Shadows in the Silence (22 page)

I GAPED AT BOTH OF THEM, BACK AND FORTH between their faces, their identical eyes—even the way they carried themselves was the same. I replayed their movements in my head, how graceful and calculated they both were, and I had no doubt that this reaper was Will’s mother, Madeleine.

She rushed into Will, cupping his face in her hands, touching his cheeks. He stared down at her and his body was stiff in her arms, still in a state of shock. I couldn’t imagine what he felt as his mother, whom he believed had been dead for most of his life, embraced him.

Will was breathless, frozen by astonishment. “You’re alive.”

“Yes,” she answered, and tears rolled over her cheeks. “Yes, my son. I’m alive.”

“How is this possible?” he asked, his voice breaking.
“Where have you been? I thought you were dead.”

Madeleine smiled, a gesture so like Will’s that it threw me off for an instant. “I became a guardian of a most powerful relic.”

He swallowed and gasped for air. “
You
have the Pentalpha?”

“For many years.” She released him and peered around him at me. “Who are you? You’re not a reaper—that much I can sense—but your strength is incredible. I don’t know what you are.”

“She is the Preliator,” Will said.

Madeleine exhaled sharply and stared at me. “You…” She trailed off and turned her gaze back to Will. “That means you’re…”

He gave a single nod, his expression hard. “For five hundred years, I have been her Guardian.”

“You are
the
Guardian,” she said, blinking in shock for a few moments before smiling at him. “I’m so very proud of you.” Her green eyes returned to mine. “It is a boundless honor to stand in your presence, Preliator.”

“I’m just Ellie,” I said with a warm smile. “It’s an honor to meet you too. Will has told me about you.”

Madeleine reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out a gold ring strung on a leather cord around her neck. Even in the low light, caught between her fingers, the ring seemed to glow. “You must want this.”

There were no words for the relief and excitement that
made my blood sing when I saw the Pentalpha at last. I recognized it immediately, but couldn’t remember forging it since I could recall nothing of my time in Heaven. But this ring…This was what we came here for. “Please,” I said. “We need to summon an angel.”

She lifted the ring, pulling the cord over her head and free of her hair, and held it for a moment, gazing at it. “I’ve had this for a long time. It will feel strange not to be its protector anymore.”

“That should be an enormous weight off your shoulders,” I said.

She eased toward me and placed the ring in my palm. I felt its power on contact, the jolt of electricity and heat searing right up my arm and into my chest so fast I gasped. I knew I would be able to summon an angel with this ring that had, until now, controlled demons alone. I knew that I was the only one who could wield absolute power over it, that it was a part of me and of my own angelic magic.

“I have heard,” Madeleine said, “from the tongue of the one who is my eyes and ears to the outside world, that the Preliator is truly the archangel Gabriel in human form.”

“It’s true,” Will confirmed. “We intend to summon Azrael so he can fight on our side against Sammael and Lilith.”

“So the beast is unbound.” Madeleine wore a thoughtful, intense look. “Please, come to my rooms. I’m sure you have questions for me, as I do for you.”

Madeleine led us back up the stairwell we’d destroyed,
down a hallway bright with moonlight, and into a room that had a few candles lit. There was a small round table in the center of the room with a lit candle and a single chair pushed in against it. on the far wall, there was a narrow bed with a worn quilt folded neatly across it. A generator hummed gently beside a dresser topped with another candle and a radio that was turned off. A stove and sink sat on another wall, and I wondered if this room may have been a tiny private apartment during the period the fortress was used as a school. From the cabinet above the stove, Madeleine collected a teakettle and filled it with water. The stove crackled until a small flame lit and she placed the kettle over it.

“Why did you leave without saying good-bye?” Will asked suddenly, blurting it out like he’d been trying to hold the question in for a while.

