by Lauren Kate
“You mean a captive audience,” she let slip out.
“Good one.” Mr. Cole elbowed her side. “I’m kidding,” he said, laughing heartily. “I wouldn’t subject you to that.” The way he turned to her when he laughed reminded her of the way her dad always did when they were watching a funny movie, and it made her feel a little better.
The wheels were rolling quickly now and the “runway” before them looked short. They would need to lift off pretty soon or they’d end up flying straight into the lake.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he shouted over the roar of the engine. “Don’t worry, I do this all the time!”
And just before the muddy bank below ended, he pulled hard on the lever between them, and the nose of the plane tilted up toward the sky. The horizon dropped out of view for a moment and Luce’s stomach lurched along with it. But a moment later, the plane’s motion settled down, and the view before them flattened out to just trees and a clear, starlit sky. Below them was the twinkling lake. Every second, it grew more distant. They had taken off to the west, but the plane was making a circle, and soon Luce’s window was filled with the forest she and Daniel had just flown through. She gazed into it, pressing her face to the window to look for him, and before the plane straightened out again, she thought she saw the smallest flash of violet. She gripped the locket around her neck and brought it to her lips.
Now the rest of campus was beneath them, and the foggy cemetery just beyond it. The place where Penn would soon be buried. The higher they went, the more Luce could see of the school where her biggest secret had come out—though so differently than she ever could have imagined it would.
“They really did a number on that place,” Mr. Cole said, shaking his head.
Luce had no idea how much he knew about the events that had taken place last night. He seemed so normal, and yet he was taking all of this in stride.
“Where are we going?”
“A little island off the coast,” he said, pointing out in the distance toward the sea, where the horizon faded into black. “It’s not too far.”
“Mr. Cole,” she said, “you’ve met my parents.”
“Nice people.”
“Will I be able to … I’d like to speak with them.”
“Of course. We’ll figure something out.”
“They could never believe any of this.”
“Can you?” he asked, giving her a wry smile as the plane rose higher, leveling itself in the air.
That was the thing. She had to believe it, all of it—from the first dark flicker of the shadows, to the moment when Daniel’s lips found hers, to Penn lying dead on the marble altar of the chapel. It all had to be real.
How else could she hold out until she saw Daniel again? She gripped the locket around her neck, which held a lifetime of memories. Her memories, Daniel had reminded her, hers to unlock.
What they held, she didn’t know, any more than she knew where Mr. Cole was taking her. But she’d felt like a part of something in the chapel this morning, standing next to Arriane and Gabbe and Daniel. Not lost and afraid and complacent … but like she might matter, not just to Daniel—but to all of them.
She looked through the windshield. They would have passed the salt marshes by now, and the road she’d driven on to get to that awful bar to meet Cam, and the long stretch of sandy beach where she’d first kissed Daniel. They were out over the open sea, which—somewhere out there—held Luce’s next destination.
No one had come right out and told her that there were more battles to be fought, but Luce felt the truth inside her, that they were at the start of something long and significant and hard.
Together.
And whether the battles were gruesome or redemptive or both, Luce didn’t want to be a pawn any longer. A strange feeling was working its way through her body—one steeped in all her past lives, all the love she’d felt for Daniel that had been extinguished too many times before.
It made Luce want to stand up next to him and fight. Fight to stay alive long enough to live out her life next to him. Fight for the only thing she knew that was good enough, noble enough, powerful enough to be worth risking everything.
Love.
EPILOGUE
TWO GREAT LIGHTS
All night long he watched her sleeping fitfully on the narrow canvas cot. A single army-green lantern hanging from one of the low wooden beams in the log cabin illuminated her frame. Its soft glow highlighted her glossy black hair splayed out on the pillow, her cheeks smooth and rosy from her bath.
Every time the sea roared up against the desolate beach outside, she tossed onto one side. Her tank top hugged her body so that when the thin blanket bunched up around her, he could just make out that tiny dimple marking her soft left shoulder. He had kissed it so many times before.
By turns she sighed in her sleep, then breathed evenly, then moaned from someplace deep inside a dream. But whether it was in pleasure or pain, he couldn’t tell. Twice, she called out his name.
Daniel wanted to float down to her. To leave his perch atop the sandy old boxes of ammunition high in the raftered loft of the beachfront cabin. But she could not know he was there. She could not know he was anywhere nearby. Or what the next few days would bring for her.
Behind him, in the salt-stained storm window, he glimpsed a passing shadow from the corner of his eye. Then the faintest tapping on the glass pane. Wresting his eyes from her body, he moved toward the window, released the lock. A torrent of rain poured down outside, reuniting with the sea. A black cloud hid the moon and shone no light on the face of his visitor.
“May I come in?”
Cam was late.
Though Cam possessed the power to have simply appeared out of thin air at Daniel’s side, Daniel pushed open the window further to allow him to climb through. So much was pomp and circumstance these days. It was important for them both to be clear that Daniel had welcomed Cam in.
