Shadows in the Silence (30 page)

“Saying how sorry I am will never make up for what has been done to you,” I said. “This is barbaric.”

“I have deserved no less a fate,” the Naphil said. “I have
done murder, Gabriel, and you imprisoned a criminal. That is the difference between our sins.”

“Then you understand why I must kill you now?” I asked him.

“I have always known that you would come for me one day and why,” he said. “I’ve had thousands of years to accept that I have done evil and that this is my punishment. I welcome death. Tell me about these beasts, the demonic reapers.”

“They have gathered against us and are killing as many humans as they can and sending their souls to Hell. We can’t let them do this anymore. We have to stop them once and for all. Sammael and Lilith, the Fallen leading the demonic, want to annihilate all life, everything.”

The Naphil tried to stand, but his muscles had clearly atrophied. He slumped back over and his head lolled about on his shoulders. He stared sadly at the ground. “I am tired,” the Naphil said. “I am tired of this hole in the earth.”

“I wish I could offer you a better fate,” I told him. I wanted nothing more than to free him and let him see the sky again, feel the sun on his skin, to let him live. But I couldn’t. He couldn’t live, and neither could I. I once asked myself if I could sacrifice others to win this war, and now that I knew I could answer that question with a ‘yes,’ I hated myself.

The Naphil’s pitiful gaze found mine. “Kill to save many lives, Gabriel. Begin with me. Give me an honorable death.”

“I’m sorry for what I have to do,” I said.

“Do not be sorry for this,” he said. “This is mercy. I do
not want to live like this anymore. Whatever fate greets my soul after death must be better than the weight of old iron chains.”

Will stepped forward. “I’ll do it, Ellie. Don’t—”

“No,” I said firmly. “I did this to him. I have to finish it.”

The Naphil watched me as I moved toward him and called a single sword into my hand.

I would never forget the feel of the Naphil’s skin breaking under the metal of my sword. I forced myself to watch him die as his life’s blood poured from his haggard body. His eyes only left mine when he was gone. I wrapped his heart, which was about the size of a basketball, with linen that Rebekah gave me, and tucked it into my backpack.

The moment we left the Sanctum, the torches went out and the chamber turned to blackness, swallowing the corpse of the Naphil. We started back the way we had come and explored several tunnels that each ended in a wall of stone or another cave-in. Rebekah and Ethan walked well ahead of Will and me, poking at a tunnel system map between them.

“Derinkuyu had a ventilation shaft that was also used as a well,” Dr. Massi said excitedly. “Most ventilation shafts are too tight for any of us to fit through, but one through which water is drawn should be wide enough. We may be able to use it to escape.”

She hurried off, ducking into tiny doorways and whirling around columns, and the trickling sounds I’d heard since
we entered the city grew louder as we followed her. The passage became a staircase that took us up and then back down again until it opened into a large cavern filled with water that gave off an eerie azure glow. The ceiling was two stories high at least and at the apex, a beam of daylight shone through a well shaft and hit the water.

“Oh, excellent,” Ethan Stone said. “A way out. Good thing I was sure to be bitten by a radioactive spider so I can scale these walls and ceiling and shimmy my arse right out of here.”

Will studied the well shaft for a long moment. “I don’t think that would work,” he murmured as Ethan’s bad joke went right over his head. “I could fly up there. It’s too narrow to fly all the way up, but I could climb. If I’m out, then I can find a rope, or look for another exit.”

I nodded. “Good thinking. Maybe we can be out of here by dinnertime. I’m starved.”

He shrugged off his T-shirt and handed it to me so I could keep it in my pack. He stepped over to the edge of the water and his wings spread with a slow grace to their full sixteen-foot breadth. Rebekah drew a sharp breath and whimpered, but she managed to hang on to her composure. Will jumped into the air, his wings beating a cloud of dust off the ground, and he rose through the center of the slant of golden sunlight. It only took him a single powerful wing-stroke to reach the shaft. His hands dug into grooves in the rock and he pulled his body into the narrow tunnel, the
muscles in his arms and back twisting and straining with strength. His wings re-formed into his skin and his boots kicked into rock to push himself higher until he was out of my sight. My gut tightened for several long minutes as he scaled the well shaft and I held my breath when I couldn’t hear him anymore.

Then something tumbled through the shaft, banging on rock, and a bucket tied at the end of a rope appeared and splashed into the water.

“Ellie!” Will’s voice called from the surface. “Ellie, get the others to swim to the bucket and hang on. It should be strong enough to hold the weight while I hoist you all out one by one.”

“There must be an active village built around this well,” Rebekah said.

I dipped my fingers into the water to test the temperature. It was surprisingly chilly, but we’d warm up once we got to the surface and into the sunlight. “You two go first,” I instructed.

