Uriel's Descent (Ubiquity #1) (26 page)

“You’re a pathetic vessel. A useless little girl, who doesn’t know what she’s got. Lucifer meant for me to live again. You’ll ruin everything because you’re a selfish child.”

Maybe Metatron was right.

“Of course I am. I’ve had millennia to learn. You haven’t learned anything.”

Another shock of threads spilled through Ronnie, and she screamed involuntarily at the spikes biting into her muscles. They amplified the pressure Gabe applied until she swore her bones were being crushed.

“Shut up.” Gabe’s bark echoed off the walls and antiques, reverberating in her skull. “You’re so much more trouble than you’re worth.”

They were both wrong. Ronnie knew it. Or at least she believed it enough to convince herself she knew it. Ronnie was powerful, but she wasn’t an original. She needed Metatron to defeat Gabe, not some half-assed, mutated conglomeration. Ronnie needed to be one with Metatron.

She clamped her jaw shut and focused inward, finding the icy strands of her power. Some of them were still a combination of Metatron and Ronnie. Ronnie dove back into the corners Metatron had retaken, forcing her out.

“Stop.”

Ronnie struggled, unable to penetrate the core of ink that hovered over the sigil on her back.
Uriel.
The mark where Metatron’s
name would have been. The designator that made Ronnie a demon and not just a cherub.

“Let’s go.” Gabe yanked her arm.

It was too bad the jarring didn’t remove Metatron’s surging quest for dominance.

His grip loosened, but his power held her as he pushed her toward the pedestal. He bound her legs moving them one foot in front of the other.

“I’ll kill him!”

Metatron screamed in Ronnie’s skull and forced herself into Ronnie’s veins. Agony tore through her. She was going to burst. She dropped to the ground with a whimper.
No.
Metatron couldn’t win. But Ronnie couldn’t fight her without cluing in Gabe. Everything ached as Metatron struggled to take control of Ronnie’s body.

“My body. Move aside, bitch.”

Ronnie gasped, studying the patterns in the marble floor, watching them swim. For a moment she saw through someone else’s eyes. Like the morning she woke up to Metatron controlling her. Ronnie’s screams sounded distant, fading as Metatron took more control.

“No.”

That was Ronnie.
Shit.
She was the voice in her own head.

“Yes.” The whisper rushed past her lips. That was Metatron.

“I won’t tell you again.” Gabe’s growl was distant, like it filtered through speakers. “Stand. Up.”

He forced her up, trying to force her joints in ways they didn’t want to go. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she weren’t fighting Metatron at the same time. “Why are you so focused on keeping him in the dark? Stop fighting me so we can kill him.” Metatron’s words came from Ronnie’s lips.

Shit.
Ronnie didn’t want Gabe to know about the internal struggle. Ronnie poured her strength into reclaiming her body. She shoved Metatron aside in her head, ice licking the edges of the ribbons and absorbing them, but not penetrating the dark box Ronnie pictured her living in.

“Kill who?” Gabe glared at her.

Ronnie ground her teeth hating to sacrifice focus to even a simple reply. “Someone else. A not-here guy”

Metatron tried to thrust Ronnie aside again as Gabe half-floated, half-dragged her across the room. Ronnie was grateful for the first time that night for his overt display of power. She grabbed individual strands of the energy he radiated, untangled the intangible bonds, and used them to further the ice flow under her skin.

“Stop.”
Metatron might as well have shouted, but terror bled through her command.

Ronnie probed the edges of the dense ball Metatron hid her core inside, tucked between her shoulder blades.

“Stop.” The command came from outside, and Ronnie’s connection to Gabe snapped, cutting her off from his power. He flung her toward the podium with a roar. “You’ve lost the right to touch that.”

Heat enveloped her, the spear’s pull grabbing her essence and tearing it from her. It didn’t matter. She took enough power from him to finish what she started. Ronnie didn’t want to destroy Metatron. Too many people wanted the original back. She didn’t see another option, and this was survival. It wasn’t the kind of standoff where they both walked away if one surrendered.

