“You know I want you,” Sam insisted, and brought his own hands up to frame the former angel’s face. Micah’s nostrils flared. Something of the features Sam knew bled back into the animal expression there.
“Sam.” His voice was still a growl, but a low rumble now, a warning buried deep inside it. So dangerous, his lust barely contained.
Sam leaned in to him, capturing his mouth. He’d kissed Micah before, but not like this. He poured himself into Micah’s mouth, kissing him as he kissed Lily. As lovers, not rivals teasing one another.
Micah’s hands grabbed his upper arms, the fingers digging into his muscles but, finding no restraint or fight in the body beneath his, the touch gentled.
“You know I want you,” Sam repeated, pulling at his leather pants. “And she’s watching, isn’t she? Looking through the gap in the door? Come on, Micah, she wants to see it as much as you want to do it.”
He pulled himself out of Micah’s stunned grip and turned around, ready for him, eager to tell the truth. He’d waited a long time to have Micah to himself, and if it was going to be this way, so be it. He’d take everything the angel had, and then give some back as well. And it would be good. Damn good.
But Micah didn’t pounce.
“She isn’t there.” The strength in the voice faded. “Sam. She isn’t there.” It sounded like Micah again, the Micah he knew.
Struggling up from the cell floor, Sam found Micah standing over him, his naked body still glorious, still marked with wings right down his back, but the eyes, narrowed in concern, were blue. Bright, lapis lazuli blue.
“Micah?”
The angel stretched out his hand to help Sam up. “I’m—” He inhaled slowly and let the air out in a long rush. “Yes, it’s me. I think—” He frowned and shook his head, like a punch-drunk boxer. “You brought Lily here?”
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Where is she? Lily?” He reached the door and tugged it open. The room outside was empty. Not even a sign of Charus. “Lily? Come back. It’s okay.”
Micah pushed past him. “She’s gone. There’s no trace of her, only—her scent.” He lurched down the corridor following whatever invisible after-trace of Lily only he could smell.
Sam’s instincts for danger were screaming inside his gut. “Lily?”
No answer. Great. He’d brought her here, told her to trust him and now she was lost. Lost or taken. Shit!
He hurried after Micah, hunting each corner and shadowed nook in a vain hope he’d find her hiding. Nothing. Not a sign. The angel strode on ahead, almost out of sight in the icy shadows.
“Micah?”
Micah stopped abruptly.
“Go back.” The warning swirled through his mind, desperate and stained with fear. “Hide. They’re coming.”
“Too late.” He knew it. There was a scuffle. Not even a scuffle. Micah didn’t fight. He knew it was useless.
And so did Sam.
“Sammael?” Asmodeus’s voice boomed down the hall. “Sammael? Are you intent on spoiling all our fun? I’ve got the angel. Now where’s the girl?”
Where’s the girl? They didn’t know. His heart surged inside him, hope springing up like a geyser. They didn’t have Lily.
So who did?
His newborn hope fell as if turned to stone. So who did?
Walking up to where Asmodeus and his lackeys held Micah wasn’t quite the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it felt like it. They moved like hyenas, seizing his arms and forcing them into manacles, but it was not the first time that had happened. Nor, he feared, the last.
“Where’s the girl?” Asmodeus asked again.
Sam tried to keep his face impassive. “I thought you had her.”
The blow came as expected, swift and brutal, snapping his face from one side to the other. “Don’t be impudent. The Nameless wants her now. Where is she?”
Sam spat out blood, bright and red on the icy steps. It gleamed there, for just a moment before a desperate figure threw itself on the spot, licking it up, sucking at the spot. Sam felt his stomach twist. This was a demon? Was this his own instilled nature as well? It disgusted him. They all did.
He turned to face Asmodeus again. Something glinted in the king’s dark eyes, dangerous and out of control. And something else. Fear?
“I don’t know. She was here. Right outside. Someone took her.”
Asmodeus snarled at him, anger winning out, rage draining the blood from his face. “Took her? Whoever took her will spend eternity wishing he’d kept his dick to himself. Bring them,” he told the other demons. “They can explain it to the Nameless themselves.”
