Hellsbane Hereafter (15 page)

He held out his hand, and I pulled the hilt from the sheath at the small of my back, shoring my grip.

“Call the blade.” He moved closer.

I glowered at him. “Why?”

“Emma.”

My belly tightened. Jukar was my father, but he was still a fallen angel. Everything in me screamed that the Fallen couldn’t be trusted, they were evil, selfish, so concerned with their own wants and needs that they risked condemning their children to a life of brutal battles and heart-wrenching loss. No matter what he said, how he filled his eyes with fatherly love, I couldn’t trust him.

I knew this, but there was something in his voice, something about this place that was muddying my brain. The darkness pressed around me, thick and smothering, so I couldn’t fully fill my lungs. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

“You’re going to die here,” s
omeone whispered in my left ear.

I jumped, double gipping my sword, calling the blade on instinct. “Who said that? Who else is in here?”

“No one.” There was a touch of concern in Jukar’s voice. “We’re deep within the mountain. The stillness will play havoc with your mind. Ignore it.”

“Traitor. Murderer.”
The voice filled my right ear, warm breath tickling my cheek.

I spun, sword up, but no one was there. “Who said that, dammit?”

Jukar stared at me, his brows drawn tight. Beside him the caldron shimmered with the strange, ghostly light, steam rolling across the top.

“Destroyer.”
The voice rushed toward me, filling my mind, the mist blanketing the top of the pot, rippling with the disembodied breath.

The voice came from the caldron? I took a careful step closer, then another, lifting my chin, straining to see deeper into the big pot. I drew closer, sensing the danger but unable to resist. Tendrils of mist rolled over the edge, ghosting out toward me, like hands, drawing me in. Closer. Closer.

“Run!”

The voice screamed through my head, raddling my bones. I jumped, my muscles snapped tight just as Jukar’s iron grip latched around my wrist, my hand still gripping tight to the hilt of my drawn sword. I gasped and jerked back on reflex. “Hey.” It was useless. “Let go. What’re you doing?”

“Helping you realize your full potential.” He raised his sword, pressing its point to the soft flesh at the inside of my elbow. “This will hurt a bit.”

With one quick slice, he slit my arm from elbow to wrist, splitting my flesh straight down the center of my illorum mark. Pain exploded through my veins, tearing a scream from my lungs. White bone flashed within the deep wound, blood gushing, spilling into the caldron. Each drop splashed and sizzled on impact.

I squirmed, pulling against his hold, my blood streaming faster the more I fought. Within minutes my head spun, and the darkness hovering at the corners of the room pressed in on me so I could hardly breathe. I was going to faint; my knees already trembled from the effort to free myself.

Quicker than I could react, he released my wrist, snagging my sword out of my hand as I stumbled back. Like a game of tug of war when the rope breaks, I couldn’t recover, couldn’t catch my balance, before I landed flat on my ass. I managed to tuck my arm against me, though, keeping sand from dusting the wound.

Jukar remained focused, lifting his sword, my sword still gripped in his other hand. He held his angelic blade out over the roiling mist, then exhaled, face grim, determined.

Then he swung my sword. Weight shifting, muscles rolling, exploiting every ounce of his strength, he chopped the blade of my sword down on his wrist. It sliced through flesh and bone like tissue paper, severing his hand from his arm. His gleaming angelic sword dropped into the pot, his big hand still gripping its hilt. The archangel didn’t even make a sound, and neither did his sword.

There was no splash, no slosh of liquid, but the sizzle rose to a loud crescendo, like water in boiling oil. The sound echoed in the big room.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Without answering, he threw my sword into the pot right after.

“No.” I jumped to my feet, lurching forward to the edge of the caldron. I thought maybe I could grab it before it sank too deep. But there was nothing there, despite the deafening sound of sizzling oil crackling through the air again.

I glared at him across the giant pot. “Dammit, Jukar, I never agreed to let you destroy my sword.”

He lifted the stub of his arm, staring at the thick spill of mist pouring from the wound. He was bleeding, or as near as angels could bleed. It was his spirit, his essence escaping his body, mixing perfectly with the cloud of steam bubbling up from the caldron.

But even as he stared, his hand reformed from the stub, and his sword manifested in his newly grown palm. An angel’s sword is as much a part of him as his hand, and Jukar had dropped those pieces of himself into the pot. It didn’t matter. As long as he lived, he could heal any wound, rejuvenate any limb, even his sword.