Madeleine gestured for us to sit on the bed while she took the chair at the little table. The mattress springs groaned beneath us. “I couldn’t let anyone know that I’d become the guardian of this relic,” she said, her voice sad. “Even you. I loved you so much and it broke my heart to leave, but I couldn’t refuse Michael. When the relic’s previous guardian died, he chose me for a reason. He placed something important into the most capable hands he could find. You, of all people, would understand.”

“You could’ve said something,” Will said. “Anything. You didn’t have to tell me why you had to leave, but at least told me you were leaving. I thought you were
dead
.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured. “I never meant to cause you pain. I only wanted to protect you in case our enemies learned that I was the Pentalpha guardian. I feared that, if you knew anything, they would harm you to get to me.”

He shook his head. “They would try. It would get them nowhere.”

She smiled. “You’ve always been strong, William, and here you are, the Guardian of the Preliator.”

“You never knew?” he asked.

Madeleine seemed sad. “No. I’ve been in seclusion for a long time in order to protect this relic. I’ve trusted Evolet to keep me informed of what was happening in the world every few months. I assume she’s the one who led you to me. Where is Nathaniel?”

“He’s dead,” Will replied. “It’s been a few months now.”

Madeleine closed her eyes for several long moments. “I would have liked to see him again. I owe him everything. This war has given and taken so much from us all.”

“How much do you know?” I asked. “About the war.”

“Very little,” she confessed. “I did not know until tonight that Sammael and Lilith are in our world. I’ve heard whisperings that Bastian had been searching for Sammael’s sarcophagus.”

Will’s jaw hardened at the mention of Bastian’s name. I studied him, knowing he had a million questions for his mother, and I wouldn’t speak until he had said what he needed to.

“Did you always know Bastian was my father?” Will asked at last.

Her gaze faltered, but I wasn’t sure that his question surprised her. “Yes, but I didn’t tell him.”

“Did you love him?”

“Yes,” she said faintly. “I did.”

“Why?” he asked, barely able to keep the disbelief from his voice. “How?”

She held her chin up defensively, as if she felt no shame. “Some things that are supposed to be wrong don’t feel that way. He showed me more than once that he wasn’t heartless. I’d hoped he would turn his back on Hell for me, but the pull was too strong.” There was a crack in her defenses, just a hairline fracture, but sorrow showed there.

Will did not miss Madeleine’s weakness and his own expression hardened. “Would it grieve you to know that he is dead?”

She drew a deep breath, pausing before she spoke. “Would it anger you if I said yes?”

“No,” Will said. “If you once loved him, then I expect you would.”

“How did he die?” she asked, her voice quiet. “By your hand?”

“By another’s.”

She was silent for a few moments before rising to tend to the kettle. She brought us each a cup of tea and I let mine sit in my hands to cool off before taking a sip. I tried not to
feel awkward sitting here, meeting Will’s mother for the first time, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps if things weren’t so tense between them, then this would have been easier to endure.

“How did you even…?” Will seemed to struggle with an end to that question.

“Get involved with him?” She wore a small, sad smile. “I knew who he was long before I met him, though I was still young. He was notorious, hunted by many of the most powerful angelic reapers. The first time I saw him with my own eyes, I had pursued some bottom-feeder right into an ambush led by Bastian. I killed six, until the only one remaining was Bastian himself. I was exhausted and wounded and certain he would kill me, but he didn’t. He let me live. After that I seemed to keep running into him. It took me a while to realize it was on purpose, and it took me longer to fall in love with him.”

Will shook his head. “But he was a monster.” His hand tightened into a fist and I covered it with my own to offer him comfort.

Madeleine’s gaze didn’t miss the gesture. “He wasn’t always. He told me his grandmother was Antares. The angelic blood in his veins made him different, created a light in his soul. But after a while, he just stopped feeling and welcomed only his dominant demonic side. He once told me that forever is a long time to keep fighting. I hadn’t realized until it was too late that he meant fighting himself. I wish I knew how to explain to you what that goodness inside him was like and how he revealed it to me.”

