Archon(120)
Silence lay heavily on the trees, the weeds, its thickness invisibly weighing upon the gate’s iron bars. Troy climbed a maple near the entryway and stiffened.
Fury stiffened with her, her stick-thin legs splayed firmly in the mud.
They were listening for something.
Then it passed, and Troy ruffled her feathers, clearly irritated. “There’s no one here, Sariel. Once again, your pathetic attempt at saving your life is a waste of my time.”
He turned on her, unable to hide the fact that her voice was more of a wound than her presence. Kim’s teeth gritted, clenched by his own irritation. “I simply followed the leader. If Israfel’s not here, he’s somewhere else. He won’t go far. He can’t—”
“Shut your mouth,” Troy said, her ears cocking forward.
She was listening more intensely than before. Cautiously, she lifted her head, smelling, and her nails slipped into wood, splitting the branch to mirror her unhappiness. “The angel. Mikel.” The name left her lips with the greatest displeasure. “That annoying woman—Nina—she’s still here.”
“You smelled her?” Kim said, laughing softly. “She would be filthy enough by now.”
“No,” Troy replied, baring her teeth at him. “I heard her breathing.”
He shivered, reaching into his pocket to touch a prayer ward. Whenever her voice took on that rasping, throaty quality, Kim always prepared for violence. But this time, her hunger faded fast, replaced by impatience. Without another word, she scampered into the black branches, disappearing like the hint of a breeze. Kim continued along the pathway, imagining Angela by his side, cursing to himself as Fury took position and strutted confidently near his ankles. Her beak was like her master’s existence—a dagger that could end his life too soon.
Unless he ended Troy’s first.
Kim dared to smile.
That smile grew the closer he came to Tileaf’s tree. Despite the gloom, Nina’s figure took shape in the mist rising from the earth, her brown hair a tangle of wisps and knotted ends. Directly to her right, at the foot of the oak’s massive trunk, Tileaf lay sprawled in the brown moss, her silken dress as bloody as his coat. She was dead, her skin a mess of red and blue, the smell of her corpse resembling vegetable rot. Interestingly, Troy’s nose ignored plant matter of any variety, whether connected to an angel’s flesh or not.
Then he spied the open hollow, gaping at him below a latticework of roots.
Someone had entered the Netherworld Gate.
Angela. Kim dashed ahead of Fury, ignoring her angry cackles, dropping to his knees in front of the hollow as soon as he reached it, dirt and mulch spraying around his hands. His fingers met cold metal.
He shrank back from the chill, startled to see the Grail’s chain resting below his palm. Kim examined the links, glancing at Nina for answers.
She was lost in some kind of trance, her eyes wide and crimson. The same shade as the Devil herself. As that brief and unsettling flicker of Stephanie’s irises.
He licked his lips, already tasting the mustiness of the tunnel as much as he smelled it.
If he was quick, Troy wouldn’t see him enter the tunnel after Angela. Not that this would be the wisest course of action, or the most logical. But no matter how much it disturbed him that Israfel had suddenly disappeared, the situation begged for him to take advantage of it. He ignored Fury’s infuriated screeches, flattening to enter the hole, his shoes squishing into the mud.
The bird descended on him in a mad rage, her wings beating furiously. Claws scraped at his coat, scratched across his scalp, and sliced his cheek.
He grasped at the wound, fending off the crow with an arm.
Boom.
Boom.
God, not now. More powerful wing beats thundered throughout the grotto. A burst of crimson light dazzled Kim’s eyes, and the sound of electricity crackled into him like a shockwave. He grabbed the prayer ward inside his coat and pitched it, spitting out the first Latin phrase that came to mind, barely aware of what he was saying. “Sanctus domine—”
His vision cleared.
The ward shredded to a ribbon of ash, its pieces dusting the soil. Above it, Naamah perched on the roots forming the hollow, the scales on her feet gleaming despite the horrendous lack of light. A blond feather fluffed from her bloody wings, dropping to the ground and into the ash pile, like a bit of dirty snow. It was astounding she could fly at all. The thin skin between the metal struts in her wings seemed almost transparent, raw with exposed bone and ooze. Hideous stitches closed up a gaping wound in her neck. So much pain, contrasting with so much perfection. She leaned over him, her blond braids tumbling out of their carefully arranged coil, her copper face bright with recognition.