagger before it sticks with a shuddering thud right under his outstretched arm. His fingers don’t even get the chance to close around the door handle. He gawks at me, at the dagger, back at me again.

“Relax. We’re joking.” I leave the words hanging above me as I fall back onto my bed and pull a book from a stack to read, using the musty-smelling paper to block out the image of Gus’s stare and Azael’s bemused face.

“Were you trying to
kill
me?”

That would be much better suited for Azael
, I consider saying but think better of it just before opening my mouth. I speak into my book when I answer him. “Oh please. Does no one have any faith in my aim?” I lower the book to my chest and roll my eyes for emphasis.

“No,” Gus and Az answer at the same time.

Azael beams. “Look at that. It’s like we share a mind!”

“Yes, split between you two, you share
one
mind,” I mumble, folding myself back into my book. It’s an examination of shapeshifters and the different creatures they’ve been known to imitate. I’m particularly drawn into a crude painting of a creature with a snout, claws, and wide yellow eyes.

“Can we please get down to the reason I’m here?” Gus asks, carefully stepping forward.

“I thought you were leaving?” I flip another page and see an oily painting of different kinds of vipers—some fat and slow-looking, others smaller with coiled bodies built for speed. They’re green, red, yellow, black...

I try to picture Botis in his reptilian form. Would his thick muscles make him more like the wide snakes with the large flat heads or the ones as thin as my wrists that look like they could strike faster than I could react?

“I’m afraid I’ve a duty to consult with you two before Eden.” He takes out the same black notebook I flipped through the other day and turns past several pages before looking back up at us. “Do you two have a plan?”

“Zag.” Azael grins at him.

Gus looks over to me for an explanation. I sit up, abandoning my open book on my pillow, resigned to being forced into conversation. “Zag,” I confirm.

“Care to elaborate?” He rolls the notebook up in his hands, the papers furling out like petals of a flower. His shoulders slouch and he seems to be leaning to one side, as if some invisible force is pushing him off balance, and I get the sense he doesn’t want this to be a long conversation. If he sits down, he’ll be too engaged. But if he continues standing, he may fall over.

“We know what Naamah and Botis are planning. Kind of.”

“Kind of?” And the notebooks unfurls again, ink spreading across more pages.

“Something about a damn apple,” Azael interjects. “We went to visit our supposed teammates to discuss strategy and they shut us out.
Us.
As if we were the ones pining to work with them... They should be so lucky.”

“An apple.” In the state he is in—turning through pages of his notebook so fast I’m sure they’ll rip, his eyes glued to the symbols that scrawl across previously blank pages—the only thing Gus seems to be able to do is repeat segments of our conversation back to us. It’s starting to irritate me.

“They refuse to work with us,” I go on, “and tried to hide what they were planning when we sat down. But I saw the symbol for apple and some mention of it being forbidden. We’re not really sure what it means, but we’ve decided to do the opposite of whatever they’re doing.”

“Is this some kind of test?” Azael asks. He runs his hands through his hair and around his neck like he’s trying to strangle himself. I’m worried he’s unraveling under whatever pressure he’s put on this assignment, and we haven’t even truly begun. “Are we pitted against one another? Because, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for competition, but it would’ve been nice to have a warning. Especially from our supposed
advisor
.”

“No.” Gus shakes his head. “You all will work as a group. It’s the only path that leads to complete success of all involved—a cohesive attempt to sully the human. Otherwise things will fall apart. It’s not a test.” He looks up, glancing around the room at anything but us. I’m not sure I entirely believe him. “It’s an assignment,” he finally manages. “Failure is not an option.”

“Never said it was,” Azael spits, clenching his fists until his knuckles drain of their color.

“I did not mean to imply you did. But it is imperative that you know what’s at stake.”

“You don’t think I know? That I don’t understand?”

I watch as rage buffets Azael like the waves of an ocean. It rocks him back and forth, rises and falls. His behavior toward Gus, in response to the topic of Eden, leads me to believe it is more important than I realize. Azael doesn’t know the danger his life is in, but he still sees even the suggestion of failure as a sentence as grave as death. Completing our task in Eden will be my way of proving to Az—to Lucifer—that I’ve committed to my choices. Gus’s words spin through my head again.
Failure is not an option.

“You don’t seem to care.” Gus shrugs, as if it was obvious. “Everything appears to be a joke to you.”

“Not when it counts.” The words grind out from his clenched jaw.

Gus nods, scratches at the scruff on his jaw. “According to my briefing on you, you follow orders well enough but don’t seem to have any potential of your own.” He pauses to touch his mouth, as if he’s half confused at what he’s saying and whether he should go on. He does. “Adam, I believe, will fall into temptation. It is bound to happen sooner or later. Sooner is preferred, but... He has choice. Unlike you.”

I push myself to the head of my bed, into the very corner of the room, and try to listen unnoticed.

“Your fate is sealed, Azael. I don’t see you ever changing the course of action you take to arrive at your ultimate destiny. Not with how heedlessly you go on. But if you can be involved in the corruption of Adam—in the corruption of man himself—you’ll be remembered, regardless of your ending.”

“My
ending
?”

“Your path may change, but the destination never will.” Gus’s voice is little more than a whisper, little more than a warning.

“And what exactly is my ending?”

Gus raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Can’t you guess?” He allows a few seconds before he says anything, as if he’s truly waiting for him to guess. “Death.” The word rings out, hollow-sounding against the cold, hard walls. “Ruin.”

A sick feeling worms its way through my veins, making my arms tingle and sting. I don’t want to hear how Azael will end, to realize my greatest fear for him is an inevitability. Knowing I can’t do anything makes me anxious, twitchy. I want Gus to stop, to take back what he’s said, erase the future he’s already seen written in ink and rewrite Azael’s story. I want him to stopstopstop. I need him to keep going.

“The only way you could end, Azael, is in absolute destruction. The question is, who will you bring with you?” He glances at me so briefly that I’m sure I imagine it. “But perhaps there is no better fate for those of us who have fallen.”

Azael jumps to his feet and stalks up to Gus until he’s inches from his face. With them standing so close together, I notice that Gus is just a few inches taller than Azael. It’s strange. Azael, with all his bravado, seems like he should be a fist or two taller than Gus, who shrinks ever so slightly into himself.

“Listen here, book boy.” He grabs Gus’s notebook and tosses it across the room. “No one understands what
this
means more than I do.” He puts so much weight on that one word,
this
, that I know he’s talking about more than Eden. It encompasses everything—his fall, his rise, his task. His duty to Hell. The room suddenly feels much too small. “I will bring all the world to ruins with me.”