Rebekah stepped into the water gingerly, moving slowly as her body adjusted to the sharp cold. She shivered a little once she began swimming, her head and backpack bobbing above the crystal-clear water. She reached the bucket and tried climbing into it, but it was so small. She accepted defeat and merely hung on with dear life. She gave the rope a couple of tugs and Will lifted her into the air slowly and smoothly with ease. Ethan’s turn was next, and then at last it was time
for me to get into the water. I made a little gasp at the chill, and I tried to keep my backpack from submerging with the Naphil’s heart wrapped within. I reached the bucket, gently set my pack inside, and gripped the rope tight. I tugged once and looked up into the bright well shaft, wishing I could see Will’s face. The bucket began to rise and my body rocked left and right as I rose high into the air. Determined not to look down, I stared at that hole until the sunlight practically burned my retinas out. The shaft was narrow and the rock walls clawed at my clothing as I was lifted through. I tried curling into a ball to keep my body from hitting the side as much as I could, but my hair still got caught on sharp pieces of stone jutting out.

As I reached the top, hands grabbed me and lifted me into blinding daylight. I stumbled over a rock ledge—the wall of the well, I realized, as my eyes adjusted to the bright light—and caught my balance before I hit the ground. They were Will’s arms around me. I caught his scent before I could squint up into his face. I looked around him for the others. The well was situated in the center of a small, unusual village comprised of tall, cone-shaped houses made from mud and brick. Rebekah crouched over, talking to a small boy in dusty jeans. Ethan, cursing up a storm, wrestled his backpack straps from a few relentless sheep who really wanted whatever he had in there.

“Shirt?” Will asked.

It took me a moment to remember that I’d taken it for
safekeeping so his wings wouldn’t rip the fabric. We had only brought so many changes of clothes with us. I dug the shirt out of my backpack, which was mostly soaked with water despite my attempt to keep it dry, and handed it to him. I also checked on the heart. The linen wrapping was still wet with blood, but it didn’t look like the heart was damaged. The water even seemed to have washed away a lot of the blood. Now we just needed to worry about how we were getting out of the Middle of Nowhere, Syria.

Ethan Stone let out a triumphant roar when he won back his pack and, still dripping wet, stomped over to us. He pulled a plastic waterproof case from the bag and snapped it open to retrieve a satellite phone.

“You thought of everything, didn’t you?” I asked him, bewildered and relieved to see that phone.

“Not everything,” he replied as he fiddled with some buttons. “Satellite phone with GPS enabled, yes. However, I didn’t bring towels.” He put the phone to his ear. “Yusri? Hello? We’re ready for pickup.”

ETHAN STONE EXPLAINED TO US THAT THE RITE OF my ascension could only be performed on hallowed ground, and it was Will’s idea to travel to Israel. The final showdown would be at Armageddon, at Har Megiddo, and I decided that I should ascend someplace very sacred. After all, there wasn’t a better place for one to become an archangel than in the Kingdom of Heaven. I wanted to maximize what power we could draw from Earth into this spell. I needed to be as strong as I absolutely could.

After Yusri picked us up in a helicopter, Ethan offered us a room at a luxury hotel in Aleppo, but I only wanted to get out of there. We rented a Jeep to leave Syria and continue to Jerusalem. Even if I wanted to crash for the night, I’d never be able to fall asleep. I felt sick and restless over what had happened at Ain Dara. Something inside of me had changed,
turned—like a piece of my humanity was now missing. I was used to having blood on my hands, but this was different.

Ethan Stone promised that he’d fly into Jerusalem at first light. Will and I packed our things into the Jeep and headed out. We also didn’t want to run the chance of meeting any more of Sammael’s goons. If he’d stationed one in Aleppo, then there were bound to be more. Will and I needed to keep moving to lessen our chances of being found.

The journey was over three hundred miles in pitch-dark night. I drove, partly in an attempt to cure my restlessness and give myself something to focus on. To my dismay, that left Will with nothing to focus on but his worry for me.

“You did what you had to do,” he said gently.

I glanced at him before staring back onto the road. “I’ve been telling myself that a lot lately and I know it’s true. I just don’t like doing what I have to do.”

“You’re not the only one,” he said.

I exhaled. “Will you be all right once I become an angel again?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’m just following your lead here.”

“If I do this, then we have a shot at beating Hell. That’s all that matters.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “Not all.” Before I could reply, he spoke first. “I won’t stop your ascension. You’re the one thing I can’t be selfish about, but I am nevertheless. I finally understand why Michael forbade me to love you. In
some ways it makes me a stronger Guardian, but in others I am crippled. I just never expected I’d have to give you up.”

“When Michael asked you to become my Guardian, did you ever consider saying no?”

