Archon (24 page)

Twenty-four

Jinn have fallen in love with humans on occasion. However, the offspring of such unions are often killed outright by either parent; an act committed in cold blood, but one where instinct has rightly reigned over affection.

—
B
ROTHER
F
RANCIS,
Encyclopedia of the Realms

“M
ama, what are you doing? Mama?”

Kim knelt beside her in front of the fire, watching as she tossed baubles into the grate. His mother was beautiful. The most beautiful person in the world. Her hair was more lustrous than a raven’s wing, full of curls, and her eyes were a mix of earth and green grass. He’d never seen a woman with skin so white, and whenever her arms wrapped around him, hugging him close, he had to touch and pinch them as much as he could, because there was always the chance it might never happen again.

Lately it was harder and harder to get her attention.

She knelt in front of the fire a lot, throwing her rocks and jewels into the ash, whispering in a strange language he couldn’t figure out. Calling for someone. Begging. And their cottage walls had become covered, floor to ceiling, in symbols she never bothered explaining: circles, sharp lines, pictures that resembled flowers, and another picture of a face with horns on its head.

He never liked that one.

“Mama?”

“Hush,” she said, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Kim squirmed, resisting her. Then he grew still and she let go, continuing her soft mumbling. She grabbed some of the earth piled in a fold on her dress near her lap, tossed it into the fire, and the flames roared, bursting into a dazzle of orange and yellow. Mice crawled up and down the wood pile to his right, squeaking, relishing the warmth. Kim cleared a patch of rushes on the floor and sat next to them, hoping to catch one. They were always too fast.

“Kim,” his mother whispered. Her pretty eyes seemed larger.

“Yes, Mama?”

“Don’t you think it’s time to go to sleep? It’s very late, and the village master will be upset if you’re not tending the fields—”

“But I want to stay with you! What are you doing?”

“Papa’s coming tonight, Kim. You should know that by now.”

He shivered; always hating the way she said “papa,” and the idea that for days she’d be gone as if she’d never existed at all. Then he’d be holed up in his tiny room, rocking on the lice-covered bed, wishing and hoping her back until it became reality. Papa’s visits were always like that. Kim never saw him or spoke with him, and often he’d just press his ears to the door, listening to them talk about places that sounded strange and far away, and then the noises would begin, suggesting that his mother was in pain. He was convinced Papa hurt her all the time. Mother’s arms and legs and feet were covered in long, thin, scars that looked like cuts. Sometimes, when she finally unlocked the door and let him out, she would still be bleeding.

The rushes would be sticky for days, mice covering the floor and licking up what they could.

Tonight, though, was different.

He was going to see Papa. He was going to make sure he was noticed.

“All right,” he said, “I guess I can go to bed.”

“Good boy.” His mother hoisted herself up and stretched out her hand.

Kim took it and allowed her to lead him to his room, a dank little space with the bed on the floor and a few rags for blankets. The walls were bare stone, and the thatch over the roof usually dribbled insects for most of the night, but it was autumn, and many of them were dying or in the process of dying. His only regret was how alone that would make him. Mama never said she’d leave him in here for days, but they both knew that was the case. Kim stared at her nervously, stripping off his shirt and pants, dropping them near a mound of potatoes she’d set next to the door.

The water would arrive in a pan come morning.

“Mama, will you be gone long this time?”

“I don’t know, Kim.”

“Why do you lock me up in here?”

Wrong question. She slapped him across the face, and the tears sprang to his eyes immediately. He wouldn’t cry, though. She hated when he cried.

“Don’t make me angry. Get in bed. NOW.
”

Kim ran and hugged her instead.

“Get off me, Kim.” She said it like he was a cockroach. Like she was afraid of him and disgusted and ashamed, all at the same time. Mama could be so pretty and kind. But when Papa came, she changed. This was the mama he feared. The one who would curse at him and call him a devil. He found the key before she realized what he was doing and took it out of her pocket, hiding it inside his fist. When she moved to hit him again, he scampered to his bed and crawled below the rags, already feeling the fleas nip at his ankles. “Don’t leave this room. Promise me.”

“I promise.” The lie was easier than he’d hoped.

She shut the door, playing with the outer lock until it latched.

His candle eventually guttered out. The room stayed pitch-black for a while, until the moon rose over the cottage, and its silver light slipped through slats in the shutters. The noises were starting already. A hiss like the whisper of a snake. The low growl of a dog and the snarl of an angry fox. Kim gathered the rags below his chin, listening intently, amazed as always to hear the noises become words he could understand. They were talking about leaving. Papa wanted Mama to go somewhere with him, and she was protesting, but then her gasps and pained screams began, and she must have changed her mind, because she said Papa’s name over and over, like she was desperate to make him believe it.

His name was alien, sounding like the harshest mix of vowels and consonants.

The more Mama said it, the more unhappy she sounded.

Kim slipped out of his covers, gripping the key. Softly, he tiptoed to the door, lifted the key to the lock.

He pushed it inside, turning.

There was a click—and the knob rolled beneath his fingers.

Mama was silent.

