by J. R. Ward
Or had that already happened, even though she'd made it here in one piece?
"Well?" Like Jim hadn't heard her. "You've got nothing to say?"
Jim reached forward and calmly stamped out his lit cigarette. "Sissy--"
"She had you raped!" As Jim's face went ashen, she slammed the door behind herself, shutting them all in. "Did you think I don't know what she had done to you? We all saw it from the walls! I watched when they . . . hurt you. How do you--" Her voice cracked. "How can you be with her after something like that?"
At that moment, she wanted to weep, but she didn't give in. How could she? This wasn't a safe place for her, even though the two "men" who were at the table, both so silent and still, were supposedly angels.
"Whose side are you really on?" she demanded.
Jim put his palms on the table and braced his arms. As he stood up, it was clear he had an iron lock on his temper, and for a split second, she felt a flash of fear.
But she'd already faced off with the devil herself. So she wasn't about to be frightened by him.
"Fine, forget about what she did to you--she murdered me!" Sissy barked. "That bitch took my life away from me. She ruined my family's lives. Nothing will be the same and nothing will ever be right--and you're sleeping with her?"
Jim's voice was deep and low. "Adrian, you need to leave this room now."
The other angel was up and out of his chair before the sentence was finished. And as he limped out, Sissy was glad for the privacy. Shit was going down, and this did not need an audience.
When they were alone, Jim locked eyes with her. "I didn't want you to see that."
"What they did to you, or the scratches she left on your chest last night?"
"Either."
"Too late."
He closed his lids, but she wasn't sure whether that was because he had serious regrets . . . or because he was trying to figure out what to say.
"I just don't get you." She shook her head. "And maybe that makes me naive--"
"This is war," he cut in.
"And that is just sick!" she yelled back. "You're disgusting!"
With an explosive lunge, he flipped the table over, sending a plate flying, scattering chairs. "Do you think I'll stop at using anything it takes to win! Even if it's myself!"
Sissy took a step back, and hit the counter by the stove. Something about seeing his anger got hers under some control.
After a long moment of standoff, she said grimly, "I don't expect you to enjoy it, how 'bout that. Or are you going to tell me men can get it up even though they're grossed out by someone? Didn't think the anatomy worked like that--then again, I'm a virgin, right. So what do I know."
Jim was breathing hard now, his blue eyes glowing, and not in a good way. But he wasn't going to hurt her--in spite of what he'd just done to that poor table, she knew deep down in her soul he would never, ever hurt her.
At least not physically.
He'd already torn her apart on the inside, however. Although she wasn't sure exactly how he'd gotten the power to do that.
"I hate it," he said raggedly. "But I will use any weapon in this war, even my own body. Are we clear?"
"So now you're a martyr as well as a savior? I don't know, like I said, I think men have to enjoy it, don't they."
"I can't do this with you." He started shaking his head. "I'm not going to do this with you."
"As if it's none of my business? Like the outcome of all this doesn't affect me?"
"No, as in you aren't entitled to this airtime." As she gasped, the anger flushed from his face and he stared at her with no emotion at all. "You're the reason I lost the last round. Not Devina. It was you. I was so goddamn worried about you that I couldn't concentrate--and the results were disastrous on too many levels. So I'm not going to do this with you. I can't. I just . . . fucking can't."
She recoiled. "It was . . . me you were distracted by?"
"It sure as shit wasn't Devina."
Jim cursed his way over to the table and righted the thing like it weighed no more than a dime. Then he picked up the plate, located the fork over by the ancient refrigerator, and took them both over to the sink.
"I've got work to do," he said on his way out.
And that was that.
At least on his side.
Sissy went after him, catching him by the arm before he hit the stairs in the front hall. She had to throw her anchor out big time to get him to turn around.
"I don't need you to worry about me," she gritted out.
"Okay, I won't."
She hid her wince. "And as for you and Devina, that's your business."
"Damn straight it is."
"But I need you to let me help."
