The cross arced through the air and speared the fleeing Elder in her sloping spine. She fell forward and convulsed, impaled by the replica of an ancient instrument of execution.
The courtyard fell quiet. Instinctively, everyone turned to look at Luce.
“She’s okay!” Dee called, raising Luce’s hand in the air as if the two of them had just won a relay race.
“Daniel!” Luce pointed at a flash of white disappearing behind Daniel’s back, into the church. As the double doors slowly shut, an elderly monk they hadn’t noticed could be heard ascending the staircase inside.
“Follow him,” Dee shouted, stepping over Presidia’s mangled corpse.
Luce and Dee ran to catch up to the others. When they entered the church, it was dark and silent. Roland pointed toward a flight of stone steps in the corner. They opened into a small stone archway, which led to a longer staircase. The space was too cramped for the angels to spread their wings, so they picked their way up the steep steps as quickly as they could.
“The Elder will lead us to Sophia,” Daniel whispered as they ducked under the stone archway to the darkened staircase. “If she has the others—if she has the relic—” Dee laid a firm hand on Daniel’s arm. “She must not know of Luce’s presence. You must prevent the Elder from reaching Sophia.”
Daniel’s eyes flickered back at Luce, then up to Roland, who nodded swiftly, rocketing up the stairs as if he had run through old stone fortresses before.
Barely two minutes later, he was waiting for them at the top of the cramped staircase. The Elder lay dead on the floor, lips blue, eyes glassy and wet. Behind Roland, an open doorway curved sharply to the left. Someone on that landing was singing what sounded like a hymn.
Luce shivered.
Daniel motioned for them to stay back, peering past the edge of the curved stairway. From where she stood, pressed against a stone wall, Luce could see a small portion of the chapel beyond the landing. The walls were painted with elaborate frescos, lit by dozens of small tin lamps suspended by beaded chains from the vaulted ceiling. There was a small room with a mosaic of the cruci-fixion spanning the entire western wall. Beyond this was a row of highly decorated vaulted columns several feet wide, portioning off a second, larger chapel that was hard to see from here. Between the two chapels, a large gilded shrine to Mary was covered in flower bouquets and half-burned sacramental candles.
Daniel cocked his head. A flash of red swished past one of the columns.
A woman in a long scarlet robe.
She was bending over an altar made from a great marble slab adorned with a white lace sheet. Something lay on that altar, but Luce could not tell what it was.
The woman was frail but attractive, with short gray hair cut in a fashionable bob. Her robe was cinched at the waist with a colorful woven belt. She lit a candle at the front of the altar. The flowing sleeves of her robe slipped up her arms as she genuflected, exposing wrists adorned with stacks and stacks of pearl bracelets.
Miss Sophia.
Luce pushed off Daniel to climb one step higher, desperate for a better view. The wide columns ob-structed the majority of the chapel, but when Daniel helped her just a little farther up the stairs, she could see more. There were not one but three altars in the room, not one but three scarlet-robed women ritually lighting candles all around them. Luce didn’t recognize two of them.
Sophia looked older, more tired than she had behind her librarian’s desk. Luce wondered briefly if it was because she had gone from surrounding herself with teenagers to running with beings who hadn’t been teenagers in several hundred years. That night, Sophia’s face was painted, lips like blood. The robe she wore was dusty and dark with rings of sweat. Hers had been the chanting voice. When she started up again in a language that sounded like Latin but wasn’t, Luce’s whole body clenched. She remembered it.
This was the ritual that Miss Sophia had performed on Luce the last night she’d been at Sword & Cross.
Miss Sophia had been just about to murder her when Daniel came crashing through the ceiling.
“Pass me the rope, Vivina,” Miss Sophia said. They were so consumed by their dark ritual that they did not sense the angels crouched along the stairs outside the chapel. “Gabrielle looks a little too comfy. I’d like to bind her throat.”
Gabbe.
“There is no more,” Vivina said. “I had to double bind Cambriel here. He was squirming. Ooh, he still is.”
“Oh my God,” Luce whispered. Cam and Gabbe were there. She assumed the presence of a third robed lady meant Molly was there, too.
“God has nothing to do with this,” Dee said under her breath. “And Sophia is too crazy to know it.”
“Why are the fallen being so quiet?” Luce whispered.
“Why don’t they resist?”
“They must not realize that this place is not a sanctuary of God,” Daniel said. “They must be in shock—
I know I would be—and Sophia must be using it to her advantage. She knows they’re worried that anything they do or say might make the church erupt into flames.”
“I know how they feel,” Luce whispered. “We have to stop her.” She started for the door, emboldened by the fresh memory of Elders they’d destroyed outside, by the power of the angels behind her, by Daniel’s love, by the knowledge of the two relics they had already discovered. But a hand clamped her shoulder, drawing her back into the corridor.
“All of you stay here,” Dee whispered, making eye contact with each of the angels to ensure they understood. “If they see you, they will know Luce is with you.
