by Lauren Kate
Daniel stared past them, at the valley below. “Unfinished business.”
“Who is that?” Miles asked, pointing at a woman in a long white dress. She was tall and willowy, with red hair that shimmered in the sunlight. Her dress was cut low, showing off a lot of golden skin. She was singing something soft and lovely, a tease of a song they could barely hear.
“That’s Lilith,” Daniel said slowly. “She’s supposed to be married today.”
Miles took a few steps along a path leading down from the olive tree toward the valley where the temple stood, about a hundred feet below them, as if to get a better look.
“Miles, wait!” Shelby scrambled after him. “This isn’t like when we were in Vegas. This is some freaking … other time or whatever. You can’t just see a hot girl and go strolling in like you own the place.” She turned to look at Daniel for help.
“Stay low,” Daniel instructed them. “Keep under the grass line. And stop when I say stop.”
Carefully, they wound down the path, stopping at last near the bank of the river, downstream from the temple. All the tents in the small community had been strewn with garlands of marigolds and cassis flowers. They were in earshot of the voices of Lilith and the girls who were helping prepare her for the wedding. The girls laughed and joined in Lilith’s song as they braided her long red hair into a wreath around her head.
Shelby turned to Miles. “Doesn’t she look kind of like Lilith from our class at Shoreline?”
“No,” Miles said instantly. He studied the bride for a moment. “Okay, maybe a little bit. Weird.”
“Luce probably never mentioned her,” Shelby explained to Daniel. “She’s a total bitch from Hell.”
“It makes sense,” Daniel said. “Your Lilith might come from the same long line of evil women. They’re all descendants of the original mother Lilith. She was Adam’s first wife.”
“Adam had more than one wife?” Shelby gaped. “What about Eve?”
“Before Eve.”
“Pre-Eve? No way.”
Daniel nodded. “They weren’t married very long when Lilith left him. It broke his heart. He waited for her a long time, but eventually, he met Eve. And Lilith never forgave Adam for getting over her. She spent the rest of her days wandering the earth and cursing the family Adam had with Eve. And her descendants—sometimes they start out all right, but eventually, well, the apple never really falls far from the tree.”
“That’s messed up,” Miles said, despite seeming hypnotized by Lilith’s beauty.
“You’re telling me that Lilith Clout, the girl who set my hair on fire in ninth grade, could be literally a bitch from Hell? That all my voodoo toward her might have been justified?”
“I guess so.” Daniel shrugged.
“I’ve never felt so vindicated.” Shelby laughed. “Why wasn’t this in any of our angelology books at Shoreline?”
“Shhh.” Miles pointed toward the temple. Lilith had left her maidens to complete the decorations for the wedding—strewing yellow and white poppies near the entrance to the temple, weaving ribbons and small chimes made of silver into the low branches of the oak trees—and walked away from them, west, toward the river, toward where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding.
She carried a bouquet of white lilies. When she reached the riverbank, she plucked a few petals and scattered them over the water, still singing softly under her breath. Then she turned to walk north along the bank, toward a huge old carob tree with branches that drooped into the river.
A boy sat beneath it, staring into the current. His long legs were propped up close to his chest, with one arm draped over them. The other arm was skipping stones into the water. His green eyes sparkled against his tan skin. His jet-black hair was a little shaggy, and damp from a recent swim.
“Oh my god, that’s—” Shelby’s cry was cut off by Daniel’s hand clamping over her mouth.
This was the moment he’d been afraid of. “Yes, it’s Cam, but it’s not the Cam you know. This is an earlier Cam. We are thousands of years in the past.”
Miles narrowed his eyes. “But he’s still evil.”
“No,” Daniel said. “He’s not.”
“Huh?” Shelby asked.
“There was a time when we were all part of one family. Cam was my brother. He was not evil, not yet. Maybe not even now.”
Physically, the only difference between this Cam and the one Shelby and Miles knew was that his neck was bare of the sunburst tattoo he’d gotten from Satan when he’d thrown in his lot with Hell. Otherwise, Cam looked exactly as he did now.
