Conspiracy of Angels (35 page)

The Eye of Nefer-Ka.

A chance. I had a chance to find the key that would release Lailah and my brothers—maybe even take back all that had been taken from me. I snatched up the icon. Lil’s eyes widened the instant she saw it. She reached to take it from me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed. Drawing on some reserve of strength I didn’t even know I possessed, I turned from her—and plunged after Dorimiel through the other side of reality. I could hear her cursing behind me.

I regretted it almost immediately. This part of the ship wasn’t solid at all. I nearly slipped through the spongy deck into a dark and yawning void.

“Shit shit
shit
,” I gasped, struggling to get airborne. My wings still ached from the battle with the cacodaimon, but they held. I marveled at the sensation, spreading them wide and soaring on an updraft.

Struggling to orient myself, I gripped the Eye in one hand. The heavy gold amulet throbbed against my palm in time to a heartbeat—but not my own. I wracked my aggrieved brain for everything I had learned about the artifact. It devoured knowledge and power—I’d experienced that first-hand. It had been crafted by the primus of the Nephilim, but anyone could tap into it. Both Terael and Saliriel had mentioned that there would be a price, though.

A blood price.

Even as I thought it, the central tail of the Eye of Nefer-Ka shifted in my hand. The narrow, wedge-shaped gold of the amulet wasn’t firmly attached. I tugged on it, following instinct, and the tail revealed itself to be a sheath. A small sliver of bright metal glinted in the twilight of the Shadowside. A hidden blade.

I hesitated for a moment, then slashed across my open palm. Blood welled up, a shocking shade of crimson in the gray of this shadowed realm. I pressed the amulet to the wound, slipping the sheath back on the blade.

The red stone central to the Eye flared and, for a moment, my entire arm went numb. The pulse of the icon abruptly ceased. I held my breath, coasting on the currents above the Shadowside wreck of the
Scylla
. Needling points of sensation blossomed around the edges of the wound, as if the back of the amulet had sprouted teeth, and they were biting hungrily into me.

With a sudden wave of heat that washed all the way up to my elbow, the throbbing beat started up again, this time tuned to the rhythm of my own racing heart. Sensation returned to my hand by degrees, and with it a sense of strange whispers in the back of my mind.

I didn’t like that part at all.

But there wasn’t much to lose.

I clenched my hand around the Eye, and searched the shifting darkness for my quarry. A roiling figure of crimson mist, shot through with ebon veins, scudded above the hungry waves—the blood-soul of the Nephilim. Once I spotted him, he was hard to miss.

Just as using the Eye on a cacodaimon had infected him with its twisted darkness, no doubt it was my life and memories that had given him the ability to cross over—but that didn’t mean he belonged on the Shadowside. I was the native here, and with luck that gave me the advantage. I needed it, because I was battered, weary, and what I was about to attempt seemed a little insane.

Maybe more than a little. “Here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself, tucking my wings for the dive.

I crashed into Dorimiel at what felt like ninety miles an hour. For an instant, I was worried I would just ghost right through him, but the whirling scarlet cloud had both substance and weight. He reacted immediately, countless eyes snapping open across the twisting expanse of him. Each of them retained that same pale green iris so remarkable in the flesh. They glared at me menacingly, then pseudopods of black and red veins whipped out from the main mass, twining around me.

We twisted in mid-air, wrestling. I could feel him scrabbling at my mind, trying to draw power, but I had the Eye now. As we tangled, I thrust my hand forward, and used it.

My hand passed
into
the central mass of him and I could feel his essence down to the last syllable of his Name. Images blossomed in my mind. We whirled together over the void-like waters. At the same time, I was pulled into a labyrinth all twisted over with black, throbbing vines. Some of the walls were crumbling, and whole sections were choked with cloying shadows.

I was inside the construct of his mind.

Choosing the first corridor, I barreled down it, and everywhere I turned there rose chiseled faces. Beneath the faces, there were names—but not the ones I’d come here seeking.

Pressing deeper, I avoided contact with the walls. Those writhing black veins were a sickness, and I wanted no part of them. They chewed at the substance of the labyrinth—the cacodaimon taint was even now unmaking him. He’d been unraveling in body and mind the instant he’d had the audacity to thrust the Eye at one of those horrors and try to make it a part of himself.

