“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they married any of them they chose.
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward.”
Jayne’s voice, trembling with purpose, floated through his mind.
“The Bible itself states that Nephilim exist.”
“Mi amante.” He covered his face with an unsteady hand. “How did you know?”
“Easy, muchacho,” the Angel of War murmured. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. But this is not a place you should linger.”
Calyx dropped his hand and stared, his brain still struggling to make the leap. “What language are we speaking here? Spanish? You’re telling me Michael the Archangel speaks Spanish?”
The other smiled slightly. “We’re messengers of God, Carlos. We speak every language.”
Michael the Archangel. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the guardian of the Gate of Heaven to look quite so young.
“And this is what—Heaven?” Calyx flung a hand toward the shore, the palm trees rustling in the breeze, the native hut with its door ajar, the sparkling waves foaming over immaculate sand.
“Your vision of it, apparently.” Michael shrugged. “We aim to please.”
“Then I’ve died,” Calyx said grimly.
Heaven or no, the thought of that bastard Mordred clocking him when his back was turned sent a black tide of anger churning through him. If he’d died, if that wretch had stolen his life as well as his galleon, then he’d stolen Jayne as well.
For Calyx realized, with blinding clarity, that he’d meant to go after her, to search until he found her.
He wanted to hear what she’d tried to tell him that last day, on the beach at Corunna. He wanted to tell her what he felt for her—
“Died?” Michael hesitated. “Technically, yes. If you insist upon absolute literalism, your mortal body is floating heels-up in the English Channel.”
Despite the balmy island warmth that bathed his skin, the heat that baked his back, a finger of ice slid down his spine. His body was floating face down in the ocean. Soon, if they hadn’t already, the sharks would find him.
“Unfortunately,” Michael continued, “I did not intend for you to arrive quite so soon.”
“That makes two of us,” Calyx said dryly.
“This is poor timing, no doubt of it. I am not ready for you to be here.”
“Bad luck for me, since here I am. Unless you’re planning to send me to the other place?”
The Archangel shot him a startled glance, one hand rising to fend off his words.
“You’re no angel, mijo—metaphorically speaking, at least. Nonetheless, you stood a fighting chance of redeeming your violent past until the Prince of Camelot’s untimely intervention.”
I’m no angel, metaphorically speaking. But I’m supposed to believe I am one literally?
Slowly he shook his head, brain struggling to absorb this latest outlandish twist of fortune. Still, unlikely though it seemed, he was gazing on an Archangel’s face with his own eyes, was he not? When he squinted, he could bloody see wings.
“Prince of Camelot?” Disjointed fragments rose to his mind of the Faerie tales his English mother had loved. “As in, the son of King Arthur? Aboard my ship, for Christ’s sake?”
The other frowned.
“Try not to curse, Carlos. But yes, King Arthur’s natural son has beguiled Philip of Spain into believing him an ally. Mordred’s magick is the ability to read and influence the minds of men. Against his sorcery, your infirm and aging King stood no chance whatsoever. Against a Nephilim, of course, Faerie magick has limited effect. And Mordred has encountered celestial beings before. For that, and for meddling in Faerie business, you can thank that rebel Zamiel.”
As he uttered the unfamiliar name, Michael’s nostrils flared.
“You say Mordred beguiled Philip?” Grateful to leave behind this wild talk of Heaven and angels, at least for the moment, Calyx applied his mind to this more manageable problem. “What are Mordred’s real intentions?”
“Through deception, he has overthrown the King of the Hagas—the Spanish Fae—and won them to his cause. They shall pass through the Veil into the Netherlands, where a mortal army gathers at Spain’s command. Your Armada is meant to collect them all, mortal and Fae, and transport them to England.”
Recalling the invasion plan, Calyx nodded. “The rendezvous with Parma at Dunkirk is Don Alonso’s first objective.”
“Unfortunately for Philip, Mordred has his own agenda. He is half Fae and half mortal. When Arthur walked the earth, he married the mortal Guinevere, but made a symbolic marriage to Maeve, the last Faerie Queene. Through her, he wore the double crown, ruling mortal England and the Summer Lands. As Arthur’s only son, Mordred considers that crown his birthright.”
