Archon(129)

“So you do have it,” Sariel said.

He was still alive, then. Troy snarled between her teeth, aching to sprint past Israfel’s Thrones and latch right onto her cousin’s throat. But his execution would have to wait for now.

“But I’d like to know why you’re waiting to open the Book, to take what you want.”

“And what do you think I want?” Israfel’s voice was dangerously gentle. If Sariel was smart, he’d soon realize his life hung by a slender thread. Instead he kept talking.

“Revenge. Against your sister.” An awkward pause. “I can help you with that.”

Where was the demon?

Fury couldn’t have killed her . . .

“Help me?” Israfel laughed, and the atmosphere chilled with more ice and waterfalls. Then he coughed alarmingly, and without any warning, thick waves of scent rolled from his body. Heady perfume and the rancid smell of his blood.

Troy recognized this odor. In the cathedral she had dismissed the memory too quickly, because the match made little sense.

“Revenge? No, priest, you’re mistaken. I’m just waiting for her to see my hour of triumph. My sister will be walking to destruction whether I help her or not. I’d rather cause her pain along the journey than shorten it. You can’t help me, just like you can’t help her.” His wings whipped a swift breeze through the snow. “A half-breed. How interesting. I was under the impression that most of you were killed in the womb.”

Israfel was pregnant. How or why was beyond comprehension.

But he’d pulled a trick common to most female angels and blocked his scent for the shortest time, effectively hiding himself from Troy’s nose. Sophia and the Thrones had simply been near enough to benefit from the disguise.

“Then,” Sariel’s voice had real pain in it, “I guess you were mistaken.”

“This is insulting, even for a demon. To align herself with a half-breed priest who’s obsessed with murdering my sister. And why, so you can take Lucifel’s place?”

Silence.

“Soon there will be a new order to things. My order. I doubt you’ll have a position of power in it.” Israfel’s tone sharpened cruelly. “You did cut my neck, after all. You’d think I’d return the favor.”

“You’re not going to kill me?” Sariel gasped. He wasn’t even bothering with the Latin. The moment he tried, Israfel would sever his windpipe.

“Why soil my hands when your betrayed god will do it for me?”

Naamah moaned nearby, the smell of her blood now tainting the air with its acidic sourness. Fury must have blinded her and escaped before the demon could slice through her wings. Too bad the rain continued to fall as snow. Only the Creator Supernal could mutate one state of matter into another with the mere power of his voice. But the poisonous effects of the water hadn’t stopped, and Troy’s wings began to shiver from the pain. If Israfel wasn’t the cause of the black rain, it was a foreshadowing of another presence soon to arrive.

The angel’s voice was like a smile.

“She’s coming.”





Thirty-nine



And if your will is gone, what do you have left?



—THE DEMON PYTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM The Lies of Babylon





Angela hid her hand behind her back, nauseated.

She took a step backward, hardly realizing her fear until her vision swam and Stephanie continued to advance like a watery blur, all smiles lost. Her expression had changed along with the color of her eyes. A pure and terrible kind of coldness darkened her pupils, contrasting sharply with those crimson irises suggesting fire and blood.

Deep silence spread throughout the Netherworld.

Angela wanted to believe this was Mikel again, returned to help her in Stephanie’s body, even despite what that implied for Nina. But Stephanie emitted a strange aura, and invisible though it might have been, it clashed against Angela’s as if they were already fighting each other. Reality warped around them, trying desperately to respond to their mental demands for space.

“Mikel?” Angela’s voice became a whisper.

Stephanie paused, analyzing her silently with those same cold eyes.

Angela swallowed the spit thickening in her mouth. None of this seemed possible. Stephanie must have entered the Netherworld on her own somehow, but when had she become possessed? If Nina was dead—

She stammered like an idiot. “How did—”

“Surely you remember Halloween night, Angela.” Stephanie only half smiled, managing to make that twist of her mouth one of the worst things in the universe.

Angela shivered back to her feet, unable to find any more joy in the stairway of light. In her mind, she was seeing the pentagrams that had torn open the walls of the Bell Chapel shortly before she’d summoned Mikel. She’d been too entranced at the time to think about why they’d appeared and what it might have meant. Now, the memory returned like a crushing wave. Maybe Kim was right. Maybe Mikel was the Devil’s daughter in every sense of the word. She could have been manipulating Angela all along, hoping to trap her in the Netherworld and finish her off when the Ladder appeared.