I surveyed the outside of the cathedral before crossing the road. Two human guards stood in front of the shimmering shield of magic. They clutched semiautomatic rifles.
I smoothed out my hair. I’d taken care with my outfit, hoping to convey “I’m a normal human here.”
Before his untimely demise, Elan had left behind a multitude of cat sweatshirts. I’d chosen to wear one that depicted a cat eating pizza and tacos in front of a starry sky. I’d even painted my nails with chipped nail polish, just like a human would.
When you had to meet with people who might kill you, it helped to let them underestimate you. Plus, I knew enough about the human race to understand that they loved weird cat stuff. Just like anything else, this was a performance, and I had to dress the part. Except unlike with my burlesque shows, this performance had life-or-death consequences.
As soon as the guards saw me moving through the darkness, their bodies stiffened, rifles pointed at me.
“Don’t you fucking move!” one of them shouted, spittle flying form his mouth.
Gods below. I guess I still conveyed some sense of threat even in the stupid cat sweatshirt.
I held up my hands, showing them I had no weapons. “Easy does it, gentlemen. The Council is expecting me.” That’s what the humans had started calling themselves. The Council.
One of the humans—a stocky fellow who looked like a squashed Chuck Norris—stepped forward. “What’s the secret password?”
I sighed. I’d forgotten about the password. Or perhaps I’d temporarily repressed it. “Cock-arsing bollocks,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Cock-arsing bollocks,” I said a little louder. Real mature, these guys.
Stocky Chuck Norris nodded, then shouted into the air, “Fuck-stick patrol!”
The magic shimmered away, and a large wooden door behind him groaned open.
Chapter 17
“Now,” he barked. “Before we put the shield back up.”
I hurried past them, moving quickly into the transept.
The city hadn’t had electricity in months, but candles had been lit in sconces and chandeliers around the cathedral. Light danced over the ivory flagstones in Poets’ Corner, where Chaucer, Spenser, and Tennyson had been buried centuries ago.
So here we were. The poets and thinkers who represented humanity’s greatest gifts to the world, guarded by men who shouted Fuck-stick patrol at each other.
My footsteps echoed off the high ceiling as I walked farther into the ancient space. There, on the ornate mosaic floor and among the gilt candleholders of Westminster’s altar, stood three women. I searched in the shadows, but I didn’t see Alex.
I raised a hand in greeting. “I’m Ruby.”
The first person to step forward was a curvy young woman with shoulder-length hair, dressed in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Already, I was feeling confident about my taco-cat clothing choice.
“Lila here,” she said. “Girl, they made you use bullshit passwords, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “Cock-arsing bollocks.”
“Charming.” A second leader stepped forward—one with dewy skin and smooth, auburn hair. “You’re Ruby, I take it. I’m Amber.”
“I’m Brianna,” said the last one—a young woman with a chin-length blond bob.
“We put those men in charge of security so they feel important,” said Brianna. “Stops them from trying to make crucial decisions, but they get to choose the passwords.”
I frowned. “Speaking of men, I thought Alex was supposed to be here.”
Lila stepped closer to me, looking me up and down carefully. “Alex! Is this her?” she shouted into the shadows.
Alex stepped into the candlelight, a smile lighting up his face. “That’s most definitely Ruby.”
He looked even leaner than the last time I saw him, a ragged sweater hanging off his thin frame. I ran over to him, throwing my arms around his neck in a hug. “Alex! I missed you. Sorry about disappearing. And about pointing an arrow at you.”
I pulled away from Alex, meeting the blonde’s gaze. “So how did you three get to be leaders?”
“Each of us represents a faction of the resistance from different territories,” said Brianna.
Lila shoved her hands in her pockets, eying me warily. “Probably best if we don’t give too much information.”
Pretty suspicious for a girl in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
I nodded at the exit. “I take it by the ostentatious display of magic that you’re not too worried about the angels discovering your location.”
Amber flicked her auburn hair over her shoulder. “We’ve got some of the world’s best mages working with us. We want the angels to see what kind of power we have. The essence of Devil’s Bane imbues that force field. If any angels touch it, their bodies will dissolve like ice in a lava flow.”
This might be my chance to provide them with some valuable information so they’d know I was on their side. “Yeah, that’s not going to stop Metatron.”
“Who?” asked Lila.
“Leader of the Heavenly Host, father of the horsemen, all around terrifying fuck-stick of an angel. To use your guard’s term. He’s been keeping the Heavenly Host in hiding and slowly transforming them into immortal beings. From what I understand, he is the most adept speaker of the Angelic language in the universe. I think he can break your shield. I think he can break everything.”
Brianna’s face paled. Then, she straightened. “In the worst-case scenario, the mages can transport us to one of the magical realms. The angels won’t find us.”
Lila folded her arms in front of her cartoon shirt. I wouldn’t say the look on her face was exactly welcoming. “We’re not transporting anywhere. This—London—is our home. They’ve invaded, and we’re fighting back to protect us. You’ve been living with the angels. You really want us to trust you?” She moved closer to me, her shoes clacking off the floor.
