"Your wings," she breathed, stunned. "You're missing your wings."
Of course. He wasn't whole and she couldn't bring him back—not if there was any chance they could find his wings. How hadn't she seen it before? She was the master of loopholes and she'd missed this very obvious one. She looked at the bloodstained silk crisscrossing her abdomen. When was the last time she'd gotten shot? When was the last time she'd gotten distracted? When was the last time she'd cared?
The shock of seeing an angel had made her stupid. Weak. It wasn't going to happen again.
"Wings," she repeated. She flexed her fingers into a fist, turning it around to examine her veins—there was no glow. She closed her eyes and tried to hear the overpowering command. But there was only silence. She was free. She was free, an Acolyte set loose from her chains. It was unheard of. She picked up her daggers. "I'm leaving."
The angel stood, disbelief on his divine face. "Didn't you hear anything I said?"
"I heard everything."
"Then you must know—"
"That your glory is temporary," she said, already rising. "I know. That's why we're going to put as much distance between us as possible. Good luck finding your wings, seraph."
Before he could respond, she'd put on a burst of speed, the rough asphalt blurring beneath her bare feet. Cool wind whipped against her skin and she lifted her face to the skies. For all of the horrors on earth, the stars were still beautiful, like sequins on a velvet background. She inhaled and the air tasted sweet despite the lingering smell of smoke. If not for an odd pattering, she'd have thought herself alone in the universe. Wait, pattering? What—
"The seraph has a name."
Issa nearly crashed into an overturned car.
A couple of yards behind her, the angel was running too, and he was catching up. She pushed faster but he did the same.
"Stop following me!" she shouted.
"Stop running," he called back.
Abruptly, she did, and he whizzed past her, a trail of dust in his wake as he dug his heels, startled by her suddenness. She was already taking off in a different direction, twisting through various bends of the city to shake him off but he was like an irritating mosquito scenting his meal.
"Wait!" he said. "Wait! Stop, please!"
It was the please that got to her. She stopped, and this time she waited. He doubled over, winded, and she tilted her head, wondering how much angel was left in him, and what the rest was. Human? Hell-dweller? Or maybe angels weren't made for running.
"Couldn't—" He tried to catch his breath. "Couldn't you have stopped earlier and saved us all this running?"
"I did," she said.
At his raised brows, she continued grudgingly, "You didn't say how long I had to stop." She had no idea why she was talking to him as though he'd given her an order. He wasn't her Keeper. She wasn't poison-bound to obey him.
He shook his head in amazement. "I can see why Lilith sent you."
She crossed her arms. "Say what you want to say. The sooner we go our separate ways, the better."
He looked at her as though she were crazy. When he straightened, she saw that his silk robe was missing its sleeves, revealing sculpted angel flesh in all its splendor. The memory of its taste made her mouth water and she cursed her Acolyte body. He's not your Keeper. And she never wanted another.
"How do you expect me to stop the Apocalypse alone?"
"I don't," she said.
He frowned. "I don't understand."
She didn't expect him to. She couldn't trust him—not after everything she'd seen him do. First, he'd gotten her shot. He'd almost sacrificed both their lives—the last angel and Lilith's most gifted Acolyte—and all for what? Three insignificant humans who would die in the Apocalypse anyway. Second, he'd known she'd been sent to capture him and still, he'd patched her up. Worse than that, he'd stayed. She'd seen this before.
Empath.
She hadn't believed it at first. Like Acolytes and hell-dwellers, angels were supposed to be instruments. They did not feel. It didn't matter if they could. What mattered was that they did not. Issa hadn't tried to kill all her Keepers. The first three, she later found out, had been empaths. They'd died within minutes of each siege. That had been the first wave of empath deaths, and the most rapid. During her first raid, a hundred hell-dwellers had left at sunset and nine returned at sunrise. Within days only the most bloodthirsty was still alive.
The second wave—the one that hit the Acolytes—was a slow, excruciating thinning of the few she might've called friends. Yassper. He was the last empath she knew. Their best fighter, before he'd died too. His new Keeper ordered him not to get shot but the stupid hell-dweller forgot about the rubble. Issa saw Yassper staring up at the high archways of the gothic cathedral as it collapsed, burying him and the humans who'd thought to seek refuge within it. In a moment of madness, she'd run towards him. She still dreamt about it—the deafening crash, and tinkling as the enormous glass of painted saints and angels came crashing down all around them. It had nearly killed her too.
"You don't have to understand," she said.
His gaze grew wary. "Where are you going?"
As though he didn't already know. She shifted her weight. "I'm going to kill the hell-dwellers. I'm going to make Lilith watch. And then I'm going to kill her." Excitement thrummed in her veins and Issa felt a spike of anxiety. Was the glory wearing off already? She glanced down at her hands but there was no glow. When she looked up, the angel's expression was as impossible to read as ever.
"And you think that's going to stop the Apocalypse?"
"Fine, before I kill Lilith, I'll make her tell me how to stop it," she amended. "Happy?"
"And if my glory wears off before that?"
"Then I hope that you'll do a better job, seraph."