“So he plans to betray Philip? To use the Armada to overthrow the Tudor Queen, then seize the throne himself?”
For a moment, Calyx wrestled with that. Not that any of it mattered now, since he was a dead man.
“For his entire existence,” Michael said, “Mordred of Camelot has been an outcast, belonging nowhere and loved by none. His fixation on the double crown is bound up with his lifelong need to find his place in the world. For this, he turned against his father.
“Since that time, he has had a thousand years to brood over the supposed wrongs done unto him. There is nothing that will dissuade Mordred from this course.”
“Nothing except his mother, who is unlike to go quietly,” Calyx pointed out. “And don’t discount Elizabeth Tudor, who must have a few cards of her own to play.”
Jayne, too, was still in play. The thought that she would never know how he felt, that he’d died without telling her, squeezed his chest in a fist of pain.
God in Heaven, Jayne.
Michael’s mouth tilted in a smile. “You love her then, your mixed-blood Faerie?”
Calyx met his swirling gray gaze head on. “More than life.”
“Good.” The Archangel nodded decisively and unfolded to his feet. “That is one mortal trick I never mastered—falling in love with a woman. But then, I was hardly prepared to commit to it.”
“You’re speaking of my mother, bastardo!” A spark of murderous rage flared in his chest. “She loved you.”
“Peace, Carlos.” Michael lifted a slim hand. “Catherine always knew our interlude could be no more than that—fleeting. I did naught to deceive her.”
“Then why trouble her at all?” Calyx glared. “Damned odd behavior for a celestial being, if you ask me. According to Scripture, the angels who coupled with mortal women fell.”
“They fell when their treachery became known. And their motives were hardly selfless, Carlos.”
“As yours were, I suppose?” he sneered.
For the first time, the Angel of War looked uncomfortable. His steady gaze faltered.
“There have been...difficulties in the Seven Heavens,” Michael said at last. “After Lucifer fell, his son the anarchist did whatever he could to stir the pot. But when Uriel himself—a fellow Archangel, my trusted lieutenant in the war against Lucifer—when Uriel chose a woman’s love over an angel’s calling, I realized the magnitude of the problem.”
“Why was it any of your affair? That was his choice.” Calyx was feeling none too kindly toward this cocksure youth who meddled so freely in others’ business.
“Carlos, who am I?” Michael sighed. “I am the Lord Constable of the celestial realm. It is my responsibility to maintain order among nine very restless Choirs of angels. The first echelon—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—are currently at armed standoff with the rest of us. With Uriel missing in action, my fellow Archangels consist of Gabriele, the Angel of Mercy, and Raphael, the Angel of Light. Imagine, if you will, how much help they are likely to be in keeping order up here.
“Perhaps I erred.” Michael sighed. “But I wanted t
o understand what lure was so irresistible that even my stalwart Uriel and that vain, conceited, self-absorbed peacock Zamiel would sacrifice the awesome blessing of divinity for a woman’s love. Catherine was my experiment. And before you explode at me, mijo, bear in mind that her soul is at blissful peace. The memory of her suffering is no more than a distant dream to her.”
“Say what you will,” Calyx growled. “After you satisfied your curiosity and left her with a babe in her belly, you abandoned her to her fate.”
“I was her constant consolation,” Michael whispered. “She barely took heed of the tribulations that befell her mortal body.”
“Even when she flung herself from the window?” Pain slashed through him. Catarina de Zamorra had jumped, and no one was there to catch her.
“I caught her soul in my arms as she fell.” Looking troubled, the Archangel paced. “After our liaison, I found I was in no wise ready to surrender my divinity as others have chosen to do. However, beyond ‘satisfying my curiosity’ as you term it, my time in the mortal realm served a greater purpose.”
“What purpose could that be?”
Michael gave him a bittersweet smile. “You’re wearing it around your neck. That Key belongs to me.”
Calyx fingered the familiar weight of the silver key. A slow, terrible, unavoidable suspicion was building—a notion so impossible he could scarcely bring himself to voice it.
