Fallen 2. Torment(69)

try to block them out. She raised her hands to her ears, which made her sword tip

skyward, confusing Lilith.

"Don't let her freak you out, Luce. She's toxic!" Dawn chirped from the bench.

"Use the prise de fer! " Shelby called. "Lilith sucks at the prise de fer. Correction:

Lilith sucks at everything, but especially the prise de fer. "

So many voices--more, it seemed, than there were people on the deck. Luce

winced, trying to block it all out. But one voice separated from the crowd, as though it

were whispering into her ear from just behind her head. Steven:

"Screen out the noise, Luce. Find the message."

She whipped her head around, but he was on the other side of the deck, looking

toward the trees. Was he talking about the other Nephilim? All the noise and chatter they

were making? She glanced at their faces, but they weren't even talking. So who was? For

the briefest moment, she caught Steven's eyes, and he lifted his chin toward the sky. As if

he were gesturing at the shadows.

In the trees above her head. The announcers were speaking.

And she could hear them. Had they been speaking all along?

Latin, Russian, Japanese. English with a southern accent. Broken French.

Whispers, singing, bad directions, lines of rhyming verse. And one long bloodcurdling

scream for help. She shook her head, still holding Lilith's sword at bay, and the voices

overhead stayed with her. She looked at Steven, then Francesca. They showed no signs,

but she knew they heard it. And she knew they knew she was listening too.

For the message behind the noise.

All her life she'd heard the same noise when the shadows came--whooshing, ugly,

wet noise. But now it was different. ...

Clash.

Lilith's sword collided with Luce's. The girl was snorting like an angry bull. Luce

could hear her own breath inside the mask, panting as she tried to hold Lilith's sword.

Then she could hear so much more among all the voices. Suddenly she could focus on

them. Finding the balance just meant separating the static from the significant stuff. But

how?

Il faut faire le coup double. Apres ca, c'est facile a gagner, one of the Announcers

whispered in French.

Luce had just two years of high school French to go on, but the words touched her

somewhere deeper than her brain. It wasn't just her head understanding the message.

Somehow her body knew it too. It seeped into her, right down to the bone, and she

remembered: She'd been in a place like this before, in a sword fight like this, a standoff

like this.

The Announcer was recommending the double cross, a complicated fencing move

in which two separate attacks came one right after the other.

Her sword slid down her opponent's and the two of them broke away. A moment

115

sooner than Lilith, Luce lunged forward in one clean intuitive motion, thrusting her

sword point right, then left, then flush against the side of Lilith's rib cage. The Nephilim

cheered, but Luce didn't stop. She disengaged, then came straight back a second time,

plunging the tip of her foil into the padding near Lilith's gut.

That was three.

Lilith dashed her sword to the deck, tore off her mask, and gave Luce a terrifying

scowl before making quickly for the locker room. The rest of the class was on their feet,

and Luce could feel her classmates surrounding her. Dawn and Jasmine hugged her from

both sides, giving dainty little squeezes. Shelby came forward next for a high five, and

Luce could see Miles waiting patiently behind her. When it was his turn, he surprised her,

swooping her off the deck and into a long, tight hug.

She hugged him back, remembering how awkward she'd felt earlier when she'd

gone to him after his match, only to find that Dawn had gotten to him first. Now she was

just glad to have him, glad of his easy and honest support.

"I want fencing lessons from you," he said, laughing.

In his arms, Luce looked up at the sky, at the shadows lengthening from the long

branches. Their voices were softer now, less distinct, but still clearer than they'd ever

been before, like a static-filled radio she'd been listening to for years that had finally been

tuned in. She couldn't tell whether she was supposed to be grateful or afraid.

116





ELEVEN

EIGHT DAYS

"Hold on." Callie's voice boomed across the line. "Let me pinch myself to make

sure I'm not--"

"You're not dreaming," Luce said into her borrowed cell phone. Reception was

spotty from her position at the edge of the woods, but Callie's sarcasm came through loud

and clear. "It's really me. I'm sorry I've been such a crap friend."

It was Thursday after dinner, and Luce was leaning up against the stout trunk of a

redwood tree behind her dorm. To her left was a rolling hill and then the cliff, and