I stared back at the familiar cloud bubbling over the edges of the pot. “What’s in there?”

“Your new sword.” He reached for me, snagging my wounded arm again, jerking me around to tuck my body in against him, my back to his chest. “It will hurt less if you don’t fight.”

The long gash on my arm gaped open, the angel-made wound healing slower. He pushed against me, his large frame forcing me forward, bending me over as he shoved my wounded arm into the caldron to the elbow.

Like acid, whatever that pot contained burned into my open flesh. A scream stuck in my throat as I watched my veins bulge, the contents of the pot traveling up my arm. The pain of it ate through me, searing under my skin, racing straight to my heart. Like napalm, the strange brew exploded inside me, shredding my muscles, infecting every fiber of my being down to my soul.

I writhed against the powerful angel, pulling back, fighting him. It wasn’t enough. He held me firm. Like a living thing, the thick, silky mist swarmed higher, climbing up my arm, slipping over my shoulder, circling my neck, and swirling into my mouth with each ragged, tear-filled breath.

The scent of fresh baked cookies, apple blossoms, and everything joyous and uplifting filled my mouth, but under it, like breathing in perfume, lay a falseness that made it wrong. Coughing, spitting the chemical taste of it from my tongue, I tried not to swallow the mist down, but nothing I did worked.

It coated the insides of my cheeks, pushing into me, forcing itself down my throat. I gasped, my need for air overriding my will to resist. My lungs expanded, and I could almost feel the mist pushing against the walls of my chest, infusing my blood, coursing to the ends of my body.

It was in me. Completely. The caldron stood empty, and Jukar finally let me go.

I staggered back, dry heaves wrenching my stomach. God, I wanted to puke, wanted to scrub the slippery sensation off my tongue. With my hands on my knees, I spit until there wasn’t any spit left. I couldn’t get it out.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” I panted, my heart a fiery ache beneath my ribs.

“Made you better than you were.” He reached for me, but I flinched away. “Stand tall, Emma. You are the ideal. You are what the world will desire. The perfect blending of human and angelic DNA. There is nothing on this Earth like you. Call your sword.”

“You melted it.”

“I gave you another.” The necessity of the statement furrowed his brow. “Call your sword.”

I did as he asked, staring at my empty hand, willing my blade to form at the end of a nonexistent hilt. A rush of tingles raced over my skin, flooding into my hand. Out of nowhere a hilt formed in my palm, the blade growing out from the guard another two-and-a-half feet. The newly formed metal shone as brilliant as any seraph’s blade.

“Perfect,” Jukar said like a proud papa. “Now will it to disperse.”

This time I didn’t argue. The thought came to my mind for the sword to vanish, and it did, hilt and all. “It’s…it’s a part of me, like yours. Like a seraphim sword.”

“No. Your sword is far more deadly.” He smiled like a greedy child coveting a new toy. “Like your illorum sword, it has the power to banish your enemies to the abyss. All your enemies and Abram’s. Demon, Fallen, seraphim, and human. Your sword is truly the key to the abyss.”

I blinked, staring open-mouthed at my empty hand, then shifted my gaze to the empty caldron. The image of Jukar slicing off his hand and dropping it into the pot flashed through my brain. I didn’t want to know what I knew. I had to ask. “What was in there, Jukar? I want a straight answer.”

“You saw what was in there. You watched me add my own.”

I swallowed hard, having trouble saying it out loud. “The magister swords the gibborim were taking last summer?”

There’d been a movement before the war. Countless magisters were attacked and killed, but not before they’d had their hands cut off and their swords stolen. The gibborim then used the swords to attack more magisters and steal more swords.

I looked up at him. “But seraphim took back the swords the gibborim used in battle.”

“Yes.” He nodded solemnly but then noticed the dust clinging to his suit sleeve and brushed at it. “We lost a few. Luckily we acquired more.”

“You had more magister swords than what your gibborim had on the battlefield?”

Confusion pulled through his expression, and he stared at me for a half beat. “Of course. The few used in battle at the start of the war were only there in hopes of obtaining the few more you’d need.”

I looked at the caldron. The strange mist, the pure light, it’d been the angel hands, their swords. The pot had been filled with the severed pieces of angels, dissolved into their natural state, saturated in their blood, their spirit. “This is why you did it, why you killed all of them?”

