Kishi flew us away so fast that I couldn’t control myself from falling into that peaceful state with the celestial chords. The music was so much louder with her than Adriel, and I knew why Cadmon wished her to carry him. Each strum pulsed deeply in my soul, pushing away the fear of leaving Adriel behind with Japheem. No matter how I struggled to keep that acuteness in the forefront of my mind, the music pushed it aside. He was going to be fine, everything was going to be fine, and the music was calling me home.
Anemoi were all around us, snapping and leaping. A streak of blood appeared on Kishi’s arm from a claw. Even that failed to fully rouse me, and I was only partially aware when we stopped going parallel to the clouds. Kishi climbed vertically up to the heavens.
When she stopped, I came back to myself. My stomach clenched at how high we had gotten. Kishi’s wings beat slowly to hold us in place. Inspecting her bloody arm, she said, “Let them try to chase us without the air to form their bodies.”
“How am I breathing then?” I asked.
“Because you’re holding onto an angel.”
“Your arm . . .”
“Hardly a scratch.” She motioned to the gun at her waist. “We need to get these Rippers into bindings. They can’t call the anemoi to them once inside.”
“It looks so peaceful,” I said about the world beneath us. Clouds curled over the green and golden land in white wisps, with a deeper bank of gray over the ocean.
“That’s how it always looks to an angel. Almost always,” Kishi said. “Well, do you want to hang out here, or take down some Rippers? I’ll fly if you shoot.”
“I’ve never shot a gun before,” I said, although I was eager to do this.
“It’s easy. Take aim and pull the trigger. The safety is off.” The floor beneath us tilted, and we spun back to earth in a sapphire streak. The chords pulled me away until we burst out over the Santa Cruz cliffs and she slowed.
One figure enveloped in links was lying across the scorched earth. Collan was over the side, clinging to crumbling handholds. A streak of ruby passed by and pulled him back to the top. Zakia had been thrown over the side entirely, and was struggling to cling to a rock in the waves. I pointed him out to Kishi, who looked down and hesitated. Then I said, “Don’t you dare tell me that he doesn’t have a soul! Get him!”
We shot down as a wave crashed over and tore him from the rock. Swept away helplessly to the cliffs, he flailed for another rock that was just out of his grasp. His fingers scratched along its surface and I reached out to catch his wrist. We shot up the cliffs too fast for us to even speak to one another. I released him upon the black earth and slid the gun from the holster.
Silea wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and Radeo was lying on the grass farther away and clutching his left leg. Collan and Evanyi were taking cover within the crack to the cave, since the firefight between the Graystones and two of the Rippers was out of control. Barasho was in the middle of the blackened space with fire wheeling crazily from his palms as Taurin threw his own. Zakia threw himself down to not be burned.
Makala punched Drina, who reeled away and fell to one knee. We shot over there, Makala raising her sword high. She brought it down, intending to sever one of those emerald wings. A streak of silver raced between us and for the briefest moment, I saw Cadmon’s face alight with outrage. He flew right into Makala’s side and the two of them went spinning away. Drina rose to her feet, screaming, “Cadmon!”
Kishi changed course to pursue that wheeling tangle of silver and dingy green. It came to rest upon a hillside with Makala on top, her wings pulling back to reveal her straddling that little form. Her sword was held beneath his chin. He kicked and struggled while we raced over, Makala laughing in his face to see him flail. All I could think was we were not going to reach them in time, and that Cadmon was going to be decapitated. Behind us, Drina was still screaming his name.
“Fire!” Kishi shouted. I took aim at Makala’s back and pulled the trigger. The Ripper lurched away and sent fire to us. The bullet struck Cadmon and sprayed links all over his body, encasing him in the gold of the atah’pay bindings. Kishi yanked us to the side to avoid the archus.
“Go back! Go back so I can release him!” I exclaimed.
“We can’t!” Kishi cried. Makala was on our tail, cutting her arm through the air and sending out an arc of fire.
Sunlight glinted off something in the grass, and then a bloody Silea rose from it with a gun cocked to her shoulder. She fired and Makala dropped from the sky. Her body was covered in the gold links by the time she hit the ground with a tremendous thud.
