Rapture

One does not turn down an invitation from the Morning Star. Miss Sophia and her cronies were there, I suppose.



The Outcasts sensed their muddy souls, but we are not working with them.”



“Wait,” Luce said, “you met with Lucifer yesterday?” That meant Friday, the day that Luce and the others were at Sword & Cross discussing how to find the relics so they could stop Lucifer from erasing the past. “But we were already back from the Announcers. Lucifer would already have been within the Fall.”



“Not necessarily.” Daniel explained, “Even though this meeting took place after you returned from the Announcers, it still took place in Lucifer’s past. When he went after you in the guise of that gargoyle, his setting-off point was half a day later, and hundreds of miles away from your setting-off point.



The logic made Luce’s brain hurt a little, but she was clear on one thing: She distrusted Phil. She turned to him. “So you knew all along that Lucifer was planning to erase the past. Were you going to help him, as you’ve now pledged to help us?”



“We met with him because we are obliged to come when he calls us. Everyone is, except the Throne, and”—



he paused, a thin smile spreading across his lips—“well, I don’t know any life force who could resist Lucifer’s call.” He tilted his head at Luce. “Could you?”



“Enough,” Daniel said.



“Besides,” Phil said, “he did not want our help. The Morning Star shut us out. He said”—he closed his eyes and, for a moment, looked like a normal teenaged boy, almost cute—“he said he couldn’t leave anything else to chance, that it was time to take matters into his own hands. The meeting adjourned abruptly.”



“That must have been the moment Lucifer went after you in the Announcers,” Daniel said to Luce. She felt queasy, remembering how Bill had found her in the tunnel, so vulnerable, so alone. All those moments she’d been glad to have him at her side, helping her on her quest. He’d almost seemed to like being with her, too, for a while.



Phil’s blank eyes fixed on her, as if examining a shift in her soul. Could he sense how flustered she became whenever she thought about all the time she’d spent alone with Bill? Could Daniel sense it?



Phil was not exactly smiling at her, but he did not look as lifeless as usual. “The Outcasts will protect you.



We know that your enemies are numerous.” He looked at Daniel. “The Scale is also on the move.” Luce glanced at Daniel. “The Scale?”



“They work for Heaven. They’re a nuisance, not a threat.”



Phil lowered his head again. “The Outcasts believe the Scale may have . . . come unhinged from Heaven.”



“What?” Daniel suddenly sounded winded.



“There is a rot among them, the kind that spreads quickly. Did you say you had friends in Vienna?”



“Arriane,” Luce gasped. “And Gabbe and Roland. Are they in danger?”



“We have friends in Vienna,” Daniel said. “In Avalon as well.”



“The Scale is spreading through Vienna.” When Luce spun around to face Daniel, he was unfurling his wings. They burst forth, lighting up the room with their glory. Phil didn’t seem to notice or care as he took a sip of the red liqueur. The other Outcasts’ empty gazes bore into Daniel’s wings with memorized envy.



The french doors to the bedroom opened and the hungover Italian girl Luce had shared the bed with spilled from them, stumbling barefoot into the room. She glanced over at Daniel, rubbed her eyes. “Wow, groovy dream!” she mumbled in Italian before disappearing into the bathroom.



“Enough talking,” Daniel said. “If your army is as strong as you say it is, spare a third of your force to drive toward Vienna and protect the three fallen angels you find there. Send another third to Avalon, where you will find Cam and two more fallen.”



When Phil nodded, two Outcasts in the living room unfurled their own drab wings and darted out the open window like enormous flies.



“The remaining third of our force falls under my jurisdiction. We will accompany you to the Mount. Let us take to the air now and I will gather the others on our way.”



“Yes,” Daniel said quickly. “Ready, Luce?”



“Let’s go.” She drew her back against Daniel’s shoulders so he could wrap her in his arms, leap through the window, and soar into the dark sky over Venice.



FIVE



A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP



They touched down in high mountain desert just before dawn. Light banded the sky near the eastern horizon, haunting pinks and golds dusted with ocher clouds, healing the purple bruise of night.



Daniel set Luce down on a flat rock plateau, too dry and unforgiving to support even the toughest desert scrub. The barren mountainscape stretched out infinitely around them, dropping steeply into darkened valleys here, rising into peaks of colossal tawny boulders resting at impossible angles there. It was cold and windy, and the air was so dry it hurt to swallow. There was scarcely room for Luce and Daniel and the five Outcasts who’d traveled with them to stand on the rock plateau.



Fine sand whipped through Luce’s hair as Daniel pulled his wings back in to his sides. “Here we are.” He sounded almost reverent.



“Where?” Luce pulled the neck of her white sweater higher to cover her ears from the wind.



“Mount Sinai.”



She sucked in a dry, sandy breath, pivoting to get a panoramic view as fine golden light lengthened over the sandstone mountains in the east. “This is where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments?”



