Angelus (16 page)

“All right, you win,” Angela muttered. She stepped away from the bushes.

Juno relaxed her ears and wings, looking a million times less threatening. “I heard what Gloriana said about the canals beneath Luz. I can go with you to meet Azrael's twin.”

Angela considered her options, and diving into Luz's underworld was all that remained. She glanced up at the sky, a shot of fear burning through her as she thought she saw a shadow pass overhead, briefly blocking out the stars. Was it an angel again? Where had the winged Kirin gone? Hopefully it hadn't taken to the skies out of fear. She examined the stars, realizing with alarm that the sky shone brighter. The angelic city must have been coming closer to Luz.

The cold was probably even worse this hour than the previous. Realms were about to collide. She didn't have any time to delay. Sophia had said more than once she could take care of herself. Angela would have to trust and pray that was the case, no matter how much it left her screaming inside.

Angela glanced at Juno.

As if reading Angela's thoughts, the Jinn nodded sagely. Then it was settled. It was time to enter Luz's darkest level, to find the angel lurking in the mists.

Angela pressed against the bricks next to the storm grate Gloriana had mentioned was their entrance into the canals. She watched the silvery water churning below and swallowed. Already, she could feel the ice cold water freezing her bones and sucking out her air. She wanted Juno—anyone—to jump into the water with her.

But she'd already decided—she couldn't just let Sophia hide in Luz alone.

Over and over, she'd been practicing how to explain herself to Juno. Angela peeked back and forth down the empty alley. She was sure people lived down here, yet there weren't any lights behind the shuttered windows, and most of them were boarded up completely.

The cold air picked at her skin and lungs, and her breath looked like smoke.

At last, a gentle
thump
touched the cobblestones behind her. Angela turned quickly.

She'd never become used to how Jinn eyes glowed so eerily.

“Is something wrong?” Juno said, her ears pricking forward. She was on alert already.

“No, I'm sorry. I'm just not used to . . . well, never mind. Thanks for getting me these clothes,” Angela said. She plucked the pair of brown pants from Juno and then grabbed the form-fitting black shirt offered to her. It wasn't much, but it would at least keep her from freezing to death for fifteen minutes or so. Angela laid aside the scarves she'd been wearing. They would be too dangerous to bring into the water, wrapped around her neck.

This is insane.

“There's no way I'm allowing you to enter the canals alone,” Juno said almost sweetly.

Angela choked on her next breath. She stared at Juno. “How did you—”

“I could see it in your eyes,” Juno whispered. “Deep down in your soul, you want me to go after Sophia and watch over her. You're misunderstanding everything. She's safer than you at the moment.”

Angela took a deep breath again. “You're only saying that to make me feel better.”

“No. I know she and Nina and Fury are all right—for now. Nina is my Vapor. I can sense if she's in danger or not.”

“What?” Angela said. “Then you can tell me where they are, right?”

Juno's wings stiffened almost defensively. “I can't. If I would, don't you think I'd say something?”

“That's true. Well, tell me if you sense anything wrong at any point.”

“I will.”

“Juno?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you . . . for all your help.”

Juno bared her teeth, which for most Jinn passed as a smile, and then she leaned down, lifting the heavy grate separating them from the churning water beneath. Angela was already shivering. There was no way to know they wouldn't just get dumped right into the ocean, or worse. She stepped closer and then knelt down. If it was possible, the air beneath the grate actually seemed colder. But wasn't water always warmer than the surrounding air? She remembered that much from her schooling. Even so, it would be a small consolation.

“I'll be right behind you,” Juno said.

Angela steeled herself. She didn't want to jump into the water. She almost couldn't. Then, without thinking, she took the next step and slid inside.

The current snagged her like a fish on a hook, dragging her into water so cold it stole her breath away. Angela spluttered, trying to keep her head up to see and breathe, but it was almost impossible. Salt water entered her mouth and ears. Foam surrounded her head. The water roared, and she felt her entire body being thrown forward, faster and faster with every passing second. The bricks of the tunnel seemed to fly by on either side, and soon everything was a blur. She tried to shout for Juno, but only succeeded in getting more water in her mouth. Her bones ached. Her organs were probably freezing.

Then, Angela felt herself lurch over a sudden drop.

Her body splashed into calmer water and she used the last ounce of her strength to swim for an ancient boat moored to a shore of slimy cobblestones. The roar of the water was still deafening. Angela grasped the boat and clung to it as hard as she could. Somehow, she pulled herself inside and curled up, trying to stay warm. She couldn't take off her sopping
wet clothes, and her hair was plastered icily against her neck. She glanced up at the high arches of the stone ceiling above her. Icicles that looked more like silver daggers hung among the rock.