Will sat in silence beside me, his expression hard and contemplating. He was trying to understand what Madeleine explained about his father, but I didn’t need any help. This was how I felt about Cadan, who fought with tooth and nail against what his father became and what he was also destined to become. From the first moment I met Cadan, I felt the light in him that Madeleine felt in Bastian, but that light had saved him from the darkness his father had been consumed by.

“It was hard for him,” Madeleine said gently, “as I know it has been for you, William. But you’re stronger than he was. Your heart is too pure for the demonic blood in you to take hold.”

His green eyes met her identical gaze. “How do you know it won’t? There’s darkness in me and I feel it every day.”

I squeezed his hand tighter. “You’re not your father. You’ve proven that to me every day for five centuries.”

Madeleine studied our faces and our clasped hands, but she wore the same ironclad, unreadable expression that Will wore when he was thinking.

Will exhaled and his gaze grew distant. “I have eternity to live, but not enough time to learn who I really am. Not until this fight is over. We have the Pentalpha and that’s all that matters right now.” He’d shut us out again, as I feared he would. He’d face Hell itself before taking on his own emotions, because the truth was a far more terrifying enemy and one that he couldn’t control. He stood, his jaw set hard and shoulders tied into tense knots.

I stood with him. “Madeleine, will you help us?”

“Of course,” she said. “I am no longer a relic guardian. My sword and life are at your disposal.”

I was certain Will would be happy to have his mother by his side and that she would be an invaluable ally. I also wanted to know her. It was like meeting a legend, someone you’d heard about and wondered what it would be like to come face to face with. And her eyes…they were Will’s eyes.

“We’ll return tomorrow,” I told Madeleine. “I need to figure out how I will use the Pentalpha to summon Azrael. We have a demonic reaper with us, so we have to take the sun into consideration. We’ll likely arrive in the afternoon when the sun isn’t so high.”

Her brow made an almost imperceptible movement. “Demonic?”

Will spoke before I had a chance. “Another son of Bastian.”

“Ah. I understand.” She didn’t seem surprised by the news that Bastian had sired another. At least Madeleine wouldn’t be as hostile toward Cadan as the other angelic reapers we’d encountered, given her history with Bastian.

We said good-bye to Madeleine and headed to the car. As we navigated the abandoned castle, the cell phone in my pocket buzzed and I realized I’d completely forgotten to call Ava. I pulled it out and answered. “Sorry,” I said guiltily.

“Where have you been?” she asked. She didn’t seem angry, which made me feel a little better about not calling.

“We got sidetracked,” I confessed. “But we have awesome news. I’m holding the Ring of Solomon right now.”

I heard Ava exhale with relief and relay the news to Marcus. “That’s fantastic,” she said to me.

“How about we find someplace to get some rest?” I suggested.

“Perfect,” she replied. “I’m not sure about you three, but Marcus and I are exhausted.”

“Cadan split from us a few hours ago, so I’ll touch base with him in a sec. While we head back into town, do you want to find a hotel to crash at?”

“Collect Cadan and I’ll call you again when we’ve got rooms somewhere.”

After Ava booked us a few rooms at the Best Western in Aalst, she texted me the address, which I plugged into the GPS. Cadan was closer to the destination than we were, so he met us there. Will and I had our own room, which I was glad for. He was troubled after the reunion with his mother and I worried that he was angry with her. I thought seeing Madeleine again would have thrilled him, despite the shock. Will had accepted her loss and mourned her long ago, and after losing my own mother so recently, I could imagine what old wounds of his had reopened upon seeing her face.

Will took a shower to remove the dust and grime caking his skin from climbing through the crumbling castle, but when he hadn’t left the bathroom after some time, I started
worrying about him. The door was cracked, so I knocked once and tapped it the rest of the way open. He stood over the sink, leaning heavily on his hands on the edge of the counter. His face was soaked as if he’d splashed it with water over and over. I touched his arm and kissed his shoulder, looking up into his face.