Covenant (7 page)

“Someone?” Angela said. A dull fear echoed inside of her. “Who?”

Camdon shook his head and smiled. “It doesn't make a difference. Besides, I'm sure Nina would have agreed as well. And my sister's opinion always counted for more than people understood.”

“Stop it,” Angela whispered. “You can't keep mentioning her like that, Camdon. I know you're sad. So am I. But—tonight, I—”

Please don't make me keep feeling guilty,
she wanted to shout at him
.

Camdon sighed. “It's okay. I understand. I guess I just feel guilty sometimes. Nina was the opposite of other people. She actually wanted to be a blood head like us—she thought that would make her fit in at this Academy. Looking back, it all sounds so ridiculous considering how attitudes have changed. I suppose I just feel like I owe her something, every day. Because I couldn't be there for her when . . .” He sighed. “Well, anyway, after tonight that will all change.”

Angela peered at him, an even more strange sensation ripping through her.

What did he mean by that
?

“Sophia,” Camdon said, nodding at her. “I hope you won't mind if I ask your friend to dance. I've been looking forward to it for quite a while.”

“Not at all,” Sophia said softly. But her eyes betrayed her wariness, and she stared at Camdon as if she could see right through him.

“May I?” Camdon said, holding out his hand to Angela.

Angela hesitated and then accepted his offer. Camdon took her by the hand and led her farther out into the crowds of people. Then he grasped her waist, imitating the couples next to them perfectly, swinging her onto the dance floor.

Here, the music was louder and the chatter more constant. But Angela couldn't stop a strange feeling of being watched, and not in a good way, like a million hateful eyes bored into her back, vanishing into the shadows whenever she spun around. For a moment, she thought she could see Troy's crow familiar, Fury, hopping from one window to the next, peeking with a flash of phosphorescent eyes through the panes.

She prayed it was only her imagination
.

Angela glanced up at the vast and heavily shadowed ceiling. In far corners, angel statues hunched over the crowds. Remembering how the statues lining the Grand Mansion's courtyard had made her feel, Angela relaxed a little.

“So have you taken my words into consideration, Angela?” Camdon smiled. “I think it would be good for every blood head at this school if you joined the Order. It would help our cause immensely.”

His hazel eyes peered into Angela's with the same strange intensity as the day they'd met.

Unwillingly, Angela's mind flashed to the night when she and her angel Israfel had danced together, when she had flown with him, and he had sung to her, turning his own falling feathers into a rain of crystals. How would he have felt to see her like this now? Not in a dirty school uniform, but elegant and feminine, and altogether . . . not herself.

Maybe it didn't matter anymore. Israfel was gone. Kim was gone. This was reality—for now. Yet it didn't feel right
.

Angela glanced at Sophia.

Sophia continued to watch them with eagle eyes from across the room. Slowly, she raised her eyes to the ceiling. Did she sense something up there?

A cold and familiar chill worked its way up Angela's spine.

“Camdon,” Angela said, “don't take this the wrong way, but I refuse to be convinced that segregating ourselves from the rest of the Academy will help matters. Why not create an Order open to any and all students, so that other students can mingle with people like us and see that deep down, we're really no different than them?”

“But we
are
different,” Camdon said in her ear. “We can do things they can't.”

“That's only because we're more confident. Because the Vatican turns a blind eye and encourages us to tamper with powers that we shouldn't.”

“All blood heads aren't witches or warlocks, Angela. True, Stephanie and her Pentacle Sorority were a good example of what can happen when the wrong people tamper with powers they don't understand. But we can do good with those abilities too. In fact, that's partly why I wanted you here tonight. I needed to show you, Angela.” Camdon's face became stony, and his eyes narrowed, examining her.

“Show me what?” Angela whispered.

Suddenly, the world turned in slow motion. A sick feeling worked its way into her stomach, and she knew what Camdon would say before the words even passed his lips. They tolled like a bell of doom, drowning out the elegance of the night.

Camdon pulled away from Angela but remained by her side. His smile seemed odd and out of place as he looked over her shoulder at someone approaching from behind. “I brought my sister back.”

Eight

Long ago, I fixed the dreadful price of a soul's return.
—L
UCIFEL

Dead silence descended on the room. The music stopped. Hushed words and whispers whirled around Angela like a tornado.

Softly, footsteps approached her.

She couldn't turn around. A sense of dread and elation, the strangest feeling she had ever known, had stopped the world.

Camdon beamed brighter than ever, and Angela now realized that the intensity she had found in his eyes was a type of madness. She stared back at him, unable to express in words the sudden horror she felt at his touch and the way he'd spoken in her ear. But she didn't need to speak, because another voice called her name from a shadowy realm beyond the grave.