Juno crawled across the ceiling, weaving her way around the ice. She glided into the boat but didn't land gracefully. More water splashed inside, and Juno recoiled from the cold as she spread her wings, shaking off the moisture.

Angela might have complained if her teeth weren't chattering so violently.

Only by summoning all her strength could Angela uncurl herself and sit up to start rowing the boat.

She grasped the rotten oar and started to push, letting the current take them again.

Juno edged closer to her and wrapped her wings around Angela, trying to warm her as best she could.

Angela fought to stay conscious. Gloriana had said to watch for two statues, but all Angela saw was more brick, and more water, and suddenly her exhaustion caught up with her.

She was aware of Juno shouting in alarm. But Angela could do nothing as sleep sank its claws into her brain and, instead of letting go, fatally tightened its grip.

Angela awakened to what was initially utter darkness.

Soon her eyes adjusted, and she realized she lay in the bottom of a boat with water leaking through its wooden frame. But despite that, the air was oddly hot and stuffy, and she was no longer freezing but warm and almost entirely dry.

Now she noticed the boat wasn't rocking. They must have hit some kind of shore.

Slowly, Angela sat up and peered out into the quiet darkness. Juno stood in front of two statues flanking either side
of a narrow path. Hundreds of similarly ragged boats lay on the shore. Perhaps these were all that remained of adventurers who entered the underbelly of Luz. But something about the walls was strange. Angela noticed there were many tunnels branching off in various directions, all radiating from this central pool. The arches above the entryways had been skillfully constructed and elaborately carved. And then, her eyes focused completely.

Death lined the walls.

Innumerable bones had been set in just as innumerable shelves in the rock.

The canals beneath Luz were catacombs. Angela and Juno had entered a giant, watery tomb.

Angela swallowed, searching the empty eye sockets of thousands of grinning skulls.

She felt afraid to move again.

At any moment, it seemed the skulls would come to life and speak. Instead, they stared at her as they had stared into the water.

Juno crawled away from the statues and scampered nearer to Angela. She seemed relieved Angela was awake, but she shook her head again as they both regarded the bones that now made up the world. “They've been dead a long, long time,” Juno said. “I can smell it.”

“Please tell me you didn't try to taste any of them,” Angela said weakly.

Juno sighed. “There's no meat left in them,” she said very seriously. “Ah, I'm so hungry, though . . .”

Angela remembered Troy telling her how staying in this dimension caused her to become insanely hungry. The High Assassin of the Jinn had been a terror in Luz for a short time, taking the sick or criminals or other unsavory individuals as
her prey. She'd said there'd been no choice. It was either kill and devour her meals or starve to death.

Angela eyed Juno carefully.

Juno showed no sign that she noticed, but she licked her lips, and her eyes glazed over as she examined the bones again.

“These statues,” Angela said. She pointed at the two enormous stone angels flanking the narrow path Juno had been inspecting. “They look just like statues I've seen on buildings in Luz built by the Vatican. They probably made these catacombs ages ago. No wonder most people were unaware they existed. Every stupid teenager in Luz would be down here to see these bones if word got out. But why would an angel live down here? And why wouldn't she let people who found her leave again?”

Juno sniffed the air. “I don't smell an angel,” she said softly.

“Exactly. I bet it's more of a legend than anything else. The Vatican probably never really sent anyone down here to find her. They just sent guards to silence people who found the catacombs.”

“So Gloriana lied to us?” Juno flapped her wings before folding them crisply against her back again. “Why?”

Juno raised an interesting point. Gloriana had been smart enough to hide her real self from the Vatican for so long. She surely knew what she was talking about when it came to angels.

Angela trembled again, but the cold wasn't an excuse anymore. Fear crept into every fiber of her being.

She walked up to the statues and glanced from one to the other. Except for their size, they looked ordinary enough. The lanterns they held aloft had lost their flames ages ago. So how could Angela see in such darkness?

Then it hit her. The walls were glowing.

She peered more closely at the skulls and bones around them. Bluish lights danced behind their empty eye sockets before disappearing again. Angela knew these delicate glowing spheres. The first time she'd encountered them was in the Netherworld ruled by Azrael. They were human souls.

Maybe Gloriana is right. Azrael hoarded human souls. Why wouldn't his twin do the same?