“Makala!” Anemoi took shape everywhere around Barasho. The Kreelings in the cave ran out and threw blades to disperse them. Barasho ran for the bundled body. His wings burst into view to speed him there, and muddy fire lanced out with every slash of his hand through the air.
Zakia collided with him. Silea shot again but missed, the links splashing harmlessly upon the cliffs. She cracked open her gun to reload fast. Radeo scrabbled in the grass around him, searching for his own weapon. I saw the gun from my height where he could not, and it was far beyond where he was seeking it.
Heaving Zakia off the ground by his arm, Barasho rose into the air. He nodded to me and said dangerously, “Release her, or I drop him.”
“Let him drop me!” Zakia yelled.
“No!” I shouted, for Barasho was pulling higher and higher into the sky. “No! Kishi, set me down, I’ll open her bindings.”
Barasho lowered as Kishi did, and then my feet were upon the black earth. I set down the gun slowly, with Barasho watching every move in suspicion from ten feet over the ground. The bundle of golden links was still, Makala not even attempting to escape whereas Zofia was still thrashing a little in the other bundle farther away.
I placed my hands on the links over Makala’s head. They separated at once under the touch of my fingers. Reluctantly I drew them down to reveal her face. She looked up to me in hate, and a gun fired. Zakia was falling to earth with Barasho crying out above. The golden links were spreading over his legs, moving up to his wings and he beat rapidly to keep them from being engulfed. I ran over to Zakia, who had crumpled onto his side. “Are you okay? Zakia!” He moaned.
“Jessa, move!” Silea shouted, the gun at her shoulder. Barasho was wheeling out of control with the links taking over his wings. Then I was down on the ground with Zakia shielding me. The golden bundle struck his back and he grunted from the weight and force of the strike. It rolled off and came to rest beside us. Makala screamed for Barasho and the newly forming anemoi dispersed.
“You get into a lot of messes, Jessa Bright,” Zakia said. He sat back and offered a hand to pull me up to a sitting position.
“I don’t mean to,” I said. “They just find me.”
Drina touched down to the ground beside us with the small bundle of Cadmon in her arms. Setting him down, she said, “Jessa, will you? I can’t get him out of there as an angel.”
I separated the links at his face and drew them down to his shoulders. Cadmon smiled to see me. I kissed his forehead and said, “Hi, honey.”
“I hid the keys,” Cadmon said breathily. For the moment, he was fully present in his surroundings. “So Taurin put the fob on them. Then the Rippers hid you, but you had the keys.” He laughed, a sound so merry that it was impossible not to laugh with him. I put my hands to the links upon his chest and spread them outwards. They split and fell onto the ground.
Everyone was clustered around, Collan bringing over Radeo from the grass and Evanyi holding up her cell phone to see if she could get a signal. Taurin spread out his ruby red wings for Drina to smooth away a few that were burned. With her head still exposed, Makala cursed and shouted at us until Silea closed the links. Then she nudged Barasho’s bundle with her foot.
“You shot him even though he was still holding Zakia up high,” I said. “You could have really hurt him with that fall.”
“That’s not my concern,” Silea said. “A kreolos hu
nter protects humans above all, not zombies or vampires or fallen angels.”
“It’s okay, Jessa,” Zakia whispered. It wasn’t okay with me. I looked out to the horizon for Adriel. The storm far out to sea was moving in, the waves bashing themselves even more furiously on the cliffs. Dark clouds were rolling this way.
The Kreelings made arrangements for a truck to come out here. The Rippers would be loaded into the back and taken to the caves to wait out eternity there. Radeo had twisted his back so badly in the fight that he could barely walk, so Kishi offered to fly him over the hills and down to the hotel rooms the Kreelings had rented while helping with the search. They were gone in a smear of blue that muted to smoke.
“What do you think happened to him?” I asked in frustration.
Zakia squinted at the clouds. “I can’t tell if that one is moving . . . does it look like a streak to you?”
I followed his gaze out to the coming storm. The distance was too great to see anything but that thick bank of gray clouds. If something had happened, I didn’t know how I was going to go on. Behind us, Drina shouted, “No more wings!” Cadmon had risen into the air like a silver star. He descended.