"I have a name!" he burst out. "And it's not seraph."
She stepped back, surprised by his sudden ire. Fire burned in his eyes, and then he looked away, exhaling. "Fine. Do what you like. It's not like anything I say will change your mind."
There had never been anything to say. She thumbed the blade of her daggers. "Is there anything else you need to know?"
"No," he said shortly.
She hesitated, taking in his forlorn expression and his tattered robes—the missing sleeves he'd wrapped so carefully around her body. Empaths had a way of making her lose her head. She thought about asking him what he was going to do but decided against it. There was no point. She unhooked one her daggers from the silks and threw it down at his feet.
"If we ever meet again," she said, "you know what to do. Don't play guardian angel."
Issa cursed the angel as she reached the city they'd come from. Somehow, he'd managed to carry her three cities away—three fucking cities—and in the wrong direction. Even at her current speed, it would be sunrise before she reached Lilith's lair. As she leapt from rooftop to rooftop, her muscles screamed at the punishing pace. But she didn't dare stop.
She'd never gone this long without a Keeper and she didn't know how long her body would last. She didn't need to look at herself to know that the angel's silken sleeves were soaked through with blood—without a Keeper as an energy source, she wasn't healing properly.
Not to mention what would happen if the angel's glory wore off. That was a separate nightmare altogether. She was going to focus on killing Lilith.
And you think that's going to stop the Apocalypse?
Issa wanted to scoff at his question—if killing the devil herself wouldn't stop the Apocalypse, what would? But it nagged at her all the same. So many hell-dwellers had died in the beginning. Why? She'd never thought to question it—not after they'd slaughtered everyone she knew and turned her into the very thing she'd despised.
Not for the first time, she tried to remember. A mother. A father. Friends. She had them—she knew she did. But not a single face came to memory. She'd been an Acolyte far longer than she'd been human, but the sheer nothingness was unusual. She knew this from the early conversations with Yassper and the other Acolytes. Unlike her, they could remember their human lives. What was it about her memory?
Would she forget Yassper's face too? Would she forget that the daggers she held once belonged to him?
Issa swore loudly.
A few hours with an empath, and now she was on the verge of crying like a little bitch about an Acolyte who'd died a century ago. She was even reconsidering her plans for vengeance! The very same ones that had kept her living when Lilith had left her in the dungeons to rot.
"Fuck you, seraph."
Taking pleasure in the knowledge that the word seraph would infuriate him, she pushed herself harder, stopping only when a familiar hum caught her attention. The void. She was on the same rooftop from this afternoon. The graffiti gleamed in the moonlight. Elliott & Sasha, someone had spray-painted, drawing a heart around the names. Issa started to wonder when they'd written it and then dismissed the thought. The humans were probably dead. Focus, Issa. She had to focus on the living.
How long would Lilith wait before sending others? Issa leapt down, stepping over the broken windows, and inhaled. Their scent was everywhere. Hers, especially, with all the blood. They'd know that she'd been here. They'd know that she'd been in and out of the void. Especially considering the three dead humans—
She froze.
The bodies were gone. Gone. Her heart began to pound. She'd seen many hell-dwellers consuming human flesh. Hell, she'd seen humans doing it. But which one had happened here? She inhaled more deeply but couldn't detect a new scent.
Not human, then.
Either they'd been here very briefly, or the next hell-dweller slash Acolyte pair were masters at hiding their scents. Were they already on the angel's track?
Not my problem, she tried to tell herself but still, she reached for the vibrating threads of the void, pulling several loose. The hum rose a little in pitch, not distorted enough to draw attention. If the next prisoner was smart enough, they'd be able to exit on their own.
As she was about to leave, something caught her eye.
Her chest tightened. It was a rendering of a Gothic cathedral. The rosetta window, the high, pointed archways, and the beige stone. It looked almost identical to the one Yassper had died under. She stepped closer to look and her brows furrowed at the book lying underneath it. A Complete Guide to Angels. And then she realised the entire antique shop was filled with similar things. Porcellain crosses, a golden Buddha statue, a leather-bound Torah…
Was this supposed to be Lilith's fucked up sense of humour? Lock the angel up in an antique shop filled with objects of worship?
Unable to resist her curiosity, she picked up the book.
Michael. Gabriel.
All the usual names.
She recognised some of the Fallen too. Asbeel, Azazel… Lucifer.
But Edvardiel… there was no Edvardiel.
She flipped through the pages again, checking the glossary, but his name wasn't listed. She searched under Seraphim, but he wasn't on it. Archangel, nope. Cherubim? Unlikely, but still nope.
She scratched her head. Maybe he was a minor seraph. But if even Lucifer and… Rikbiel, whoever that was, was listed in the book, why wasn't a seraph? For fuck's sake, even the stalker angels—the Watchers—were listed.
"How lame are you?" she muttered, putting the book away.
If this wasn't a sign that she shouldn't listen to him, she didn't know what else was. She was going stick to her plan to find Lilith. She was going to make her unseal Heaven's gates. Once the other, hopefully less lame angels got here, the Apocalypse would have to stop.