I grip Raffe’s sword. I guess it’s my sword now. If the sword rejects him as long as he has his new wings, then I’m the only one who can use it.
I move toward Raffe and Beliel, ready to slice the wings off.
Something grabs my ankle and pulls from behind. Something slimy with an iron grip.
My feet slip on the wet floor and I slam down onto the concrete. The sword skitters out of my hand. My lungs spasm so hard at the impact that I think I’ll black out.
I manage to turn my head to see what has a hold of me.
I wish I hadn’t.
CHAPTER 42
Behind me, a well-muscled scorpion fetus opens its jaws to scream at me, revealing rows of piranha teeth.
Its undeveloped skin shows its veins and the shadows of muscles. It lies on its belly as if it crawled all the way from its shattered tank to get to me.
Its deadly stinger shoots up and over its back, aiming for my face.
An image of Paige and my mother running through the night flashes through my head. Alone. Terrified. Wondering if I’ve abandoned them.
“No!” The scream is torn from me as I twist unnaturally to avoid the onrushing barb. The tip narrowly misses my face.
Before I can even take a breath, the tip whips up and jabs down again. This time, I don’t even have time to brace myself as it whips down towards me.
“No!” Raffe roars.
My body jerks as the stinger punctures my neck.
For a moment, it feels like an impossibly long needle digging its way through my flesh.
Then the real pain starts.
A burning agony spreads across the side of my neck. It feels like I’m being shredded from the inside out. My breath comes in harsh gasps and my skin breaks out in a sweat.
A tormented scream bursts from my throat and my legs pump in frantic kicks.
None of that stops the scorpion fetus from coming for me. Its mouth opens as it nears, poised to give me its deadly kiss.
Our eyes meet as it pulls me to it. I can tell that it thinks sucking me dry will give it enough energy to survive outside its artificial womb. Its desperation shows in its grip, in the way it opens and shuts its mouth like a fish trying to breath, in the way it squeezes its veined eyelids shut as if the harsh light is too much for its underdeveloped eyes.
Its venom spreads a swath of torment across my face and down my chest. I try to shove the scorpion angel away, but all I can do is feebly nudge at it.
My muscles are beginning to freeze.
The stinger suddenly rips out of my neck. It feels barbed, like it’s pulling my neck inside out.
Another scream rips through me but I can’t release it. My mouth only opens a crack. The muscles in my face just twitch instead of contorting in agony. My scream sounds like a weak gurgle.
I can’t move my face.
Raffe whips the tail in his hands and drags the abomination off me. He is roaring, and I realize he has been screaming all this time.
He grabs the scorpion fetus, swings it like a bat, and whips it into the scorpion tanks.
Three columns shatter as it crashes through them, one after another. The room fills with the dying screeches of aborted monsters.
Raffe crashes to his knees beside me. He looks stunned. And oddly shaken. He stares at me as if he can’t believe what he sees. As if he refuses to believe what he sees.
Do I look that bad?
Am I dying?
I try to touch my neck to see how much blood is flowing, but I can’t get my arm to move all the way up there. I watch it come up a third of the way, trembling with effort, then fall limp. He looks stricken when he sees my feeble attempt to move.
I try to tell him that the stinger venom paralyses and slows down breathing, but what comes out of my mouth is a mumbling that even I can’t understand. My tongue feels enormous and my lips too swollen to move. None of the other victims looked swollen, so I assume I don’t either, but it feels that way. Like my tongue has suddenly become large and clumsy, too heavy to move.
“Shh,” he says gently. “I’m here.”
He pulls me into his arms and I try to concentrate on feeling his warmth. Inside, I feel like I’m trembling with the pain but outside, I’m utterly still as the paralysis spreads down my back and legs. It takes all my willpower to keep my head from drooping on his arm.
The look on his face scares me as much as the paralysis. For the first time, his face is completely unshuttered. As if it just doesn’t matter anymore what I see.
Shock and grief line his face. I try to wrap my head around the fact that he is grieving. For me.
“You don’t even like me, remember?” That’s what I try to say. What actually comes out of my mouth is closer to a baby’s first attempt at babbling.
“Shh.” He runs his finger tips along my cheek, caressing my face. “Hush. I’m right here.” He looks at me with deep anguish in his eyes. Like there’s so much he wants to tell me but feels it’s too late now.
I want to stroke his face and tell him that it will be okay. That everything will be all right.
And I wish so badly that it would be.
CHAPTER 43
“Shh,” says Raffe, rocking me in his arms.
The light around Raffe’s head falls into shadow.
Behind him, Beliel’s dark form rises into my field of view.