“Not bad for a kreili girl,” Evanyi called to Silea. “Your first capture and you have yet to take a trial.”
“She’s not a full kreolos hunter yet,” Zakia said in a low voice. “You don’t qualify for the three trials until you’re seventeen. Once she passes those, then she’s considered kreolos.”
“She shouldn’t have let you fall like that!” I said.
“Your life is worth more than mine. No. Don’t be mad about it. That’s just how it is. The moment the zombie sank his teeth into me ninety years ago . . . I stopped being worth as much.” We looked out to the storm on the horizon. I slipped my hand into his cool one, refusing to accept that he was any less.
“I think your worth is determined by your choices,” I said, pressing my cheek into his mole. “You didn’t choose to be what you are, not like the Rippers chose to be what they are. So you’re worth just as much as you ever were.”
He chuckled. “I knew you were going to grow up into an interesting person. I knew it when I walked you home as a little girl. I never forgot you or that day. You were trying so hard to be brave. You didn’t know how to ask for help when you weren’t supposed to talk to strangers. Do you remember?”
“Not all of it,” I said. “That was so long ago.”
“You looked up at me and said are you a kidnapper? Because if you’re a kidnapper, then I can’t ask you for help getting home.” His body quivered with laughter, the vibrations of it passing through to me. “I said no. My name was Jaden Cooper and I was not a kidnapper. So you figured it was okay to ask for directions.”
The clouds moved in incrementally and drove the waves forth. By night, Santa Cruz was going to be under siege by this storm. Noticing a spot of blood on Zakia’s ripped jeans, I said, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll heal. That would have been a harder fall for a human. It will take a lot more than that to kill me. Lotus will be so thrilled to hear we’ve gotten you back. She’s with Mercy right now.”
“Is Mercy all right?”
“No. She’s very, very old, and this week her health took a major nosedive. It’s getting to the end. She’s coming to her horizon. So Lotus is sitting with her.”
“Oh, Zakia, I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded. “That was hard, back when it first happened. To have almost everyone turn away . . . it was difficult to accept. I loved my family very much, and they loved me. To be suddenly shunned by those who came through that night . . . and finally I realized that a lot of them didn’t consider me as one who had come through. I wasn’t Embry Cooper any longer. The moment I was bitten, I died to them even if I was still breathing. You have moments in life where absolutely everything changes, and you don’t even understand at the time the depths to which everything goes.”
“Some day I want to hear all of your story. When you’re ready.” I understood what he was talking about to some degree. When my parents won the cruise, I had known that our lives were going to change but I hadn’t grasped the extent of it. There was no way for me to do that. It just had to be lived.
A dark streak dipped below the clouds. It was racing for the cliffs. Zakia and I cried out to the others that someone was coming. We backed away from the edge, the three Kreeling hunters hurrying over and taking aim. The wings stayed muted, giving us no clue of which fallen angel was within.
The golden bundles were laid out side-by-side, and every one of them was still. With his wings bare of feathers at the tips, Taurin flew to the crack of the cave to reach Cadmon, who had been exploring over there. Drina flew up to a higher cliff to watch the smoke hurtling our way. A sapphire light shot over the hills and Kishi touched down upon another. Tense, all of us waited for it to arrive.
“Ripper!” Collan shouted, muddy fire flying out to the cliff upon which Drina was standing. She shot up while the grass was incinerated. More fire burst out, but this was the sweet blue and yellow of untainted archus. It flew through the air to that dark streak of smoke, and I shielded my eyes to see from where it had come. Adriel was flying just inches above the water. He had used the waves rolling in for cover. His fire burst out in front of Japheem, forcing him to reel back. For a moment, his dirty wings glinted in the sunlight.
Then they were flying for one another, two streaks of smoke shooting at high speed across the ocean. Adriel was rising from the water as Japheem dove down to it. Fire burst from both of them and connected with a blast into which they flew and disappeared. I screamed, for just being an angel and made of stronger materials than humans didn’t protect Adriel in whole. Japheem’s sword could scatter him to pieces along the bottom of the sea.
