VII. Lion
Edvardiel turned to look at her from where he lay on the altar. "So how exactly do we do this?"
For a second, Issa wavered. Thinking about explaining the Binding process to a very virgin angel made her wonder if dying was less the troublesome option. Then she shook her head. What did she care about corrupting an angel? It wasn't like doing the deed would kill him.
"There are two steps," she said. "First I have to drink your blood."
If the thought scared him, he didn't show it. "Okay."
He waited for more and Issa shifted her weight. "I don't know what your blood will do to me," she stalled. It was a dumb thing to say, considering she was choosing between the certain-death of not having a Keeper versus the maybe-death of drinking angel blood.
Edvardiel, being the saintly angel he was, didn't point this out. "You withstood my glory. I don't think my blood will be any different. What's the second step?"
"Mm." She suddenly found the rotting sarcophagus very interesting. "Have you ever…" She wondered why she was asking a question she already knew the answer to. She clamped her mouth shut. "Never mind." She should just throw herself into hell. That was probably less painful than this.
She found herself once again missing Lilith's poison. At least then, she'd never had a choice. She'd never had to take the blame. Now…
"The second step," she tried again.
"Yes?" He looked confused.
Oh fuck it. She seemed incapable of charm without the poison, but she was still an Acolyte. Temptation personified. She'd make him take her. She knew he already wanted her.
His breathing hitched as she climbed onto the altar and straddled his hips, gazing down at him with a challenge in her eyes. Not the best method of seduction, if she were being honest with herself.
Edvardiel's fist tightened around the ceremonial garb covering him but he didn't push her off. Didn't even ask her what she was doing. Just laid there waiting to see what she would do. So foolishly trusting, as always.
She sighed.
Get on with it.
Lightly, she brushed back his shoulder-length hair with her knuckles, marvelling at its softness, and then ran her fingers down his cheek and the side of his neck. He was so still that he looked like a statue, save for his fast, shallow breathing and frantic heartbeat. She pressed her palm flat against his chest, and his warmth seeped through the fabric slowly. Too slowly. He wasn't shivering but his body hadn't regained its blazing warmth. His lips were still stained with dark blue. He was so, so weak.
Issa pursed her lips and swung herself off him.
"Get up," she ordered. "You're still half-frozen and the cold stone's not helping. I don't need you dying on me during the Binding."
She helped him off the altar and onto one of the long wooden benches, then stared shamelessly at the exposed parts of his flawless body. The ceremonial garb wasn't doing much to keep him warm.
He curled into the garb, defensive, and she smiled sweetly. "As delicious as you look, I'm going to go find you some clothes first."
She told herself she wasn't stalling. After all, she'd never experienced a Binding while her Keeper was weakened. She needed to keep the angel alive for his glory. This was a practical choice, that's all it was.
"Wait," he said, pushing himself up to his elbows. "You shouldn't go out in this weather. Not in your condition."
She scoffed. "Worry about yourself, seraph."
"At least wait for it to stop snowing," he said.
She rolled her eyes. "That could be anything from next week to next month." The climate had changed since the humans tried to nuke them. Now there were firestorms, radioactive cities, and frozen oceans.
"I don't…" He was sitting up now, leaning against the arm of the bench with a grimace. He looked embarrassed. "I don't even know your name."
Her brows rose. Her name? Most of her Keepers had never learned it. Why bother, when they died like flies? Acolyte was name enough.
"Issa."
"Issa," he repeated. "That's Arabic, isn't it?" He looked at her. "You don't look quite... Or maybe."
That threw her off. What anyone looked like, where anyone was from, had long ceased to matter.
"I keep forgetting how long you've been trapped in that void," she said. Then she paused. "I don't remember my human name. A friend gave me this name."
Yassper, but he was a sore topic.
In the beginning, she had often wondered where she was from. Her features were hard to place. After a while, all of her musings faded into nothingness. What was the point? Her nights were spent slaughtering, her days spent licking her wounds. Humans became nothing but fragile flesh to be cut apart and blood that ran like an endless river. It had taken everything she had to just put one foot in front of the other, night after night after endless night.
"I woke up in what used to be Haiphong," she said, "about seventeen years after the Apocalypse started. Everyone had been running everywhere by then." Trying to find somewhere the demons wouldn't attack. But no continent had been spared. Then she frowned. Why was she telling him all this?
"I'm going." She unsheathed her blade, flicking it in her hand with a single practiced motion. "See you soon."
"Issa," he said. "Stay. Please. You're not well."
That made her cackle. "Seraph. I've never been well."
"You're on the brink of—"
Issa left before he could finish his sentence.
Death.