"Oh, hell no. There's no place for you in this--"
"I earned the right to fight by dying in her bathtub. By being in her wall. I earned the right to be in this, Jim."
"No fucking way--"
"I have to fight for the others like me." That shut him up enough for her to get a word in. "There are more like me down there. And they deserve to be free just like me. So you either let me help you win this, or I'll go after her on my own. Your choice."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"The hell I don't."
"She can read the book."
At the sound of Adrian's voice, both of them turned to the front door. It was wide-open, and the other angel was parked on the front steps of the house, facing the sunshine.
Like he knew he'd gotten their attention, Ad twisted around. "If you want to get in and out of Purgatory in one piece, we're going to need her. Unless you want to spend the next twenty years on Google Translate--and we don't have that kind of time."
"What book?" Jim demanded.
"The one that might be able to tell you what you need to know."
"Purgatory?" Sissy interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"
The archangel Colin sat on the river's shore up in Heaven, staring at the rushing water. In his dirty right hand, a crystal dagger rested against his palm, and in his filthy left, a bottle of gin. He'd gotten both from Nigel's tent across the lawn.
The mess upon his flesh had been from his recent endeavors.
He took a deep swig of the Beefeater and squeezed the hilt of the dagger even tighter. In spite of his being an immortal, his body could function in the manner of a human if he assumed the flesh he was in the now.
And that meant he could feel the liquor taking effect, the exhaustion in his bones . . . and the madness in his mind.
Of all the ends he had considered in this war, him sitting alone and Nigel gone had not been among them.
Back at the time of Creation, the archangels had been brought into being as guardians of Heaven and the Manse of Souls. The five of them had been a deliberate balance of qualities, all fingers aboard a single palm, each with a part to play in the balance of function: Byron, who was the soul; Bertie, who was the heart; Colin, the mind; Lassiter, the body.
And Nigel, the rule-abiding leader of them all.
Lassiter had been the wild card, and he had not lasted. Distracted by physical yearnings, he had gotten into epic trouble and been banished, lost to a destiny and destination of which Colin was only vaguely aware. On the other hand, Bertie and Byron had been steadfast and true since the beginning, and now, in this moment of crisis with Nigel gone, they were behind the walls of the Manse, protecting what needed tending to.
Nigel hadn't lasted, either--and the fact that he had quit was a fall from grace Colin struggled with as much as he did all the rest of this tragedy.
Had there been signs he'd missed? he wondered. Some tip-off that Nigel had reached a turn in the journey he could not navigate?
It was impossible not to blame oneself . . . not to feel as if his own hand had been on that dagger when the silver blood of his beloved had been shed.
More than half of him was gone now. The very best part of him was gone.
And the Creator was not p
repared to intervene. God had been the first place Colin had gone in desperation. The second had been Nigel's French marble-topped bombe table with its silver tray of fine liquors upon it.
Colin took another deep draft from the bottle, the razor-sharp taste slicing down the back of his throat and fanning the flames in his gut.
His eyes went to the vicious tip of the dagger. Heaven's ambient light entered the clear blade and refracted off its facets in a rainbow of glorious flashes.
He had wiped the silver blood off in Nigel's tent. God knew, in that silk-strewn palace of an abode, there had been plenty of stray cloth from which to choose.
And then he had stripped a bolt of crepe de Chine from the wall and wrapped the body up.
Fortifying himself with another pull from the neck of the bottle, he twisted 'round and felt tears come to his eyes.
The funeral pyre was a meter and a half off the ground and constructed of an ancient oak that Colin had chopped down in the woods. A ragged trail had developed between where the tree had been felled and where he'd done the building, the path gouged by his dragging the massive limbs and trunk over. To cleave the wood, he'd used the dagger in his hand and the strength of his upper body, and the nails had been harvested from a shed behind the Manse of Souls, old-fashioned, square-shanked strips of metal that he'd banged into place with a rock.