Gabe kept talking. “I wish you’d gone along with this. I would have loved to have flaunted you on my arm. Better than destroying Metatron again—she would have been locked away, Lucifer would have been furious, and Michael… That might have driven him over the edge. But you were never more than a trophy. Destroying them—literally or otherwise—is the ultimate goal. I don’t have a problem decimating you, if it kills her again.”

“I’ll demolish you first.” Metatron’s threat slipped past Ronnie’s lips. “See you crushed, leave you alive, and walk away from your broken existence.”

“Shut up,” Ronnie growled at herself.

She was done trying to hide what she was up to. She pushed at Metatron, focusing on wearing down the black core of her power with the ice of Ronnie’s, absorbing all of it. Ronnie wouldn’t let someone else take the life that belonged to her.

“That power is mine, not yours.” Metatron still had control.

“Have I broken you already?” Gabe’s taunt was distant, carried on more pain than Ronnie thought possible.

Through the haze of her internal struggle, she saw him grab the spear.
Fuck.

“No.” Metatron’s roar bounced off the concrete walls.

He grasped the weapon, lips curling into a wicked smile, as he hefted it.

Metatron tried to pull away, but with Ronnie absorbing more and more inside, and Gabe’s energy holding her body in place, there was nowhere to go. Agony ripped through her, as the weapon drew closer, sucking out her guts, tearing her to ethereal shreds. She couldn’t move.

Ronnie withdrew further into her head, both to avoid the pain and to finish absorbing Metatron. But she couldn’t grasp the threads. Metatron had blocked her off from her own power again. Ronnie’s icy strength was faint, growing cloudier each moment as Metatron took more and more control.

“Now I take what belongs to me.”

Why wasn’t Metatron talking out loud anymore?

“You’ll die instead of me.”

No.

“I’ll destroy you.”

Why wasn’t Ronnie surprised?

Gabe stabbed her from behind.

A new pain tore through her. She screamed until her throat was raw, and even then couldn’t stop. The walls rattled.

He plunged the spear deeper into her back, between her shoulder blades. He twisted and pushed harder, hitting what she was sure was a lung. A gurgle marred her roar.

Metatron was being stripped from her, unwound from the corners of her mind, being shredded away from aspects of Ronnie she didn’t realize the angel was buried in. Wisps and strands rushed into the obsidian sticking out of Ronnie’s back.

Holy fuck, that hurt.
Metatron dug her claws in, wrapping herself around Ronnie. The edges of where Metatron started blurred with Ronnie, until the two of them were no longer distinguishable.

Revelation sank in amid the agony. Ronnie didn’t know if it was a pain-induced idea, or if there was actually any logic to it, but if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t matter in a few seconds anyway. Suddenly, everything Izzy and Ari said to her about claiming a cherub made sense. Ronnie didn’t have to pick which of them survived. Metatron still ran from the spear’s pull, and Ronnie used the distraction to dive into what Metatron locked away. To plunge headfirst into
her
.

Metatron gained control of Ronnie’s arm, and reached for the spear.

“Sorry, love.” Gabe’s admonishment was distant. His power pinned her arms to her side, and he gave the weapon another shove.

Ronnie arched her back and whimpered, no longer having the voice to scream. Focus. Needed to focus. Finish this. In her mind, she saw Metatron’s core. It was attached to Ronnie’s, woven and braided through each other. Ronnie thrust everything toward it. It didn’t matter how much the spear hurt, or that Gabe crushed her. If she couldn’t finish this internally, she might as well let him do what he wanted.

Metatron recognized Ronnie’s target, but not the ultimate goal. Sharp, black rage enveloped her thoughts, trying to shove Ronnie back, but it was too late. Ronnie saw the individual strands of both of them. She plucked at one, unraveling the threads. Metatron’s internal protests faded as Ronnie absorbed more of her, and the harmony of the two opposing powers mingled and coursed through her veins.