He shrugged. “Yes. There must be sacrifice to earn reward, Emma. They sacrificed so my son might be safe against their brothers, and my daughter might become powerful enough to protect him.”

I couldn’t breathe, and my heart hammered in my ears. “It was because of me? You killed them…because of me?”

“There was no other way.” He straightened his tie, smoothed a hand over his cornsilk hair.

I met his eyes, blinked, and tried to wrap my brain around everything. “What the hell am I?”

“Don’t you know by now?” He tilted his head, brows furrowed. “You are divine reckoning, Emma Jane. You were born for the job.”

Chapter Twelve

I don’t know how long I sat deep in the ancient monastery of Petra. The fire under Jukar’s caldron had gone out, turning the vast room into the empty cave it once was: black, devoid of even the faintest light. I didn’t care.

The ache of angelic spirit burning through my veins had left my body numb. The fact that Jukar was able to alter my DNA, that I had been born with the ability to become this lethal mix of angel and human, left my thoughts in a twisted mess. I was exhausted, mentally and physically, weary down to my bones, down to my soul.

I closed my eyes, desperate to shut out the memories of what had happened and how many angels had paid the price.

When I opened my eyes again, I knew I’d passed out, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit rested. I pushed to my feet in the utter blackness, wanting to talk to Michael and instantly sensing his location. I called my power to transport me to the National Aviary in Pittsburgh’s North Side.

I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face, but the moment my powers coalesced inside me, a flutter of wings stirred the silence. Before my brain could recognize the sound, I stood at the entrance to the wetlands exhibit.

I stumbled forward, catching myself with both hands on the metal and glass door. It felt like I’d moved faster than normal, my momentum more than I’d anticipated. That couldn’t be. I was already faster than any illorum, nearly as fast as the Fallen. Dear God, what kind of a freak was I now?

“Excuse me, lady.”

I jumped, twisting around to see a pint-sized, curly-haired kid staring up at me. My attention skipped back to his older brother and then to their dad behind them, waiting to go through the door to the wetlands room. Had they seen me arrive? I stepped back and slapped the button for the automatic door. “Sorry.”

The guy smiled, hustling his kids in front of him with one hand, the other gripped around a video camera at his side, filming nothing at the moment. “Thanks.”

I followed a few steps back, the door swishing closed behind me. The boys rushed ahead, their father lifting the camera to track their progress. If they’d seen anything unusual they didn’t show it. I hung back just inside the door, scanning the tropical room: the high, glass ceiling, the windowed walls behind the trees, the long, muddy pond.

“Birdies, Daddy. Lookie, the birdies.” The littlest of the munchkins squealed, racing along the brick walkway toward the center of the room where low bleachers sat between two tall cages. A three-foot wire fence made the barrier between visitors and feathered residents, though the residents were free to cross as they pleased. I glanced ahead of the kid and noticed the birds perched in a row along the top wire.

There must’ve been twenty of them right in front of the bleachers. More birds weighed down the nearby branches and waddled along the brick floor. The little kid ran right up to them, reaching his chubby hand out.

“No touching,” someone said from the bleachers, and the little blond yanked back his hand. I knew that voice, the voice of an angel.

“Come here, Randy,” the dad said.

I stepped forward, peering around the nearest ceiling-high cage. Little Randy skipped past me, back to his dad and brother, and I traced his path in the opposite direction.

“Emma Jane,” Michael said when I came into view. The archangel sat on the middle bench, his elbows bracing on the top seat behind him, his long legs stretched out, feet crossed and resting on the bottom bench, and dressed in a security guard uniform, the National Aviary logo on his breast pocket.

“You’ve gotta take Eli back. Now.” I closed the distance, stopping in front of the bleachers. “You gotta get him back into Heaven.”
Where it’s safe.
Away from me.

Cobalt eyes narrowed on me, sizing me up. Could he tell? Did he know what Jukar had done to me? Did anyone? Michael sniffed, a half smile lifting the corner of his mouth. He sat forward, drawing up his legs and shifting his elbows to his knees.

The big room erupted with squawks and chirps, wings beating the air, as his feathered audience scattered. “You’ve changed.”

I feigned ignorance and looked down at myself. “New shoes. You like?”

His smile lifted a fraction of an inch. “No. That’s not it. But we can discuss it some other time. What do you have for me?”