The pyre was not a work of art, especially not when compared to the fine antiques that Nigel had surrounded himself with. Indeed, the archangel had had a preference for things of beauty, a reason, he had often said, for his attraction to Colin.
This was no fitting end for the archangel. No fitting end a'tall.
Colin sat for a time, drinking and thinking. And then he roused himself and went over to his lover. The silk he'd chosen to wrap Nigel up in was a soft French blue--and he'd picked it mostly because he'd hoped the silvery stains from the blood wouldn't show overmuch.
He'd covered Nigel's face. He simply couldn't look at it, because the features and the coloring were too close to health for comfort. It was too tempting to think that if he just waited long enough, and said some combination of words, his other half would sit up and reply to him.
Folly. And that ridiculous impotent optimism had to be put aside.
First, the disposition of the remains. And then he had work to do.
Colin reached over and tucked a fold of the silk in tighter under the body. The concept of prayer, for an angel, was foreign. For one thing, he could make entreaties directly to the Maker, so sending up wishes or hopes upon the air was not necessary. For another, prayer was typically rooted in helplessness or despair, and historically neither was something he'd ever felt.
Tipping the bottle over the body, he poured the clear liquor Nigel had favored out in a steady stream from head to toe; then he took a long drink, put up his palm, and summoned heat. As he cast the energy forth, the super-charged molecules combusted in a burst of white flame, the silver blood and the gin creating an ignition platform.
He stepped back. Kept drinking.
Smoke the color of snow wafted up as Nigel was cremated, and as Colin watched, he thought that the billowing white waves were a kind of prayer--or at least the closest he would ever get to one.
He ended up on the ground, sitting with his legs crossed. The consumption was taking longer than he had thought, and he would not leave until there was nothing left but ashes.
And then he was going to settle this score with Jim Heron.
With the very dagger Nigel had used upon himself.
Chapter
Five
"We need her. What do you want from me?"
As Adrian waited for Jim to respond, he shifted his weight on his feet, trying to find some distribution of tonnage where his bad leg didn't feel like it was in a meat grinder. No luck.
Jim glared up at the stairs Sissy had just put to use. "I don't want her involved in this."
"Yeah. You've said that." Adrian glanced around at the total absence of chairs and sofas in the front foyer. "No offense, but I gotta take a load off."
Limping across the shallow space, he headed for the parlor over on the left side of the house. When they'd first moved in--how long ago was that? A week? Fifteen years?--the house had been entering the final throes of age-onset molting: Wallpaper had been curling up in the corners of rooms, ceilings had been stained and flaking, old Victorian Orientals had been threadbare and unraveling.
Now? As he entered the sitting room, the velvets on the sofas, the silk of the drapes, the molding around the bookcases and the tops of the varnished tables were all pristine--as if he'd walked into a carefully preserved museum piece of life in the late eighteen hundreds. The same was true of that kitchen they hung out in, the forties-era appliances suddenly working like a collection of brand-new GEs, the Formica gleaming showroom-fresh. Upstairs was the same deal, too, all the lace in the privacy curtains and the girlie bedspreads magically filling their own holes and fixing their frays. Creepy shit--at first he'd assumed it was because someone, not him, was cleaning stuff. But no Dyson job could restitch a rug, repair the hem of a chair, replaster a wall.
There was so much else to worry about, though.
As he breathed in, the lingering stench of smoke sharpened the air, and he looked to the hearth. The charred detritus in and around the burned logs looked like paper, as if someone had tried to burn up an old set of encyclopedias. But nah, it wasn't that. The shit was the remains of all the sheeting that had been draped over the old furniture. Sissy had been the one who dragged everything over to the fireplace and lit the match.
Can you say Phhhhhu-mp!
The smoke damage had charred the walls around the hearth, and that forty-by-twenty-foot rug, even though it was doing the Oriental carpet version of Botox with the anti-aging, had been toasted but good in a semi-circle.
They'd probably lost their security deposit, thanks to her.
