“What is this place?”
“It’s a place for The Powers’ voice to be heard. They speak here,” Bane explained.
It looked fucking weird, and if the winged could fly, why the need for steps? Heck, who was I to judge architecture? We parked and then climbed out of the van. Michael led us up the steps at a brisk pace; they were deep steps, and if not for the extra power inside me, I’d be feeling the burn by the time we reached the summit. The entrance was huge, like twenty feet high, and the inside was shrouded in darkness. My skin prickled in warning.
“Once we set foot inside, they will be alerted to our presence,” Michael explained. “Be prepared for resistance. They won’t be pleased I brought you here.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” Abbadon said.
Michael stepped into the building and we followed. The door closed behind us with a hiss, and for a moment, we were left in complete darkness, but then the lights flicked on, too white, and too bright. My eyes stung, taking long seconds to adjust. Behind us, the door was gone, melted seamless into the wall. Trapped. We were trapped inside an egg. A huge, cavernous egg. No furniture, no adornment whatsoever, just unmarred walls and a gleaming unmarked floor.
The ground slowly bloomed into a soft glow which focused beneath our feet. It pulsed softly and then a voice filled the space, echoing eerily around the room.
“What have you done, Michael?” the voice said. “This is unacceptable.”
Michael inclined his head. “I apologize, Gadriel, but this is important.”
“We will be the judge of that,” the voice said. “And if we disagree, you will be punished.”
Michael didn’t even flinch. “So be it.”
“Speak,” the voice demanded.
Michael took a deep breath and then forged ahead. “Adamah has been found by the shades. They have him in their power. They wish to use him against us.”
Silence. Deadly and thick.
“Gadriel?”
“Adamah has awoken?”
“That’s right,” Bane said.
“Silence, Lucifer! We do not address traitors here.”
Bane’s jaw ticked and a myriad of emotions flitted across his face, but he held his tongue. If he’d just been Bane he’d have exploded, but he was Lucifer now; he was finally whole, and Lucifer knew when to hold his peace.
“Gadriel, we cannot hold back any longer,” Michael said. “Adamah possesses the power to kill the winged. Asher, the shade commander, will use him against us. We must prepare for battle.”
“Adamah may come, but he will not gain entry to Dawn,” Gadriel said. “He will continue to execute his purpose outside of our borders, in Midnight and Sunset, where the traitor Black Wings reside. His attentions will work in our favor.”
Was he serious? Was he actually saying that he was willing to sit back and let Adamah kill all the Black Wings? Of course he was. Hadn’t that been the White Wing objective all along? Eliminate the Black Wings and claim humanity.
But surely they couldn’t allow the slaughter of innocents? “What about the humans caught in the crossfire?”
“Who is this that speaks without prompt?”
“Someone who actually gives a shit about humanity.”
“Insolent creature!”
The ground under my feet began to warm and then heat up. The fucker was trying to singe me. Fuck that! The power inside me had the same thought and lashed out. It shot down through the soles of my feet and into the ground. A low hiss filled the air and then the glow beneath me winked out.
“What ... what is this? What are you?” Gadriel asked.
“I’m pissed off, that’s what I am, and I strongly suggest you don’t do anything else to piss me off further.”
“No. There is more ... you have grace inside you. I felt it. His grace.”
I snorted. “No. It’s not His anymore. It’s mine, and I can either use it on the shades or I can vent at you. Your choice.”
“Serenity is on our side,” Michael interjected quickly, shooting me a warning glance. “She is the weapon we lost long ago, and she will fight alongside us.”
“So the rumors are true ...” Gadriel was silent for the longest time and the lights dimmed.
“He’s conferring with the others,” Michael said.
“Where exactly are the others?”
“Home,” Michael said. “This building is our connection to our home, and thus, they are able to speak with us.”
“But they can come here, right? To help?”
“They could, but it is unlikely.” He gnawed on his bottom lip.
“What? What are you not telling us?”
“I’m not sure if my conclusions are correct, but I’ve been thinking ...” He dropped into a whisper. “Arcadia is hidden away from the world, held this way on a wager. If the Black Wings die, the wager will be broken and Arcadia will no longer be important.”
“What are you saying?”
He locked gazes with me. “I’m saying that Arcadia is dispensable.”
He was saying they’d leave us here to rot. Locked away with the shades ... but wait. “And what about when the walls come down? What then? The shades would gain access to the rest of the world.”
He winced. “With the wager broken, the White Wings could reset the timer on Arcadia’s exile to infinity. They could leave Arcadia locked away forever and the shades with it.”
“What about the other Black Wings? There must be others on the outside.”
“Yes,” Abbadon said in resignation. “But an army is redundant without a general to lead them.” He looked to Bane. “If this is true, then all will be lost.”
“I don’t know for sure,” Michael said quickly. “But I can’t help but draw conclusions from what I’ve heard and seen over the past few weeks.”
