Rebel (30 page)

Everyone watched in breathless silence, the only sound the crackle of the inferno that was slowly approaching us. Michael didn’t hesitate. With a battle cry he charged through, Cain right behind
him, and we could see them through the flames, untouched, as the Armies of Heaven came to life.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” Raziel shouted. “Go!” And with that he raced after them, followed by the rest of the angels.

For a brief, vain moment I hoped Uriel’s armies would be trapped between the flames and the water that had proven so deadly to them, but already the bloody, dangerous angels of heaven broke through, meeting the Fallen as they charged.

And then it was a battle once more, smoke and noise, screams of the dying, blood everywhere. I stood frozen in the midst of it, barely able to see through the billowing black smoke, as around me the wounded fell. I came to with a jerk as I saw a dark angel standing over Gadrael’s fallen body, about to finish him off with a spear to the throat, and I screamed at him, racing toward him. Gadrael’s sword had fallen by his outstretched hand, and I scooped it up and leapt on the angel, screaming like a banshee.

He fell. The sword had pierced his armor, pierced his heart. I had slaughtered Nephilim, those hideous, barely human creatures, by the dozen, but I had never drawn my sword against another human being. An angel, no less. And he was dead at my feet.

I heard a choking noise, and looked to see Gadrael coughing up blood. The angel had been thorough with his handiwork—Gadrael had been cut up so badly,
there was no time to get him to the infirmary, no way to get him to the sea. I knelt beside him in the sand, cradling his bloody head in my lap, murmuring soothing words. The Fallen might survive, but I was human.

“Hold on,” I said urgently. “Someone will come and help get you—”

“Not . . . enough time,” Gadrael said, his breath wheezing through a slashed lung. “Get the Source.”

The Source, who was right now giving birth, far above the battlefield. I stared down at Gadrael in despair. I was going to hold him as he died, and there was nothing I could do.

I looked around me for any kind of help, but people were fighting for their lives. Through the curtain of fire I could see them now, the pitched battle, and I took only a moment to acknowledge that in this, at least, Cain hadn’t lied. The Fallen had survived the fire.

And Cain had survived on the blood of two different women. I had no idea whether my blood would provide the same healing power as Allie’s, but I had no choice. I took the sword and cut my wrist, an expert slash, and held it to his mouth. “Drink.”

He clamped his mouth shut, like a child refusing spinach, and shook his head.

“He’s been right about everything else, damn it,” I said. “Take my goddamned blood.” And I reached out and held his nose, so that he had no choice but to open his mouth.

I felt his teeth as he latched onto me, the pain short-lived, and I watched him drink. There was no pleasure in it, not as there had been when Cain had taken my vein, but there was comfort in knowing that I could save at least one man.

A moment later he rolled away from me, jumping to his feet and grabbing the sword I’d used. He stared at me in amazement. “My wife is going to kill me,” he muttered, and charged back into the fray.

Everything passed in a smoky daze—I had no idea whether it was minutes or hours. I moved among the wounded, sinking down, giving them my blood, sending them back to fight once more as more and more of Uriel’s army descended and were cut down. The sky was black with smoke and with wave after wave of dark soldiers, and I knelt in the sand, tears running down my face. We could never prevail against them, not when they outnumbered us so heavily. Half of our warriors were human women, trapped behind the wall of fire, watching numbly.

Suddenly just enough of the smoke lifted and I could see Cain, covered with blood, a savage grin on his face as he fought a huge angel. It was Metatron, slashing and hacking at him, and panic froze me in place. I had no proof, no sense that Cain would survive this battle, and Metatron was enormous, determined. I could kneel there and watch him die, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

I wanted to scream, but I covered my mouth to stop it. There was no way he could hear it through the noise of battle, but I knew that he would anyway, and it could distract him at a crucial moment. I watched, motionless, as Metatron forced him back, back, even as Cain slashed at him, and I wondered if that was desperation thrumming through his lean, strong body, or determination.

And then the world went sideways as Cain tripped over a fallen soldier, sprawling backward; he wouldn’t have time to recover. Metatron was moving in, his blood-splattered face like granite, descending upon him for the final kill, and I knew that if Cain died I would die too, I would simply cease to exist. I watched in helpless horror as Metatron leapt to finish him off.

