At last she stood over him, swaying as she stared down at the angel slowly being swallowed by the remains of the army he had destroyed. He lay unmoving on his side, one knee drawn up, a hand outstretched toward the sword he’d released. His powerful shoulders slumped, limp and lifeless, and his wings sagged along the ground, their black feathers riffling in the wind.
Alex lifted her gaze to the sword beyond him. To the light that poured into it from above. The power.
A tremble vibrated through the ground beneath her feet. The air surrounding her crackled with pent-up electricity.
Too much power.
Ice crept through her veins. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Whatever Michael had started, it hadn’t stopped. And it needed to. Dear Heaven, it needed to.
Alex looked to the unmoving Archangel, willing him to wake, knowing he wouldn’t. She stared again at the sword. Could she? Did she dare?
Just how immortal was she?
She closed her eyes against the brilliance that grew more blinding by the second. Against the choice that faced her. So much had already been sacrificed for this world, and now—now, if she didn’t survive, Michael would have no one to hold him as he had held her. He would be forever alone in the darkness.
Choices.
Alex turned and knelt at the Archangel’s side. Her tears dropped onto his face, leaving dark stains in the dust that covered him. She tugged a corner of her t-shirt free and, with shaking fingers, wiped the dirt from his eyelids, his nose, his mouth. Then she leaned down until her lips were beside his ear.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, Mika’el of the Archangels,” she said, “or if my words will make a difference, but know that you did the right thing. You made the right choice. The only choice. And I—”
Her voice broke, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes. She cupped Michael’s face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I can’t be here for you like you were for me. I’m sorry I didn’t say thank you. I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough or strong enough or brave enough to do more for you, Michael. I’m so, so sorry.”
Then, before she could reconsider, she shoved to her feet, turned, and threw herself into the inferno that had swallowed the sword.
*
Mika’el screamed until he was hoarse and could scream no more. Until his throat bled, and he choked on the liquid warmth of his own blood. Until his ears shrieked in protest at the sound of his voice.
And then he screamed some more.
But no one heard.
Because no one was there.
No one to hear him, no one to witness the agony of his splintered, shattered soul. No one to break his fall.
Thou shalt not interfere.
It was the Cardinal Rule, the one law that could not be broken. Could never be broken, not without a price.
Those in Hell had paid one price; Mika’el would pay another. They had fallen only so far before coming to terms with their penance. But he—he who had been Heaven’s greatest warrior and protector of all life, he who had become destroyer—he would never come to terms with what he had done. Could never come to terms with it.
Eighty thousand lives.
Eighty thousand children.
He screamed again.
Continued to fall.
Would never stop falling.
That was his price.
Then, in the breath he drew between screams, came a voice.
“…the only choice,” it whispered.
Mika’el’s breath hitched. His descent slowed for an instant, then resumed.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said.
He turned, frantic, peering through the dark, stretching out his hands, trying to catch hold of something—anything—to stop his fall. He knew that voice. Knew it, cared about it, clung to it.
“…wasn’t good enough or strong enough or brave enough,” it whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Realization surged through him, and his fall ended with an abruptness that rattled his teeth, jarred his spine, shocked through his entire being. He hung, suspended in the dark, grappling with the impossibility.
Alex.
But she was supposed to be dead. Safe from Seth. Mika’el had made sure it would happen, counted on it as his only salvation in the face of what he would become. If she was here, if she was holding him…
New agony ripped through him.
If she was holding him, she was still alive. Seth would come for her. And Mika’el would have failed at the only thing that might have saved a tiny part of his soul.
Alex, what have you done?
Her presence withdrew.
CHAPTER 63
THE OUTPOURING OF HEAVEN’S power into the human realm stopped abruptly. Emmanuelle reacted a scant microsecond before Seth did, but it was enough. Enough to have her on her feet before he was, enough that she could strike the first blow. And the second. And the third.
It was not, however, enough to stop him.
Blue heat swallowed her, setting fire to her form, her mind, her consciousness. She shrieked, beating at the flames, reeling from the onslaught. Panic set in, and for an instant, she lost her bearings. Her resolve faltered.
It’s not your fight, a voice inside her whispered. It was never your fight. Never your war. You walked away once…
No. Emmanuelle snuffed out the last flame licking at the edges of her consciousness. No. She might have walked away once, but not now. Not this time. And sure as Heaven not from this fight, because Mika’el had had given his soul for her today, and in return, she had made him a promise she intended to keep.
“I’ll make you proud. I may not be what Heaven or Earth is used to, but I’ll be the best damned ruler they’ve ever seen. And I’ll defeat my brother. You have my word.”
She lifted herself from the pool of blue fire she’d sunk into on the street. She’d lost her mother, she’d lost friends, and she’d lost her soulmate. She had no intention of losing the war.
And she was done fighting by Seth’s rules.
“Enough!” she roared. In a dozen strides, she stood before her brother, hands wrapped around his throat, face so close to his that she could feel his breath. “Damn it to Hell and back, Seth, enough! Don’t you understand? You can’t win. Not against me.”