And hell, maybe Jim had a point. If Sissy was already lighting things up . . . this recon trip Jim was about to head off into wasn't going to help her mellow out.
"And why did you tell her?" Jim demanded from the doorway. "What the fuck is that all about?"
"Tell her about what?"
"About Devina and me."
Ad turned around. "I didn't--"
"Bullshit."
Ad leaned forward even though his hips let out a holler. "Let me make this perfectly clear--I didn't say one goddamn thing about you and Devina. You think I want to make this situation worse than it already is?"
Jim stalked into the room, going all caged-animal as he paced around. "Then how did she know--"
"Here it is."
As Sissy came in with the book, Jim froze and just stared at her--and in the strained silence, the only thing that came to Ad's mind was . . . why the fuck couldn't the bunch of them, at least once, have something go their way. Because the math was looking really bad at the moment: Jim had clearly not said anything about his demon lover. And Ad might be an asshole, but he knew every word that had come out of his own mouth, and he sure as shit hadn't spilled.
There was only one other source of that knowledge.
"Now, are you going to tell me about Purgatory," Sissy said. "Or are you two going to try to get through these stereo instructions on your own?"
Jim let off a fantastic string of curses that did nothing to share any information, but did suggest that inanimate objects were in imminent danger of getting thrown.
When the savior finally went quiet, Ad found himself wanting to rub his face with a piece of sandpaper. 'Cause that would be less painful than all this bullshit.
Clearly, the pulpit was his and no one else's. "Okay, so we have a boss--"
"God," Sissy cut in.
"No. Although the Creator is a huge part of everything." Well, duh on that one. "And Jim's bright idea is to go and bring him back."
"He's dead? I thought we were all immortal."
Hadn't he come in here to sit down? He picked a sofa and sa
nk into it with all the grace of a knapsack falling off a counter. "Our boss is no longer in existence, how about that."
"So there is a way out of here? Like, this life--or whatever it is."
"No." He thought of Eddie, but decided, given Sissy's too-intense expression, he was going to keep quiet on that one. 'Nuff to worry about already. "Our boss is in Purgatory, and that's just a different kind of immortal hell."
"There has to be a way of doing this without her," Jim growled in the corner.
Sissy leveled a stare at the guy that could have blown a hole through a bank safe. "You wanna ask your girlfriend? Maybe she can help."
Jim's eyes burned across the room. But he didn't say anything else, the whole by-the-short-hairs thing shutting him up.
Ad shook his head. Man, now he knew how Eddie had felt back in the beginning when Jim and he had gone at each other.
"That book"--Ad pointed to the damn thing--"does it have anything in there about Purgatory? That's what we need to know. I can't read it--Jim can't, either. Eddie could, but he forgot his reading glasses in Heaven."
Sissy came over and sat down on the opposite couch, putting the ancient tome on the short-legged coffee table. The book creaked as she opened it, and a subtle glow seemed to be released by the parchment pages, like it was its own reading light.
Okay, that was one book that was never making it onto the New York Times list. There was one and only one copy, and it was not supposed to be in the hands of the angels. Made from the skin of sinners, its "ink" supposedly came from the ejaculate of Devina's minions. Who knew who had composed it. The thing was pure evil, inside and out.
If Devina knew they had the thing? Big fun.
"There's no table of contents," Sissy muttered as she idly flipped through. The writing was so dense, it was as if each page had been brushstroked in black, and it made his head hurt just trying to focus that tight. "And there's no internal organization, either. I've spent hours going through it . . . and I'm not sure how helpful it's going to be about anything."
"Frankly, I'm impressed you can read even a word of it," Ad muttered.
"Well, I took Latin in high school."
"Is that what it is?"
"Or a derivative of it. The good news is, the longer I stick with it, the easier the going gets." Sissy looked over at Jim. "So tell me what you want to do, and I'll see if I can find something on it."
Jim stopped by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared outside. With the morning sun hitting his face, he looked worn-out, instead of refreshed. And that did not bode well for them.