Hauled down the tunnels by hands that tore and scratched, that bruised and bit, Sam tried to reach for Micah’s mind. Perhaps together they could sense her, feel her presence. Perhaps together, even now, they could find her. The angel was carried ahead of him, unconscious or just completely passive, Sam couldn’t tell. But he didn’t fight. Not like Sam. He couldn’t help himself, even when every struggle of his was punished tenfold by his captors.
Finally, beaten and bloodied, he was dumped unceremoniously at the foot of the dais that held the throne. The Nameless sat forward, watching him bleed and cough, watching him try to drag himself off the ground.
“Well, Sammael, it looks like in trying to steal one of my presents, you lost the other. So they tell me, anyway.”
“Tell you…?”
“My Lord—” Asmodeus began angrily but the Nameless stooped him with a wave of his hand.
“Silence,” he said, his voice unnaturally calm and controlled. One might say even blissful. “We have guests.”
Sam twisted around so sharply it hurt. From the far side of the hall a group of beings clad all in white were approaching. Not just clad in white, they glowed with light, the luminescence making the blackness of the walls of Hell even darker. They looked ludicrously handsome in their neatly tailored jackets, pressed trousers, the crispest shirts. All white. All perfect spotless white.
Shit, thought Sam, they look like a fucking boy band. It was a short leap from dressing in that sort of getup to singing in close harmony.
But they weren’t. He knew that. They were angels. A host of angels.
One stepped forward, his golden eyes coming to rest on Micah, and the placid mouth sank into a hard line. Another stepped forward then, also golden-haired, but in a style which fell over his eyes in an oddly human way.
“Lucifer,” said the first angel and bowed his head in greeting.
“Raphael.” The Nameless nodded, a gesture unparalleled in all of Sam’s infernal experience. They were acting like equals. “And Enoch too. I am honoured.” He didn’t sound it.
“We’ve come for our brother,” said Raphael.
The Nameless stilled, and his eyes bored into them. “You took the Nephilim in his place.”
“We have no Nephilim. We have come for Micah.”
Pushing himself out of the chair, the Nameless stalked forward. “Micah is mine. I have marked him.”
“And yet here he is,” Raphael concluded in his musical voice, “uncorrupted by his sojourn here. Our brother, if you please. And the mortal.”
“The woman you were going to allow to die,” Micah interrupted. “What right do you have to come here now and claim us, to swoop in and save the day?”
Raphael’s jaw fell open, his mouth slack for a moment before his grace reasserted itself. “Micah, you forget yourself.”
Micah rose, his muscles rippling beneath his torn and blooded skin. “I think I only begin to remember myself. You’ve forgotten me. You and all my so-called brethren. This isn’t a place of healing, Raphael. You have no business here.”
But the angel stood firm, glaring at his supposed subordinate. “I am one of the seven who stand before the Lord, Micah. He has sent me to untangle this and I will do so. Where is the girl? Where is the Nephilim?”
Sam gagged, as in his mind elements slotted into place. Click, click, click, so easy, so simple, so bl
oody obvious. “Who traded Micah for the Nephilim?” he blurted out into the taut silence.
“The Creator himself,” snarled the Nameless, clenching his hand into a fist around the hilt of his knife.
Raphael shook his head. “Not so. He loves all, but He would never make an exchange like that.”
Micah stared at them, angry, betrayed, but silent. No, not at them all, at one in particular, one who would not meet his gaze. “Enoch,” Micah said at last. “Enoch, did you lie?”
Enoch, the Metatron, let out a sigh which deflated his chest. “What choice did I have, Micah? I tried to make you leave. I tried to stop you. But you wouldn’t. I had no choice but to leave you here and take Hopkins.”
To Sam’s amazement, Micah nodded. “What parent would do less for their child?”
Tears started in Enoch’s eyes. They glistened as they slid down his cheeks. “I never dreamed he would escape. I meant to keep him with me, out of harm at last. But he…the first chance he got, he fled. I trusted him and he fled.”
“Then where is he?” Sam interrupted. “And where has he taken Lily?”
