The air is cold and damp in the darkness, and a shiver rolls through me, making me very aware of the fact that my arms are tied behind my back around some kind of square post. The corners dig into the insides of my arms. My legs are splayed straight out in front of me, and the ground I’m sitting on is cold and hard. I move my leg a little bit, searching for something, anything. The surface beneath me is smooth, not like a tile floor would be. As my dress bunches and the bottom part of my calf is exposed, I can feel grit rolling beneath it. It’s almost like I’m sitting on bare cement.
I turn my head left and right, searching for a source of light, but I find nothing. I’m blinking rapidly, if only to assure myself that my eyes are indeed open.
What happened?
Scanning my mind, I search for the last thing I remember. The girl. Lily. The gates of heaven. The Archangels. “Oh, God,” I whisper, but He doesn’t answer me.
They just disappeared in front of me. She simply reached out and grabbed their shoulders. I can still see the confused looks on their faces as they disintegrated. I’ve never seen anything like that happen to such powerful beings. Frankly, I hope to never see it again.
I remember Nathair, and the girl crying out for me to save her. And Mara… Who could forget her? The angry human responsible for savaging the tapestry of life. She severed several of the carefully spun threads of life, ending the humans’ lives decades too soon, and then trapped their souls in that horrible prison in hell.
Tears form in my eyes. I’ve failed. Again. Despite all the precautions I took, the child’s soul did not go to heaven where she belongs. Children are not unheard of in hell. Some are just black threads. But they are rare to say the least. And it is an absolute crime against humanity for a child who was meant for heaven to be condemned to even a moment in hell. Guilt washes over me—I promised to save her, but I didn’t.
To my surprise, Nathair breaks my despair. He opens a small, rectangular slit—a window?—in what appears to be a door. The sound of scraping metal makes me want to press my hands to my ears, but I’m quickly reminded of my bound hands.
The light streaming in through the hole is absurdly bright, but I struggle to keep my eyes open, wanting to get a feel for my surroundings while I can. But the light is blinding, so I turn my face away from it, looking instead at the walls around me. It’s a square room with no windows besides the one in the door. It’s the world’s smallest basement. There’s nothing in here but the post and me. No shelving for storage, no canned goods, boxes of mementos, nothing. Just the post, me, and now Nathair on the other side of the door.
“Nathair! What’s going on? Why are you helping her? We were made to protect the humans—to bring them home—not to destroy them,” I plead with him. He scans the room silently before his dark eyes fall on me.
I see the tops of his shoulders bob above the bottom of the window in a shrug. “I just came to check on you, not debate good and evil.”
“Nathair. Please,” I beg, but his blank eyes tell me nothing. He slams the window shut, plunging me back into darkness. Once again, I’m rendered blind. But at least I have my bearings now. I know there’s a door in front and bare walls to either side of me. If I can ever get free of my restraints, I will know where to start walking.
I’ve never cared much for darkness. Although Webber once made a strong argument that without it, it would be impossible to appreciate and recognize the light, now that I’m submerged in it, I can’t help but relate to Penn’s desire to minimize it within the world.
Something tells me that I’m not in hell. For one thing, the basement lacks that distinctive sulfuric odor. In fact, it’s almost…earthy.
“They have me on Earth,” I say to the darkness. The room is so damp that it swallows my words without leaving an echo behind.
Why trap me on Earth? They must know I can come and go as I please from here. If Mara doesn’t understand that, certainly Nathair—as a fellow…well, former Reaper—would have explained our duties and privileges to her.
The quickest way out would be to call the mists and disappear into them. But no matter how much I relax, no matter how much I need them, they don’t come. Normally, all I have to do to get them to appear is visualize them. The fact that it’s not working makes my heart race. It also makes me feel incredibly vulnerable, which isn’t an emotion I’m used to feeling. I can certainly empathize with the human souls I collect, but I’m a heavenly being. I’m not susceptible to any real threats. Until the Fates and I went to hell to retrieve those souls, I had never known real danger. But at least I had them. This horrible isolation is so much worse.
“I’m alone,” I whisper, and my words are once again swallowed by the damp darkness.
Time stretches before me like some horrible unknown. With no sun or moon, no workday, nothing to give me any indication of how long I’ve been down here. Despair is my constant companion.
I think about Mara’s last words to me—she’d told me I would help her, like it or not. But how? Surely keeping me tied up in this dank basement can’t be the entirety of her plan. There’s more to this situation than meets the eye, and it makes me wary.
Left to my own devices, I replay the memory of losing Lily again and again. Of course, I don’t know what really happened to her—I don’t remember anything after Nathair grabbed me—but I don’t trust that this woman, Mara, would do right by her. After all, why else would she have been lying in wait?
How is she even doing this? Is she the one blocking the mists, or is Nathair helping her? She’s human; her aged face attests to that. But that doesn’t mean she’s not powerful. When I think about the way those Archangels vanished… Well, it’s obvious our foe is much more formidable than we originally anticipated.
The thing is, humans aren’t supposed to know about our world.
But she does, and she vanquished two huge Archangels with no more than a touch.