At the thought, I saw the memory. A party onboard the
Scylla
. Late summer? Hard to tell. Someone on deck complaining of feeling sick. Peering across the Shadowside to see the dark shape hovering over her, slowly worming its way into her drug-addled brain. Grappling with the horror, exulting in the ability to seize a spirit with the swallowed skills of collective Anakim. Drunk on stolen power—intent on stealing more.

I shied away from the rest of that memory. I didn’t want to know what it felt like to taste the absence of reason that was the Unmakers.

We continued to spin in the empty air above the dark waters, fighting mind-to-mind as the images flashed by with the speed of thought. Not fast enough, though. We were still in the Shadowside.

Borrowed time.

“Where’s the key for Lailah?” I bellowed through his mind. “How do I release the ones you’ve bound?”

Voices gibbered—and they were all Dorimiel, underscored by a surging wave of insectile chittering that rose and fell like the cycling of cicadas. I heard expletives, imperatives, whispered names.

I clung to one that I sought—
Anakesiel
.

Turning a corner. I encountered a door. Huge and graven, the lines of his face emerged from the stone, carved on a cyclopean scale. I seized the handle, dragging it open. Memories spilled forth as vividly as if I’d lived them myself. I staggered beneath the flood, striving to control the rush of information. There was too much.

Hunted. We’re being hunted.
In a carriage riding through the Alps. Someone across from him—
Tashiel
—I knew the name instantly. Tash recounted an attack. A group of Nephilim. It was 1833.

A memory far older—so old my brain spasmed around the truth of it. A wind-swept mountain. A great stone table, the tribes gathered round. Faces of the other primae. The reverberant sound of the oath. Each setting his icon upon the table as he swore to bury the power. Anak pulling a smooth, carved stylus from his robe, reluctant to part with it. Feeling how it was perfectly weighted to his hand.

He laid it beside the Eye.

The 1800s again. Imprisoned. Delirious. Pain and thirst and fever. Dorimiel’s face twisted with fury.

Where did you bury it? Tell me and I’ll let you die.

A clay jar, freshly fired. Dorimiel presenting it with a look of triumph. In his hand, a stylus—
the
Stylus.

I doubt you even know what this is anymore, but I promise to keep it safe for you, Anarch. You and all your tribe.

I blinked, and the labyrinth scattered. I grappled with the ugly pulsing thing that was the decimus on this side of reality. The rubine glow of the Eye lit him from within.

“I already know about the icon,” I shouted. “Give me the words that open the seals, dammit!”

Dorimiel shuddered in my grasp. Half the green eyes dotting his form rolled up to show the whites. Shadows spilled across the sclera. The veins of black rippled through him, spreading little tendrils. Maybe using the Eye on him had hastened the decay—or maybe the Eye had been the only thing keeping him together. Either way, he was losing the battle with the taint of the cacodaimon.

I dove back into the collapsing architecture of his mind. The walls around me buckled, the black taint like hungry vines pulling ruins back into the jungle. More twists and turns as I frantically searched.

Arriving at a crossroads, I felt the foundations of his mind deteriorating. Black rot twisted and the nearest wall nearly tumbled down on me. Desperate, gibbering, the decimus threw galvanizing images to throw me off the chase—the pillaged temple, scattered bodies. My face from his perspective, features twisted with hate.

We killed everyone.

We made him watch.

He and I had dropped perilously close to the face of the waters. He was trying to distract me so he could drag me down with him. I pounded furiously with my wings, trying to pull us free from the sucking current. Muscles across my back—ones I didn’t even know I possessed—burned with the effort.

Dorimiel screamed with fear and rage. I felt more than heard his voice. One last chance. With the Eye glowing fiercely in time to my thudding pulse, I launched my mind at his. I saw a corridor that was all tumblers and gears. Light spilled through keyholes, shimmering with sigils. I heard Names, phrases. Lailah. Haniel. Countless others. They rang like music, chiming on the wind. I almost had them—then Dorimiel shoved a final image at me.

The portal bearing my face.