She knew that. She'd known that since she came to fetch him. But pushing her body to its limits was all she'd known.
The icy blast of air did her good. If she had to stay in the same room as the seraph for a moment longer, she'd corrupt him more thoroughly than he could imagine. After all, he made it so easy for her, as trusting and loyal as he was. The memory of his warm skin underneath her murderous fingertips made her want to hurl. She repulsed herself. How he could stand her touching him, knowing what she was, she'd never understand.
It would be a blessing for him if she didn't make it out of the snowstorm. Well, a blessing with some drawbacks, considering the stench of that corpse's garb.
When she returned, Edvardiel glowered at her. He was so pissed that he was practically iridescent with it, his glory burning high, those fiery eyes flashing. The Acolyte in her found his aggression unexpectedly mouth-watering. She repressed the hellish impulses, reminding herself that this was not an up-for-grabs demon but an innocent angel.
"If you'd died out there, I'd have died in here too," he snapped.
"And here I thought you might've been worried about me," she said dryly.
His eyes confirmed it even if his words didn't. "You keep raging at me for being an empath. What does that make you?" He gestured at the clothes in her arms. "Running out in a snowstorm for some moth-eaten jackets?"
She lifted one shoulder. "I guess stupidity is catching."
He ran an agitated hand through his hair. "If you were trying to make a point—"
"Oh, stop complaining and put on the clothes." She threw the jacket, pullover, and pants at him. "I came back, didn't I?"
"You could've just as easily—" he began.
She threw the socks right into his face.
"I'm going to throw shoes next," she threatened. "If you've got that much energy, use it to dress. Unless you want me to leer at you for the next couple of days." She hooked a finger around the stinky corpse garb and tossed it into a corner.
"Didn't you get any clothes for yourself?" he asked.
Issa looked down at herself. "I'm not cold." She wasn't, not really. Not when she was so numb. "Besides, I like how this dress makes me loo—"
He reached around her, wrapping the jacket around her shoulders, and nearly toppled off the bench. She caught him around the waist, trying to ignore the way his bare skin was rubbing all over her. He even smelled good—no small feat after almost dying near the subway sewers and wearing something that belonged to a corpse.
She kept her expression deadpan. "I thought I was the one who was supposed to be seducing you, not the other way around."
Edvardiel seemed to realise their compromising position and yanked himself off her. He landed with a thud against the bench, panting from the exertion.
"Unfortunately, I don't do one-night stands," he said.
She snorted. "I don't think you do any kind of—"
"Just put on the jacket, Issa." He was glowing again, and Issa decided not to make him waste all of his glory blushing.
"You're not even my Keeper yet and you're already so bossy," she muttered as she slid her arms into the jacket.
She watched him struggle to put the pullover over his head. Watched him tussle with the right sleeve. Then the left. He reached for the pants, and she snatched them from him.
"Watching you dress yourself is giving me an aneurysm," she said.
She grabbed his foot, one after the other, and stuffed them into the pant leg. Then she dragged them up his hips and turned him back to a sitting position.
"Heavens above," she said, as she knelt down and helped him with his socks. "I didn't think hypothermia would make an angel this weak."
"It doesn't," he said. He tried to pull his feet away. "Leave the socks."
She grabbed his ankle. "I'm almost done."
She finished and rose to find him gazing at her. "Thank you," he said, his voice filled with gratitude.
"Fuck off, seraph," she said gruffly. "I only helped you put on some fucking socks."
"No. I owe you an apology," he said.
Her brows pulled together. What?
"When we first met, I didn't realise you were under orders," he said. "I gave you a hard time about the dead humans when you didn't even have a choice. It was stupid of me. No wonder you left."
"Wait. Stop right there." She frowned. "Let's make one thing clear. I didn't leave because you accused me of anything. My ego isn't that fragile. I left for me. I left because I wanted to be free. I left because I'm selfish. That's all there is to it."
"That's why you went off to kill Lilith while you were wounded?"
"I wanted revenge."
"And that girl you saved. What was that?"
"It was the blood loss. I wasn't thinking straight."
"And me. Why drag me all the way to a cathedral and—"
"It's your glory that's maintaining my freedom, isn't it? Can't have you dying on me."
He was unrelenting. "The clothes you went out to get—"
"Same point as before. Can't have you dying on me." She stood, throwing up her hands. "Stop painting me to be some kind of saint. I'm not. I only do things when there's something in it for me. You're the only empath around here."
He inhaled and exhaled slowly, as though he were praying for patience. "Fine. Let's get on with the Binding then."
She was taken aback. "Now? But you're—"
"What's in it for you to wait for me to recover?" he said scathingly.
"So you won't die on me!"