I shiver again against the thought. Diligence, I remind myself. Just yesterday—in heavenly terms, at least, I met with God in his own personal Garden of Eden. He’d told me that my work was only just beginning. Diligence was the only way I’d see it through to the end.
The thought gives me strength. After all, diligence doesn’t leave room for despair. I wiggle my wrists. They’re tied together so tightly they’re starting to ache. The coarse rope is making my skin itch, and my squirming only makes it worse. My shoulders are sore from the awkward position. I’m ready to be free—I need to be free—but my wiggling doesn’t gain me an inch. Still, I have nothing but time stretched out ahead of me for what seems like an eternity. So I keep working. Keep squirming.
It’s not quick, and it’s not easy. It feels like a week passes as I struggle with my bonds, but it’s probably only a few hours. The more I struggle, the weaker the rope gets. I just have to keep working at it. Diligence.
Eventually, I manage to wiggle my right hand just enough to give myself some leverage. I’m not out completely, but I know I’ll be home free soon. But my shoulders are screaming, and each movement makes it worse. Still, I know I can’t stay here. I can’t give up. My work isn’t done. I have souls to save and a human to stop.
One arm comes free first, and I slowly bring it around to the front of my body. I can almost hear the creaking in my shoulder. The urge to groan is almost impossible to resist, but I have no concept of the rest of the building, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. The last thing I need is for Nathair to come check on me. I’d be right back where I started if that happened. Or worse.
I have no idea what they’d do to me. The worst-case scenario ends with me joining the Archangels she made disappear, wherever they went. I shudder at the thought, determined not to let that happen.
I sit for a moment and revel in my almost freedom, but my left hand is still tied to the pole. Sighing, I extend my free arm back behind me to help untie my other hand, pushing past the pain in my shoulder.
It only takes a few moments, but it’s a few too long fo
r my aching body. Once both hands are free, I rub my wrists and bend over, bringing my knees up so I have a place to rest my head.
Now what?
My unseeing eyes search the darkness. The way out is just a few paces in front of me. But this isn’t hell, where all the doors are open. Most who are brought there truly have no hope of escape—the apparent freedom is yet another form of torture—so I probably can’t just open it and walk out of here. On second thought, I suppose this is what it feels like for the prisoners in hell. The doors may be open, sure, but what’s on the other side might be more frightening than what is inside. After seeing what Mara did to the Archangels, I’m very aware that I’m not invincible. Frankly, I’d like to avoid her if I can.
But then I scold myself. I can’t avoid her forever. I need to get her to stop this madness. But I can’t face her alone either.
Making up my mind, I nod. I need to escape and get reinforcements. Just like I did after I discovered the prison of souls in hell.
It’s comforting to have a plan of action, and it gives me the boost I need to rise to my feet. I dust off my long, black-and-white dress on impulse. I can’t actually see it, but I just feel dirty after sitting on the gritty floor for so long.
Taking slow, measured steps, I approach the door with my arms outstretched in front of me.
After a few short steps, I make contact with what I think is the door. It’s cold and smooth. I feel around, running my hands all over it, finding its outline among the cinderblocks.
There’s not even a handle on this side. But I push the rising despair back down. Keep moving. Keep working. Stay focused. Diligence. It’s my mantra as I feel for the slot in the door, hoping I can pry it open.
Hope is all I have in the darkness, and it’s lighting my way as my fingers find purchase in the door.
Three
Penn
The night drips on with a slowness that is painful, like trying to fill a gallon jug with a leaky faucet. It fills the three of us with dread because Michaela still hasn’t returned. By now, we know she isn’t in a meeting with Ryker. She isn’t taking her time with her quarry. She didn’t stop to admire a particular waterfall on Earth. She’s in trouble.
“We have to do something,” I say, standing so abruptly from my seat between my sisters that Galenia lets out a small gasp.
“What do you propose?” Horatia asks.
“I think we should go to the Reaper’s wing and start asking questions. Someone must have heard something.”
Galenia eyes me. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. What if you’re recognized?”
“I can’t sit still any longer,” I say. “We all know something went wrong.”
“Why don’t Horatia and I go?”
But the thought of waiting alone in Michaela’s room makes me panic a little. Okay, more than a little. It fills me with a sense of dread so cold I physically shiver. “No. I’m coming too.”
“How are two Fates and a Keeper going to avoid suspicion?” Galenia asks, clearly skeptical of my demand.
“It’s late. There probably aren’t too many people wandering around anyway,” Horatia points out.
“Galenia raises a good point,” I say. “It would be more inconspicuous if only one of us went. And since you two are joined at the hip, I should be the one to go.”
“Since when do you care about being inconspicuous?” Horatia asks.
Before I can put together a solid argument, Galenia says, “No. We go together or we wait and see. No in between. We’ve been to hell and back together, we can certainly manage the Reapers’ wing.” There’s a fire in Galenia’s eyes I wasn’t expecting. It assures me I’ve lost this battle. They’re coming with me.
As we make our way toward the naming room, the place where the Reapers gather before setting out each morning, I struggle to maintain my composure. The gravity of what her disappearance might mean makes my feet feel like lead and my breath huff out in short gasps. I can’t lose her. I can’t add her to the list of losses I’ve incurred since this all began. My job. My home. Andrew. Kismet. No, I can’t lose Michaela too.
