Rapture

“What about him?” Luce stared at the dead man on the floor. His shoes were freshly shined. He wore a thin gold wedding band. “He was just a janitor coming in to see about the noise. Now he’s dead. ” Daniel took Luce by the shoulders and pressed his forehead to hers. His breath came short and hot. “His soul has sped to peace and joy. And many more will be lost if we don’t find our friends, get the relic, and get out of here.” He squeezed her shoulders, then released her too quickly. She choked back a cry for the dead man, swallowed hard, and turned to look at Phil.

“Where are they?”

Phil pointed a pale finger skyward.

Dangling from a thick crossbeam near the shattered skylight were three black burlap pods. One of them bulged and swayed, like something trying to be born.

“Arriane!” Luce shouted.

The same sack bulged again, more violently this time.

“You will never free them in time,” a voice warbled from the ground. A Scale member with a fish face rose up on his elbows. “More Scale are on the way. We will bind you all in the Cloaks of the Just and handle Lucifer ourselves—”

A bronze shield thrown like a Frisbee by Phil nicked off a piece of the Scale’s scalp, sent him back into the pile of blue wings.

Phil turned to Daniel. “If you do need Scale assistance to unbind your friends, we’ll have more luck while their force is small.”

Daniel’s eyes burned violet as he flew around the wing, moving from one scaffolded restoration station to another, then to a wide marble table that looked like one of the museum restorers’ workstations. It was stacked with paperwork and tools—mostly useless after that night—which Daniel dug through with intense scrutiny, flinging aside an empty water bottle, a stack of plastic binders, a faded picture in a frame. Finally, his hands seized a long, heavy-duty scalpel.

“Take this,” he told Luce, sliding Phil’s heavy satchel across her shoulder. She held it close at her side and held her breath as Daniel arched back his wings and lifted off the ground.

She watched him rise effortlessly, magically, and wondered how it was that his wings could make everything in the dim museum glow. When Daniel finally reached the ceiling, he drew the scalpel cleanly along the rafter, slicing through the rope from which each of the three black pods hung. They slipped into his arms without a sound, and Daniel’s wings beat once as he carried the whole mass easily back to the floor.

Daniel laid the black pods side by side on a bare stretch of floor. Hurrying over to him, Luce could see each of the three angels’ faces poking out of the top.

Their bodies were bound up in the same type of rigid black cloak that had kept Luce breathlessly constricted.

But the angels had also been gagged with a strip of black burlap cloth. Even as she watched, the gags seemed to slither through the mouths of her friends. Arriane writhed and strained and grew redder in the face and looked so furious Luce thought she would explode.

Phil glanced at the struggling black forms. He lifted one up under the arms. The Scale angel blinked, in a daze. “Would you like the Outcasts to select a Scale vol-unteer to help you unbind your friends, Daniel Grigori?”

“We will never reveal the secrets of our knots!” the Scale angel came to enough to hiss. “We would rather die.”

“We would rather you die, too,” Vincent said, approaching their circle with a starshot in either hand, drawing one to the throat of the Scale angel who had spoken.

“Vincent, hold your fire,” Phil instructed.

Daniel was already kneeling over the first black cloak—Roland’s—working his fingers over the invisible knots. “I can’t find the ends.”

“Perhaps a starshot would slice it,” Phil suggested, holding out a silver arrow. “Like a Gordian knot.”

“That won’t work. The knots are blessed with an oc-cult charm. We may need the Scale.”

“Wait!” Luce dropped to her knees next to Roland.

He lay still, but his eyes told Luce everything about how powerless he felt. Nothing should restrict a soul like Roland’s. Through this cloak she could see none of the class and elegance that made the fallen angel who he was—

whether he was out-fencing all the Nephilim at Shoreline, spinning records at a Sword & Cross party, or stepping through Announcers more deftly than anyone she knew. That the Scale had done this to her friend in-furiated Luce to the point of tears.

Tears.

That was it.

The Hebrew words came back to her. Her traveling had given her a gift for languages. She closed her eyes and, in her memory, watched the golden thread fall off the book. She remembered Barach’s chapped lips self-righteously mouthing the words—

And Luce said them now to Roland, not knowing what they meant, only hoping they could help.

“And Heaven wept to see the sins of Her children.” Roland’s eyes widened. The knots slithered loose.

The cloak dropped to his sides and the gag in his mouth slid off, too.

He gasped for air, rolled to his knees, stood up and shot out his golden wings with stunning force. The first thing he did was clap Luce on the shoulder.

“Thank you, Lucinda. I owe you a solid for a solid thousand years.”

Roland was back—but blood pooled from the place Barach had ripped that false pennon from his wings.

Daniel reached for Luce’s hand, pulling her toward the other two bound angels. He had watched and learned from Luce. He went to work on Annabelle, while Luce knelt before Arriane. Arriane could not stay still. The cloak was cinched so tightly around her that Luce almost cringed to look at her.