He’d been digging, he must have been. Lucifer and I had left him with questions the last time we’d come. I’d seen the doubt on his face. His theory made sense. The Powers were preparing to cut us loose. How could they? They were the warriors of the angels, the ones who donned their armor to ensure the balance of power on earth was maintained. They were essentially protectors of humanity, and here they were preparing to turn their back on everything they stood for.
I was done with the silence. “Hey! Hey, Gadriel!”
The lights flared. “We cannot help you. You must leave.” His tone was curt. Final.
Rage clawed at my throat. “What? So you can wash your hands of this place? Pretend it never happened? You make me sick! Is this what your creator would want? Is this what your purpose is?”
“Do not dare to assume you know anything about our purpose. Do no—”
“Fuck you! I know enough because I’m fucking dying trying to fulfill mine!” My chest heaved as I strode into the center of the chamber. “This power is killing me but I’m still here, still standing, still fighting, while you hide away and watch from the sidelines. You want humanity, then you need to fucking fight for it. Put on your fucking armor and do something.”
His response was cut off by the blare of a siren. A crack like thunder assaulted my ears and then the lights switched to crimson.
“What’s happening?” Abbadon asked.
Michael rushed to where the door had been. “The wards just fell. We’re under attack.”
Chapter 13
The door appeared with a touch of Michael’s palm, and we ran out into the sunlight to find the skies buzzing with activity as winged shot flaming arrows at the earth where a mass of darkness spread across the land.
“The shades!” A wounded winged ran up the steps toward us. “They breached the wards. He was glowing, the man was glowing, and the wards cracked beneath his hands. They’re headed for the human sector.”
Adamah. Adamah had brought down the wards somehow, and now the silvered were in danger, because the black mass was shades without hosts, and what better hosts than humans who had relinquished their free will.
“The silvered won’t be a
ble to put up a fight.” I started down the steps. “We have to get to them. We need to help them.”
Arms grabbed me around the waist and my feet left the ground. Bane had me and we were in full flight, dodging between the winged fighting from above. Michael flew at our left and Abbadon to our right.
“This way!” Michael swerved left and we followed, swooping and accelerating to get ahead of the shades, to beat them to the little Victorian-themed village set up for the humans. Other winged joined us, a flock of defense headed to the gates that denoted the barrier between the winged sector of Dawn and the silvered.
We overtook the shades and dove sharply toward the gates. Bane held me tighter, wrapping his wings around us to ward off the dust that kicked up upon our landing. Even in the heat of upcoming battle, the brush of his body against mine, his breath against my cheek, had me aching for him. He pulled me close and pressed a hard kiss to my lips in a promise before releasing me and drawing his sword.
Michael was shouting orders to the other winged landing around us, and they formed a barrier between the gates and the shades. The ground shook and the darkness rolled toward us like a viscous cloud of death. I switched to aether-sight to see the tall, long-limbed shades, mouths open in battle cries, hurtling toward us.
“Stay behind me,” Bane ordered.
My daggers appeared in my hands. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.”
His lips curved in a smirk and then we clashed with the shades in an explosion of clangs and bellows. The winged fought hard, pushing back the threat, but they’d spent way too long in the lap of luxury and it showed in the slightly sloppy parries and slow reflexes. Maybe if the protectorate were here, if Ava and her unit and the Lupin were by our side, we’d succeed in driving them back, but as it stood, we were royally screwed. A flash of golden light amidst the darkness caught my eye. I cut a swathe toward it, leaving Bane in the company of Abbadon.
“Harker!” His warning came in time for me to duck and avoid a nasty case of decapitation, and the shade who’d swiped got a dagger to the gut in response. My eyes were on the prize, on the glow that walked between them, on the man that was wreathed in the shimmer that called to every atom in my body. He took out the winged with a brush of his fingertips through will alone. The winged erupted into rainbow light that dispersed in a fraction of a second—here one moment, gone the next. He had to be stopped. He had to be saved. I had to get near him.
I slid between a shade’s legs and came up just as the figure spun round to face me, his long hair whipping round in an arc parallel to the ground. He’d brushed it, and now it flowed around him like a thick, wavy sheet of obsidian. My breath hitched in my chest and my brain took a freeze frame shot of his perfect face. A face I knew in some primal part of me.
Adamah.
This was Adamah.
He took a step and was by my side, enveloping me in the golden shimmer that emanated from his skin.
“You,” he said softly. “I have dreamt of you and now I find you.”
What was he talking about? And why weren’t my lips working, because he was doing something to my body, drawing from me, taking the edge of the pressure building up inside me.
“You will come with me. You belong with me. You are made from me.” His hand curled around my arm, and he gently tugged me to my feet and into his arms. It felt right. It felt like home.
No. This wasn’t me, it wasn’t real. It was the power wanting to go home. Not me. I shook my head and pulled out of his grasp. He didn’t hold onto me, didn’t try to make a grab for me. Instead, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Eve? We are meant to be together.”
Eve? What the heck? “Adamah, you need to stop this. You can’t trust Asher. He wants to kill the winged and—”
“The winged must die. They betrayed the creator. They made him leave.”