Kim opened the door slower than anything he’d ever opened before, peeking through the slit at the hearth. The fire had burned down to cinders, smoldering a dirty orange. Next to them, her back and waist white as a cloud, his mother rested in the arms of someone with skin paler than hers, and his thin arm was tracing a nail along the skin near her neck, up and over the scars already there. Another cut opened beneath it, and the blood oozed down her back, red as garnet. Then Papa bent over her, slightly revealed by the moonlight, his great eyes shining like two yellow stars. Ribbed horns curved upward from a headdress that wrapped below his hair, and two shadows billowed behind them, making a breeze whenever they moved.

His mother turned her head and looked up at Papa, all longing and passion.

Then he scraped the side of her neck with his teeth, and while Mama shuddered, Papa stared back at Kim with those terrible yellow eyes. And all he could do was scream, scream, scream—

“S
ariel—”

Kim’s eyes snapped open. He shot up from the leaves, sweating, gasping.

He was soaked from head to toe, his coat soggy with rain and probably his own fear. A gurgle of thunder broke overhead, and Nina appeared in front of him, peering into his eyes with a mirror image of Lucifel’s. Mikel either hadn’t released her, or Nina didn’t want the angel to leave after all.

“Where’s Angela?” he said, fighting the sudden instinct to smack her aside and begin his search. “Did she leave?”

Mikel nodded. “You’re too late. He’s found her.”

He stood, brushing twigs and dirt from his back, knees, and shoulders. Then he shook out his hair and pieces of mulch sprayed side to side. Kim gasped, still smelling the hearth and the stuffiness of the rushes on his bedroom floor. “He? Who are you talking about?”

The angel regarded him coolly, probably remembering how he could torture her if he felt like it. “Israfel.”

Kim stopped breathing, thinking, almost living. He just stared back at her, his teeth chattering a little from the cold, the rain rolling down both of their faces. An immense crack of thunder resounded overhead and she stole a quick glimpse of the lightning only to meet his gaze again, unnaturally calm. The park roared on every side, leaves dropping like snow as they collapsed beneath the onslaught of water and wind. Branches waved and scratched against each other, and in their midst, Tileaf’s tree stood untouched, as if the storm weren’t worthy of putting an end to her misery. “How would you know that? You didn’t follow her—”

“His song.” Mikel held out a hand to catch the rain. “I could hear it. I am a spirit, priest. But it’s not my place to say when Nina Willis’s body awakens from sleep. I couldn’t follow Angela any faster than you.”

“Where did she go?”

Or where did
they
go?

“I have no way of knowing that.”

Israfel had been alive all this time, living like a hermit in the farthest reaches of Heaven, and suddenly, out of every era he could have chosen, the Supernal decided to visit Earth now? He must have been searching and waiting for the Archon all along—hoping to reunite with his dead brother. But Angela wasn’t the Archon. Troy had said so. Or, at least, she wasn’t Raziel. So why would the angel bother with her in the first place? Either he was—despite his lofty nature—as ignorant as them, or someone, somewhere, knew something that everybody else didn’t.

Mikel blinked at him, glassy-eyed.

Kim grabbed her by the throat, nearly lifting her from the ground.

The angel’s teeth gritted and she clutched at his hands, furious at how helpless she was.

“What do you know?” Kim shouted at her. “And how do you know it? It seems odd to me that if Angela isn’t the Archon, she still managed to snag your attention.”

The trees groaned, turning in on one another, their limbs snapping ominously. Then the wind picked up, mirroring Mikel’s fury, and a gale besieged Tileaf’s grotto, branches splitting and tumbling from thick trunks, leaves blowing about in a whirlwind, every gust whistling, howling. Rain slanted into Kim’s eyes and his mouth, and still he held on, threatening the worst.

“Answer me, angel.”

“I don’t know what she is either,” Mikel said, screaming over the storm, “but she was powerful enough to call me, and so I came—”

“You told Israfel that the Archon was here. Just like you told the demons.” He tightened his grip. “You’re toying with everyone.”

Mikel twisted, kicking at his legs. “I told him
nothing.
” She glared at him, equally exasperated. “Israfel was my torturer, priest. He was the one who forced me—the one with no body—into a body made for nothing but pain. And the moment she called me, I left it. He is no more aware of that miracle than you were before this moment.”

Kim dropped her, shoving her away from him. “You’re saying that the official history—that Lucifel’s chicks died—was a lie he made up. There are more of you?”

The wind died down. The rain fell slower.

“One other. My brother.”

“And he is like you?”

“No. He is both body and soul, but he collaborates in my torture.” Mikel rubbed the skin of Nina’s throat, coughing. “You’re not listening to what I’m saying to you. I didn’t come to Angela Mathers. Angela Mathers called me. I left that prison summoned by her power, and if she is not the Archon, then we are all very mistaken about who the Archon is.” Her voice quivered, and she spoke to him sharply, insisting. “I am the offspring of Raziel and Lucifel. I am above the other angels, in case you are forgetting, and the power to break Israfel’s prison must be equal or greater than his.”

Equal. Or greater.

But there was none greater that they knew of.

Until now, everyone had believed Mikel and her brother to be dead, so what else had Heaven been hiding all these eons? What else lived and existed in its highest spaces? Israfel was more like Lucifel than even Kim had imagined, and perhaps it explained their terrible antipathy a little more logically. Their flavor of cruelty, anyway, was a close match. And if Israfel had the Archon, his sister’s possible future opponent, on his side
 
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