In time to meet Cain’s upthrust sword slamming into his chest, twisting. Metatron went down, boneless, sprawling on the sand beside Cain.

I let out my breath in relief—until I realized that Cain hadn’t risen to stand over his fallen enemy. He lay still, spent, and I knew with sudden certainty that he was dying. Alone. Without me.

I rose. Humans couldn’t walk through flames. Fallen angels shouldn’t be able to either. Cain didn’t know all the answers, and in this insane world of Sheol anything was proving possible. I started toward the flames.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tory caught my arm. She wasn’t human, but neither was she one of the Fallen, and she’d been trapped on this side of the battle as well, fighting off the soldiers who managed to break through.

“Cain. He’s hurt.”

“What the fuck do you think you can do about it?” she yelled back.

“Save him,” I said, ripping myself away from her grip. “Or die trying.”

I ran toward the flames.

H
E WAS DYING,
and he didn’t really care. He’d finished Metatron, that piece of business paid for, and he couldn’t think of anything else he needed to do as the noise of battle raged around him. Metatron had fought well, better than he’d expected, and the killing blow he’d landed beneath Cain’s ribs was testament to that fact. It was all right. He was ready for it to end.

Odd—he would have thought Tamarr’s face would finally come back to him when he was dying. But all he could see was Martha, her halo of unruly curls around her stubborn face, her delicious mouth. He laughed as he lay dying. It was just like him to think lustful thoughts as he finally blinked out.

“You asshole.” He was hearing Martha’s voice as well, though those weren’t exactly the loverlike
sentiments he would have wished for his final words. He opened his eyes to tell the phantom just that, and then froze. It was Martha in the flesh, covered with soot and blood and grime, kneeling beside him, fury in her eyes as she shoved her wrist at him. “Drink.”

“How did you—?”

“Do you think you know all the answers? Drink, or I swear I’ll let you die on a pile of rotting corpses. And don’t worry if you taste a few other men at my wrist—I’m sure you don’t mind sloppy seconds.”

He stared at her in disbelief. And then he caught her arm, yanking her down, and kissed her, hard.

For a brief, golden moment she kissed him back. And then she shoved him away. “I thought you were going for my neck.”

He was fading now, but it was worth it. To die with Martha’s kiss on his mouth was as good a way to go as any.

“Asshole,” she muttered again. And he could taste the warm, sweet, life-giving drops of her blood against his lips, his tongue, and he swallowed, taking her.

T
HE WOMEN FOLLOWED
me like a horde of ancient Celts, screaming blue murder, moving through the blaze as if it were as insubstantial as the mist that shrouded Sheol. I heard them as I fed Cain, heard them as I cradled his head in my arms, but I didn’t
watch. Either we’d prevail or we wouldn’t—right then I couldn’t stand any more bloodshed. This was the last time I would see Cain, the last time I would be with him. Assuming we both survived, I was leaving. Going back to the ugliness of the real world, maybe. Raziel would have some idea of a bolt-hole until I recovered. But for now I could hold him and look down at the lying bastard and love him as I knew I shouldn’t.

Slowly, slowly, the noise grew softer, the deafening clang of metal against metal dying back, the thuds and grunts fewer, the screams of the dying fading into nothingness, and I wondered if I was dying as well. I realized with absent despair that we were bathed in a golden light, and I looked up, expecting to see some kind of eternity waiting for us. Instead I saw the sun beating down on us, with no cloud of dark angels blocking the light. I stared around me dazedly, to see that the wall of flames had disappeared and I was kneeling in the middle of a bloody battlefield strewn with hundreds of bodies, though I recognized none of them. They were all soldiers of Uriel’s.

Who had now seemingly departed. There was a sudden shout of triumph, followed by a roar as the army of the Fallen raised their bloodied weapons in triumph, and I looked down at the man whose head I cradled so tenderly.

He was looking up at me, a bemused expression on his face.

I dropped his head in the sand.

A moment later I reached Tory, throwing myself into her arms as we hugged each other, laughing and crying—when the familiar sensation washed over my skin, and I froze.

