Archon(81)

The water would arrive in a pan come morning.

“Mama, will you be gone long this time?”

“I don’t know, Kim.”

“Why do you lock me up in here?”

Wrong question. She slapped him across the face, and the tears sprang to his eyes immediately. He wouldn’t cry, though. She hated when he cried.

“Don’t make me angry. Get in bed. NOW.”

Kim ran and hugged her instead.

“Get off me, Kim.” She said it like he was a cockroach. Like she was afraid of him and disgusted and ashamed, all at the same time. Mama could be so pretty and kind. But when Papa came, she changed. This was the mama he feared. The one who would curse at him and call him a devil. He found the key before she realized what he was doing and took it out of her pocket, hiding it inside his fist. When she moved to hit him again, he scampered to his bed and crawled below the rags, already feeling the fleas nip at his ankles. “Don’t leave this room. Promise me.”

“I promise.” The lie was easier than he’d hoped.

She shut the door, playing with the outer lock until it latched.

His candle eventually guttered out. The room stayed pitch-black for a while, until the moon rose over the cottage, and its silver light slipped through slats in the shutters. The noises were starting already. A hiss like the whisper of a snake. The low growl of a dog and the snarl of an angry fox. Kim gathered the rags below his chin, listening intently, amazed as always to hear the noises become words he could understand. They were talking about leaving. Papa wanted Mama to go somewhere with him, and she was protesting, but then her gasps and pained screams began, and she must have changed her mind, because she said Papa’s name over and over, like she was desperate to make him believe it.

His name was alien, sounding like the harshest mix of vowels and consonants.

The more Mama said it, the more unhappy she sounded.

Kim slipped out of his covers, gripping the key. Softly, he tiptoed to the door, lifted the key to the lock.

He pushed it inside, turning.

There was a click—and the knob rolled beneath his fingers.

Mama was silent.

Kim opened the door slower than anything he’d ever opened before, peeking through the slit at the hearth. The fire had burned down to cinders, smoldering a dirty orange. Next to them, her back and waist white as a cloud, his mother rested in the arms of someone with skin paler than hers, and his thin arm was tracing a nail along the skin near her neck, up and over the scars already there. Another cut opened beneath it, and the blood oozed down her back, red as garnet. Then Papa bent over her, slightly revealed by the moonlight, his great eyes shining like two yellow stars. Ribbed horns curved upward from a headdress that wrapped below his hair, and two shadows billowed behind them, making a breeze whenever they moved.

His mother turned her head and looked up at Papa, all longing and passion.

Then he scraped the side of her neck with his teeth, and while Mama shuddered, Papa stared back at Kim with those terrible yellow eyes. And all he could do was scream, scream, scream—

“Sariel—”

Kim’s eyes snapped open. He shot up from the leaves, sweating, gasping.

He was soaked from head to toe, his coat soggy with rain and probably his own fear. A gurgle of thunder broke overhead, and Nina appeared in front of him, peering into his eyes with a mirror image of Lucifel’s. Mikel either hadn’t released her, or Nina didn’t want the angel to leave after all.

“Where’s Angela?” he said, fighting the sudden instinct to smack her aside and begin his search. “Did she leave?”

Mikel nodded. “You’re too late. He’s found her.”

He stood, brushing twigs and dirt from his back, knees, and shoulders. Then he shook out his hair and pieces of mulch sprayed side to side. Kim gasped, still smelling the hearth and the stuffiness of the rushes on his bedroom floor. “He? Who are you talking about?”

The angel regarded him coolly, probably remembering how he could torture her if he felt like it. “Israfel.”

Kim stopped breathing, thinking, almost living. He just stared back at her, his teeth chattering a little from the cold, the rain rolling down both of their faces. An immense crack of thunder resounded overhead and she stole a quick glimpse of the lightning only to meet his gaze again, unnaturally calm. The park roared on every side, leaves dropping like snow as they collapsed beneath the onslaught of water and wind. Branches waved and scratched against each other, and in their midst, Tileaf’s tree stood untouched, as if the storm weren’t worthy of putting an end to her misery. “How would you know that? You didn’t follow her—”

“His song.” Mikel held out a hand to catch the rain. “I could hear it. I am a spirit, priest. But it’s not my place to say when Nina Willis’s body awakens from sleep. I couldn’t follow Angela any faster than you.”