Except that this long-ago Cam’s face was stiff with worry. It was an expression Daniel hadn’t seen on Cam in millennia. Probably not since this very moment.
Lilith stopped behind Cam and wrapped her arms around his neck so that her hands rested just over his heart. Without turning or saying a word, Cam reached up and cupped her hands in his. Both of them closed their eyes, content.
“This seems really private,” Shelby said. “Should we be—I mean, I feel weird.”
“Then leave,” Daniel said slowly. “Don’t make a scene on your way out—”
Daniel broke off. Someone was walking toward Cam and Lilith.
The young man was tall and tanned, dressed in a long white robe, and carrying a thick scroll of parchment. His blond head was down, but it was obviously Daniel.
“I’m not leaving.” Miles’s eyes locked on Daniel’s past self.
“Wait, I thought we just sent that guy back into the Announcers,” Shelby said, confused.
“That was a later early version of myself,” Daniel said.
“A later early version of myself, he says!” Shelby snorted. “Exactly how many Daniels are there?”
“He came from two thousand years in the future beyond the moment where we are right now, which is still one thousand years in the true past. That Daniel shouldn’t have been here.”
“We’re three thousand years in the past right now?” Miles asked.
“Yes, and you really shouldn’t be.” Daniel stared Miles down. “But that past version of me”—he pointed at the boy who had stopped next to Cam and Lilith—“belongs here.”
Across the river, Lilith smiled. “How are you, Dani?”
They watched as Dani knelt down next to the couple and unrolled the scroll of parchment. Daniel remembered: It was their marriage license. He’d inscribed the whole thing himself in Aramaic. He was supposed to perform the ceremony. Cam had asked him months before.
Lilith and Cam read over the document. They were good together, Daniel remembered. She wrote songs for him and spent hours picking wildflowers, weaving them into his clothes. He gave all of himself to her. He listened to her dreams and made her laugh when she was sad. Both of them had their volatile sides, and when they argued, the whole tribe heard about it—but neither one of them was yet the dark thing they would become after they split up.
“This part right here,” Lilith said, pointing to a line in the text. “It says we will be married by the river. But you know I want to be married in the temple, Cam.”
Cam and Daniel shared a look. Cam reached for Lilith’s hand. “My love. I’ve already told you I cannot.”
Something hot rose in Lilith’s voice. “You refuse to marry me under the eyes of God? In the only place where my family will approve of our union! Why?”
“Whoa,” Shelby whispered on the other side of the stream. “I see what’s happening. Cam can’t get married in the temple … he can’t even set foot in the temple, because—”
Miles began to whisper, too: “If a fallen angel enters the sanctuary of God—”
“The whole thing bursts into flames,” Shelby finished.
The Nephilim were right, of course, but Daniel was surprised by his own frustration. Cam loved Lilith, and Lilith loved Cam. They had a chance to make their love work, and as far as Daniel was concerned, to Hell with everything else. Why was Lilith so insistent on being married in the temple? Why couldn’t
Cam give her a good explanation for his refusal?
“I won’t set foot in there.” Cam pointed at the temple.
Lilith was close to tears. “Then you don’t love me.”
“I love you more than I ever thought possible, but it doesn’t change a thing.”
Lilith’s thin body seemed to swell with rage. Could she sense that there was more to Cam’s refusal than merely some wish to deny her? Daniel didn’t think so. She clenched her fists and let out a long, shrill scream.
It seemed to shake the earth. Lilith grabbed Cam’s wrists and pinned him against the tree. He didn’t even struggle.
“My grandmother never liked you.” Her arms trembled as she held him down. “She always said the most terrible things, and I always defended you. Now I see it. In your eyes and your soul.” Her eyes bored into him. “Say it.”
“Say what?” Cam asked, horrified.
“You’re a bad man. You’re a—I know what you are.”
It was clear that Lilith didn’t know. She was grasping at the rumors that flew around the community—that he was evil, a wizard, a member of the occult. All she wanted was to hear the truth from Cam.