"I'm telling you now, I won't die." The coldness in his tone made her flinch. He lifted his chin. "Do it."
A thousand thoughts shot through her mind. The second step. His weakness. The fact that she swore to herself that she'd never have another Keeper.
"We're going to be snowed in if we wait." Edvardiel's voice was gentle this time and he nodded to the colourful frosted windows, where the white flakes were falling and falling. "So just do it now."
His skin blazed and he got to his feet easily this time, offering her his hand as though they were about to dance. "See, I'm feeling all better."
Except he was offering the hand wrist up.
She didn't ask him again if he was sure. He was powering himself with glory just to convince her. And she was tired of being afraid. She took the hand in both of hers, kissing his wrist reverently, and then she bit.
His blood flooded her mouth, hot as fire, its taste oddly sweet and familiar. It took little more than two little swallows before she felt it.
Power.
The rush of sudden strength made her entire body vibrate. Energy seeped out of her and the very air she breathed seemed to crackle.
"What's happening?" Edvardiel asked, his eyes wide.
"You tell me," she said, looking down at herself as her body began to glow. "This is your strength." It seemed Binding an angel didn't require the second step. Huh. To think she'd nearly had an existential crisis over that.
"I don't have that much glory." He stepped back, shielding his eyes as her skin shone like a disco ball on steroids. "That isn't mine. It can't be." His gaze drifted upwards, as though expecting to see another angel hidden somewhere in the rafters.
Unnerved, Issa wrapped her arms around herself, trying in vain to hide the light in her jacket. "Well, it sure as hell isn't mine. Seraph, you have to do something. Contain your glory before someone finds us. I'm like a fucking beacon."
"Contain it?" He looked at her helplessly.
"Block the energy channel. Close the gates. Do something like—I don't know, I'm not the Keeper here." She'd never had to tell her Keepers to restrain their energies—most were so fearful of her they barely gave her a trickle. Edvardiel's channel was an open dam, hitting her like a typhoon. Another wave of energy surged into her and she inhaled sharply, feeling like she could literally fly.
"I'm trying." He looked around bewilderedly as though he would find something in the room to block his inner channel. He was hopeless, hopeless as always—
The ground vanished beneath Issa's feet suddenly and she realised she was floating like a fucking astronaut. She tried to set them back to the earth but her feet seemed to have a will of their own as they tugged her higher and higher, making her sway unsteadily in the air, trip while airborne, and nearly slam face-first into the long iron table. She grabbed a hold of the table leg in terror. She'd dealt with many horrible things, but a glowing, possessed body part was not one of them.
"SERAPH! Make it stop!"
Edvardiel grabbed a hold of the table as that, too, began to float. "I don't know how!"
Issa clung to the table till her knuckles turned white, her heart hammering in her chest. "Don't let go of the table or I will murder you."
"But look at you—you're flying."
She couldn't believe he was making a joke right now. She scowled and his lips twitched, his eyes shining with mirth. Then he burst into laughter. Tear-inducing, side-splitting laughter. "You look like an angry lion."
Vaguely, she realised that her hair had been electrified and was standing on end in every direction. Her legs were pulling her higher and higher, and her weakened muscles were tiring.
"Seraph!" she screamed, as her hold gave out and she found herself shooting upwards like a rocket, hitting the top of the church ceiling.
He'd stopped laughing.
"Get me down!" she gritted out. She could barely breathe, pressed flat as she was against the ceiling, still vibrating with power. Tiny cracks began to form in the stone behind her, and Issa was genuinely terrified of what would happen if she broke through the roof and kept going up and up.
Edvardiel circled her below, a pensive expression on his face as he paced back and forth. Then he cracked his neck and positioned himself directly beneath her.
"What are you doing?" Her eyes narrowed. He looked like he was about to do something very stupid… or something brilliant.
"Trying out my new Keeper powers," he said.
"Huh?"
He held his arms out. "Come down," he said simply.
The command rippled through her being, seizing hold of her muscles. She felt her tissues contorting to obey. The power shifted in a different direction and she was shooting downwards, screaming.
Edvardiel's eyes widened. "Come down slowly!"
Too late. She was inches away from his face. She slammed into him with the force of a battering ram. They skidded across the long aisle like bride and groom before colliding with the altar. Edvardiel turned his body, shielding her from the worst of it.
There was a nasty crack.
"I think I broke something," Edvardiel groaned.
"I think you broke many somethings," she said, winded, but glad to be back on solid ground.