I sighed and shoved a hand through my hair. “Okay. You ready for this? Abram has a destiny.”

He laughed. “Don’t we all?”

“Do we?” I asked, totally serious. He didn’t answer. “Right. Anyway, Jukar thinks Abram’s destiny is to convince humanity to combine their species with angels. He figures if humans choose it of their own free will, God will allow it, and angels won’t be punished for seducing human women anymore. Poof. Just like that no more angels shunning angels. No more nephilim being made into Fallen-hunting machines. The gates of Heaven open, and everyone will be one big, happy family. At least that’s the plan.”

“Interesting.” His brows drifted up.

“Could it work?”

He leaned back again, elbows braced behind him. “Not likely. It would be virtually impossible to fully meld the species.”

“Why?”

He nodded to the space beside him. “Sit.”

When an archangel tells you to sit, you sit. I long-legged it up the bleachers, taking two at a time to the seat next to him, and sat facing the green, miniature ecosystem in front of us. The dad and munchkins who had come in with me had already gotten their fill and moved on to the next exhibit, but plenty more people filed in behind them.

It was nearly five, but the sun remained high enough to bathe the glass room in warm light, leaving the birds happily chirping and singing all around us. I couldn’t enjoy it. I was still too freaked out.

Michael leaned toward me, our shoulders touching. “Only angels can pass on angelic DNA. And while the Fallen are an amorous bunch, they would have to impregnate every human female on the planet at once.”

The spot where our bodies touched warmed, and the soothing scents of the shoreline swirled around me. I knew instantly that it was his scent, adopted from his favorite places. Angels always smelled great, but I’d learned they smelled as differently as individual humans and rarely of anything as mundane as cologne, although Eli often had a hint of perfumed spice beneath the smell of fresh-cut grass and flowered fields. Was that for my benefit? The question went as quickly as it had come, my mind too full of more important questions.

I breathed in the smell of suntan lotion, roasted peanuts, and sunny beaches, let it seep through me and calm my frazzled nerves. “Jukar seems pretty confident. He says it’s his destiny. That Abram’s testimony would convince everyone. That people would choose to be with angels, and humanity would evolve into a kind of hybrid mix.”

Michael scoffed, but it didn’t sound convincing. “There’s no danger of humanity’s extinction. Like all Fallen, Jukar just wants to eat his cake.”

“You mean, have his cake and eat it, too.”

He looked at me. “That’s what I said.”

I let it go with a shrug.

His gaze shifted back to the trees. “In theory, Father would be less inclined to punish angels for bedding humans if all of humanity desired it above all else. But even then, as I said, only angels can pass on angelic DNA. The offspring of nephilim are pure human.”

“So the child of two nephilim?” I thought of Dan and Crissy.

“Would be pure human and possess no angelic DNA.”

I exhaled. That was good to know. But why was Jukar so sure about the new species thing then?

“That being said, however,” Michael continued, ignoring my question. “If even one innocent is corrupted by his bastard’s testimony, it is one innocent too many.”

And just like that, tension twined through me all over again. “What are you going to do? I mean, how are you going to stop him?” I understood why the seraphim would want Abram stopped, but I didn’t want to see him hurt.

The kid was kind of clueless about most of this angel stuff, both good and evil. It wasn’t his fault. Jukar and his Fallen flunkies strung him along, keeping him in the dark about what they were and which side he was really on.

“I’m not going to do anything.” He waved a hand at me. “You’ll take care of it.”

“Me?”
Of course, me. Is there anyone else?
“What do you want me to do?”

“You’ll have to kill him,” the angel said.

I shot to my feet. “No. I mean, I can’t.”

Michael rubbed his hands together in his lap. “You can. And you will.”

“But he hasn’t done anything. It’s…it’s murder.”

“Which is why it must be you,” he said. “You above all else are uniquely qualified to neutralize the risk.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, but I knew. My gut clenched with a knowledge I didn’t want to think about. Whatever Jukar had done to me had made me different. I knew that, but once again I wondered if Michael somehow felt it, too.

“Do you really need to ask?” He smiled the sort of smile you give people who are a little slow but adorable. “The sword you carried was a part of me. Did you think I wouldn’t feel it when he severed its connection to me?”

