A wing brushed her as they began to beat, and she felt chaos sweep through her. If not for the golden presence driving her body, Isela would have been lost to madness. As it was, she could not lift the knife. She began to weep.
The angel opened its eyes.
Pure black, without an iris, the eyes took up half its narrow face. In them, she saw nothing—and everything—the cosmos born and dying, in endless sequence. She knew what she must do. Its hand shot up to her wrist. She twisted, spinning and dragging the thing off the altar onto the floor. It was still weak physically—and she was able to get her hand and the blade free.
The blade sang through the air twice, and the angel let out a shriek. It fell back onto the floor. It left severed wings behind, trailing diamond threads like droplets of blood. It backed into the altar, mouth open mutely now, and Isela drove the knife home.
The world went white.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Why haven’t you spoken to me before?
None of us possess the ability of speech unless we take possession of a human.
Isela was having a telepathic conversation with her shadow. The god. All around her was darkness and stillness so profound she felt it must have always been and would never end.
She tried not to think about how strange this all was.
Who—what are you? she asked.
I loved her once, in the body of another mortal. I tried to warn him, but he was lost to her.
You were the god that possessed her dancer, Luther Voss.
A sensation of assent. We have never been gods, Isela. You named us that.
The light was not uniform. A soft-edged glow pulsed in the distance like a dying star. She was moving toward it now, though her body was still. What a strange dream this was.
But I thought you were female.
A laugh so gentle filled the air it made her want to smile. Gender is a human trait, Isela. It is enough to say that I am.
Are all—of them—like you?
Are all leaves the same—even from the same tree?
Isela considered it for a moment. Why do you care? About us?
You fascinate us. Your short lives are ruled by your physical presence. We have neither. We find humans intoxicating.
You let us think you were gods.
Why not? We like your gods. There are so many to choose from and each with its own relationship to your race.
Isela thought of the war that had almost ended the world. Why did you help us try to destroy one another?
Don’t mistake fascination for regard, the voice chided. Some of us hate our addiction and would see you perish.
Yes, she was definitely moving. Or the light was drawing closer. Where are we going?
I don’t know, I’ve never followed a mortal this far before.
This far?
Into death.
Isela would have gasped had she had lungs. Instead, she found she could control her movements, and she spun, running back the way they had come, but it was impossible to tell if the distance shortened. When she turned, the light was larger. Brighter.
No, she shook her head. I can’t be dead. I can’t.
No mortal can survive an angel’s touch. Even one not fully formed.
“Little Bird? Is that you?”
A sob stuck in her throat, and she turned back to the light to see her father emerging. He looked as he hadn’t in twenty years, and it was clear how much his illness had cost him at the end. She ran into his arms. He smelled the same, felt the same. In that moment, she was seven again, and he was pushing her on the swing set in the park.
When she opened her eyes, they were in Vysehrad Park on an autumn day. The leaves were shades of flame and ember, the air so crisp it stung her lungs.
Lukas Vogel laughed. “You’re much better at this than I am.”
I’m dead?
Yes and no, the golden voice said.
What does that mean?
If death were a train ride away, you’re in the station waiting to board. Your dad is real though. He hasn’t moved on.
Isela collapsed into the nearest swing, kicking her feet in the leaves and sand beneath.
“What’s the matter, Little Bird?” Lukas Vogel grasped the chain links on either side of her hands and began, gently, to push.
“Dad, we’re dead,” she whispered around the tightening in her throat.
Lukas Vogel sat in the swing beside her, stretching out a hand to catch hers. “I know. I didn’t expect to see you here so soon.”
All the unspoken regrets rose in her. That she would never feel Azrael’s heat racing through her body again or wake up in a pile of smoldering sheets. She would not get to know her family for who they truly were and see her nieces and nephews grow up.
You did what had to be done. You made a great sacrifice. She couldn’t be allowed to succeed.
But Azrael. Her desire drew her back to the room below ground in the cemetery.
Isela hovered above the mess: the remnants of angel wings, hardening pewter dull, and the fading demons, melting into shadows once again. Outside the circle of light, she recognized the familiar dark head of hair and broad shoulders, crouched on the floor with a limp body in his arms. Around him, his four were down on one knee, heads bowed. The pale wolf, his pelt sticky with blood and demon gore, sat back on his haunches and loosed a skull-tingling howl. The rest of the pack came down into the darkness to join their brother in mourning.
Her. She realized. They were calling for her. And Azrael was sitting on the floor, bleeding from a hundred different wounds with her body cradled in his arms. He was rocking, she realized, and saying something she could not quite make out.
Isela was standing outside the circle, and no one could see her. She looked at her father beside her, his face full of pain.
“You don’t belong here, Little Bird.”
What if there was a loophole between life and death, a way back, would you take it?
Isela would have stopped breathing, but that was already status quo. She went still and silent. Waiting.
I can’t bring you back to life, but I can take you with me.
I don’t understand.
You accepted me once. Do it again, Isela. Only this time make it permanent. Share your body with me.
