Harsh Gods (41 page)

He was shoved to his knees in the next instant as Dr. Kramer erupted from below. He ran encumbered, curling around the weight of Terhuziel’s battered stone head like a running back with a massive football. Malphael’s dual-voiced bellow resounded from the bottom of the stairwell.

“You will not escape me, physician! All the Thunderer’s servants die this day.”

The Gibburim’s footfalls pounded upward in swift pursuit.

Kramer dodged to the side of the doorway, throwing his back against the wall. Adjusting his grip on the Rephaim’s idol, he scanned the platform, brows knitting as if he expected to find something—and it wasn’t me.

A moment later, Halley came through the other door on the far side of the tower. Shivering in the bloody tatters of her hospital gown, she clapped her hands to her ears, screaming over and over again.

“I’m
me!
You can’t be me!
I’m me!
”

Terhuziel’s presence lashed the air.

YIELD AND MAKE ME WHOLE AGAIN.
Crashing peals of thunder punctuated the Rephaim’s demand.

Kramer and I both charged toward the girl, as Ski Mask scrambled in the snow for the slug dropped by Checkerboard. He couldn’t find it in time and instead darted to block me. Swinging wildly with the rifle butt, he landed a lucky shot across my jaw. Fireworks dazzled my vision and I staggered under the ringing blow. He raised the weapon for another strike.

Recovering, I feinted with my right. His lunge carried him past me. I lashed out with my left-hand blade. With an arcing twist, I laid his belly open. The rifle clattered from his grip as his guts spilled out, clotted with down from his parka. He sank to his knees, blood staining his fingers as he sought to catch the steaming coils of gray intestines spilling forth.

Halley ran straight for the edge of the platform, heedless of the snow clinging to her feet. Kramer rushed after her, his handsome features distorted with rage.

“There’s nowhere to run,” he barked.

The girl didn’t hesitate as he grabbed for her—just climbed out onto one of the gargoyles and balanced with her bare feet on its icy stone head. The city spread out before her as she teetered precariously over the drop.

“Halley, no!” I called.

Her head whipped up at the sound of my voice. The gusting wind blew her hair from her face, freezing tears to her lashes. She held my gaze for a poignant instant.

“Wingy,” she said.

I thought she was going to drop right then. Kramer froze as he realized what she threatened to do.

YOU ARE MY CHOSEN. YOU MUST YIELD.

Halley shook her head.

“Die first.”

“Smart girl,” Malphael crowed. He stood framed by the door at the top of the stairs, one hand loosely cupped around the palm-sized seal. His nose was bloody, maybe broken. A host of little cuts speckled his forehead and cheeks, each seeping red. The friction burn of a seatbelt stood out lividly on his neck.

None of it slowed him down.

Halley wobbled when she spotted him, her eyes locked to the form rising behind David Garrett’s head.

“Halley, get back before you fall,” I called.

“No,” Malphael said. Fire kindled in his human eyes as he whispered, “Jump.”

“You fucking leave her alone!”

Kramer lunged forward reflexively, then abruptly drew up short. He couldn’t grab Halley without dropping the stone head, and he was clearly loath to do that. Seizing this moment of hesitation, Malphael leapt in a sudden blur. The Gibburim hit Kramer with a flying tackle, connecting with such force I feared shocks of the impact would knock Halley from her perch. The two thrashed across the stones of the observation deck, Kramer curled protectively around Terhuziel’s head as Malphael sought to press the seal home.

A subtle depression above the statue’s chipped brows suggested where the confining device belonged. Kramer twisted and bit, forcing Malphael to pry him bodily from the Rephaim’s broken idol. Tiring quickly of this, the Gibburim took a great lungful of breath and bellowed inches from Dr. Kramer’s face. Incomprehensible words crashed upon the air with a fury to rival Terhuziel’s thunder.

The man convulsed in the face of that power, keening with stark and mindless terror. His fingers slipped from the idol, and the battered piece of statue rolled ponderously toward one corner. It fetched up against one of Checkerboard’s singed boots, blind eyes angled heavenward.

Malphael snapped the helpless doctor’s neck and dove for the severed stone head.

NO! NO! NO!

Terhuziel’s panic surged in waves across the platform.

I rushed for Halley.