Seth drove his arms up between hers, breaking her grip. He wheeled out of reach, his face as dark with rage as his eyes.
“Then we will destroy one another,” he spat, “along with your precious mortal realm, because you can’t win against me, either.”
“You forget I’m the daughter of the One Creator.”
“And you forget I’m her son,” Seth snarled. “Same mother, same father, equal in every respect.”
“You’re wrong.” Emmanuelle held a hand over her head, arm straight, palm open to the skies above. She stretched her thoughts toward Heaven. Followed with her heart. Her mind. Her entire being.
Then she chose.
And in choosing, she tapped into the awesome power that was Creation itself. The power Mika’el had used to destroy the Nephilim, that had very nearly destroyed the entire Earth instead. It flooded her with light. Dark. Heat. Cold. Compassion. Indifference. Love. Hatred. Pure bliss. Absolute despair.
It was everything.
It was nothing.
It was All.
She was All.
As if in slow motion, she watched understanding dawn across Seth’s face. Rejection followed. He lifted both hands to gather the blue, then pushed it at her, a massive, towering inferno of everything he could muster.
It enveloped Emmanuelle with a fury fired by Seth’s own wrath, but this time it didn’t touch her. It didn’t come near her. Instead, it raged at a distance, held at bay by something greater than Seth would ever be. Could ever be. And when at last it fizzled out, when it was just Seth and Emmanuelle again, she went to him and held him as he wept with a pain he’d held inside him for too long.
Wept with him for all they had lost and would never find again.
*
The climb back from where he’d fallen took everything Mika’el possessed. All his will, all his strength, all his determination. And it took forever.
By the time he opened his eyes, the world around him had stilled. Utterly. Not so much as a puff of wind stirred the air. No sound whispered across the city whose ruin he had completed. Nothing moved.
Nothing.
He bolted upright, wiping grit from his eyes. As if drawn by a magnet, his gaze settled on the smoldering pile of rags no more than a dozen feet away. And then on the sword clutched in charred, skeletal fingers.
The sword of an Archangel.
His sword.
Slowly, he pushed up from the ground and walked over. A distant part of him noted that he left no footprints. The ground was bare again, with no trace of the eighty thousand children he had turned to dust.
“You did the right thing,” Alex’s voice whispered. “You made the right choice. The only choice.”
He stopped at her side. A haze covered the sightless, lake-blue eyes. White bone gleamed through the charred flesh of face and arms. Her entire ribcage had been laid bare—along with the shriveled, desiccated organs beneath. Mika’el’s breath caught, and for a moment, everything in him quailed from what he might find. But he made himself crouch beside the woman who had stopped his fall, the woman who had saved the world. He blew out a gentle puff of air, just enough to clear the ash covering her chest.
And there, in its cage of bone, nestled between blackened lungs, he saw it. A sphere of phosphorescence. Intact.
Michael inhaled a shaking breath, then lowered himself to the ground, took the blackened fingers from his sword, cradled them in his hand, and settled in to wait.
Alex’s heart trembled. Quivered. Began to beat.
CHAPTER 64
ALEX SURFACED SLOWLY, IN stages of awareness. Sensation came first: the cold, hard ground beneath her; a rock digging into her spine; warm fingers curled around her hand. Smell was next, bringing with it the acrid scent of burnt flesh. Then taste, closely resembling smell and making her stomach heave. Sound followed, with the thud of a heartbeat beneath her ear.
Her eyelids shot open at the last awareness, and she added sight to her list of accomplishments, staring into a shadowed emerald gaze.
“You’re back,” Michael said.
Alex frowned. “Was I gone?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Where are we?” She tried to look past him, but couldn’t see past the black wings or bare chest. She blinked. Bare…?
“Still in Pripyat,” Michael answered. “Though there’s not much of Pripyat left.”
She tried to focus again on his face. “Your sword…it was…I thought something was wrong. I tried to pull it out of the ground.”
The hand around hers gripped a little tighter. “Something was very wrong. And you did pull it out. Thank you.”
Nope. It was no use.
“Um…why are you half-naked?” she asked.
“You needed my shirt.”
Alex looked down at herself. A whisper of memory flitted across the edge of her mind. She flinched from the pain it contained. Smelled again the odor of charred flesh. Wondered how much not much of Pripyat Michael had meant. She closed her eyes on a wave of nausea.
Well, at least her question about how immortal she was had been answered. Which brought up a whole other issue.
“Is it over? The war? Did Emmanuelle—” She broke off, unable to finish.
“The fighting is over,” Michael agreed. “But damage is…extensive.”
Alex went quiet. Then, deciding this was a conversation best held upright, she pulled back from the heartbeat beneath her cheek. Michael slid an arm beneath her shoulders and eased her into a sitting position. His free hand swept back the hair from her face.
“Okay?” he asked.
Alex nodded. A wave of vertigo swept over her. She bit her lip.
“It will ease soon,” said Michael. He released his hold on her and shifted back to rest his arms across his knees.