Freezing water burst over Lily’s face, dousing her in a terrifying reality. She flinched back, a scream on her lips, and found her hands tied behind her back. She spluttered her way to consciousness and opened her eyes to find Hopkins standing over her with a wide, shallow bowl.
“Good. You’re awake, witch. We can begin.”
“You’re dead,” she gasped, trying to wriggle her hands free. “I saw you fall.”
“Yet you’re the one I found here in Hell.” He laughed, dropping the bowl. It clanged against the stones and rolled around with a deep ringing sound. Beyond him a lake stretched out, wide, dark and deep.
“Welcome to the shores of the Acheron.” Hopkins knelt beside her and stroked her hair.
Shivers ran down her spine, but she held herself still, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. Still grey and colourless, he didn’t look harmless now. He moved like quicksilver, so fast she couldn’t follow. Though he wore a pale suit, his eyes sparkled like cold fire and his mouth was a thin, hard line of hate.
“They say that those who try to swim across are dragged down by the souls of the damned, who also attempted to escape this place, or who never managed to cross. Trapped between worlds, they wait in watery graves, pulling the unwary down with them. Suicides, murder victims, the massacred, the unavenged, the forsaken, those who never embraced their lives and souls, those who never accepted their deaths, they all wait in those depths.”
“Let me go.” She tried to keep her voice calm and controlled. “Please. Let me go.”
His hand slid down the side of her face, his touch clammy and disturbing, intimate but at the same time repulsive. He stroked her neck but stopped at her shoulder, his eyes fixed on the mark left there by Sam’s teeth.
“I can’t do that. You’re a witch, the concubine of a demon who would give you to the dark Lord himself.” He gazed at her with wide, washed-out eyes and tried to smile helpfully. “I’m saving you. Why can’t you understand that?”
He leaned in closer and Lily could smell his breath, rancid and ancient. This was a creature as old as time, one who had persecuted countless women and men, physically and mentally torturing them, isolating them from their families and homes, until finally he killed them. Just as he had killed Todd and Rachel. Just as he had tried to kill her.
“They called me Jack, when I liked to cut. And how I liked to cut. They called me the Witchfinder General before that, and Inquisitor. Titles have power, especially titles like that. They instil fear, get the blood pumping. Do you know that in the first days, humankind spilt human blood for the Lord? They sliced open their sacrifices, or drowned them, or garrotted them, all to the glory of His name. And those who were special, marked, or tainted like you, they were the most powerful sacrifices of all. It’s an age-old tradition.”
Lily’s stomach twisted and he leered in closer, his hand closing on her shoulder, pulling her towards him. She did the only thing she could and slammed her forehead right into the bridge of his nose.
Pain blinded her. Hopkins howled as he staggered back from her, but it served her nothing. His fist cudgelled into the side of her face, knocking her to the ground. Without her hands to save her, she hit the rocks hard, and stars danced before her eyes.
He seized her by the back of her neck, dragging her up. “You like it rough, do you? Fucking bitch!”
He hit her stomach hard, driving his fist up into her and knocking all the air from her. Gasping, blind, her body screaming in agony, she folded over his blow. Another crashed into her in precisely the same place, his knee this time. She heard a crack and knew it was something inside her. Blood filled her mouth and she couldn’t breathe.
“We’ll see how you like it wet.”
He plunged her into the black and near-stagnant waters.
Lily’s eyes flared open and she struggled, remembering the sensation of drowning too intimately from her vision of Rachel’s death. Air bubbled up from her mouth, sheened with light, like particles of pure magic in the dark water. Beneath her, weeds swayed, stirred up by her struggles. Her feet scrabbled against the stone but she couldn’t find purchase, and her body wasn’t strong enough to tear itself free of Hopkins’ grasp. He pushed her deeper and her lungs strained, needing to breathe, fighting to breathe. Her heart pounded and thundered in her head.
The weeds undulated like long hair in the water, parted and closed. Behind it two points of light sparkled and, to Lily’s panicked horror, resolved into a face, a woman’s face. She surged up, pale and wan, her sunken cheeks bruised. Lips brushed Lily’s and suddenly Lily knew her. Rachel.
“Breathe, Lily.”