Daniel knew that Cam could tell Lilith, but he wouldn’t. He was afraid to.
“I am none of the bad things anyone says I am, Lilith,” Cam said.
It was the truth and Daniel knew it, but it sounded so much like a lie. Cam was on the brink of the worst decision he would ever make. This was it: the moment that broke Cam’s heart so that it rotted into something black.
“Lilith,” Dani pleaded with her, pulling her hands away from Cam’s throat. “He is not—”
“Dani,” Cam warned. “Nothing you can say will fix this.”
“That’s right. It’s broken.” Lilith let go, and Cam fell backward into the dirt. She picked up their marriage contract and flung it into the river. It spun slowly in the current and sank. “I hope I live a thousand years and have a thousand daughters so there will always be a woman who can curse your name.” She spat in his face, then turned and ran back to the temple, her white dress flowing behind her like a sail.
Cam’s face turned as white as Lilith’s wedding robe. He reached for Dani’s hand to help himself up. “Do you have a starshot, Dani?”
“No.” Dani’s voice shook. “Don’t talk like that. You’ll get her back, or else—”
“I was naïve to think I could have gotten away with loving a mortal woman.”
“If you’d only told her,” Dani said.
“Told her? What happened to me—to all of us? The Fall and everything since?” Cam leaned closer to Dani. “Maybe she’s right about me. You heard her: The whole village thinks I am a demon. Even if they won’t use the word.”
“They know nothing.”
Cam turned away. “All this time I’ve been trying to deny it, but love is impossible, Dani.”
“It is not.”
“It is. For souls like ours. You’ll see. You may hold out longer than I could, but you’ll see. Both of us will eventually have to choose.”
“No.”
“So quick to protest, brother.” Cam squeezed Dani’s shoulder. “It makes me wonder about you. Don’t you ever think about it … crossing over?”
Dani shrugged away. “I think about her and only her. I count the seconds until she’ll be with me again. I choose her, as she chooses me.”
“How lonely.”
“It’s not lonely,” Dani barked. “It’s love. The love you want for yourself, too—”
“I meant: I’m lonely. And far less noble than you are. Any day. I fear a change is coming on.”
“No.” Now Dani moved toward Cam. “You wouldn’t.”
Cam reared away and spat. “Not all of us are lucky enough to be bound to our lover by a curse.”
Daniel remembered this empty insult: It had made him furious. But still, he shouldn’t have said what came next:
“Go, then. You won’t be missed.”
He regretted it instantly, but it was too late.
Cam rolled back his shoulders and threw out his arms. When his wings bloomed at his sides, they sent a burst of hot wind rippling across the grass where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding. The three of them peered up. His wings were massive and glowing and—
“Wait a minute,” Shelby whispered. “They’re not gold!”
Miles blinked. “How can they not be gold?”
Of course the Nephilim would be confused. The division of wing color was as clear as night and day: gold for demons, silver or white for everyone else. And the Cam they knew was a demon. Daniel was in no mood to explain to Shelby why Cam’s wings were pure, bright white, as radiant as diamonds, glistening like sun-kissed snow.
This long-ago Cam had not crossed over yet. He was merely on the brink.
That day Lilith lost Cam as a lover, and Daniel lost him as a brother. From this day on, they would be enemies. Could Daniel have stopped him? What if he hadn’t spun away from Cam and unfurled his own wings like a shield—the way he watched Dani do now?
He should have. He burned to burst forth from the bushes and stop Cam now. How much could be different!
Cam’s and Dani’s wings did not yet have the tortured magnetic pull toward each other. All that repelled them in this moment was a stubborn difference of opinion, a philosophical sibling rivalry.
Both angels rose from the ground at the same time, each facing a different direction. So when Dani soared east across the sky and Cam soared west, the three Anachronisms hiding in the grass were the only ones to see the gleam of gold bite into Cam’s wings. Like a sparkling lightning bolt.