“She’s been working with the Order,” said Alex. “She’s been undercover among the horsemen, gathering information, even before the resistance was formed.”
Lila’s jaw tightened. “I know that. But now she’s working with the Hunter. Isn’t that right? You want us to join an alliance with two of the horsemen who’ve been slaughtering us.” Tears shone in her eyes, and her cheeks turned pink. “I watched one of my friends torn to pieces in the streets by his hounds.” She pulled up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, displaying a brutal scar where some of the flesh had been torn off her arm. “His hounds did this to me.”
Oh, balls.
I had known this was going to be a hard sell, and the taco cat on my sweatshirt might not be enough to smooth it over. But I didn’t think it would be “watched my friend eaten by dogs” bad. Or “he ripped the flesh off my arms” bad.
I took a deep breath. I wanted to say that Kratos couldn’t control it—that he’d been cursed by Metatron and forced to hunt. But this would just sound like a bunch of bullshit excuses to them. They’d never feel sympathy for him or care why he’d done it.
I had to appeal to something more powerful. A desperate will to live. “Yes, Kratos—the Hunter—is part of the alliance I want you to join. As I’m sure you know, he is no longer hunting humans. The simple fact is, a war has erupted between the horsemen. Two of the horsemen are trying to end life on earth as we know it. They want to kill all of us and start fresh. They want to create a race of humans born only to worship them and Metatron. The two horsemen who oppose them are willing to wage war against them, and we need to work with them. Because guess who’s not going to win a war against immortal angels? Humans.”
Alex frowned. “You think humans are weak against the angels, and maybe we are. So why are you so eager to form an alliance with us?”
And here’s where my pitch got really difficult. “To give us the greatest chance of winning, we might need you to change a bit.”
Amber furrowed her brow. “Change us? What are you talking about?”
“Look, I’m jus
t going to lay it out for you,” I said. “Right now, your chances of survival are not good. Metatron can get through your shields and slaughter you all within seconds.”
“Even if that’s true,” said Brianna doubtfully, “How exactly are you proposing that we change?”
“We can make you more durable.”
“Bollocks,” said Lila. “How?”
“You’d have to stop being human.”
“What are you on about?” snapped Lila.
“There’s a way to convert you to demons and fae,” I said. “Whatever species you choose. You’d have magic, maybe the ability to fly. As a demon, you could be immortal. As a fae, your life would extend for centuries.”
“You’ve got to be bloody joking,” said Lila.
“I definitely didn’t come here to tell jokes.”
“First,” said Brianna, “you want us to accept the Hunter as an ally. Now you want us to transform into the demons who have been attacking us since the Great Nightmare began.”
This wasn’t going well. “You’d still be you. Just more powerful. And more importantly, you’ll be alive.” I sighed. “Look, I’m not human, but I lived among you. Just like you, I watched my loved ones taken from me. The day angels came to earth, I watched a dragon shifter kill my boyfriend in front of my eyes. I watched my sister taken from me while Kratos flew through the skies above us.”
I nodded at Alex.
“Alex and I lived in a rookery in Whitechapel, fighting gangs over rat meat, just like you’ve been doing. I remember the Hunter coming through the city at night. I remember trembling in fear when I heard his hounds howling. The Great Nightmare changed me. After everything I’d seen, I started getting scared of the dark. I slept in a windowless room, hiding my candle from the others because I couldn’t face the shadows. This is our chance to come out into the light again. This is our chance to rebuild. You have two options. You can stay human and die, or you can adapt and survive. You’re leaders. Lead. Your job is to make sure your people survive at all costs.”
Amber shot me a fierce look. “Demons have done nothing on earth except feed from us. Humans have created everything you see here.” She gestured at Poets’ Corner. “Shakespeare, Darwin, Byron—all human. Galileo, Newton, Einstein—all human. We are earth’s actors, its creators. We built civilization, and we’re here to defend it. And now you want us to give all that up and become monsters? Leeches? What exactly are we defending if we become like them? We were born human, and we’re meant to stay human.”
“You can protect the other humans by adapting.” I shook my head. “Clinging too hard to what you believe is your nature is dangerous. It’s a shackle around your throat. Sometimes I’m a fae, sometimes a human. Sometimes I’m a succubus. None of these things are my destiny. We all have to adapt to survive, and the fact is, if you don’t form an allegiance with us, human culture won’t survive at all. No more poems, sculptures, or cathedrals. All this turns to ash. No more nursery rhymes or tacos or cat sweatshirts. Just a wasteland populated by human slaves created to worship the horsemen. Do you understand what I’m saying? You can either join us, or die. Everything dies.”
Join or die. I think I’d seen that slogan on some old human propaganda, and it seemed like it might be effective. In fact, it seemed perhaps like the perfect note to end on.
I turned, crossing to the cathedral’s doors. I’d done my job for now—planting a seed of an idea in their minds. They didn’t seem like they were jumping at the chance to become a mob of vampires and ogres, and I didn’t blame them. But surely they’d spent enough time scrambling for rat meat and dying from dysentery to know that death lingered for them around every corner.