Their eyes locked. Arriane made a noise that Luce took to mean she was glad to see Luce’s face. Luce’s eyes watered as she remembered her first day at Sword & Cross, when she’d seen Arriane endure electroshock therapy. The ultra-cool angel had seemed so fragile then, and though Luce had barely known the girl, she’d felt an urge to protect Arriane, they way you did with old friends. That urge had only strengthened over time.

A hot tear slipped down her cheek and landed in the center of Arriane’s chest. Luce whispered the Aramaic words, hearing Daniel whisper them to Annabelle at the same time. She glanced at him. His cheeks were wet.

All at once the knots loosened, then unraveled completely. The angels were free by Luce’s and Daniel’s hands—and hearts.

A gust was generated by the release of Arriane’s awe-some iridescent wings, followed by a gentler breeze from Annabelle’s lustrous silver ones. The room was almost silent in the moments before both girls’ gags came off.

Arriane also had a piece of duct tape over her mouth; she’d probably been the reason the others had been gagged in the first place. Daniel grabbed a corner of the tape and ripped it off quickly with a cricccck.

“Hot damn! It’s good to be free!” Arriane shouted, dabbing the swollen red square of skin around her mouth with her fingers. “Three cheers for the knot master, Lucinda!” Her voice had its sparkle, but her eyes were dotted with tears. She noticed Luce notice, and wiped them quickly away.

She paced around the wing-strewn floor, making different taunting faces at each of the unconscious Scale, lunging like she was about to hit them. Her denim overalls were torn almost to shreds, her hair was wild and greasy, and she had a bruise the shape of Australia on her left cheekbone. The bottom tips of her iridescent wings were bent and dragging on the littered floor.

“Arriane,” Luce whispered. “You’re hurt.”

“Aw shucks, kid, don’t worry ’bout me.” Arriane offered a lopsided grin. “I’m feeling sprightly enough to kick some scaly old Scale ass!” She looked around the room. “’Cept it looks like the Outcasts beat me to it.” Annabelle rose more slowly than Arriane, spreading, then flexing her muscular silver wings, stretching her long limbs like a ballerina. But when she looked up at Luce and Arriane, she smiled and cocked her head. “There must be something we can do to pay them back.”

Arriane’s wings fluttered and she lifted a few feet off the ground, flying around the museum wing in great circles, scanning the wreckage. “I’ll think of something—”

“Arriane,” Roland warned, looking up from a whispered conversation he’d been having with Daniel.

“Whaa?” Arriane pouted. “You never let me have any fun anymore, Ro.”

“We don’t have time for fun,” Daniel told her.

“These fossils tortured us for hours,” Annabelle called from the top of the lion’s head. “We might as well return the favor.”

“No,” Roland said. “Enough priceless damage has been done. We should spend our energy finding the second relic.”

“At least let us make sure they stay down while we do that,” Annabelle said.

Roland looked at Daniel, who nodded.

With a smile, Annabelle flitted to a table against the back wall of the warehouse. She turned on a faucet, humming to herself. She poured what Luce assumed must be plaster of Paris or some other casting agent into a bucket and started adding water.

“Arriane,” she said with bravado. “A hand, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Arriane took the first bucket from Annabelle and flew over the semiconscious Scale, smiling sweetly. Slowly, she began to pour the wet slurry over their heads. It slopped down their sides and gathered in a pool between their bodies. A few of them struggled against the thickening mixture, which was hardening quickly into a kind of artificial quicksand. Luce recognized the genius of the plan. In a few moments, when it dried, they would be stuck in their sprawled positions in rocklike plaster.

“This is not wise!” one of the Scale burbled through the wet plaster.

“We’re making you monuments to Justice!” Annabelle shouted.

“You know, I think I prefer the Scale when they’re plastered.” Arriane laughed, betraying more than a tinge of vengeful glee.

The girls kept pouring, bucket after bucket, a full bucket over the threatening angels’ heads, until their voices did not carry anymore, until the Outcasts had no need to stand over the Scale with their starshots.

Daniel and Roland stood apart from the group, arguing in hushed voices. Luce stared at Arriane’s purple bruise, at the blood on Roland’s wings, at the gash in Annabelle’s shoulder.

Then she had an idea.

She reached inside the satchel and pulled out three small bottles of diet soda and a handful of starshots in their silver sheath. She twisted off the caps.

Quickly, she dipped a starshot into each one, holding the bottles as they boiled and steamed, letting the brown liquid inside turn to silver. Finally, she rose from the corner where she’d been crouched, and was pleased to find a Chinese porcelain tray that had somehow survived the battle.

“Here, everyone,” she said.

Daniel and Roland stopped talking.

Arriane stopped dousing the Scale with wet plaster.

Annabelle alighted on the lion statue’s mane again.

None of them said anything, but all of them looked impressed as they claimed their bottles, clinked each other’s in celebration, and drank.