What awaited them beyond the statues? According to Gloriana, no one had ever returned to tell.

Before she could reconsider her foolishness, Angela stepped beyond the statues and onto the long path to nowhere.

Juno followed behind, slinking with catlike grace among the heavy shadows. More of the bluish spheres flew by them into the blackness, and a few danced around Angela's head as if trying to warn her away. But she steeled herself and continued, listening to the slow and ominous drip of water from the icicles on the ceiling. Eventually, her ears caught a song floating toward them. There were no words, just a melody that seemed woven from time and starlight. Every note was clean and pure like a crystal dropped in water.

Angela gasped as she recognized it. This was Sophia's lullaby. As always, the song took Angela to distant worlds and back into unreachable time, and it plucked at her heart, summoning both pain and bliss. Tears burned the corners of Angela's eyes.

She felt so far away from everyone right now. Hearing this song only made the feeling worse.

If the song affected Juno, she didn't show it. But she didn't seem about to turn back either.

They entered another cavern. Narrow stone bridges stretched and crisscrossed over one another in a thousand
different directions. Far, far below the perilously narrow walkways, a pool of water gleamed. Barely a ripple touched its surface, and it was impossible to tell what stream fed it or how.

The music grew unendurably beautiful by the second.

Juno stepped out onto the middle of the walkway they'd used to enter, and Angela followed her. Even in Hell, she'd never seen anything quite like this. Angela glanced down at the water, and dizziness swept through her like a tornado. She looked at the walls around them, seeing thousands more skulls.

“I don't understand,” Angela whispered through the music. It now seemed to come from every direction at once. “Why would any angel hide in a place like this?”

Juno stiffened. She crouched down on her hands and feet and her ears pressed against her hair. She bared her teeth, snarling nastily.

Now the song sounded too enchanting, sweet, and pure. It had lured them deeper inside.

Angela's vision spun.

“Someone's coming,” Juno growled.

Angela couldn't see a thing. Was this angel invisible?

“They're here,” Juno said, her large eyes narrowing. She arched her wings defensively.

Angela and Juno each faced opposite directions instinctively.

Where was this angel? Where! And
what
was Angela even looking for?

The music stopped. Angela held her breath. Then, like he was emerging from a pocket in the air and ether, Kim appeared.

FROM BABYLON TO LUZ
12 HOURS EARLIER

The moment Troy said they were returning to Luz, a sense of dread had suffocated Kim. The idea of returning to that city frosted over his soul and gnawed at his insides. Nothing good could come from some mysterious angel locked up in Luz.

And Kim thought he'd known all there was to know about the Vatican's mysterious city.

Unfortunately, he'd been wrong.

As he followed Troy on whatever path she felt would return them to Earth, he couldn't help wondering. Who was this angel, and why did Troy seem so frightened of her? Was this really the right thing to do when he had such little time left to help Angela? Trading his soul to Python had left Kim clinging to every second like it was his last. He forced himself to think of Angela, and her warmth as she nestled in his arms.

He bit his lip and continued behind Troy in silence. Perhaps the darkness would never end. Perhaps they were trapped in a rat's maze that would dump them out at the very edge of the universe.

Thank goodness, he was wrong about that too. At last, they stopped in a circular cavern with pulsing hieroglyphs etched into the stone walls. Before them, a pool of water rested like a silver mirror.

Troy stepped to the water's edge and looked back at Kim, gesturing for him to come closer.

This wasn't an ordinary pool. A strange whispering filled the air.

Kim had to push himself to reach Troy's side.

Her ears were high and alert, and her breathing sounded ragged. So—she was afraid too. Troy glanced back nervously, as if Python might step out of the darkness any second.

“This is what Angela used to enter Luz,” Troy said so softly, she could have hissed. “The water called to her, she entered, and then she and the Book and the Kirin disappeared.”

“You didn't do anything to keep her out?” Kim snapped.

“Of course! I tried,” Troy snarled back at him. “But the pull of the water was too strong.”

“So you're suggesting that we enter the water and that's how we'll return to Luz?” he offered.

Troy continued examining the pool's deceptively peaceful surface. “It's the surest and quickest way. We don't have the time to climb into Memorial Cemetery through the Netherworld.”

That was an excuse and they both knew it. It seemed Troy was deliberately ignoring the fact that if either of them were spotted by a rival Jinn Clan—or their own—they would probably be killed. Perhaps her new status as a fugitive like Kim was so odious to her, she couldn't even bear mentioning it more than necessary.