Edvardiel's arms were still around her, and she found herself leaning into his fiery heat. A powerful wave of safety and comfort washed through her. It was the same sensation she'd experienced when he'd healed her in the subway. It was intoxicating—safety was something she'd never felt as an Acolyte. She inhaled his scent and was hit by a vision. The same fiery heat emanating from something soft and downy. Wings. Warm wings wrapping around her, keeping her safe.
"Have we met before this?" She couldn't help asking.
Edvardiel winced as he tried to move. "Don't tell me the fall gave you amnesia."
"I don't mean when I was sent to retrieve you," she said. "I mean before. When I was… human." Absurd hope swelled within her. Maybe the visions she had weren't because of the cold or the fall. Maybe they were memories. "Is there any possibility that we'd crossed paths? That you'd been one of the guardian angels?"
A strange expression crossed Edvardiel's face. "No," he said. "I'm no guardian angel. I've flown down to earth exactly once."
"So you're seraphim through and through," she mused. "Funny. You don't strike me as being very warrior-like. More guardian angel-like." She was about to ask him about the book and why his name wasn't in it—
"Can we talk about this when you're not pressing down on my broken somethings?" he said stiffly.
Reluctantly, Issa pulled away from his wonderful warmth, and reached to help him up. He took her hand but paled when he tried to stand.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked.
"My back," he admitted. "My neck. My head."
Damn it. If it was his back, it was serious. Issa had seen enough paralysed humans who'd been left to die. And his head… how badly did angels bleed? What if he had internal bleeding and died on her tomorrow? God. The whiplash could've snapped his neck too.
"You should've just let me fall," she scolded. "I would've healed. Or you could've healed me. Why do you keep sticking your neck out like this? It's stupid. You're—" She stopped when she felt something shift in their newly formed connection.
His expression betrayed nothing, but the connection revealed otherwise. It seemed that he'd drunk every reckless word of disapproval she hurled at him—and believed them.
Stupid.
The most useless angel in the world.
Hopeless.
She'd said all the words out of anger, but she felt through their connection how deeply he believed them.
For the first time, she was grateful it was a one-way channel—that she could feel him but he couldn't feel her. The intent behind the design was not meant for her benefit but her Keeper's, so that Acolytes could sense exactly what was wanted from them and obey, and the Keepers didn't have to deal with any of the fallout.
Issa closed her mouth, stuffing away all of her hostile words, and took several deep breaths, kneeling down beside him instead. "How fast do you heal?"
"I'm not sure," he said.
Their connection pricked again, and she felt his frustration—he was more frustrated with his lack of knowledge than she was.
It was amazing, how someone this powerful was also this clueless.
Even now his glory thrummed like a great river beneath her skin. Issa had an idea. She rested her hands on his chest, unsure what she was doing, only that she wanted to try and do something. Her palms glowed gold. Warmth seeped through her hands and into his body. Slowly, slowly, the tension left his body, and he looked at her in wonder.
She was amazed by it herself. But to him, she only said, "Don't look at me like that. This is your power."
"You're an amplifier," Edvardiel said. "You have to be. I don't have enough glory for wingless flight." Did she imagine the twinge of envy in his voice?
"You have to work on containing your energy," she said. "I'm still glowing like a lamp."
"It's not me," he said. "It's you. You're amplifying my energy." He was frowning. "Still, I've never heard of living amplifiers… They've always been objects, like the Flaming Sword of Michael."
"I've never had this problem before," she said. "I thought I was going suffocate in space."
He burst into laughter again. "I don't think I've ever seen a flying demon."
"Oh fuck off." She crossed her arms. "I'm not a demon. I'm an Acolyte, there's a difference."
He nudged her. "In any case, I'm serious. It's you, not me. You need to work on controlling the glory that's flowing into you."
"When did this become my problem?" she said. "You have to close the channel, not me."
"When I called you down, you came down," he said. "Which means you can control it, you just don't know how."
Issa thought about it for a while and then nodded slowly. "That was ah…" she cleared her throat. "That was some quick thinking."
His eyes flashed with humour again, and she immediately regretted trying to be nice. "Are you complimenting me, my cold-blooded Acolyte?"
She gave him a shove and stood, walking towards the cathedral doors. "Come on. After all of that screaming and glowing, I'm sure everything dangerous within a few miles heard us. We should leave."
"You mean, after all of your screaming and glowing." He grinned.
"And you were laughing like a fucking hyena. I'm pretty sure that was attracting attention too."
"Sure, little lion." He patted her head.
The nerve. Did he realise know many hands she'd hacked off for doing much less?
She growled at him.
He smirked and she realised too late that she was proving his point.
"Fucking angel," she muttered and tried to smooth down her electrified hair.
As she caught a flicker of her reflection in the church organ, she grudgingly conceded that she did indeed look like an angry lion.