He slumped deeper into the seat, thoughtful. “Not even once. Instead, I wondered if I was willing to give up my life for you, to lay it down for you. I wondered if I was willing to become expendable and insignificant, to relinquish my own dreams and desires and to become a servant. When he asked me to be your Guardian, I considered only selfish thoughts, and I realized that they were things I could sacrifice. I knew that I wanted only to have you in my life, to protect you and to follow you, so that in the end, I wasn’t losing anything at all. But now I’m going to lose you after I believed I would have you forever. This is the first time since I became your Guardian that I feel like I’ve ever given up anything, that I feel empty. You were a gift.”

I glanced at him again only to find him watching me with those crystalline green eyes. “I believe there’s a chance that I will be myself when I’m an archangel again, and that I will survive using the hallowed glaive.”

“I will pray for it,” he said.

We arrived in Jerusalem just before dawn. Will had taken over driving at about the halfway point, so I was able to get a little sleep, but it was nowhere near what I needed. We decided that we needed to rent a room somewhere and rest
before we did anything else. The size of the city allowed us to disappear into the crowd and would make it hard for our enemies to track us, so we found an inconspicuous hole-in-the-wall inn that had vacancy. I texted our location to Ethan Stone. After a few hours of fitful sleep, we woke to a fierce rapping on the door. Will got up, rubbing his eyes, to let Ethan into the room. I pulled the covers over my head and hid, but kept one eye peeking over at him.

“Morning, morning,” Stone sang so cheerfully that I wanted to break his kneecaps. He set two large brown paper bags on the little round dining table across from the bed. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I brought you breakfast!”

The smell of food lulled me out from my hiding place. I flipped the blanket over and crawled across the bed toward the bags of goodness. I grabbed one and tore it open. My stomach roared like I hadn’t eaten in days. Inside was a plastic container of eggs and another filled with a salad and a big chunk of bread. “Aw, no bacon?” I asked.

Ethan gave me a reproachful look. “You’re joking, right?”

“Yes, moron.” I pulled out the eggs first. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“It’s good,” Will said approvingly through a mouthful as he dipped his bread into some pasty stuff. “We don’t have a plan of action yet. We just wanted to get here, to Jerusalem.”

Ethan slapped a tourist brochure onto the table. “St. Anne’s Church. That’s where we’re headed.”

I slid it closer so I could take a look. The cover featured
a photograph of a beautiful and ancient Roman Catholic church built of gold and gray stone. “Why?”

“Because I paid a groundskeeper to leave a gate unlocked,” he replied. “Also, it’s nine centuries old and supposedly the basilica sits upon the birthplace of the virgin Mary.
Also
, also, the acoustics are incredible. I’ve been dying to play AC/DC in there for years.”

I chose to ignore that. “So, food now. What next?”

“Shopping for your ascension rite,” he replied and handed me a sheet of paper. “Now don’t go all schoolgirl squealy on me. We’re buying herbs, not shoes. I have a list and you have a list. It’ll be like a scavenger hunt. Now you can go all squealy.”

I glared at him and read the list of ingredients he requested for the spell.

“Afterward, we’ll meet at St. Anne’s.” He started toward the door but turned back before leaving. “Don’t show up until after ten or eleven, okay? Everyone in old City will be down at the Festival of Light, so we shouldn’t be bothered. We don’t want anyone wandering by while we’re trying to shove an archangel into that skin of yours.”

Then Stone was gone.

I sat on the bed, gazing blankly at the ingredients list in my hands. Will eased down beside me, took the sheet of paper from me, and set it aside. He took my hands and held them in his. My small, slender fingers fit perfectly through his callused ones, like puzzle pieces. My hands moved over
his, my fingertips tracing the lines in his palm, and then I drew his hand to my cheek. I had a horrible thought that I wouldn’t remember or care what his skin felt like against mine once I ascended. I wondered whether, if I touched him for as long as I could, the feeling would be burned into my memory and made permanent, with no force on Earth or in Heaven able to chip it away.

Will felt my sorrow through our bond and pulled me close. “We’ll make it through this. We always do.”

“We’ve never been through anything like this before,” I whispered. “Never anything so uncertain.”

He was quiet at first, thoughtful. “Facing the unknown is a part of life, something humans have done since their creation without any special powers. They’ve survived by sheer will and heart. You have both of those things, stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. We don’t know what exactly will happen tonight, but you have the will and the heart to make it through anything, even through this. I believe in you.”

“But why do I have to lose who I am in order to save the world?”

He lifted my chin so I couldn’t avoid his firm but gentle gaze. “If you forget who you are, I will just have to wake you up again as I’ve always done.”

I bit my lip and before I could say anything back, he kissed me and I wasn’t afraid anymore.

By nightfall the light festival, which Ethan had mentioned would serve as a distraction for us, was in full swing. From the top of the Mount of olives, music thrummed like thunder and laser lights danced across the low-hanging atmosphere. Thousands and thousands of people were in attendance, pouring through every street past imaginative displays of galloping horses made of light, shadow monsters playing behind trees, glowing figures of men climbing over stone walls…old City was alive and surreal, and I longed to stop and enjoy the festivities, but there was no time for that.