All my memories were locked in that vault. I could take the phrases, or reclaim what he’d stolen from me.

Choose, Anakim. Loyalty or self-preservation. Prove you are no different from me.

A tremor shook the labyrinth of his mind. More crumbling destruction. The last shreds of reason unraveled. There was no more time.

I made my choice.

With the final scintillating shard of knowledge, I fled the maze before it collapsed.

Dorimiel was screaming. Black veins consumed his form, whipping out from a central lesion boiling with rot. His cries grew shriller and shriller until anything like a human voice was lost in a harsh cicada buzz. Revolted, I flung him away from me.

An answering cry echoed from below. Then another, and another.

A crashing wave of darkness leapt up from the water, comprised entirely of living, shrieking shadows. They moved in a swarm like a colony of hellish insects, their red eyes gleaming with ferocious intent. Dorimiel’s tainted blood-soul pushed and pulled against itself, the last few tendrils of crimson seeking to crawl away on the air to escape the swarm—but his black veins reached like countless hands, greeting his new brethren.

I strained furiously with my wings, pushing away even as the cacodaimons swarmed the Nephilim like an army of hungry ants. Tendrils of bright red and pale emerald eyes peeked out from the writhing mass of chitinous black, struggling with a bitter desperation. His cries of agony echoed across the bleak landscape of the Shadowside.

More of them were already speeding after me. Trembling with effort and weary to the bone, I flew as fast and as far as my wings could carry me. My strength was quickly waning, and in fact, I was amazed it had taken me this far. In a few moments, I wouldn’t need a swarm of cacodaimons to drag me into the abyss. I was going to drop like a stone.

Then they were on me, more of them than I could count, their taloned appendages frigid and grasping. Stinging points of cold erupted all over my legs, arms, and wings. Wordless panic filled my mind as I started falling.

At the last possible instant, I remembered Lil’s little charm. With the nerveless fingers of my free hand, I dug it out of my pocket, turning it to face the swarm of cacodaimons. I snapped it with a cry, and a burst of light like the stored brilliance of half a dozen sunsets flooded forth. It was warm and pure and golden and wholly alien to this portion of the Shadowside. The cacodaimons shrieked in agony, many of them just disintegrating in the wash of light.

She must have known.

I felt myself slipping from their grasp, and then I was tumbling away. In the midst of a terribly swift descent, I made a last-ditch effort to thrust myself back to the skinside. If I crashed into the lake on the flesh-and-blood side, at least it would just be water and not a direct pipeline to the abyss.

I felt the familiar tearing sensation, and I could see the sickly red light of a fire in the distance. The
Scylla
was still burning. I tumbled end over end for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I plunged with bone-jarring force into the icy water.

Bulleting below the surface, I kicked and clawed at the choking waves. Everything was black, and I couldn’t tell which direction was up. My lungs burned and I fought to blink the darkness from my eyes. Every direction I turned there was water. Water and no air.

I stopped fighting, and the numbing cold swallowed me whole. With my last shred of awareness, I felt the bloody Eye slip from my grasp.

S
omeone shone a light into my eyes. With a groan, I batted them away.

“Welcome back,” a cheery voice said. Blearily, I tried to focus on the owner. She had a pleasant face with warm, coffee-colored skin. Her thick braids of dark hair were pulled together in a kind of ponytail with a ruffled blue band that matched her scrubs.

Great. A hospital.

“What day is it?” I croaked. Anything else I might have asked was lost to a coughing fit. My throat and lungs felt raw. My voice sounded worse. She held a glass of water with a straw out to me, and I drank. That helped.

“It’s Tuesday morning, Sunshine,” she replied, setting the water aside. “Now lay back, I need to check a few things out.”

“Tuesday?” I murmured. I couldn’t recall what day it was supposed to be, but that didn’t sound right. I went to rub my face, only to realize that my hand was bandaged up, and there was an IV taped to the back of it. I scowled, picking at the medical tape until she nudged my fingers away.

“None of that,” she scolded lightly.

The doctor or nurse—I really couldn’t tell which from her outfit—bustled around, poking at monitors and clipping some weird little doohickey to my middle finger.

“What’s that do?” I asked, then the hacking started again.