Something caught my ankle. I pitched forward mid-charge, dropping both daggers as my hands went out instinctively to break my fall. The steel clattered ringingly across the stones. Spitting curses, I crashed after them, twisting to free my leg.

Ski Mask clung to the hem of my jeans with blood-caked fingers. He lay tangled in his own intestines, eyes wild with hatred and pain. I kicked furiously at him, planting my steel toe in the center of his face. The cartilage of his nose gave a satisfying crunch.

“Fucking die already.”

I kicked again, and his grip slackened. Picking myself up, I rushed to reclaim my blades. I wiped the daggers on the thighs of my jeans as I went, hastily resheathing them so I could grab Halley.

“I’m me. He can’t be me,” she breathed in rhythmic repetition. “I’m me. He can’t be me.”

Malphael knelt directly in my path to Halley. One-handed, he palmed Terhuziel’s head like it was some grisly basketball. Above his mortal shell, the Gibburim clashed in heated battle with the broken Rephaim. Their shouts and imprecations echoed through the Shadowside.

In the physical world, thunder raged and a hail of lightning dropped from the sky. I danced back with a warning to Halley. The girl yelped and nearly overbalanced. Malphael didn’t even flinch.

Smoldering scorch marks dotted the stones around Garrett in a neat and perfect ring. Nothing aimed for me or Halley. When the rain of fire ended, I edged closer to the girl. A few more feet and I would reach her.

I willed for her to hang on.

“Such a desperate waste of power,” Malphael growled. “You’re wide open to me now.” On the other side of reality, Terhuziel shrieked as the Gibburim pinned him with his massive spirit-blade.

Smoke rising from his lips, Malphael intoned the fallen god’s Name. Rings of roughly scribed sigils leapt with answering fire within the seal. They filled the air with acrid power. The Rephaim decimus loosed a thought-numbing wail.

BY ALL OUR VOWS, KILL ME THIS TIME, MY BROTHER.

“I owe you no mercy,” Malphael boomed. “Sentence was passed. You are confined once more to your vessel.” He slammed the seal against Terhuziel’s brow even as the Rephaim shrieked and pleaded. The rings of sigils spun like tumblers in a lock and the clay disk fused to the stone.

Terhuziel’s voice cut out abruptly. The next instant, the storm ceased.

I dove for the girl.

“Halley. Now. Take my hand.”

Her eyes sought mine, fleetingly. Shivers wracked her thin body, threatening to steal her balance. One foot slipped on the gargoyle’s head.

I pressed myself against the waist-high wall, stretching out to reach her.

“Come on,” I urged.

Behind me, Malphael growled in that eerie, two-toned voice.

“Everything touched by the Rephaim is tainted.”

I turned just in time to see him puff his chest with a gulping breath. Glowering at Halley, he loosed his fury in a roar.

Halley cringed before his onslaught of raw, paralytic power. That motion alone was enough to carry her over the edge.

She didn’t scream—just loosed a tiny startled sigh as she slipped from the head of the gargoyle. For an awful, breathless moment, she seemed to hover on the air, her wide, dark eyes locked to my own.

I reacted before my brain could tell me it was a bad idea.

With faster-than-human movements, I leapt and spread my wings. They were useless on this side of reality, but that didn’t register. I vaulted over the gargoyle, slamming into Halley before she’d dropped below its open jaws.

I caught her in my arms and she clung to me—but now we were both going over, and there was nothing but concrete and death stretching ninety feet below.

Behind me, Malphael made a derisive sound—maybe it was words, maybe not. I lost the meaning to my racing thoughts.

There was only one place where I could fly, but nothing like a Crossing hung upon the air. Even if I could shadow-walk, that wouldn’t help Halley. I’d save my own hide, leaving her to die.

Two thoughts occurred to me in the milliseconds that passed as my feet traded stone for empty air.

I had a relic in my pocket.

Terhuziel had called Halley the child of my tribe.

That made sense—so much sense. From the start she’d done things that I did. Channeled languages. Peered through the Shadowside. Plucked thoughts and emotions from others with just a touch. Even her reactions to the cold—she shivered, but she shouldn’t have been able to function this long in such ill-suited clothes. But I was so used to my own reactions, it had failed to register as unusual.