“You're right,” Kim said, agreeing for the sake of avoid
ing another argument. “No time. So, we just walk into the pool?” he said again.

“Quiet, I'm trying to think,” Troy growled at him. She closed her glowing eyes. Then she opened them again and slid one toe into the water. Her entire body tensed.

Nothing happened.

Troy waded directly into the middle of the pool, cautiously at first, then with a hastiness born from frustration. Her ears flipped back in anger. She flapped her remaining wing, flinging silver droplets into the air. “I don't understand.”

“What? What's wrong?” Kim said. He knelt down and slipped a hand into the water. It was shockingly cold. He held up his hand again, watching the droplets slide down his pale fingers.

Troy growled under her breath. She examined the demonic hieroglyphs on the cavern walls. She seemed tempted to spit angrily in the water, but checked herself. “I should have known. Angela was summoned. Whoever brought her back to Luz waited until the right moment. Only a witch could know how to do that. They must have used a mirror somehow connected to these pools.”

“So now what?” Kim said, a little too angrily himself.

Troy noticed his accusatory tone. She gave him a warning glare. “Patience, cousin.
Let me think
.”

“For God's sake! We don't have time to climb into the Netherworld and we sure as hell don't have time to think,” Kim muttered, knowing she could hear him and not caring anymore. “Since when did you become such a detective anyway?”

“A what?” Troy said, bristling like he'd called her something hideous.

She clearly didn't know what that word meant.

“Never mind. Just hurry, damn it!”

Troy paced within the water. Then her eyes widened. She reached up to her hair and untied the iron crow's foot talisman she'd taken from Kim. She held it up to him, nodding. Then she waited a long moment before finally letting go, dropping it into the pool.

The crow's foot disappeared with barely a ripple. The whispering in the air grew louder, as if a million voices called to them at once. Troy instinctively backed away from a whirlpool forming in the pool's center and stood next to Kim again, water dripping from her hair, wing, and face. “I knew it,” she said. “As long as we have a physical connection to the Realm where we wish to travel, the pool acts as a portal.” She quieted again as the pool's outer edges reflected an odd image of bones and skulls. Troy licked her lips. “So, she's there. She's alive!” Troy said with a tenderness in her voice Kim never expected.

Kim didn't think she was talking about Angela right now.

“Who's alive?” he said, hoping to get some kind of information out of her.

Troy shook her head, breathing hard.

“Come on,” she said, grasping him by the arm so tightly Kim thought his bones might break. “We're leaving now. Before we miss our chance.”

She dragged him into the ice-cold water. Kim fought his instinct to splash back to shore, because the more Troy waded toward the pool's center, the more he felt they were doing something incredibly dangerous. The waves overtook them, and foamy water churned into his mouth. Then Troy lost her grip, and Kim's feet slipped, and he plunged into a frigid darkness that wrapped around his heart and filled every inch of his lungs.

No—this was a mistake
. He'd done the most stupid thing imaginable and allowed Troy to kill him when Angela needed him most.

Suddenly a different darkness seeped through Kim's brain. He felt stretched inside and out and nothingness took over. Was this death?

If so, it took Kim so stealthily, he might have fallen asleep.

The darkness didn't last. Kim's awareness returned by degrees, and before he knew what was happening, he surfaced for air, gasping and splashing his arms to catch his grip on anything that could save him. Finding nothing, Kim worked against an overwhelming ache in all his muscles and swam as hard as he could. At last, he reached some kind of shore. He collapsed like he was dead, spluttering water from between his lips. Now he realized the water tasted saline, as if it came from the ocean.

He grasped the hourglass pendant at his chest, turning over on his back as he examined it. One-third of the grains were gone.

A shot of fear scorched through him. How could that have happened so quickly?

Coughs to his left startled Kim from his horrified trance. He turned and saw Troy collapse on her hands and knees beside him, her wing feathers and hair sodden with water. Amazingly, she uncurled one of her palms and—
clink
—the crow's foot talisman dropped to the stone ground.

She'd somehow recovered it in the whirlpool.

They looked at each other.

Troy broke away from Kim's gaze and stood shakily to her feet. She leaned down, coughing out more water. She
wiped her mouth, her face scrunching with surprise. She must have noticed the water's saltiness too.

It seemed like they hadn't made any progress at all, yet they were clearly in another place, and that place was apparently somewhere in Luz. The hieroglyphs were gone, and instead thousands of skulls and bones gleamed at them from long carved rows in the rock. Bluish spheres appeared and disappeared, hiding within the skeletal remains. A lilting melody echoed in the background.