Mordred’s words, before the blow that felled him, whispered through his brain.
Every key must open something.
He braced himself to confront it head on.
“According to Bible lore, you guard the Gate of Heaven.”
“Si, mijo.” Michael hunkered before him and lowered his voice to a whisper. “My Archangels were stealing away, one by one, to the mortal realm. Gabriele would have been the next to fall—and her, I promise you, I will not lose. Yet Jehovah Himself does nothing. Joshua’s Trumpet, He has not even spoken since the sacrifice of Christ!
“Do you not see, Carlos? The Key unlocks the Gate of Heaven. Without it, no angel can slip through to sample forbidden temptations in the mortal realm. I gave the Key to your mother for safekeeping, to seal the Gate of Heaven and contain this rebellion. My intention was to retrieve it when the rebellion was suppressed and the threat defeated. This is why I say you arrived too soon!”
Aghast, Calyx stared, struggling to grasp the enormity of the talisman hanging around his neck. He’d never been devout—not since his capture by the Ottomans, at any rate. When he learned of his mother’s death, he’d lost his faith forever.
He wrestled his recalcitrant thoughts into order. “What of the mortal souls who die? Aren’t you locking them out of Heaven?”
“The Angel of Death—Metatron these days, since Zamiel left—shepherds those souls to their final destination. Those are not my judgments to make. But the decision before us now is entirely yours.”
Realization washed over him. Calyx’s mouth twisted in a grim smile. “You don’t want me here. I came back too soon, before your rebel angels were contained. And I sure as hell don’t want to be here—not now, with the Armada poised to rain death and destruction on England.
“And then there’s Jayne.” He scrubbed a hand roughly over his face. “She’s right in the thick of it, no doubt, embroiled in some risky scheme. I have to find her.”
“Bueno.” A look of relief suffused the Archangel’s youthful features. The breeze billowed in his white shirt as he planted a foot against the coracle. “I can send you back—”
Calyx gripped his bare ankle. Again the world seemed to slow around him. The breeze rippled with infinite slowness through the streaming silk of Michael’s garments. Gazing up at him, Calyx glimpsed a glimmer of what Lucifer himself must have seen when the Strength of God drove him from Heaven with his flaming sword.
He beheld the cold beauty of an angel, relentless and unforgiving as the hand of time, platinum mail flashing in the tropical sun. White fire poured from the open portals of his gaze. Splintered blades stabbed into Calyx’s eyes until he tore his gaze away. The sweet scent of cherry blossoms washed over him.
This is my father, he marveled. Not Rodrigo de Zamorra, that harsh unyielding figure who’d made his childhood a living hell, the monster who drove his mother to her death. Calyx was no murderer’s son, no bizarre freak of nature. He was Nephilim, half angel.
Somehow Jayne had known, yet she’d looked upon him with her heart in her eyes. She’d tried to tell him—something—
Gently the Angel of War disengaged and gazed down at him, a wide-eyed youth once more.
“Si, Carlos? Is there something more you wish to say to me?”
“There is,” Calyx said firmly. “Carlos is what he called me—the monster who married my mother. I’m Calyx, capitán of the Arcángel, the Scourge of the Spanish Main. And I’m not going back to the mortal plane with the Key to Heaven hanging around my damn neck.”
Michael blinked, his smooth brow furrowing. “But I am not yet prepared—”
“You want me gone, and I’m going.” Calyx lifted the weight of the heavy key and its tarnished links. “No one in Heaven will learn of your little indiscretion from me. But if you want to play watchman over the Gate of Heaven, you’ll have to do it without my help.”
Calmly he deposited the Key on the smooth weathered dock. Without its weight around his neck, he felt twenty years younger—as though the living hell of his life at Zamorra and his captivity with the Ottomans had been lifted away.
The swelling rush of hope and joy that filled his chest to bursting was his restored faith. Heaven might not be the serene, uncomplicated haven he’d imagined—but it existed. His soul had come here rather than the other place. Which meant he must have done a few things right.