It’s eerily quiet in the corridors. Soon, we find out why. All the Reapers are packed into the naming room.
“Is it normal for them to be gathered at this time of night?” Horatia asks, but from her concerned tone, I can tell she already knows the answer. We all do.
Through the glass doors, I can see them gathered in front of the podium as Ryker addresses them from on high. But I can’t hear what he’s saying. I search the crowd for Michaela. None of the Reapers are facing us, but it doesn’t matter. None of them share her long, blonde hair, her medium stature, or her glowing smile.
Relief wraps around me like a warm blanket when my eyes land on a Reaper with hair similar to Michaela’s. I will her to turn around. It has to be her. Who else could it be? I’m smiling, planning what I’m going to say to guilt-trip her for worrying us, when the woman turns. Her face is sharp, coming to a point at her chin, with deep brown eyes and skin darker than Michaela’s. Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling that washes over me.
Ryker is still talking. His facial expressions reveal nothing. He’s a stern man with a hard exterior, which means we’re not going to learn anything from watching him speak. We need to hear what he’s saying. But if one of them recognizes me, I’m done for. As a banished soul, if I’m discovered back in heaven, the punishment will be annihilation. Besides, if they spot the two Fates, they’re bound to ask questions. It’s lose-lose as far as I can see.
I sigh. I’m tired of living in a state of constant fear. It’s exhausting. But even though I want to live, I’m not willing to live like this. Anyway, Michaela stuck out her neck to bring me back here. The least I can do is stick my own out for her.
Throwing caution to the wind, I slip into the naming room, with the Fates right on my heels. With any luck, the Reapers won’t notice. But I’ve been in here before in my Keeper’s uniform. Perhaps, if pressured, I can concoct a similar story about collecting information for the Keepers’ records. Maybe even ask about the whereabouts of the latest missing Reaper. Nathair still hasn’t been found, and the thought makes me shiver as I wonder if he and Michaela met with a similar fate.
That doesn’t explain the two Fates’ presence, but I’ll deal with that if I have to.
We linger near the door in case we need to make a fast getaway, but Ryker’s booming voice carries to the far corners of this room. He certainly is an intimidating presence, but I know Michaela has a soft spot for him, so there must be more to him. Then again, she has a soft spot for everyone, Webber included.
“Two Archangels have gone missing as well.” His statement rings through to the back of the room, striking me right through the heart.
Archangels? They are supposed to be the strongest of all of us. If someone managed to best them, the entire world as we know it is in danger. Galenia’s right. This situation is coming to a head. Now.
I swallow hard, trying to hold back a rising sense of panic. Panic isn’t my thing, and besides, it won’t help at all.
Ryker’s voice brings me back to the naming room. “Their disappearance is believed to be connected with Michaela’s. We’re doing everything we can to locate her, and we’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available.”
The Reapers erupt with questions—their voices a dull roar in the back of my mind. Or maybe that is just the blood rushing to my head. Michaela’s disappearance.
As if of its own accord, my hand reaches past Galenia and finds purchase against the glass, bracing myself against the news.
She’s really gone.
Four
Michaela
I hold still for a few moments, listening hard for any kind of sound on the other side of the door. My fingers grip the slat in the metal as if it’s my only lifeline. I hear nothing at all, only the heavy sound of my own breathing. But I have no idea if that’s because the door is soundproof, or if it mea
ns there’s no one on the other side. Would they leave me unguarded? There’s only one way to find out.
Worming the pads of my fingers into the small space between the slat and the door, I ease the small window open, millimeter by millimeter, until I have a firm hold. I pause, listening again, but there’s still nothing. I try to ease it open as quietly as possible, but it makes that same screeching metal-on-metal sound, and the slower I move, the longer it drags out. Acting on impulse, I push it open hard. The sound echoes as if bouncing off walls that are too close together. I can only hope no one else heard it.
Blinking, I peer out the window, but the darkness outside is as absolute as it is in the room. When Nathair checked on me, there was light streaming in. Why is it so dark now?
I can only hope this isn’t simply a smaller interior room in a larger basement that’s guarded by another locked door. Before I can slump over with despair, I shake my head. No. I can’t harp on everything that might go wrong. This is my opportunity to act.
Moving carefully, with tentative movements, I stick my arm out of the opening, hoping that if I can’t see anything outside the door, then a potential guard can’t see me either.
Pushing myself all the way to the edge of the window, I stretch my arm out as far as it will go, reaching for the edge of the door. Trying to find some sort of handle. When I don’t find anything, I move to the other side. My hand finds purchase, and I almost buckle with relief. There’s a knob on some kind of slider, and above it, a deadbolt. That’s as far as my arm will reach, so if there’s another lock under the knob, I won’t know until I try to push the door open.
First, I try to undo the deadbolt, but it protests. It feels unused, not to mention displeased with the movement. It cries out with another scraping metal sound as it slams home. Trying to keep panic at bay, I feel for the other lock with a shaking hand.
The Children of Wisdom Trilogy Page 33