Cam’s face was still cast in shadow, but he showed no sign of having traveled thousands of miles in the rain. His dark hair and his skin were dry. His auric wings, compact and solid now, were the only part of him that gleamed. As if they were made of twenty-four-karat gold. Though he tucked them neatly behind him, when he sat down next to Daniel on a splintering wooden box, Cam’s wings gravitated toward Daniel’s iridescent silver ones. It was the natural state of things, an inexplicable reliance. Daniel couldn’t inch away without giving up his unobstructed view of Luce.
“She is so lovely when she sleeps,” Cam said softly.
“Is that why you wanted her to sleep for all eternity?”
“Me? Never. And I would have killed Sophia for what she attempted—not let her run free into the night as you did.” Cam leaned forward, resting his elbows on the railing of the loft. Down below, Luce tightened the covers around her neck. “I just want her. You know why.”
“Then I pity you. You will end up disappointed.”
Cam held Daniel’s eyes and rubbed his jaw, chuckling cruelly under his breath. “Oh, Daniel, your shortsightedness surprises me. You don’t have her yet.” He stole another long glance at Luce. “She may think you do. But we both know how very little she understands.”
Daniel’s wings pulled taut against his shoulder blades, but the tips were reaching forward. Closer to Cam’s. He couldn’t stop it.
“The truce lasts eighteen days,” Cam said. “Though I have a feeling we may need each other before then.”
Then he stood, shoving the box back with his feet. The scraping along the ceiling over her head made Luce’s eyes flicker, but both angels ducked back among the shadows before her gaze could settle anywhere.
They faced each other, each still weary from the battle, each knowing it was a mere taste of what was to come.
Slowly, Cam extended his pale right hand.
Daniel extended his.
And while Luce dreamed below of the most glorious wings unfurling—the likes of which she’d never seen before—two angels in t
he rafters shook hands.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Tinderbox Books, LLC and Lauren Kate
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
WWW.RANDOMHOUSE.COM/TEENS
WWW.FALLENBOOKS.COM
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89717-7
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
FOR ELIZABETH, IRDY, ANNE, AND VIC.
I HAVE BEEN SO LUCKY TO HAVE YOU.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, inexpressible thanks to my readers for all the effusive and generous support. Because of you, I may just have to keep writing forever.
To Wendy Loggia, whose belief in this series was a great gift, and who knows just how to make it more like what it always wanted to be. To Beverly Horowitz for the sharpest pep talk I’ve ever received, and the dessert you stuffed into my purse. To Krista Vitola, whose good-news emails have made so many of my days. To Angela Carlino and the design team, for the jacket that could launch a thousand ships. To my traveling partner Noreen Marchisi, Roshan Nozari, and the rest of the tremendous marketing team at Random House. You are magicians. To Michael Stearns and Ted Malawer, tireless geniuses. Your wit and encouragement make you almost too much fun to work with.
To my friends, who keep me sane and inspired. To my family in Texas, Arkansas, Baltimore, and Florida for so much exuberance and love. And to Jason, for every single day.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue - Neutral Waters
Chapter 1 - Eighteen Days
Chapter 2 - Seventeen Days
Chapter 3 - Sixteen Days
Chapter 4 - Fifteen Days
Chapter 5 - Fourteen Days
Chapter 6 - Thirteen Days
Chapter 7 - Twelve Days
Chapter 8 - Eleven Days
Chapter 9 - Ten Days
Chapter 10 - Nine Days
Chapter 11 - Eight Days
Chapter 12 - Seven Days
Chapter 13 - Six Days
Chapter 14 - Five Days
Chapter 15 - Four Days
Chapter 16 - Three Days
Chapter 17 - Two Days
Chapter 18 - Thanksgiving
Chapter 19 - The Truce is Broken
Epilogue - Pandemonium
For, if I imp my wing on thine
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
—GEORGE HERBERT, Easter Wings
PROLOGUE
NEUTRAL WATERS
Daniel stared out at the bay. His eyes were as gray as the thick fog enveloping the Sausalito shoreline, as the choppy water lapping the pebble beach beneath his feet. There was no violet to his eyes now at all; he could feel it. She was too far away.
He braced himself against the biting gale off the water. But even as he tugged his thick black pea coat closer, he knew it was no use. Hunting always left him cold.
Only one thing could warm him today, and she was out of reach. He missed the way the crown of her head made the perfect resting spot for his lips. He imagined filling the circle of his arms with her body, leaning down to kiss her neck. But it was a good thing Luce couldn’t be here now. What she’d see would horrify her.
Behind him, the bleat of sea lions flopping in heaps along the south shore of Angel Island sounded the way he felt: jaggedly lonely, with no one around to hear.
No one except Cam.