“Angela,” Nina Willis said from some nearby spot behind her.

The silence in the room pressed like a vise. Most people who had known Nina when she was alive seemed rooted to the spot, either confused or vaguely terrified. In the background, someone muttered a hasty “Hail Mary.” Others cried softly, but whether from relief or fear it was impossible to tell.

But no one moved.

“Angela,” Nina's voice said again. “Aren't you going to say hello?”

It can't be.

Nina was dead. She went to Hell in Angela's place, so Angela could live and help everyone else.
She was gone forever
.

Slowly, Angela turned around, her knees feeling shaky and weak.

Nina Willis stood in front of her, looking almost exactly as she had when she was alive.
Almost
. Her hair, which had always been frizzy and unkempt, had been pulled back into a smooth and careful braid. Nina's eyes, which had always been so bloodshot, were clearer than Angela had ever seen them. She wore a dirty white dress that Angela recognized instantly as the dress Nina's body had been buried in. Oddly, there wasn't a single scar on her neck marking the spot where her throat had been cut.

It was like looking at Nina's twin—someone very similar but not quite her.

“You—you're dead, Nina,” Angela whispered lamely. Tears rolled down her face. What else could she possibly say? It was a miracle she hadn't fainted on the spot.

Nina took a very deep and alive-sounding breath, and she gazed at Angela with the most open and sincere expression possible. “Not anymore. Someone brought me back.” She lifted her dirty hands, showing off the mud caked beneath her fingernails. “Do you know what it's like to crawl out of the ground, Angela? Not—very—pleasant. But I'd much rather be here than in Hell where I don't belong. Just imagine it; I fell into Hell and lost all sense of place and time, wandering aimlessly. Then I was grabbed and thrust into a new body just like my old one. Remade. Oh, that couldn't be the end of it though. I had to escape and crawl out from under that huge tree in Memorial Park—out of Hell. On my hands and knees, tunneling and crawling, rolling around on the snow once I reached the surface, learning how to breathe again. It was awful.” Nina hugged herself, shivering. “And then I heard someone familiar calling me here—to this building. And I saw you dancing. Was it you, Angela, who brought me back?”

Nina has a new body just like the old one. She's a Revenant, a person resurrected from death through Lucifel's power. Sophia's body is exactly the same—just a machine that can be destroyed over and over again, only to come back for the next round. This means . . .

Angela glanced over her shoulder at Camdon, who stared at Nina with undisguised elation.

This means . . . I found the real snake Sophia was talking about. Camdon is helping Lucifel. Why?

What could she do now
?

Angela's mind raced. She turned to Nina, and back to Camdon again, trying to think and think fast.

He'd already started stalking in Sophia's direction. A hot fear raced through Angela.

That's it—Lucifel blackmailed him into making an exchange. Camdon gets Nina, and as part of the bargain Lucifel gets Sophia. Damn it!

It was too late. Sophia simply couldn't move fast enough. She took two fearful steps backward and dashed for the room's exit, but Camdon grabbed her by the waist. The terrified screams of the crowd began. Noise and movement thundered throughout the Mansion.

Angela's left hand burned all over. Beneath her glove, the Grail throbbed, slowly and dreadfully blinking open its great Eye. A deep shudder ran through her and up into her body.

How dare you,
her mind hissed inwardly.
You're not taking her from ME.

She tore off the glove and raised her hand at Camdon.

He shouted in terror and raised his own.

A searing red light flashed throughout the room, illuminating the farthest corners. A great portal opened up behind him, some kind of vicious cut in the fabric of reality. Camdon screamed fearfully as Angela strode toward him. Her entire being was now focused on grabbing Sophia and crushing Camdon like a fly if the need arose.

“
Te libero,
” he screamed even louder. “
Te libero
.”

I release you.

Angela was almost on top of him as three enormous snakes burst from the portal.

She never had a chance.

The largest of them wrapped itself tightly around Angela's body, pinning back her arms, and squeezed.

Nine

Sophia had been right about everything. Yet somehow, I still couldn't accept the truth: that the wheels of fate would forever turn, whether or not I agreed.
—A
NGELA
M
ATHERS

Angela gasped for breath. Her ribs would snap like twigs at any second. She screamed hoarsely, already suffocating under the weight of muscle and scales. Her ears buzzed, her vision swam, and every time she struggled even an inch, the snake squeezed tighter.

The cold screech of a crow sounded outside, crying in warning.

Angela recognized that sound
.

Sudden hope rushed into her.

It can't be—

A crushing weight knocked Angela and the snake to the ground, rolling with them.