Wait here.” She pointed to the columns, thick enough for three angels to hide behind. “I know how to handle my sister.”
Without another word, Dee strode into the chapel, her heels slapping the black-and-white tile floor.
“I’d say you’ve been given quite enough rope, Sophia,” Dee said.
“Who’s there?” Vivina yelped, startled in mid-genuflection.
Dee crossed her arms over her chest as she walked around the altars, clucking in mock disapproval of the Elders’ work. “Very shoddy dressing. Leave it to Sophia to bring her B game to a sacrifice with cosmic and eternal implications.”
Luce was desperate to study the reaction on Miss Sophia’s face, but Daniel held her back. There were a scraping sound, a melodramatic gasp, and a cruel soft cackle.
“Ah yes,” Miss Sophia said. “My tramp sister returns, just in time to witness my finest hour. This will trump your overrated piano recital!”
“You’re really very dumb.”
“Because I don’t have the recommended brand of rope?” Sophia snorted.
“Forget the rope, dope,” Dee said. “You’re dumb in many dozens of ways, not the least of which is thinking you might get away with this.”
“Do not condescend to her!” hissed the third Elder.
“There’s really no other way to approach her,” Dee instantly replied.
“Thank you, Lyrica, but I can handle Paulina,” Sophia said without looking away from Dee. “Or what do you have people call you now? Pee?”
“You know very well it is Dee. You only wish you knew why.”
“Ah yes, Dee. Biiiiiig difference. Well, let us enjoy our brief reunion as best we can.”
“Let them go, Sophia.”
“Let them go?” Sophia cackled. “But I want them dead.” Her voice rose and Luce pictured her hand sweeping over the angels bound upon the altars. “I want her dead most of all!”
Luce couldn’t even gasp. She knew whom the librarian meant.
“It won’t stop Lucifer from erasing your existence.” Dee’s voice sounded almost sad.
“Well, you know what Daddy always used to say:
‘We’re all Hell-bound, anyway.’ Might as well try to get what we want while we’re on this Earth. Where is she, Dee?” Sophia spat. “Where is the mewling child Lucinda?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Dee’s voice was smooth. “But I have come to keep you from finding out.” Now Daniel let Luce press a little closer to the first chapel’s entrance.
“I hate you!” Sophia shouted, pouncing on Dee. Roland turned to look at Daniel, asking with his eyes if they should interfere. Daniel seemed confident in the desiderata’s abilities. He shook his head once.
Sophia’s assistant Elders watched from their altars as the two sisters rolled across the floor, moving out of, then back into Luce’s view. Dee on top, then Sophia, then Dee on top again.
Dee’s hands found Sophia’s neck and squeezed. The old Sword & Cross librarian’s face glowed red as her hands strained against Dee’s chest and she struggled to survive.
Slowly, Sophia worked her knee up until it pressed deeply into her sister’s stomach to push her back. Dee’s arms were fully extended, reaching to keep their hold on Sophia’s neck. She gazed down on her sister’s rage-distorted face, her eyes on fire with hatred.
“Your heart turned black, Sophia,” Dee said, her voice soft with something like nostalgia. “It was like a light went off. No one could turn the light back on. We could only try to stop you from running over us in the dark.” Then she released Sophia, allowed her to draw a huge and panicked breath into her lungs.
“You betrayed me,” Sophia gasped as Dee took her sister’s collar in her hands, closed her eyes, and moved to slam Sophia’s skull against the tiles of the mosaic floor.
But instead there came a long shriek as Dee was launched into the air. Sophia had kicked her with a force Luce had forgotten the old woman possessed. She leaped to her feet. She was sweating and red in the face, her hair white and wild, as she ran to where Dee had come to rest several feet away. Luce rose on her toes and winced when she saw Dee’s eyes were closed.
“Ha!” Sophia returned to the altars and reached beneath the one binding Cam. She pulled out a sheath of starshots.
Back in the alcove Roland glanced at Daniel again.
This time Daniel nodded.
In an instant, Arriane, Annabelle, and Roland flew from their hiding places into the room. Roland drove toward Miss Sophia, but at the last instant, she ducked and deftly avoided him. His wing slapped her across the face, but she had eluded his grasp.
In the face of angel wings, the two other Elders cow-ered, shrinking in panicked fear. Annabelle held them back while Arriane flicked open a Swiss Army knife from her pocket—the pink one, the same one Luce had used to cut the girl’s hair months earlier—and sawed at the ropes binding Gabbe to the altar.
“Stop or I’ll kill him!” Sophia shouted at the angels as she tore out a fistful of arrows and leaped on Cam.
Straddling him, she raised the silver shafts above his head.
His dark hair was matted and greasy. His hands were pale and trembling. Miss Sophia studied these details with a smirk.
“I do so love to see an angel die. ” She cackled, holding the starshots high. “And such an arrogant one to kill.” She looked back down at Cam. “His death will be a beautiful thing to behold.”