Entice

by Jessica Shirvington

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “What about Phoenix?”

  His head tilted. “He thought he had found my weakness. He had not.”

  “You were supposed to give him the Scripture in return for something.”

  He nodded again. “He will know by now that I have not kept my end of the arrangement. It will not take long for him to know where I am.”

  I looked around the room; everyone seemed unsure of what to do. Lincoln’s hand still hovered near his dagger. Steph looked completely baffled and Salvatore had a firm arm around her. He must have had to restrain her at some point from approaching Jude. Even Onyx seemed wary, standing at the back of the room, though I also saw him keeping one eye on Spence. I wondered if he was still a little apprehensive in his presence too.

  But I wasn’t scared. Images of my dream continued to flow as if the door had been unlocked. I could see it, feel it.

  “How long have you been in the world realm?” I asked.

  The corners of his mouth made a minuscule movement. Did he know I was working it out?

  “A little over two thousand years.”

  His eyes went to the Scripture and then back to me. I took a step toward him, toward the thing that had cost so much already.

  “You are betraying your own.”

  “Sometimes it is necessary, even when others cannot see.”

  Because we need a villain.

  He stood. I heard the others shuffle nervously behind me. I took the Scripture in one hand and closed the final step between us. I leaned in slowly and he let me. My other hand took hold of my cold hard destiny.

  This was it. The moment.

  And I was right; Jude was another cliff. I remembered how Uri had explained it in the desert. Now, it was true again.

  It was simply a matter of the right question being laid before you so that you could, in turn, make the right choice.

  My grip tightened around the dagger. This was the same as leaping and I knew, once I did this, I’d never be able to go back. And then the words of my angel maker floated through my mind, words from my dream. I’d assumed he was speaking of Jude, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  We all have the capacity to find the will—even when that which we must do terrifies us most.

  Jude’s cheek was soft and untouched for so very long. I kissed him. Once.

  “Thank you, Judas,” I whispered as I pulled back and drove the dagger into him, returning him for judgment.

  His kind eyes met mine. An eternity of sacrifice showed. A tortured solitude.

  “Thank you, Keshet,” he said, using the same title both my angel maker and mother had given me as his hand reached out toward me gently. Before his fingers touched my face, they disappeared, along with the rest of him. And though he was gone, I was sure I still felt him the moment he would have connected with me.

  I hoped he got the nothingness he had craved.

  “Did you just say Judas?” Dapper asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I answered, looking down at my hands. In one, an ancient Scripture; in the other, a dagger. My dagger.

  “Oh. Just checking.” Dapper started pouring himself a drink.

  “So it is true,” Onyx said from the back of the room, moving forward now.

  “Which part?” Lincoln asked, sounding out of breath.

  “Keshet,” Onyx said, looking at me.

  “The rainbow,” I said, distracted. Bewildered.

  I just killed Judas.

  Dapper, who seemed to be relaxing a bit now that Jude was gone, put down his drink. “It’s why your aura is always different,” he marveled, reminding us of his ability to identify auras. “Kind of a contradiction—Grigori power usually comes out all multicolored, but Grigori auras are always just the one color. It can be different shades for different people, but always just one and, on top of that, a lining of gold. Violet, here, she’s, well, she’s like a rainbow with streaks of gold all over the place.”

  “I hate to ask the obvious, but what the hell does all that mean?” Spence spat out.

  “It means,” Lincoln started, as if saying it hurt him, “she can connect the realms.”

  I didn’t really understand, but I knew he was right and that my mother had always known. It was why she’d sacrificed herself, why she’d named me Violet.

  Onyx moved over to the bar and motioned for Dapper to pour him a large glass of whatever he was having. Whiskey, I think. Salvatore and Steph collapsed onto the chaise while Zoe made herself comfortable on Dapper’s shag rug. Griffin and Lincoln joined me on the other side of the minibar.

  I took a deep breath and unfurled the Scripture.

  The blood drained from my face. My vision blurred.

  “What?” Griffin prompted.

  My eyes welled with tears of pure fright. “Does anyone know what Tartarus is?” I asked, in barely a whisper.

  “The pits of this realm,” Dapper said, as Onyx took a massive gulp of his drink and offered a much plainer explanation.

  “Hell.”

  My hands shook, holding the Scripture that was not meant for us. “This is not the Grigori Scripture. It’s…it’s…”

  My heart started to race; my mouth went dry. The large bold outline of a triangle in the middle with small symbols at each point haunted me to the core. Below that, two sections of text. The words were not decipherable, but they didn’t need to be. Instinct told me what this was.

  “I know why Phoenix wanted the Scriptures. It was never about the Grigori list.” My hands shook so much Lincoln had to take the parchment from me.

  “What is it?” Griffin asked, now looking over Lincoln’s shoulder at the Scripture.

  “Writing. Diagrams. It’s in another language but…I think it’s…instructions.” I stared into the room, full of my friends—Grigori warriors, Steph, even Onyx and Dapper. I feared for us all and could think of only one person who would know what to do. But Mom was already dead.