Alex suppressed a shiver at the loss of his warmth. She wrapped her arms around her own knees, hugging them close. “How bad is it?” she asked. “The damage.”
Michael’s mouth pulled tight, and pain flashed across his eyes. “Tens of millions,” he said quietly. “Perhaps hundreds.”
Shock flooded her. She turned her head away to stare at the barren, burnt landscape before her, so empty that the setting sun cast no shadows but her own and Michael’s. She wanted to cry, but no tears came. Just…disbelief. Hundreds of millions of people…dead? How did one even begin to wrap one’s head around numbers like that? How was such a thing even possible?
She swallowed, and pain lanced through her throat.
“We won’t know for certain until we go through the cities,” Michael continued, his voice matter-of-fact. “But it’s enough that the world will be profoundly changed.”
“Yes,” she said, her own voice carrying so little inflection, they might as well have been discussing the weather. “I suppose it will.”
Cloudy today with a chance of angels. Watch out for dead bodies.
She shuddered, and then something Michael had said snagged her attention. “You said we. Does that mean you’re staying?”
It was his turn to look away.
“Some of the angels are, just for a week or two, to help with the rebuilding. And with the dead. Infrastructure has been damaged beyond the capacity to cope with the numbers.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “What happened to not interfering?”
Michael almost smiled. “You—and the rest of Heaven, I suspect—will find that Emmanuelle isn’t her mother. She won’t rescue mortals from themselves, but she believes in cleaning up her own mess. And perhaps setting humanity straight on a few key points.”
“You’ve talked with her…recently.”
“I called on her to help heal you.”
“And she answered? Even though you—” Alex broke off. Hell. That was not how she’d planned to bring up this particular topic. She looked sideways at the Archangel. He’d gone as still as marble, his shoulders gleaming golden in the rays of the setting sun, his wings blacker than the approaching night.
“Michael—” she began.
He cut her off. “Seth won’t be bothering you anymore,” he said. He gazed into the distance. “What I said about him giving up parts of his soul to heal you—I was right about that, but there was more. The pieces were still connected to him. He was quite literally incomplete without you, and the pain drove him mad. Emmanuelle severed the connection, and they’ve agreed he will remain in Hell. With Samael gone, things should be less volatile there, and Emmanuelle is hoping they can maintain some kind of peace between the realms. Balance.”
Alex had instinctively caught her breath at the sound of Seth’s name. She still held it, not quite knowing what to do with it. Or with Michael’s news. She should be angry, she thought. No, she should be furious. Beyond furious. She had every right to be.
Seth had done so much. Was responsible for so much more. Aramael. Jen. Nina. Hugh and Elizabeth. Michael’s fall. Her own immortality.
Hundreds of millions of lives.
And now he would live peacefully in Hell.
She should be angry, but she wasn’t. She was just…she didn’t know what she was. Didn’t really care.
“So that’s it, then,” she said. “We rebuild and everyone lives happily ever after?”
A shadow crossed Michael’s face. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
She stared down the path into her future. Into an eternity of living with the losses she’d already suffered. Those still to come. She gave a tremulous sigh.
“No, I don’t suppose I’d put it like that, either.”
Michael fell silent. Then he cleared his throat. “She can take it away, you know.”
“Who can take what?�
�
He nodded toward the setting sun, and for the first time, Alex noticed a figure walking toward them, silhouetted by the last rays of the day. Michael stood up from the ground and held out his hand. Alex hesitated, then reached to accept it. Warm, strong fingers closed around hers, and he pulled her to her feet.
“Emmanuelle,” Michael said. “She can take away the immortality Seth gave you.”
He turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 65
EMMANUELLE STOPPED A FEW feet from Alex, hands shoved into the pockets of her leather jacket. Her gaze traveled Alex’s length, resting a moment on the inadequate hem of Michael’s shirt, then flicking to where Michael himself stood framed against the emptiness.
Alex’s gaze followed, and her hand crept up to massage the tight spot that had taken root in her chest following his bombshell.
“So,” said Heaven’s new ruler.
Alex turned to face her.
“The world owes you a great debt, Alexandra Jarvis.” Pressing her lips together, Emmanuelle shook her head. “I owe you. If you hadn’t come after Mika’el…”
A breeze stirred between them, lifting Michael’s shirt against Alex’s legs, and whirling the dust at their feet into an eddy. Alex shivered, and Emmanuelle stripped off her leather jacket and handed it across the space separating them.
“Why did you?” asked the One’s daughter as Alex slid her arms into leather warmed by a god’s heat. “You knew there was a chance I wouldn’t defeat Seth. A chance he would come after you again. You would have had to live an eternity with him—in Hell. And yet you took that risk to be here with Mika’el. Why?”
“I owed him,” Alex said simply. She crossed her arms over the jacket, holding it shut. It smelled like roses.
“Your life?”
“My sanity. Quite possibly my soul.”
Emmanuelle regarded her in silence, iridescent eyes inscrutable. She tipped her head toward Michael. “He told you I can undo what Seth did to you? Take away the immortality?”
Sins of the Warrior Page 31