Tory stared at me. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “You’ve seen something. Are they coming back?”

“Eventually,” I said in an absent voice, breaking free of the sudden trance. “It’s not that.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“Listen!”

For an impossible moment there was complete silence on the bloody sand. And then, like purest music, the sound came floating out into the sunlit air, carried down from the topmost floor.

The healthy cry of a newborn baby.

R
AZIEL STARED DOWN AT HIS
sleeping son, a look of complete amazement on his face. It had been three days since he’d been born, and Raziel still couldn’t get over the absolute wonder of him. Ten fingers and toes, a sweet milky smell that Martha insisted went with all babies. And Allie was fine, if exhausted from the short, hard labor, smiling at him so benevolently that he wondered if she was the same woman who took delight in pricking his pride. “He’s beautiful,” he said in a voice of wonder, knowing he only echoed what every father in history had said when gazing upon his child.

“Shhhhh,” Allie said. “Martha’s asleep.”

He frowned, but lowered his voice anyway. “Why do we have to worry about Martha getting enough sleep? You’re the one who just had a baby.”

“And she’s the one who’s been walking him while he cries so I can rest. Between that and her visions and Cain and serving as a source, she’s been a mess. She finally drifted off a little while ago, and I want her to sleep as long as possible.”

Raziel glanced over at the seer. She was pale, paler than he’d ever seen her, curled up in a chair by the window, one hand under her face in a protective gesture. “Cain’s not going to be a problem for much longer—he’s leaving.”

“Of course he is,” Allie said in a dangerous voice. “The rat bastard.”

“He saved us.”

“Rat bastard,” Allie repeated firmly.

There was a soft knock on the door, just enough to startle the seer into wakefulness, and she jumped up. “Sorry,” Martha mumbled. “I don’t know why I fell asleep. Are you up for visitors, or should I send them away?”

“Depends on who it is,” Allie said.

“Michael and Tory,” she said promptly.

Raziel stared at her. “How do you know that?”

Martha had a sudden hunted look on her face, but she managed to shrug. “The vision thing,” she said finally. “It’s gone haywire. I’m getting constant flashes of things that don’t really matter. The good thing is, it no longer makes me sick.” She shook herself, as if shaking it off. “You want us all to go away?”

“Of course not,” Allie said immediately. “Bring them in.”

Raziel watched the seer as she went to the door. She’d lost weight in the three days since the battle. She was bruised and had stitches across a long gash on her wrist, and everything about her looked pale and battered.

He handed the baby back to Allie, a little afraid he might drop him, and turned to greet the archangel. “You’ve come to see the new baby.”

“No, I’ve come to gaze upon your shining face,” Michael said dryly. “Of course we’ve come to see the baby.” He gazed down at it, nodded as if to say “That’s a baby,” and stepped back for the women to fuss. “What are you going to call him?”

Raziel glanced at Allie. “We were thinking Luca.”

“Bringer of light.” Michael nodded, approving. “In honor of the First.”

“Yes,” Raziel said. He hesitated, then drew Michael aside. “You know, it was the damnedest thing.”

“What was?”

“In the heat of the battle, just when I knew we were going to defeat them, I thought I saw something. As far as I could tell, Uriel was nowhere around. But something else was.”

Michael was looking at him critically. “Don’t tell me you’re having visions?”

“Of course not!” he protested with an uneasy laugh. “You didn’t see anything, did you?”

“Besides blood and death and flames? No. What did you think you saw?”

“Lucifer.” He said the word softly, half hoping Michael wouldn’t hear it. But the archangel had frozen at the name. “Uriel’s angels were retreating, the last of them cut down where they landed. I was looking to see if Uriel was with them, and I swear I saw Lucifer, sort of floating there. Shimmery, like a mirage, and he was trying to tell me something. And I have no idea what.”

Michael was looking like he’d seen a ghost as well. He began to curse softly beneath his breath, this man who, before the arrival of his wife, had never cursed at all. “I’ve seen him too. Not in battle. Earlier.”

Raziel just stared at him. “We’ve spent millennia trying to find him, and you just now decide to tell me this?”

“I didn’t remember.”