  “To return one of the damned,” Lincoln said. “Phoenix wants to bring someone back from hell.”

  “Who?” Spence asked, irritated he was missing something.

  Lincoln’s ghost-white face now mirrored mine, and even when I looked at Onyx, I could see he wasn’t exactly a shade of good health either. Together, we gave Spence his answer.

  “Lilith.”

  “And so,” Griffin sighed, “we have what he wants and he has the lists.”

  My phone beeped in my pocket and I pulled it out with still quivering hands. I already knew it would be him. There was no running, no quitting—he wouldn’t let me, and somehow that helped. A kind of resignation came over me.

  I stood a little taller, not so tired anymore. I stared at the text message as my hands stopped shaking.

  Interested in a trade…lover?

  “The star that leads the way is your star…You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

  The Lost Gospel of Judas

  The Sole

  1st Choir

  Seraphim

  Griffin (G)

  Azeem (G)

  Uri (AL)

  Nox (AD)

  Cherubim

  Rudyard (G)

  Nahilius (EL)

  Farmhouse exile (ED)

  Thrones

  Phoenix (ED)

  Jude (EL)

  2nd Choir

  Powers

  Lincoln (G)

  Nyla (G)

  Gressil (ED)

  Dominations

  Spence (G)

  Onyx (once an ED)

  Virtues

  Ermina (G)

  Salvatore (G)

  3rd Choir

  Principalities

  Fear exile 1 (EL)

  Fear exile 2 (ED)

  Archange
ls

  Zoe (G)

  Olivier (EL)

  Angels

  Magda (G)

  Grigori (G) Angel Light (AL) Angel Dark (AD) Exile Once Light (EL) Exile Once Dark (ED)

  “As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.”

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Smooth black lines bled from me—soul to hand to paper—begging for release. Charcoal wasn’t my usual medium, but lately it seemed appropriate. With my back to the window, the sun cast a bright glow around my shadow on the remaining white. Beyond that, the charcoal began to carve out stronger, sharper lines as I dived deeper and lost myself in my work. That’s what art did to me—it almost made time stand still.

  Almost.

  I was different, despite my efforts not to show it. I couldn’t fool myself. The best I could do was stick to the rules. It was the only way. School, training, and research—when I was of any use. That’s how I held on to the control that had never been so important or so fragile.

  Lines had been drawn. Phoenix had gotten what we wanted—the Grigori Scripture—and yet he’d be willing to do anything to get his hand on what we had gotten. And if I should die in the process of him getting it back? Well, he’d see it as a well-deserved victory.

  That didn’t mean I was going to make it easy for him. If the Grigori Scripture remained in the hands of exiles, an unfathomable number of innocent lives would be at stake. So, that left us with his suggestion—the trade. It wasn’t ideal. If Phoenix got the Exile Scripture, he was going to do something so devastating we could not even begin to comprehend the price.

  Or how many would have to pay it.

  How does one really calculate the cost of resurrecting the mother of all darkness from Hell?

  I tasted the apple, sweet and young, and smelled the flowers, so heavy with pollen the air thickened. I flinched at their nearness, but I was slow to react, still lost in my haunting thoughts. My charcoal slashes grew rigid and intense. I channeled the sound I heard of wings crashing, along with the flashes of morning and evening. They ripped through my vision, into the paper on my easel.

  I finally snapped out of it at Miss Kinkaid’s distinctive throat clearing. She was hovering over my artwork. I didn’t need to guess why.

  “Ah-hem, Violet—”

  But now that I was aware of my surroundings again, my entire body rang with alarm bells.

  Damn it, not again.

  Griffin was going to be pissed.

  “Miss Kinkaid, you need to move away from the window,” I said, cutting her off before she could start her critique.

  I stood and took a few deep breaths to steady my angelic senses. It was bad enough for normal Grigori, who had one, occasionally two, senses. I was the first to experience all five, and it was more than overload.

  “I, well…I beg your pardon?” She slapped her hand over her chest as if I had just insulted her very existence.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Same reaction every time.

  “Yes. Now. And the rest of you!” I called out to my art class. Luckily, we were a relatively small group of fifteen. “Backs against the far wall!” I ordered, grabbing my cell phone and typing in OIO3 before hitting send and dropping it.

  Out in open, three exiles en route.

  Yeah, we’d even come up with an abbreviation for my…spells. Sometimes I just couldn’t stop my defenses from dropping—especially when I was working on art. I just forgot about everything else. And when I didn’t have my shields up, I drew exiles like a magnet.

  My classmates looked at me like I was a freak, and even though I didn’t have time to care, it still grated on me.

  Maybe because they’re right.

  “I’m really sorry, everyone, but move it!” I said, starting to drag people from one side of the room to the other, the display of my inhuman strength leaving my fellow students’ eyes popping out of their heads and mouths hanging agape. The outright screaming would start later, when they realized that this wasn’t some practical joke. For now, everyone was affecting a certain amount of cool, just in case there was a hidden camera. As it was, I could already see Tristan Newland holding up his cell phone.

