“Remember what I said,” Nina pushed her toward the tunnel. “Be strong about this, Angela.”
“Hold on,” Angela went down on her stomach, peering into the musty gloom, “I don’t see a door.”
“You have to crawl.”
“How far?”
Nina shrugged, ruffling a hand through her frizzy hair. “God. I don’t know.”
“Does Mikel?” Angela snapped at her.
“She said she’ll meet you inside. Once you pass through the door.” Nina’s irises began to redden at the corners. She crossed her arms, suddenly glancing at the sky like it was a predator out for the hunt. When she turned back, her smile was more one of farewell than encouragement. “Because from what I’ve learned, you’ll need all the help you can get.”
Angela scooted through the tunnel, her fingers curling into mud and mounds of decay. Insects dropped on her back from overhead, and the gloomy light of Memorial Park disappeared fast. This felt too much like being locked in a closet or spending a day in the crawlspace of her parents’ basement, both of which she’d experienced as punishment.
But that was the one good thing she’d inherited from her time at the institution—a way to make her brain melt away her most traumatic memories in favor of others.
And when she couldn’t do that, Angela simply accepted them and choked down the pain, quarantining it inside the part of her soul that grew angrier by the day. The part of her that found freedom in the arms of Kim—or Israfel, even if she had to imagine the angel’s embrace, even if half of his feelings had been a dream.
But he was real. And the time for dreams was officially over.
Angela took ragged breaths, inching on her elbows through the darkness, determined to focus on anything other than the wall of earth surrounding her.
Israfel . . . He has Sophia now. What if he finds out how to open her?
Tileaf had mentioned a Key and a Lock, both missing. Yet that strange detail didn’t make Angela feel any better. Israfel was Raziel’s brother, a Supernal, and one of the only creatures in the universe who could open the Book without going mad. If Israfel knew where to look and how to use what he found, there was a chance, however slim, that he would act in the best interests of himself and not so much everyone else. Otherwise, why would Raziel go through the trouble of reincarnation to open the Book himself? There must have been a reason—a very good reason—why Sophia couldn’t simply blab every little secret inside of her. And also why Raziel wanted as few people as possible to hear those secrets.
That’s why the demons want the Archon on Hell’s Throne. It has to be.
To manipulate Her. Use Her as a puppet to open Raziel’s Book, and then—
Then they’ll murder Her. Whoever is in charge under Lucifel will kill the Archon, take the power inside of the Book—inside Sophia—and rule in Her place.
My place.
But they couldn’t do that if Lucifel murdered the Archon first. Or opened the Book first. Because it was rather obvious that if Angela was the Archon—and with every passing second, she felt more strongly that this was the case—then Lucifel would torture her until she found the Key, the Lock, and everything that went with it. When it came down to it, Angela now had two very powerful and very real enemies. The gray angel she’d grown so reluctantly fond of after years of memories and dreams, and the demons who either wanted Lucifel gone or wanted a figurehead they could murder with much greater expediency whenever the time arrived.
Too bad they didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Angela hadn’t forgotten about punishing Stephanie for Brendan’s death. Instead, she now felt vengeance was her absolute right.
Her breath huffed out of her, stifled. The tunnel could have been losing all its air, and now the earth would swallow her like a gigantic snake, its roots and sticky strands of what could have been spiderwebs or moss sliding across her cheeks, hair, and shoulders. Angela fought with the panic scorching her nerves, the heaviness tugging on her brain, the sweat trickling down her neck. There was no turning back. And this could go on for a long time. Hours, days, a week. And she hadn’t brought any food, or water, or even better clothing so that the centipedes didn’t crawl across her skin. Why couldn’t she have been Troy, just for one brief second? If what Kim had said was true, the spaces Troy scampered through were even narrower.
It was so ironic. For years, Angela had wanted nothing more than to kill herself.
Now, death actually frightened her. Because now, she wasn’t trying anymore.
And if it’s not deliberate . . .
Then it could very well happen.