St. Anne’s was even more beautiful in person and at night. Golden spotlights lit up the stone walls, but our movements were safely cloaked within the Grim. We entered through a wooden door and passed through a small courtyard filled with incredible flowers. Ethan met us at the front entrance and allowed us in. Passing humans would never notice us as long as we stayed hidden in the Grim.

Ethan had already spread out our ingredients for the ritual on the cool stone floor, and Will helped me set out the herbs, oils, and incense to sort and measure. Just as I placed the grimoire among them, Ethan used his power to flip the book open and the pages settled to a passage written in Enochian.

“Is this the spell?” I asked Ethan.

He was fiddling inside a duffle bag on the altar when he replied, “It is. I’ll need to speak the words. You can
stand there and look pretty while Will assists me. I shall be your Frankenstein and Will shall be my—much larger than normal—Igor.”

Will sighed as he lit the incense and candles and placed them, one by one, on the altar steps below Ethan. When I looked at Ethan again, he was pulling a battery-powered MP3 docking station out of a duffle bag. He set it onto the floor and plugged in his iPod.

“I didn’t think you were serious,” I called to him. “You can’t play that in here.”

“I am
always
serious,” he replied. Suddenly AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” burst out of stark silence and echoed off the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling.

“Are you kidding me?” I cried, struggling with myself not to chuck the book at his head.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he said as he fumbled with the player and shut it off. The basilica fell quiet again. “That was inappropriate. Sorry!”

I looked across the book at Will for support, but he was grinning ear to ear, trying not to laugh. I shoved his shoulder so hard he almost toppled over. “Stop laughing!”

He caught his balance and put his hands up, unable to hold back his laughter anymore. “It was funny! You have to admit.”

“It
wasn’t
funny,” I hissed. “It was horrible.
You
are horrible, Ethan.”

“No,” he said as he fiddled with the iPod. “Classy. Always classy.”

Music blasted once more, this time “Thunderstruck.” Seeing Will laugh made me realize we needed some kind of levity. I had to savor this moment of good spirits and fun, because I couldn’t be sure when or if I’d ever have another one like it. I wasn’t sure when the next time I’d see Will laugh would be.

I finished measuring out the oils and incense needed and placed them in small ceramic dishes. I unwrapped the Naphil heart, which was still as red and bright as when I had cut it from its owner’s chest, as if no piece of it had even begun to decay yet. Ethan gave me a clay bowl to set the heart in and he instructed me to anoint the organ with the correct oils. Then it came time for me to stand in the basilica while Ethan dipped his thumb into three different oils and drew lines down my nose and over my lips. He drew the oil across my necklace as well and then he stepped back.

The music was gone and the only sounds I heard now were the distant cheers of spectators at the Festival of Light and the pounding of my heart. The candlelight on the steps below me cast a golden glow in the basilica, occasionally interrupted by beams of light from outside. Ethan lifted the book to read the angelic spell, his voice a haunting echo through the cathedral.

Fear, like ripples in reverse, growing stronger as it
spread, took fierce hold of me. I tried to look at Will, but when I did, I was struck by the memory of the first time I witnessed him double over in agony as my overwhelming guilt and grief spilled into him through the ink in his tattoos that bound us together. The angelic magic gave us a connection deeper than anything else in this world, and though its purpose was to alert him when I needed him the most, this magic was also very cruel. I tried to contain my fear, because I knew my emotions echoed into Will and made him feel everything that I did through physical pain. He felt my fear like knives in his gut, and I didn’t want my last action as me—as Ellie—to be to cause him pain.

Will’s gaze captured my own and held it tight. “Eyes on me,” he said. “My face, Ellie. Eyes on me. Don’t be afraid.”

The green of his eyes was so bright and his breathing became more and more labored. Unbidden tears rolled down my cheeks and I watched him struggle to keep standing. He knew that I’d discovered how my suffering affected him physically, and it only crushed my heart more.

“Let me take it,” he murmured. “It’s okay. Let me have this. Let me do this for you.”

I nodded, choking down a fearful swallow of air. I could feel the ancient words taking affect. A light grew inside of me, a warmth that was foreign, but still felt familiar. I could no longer watch Will’s face. The light I felt inside me began to shine through my skin, giving me a glow of my own. I watched the light gather along the spider’s web-work of
veins in my skin, replacing my blood with bright gold until I gleamed like a beacon. I fumbled for my necklace, my fingers brushing past the leather cord carrying the Pentalpha, and I found my winged necklace and gripped it tight. I held it between my fingers as if it were my lifeline, my last link to my humanity, even though it contained the archangel grace that would strip my humanity from me like meat off my bones.