I pushed open the enormous transept door into the cold night air, and the two guards nodded at me. I crossed into the shadowy street in front of Westminster, heading for my meeting spot with Adonis.
But as I moved closer to the old stairwell, Angelic words began to boom around me, clattering inside my skull until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. Words and fragments appeared and popped in my mind like bubbles…. Pavem—blood—Marc—fera—drago—beast—
I fell to the ground, my hands over my ears, trying to block it out. Through the chaos, one idea rang clearly.
Metatron is near.
And in the next moment, my world went black and silent as a grave.
Chapter 18
I woke in a tiny stone room, hanging from the ceiling in iron manacles, agony burning through my arms. Only the tips of my toes touched the slimy floor.
I knew my manacles were iron by the fact that they sent a deep, throbbing pain racing through my bones, from the wrists down through my shoulders. Also from the fact that my body felt completely drained of all energy, as if someone had sucked all the blood out of me.
I strained, trying to see around me. In the gloom, I couldn’t see much beyond the slick stones. The air around me smelled damp and fusty, like old moss. Or like an old fae. As my eyes adjusted, I peered through an arched doorway. Through it, I could vaguely see a spiral staircase leading up to another floor. All I really knew was that I was hanging by my wrists in a vaulted room. Heavy shadows cloaked much of the space.
Something fluttered in the darkness, then burst into the air, cawing. My body tensed until I realized it was just a raven.
A wild guess told me I was in one of the old dungeons at the Tower. And also that I was pretty much screwed. With iron sapping my power and no one to hear me scream in a torture dungeon, it was looking a little bleak. Fear began to crawl up my spine.
If I needed to, I’d call to Adonis through our bond. But I wasn’t going to panic just yet. I wanted to know exactly what my enemies had planned here before I called Adonis into the fray. For all I knew, this could be a trap.
Then—from the shadows—he appeared. Metatron glowed with pale light. His features looked so much like Adonis’s, but he had that otherworldliness about him that disturbed me. He wore his dark hair longer, and it hung over his shoulders, melding with the shadows. His body seemed fuzzy, like I was looking at it through a Vaseline-smeared lens. I didn’t quite have a sense of what he was wearing—just an ethereal, white glow around his body.
“Ruby.” His voice knelled like a funeral bell. “The great savior. Are those little rocks in your head supposed to ward us all away?”
An uneven stream of water droplets dripped onto me from the ceiling, plunging onto my shoulder, cold and slimy. Drip, drip … drip.
Faintly, the stones tingled. But with the iron digging into my skin, I couldn’t summon any of their magic.
An icy wind rippled over me, and I shivered. It was only at this point that I realized I’d been strung up completely naked. “I was actually growing fond of that cat sweatshirt, you know. You fucking pervert.”
“Oh, you misunderstand, little beast. I find you physically repulsive.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. From what I could tell, he was telling the truth. He looked at my body with all the excitement of a high school student staring at a math problem about train velocity.
“Of course I find you repulsive,” he continued. “It’s just that beasts weren’t meant to wear clothes. Humans certainly weren’t. Don’t you know the story of the Garden of Eden?”
The manacles were biting into my flesh, but I tried to keep myself from grunting, or from giving him the pleasure of hearing me struggle. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it once or twice.”
“Humans—beasts like yourself—became self-conscious. They learned they would die someday, that the consciousness they came to think of as eternal would cease to exist. It pained their simple minds. That was their punishment for hubris. They thought of themselves as angels. They weren’t.”
“Okay. So you’re not into human or fae bodies. Good to know.” I grimaced at the pain in my arms. “You do realize that I’m not a human, though, right?”
He sniffed the air. “You have a particularly strong fae smell. You smell of moss and dirt. Eons ago, your kind were angels.
You chose to live as beasts here on earth. Fighting and fucking like animals. You are worse than humans. Have you ever seen a dog dressed in a suit? That’s what you look like to me in your clothing.”
“Yes, I get it. Shall we move on? I assume you have a point to all this.”
Whatever it took, I needed to get out of these manacles. I just had no idea how. I craned my head, glancing behind me to find a sort of ladder. That was the rack, I thought. If I had to guess, they probably planned to tie me to that at some point for a bit of enhanced interrogations.
His lip twitched in a smile. “I understand you know Aereus.”
Footfalls echoed out, and the Horseman of War stepped into the dim light. In his eyes, I didn’t find the bland dispassion that Metatron displayed. Nope, Aereus was looking at me like I was a stripper at his prison release party.
This all just got more fun. “Did you know that your lovely son here has a prurient interest in animals?”
Metatron ignored me, taking another step closer. “It was the worst mistake an angel ever made—giving divine knowledge to the animals. I listened in on your little meeting in the cathedral. Very interesting. The humans are quite proud of their scientists and their poets. They don’t commemorate the truth. Shall I show you what they leave out of Poets’ Corner? The real work of humans. Their singular ability to devise creative ways to torture, maim, and kill. Everything we’re going to do to you here in this prison was designed by humans. Remember that.”
Oh, this didn’t sound good. In fact, my mouth was starting to go dry, and I really wanted to puke.
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