One of his new wings is mostly torn off and dangling by a few stitches. His face is contorted in rage as he lifts what looks like a refrigerator over Raffe’s head the way Cain must have hefted a boulder over Abel’s head.
I try to cry out. I try to warn Raffe with my expression.
But only a whispery exhale comes out.
“Beliel!”
Beliel swings to see who yells at him. Raffe also swivels to take in the scene, still holding me protectively in his arms.
Standing in the doorway is the Politician. I recognize him even without the terrified trophy women following in his wake.
“Put that down, now!” The Politician’s friendly face is marred by a frown as he stares down the giant angel.
Beliel breaths heavily with the refrigerator hefted above him. It’s not clear whether he’ll comply.
“You had your chance to kill him out on the streets,” says the Politician as he marches into the room. “But you got distracted by a pair of pretty wings, didn’t you? And now that he’s been seen and rumors are running wild that he’s back, now you want to kill him? What is wrong with you?”
Beliel hurls the refrigerator across the room. He looks like he’d like to throw it at the Politician. It lands with a crash out of sight.
“He attacked me!” Beliel stabs his finger at Raffe like a crazed infant on steroids.
“I don’t care if he poured acid down your pants. I told you not to touch him. If he dies now, his men will turn him into a martyr. Do you have any idea how hard it is to campaign against an angelic martyr? They’d forever be making up stories of how he would have opposed this policy or that.”
“What do I care about your angel politics?”
“You care because I tell you to care.” The Politician straightens his cuffs. “Oh, why do I bother? You’ll never amount to more than just a mid-demon. You just don’t have the faculty to comprehend political strategy.”
“Oh, I comprehend it, Uriel.” Beliel curls his lip like a growling dog. “You’ve turned him into a pariah. Everything he ever believed in, everything he ever said will be the ravings of a demon-winged, fallen angel. I get it more than you’ll ever understand. I’ve lived through it, remember? I just don’t care that it gives you an advantage.”
Uriel faces off with Beliel even though he has to look up to glare at him. “Just do as I say. You got your wings as payment for your services. Now get out.”
The building shakes as something explodes above.
The last ounce of will drains out of me, and I just can’t keep my head up any longer. I wilt in Raffe’s arms. My head dangles, my eyes are open but unfocussed, my breathing imperceptible.
Just like a dead body.
“NO!” Raffe grips me as if he could bind my soul to my body.
An upside-down view of the doorway shows up in my field of vision. Smoke wafts through it.
Although the pain obscures Raffe’s warmth, I feel the pressure of his hug, the rocking of our bodies back and forth as he repeats the word, “No.”
His embrace comforts me and the fear ebbs a little.
“What is that he’s mourning over?” asks Uriel.
“His Daughter of Man,” says Beliel.
“No.” Uriel sounds delightfully scandalized. “Can’t be. Not after all his warnings to stay away from them. After all his crusading against their evil hybrid spawn?”
Uriel circles around Raffe like a shark. “Look at you, Raffe. The great Archangel, on his knees with a pair of demon wings puddled around him. And holding a broken Daughter of Man in his arms?” He chuckles. “Oh, God does love me after all. What happened, Raffe? Did life on earth get too lonely for you? Century after century, with no companions but for the Nephilim you so nobly hunted?”
Raffe ignores him and continues to stroke my hair and rock back and forth gently as if putting a child to sleep.
“How long did you resist?” asks Uriel. “Did you push her away? Did you tell her she meant no more to you than any other animal? Oh, Raffe, did she die thinking you didn’t care about her? How tragic. That must just tear you to pieces.”
Raffe looks up with murder in his eyes. “Don’t. Talk. About. Her.”
Uriel takes an involuntary step back.
The building rocks again. Dust falls over the dying scorpions. Raffe lets me go, putting me gently on the concrete.
“We’re done here,” says Uriel to Beliel. “You can kill him after he’s known as the Fallen Angel Raphael.” His shoulders are stiff with authority, but his feet beat a hasty exit. Beliel follows him with his torn wing dragging in the dust. It’s a heartbreaking sight to see Raffe’s snowy feathers treated that way.
Raffe takes a moment to tuck my hair out of the way so it won’t tug against my head, as if that matters.
Then he takes off running after them. He roars out his rage as he tears through the doors and up the stairs like a cyclone.
Two sets of footsteps pound up the stairs ahead of Raffe’s.
A door bangs shut at the top of the stairs.
Blows echo off the door and walls. Something crashes, then clangs down the stairs. Raffe yells his fury and it sounds like he’s punching through the walls. He’s raging like a mad dog at the end of his tether. What’s he tethered to? Why isn’t he going after them?
He stomps down the stairs and stands at the doorway breathing heavily. He takes one look at me lying on the cement floor and hurls himself at a scorpion tank.