pulled back on the bowstring. Luce held her breath. But before the girl could shoot, her
glossy eyes widened. The bow tumbled from her hands. And her body disappeared in a
dim gray flash of light.
Two feet behind where the Outcast girl had stood, Molly lowered a silver bow.
She had shot the girl cleanly in the back.
"What?" Molly barked as the whole group turned to gape at her. "I like that
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Nephilim. She reminds me of someone I know."
She jerked an arm to gesture at Shelby, who said, "Thanks. Seriously. That was
cool."
Molly shrugged, oblivious to the towering dark presence rising up behind her. The
Outcast boy Miles had beaten to the ground with the kayak. Phil.
He swung the kayak behind his body, as if it were a baseball bat, and batted Molly
clear across the lawn. She landed with a grunt on the grass. Tossing the kayak aside, the
Outcast reached into his trench coat for one last shining arrow.
His dead eyes were the only expressionless part of his face. The rest of him--his
snarl, his brow, even his cheekbones--looked utterly ferocious. His white skin seemed
stretched across his bony skull. His hands looked more like claws. Anger and desperation
had changed him from a pale and strange but good-looking guy into an actual monster.
He raised his silver bow and took aim at Luce.
"I've been patiently waiting for my chance with you for weeks. Now, I don't mind
being a little more forceful than my sister," he growled. "You will come with us."
On either side of Luce, silver bows were raised. Cam brought his out from inside
his coat once again, and Daniel scrambled to the ground to pick up the bow that the
Outcast girl had just dropped. Phil seemed to expect this. His face twisted into a dark
smile.
"Do I need to kill your lover to get you to join me?" he asked, pointing his arrow
now at Daniel. "Or do I need to kill them all?"
Luce stared at the strange, flat tip of the silver arrow, less than ten feet from
Daniel's chest. No chance Phil would miss from this range. She'd seen the arrows
extinguish a dozen angels tonight with that paltry flash of light. But she'd also seen an
arrow glance off Callie's skin, like it was nothing more than the dull stick it appeared to
be.
The silver arrows killed angels, she suddenly realized, not humans.
She leaped in front of Daniel. "I won't let you hurt him. And your arrows can't
hurt me."
A sound escaped from Daniel, a weird half-laugh, half-sob. She turned to him,
wide-eyed. He looked afraid, but more than that, he looked guilty.
She thought of the conversation they'd had under the gnarled peach tree at Sword
& Cross, the first time he'd told her about her reincarnations. She remembered sitting
with him on the beach in Mendocino when he talked of his place in Heaven before her.
What a struggle it had been to get him to open up about those early days. She still felt like
there was more. There had to be more.
The creak of the bowstring snapped her attention back to the Outcast, who was
pulling back the silver arrow. Now it was aimed at Miles. "Enough talk," he said. "I'll
take your friends out one at a time until you surrender to me."
In her mind, Luce saw a bright blink of light, a swirl of color, and a whirling
montage of her lives flashing before her eyes--her mom and dad and Andrew. The
parents she'd seen in Mount Shasta. Vera ice-skating on the frozen pond. The girl she'd
been, swimming under the waterfall in a yellow halter-top bathing suit. Other cities,
homes, and times she couldn't recognize yet. Daniel's face from a thousand different
angles, under a thousand different lights. And blaze after blaze after blaze.
Then she blinked and was back in the yard. The Outcasts were drawing closer,
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huddling together and whispering to Phil. He kept waving them back, agitated, trying to
focus on Luce. Everyone was tense.
She saw Miles staring at her. He must have been terrified. But no, not terrified.
He was fixating on her with so much intensity that his gaze seemed to vibrate her very
core. Luce grew woozy and her vision clouded. What followed was an unfamiliar
sensation of something being lifted off her. Like a casing being removed from her skin.
And she heard her voice say, "Don't shoot. I surrender."
Only, it was echoing and disembodied, and Luce hadn't actually said the words.
She followed the sound with her eyes, and her body grew rigid at what she saw.
Another Luce standing behind the Outcast, tapping him on the shoulder.
But this was no glimpse of a former life. This was her, in her skinny black jeans
and plaid shirt with the missing button. With her black hair cropped and newly dyed.
With her hazel eyes taunting the Outcast. With the burning of her same soul clearly