“No, that’s not true. The winged may be a lot of things, but they weren’t responsible for the creator’s abdication. They were confused and lost and they turned their attention to humanity’s preservation.”
“What kind of preservation is this prison?”
“Okay, so they may have split views on what’s best, but they don’t deserve to die. They’re the only thing standing between the shade and humanity.”
“The shades wish to protect humanity,” he insisted.
“By taking them as hosts? Come on. How does that make sense?”
“They will relinquish the bodies once the winged are dead.”
But he didn’t sound so sure anymore. I gripped his hand, ignoring the electricity that jumped between us. “No, they won’t, because they can’t. Once in possession of a host, they can’t jump back out, not unless I expel them.”
He stared at me blankly and then his head whipped up, hearing something I couldn’t. The sound of the explosion filtered through the shimmering haze surrounding us a moment later.
Panic fisted my throat. “Adamah, you need to come with me. You can’t let Asher use you like—”
Adamah was yanked away from me, his mouth open in silent protest, and then I was back in the cold with the glow retreating rapidly, pulled along by shades.
They were taking him.
No fucking way. He was mine.
Mine? What the heck? Later. Now, I needed to save him.
The shades who had Adamah were slowed down by their load, but not me. Didn’t he realize he could burn the fuck out of them if he chose? Probably not. Asher would have withheld that bit of information for sure.
“Adamah, you need to fight them!”
The shades faltered and then ducked under a bridge. With a surge of energy, I closed the distance between us and slammed into the nearest shade. We hit the ground, hands scrabbling at each other. Its claws scraped my arm, tearing through fabric. My scream was involuntary and laced with rage.
“NO!” The shade was ripped off me by the glorious light that was Adamah, and then the whole shade erupted into cinder.
Adamah stumbled back in shock. He hadn’t known he could do that. There was so much he needed to know. I reached for him but the darkness grabbed him again, and this time he didn’t fight back, and I wasn’t fast enough to stop them.
***
The egg-shaped building was nothing but ash and debris. They’d blown it up. Distracted us and then taken out the only connection the winged had to any higher powers. The Powers were gone.
“How could they have known?” Bane asked. “How could they know how important that building was?”
The winged had gathered in a crowd, ash-covered, grime-streaked, wings vibrating with indignation, chests heaving with exertion and shock at the impingement upon their sanctuary. Smoked curled in the sky, blocking out the glorious sun, and the mood was one of gloom and foreboding. Dawn, the impeachable, the untouchable haven, had been invaded and desecrated. For the first time since coming to know the White Wings, I saw fire in their dispassionate eyes. They were fucking pissed.
A tall, haughty-looking White Wing pushed through the crowd, dragging a cowering winged in his wake. He shoved the winged at Michael.
“Ask your favored Principal, Michael,” the haughty White Wing said. “Ask him who told the shade where they needed to strike.”
The Principal fell to the ground, his hands clasped as if in prayer. “Please. Michael, they were going to burn me. That thing burned the others, and he was going to burn me.”
“And so you acted selfishly in order to save your life. You condemned us all with your actions.” Michael spat out the words, laced with disgust. “You fool, you should have died. It was your duty to die rather than allow them to sever our connection to our home. Do you realize what you’ve done?” His voice rose, morphing to icy rage. “Do you realize what you have cost us?”
The White Wing prostrated himself and kissed the earth. His creamy wings fanned out across the ground in supplication. “Please, Michael. Please, have mercy.”
But Michael’s eyes were ablaze with an unyielding wrath, an
d his sword lit up in flame as it came down on the Principal. The White Wing’s scream scraped at the inside of my skull, cut off blessedly quick.
Bane stared at the ashes of the dead winged dispassionately. “There is no escape now,” he said. “Will you join us, Michael?”
Michael nodded. “Yes. We will join you. We will avenge what has been done to us. But first we must talk.” He jerked his head in my direction. “Abbadon, please take Serenity back to Midnight and then return so we may discuss our next move.”
Chapter 14
“Eve? Can you hear me?” The voice was melodious, deep and warm.
“Adamah?” It was dark and cold but his voice was like a warm balm. “Where are you?”
“In your dream. With you.”
When had I fallen asleep? I’d lain down to think and then ...
“Now that we have connected, I could find you,” he said.
Connected? Wait, if he was really here, in my dream, then it was my chance to force him to see the truth. “You need to get away from Asher. He’s lying to you.”
“I know. I believe you.”
Huh? “Then what are you still doing with him? Why did you let the shades take you?”
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“But you were okay hurting the winged?”
He sighed. “I was confused when I awoke. The world I dreamed of, the world father showed me, is not this world. I felt his absence immediately, and it tore at my soul. Asher told me that the winged were responsible for his abdication.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Yes. I know that now.”
“Then why are you still there? You need to get away from the shades.”
“I cannot leave them. They are lost and they are confused. They need me. Asher needs me.”
Fucking hell. Who was this guy? “Asher doesn’t need you. He needs to be put down. Have you any idea what he wants to do to this world?” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “He wants the winged dead and the humans enslaved.”
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