Horror crept through her. Possessed by a god. It was no better than becoming a zombie, a slave at the whim of a more powerful entity.
I don’t want to control you, to make you anything other than you are. I like you, Isela.
What’s the catch?
The gold shimmer laughed. I experienced physical form once for such a short while. I want to be alive again. And I can be helpful, you’ll see. I know things that even necromancers don’t.
Isela heard a wink in that voice. She closed her eyes, unable to watch Azrael grieving any longer. She felt her hand encased in a larger one, warmth spreading up her arms. Once again, she was being asked to give up everything she’d ever known for something she’d never known she wanted.
“I want to go home, Papa.”
“I know,” he said, pressing his lips to her temple. “I know.”
Losing to Róisín couldn’t have felt worse than this. Azrael had won; his Aegis was whole. He would recover, even increase his power in time. Defeating another necromancer always strengthened the victor.
Yet he had never felt this hollow. The emptiness cut deeper because he had so recently known fullness to the point of bursting in Isela’s arms. Grief crumbled a thousand years of world-weariness like waves drawing sand under his feet.
His sight began to return as his corneas healed. He’d felt his way to her, crawling across the floor until he could put his fingers on her face. He wanted to believe he saw the rise of her ribcage and the flicker of her eyelashes against her cheek.
But he knew better. From the first days of his power, he could sense the death that each mortal held, like the blemish of a bruise on a ripe fruit. In some, it was small; in others, large and immin
ent. But it was always there. In those that death had taken, the mark covered them head to toe. Isela was a darkness, an absence of all light and warmth. He barely registered the hand on his shoulder.
“Bring her back,” Rory said, a gravel-toned command.
It had been his first instinct, to reach into the In Between and call her soul back into her body. He should do it. She belonged to him. His dancer; her human body too frail to serve the wolf heart it caged.
It had been a thousand years since he’d known grief. More since the realization he would outlive everyone he loved and their children’s children, for an eternity. It had taken him decades to rise up out of the ennui caused by that kind of loss. He wanted to hate Isela for stripping away the walls that he’d cultivated. Gregor was right to reject his humanity, to protect himself from the damage it could wreak.
He should bring her back. It would serve her right. She would have no choice but to obey. As the summoned dead, she would be a servant to his will. And she would never forgive him for it.
Azrael shook his head, unable to speak.
Anguish and rage swelled in the emptiness. As Isela would have said, it simply was not fair. He’d done everything he could to protect her. And she had walked into her own death with open arms. To help him. To preserve a world that would be dimmer for the loss of her presence.
Azrael curled the empty body in his arms, feeling the heat from his skin flow into hers. In the silence, the voices of the wolves called into the night in tones richer than any human song.
“I will build you monuments,” he promised her at last, preparing himself to give her one last gift. “Everyone will know what Isela Vogel did for humanity.”
He would burn her body. With no physical remains, she could not be summoned. She would never be forced back into this plane against her will. It was the least he could do to protect the life he had cherished. He let the heat flow into her, prepared to hold her until the last of her became ash.
The youngest wolf stopped midhowl. He slunk forward on his belly to put a paw on Isela’s leg. He whined, and Azrael met his gaze. The too-human glaucous eyes looked unsure.
Azrael wondered how much they understood as animals. The young wolf nudged his arm where it rested against her chest. Again the whine, questioning. Should he try to explain?
The howling stopped abruptly.
“Monuments, Azrael?” a weak voice said from under his collarbone. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Azrael felt her body beginning to stir as life crept into the darkness, chasing away the shadow of death. Hope, raw and unbidden unfurled in his chest. It filled the hollowed-out space and expanded, making his ribs ache. She was alive. He crushed her against his chest, determined not to let her go.
“Why is it so hot in here?”
Azrael recoiled the heat as quickly as he could as the sweat began to bead on her skin.
A wolf tongue flicked out, bathing her face from chin to temple.
“Chris, gross!” Her face wrinkled in disgust.
The gray’s jaws opened in a canine grin. She laughed, and Azrael watched a thread of gold streak through her irises. He took her chin in his bloody hands, turning her face toward him. Her expression changed, the helpless smile sliding slowly away as she saw the realization in his face.
“Isela,” he breathed. “What have you done?”
Before his eyes, the earthy gray was slowly overtaken by shining gold.
When Isela emerged from the tomb in Gregor’s arms, something about the sight of desecrated graves and still-twitching corpses in dawn’s rosy sunlight undid her. Behind Gregor, Rory supported Azrael’s weight, while Lysippe bore the wrapped grimoire and Róisín’s broken heart.
From the time Isela and her brothers had been children, their mother always said the solstice was a time for strengthening bonds and taking stock of the past to move forward into the future. Flanked by three wolves and surrounded by Azrael’s inhuman guard, she had the distinct impression the Isela who had walked into that tomb had been left behind. And it wasn’t just the goddess inside her now. The dancer she had been—naive of the true world—was gone. She didn’t know the woman who emerged, but there was time enough to find out. She began to sob, for no other reason than she would live to see the days grow longer again.
