Rapture

They landed on the bank of the river under the shade of a weeping willow tree, sending a flock of agitated ducks flapping into the water. In broad daylight, the angels folded in their wings. Luce stood behind Daniel to watch the intricate process as his retracted into his skin.



They drew in from the center first, making a series of soft snaps as layers of muscle folded on empyreal feathers. Last came Daniel’s thin, nearly translucent wing tips, which glowed as they disappeared inside his body, leaving no trace on his specially tailored T-shirt.



They walked to the bridge, like any other tourists interested in architecture. Annabelle walked much more stiffly than normal, and Luce saw Arriane reach out and touch her hand. The sun was bright and the air smelled like lavender and river water. The bridge was made of big white stones, held up by long arches underneath.



There was a small stone chapel with a single tower attached to one side near the entrance of the bridge. It held a sign that read CHAPEL DE SAINT NICOLAS. Luce wondered where the real tourists were.



The chapel was coated with a fine, silvery dust.



They walked the bridge silently, but Luce noticed that Annabelle wasn’t the only one upset. Daniel and Roland were trembling, keeping well clear of the entrance to the chapel, and Luce remembered they were forbid-den to enter a sanctuary of God.



Dee ran her fingers over the narrow brass railing with a heavy sigh. “We are too late.”



“This isn’t—” Luce touched the dust. It was insubstantial and light, with a hint of silver shimmer, like the dust that had covered her parents’ backyard. “You mean—”



“Angels have died here.” Roland’s voice was monotone as he stared into the river.



“B-but,” Luce stammered, “we don’t know whether Gabbe and Cam and Molly even made it here.”



“This used to be a beautiful place,” Annabelle said.



“Now they’ve marred it forever. Je m’excuse, Bénézet. ”



That was when Arriane held up a quivering silver feather. “Gabbe’s pennon. Intact, so it must have been taken by her own hand. Perhaps to give to an Outcast who didn’t get it before . . .” She looked away, holding the feather to her chest.



“But I thought the Scale didn’t kill angels,” Luce said.



“They don’t.” Daniel bent down and wiped away some of the dust that was mounded like snow at his feet.



Something was buried underneath it.



His fingers found a dusty silver starshot. He wiped it on his shirt and Luce shivered each time his fingers drew near the deadly dull tip. At last, he held it out for the others to examine. It was branded with an ornate letter Z.



“The Elders,” Arriane whispered.



“They are happy to kill angels,” Daniel said softly.



“In fact, there’s nothing they’d rather do.” There was a sharp crack.



Luce whipped around, expecting . . . she didn’t know what. Scale? Elders?



Dee shook out her fist, rubbing red knuckles with her other hand. Then Luce saw: The wooden door to the chapel was smashed in the center. Dee must have punched it. No one else thought it was remarkable that such a tiny woman could cause so much damage.



“You all right there, Dee?” Arriane called out.



“Sophia has no business here.” Her voice quaked with rage. “What Lucifer is doing is beyond the compass of the Elders’ concern. And yet she could ruin everything for you angels. I could kill her.”



“Promise?” Roland asked.



Daniel slipped the starshot into the satchel and clasped it shut. “However this battle ended, it must have begun over the third relic. Someone found it.”



“A war of resources,” Dee said.



Luce flinched. “And someone died for it.”



“We don’t know what happened, Luce,” Daniel said.



“And we won’t know until we stand before the Elders.



We need to track them down.”



“How?” Roland asked.



“Maybe they went to Sinai to stake us out,” Annabelle suggested.



Daniel shook his head and paced. “They don’t know to go to Sinai—unless they tortured the location out of one of our angels.” He stopped and looked away.



“No,” Dee said, looking around their circle on the bridge. “The Elders have their own agenda. They’re greedy. They want a larger stake in all of this. They want to be remembered, like their forefathers. If they die, they want to go as martyrs.” She paused. “And what is the most self-indulgent location to stage your own martyr-dom?”



The angels shifted their weight. Daniel’s wings bristled as he scanned the pale pink eastern sky. Annabelle ran her long nails through her hair. Arriane hugged her arms around her chest and stared hard at the ground, at a loss for sarcastic words. Luce seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what Dee was talking about. Finally, Roland’s voice echoed ominously across the crumbling bridge:



“Golgotha. Place of skulls.”



ELEVEN



VIA DOLOROSA



As the angels banked right over what looked like the southern coast of France, Luce watched the dark waves roll below them, washing up along the distant shore. She did some math in her head:



At midnight, it would be Tuesday, December 1. Five days had passed since she’d returned from the Announcers, which meant they were past the midpoint of the nine-day period that the angels fell to Earth. Lucifer and all their earlier selves were more than halfway through the Fall.



They had two of the three relics, but they didn’t know what the third was, didn’t know how to read them once they got them all together. Worse, in the process of locating the relics, they’d gained more enemies. And it looked like they had lost their friends.