SEVENTEEN
WRITTEN IN BONE
YIN, CHINA • QING MING
(APPROXIMATELY APRIL 4, 1046 BCE)
At the far end of the Announcer’s tunnel was an engulfing brightness. It kissed her skin like a summer morning at her parents’ house in Georgia.
Luce plunged toward it.
Unbridled glory. That was what Bill had called the burning light of Daniel’s true soul. Merely looking upon Daniel’s pure angelic self had made an entire community of people at the Mayan sacrifice spontaneously combust—including Ix Cuat, Luce’s past self.
But there had been a moment.
A moment of pure wonder just before she died, when Luce had felt closer to Daniel than she ever had before. She didn’t care what Bill said: She recognized the glow of Daniel’s soul. She had to see it again. Maybe there was some way she could live through it. She had to at least try.
She burst out of the Announcer into the cold emptiness of a colossal bedroom.
The chamber was at least ten times bigger than any room Luce had ever seen, and everything about it was lavish. The floors were crafted of smoothest marble and covered by enormous rugs made of whole animal skins, one of which had an intact tiger’s head. Four timber pillars held up a finely thatched gabled ceiling. The walls were made of woven bamboo. Near the open window was an enormous canopy bed with sheets of green-gold silk.
A tiny telescope rested on the window’s ledge. Luce picked it up, parting the gold silk curtain to peer outside. The telescope was heavy and cold when she held it up to her eye.
She was in the center of a great walled city, looking down from a second story. A maze of stone roadways connected crammed, ancient-looking wattle-and-daub structures. The air was warm and smelled softly of cherry blossoms. A pair of orioles crossed the blue sky.
Luce turned to Bill. “Where are we?” This place seemed as foreign as the world of the Mayans, and just as far back in time.
He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but then—
“Shhh,” Luce whispered.
Sniffling.
Someone was crying soft, hushed tears. Luce turned toward the noise. There, through an archway on the far side of the room, she heard the sound again.
Luce moved toward the archway, sliding along the stone floor in her bare feet. The sobbing echoed, beckoning her. A narrow walkway opened u
p into another cavernous chamber. This one was windowless, with low ceilings, dimly lit by the glow of a dozen small bronze lamps.
She could make out a large stone basin, and a small lacquered table stocked with black pottery vials of aromatic oils that gave the whole room a warm and spicy smell. A gigantic carved jade wardrobe stood in the corner of the room. Thin green dragons etched into its face sneered at Luce, as if they knew everything she didn’t.
And in the center of the chamber, a dead man lay sprawled on the floor.
Before Luce could see anything more, she was blinded by a bright light moving toward her. It was the same glow she’d sensed from the other side of the Announcer.
“What is that light?” she asked Bill.
“That … er, you see that?” Bill sounded surprised. “That’s your soul. Yet another way for you to recognize your past lives when they appear physically different from you.” He paused. “You’ve never noticed it before?”
“This is the first time, I think.”
“Huh,” Bill said. “That’s a good sign. You’re making progress.”
Luce felt heavy and exhausted all of a sudden. “I thought it was going to be Daniel.”
Bill cleared his throat like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. The glow burned brightly for another heartbeat, then snapped out so suddenly she couldn’t see for a moment, until her eyes adjusted.
“What are you doing here?” a voice asked roughly.
Where the light had been, in the center of the room, was a thin, pretty Chinese girl about seventeen—too young and too elegant to be standing over a dead man’s body.
Dark hair hung to her waist, contrasting with her floor-length white silk robe. Dainty as she was, she seemed the kind of girl who didn’t shy away from a fight.
“So, that’s you,” Bill’s voice said in Luce’s ear. “Your name is Lu Xin and you lived outside the capital city of Yin. We’re at the close of the Shang dynasty, something like a thousand BCE, in case you want to make a note for your scrapbook.”
Luce probably seemed crazy to Lu Xin, barging in here wearing a singed animal hide and a necklace made out of bone, her hair a wild and tangled snarl. How long had it been since she’d looked in a mirror? Had a bath? Plus, she was talking to an invisible gargoyle.