Angela shut her eyes, groaning with pain. Her muscles and bones still hurt from her fall with Janna, and now they sang in agony again.

Suddenly—she could breathe.

Angela threw off the snake's now limp and bleeding body. She rocked to her feet.

Troy, the beautiful but nightmarish Jinn, stood in front of her.

The snake regained some life, and Troy pounced on it again, biting it viciously at the head with her pretty mouth filled with sharp teeth. Her great sickle-shaped black wings thundered blasts of air that mixed with the portal's screeching wind. The phosphorescent yellow eyes of Angela's darkest nightmares blinked at her with acknowledgment. Pointed ears pressed back against Troy's choppy black hair, expressing her irritation as her chain earring swung side to side in the gale. The hellish snake whipped beneath her, attempting one last grasp at life.

With the little bones tied in her hair rattling viciously, Troy split the snake down the middle with her nails and tossed its body aside.

More thunder echoed from above.

Angela glanced up toward the ceiling, astonished to see a male Jinn with the blue-sheened feathers of a blackbird streaking down to meet with another snake. On a perch next to the angel statues, a much smaller Jinn waited and watched with owlish eyes.

Sophia was right. She knew. Troy had been watching Angela all along
.

A hideous hiss assaulted Angela's ears. She turned around to find another snake rearing above her.

I don't think so.

Angela dug her fingers into the Grail, flinching as warm blue blood leaked from the cut. How long would it take for the blue blood to crystallize and for the infamous Glaive to settle long and lethal in her hands? Seconds.

As the snake arced down to bite off Angela's head, she swung the Glaive's curved blade to the right.

The demonic reptile thudded in two twitching pieces to the floor.

Terrible growls followed its demise. The light and wind from the portal intensified. Angela searched for Sophia and Camdon within the red brilliance. Hopefully they weren't gone. Without any more thought, she raced again in the portal's direction. The closer she came, the better she could see. But the Glaive drained her energy more with every step.

Sophia—HE CAN'T TAKE YOU
.

The most terrible growl yet erupted from deep within the portal.

Angela halted, shivering despite herself. A moment of tense silence descended.

“
Stay back,
” Troy screamed with uncharacteristic fear.

Angela had no time to go backward. She could only duck as something huge and leonine exploded from the portal, soared over her, and landed heavily in the middle of the ballroom floor. The ground shook. The chandeliers rattled.

She held her breath, riveted and terrified.

What was that thing
?

Slowly, a face ringed by a copious mane of black hair turned and glared back at her. The portal's light glistened along the curves of the creature's eyeballs, the straight fence of its teeth. The hunter took another noisy breath, flapping four enormous wings and then it rounded on Angela again, its limbs splayed and stiff, its hackles rising along the slope of its enormous back. It pawed at the ground with disturbingly human-shaped hands.

Worse yet, Angela sensed intelligence behind its predatory eyes. Briefly, she matched the creature's movements to those of the twin angels who used to guard Israfel, sensing a similarity, though not understanding why.

The creature's green eyes narrowed as it examined her.

That was it—its eyes were exactly the same.

“
Here,
Hound,” Troy hissed from her corner with frightening anger. She unfurled her wings, answering her enemy with an open mouth filled with teeth.

Unimpressed, the wolfish beast paced nearer to Angela.

Troy switched to a ferocious growl, rage bubbling up from her throat and escalating into a chill screech.

Troy's distracting it. Risking her life . . . for me.

It was working.

The Hound snarled at Troy, and then it prowled nearer with heavy footfalls. A sulfurous odor emanated from the beast's body like a cloud. Its four wings snapped inward, restricted by the suddenly inadequate width of the room.

The male Jinn streaked out of nowhere again and hit the horror head-on, throwing them both to the ground.

Troy lost little time, pouncing with him. All three terrors rolled together, biting and snapping in a ball of feathers and teeth. Blood spattered across the tiles. The battle continued for an eternal minute.

Without warning, the male Jinn lost his footing.

That was all it took. The Hound grabbed him by the wings, bit fatally through his neck, and hurled him into the wall.

Troy froze for a mere second but bravely resumed her battle. For the first time, Angela saw terror behind the Jinn's eyes.

Heedless of all else, Angela rushed for them both.

She had barely taken a few steps when the Hound tossed Troy aside and galloped for Angela, leaping with its angelic face and baring rows of horrific teeth. Its jaws were wide enough to tear off Angela's head.

This is it
.

She lifted the Glaive to meet the nightmare. Troy shrieked in pain, and the Hound released a bloodcurdling cry of agony.

Then it fell on Angela, and the world around her blinked out like a light left on too long.