Dust from the Pont Saint Bénézet was under Luce’s fingernails. What if it was Cam? In a handful of days, Luce had gone from being wary about Cam’s involve-ment in their mission to feeling despondent at the thought of losing him. Cam was fierce and dark and unpredictable and intimidating and not the guy that Luce was meant to be with—but that didn’t mean she didn’t care about him, didn’t care for him in a certain way.



And Gabbe. The Southern beauty who always knew the right thing to say and do. From the moment Luce met Gabbe at Sword & Cross, the angel had done nothing but look out for her. Now Luce wanted to look out for Gabbe.



Molly Zane had also gone to Avignon with Cam and Gabbe. Luce had feared, then hated Molly—until the other morning, when Luce had come in through the bedroom window at her parents’ house to find Molly covering for her in bed. It was a solid favor. Even Callie liked spending time with Molly. Had the demon changed?



Had Luce?



The rhythmic beats of Daniel’s wings across the starry sky lulled Luce into a deep state of relaxation, but she did not want to sleep. She wanted to focus on what might greet them when they arrived at Golgotha, to brace herself for what was coming.



“What’s on your mind?” Daniel asked. His voice was low and intimate in the frantic wind they were flying through. Annabelle and Arriane flew in front of them and a little bit below. Their wings, dark silver and iridescent, spread wide over the green boot of Italy.



Luce touched the silver locket around her neck. “I’m afraid.”



Daniel squeezed her tight. “You’re so brave, Luce.”



“I feel stronger than I ever have before, and I’m proud of all the memories I can access on my own, especially if they can help us stop Lucifer”—she paused, glancing down at her dusty fingernails—“but I’m still afraid of what we’re flying towards now.”



“I won’t let Sophia get anywhere near you.”



“It’s not what she might do to me, Daniel. It’s what she may have already done to people I care about. That bridge, all that dust—”



“I hope as much as you do that Cam and Gabbe and Molly are unharmed.” His wings gave one great beat and Luce felt her body rise above a swollen rain cloud. “But angels can die, Lucinda.”



“I know that, Daniel.”



“Of course you do. And you know how dangerous this is. Every angel who joins our struggle to stop Lucifer knows it, too. By joining us, they acknowledge that our mission is more important than any single angel’s soul.”



Luce closed her eyes. A single angel’s soul.



There it was again. The idea she’d first heard Arriane speak about in the Vegas IHOP. One powerful angel to tip the scales. One choice to determine the outcome of a fight that had lasted for millennia.



When she opened her eyes, the moon was bathed in soft white light, rising over the dark landscape below.



“The forces of Heaven and Hell,” she began, “are they really in balance against each other right now?” Daniel was quiet. She felt his chest rise against her and then fall. His wings beat a bit more swiftly, but he didn’t answer.



“You know?” Luce pressed on. “The same number of demons on one side and the same number of angels on the other?”



Wind whipped against her.



Finally, Daniel said, “Yes, though it’s not that simple.



It’s not a matter of a thousand here versus a thousand there. Different players matter more than others. The Outcasts carry no weight. You heard Phil lamenting that.



The Scale are almost negligible—though you’d never know that from the way they carry on about their importance.” He paused. “One of the Archangels? They are worth a thousand lesser angels.”



“Is it still true that there’s one important angel who still has to choose a side?”



A pause. “Yes, that is still true.”



She’d already begged him to choose once, on the rooftop at Shoreline. They were in the middle of an argument and the time hadn’t been right. But their bond was stronger now. Surely if he knew how much she supported him, that she’d stand by him and love him no matter what, it would help him finally make up his mind.



“What if you just went ahead and . . . chose?”



“No—”



“But, Daniel, you could stop this! You could tip the scales, and no one else would have to die, and—”



“I mean no, it’s not that easy.” She heard him sigh and knew, even without looking, the precise shade his eyes would be glowing now: a deep, wild lupine violet.



“It’s not that easy anymore,” he repeated.



“Why not?”



“Because this present no longer matters. We’re in a pocket of time that may cease to exist. So choosing now wouldn’t mean a thing, not until this nine-day glitch is fixed. We still have to stop him. Either Lucifer gets his way and erases the past five or six millennia and we all begin again—”



“Or we succeed,” Luce said automatically.



“If that happens,” Daniel said, “we’ll reassess how the ranks are aligned.”



Twenty feet below them, Arriane was flying in slow trancelike loop-the-loops, as if to pass the time. Annabelle flew into one of the rain showers that the angels usually avoided. She came out on the other side with her wings damp and her pink hair plastered to the side of her face without even seeming to notice. Roland was somewhere behind them, probably deep in his own thoughts as he carried Dee in his arms. Everyone seemed weary, distracted.