Gregor grit his teeth and produced a handkerchief.
The coven had done its job well—minimizing the damage outside the cemetery to the equivalent of a minor earthquake. Azrael’s people would be busy for weeks maintaining the cover story while the work was done to repair the damage done by Róisín’s attempted revenge.
The cemetery had been cordoned off by local police and the undead servants of the necromancer. A series of black vehicles with tinted glass was waved through to meet them. Lysippe helped Azrael inside a Mercedes van.
She could see Azrael’s power now, as though an extra layer of sight had been added to her eyes. It curled and roiled around his edges like sun flares. Even the members of his Aegis bore faint traces of it.
Gregor slid her inside with more gentleness than she knew he possessed, before snarling at her to put on her own seat belt.
“Hi, Miss Vogel,” Tyler said from behind the wheel. His aura was an absence of light. She wondered if that was because he was dead and if so, what she looked like. “Glad to see you’re all right.”
“You too,” she said, meaning it.
The wolves sulked, clearly unsure of how to deal with their sudden exposure to daylight in the middle of the city. Gregor opened the tailgate. Markus growled, ears flat. Tobias looked between Isela and their brother.
Christof decided, leaping in with a wag of his plumed tail. Tobias came next, almost missing his landing when his injured leg buckled. Gregor hooked him under the hind legs, boosting him the rest of the way.
Still bristling, Markus made the easy jump, staying far away from the Hessian. The Sprinter’s rear springs sagged alarmingly.
“Suit yourself, fleabag,” Gregor said cheerily, slamming the door shut.
Isela smiled at the sight of the three panting werewolves. She patted Tobias, and Christof took another long swipe at her face with a big pink tongue. “Quit that.”
Markus growled uneasily, and she reached a hand to reassure him, but he darted away. Isela settled in her seat, ignoring the ache of his rejection. She watched Rory hoist the bag holding the remnants of the angel wings. Dory took the cloth-wrapped grimoire from Lysippe.
“Is it dead?” Isela asked.
Azrael shook his head. “It was too close to being complete. But it has no physical form, and you prevented it from acquiring its full power. It fled, without a trace, but the Aegis will continue to hunt for it.”
Gregor climbed into the passenger seat as the rest of the guard filed into the other vehicles. When she looked away from the window, Azrael was watching her.
“It can’t hurt anyone can it?” Isela said, a tangle of emotion in her throat.
“Not as it is,” Azrael said. “And with the grimoire under my control, the spell cannot be completed.”
“Can’t you just let it be then?” She avoiding meeting his eyes as tears blurred the scenery outside. “Do you have to—kill it?”
Azrael sighed. “You are still human enough, so quick to empathize.”
She thought about the bargain she’d made. How much would the goddess change her?
“I can’t read you anymore,” Azrael said quietly.
Isela hesitated, knowing he saw exactly what she was. Her throat was a tight knot. She remembered the arrogant confidence of his statement that everyone in his household was an open book. Even if he had been trying to respect her boundaries, it was a choice. That had been taken from him. Fear of the unknown had undone Róisín, made her susceptible to the suspicions of the other necromancers.
“Is that the only thing that’s changed?” She was happy she managed to sound calm as her chest clenched.
“It’s gone,” he said. “The kernel of death
that all humans hold. I’ve scanned you, three, four times since we left the tomb. It’s gone.”
Isela turned her attention inward, alarm growing.
Can you hear me?
Of course. The golden voice came sluggish and distant, as if it were curling up for a long sleep.
Does that mean—
You can still be killed, Isela. It will be a while before you are strong enough to resist blade and spell. But disease, illness, or age cannot touch you. Consider it a side effect.
What am I now?
Same as you’ve ever been, the golden voice answered. Just with a few—tweaks. Shh, I didn’t know it would be so tiring—being born this way.
Azrael was waiting in that patient stillness when her attention returned to the car.
“I just wanted to come back,” she said bluntly. “I wasn’t ready to leave you. Now I don’t know who—what—I am anymore.”
She felt it first—the long tendrils of heat that curled away from his body and encircled hers. They beckoned, when his arms were too weak, and she went willingly.
She thought of what the golden shadow had said about warning Luther Voss. She understood now how Róisín’s lover would have gone to her bed anyway, knowing she would be his end.
Isela couldn’t have made herself run from Azrael if she wanted to.
In spite of her own terror, the golden shadow seemed quiescent in her chest. Azrael waited until she was curled up against his least-damaged side, tangled his fingers in the mess of her hair, and drew her face to his.
“You are Isela Vogel,” he said. “Kin to witches and wolves. Vessel of a god. And my consort.”
Azrael named her, and claimed her, in a single breath. And she knew whatever happened next, she was home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Even with her own army of undead, pulling off a dream wedding on New Year’s Day took more work than Isela would have imagined. With Azrael healing, Lysippe was charged with handling his official business, including the fallout from Róisín’s attack on the city. That left Gregor to be Isela’s right hand.
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