Anakim blood beat in her veins—diluted perhaps, but still potent. We were the only tribe who could bodily make the transition. So what of our descendants? I thought at her in a rush, thrusting layers of complicated concepts through all the words. The message flashed in the space between one heartbeat and the next. I knew from my own experiences with Terael how bad that felt, but there was no time to be delicate.

The wings you can see aren’t here where your body is. There’s another direction. Follow me.

Her panic hammered against both of us.

I kept one arm around her, digging with the other in my pocket. Time raced and the ground rushed up. The warded silk tingled against my fingers, but the ring was lost in its folds. Halley clung to my neck, burying her head against my chest. Her hair lashed my face.

Don’t die with me, Wingy.

Visions of her tower, Rapunzel, a cat I hadn’t even seen at her house, her little brother—treasured things, laughter, regrets, all cascaded through her head. Books and stories and lost goodbyes, all so fragile.

I won’t let you die
, I promised.

I tore at the silk. Finally my fingers brushed the ring, and the power of the relic hummed beneath my touch. I closed my hand around it, and there wasn’t even time to gulp a breath.

Here we go.

I held my mind open to hers as I reached through the relic’s connection to the other side of reality. My body stuttered on the verge of transition, and I experienced the mechanics of crossing in excruciating detail—the sense of the veil, pushing to rip it, fighting to drag all that I was from one side to the next.

I felt every iota of what I attempted to pull across—my jacket, the deadly blades strapped to my wrists, the heavy steel-toed boots.

And the girl.

Frail as she was, she hung like an anchor wound around my neck. I struggled against that resistance, while the tower streaked past.

It wasn’t going to work.

I need your help
, I thought.

My wings beat uselessly against the pummeling air.

Like a curtain. Rip.

Everything flew by, faster than thought. Too fast.

I shoved against the veil again, thundering directions at Halley with an urgency that defied words. The bent railing, the woman’s broken body—all of it was terribly, fatally near. I could see where the fallen rifle had cut its shape through a nearby drift of snow.

Zaquiel!

With unexpected power, she intoned my Name—the same way that I did, each syllable a spell. Light and meaning surged within me, and together we rode that rush. The relic burned against my hand, little shards of precious gems embedding themselves into my fingers as the stones shattered with the effort of dragging us both across.

Together, we broke through.

The ground flickered, snow replaced by a memory of grass, leached of all color. I shouted my exultation, though I barely had breath for it. Halley twined around my torso and I dropped the shards of the spent relic to cradle her with both arms. My wings caught the wind of our free fall and I guided us into an arc.

“Wow,” she breathed. I felt more than saw her head tilt up, tracking the motion behind my shoulders.

“Pretty fucking cool, right?”

She nodded, shivering against me. I shifted my grip on her, climbing higher to avoid the naked branches of twisted Shadowside trees. I aimed us toward the Mayfield Gate, far beyond Malphael’s reach.

“Way quicker than walking, hunh?”

That time, I couldn’t feel her nod, though I heard the chatter of her teeth even over the rhythmic sound of my wings. She was such a frail thing—she weighed next to nothing. Even so, I felt the strain the longer I kept her aloft—I wasn’t exactly built for passengers. The ground sped by beneath us, exhilarating now that the worst threat was past.

As I closed upon the cemetery gate, her hands went limp and slid from my neck.

“Halley?”

I shook her. She sagged in my grip. Her head lolled back.

From the tail of my vision, I could see her eyes, half-lidded. Only white peered through the fringe of dark lash.

“Halley!” I cried. I moved to support her head, one arm under her shoulders, the other under the small of her back. Her legs dangled, dragging the air.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I hissed, angling toward a clearing.

Dead weight now, she made it hard to maneuver. As I tried to land, her legs tangled in my own. I hit, hard and awkward, curling my body around hers as I rolled into the fall. I tucked one wing in time, wrenching the other nearly out of joint as I skidded across the ground, taking the brunt of the impact on that wing and shoulder. I bit my tongue as the top of Halley’s head banged against my chin.

I tore back to the flesh-and-blood world with a cry that was anger and panic and frustration all thrust together in one excruciating sound. Halley lay limp on the snow beneath me.

She wasn’t breathing.