They were in catacombs, hidden below Luz.

Kim pushed up on his hands and knees and slowly rose to his feet, staring goggle-eyed at the sheer amount of bones. They seemed innumerable.

Without warning, Troy tensed and dropped to the ground again, her single wing raised high and stiff. She bared her teeth and her hair stood on end.

She was so terrifying, Kim could hardly look at her.

That was when he heard a low rhythmic noise. It echoed from above. He glanced up, searching the cavern's ceiling. Thin bridges of rock crisscrossed above them, though on the far side, they met at a ledge of black stone jutting from the wall. An immense creature sat upon it, with its four wings folded, and its glassy pure black eyes locked on them.

Kim couldn't move. He could barely breathe anymore.

The creature resembled a Hound, but its mane and body were pure white and its wings held a dazzling shine. Its humanlike hands rested on top of each other as it slouched like a regal lion, examining the mice who'd dared to enter its domain. Was this the angel Troy had been talking about?

The angel yawned, revealing teeth like daggers.

Troy didn't relax, even though the angel was making no
move to confront them. Worse, it was large enough not to care. Its hand was the size of Kim's entire body.

“You plunged us into a death trap,” Kim whispered to Troy. “What is this thing?”

“A Cherubim,” Troy said slowly. “She was once one of Raziel's Thrones. Or so she says.”

“How would you know? You've never been here before!”

“Some of my ancestors made it here. Only a few returned . . .”

“What? Why didn't all of them come back?”

Troy glanced at the bones surrounding them. “I'd guess the angel was hungry, fool.”

“Then what's to say she isn't hungry now?”

“
So you've arrived,
” a low female voice said. The angel's words ricocheted through Kim. He stood absolutely still, his brain screaming to run as the Cherubim dropped from her ledge to the ground directly in front of them. Her feet and hands met the stone with an immense thud, and she loomed over them, her jaws so immense and horrible that Kim's sanity threatened to melt. “
You've come about the Archon.
”

The angel knew why they were here?

Kim glanced at the Mirror Pool, now so glassy and still it was as if they'd never left its waters. This angel must have had the ability to scry the pool. Perhaps she saw them long before they ever arrived.

Kim stared back into the angel's onyx-hued eyes. They were somehow both vacant and absolutely penetrating, like staring into two black holes. But it didn't take much longer for him to realize they were also blind. The Cherubim followed Troy more with her ears than her gaze.

Troy was still on the defensive. “Yes, that's indeed why we've come,” Troy said cautiously.

The Cherubim turned and examined her with a strange vacant expression. “
A Jinn? I haven't spoken to one of your race in over two hundred years.
”

“How unlucky of you,” Kim rejoined sarcastically.

He shot Troy an ironic look she didn't bother noticing.

“Now, please explain to me why you're here. Because if it isn't for a good purpose, I have no use for you. And besides . . . I am rather hungry. They don't bring the dead down here anymore.”

Kim shuddered. He wanted to ask exactly why there was a Cherubim beneath Luz and why it fed off the dead. But he doubted his questions would be answered satisfactorily. It was bad enough to know that a monster like this lived and breathed beneath the city. It was a certainty she couldn't leave at will. How many of the priests knew about her? How many had died trying to reach her? That might forever be a mystery.

“I thought you knew why we've come,” Troy answered the Cherubim testily.

“
I do indeed,
” the Cherubim said. “
Yet—only to a certain degree. I cannot always rely on the visions I see in the pool. Sometimes they lie.
” The Cherubim sighed. She gazed now at Kim, piercing through to his soul as she spoke. “
One tiny change—a bird's wing testing the air, for instance—can set off a chain reaction that turns the present and the future in another direction. Between the time I gazed and saw you, and the moment you arrived, much could have changed concerning our destinies.
”

“When did you last look?” Kim said breathlessly. He stared at the water to his left. It was definitely a Mirror Pool like the one in Hell. But how could one have existed beneath Luz,
untouched by the ocean? The ocean came first, and Sophia had hinted that the Mirror Pools were incredibly ancient.

Kim remembered how the water tasted salty. He couldn't understand. A crucial detail was eluding him.

“
When did I last look?
” the angel repeated solemnly. “
Oh, a long time ago. And only a minute ago. Time is a concept, of course. Humans, and half-humans, aren't usually intelligent enough to understand. I won't even bother trying. This is the outer darkness beneath Luz. That is all you need to know.
”