Now, with God’s grace, he’d do a few more. He had a new homeland to protect from the Armada’s wrath, and a woman’s heart to win.
“Take my advice, padre,” he told the Angel of War. “If you intend to end the discord up here, you’ll have to do more than wait for the turmoil to subside of its own accord. I advise you to grapple the problem head on. Start with Gabriele, the one whose defection in particular you seem so determined to prevent.”
The youth looked down at him, an indecipherable blend of emotions chasing across his smooth features. Shaking his head, he gazed out at the sea, an uncharacteristic hint of color climbing into his fair features. But at least he made no effort to force that damn Key upon him.
A bemused smile curled Michael’s lips. “Given your history with the fair sex, mijo, you are no wise dispenser of romantic advice.”
Deviltry crept into Calyx’s soul. “Oh, is it romantic advice I’m offering?”
“Diablo,” Michael murmured, with what could almost be affection. “We are well rid of you here, I think, until I can restore our angelic house to rights. Go with God, Calyx.”
The Strength of God planted a bare foot against the coracle and pushed him firmly from the shore.
Chapter Twenty
August 1588
Isle of Wight
England
Dear God in Heaven, the Spanish were coming.
Jayne huddled among the rocks on the fog-wrapped shore, the distant rumble of culverins and demi-cannon booming over the choppy sea. When the breeze shifted, she discerned the faint crackle of musket fire from arquebuses and hackbutts as the English fleet raked the Armada’s deadly crescent.
The fog obscured her vision. She could have leaned on the weather. But the fog would help Calyx if he sought landfall here. With the entire coast bristling as the Armada sailed down the Channel, she held out little hope that a forty-gun galleon like the Arcángel, its sails blazing with Catholic saints and angels, would slip into port unnoticed. But the longboat could surely manage, if Calyx could contrive to break away.
He must have a plan for doing that. If only she had convinced him to trust her!
The scuff of a boot against rock startled Jayne violently. Her heart kick
ed hard, then galloped with alarm. Calyx was not the only Spaniard she might encounter here. For all she knew, the entire Armada was making for the Isle of Wight. It was ideally placed to land troops and punch inland—
“Easy, lass.” The gravelly voice of Thomas Knyvett, Lord Sheriff of Norfolk, was pitched cautiously low, for sound carried over water. “I’ve brought warm ale to break your fast. ’twas a long, raw night for this vigil.”
“My thanks, my lord Sheriff. Your kindness is most welcome.”
Jayne uncurled an arm stiffly and accepted the leather flask. Despite the bone-deep exhaustion that sucked at her, the nervous strain fueled by alternating bouts of hope and despair, her soul revived under the crisp tones and no-nonsense manner of this English countryman.
Ten years was a lifetime to be exiled. Yet here she stood on honest English soil. But the Queen’s firm caveat to Jayne’s repatriation forbade her from going anywhere near Elizabeth—or Lord Robert Dudley. She dared not approach Ryder, ensconced in Dudley’s ocean-side manor—directly in the Spaniards’ path.
Her nerves had been stretched on tenterhooks since the first deadly clash between Don Alonso’s horned crescent and the pack of English seadogs off the Cornish coast. Thankfully, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Martin Frobisher had proven themselves men to be reckoned with. Since then, the two navies had clashed half a dozen times, minor skirmishes interspersed with major engagements.
Thus far, the seadogs had managed to fend them off. But the Armada was still coming, drawing ever closer to the beating heart of England—London, where Elizabeth Tudor awaited.
With open curiosity, Jayne studied the man hunkered beside her. Lord Thomas Knyvett was a well-regarded nobleman, a Gentleman of the Queen’s Privy Chamber. Once, he’d been brother to Lady Catherine Knyvett.
Jayne had been beyond astonished to stumble over him during her first, spectacularly unproductive vigil near Portland Bill.
Under her worried gaze, the young Sheriff’s face creased in a weary smile. He hadn’t shaved or shifted his linen since last night. Despite wind-whipped brown curls and a day’s growth of dark stubble, his mocha-brown eyes were achingly familiar.
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