The explosion of smoke and flame blotted out the sky, crackling bits of fire falling from it to sizzle upon the water. The cliffs beneath us trembled from the impact, forcing the Kreelings to step back from the edge for safety. Their guns moved and moved, all eyes seeking through that eruption for signs of the two. Billows of steam rose up from the waves and settled heavily around us to obscure the cliffs and sky. It grew so thick that I could hardly see Zakia at my side.
A growl rattled through the fog.
“Oh, Jessa. This makes me very, very sad,” Japheem whispered. I whirled around, but no one was there. His sibilant voice issued from above and below, from every side and no side all at once. He was flying around us, and in his muted form so I couldn’t separate him from the mist. I searched fruitlessly for his whereabouts, Zakia’s arm coming around my collarbone and tightening there. He held me to him and we watched the fog.
“So sad, Jessa Bright, so sad. Did you not want to be a part of my family? You would rather stand here with one of the cut? Oh, you cannot see him as I do. I have touched the tapestry. I have stroked the threads of the cut. I have yanked them. The black pits of their souls, the absence of the celestial . . .”
“Leave me alone!” I shouted. The others were calling, trying to find everyone in the impenetrable grayness.
“Did I frighten you, Jessa?” Japheem asked. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I am going to take you some place very beautiful, so you can cry Japheem! Japheem! To live anywhere else but this place is death. To live with anyone else is death, too. So let go of the cut, and let me show you this place.”
There wasn’t a force in the universe that could have pried me from Zakia. Locking my hands around his muscular arm in terror, I said, “I’m claimed, Japheem, and not by you.” I belonged to my parents and grandfather and friends, to my fallen angel and Zakia, and to myself. Not to this mad Ripper.
“But whose mark is that on your wrist? Whose address? Hold it up! Is it a crescent moon divided by an arrow?” As he described my mark, I pressed the burn to Zakia’s arm to hide it. Japheem giggled. “Yes, it is the mark of Japheem! You wear my mark upon your wrist. So you belong to me.”
“Never,” Zakia said.<
br />
“Shall we play a game of tug-of-war for her?” Japheem asked, and Zakia hissed with pain. Blood leaked from a gash in his shoulder. “Oh, I do like games! I do, Jessa! So I will tug one arm and the cut will tug one arm, until you split in two. Then we will both have a piece of you.”
A hand came out of the mist and closed around my wrist. Zakia tried to pull me back, but that fist unlocked my fingers with ease and drew my arm away. When I screamed, Japheem’s laughter curled around us. “Yes! Yes! She likes this game!”
Archus fire exploded around us, and everything turned to brightness. The grip around my wrist released and I snatched my hand back. The mist evanesced to show the Kreeling hunters huddled back-to-back to defend themselves from anemoi, and a dark streak of smoke swirling around Zakia and myself. It unfolded into the filthy yellow wings of Japheem, and those unfolded to Japheem himself upon the black ground.
A golden light descended from the heavens, and within its blaze was Adriel. He sank down to the cliffs with the sword of blue and yellow fire. The aura created by the points of his wings in the direct sunlight was searing. A sword came to Japheem’s hand and he shouted upwards with laughter, “You cannot take what I have claimed! She has my mark!”
Adriel said nothing. His wings carried him to the earth. Clasping his sword in both hands, he swung when Japheem flew to him. My heart jumped to my throat as they traded blows that rattled through the air and caused the cliffs beneath us to quake. Over the ground the two stormed, Japheem’s laughter cutting short. Adriel was striking too hard and too fast for him to get his bearings.
A grinding sound began of rock against rock. Ruby and silver lights sped away from the caves, which were collapsing inwards with loud cracks. The rock under Drina’s feet was dropping down and falling into the ocean. She vanished into an emerald light and flew to the grass. Adriel staggered when the ground rocked under his feet, and Japheem lashed out to stab through his wing.
“Watch out!” I shouted. Adriel’s wings vanished the instant the sword touched them. To have met no resistance threw Japheem off-balance. Adriel drove his sword forward and lopped off the tip of one dirty yellow wing.
Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) Page 32