“I…” When Jukar dropped my sword in the caldron, he changed it and me, adding to it, adding to me, and Michael had felt it. Of course he did. Was his sword still with me somewhere, melted in with all the others? Did he know how drastically it had been changed? How drastically I’d been changed? “Do you know what he did?”

His smile softened. “It doesn’t matter. I know you are not as you once were, and that is enough. I was aware the moment he unleashed your power. I mourned your loss, mourned the loss of your human life.”

“I didn’t die,” I said, uncomfortable with the topic. “I’m still the same person.”

“You’re not, Emma. Surely you feel it.” He held a finger like a perch in front of him, elbow braced on his knee. Almost instantly a small, bright-yellow bird landed there, eager to please. “Nephilim are born with equal parts angelic and human blood coursing through their veins. But human ignorance of their existence results in parents not believing their children’s claims.”

“What, like kids saying they see dead people? Or talk to angels, or—”

“Or feel other people’s emotions,” he finished for me. He stroked the tiny bird’s back, studying its quick movements. “Yes. Exactly like that. Years of being told their abilities aren’t possible trains the mind to make it so. Then, in hopes they never discover who and what they are, most Fallen fathers shackle the child’s power even further. My sword temporarily removes that shackle, awakens their angelic half. Our magisters retrain the mind and prepare the body. These things in concert enable illorum to fight, to make amends for the sin of their existence. Once their amends are made, the sword is removed, and the shackle slips back into place so they may return to their human life.”

“Yeah. I know. I was there when it happened to me. Got the memo,” I said.

“Your shackle has been removed. Completely. Your awakening is no longer temporary. You are as you were on the day of your conception. Your angelic half is without restraint, fully aware. You are utterly in possession of your power.” There wasn’t a hint of accusation in his voice.

“Yay me…right?” I felt guilty nonetheless.

He shrugged. “That depends on your point of view. You will never return to the ignorant bliss of human life. You will also never lose the power you now possess, the gifts afforded you by your angelic half. This is what Jukar has done to you.”

He didn’t know the half of it, and I was weirdly too ashamed, or maybe too afraid, or maybe both, to clue him in. It wasn’t my fault Jukar had messed with me again. I’d tried to stop him. But maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough. Maybe I’d wanted this, deep down. Maybe a part of me, the fallen angel half of me, the wicked half, wanted everything he could give me. Maybe I was as evil as Dan and Crissy and the others thought. I just didn’t know.

I looked away, worried he might read the guilt on my face. “So what’s that have to do with me becoming a murderer?”

The tiny bird suddenly burst into flight, winging quickly back to the treetops, and Michael once again clasped his hands, elbows on his knees, and met my eyes. “Until the boy uses his power, he is human and therefore cherished as all humans. We, the seraphim, cannot stop him from acts he might commit, only sins he has already undertaken.”

I watched the little bird hop from one branch to the next and then finally out of sight. “Yeah, well, illorum are only supposed to hunt the Fallen and their demons.”

He opened his long fingered hands, his smile easy. “Illorum are not to stand against seraphim either while still loyal to me, and yet you can.”

I stared at him. “I do what I have to for Eli.”

“You are
able
to do what you have to for him with no visible sign of your punishment for such actions.” Michael leaned back. “That’s my point. Illorum who raise a sword against a warrior of God are punished for the betrayal. My sword sees to it. Their mark is altered, their connection to me stained. But you, because Jukar removed your shackle and thereby your dependence upon my sword, don’t seem to suffer the punishment as they do.”

Was he hinting that my working with Jukar was somehow my idea? That it was something I wanted to do? My heart kicked faster, and a hot wash of indignation flooded my face and down my chest. “That doesn’t make me a murderer.” I fisted my hands, trying to rein in my guilt and irritation.

“No, but you have turned your back on your duty.”

My back stiffened, jaw tightening. “No, I haven’t. I mean, I’m only working for Jukar to help Eli. I’m doing it because you said it was the only way to earn back his grace. It was your idea.”

“And you agreed to it.” He picked at the aviary insignia on his uniform, finally smoothing his hand over it, his gaze languidly drifting back to me.

“What choice did I have?”

He crossed his legs. “To say no.”

“And leave Eli as a Fallen, all alone. His fall was as much my fault as his. It’s not fair.”

“Fair has nothing to do with it.” Michael ran a hand through the thick waves of his hair, shaking his head to toss the strands back from his face.