Rachel opened her mouth and air flowed over Lily’s lips, little bubbles, trailing away, wasted by Lily’s shock. Rachel shook her head, the strands of hair swirling around their faces, and tried again. Lily forced her lips to part and breathed. The blackness cleared, and from her left she saw another face, as pale and lost as Rachel.
“Breathe, Lily. You must breathe or die.”
Todd kissed her and the air he imparted was blazing hot, a total contrast to Rachel’s, and it warmed her rapidly freezing body.
Hopkins’ hands bit into her scalp and shoulders. Pushing her deeper, holding her down. She kicked and struggled, feeling her hair tearing out by the roots, but she couldn’t get free. And her body still strained to breathe.
Rachel surged up again and Lily met her greedily.
“Help me,” she thought, pleading with all she believed that they would hear her. “You have to help me.”
She needed to breathe. Her body was reaching the break-point, her own instinctive urges gaining control. Her sight was falling away to the darkness of the lake. She had to breathe. Had to.
Chapter Twenty
Micah willed himself to be still, to capture the inner calm and let it cradle him. Panic would gain nothing. Rage would tear him apart. He needed to think, to be calm, to feel. He needed to find her.
All around him the chamber exploded in wild accusations, shouts and threats. The Nameless and Raphael all but snarled at each other, Enoch was still trying to plead his case, and Sam was yelling the loudest of all.
Something long forgotten inside him unfurled. Something he had put aside so long ago that it remained no more than a ghost of a memory. Now it roared back into life from deep inside him.
“Be silent!” Micah roared, and it was as if that other rose up within him. Pure and powerful, it shook its way through him, transforming as it went with the heat of a refiner’s fire.
His voice shook the earth as only the voice of an archangel could, coupled with something else, something greater powering it from behind. They fell still, even Raphael and Lucifer, stunned. Micah didn’t care. All he could think of was Lily back in the hands of the Nephilim.
The Nameless stepped towards him, the knife in his hands now, the blade glinting ruddily in the
light. “Brother, you will not bring that light here. If you do I will snuff it out. If you speak the Word, or His Name, I will—”
Micah glared at him and whatever Lucifer saw in his face, it stopped him. But the blade still remained in his clenched fist, the blade that could kill gods, let alone a demon or an angel. Any angel. Even one as powerful as the Morningstar himself.
Micah could feel the fire of the Creator within him now. It had been so long that the dizzying feeling of being swamped by such endless power stole his breath. It felt euphoric and at the same time terrifying. Once he had lived only for moments like these, consumed with this fiery zeal. Now he felt like nothing more than a vessel to be used.
“I can find her.” He had to force the words out. “She lives, as yet, and I can find her. For with Him, nothing is hidden.”
“Micah, you can’t dream to use Elohim’s power to seek out the mortal?” Raphael exclaimed.
A spark of rage ignited in the vortex of energy overwhelming him, and Micah recognised it as his own. “Well, why not? I fell, remember? I fell and you left me here to rot so Enoch could save his spawn. As he’s been trying to save him throughout time. And failing. Just as he failed the child’s mother. How many lives has the ruling to leave the Nephilim be cost? How many innocent souls? How many who turned to the Nameless for salvation under his torture?”
He burned inside, the energy coiling through him, making his anger blaze even brighter. He had to find her. He threw back his head and gave himself up to the power, losing himself in it, becoming it.
The Nameless gave a howl of rage and thrust the knife forward in a savage attack, but Micah was gone, a column of fire which swirled around them, licking up the length of the chamber. It snuffed out all other fires, drained the light from the angels. And then it took off, like a serpent of flames, roaring down tunnel after tunnel, razing the ground as it passed, scourging the labyrinths of Hell.
Light blasted across the surface of the water, roaring like a dragon released from its den. Lily gave one last, desperate kick and felt her foot connect with his legs. The next moment Hopkins was torn away from her, flung out over the water, and Lily burst from the lake, gasping for precious air. Strong arms pulled her clear, dragged her onto dry land, arms which flickered with fire, which glowed from within with the light of the sun. Micah’s arms. She knew their touch as well as she knew her own. Micah cradled her, held her.
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