Ronnie followed the fading trails back to the spear, blending with the remainder of Metatron as she went. She formed a shell around the onyx wedged between her shoulder blades. She let out one last scream as she stripped the rest of herself from the spear. Metatron gave a final protest, and something inside snapped. A rush of memories that hadn’t been Ronnie’s, but were now, screamed inside her skull. Images of Michael, Lucifer, Izzy. Things she never lived, but did.

Metatron’s hatred. Her rage, hurt, disappointment, and sense of betrayal at what she was subjected to—forced into without her consent—because one angel wanted her dead and another couldn’t let her go. Her emotions were Ronnie’s now. Not clouded by an extraneous voice. She still whispered, but they were a part of the same whole.

Ronnie’s memories were there, too. A little cherub helping Lucifer tirelessly for decades. Offered a chance to become more. To be something special.

Ronnie let the glory of both of them rise to the surface and rush over her, wrapping her in golden light, as wings spread from her back. There was no one or the other. A simple shove, and Gabe’s hold on her shattered. Power crackled and faded around them. The last of the pain vanished, and Ronnie straightened up with a smile.

Gabe growled and lunged. She knew how to avoid him. Metatron’s knowledge of how to fight filled her head. With a whisper of a command, his spear tore itself from her back and vanished. Now that she knew how an original summoned their weapon, it was simple enough to see the source of Gabe’s and make it disappear. He could summon it again, but she wasn’t planning on giving him a chance. She shifted to quasi-mortal enough to eliminate the gaping hole in her back.

Gabe stopped a few feet away, wary. His smile looked forced. “Welcome back, love. I’m glad you figured it out before it was too late.”

“Clever.” A torrent of hatred snaked through her, and she entertained the idea of killing him. Getting used to those moments when her memories and feelings contradicted themselves would be interesting. Vengeance wasn’t her place.

Concern bled into his voice. “I was so worried you might not survive. I didn’t want to do that to you, but I didn’t know any other way to separate the two of you.”

“I’m sure you only ever had my welfare in mind.”

She would give Gabe what he wanted. Or at least, what he thought he wanted. She’d leave him to rule his lonely little corner of heaven and keep him from going anywhere else for a while. She couldn’t help one more power play. That part of Metatron demanded she do more than just slap him on the back of the hand and then let him roam free again. She stepped toward him, hands clasped behind her back.

“Uriel?” He backed way.

She smiled, stopping less than an inch from him, coiled and ready to spring out of reach if he lunged. She stood on tiptoe, looking him in the eye, and chewing on her bottom lip. “For a while there, I almost thought you cared about what happened to me.”

“I did. I do.” His insistence came too quickly.

“I bet.” She pressed her lips to his, consciously drawing on his power and funneling it through her body. She didn’t need it, and it wouldn’t kill him, but she wanted him to be without it for a while. She took more than he ever fed her before. The kiss lasted less than a second, but it was enough. She drained him for the moment.

He broke away with a snarl, face pinched, and hands shaking.

The energy filling her was foreign, almost uncomfortable. Did she really take that much? Good, maybe that would keep him from fucking with her for a little while. He’d be back. His agenda was pretty straightforward, and all three of the other originals were back, preventing him from being the one and only.

“You manipulated the system.” She liked knowing every word was her own. “You tried to destroy a balance that exists for a reason. We won’t let it happen again. Michael and I know the truth about what you did to me. Lucifer will as well. When you recover—and I know you will, I’m not stupid—things won’t be the same.”

Everything had changed. There was too much knowledge on the table now. And as much as it still ached deep inside that Michael left, she understood his reasons better than she wanted to. She didn’t agree, but Metatron gave her insight she didn’t have before.

Back then, in Metatron’s original incarnation, he and she would have surrendered eternity for each other. Given it all up to experience mortality. Doing that now determined more fates than their own. If Gabriel was willing to throw Earth into chaos for control, all four of them needed to exist as immortals to maintain balance. Besides, Ronnie liked her immortality too much to surrender it.

Gabe opened his mouth.

She wasn’t interested in hearing anything he had to say. She vanished from his basement, leaving him alone and at least temporarily unable to cause trouble.