He was crouched in front of Daniel, tying a rusty anchor around the bulging, wet figure at their feet. Even engaged in something so sinister, Cam looked good. His green eyes had a sparkle and his black hair was cut short. It was the truce; it always brought a brighter glow to the angels’ cheeks, a shinier sheen to their hair, an even sharper cut to their flawless muscled bodies. Truce days were to angels what beach vacations were to humans.
So even though Daniel ached inside each time he was forced to end a human life, to anyone else he looked like a guy coming back from a week in Hawaii: relaxed, rested, tan.
Tightening one of his intricate knots, Cam said, “Typical Daniel. Always stepping aside and leaving me to do the dirty work.”
“What are you talking about? I’m the one who finished him.” Daniel looked down at the dead man, at the wiry gray hair matted to his pasty forehead, at his gnarled hands and cheap rubber galoshes, at the dark red tear across his chest. It made Daniel feel cold all over again. If the killing weren’t necessary to ensure Luce’s safety, to save her, Daniel would never raise another weapon. Never fight another fight.
And something about killing this man did not feel quite right. In fact, Daniel had a vague, troubling sense that something was profoundly wrong.
“Finishing them is the fun part.” Cam looped the rope around the man’s chest and tightened it under his arms. “The dirty work is seeing them off to sea.”
Daniel still gripped the bloodied tree branch in his hand. Cam had snickered at the choice, but it never mattered to Daniel what he used. He could kill with anything.
“Hurry up,” he growled, sickened by the obvious pleasure Cam took in human bloodshed. “You’re wasting time. The tide’s going out.”
“And unless we do this my way, high tide tomorrow will wash Slayer here right back ashore. You’re too impulsive, Daniel, always were. Do you ever think more than one step ahead?”
Daniel crossed his arms and looked back out at the white crests of the waves. A tourist catamaran from the San Francisco pier was gliding toward them. Once, the vision of that boat might have brought back a flood of memories. A thousand happy trips he’d taken with Luce across a thousand lifetimes’ seas. But now—now that she could die and not come back, in this lifetime when everything was different and there would be no more reincarnations—Daniel was always too aware of how blank her memory was. This was the last shot. For both of them. For everyone, really. So it was Luce’s memory, not Daniel’s, that mattered, and so many shocking truths would have to be gently brought to the surface if she was going to survive. The thought of what she had to learn made his whole body tense up.
If Cam thought Daniel wasn’t thinking of the next step, he was wrong.
“You know there’s only one reason I’m still here,” Daniel said. “We need to talk about her.”
Cam laughed. “I was.” With a grunt, he hoisted the sopping corpse up over his shoulder. The dead man’s navy suit bunched up around the lines of rope Cam had tied. The heavy anchor rested on his bloody chest.
“This one’s a little gristly, isn’t he?” Cam asked. “I’m almost insulted that the Elders didn’t send a more challenging hit man.”
Then—as if he were an Olympic shot-putter—Cam bent his knees, spun around three times to wind up, and launched the dead man out across the water, a hundred feet clear into the air.
For a few long seconds, the corpse sailed over the bay. Then the weight of the anchor dragged it down … down … down. It splashed grandly into the deep aquamarine water. And instantly sank out of sight.
Cam wiped his hands. “I think I’ve just set a record.”
They were alike in so many ways. But Cam was something worse, a demon, and that made him capable of despicable acts with no remorse. Daniel was crippled by remorse. And right now, he was further crippled by love.
“You take human death too lightly,” Daniel said.
“This guy de
served it,” Cam said. “You really don’t see the sport in all of this?”
That was when Daniel got in his face and spat, “She is not a game to me.”
“And that is exactly why you will lose.”
Daniel grabbed Cam by the collar of his steel-gray trench coat. He considered tossing him into the water the same way he’d just tossed the predator.
A cloud drifted past the sun, its shadow darkening their faces.
“Easy,” Cam said, prying Daniel’s hands away. “You have plenty of enemies, Daniel, but right now I’m not one of them. Remember the truce.”
“Some truce,” Daniel said. “Eighteen days of others trying to kill her.”
“Eighteen days of you and me picking them off,” Cam corrected.
It was angelic tradition for a truce to last eighteen days. In Heaven, eighteen was the luckiest, most divine number: a life-affirming tally of two sevens (the archangels and the cardinal virtues), balanced with the warning of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. In some mortal languages, eighteen had come to mean life itself—though in this case, for Luce, it could just as easily mean death.
Cam was right. As the news of her mortality trickled down the celestial tiers, the ranks of her enemies would double and redouble each day. Miss Sophia and her cohorts, the Twenty-four Elders of Zhsmaelin, were still after Luce. Daniel had glimpsed the Elders in the shadows cast by the Announcers just that morning. He had glimpsed something else, too—another darkness, a deeper cunning, one he hadn’t recognized at first.
A shaft of sunlight punctured the clouds, and something gleamed in the corner of Daniel’s vision. He turned and knelt down to find a single arrow planted in the wet sand. It was slimmer than a normal arrow, a dull silver color, laced with swirling etched designs. It was warm to the touch.