“No.” Daniel pointed over her shoulder, where a line of doll-sized backpackers were ascending more forgiving terrain a few hundred feet to the south. Their voices carried across the cold, thin desert air. Their soft peals of laughter echoed eerily from the silent mountain summits. A blue plastic water bottle tilted into the sky over someone’s head. “That is where Moses received the Ten Commandments.” He spread his arms and looked at the small circle of rock where they were standing. “This is where some of the angels stood and watched it happen.



Gabbe, Arriane, Roland, Cam”—he pointed to one area on the rock, then another, where each of the angels had stood—“a few more.”



“What about you?”



He faced her, taking three small steps forward so that their torsos were touching, the tips of their feet overlapped. “Right”—he kissed her—“here.”



“What was it like?”



Daniel looked away. “It was the first official covenant with man. Before then, covenants had taken place only between God and the angels. Some of the angels felt betrayed, that it disrupted the natural order of things.



Others thought we’d brought it on ourselves, that it was a natural progression.”



The violet in his eyes blazed a little brighter for a moment. “The others must be on their way.” He turned to face the Outcasts, whose dark silhouettes were outlined by the growing light in the east. “Will you stand guard until they arrive?”



Phil bowed. The other four Outcasts stood behind him, the frayed edges of their soiled wings undulating in the wind.



Daniel drew his left wing across himself and, shielding his body from view, reached inside it with his right hand like a magician reaching into his cape.



“Daniel?” she asked, stepping closer to him. “What’s wrong?”



Teeth bared, Daniel shook his head at her. Then he flinched and cried out in pain, which Luce had never witnessed before. Her body tensed.



“Daniel?”



When he relaxed and extended his wing again, he held something white and shimmering in his hand.



“I should have done this sooner,” he said.



It looked like a strip of fabric, as smooth as silk but stiffer. It was a foot long and several inches wide, and it quivered in the cold breeze. Luce stared at it. Was that a strip of wing that Daniel had torn from himself? She cried out in horror and reached for it without thinking.



It was a feather!



To look at Daniel’s wings, to be wrapped up in them, was to forget they were made up of individual feathers.



Luce had always assumed that their composition was mysterious and otherworldly, the stuff of God’s dreams.



But then, this was unlike any feather Luce had seen before: broad, densely plumed, alive with the same power that coursed through Daniel.



Between her fingers, it was the softest yet strongest thing Luce had ever touched, and the most beautiful—until her eyes flew to the flow of blood from the spot where Daniel had plucked the feather.



“Why did you do that?” she asked.



Daniel handed the feather to Phil, who tucked it into the lapel of his trench coat without hesitation.



“It is a pennon,” Daniel said, glancing at the bloody portion of his wing without concern. “If by chance the others arrive alone, they will know the Outcasts are friends.” His eyes followed her own, which were wide with worry, to the bloody region of his wing. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll heal. Come on—”



“Where are we going?” Luce asked.



“The sun’s about to rise,” Daniel said, taking a small leather satchel from Phil. “And I figure you must be starving.”



Luce hadn’t realized it, but she was.



“I thought we could steal a moment before anyone else shows up.”



There was a sheer, narrow path from the plateau that led to a small ledge down from where they’d landed.



They picked their way down the jagged mountain, hand in hand, and when it was too steep for walking, Daniel coasted, always flying very low to the ground, his wings tucked close to his sides.



“Don’t want to alarm the hikers,” he explained.



“Most places on Earth, people aren’t willing to let themselves see miracles, angels. If they catch a glimpse of us flying by, they convince themselves their eyes were playing tricks on them. But in a place like this—”



“People can see miracles,” Luce finished for him.



“They want to.”



“Right. And seeing leads to wonder.”



“And wonder leads to—”



“Trouble.” Daniel laughed a little.



Luce couldn’t help grinning, enjoying that at least for a little while, Daniel was her miracle alone.



They sat down next to each other on the small flat stretch in the middle of the heart of nowhere, shielded from the wind by a granite boulder and out of sight of everyone but a pale brown partridge picking its way along the scabby rocks. The view when Luce looked past the boulder was life-altering: a ring of mountains, this peak in shadow, this one draped in light, all of them growing brighter with each second that passed as the sun crested over the pink horizon.



Daniel unzipped the satchel and peered inside. He shook his head, laughing.



“What’s funny? What’s in there?” Luce asked.



“Before we left Venice, I asked Phil to pack a few things from his cupboard. Leave it to a blind Outcast to prepare a nutritious meal.” He pulled out a canister of paprika-flavored Pringles, a red bag of Maltesers, a handful of blue-foil-wrapped Baci chocolates, a pack of Day-gum, several small bottles of diet soda, and a few sleeves of powdered-espresso packets.