  Exiles were almost here. I cursed myself. If I’d just kept my shields up for another half hour, I would have been outside school grounds and this whole thing would be easier.

  The thing about exiled angels is there aren’t many rules they have to—or bother to—follow, and while it’s difficult for them to locate Grigori, angel-human hybrids like me, in our homes due to some kind of protective barriers all homes naturally emit, every other place, including school, was fair game.

  I pulled off my sweater. “The windows are going! Close your eyes!” I commanded my classmates, who were now starting to react. Only half of them took me seriously, burying their faces in their knees. Maybe they thought I was taking them hostage. It probably didn’t look good when I pulled out my very lethal-looking dagger from its sheath, a glamour acting as a camouflage to ensure no one even knew it was there. Once revealed, though, all eyes could look nowhere else.

  “Oh dear God,” Miss Kinkaid whimpered.

  But there wasn’t time to help them anymore because right then, three exiles came crashing through the windows with the force of a freight train, showering almost all the glass and surrounding woodwork straight into the room and over everyone.

  Exhibitionists!

  I saw a few people hit by stray shards of glass, but nothing major. Yet.

  Three against one was bad. Three against one who also had fifteen defenseless humans to protect was worse. A white-haired exile zeroed in on me immediately and started lunging in my direction. I had less than a second to react, knowing I couldn’t leave the other two free to get expressive with their own version of art—maim and torture—with my classmates.

  As the exile prepared to land, I dropped my dagger and rolled, narrowly missing his fist and giving myself just enough time to grab the next exile, a strawberry-blond one this time, and hurl him like a bowling ball into the third one before Whitey was back on top of me. I paid for the move, my head pounding into the nearest desk, splitting the desktop in two.

  Whitey threw me to the ground and straddled me before proceeding to pummel fist after fist into my face, all within seconds. I managed to wriggle enough to get a knee to his gut and scrambled back, jumping to my feet.

  Two more figures came flying through the now glassless windows, landing gracefully behind the three exiles. They didn’t hesitate, just pulled their daggers and jumped into the fray. I breathed out a sigh of relief before landing a fist in the face of the exile moving in on me. My strike packed enough force to throw him into the wall, giving me a chance to grab my dagger and draw upon the power that welled in the base of my stomach. I called it up.

  My signature amethyst mist cloaked the room and I smiled as it encircled me. The exiles all stopped moving, stilled by my power and unable to break the hold.

  I could feel a trickle of warm blood slipping down the side of my face. That earlier head-pounding had caused some damage.

  “Hey, guys,” I said to Beth and Archer, biting my lip.

  My classmates started to scream or cry. I didn’t blame them.

  The two Grigori simultaneously raised their eyebrows.

  “This is the third time in five days, Violet.”

  I walked over to Whitey, slumped against the wall. He could hear me and could talk if needed. He watched me coming, knew what I could do to him. The very same thing that had led them to me let him know just how powerful I was. Yeah, apparently…I radiate the stuff.

  He was young. Not just in looks but in experience. I was willing to bet he hadn’t been here much longer than a year, which was more than I could say for the other two. Millennia of existence as angels really didn’t prepare the
m for taking human forms. This one looked awkward in his body, like it was the wrong fit. No surprises, he was male. They all chose to be male, at least almost all. From their point of view, males were superior and females the lesser gender, with no power and the added disadvantage of monthly bleeding.

  Idiots.

  This one didn’t look more than my age, his bright white hair standing tall. He’d used one of those granny hair dyes and it was turning purple. I almost laughed, imagining him becoming human and then spending the next few weeks experimenting with hair colors.

  Miss Kinkaid rose to her feet, shaking like a newborn foal against the wall, leaning against it for support.

  “V-V-Violet, put…put that w-weapon away. We need to call the…police,” she said, losing almost every other word in a hiccupping sob.

  I sighed. This wasn’t good. And even though we had it covered, I wondered if we might be causing some kind of psychological damage to these people later in life. Griffin, the head Grigori in the city, assures me not, but still…

  At least the art studios are in a separate building; otherwise, the entire school would have charged in on us by now. As it was, I could hear people moving in our direction already.

  “I wish it were that simple,” I mumbled, not taking my eyes from the exile who would have killed me while smiling, before finishing off everyone in the room out of a misplaced sense of righteousness and, more practically, to cover the evidence. Exiles were thorough if nothing else.

  “Do you want me to make you human?” I asked, glancing at the other two exiles. During an outright attack like this, we weren’t required to make the offer and I knew what their response would be anyway, but I still felt the need to verbalize it.

  Yeah. Sentimental.

  The exile didn’t respond; he just continued to look at me like he was envisaging ripping my head off. I tightened my grip on my dagger.

  Archer cleared his throat. Unfortunately, I knew why.

  I held back a sigh of frustration. “Do any of you have a message for me?” I asked, sticking to our latest protocol.

  The exile didn’t pause to consider his words, while the other two simply growled.