Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (24 page)

As the priest poured out a handful of the water, Clark had to use every ounce of his control to keep from screaming. He fought against his restraints though, his head beating against the back of the chair. Tortured, agonized sounds came out of his strangled throat. Over the priest’s shoulder, he saw Camille turn to Zarachiel. The gesture was the closest she’d come to seeking comfort that Clark had ever seen. Zarachiel didn’t put his arm around her, but he leaned closer, whispering something in her ear. Seeing them—his two best friends—gave Clark a tiny amount of peace, and he stilled in his chair.

“A demon killed Liam,” he wheezed, his throat tight and itchy as the priest stepped closer. “I killed the demon when it was in Liam’s body. I didn’t kill Liam.”

“That’s convenient,” Dylan said. “Yet, no one here can attest to your version of events. I myself saw no such sign of demonic activity at that church. Nothing was there, asshole.”

“That demon is inside me now. Isn’t that enough?” Clark growled.

“No.”

With the Descendants clustered so tightly around him, Clark saw in their eyes that they wanted him to burn, to hang, to die. They hated him. But it wasn’t just for killing Liam. This hate went a lot deeper. To the marks on his arms. To the color of his hair. To the way he’d always talked back and cursed too much. To his Dad, being Keeper. To Michaela. To the war.

They hated him because he’d been right, because he’d made them look bad.

The priest slung the holy water at Clark. Even turning his face at the last second, he felt every thick drop splatter against his jaw and neck, like fiery acid searing into him. He heard his skin hiss and crackle, smelled the tiny hairs on his face burning. He screamed as the drops tore into his skin. The pain unleashed inside him, and Clark didn’t know if it was him or the demon who screeched so wildly.

The sound echoed throughout the hall, and a gust of terrified chatter escaped from the gathered onlookers. Their fear coated the air with a thick, stifling humidity that strangled Clark. He gagged and sputtered, yanking his wrists against the restraints until they were raw and bloody. Finally, the pain subsided. Or Clark succumbed to the pain. Either way, he went numb, sagging into his seat. Through his dirty hair, he looked up at the priest.

“It’s my conclusion,” the priest said, smiling slightly, “that’s he’s possessed. I would like to exorcise him.”

His excitement was obvious. Clark highly doubted the priest wanted to save his soul. Torture seemed about right though.

“Will it kill him?” Dylan asked a little too eagerly.

“We haven’t had a death from attempted exorcism in years,” the priest answered, leaning toward Clark and examining the side of his jaw. The holy water drops would leave scars.

“You haven’t had an exorcism in years,” Bailey spoke up, his shrewd gray eyes on the priest.

“It’s highly unlikely that he will die. There’s been some new information in the field of exorcisms recently.”

“Like what?” Bailey questioned.

“That’s confidential.” The priest sniffed.

His confidence seemed to satisfy all the Descendants except Bailey. They went back to the table, leaving the priest behind. The old man hovered beside Clark, as if he was worried someone would steal his prize. Bailey remained behind too, his eyes uncertain. Clark smiled tiredly up at him, hoping to convey some gratitude.

“Clark, I…” Bailey started, but he didn’t finish. The words seemed to hook in his throat. He shook his head instead. He acted like he might say something else when the meeting hall’s doors banged open.

The attention quickly shifted toward the back of the hall, where someone was stalking forward. Clark weakly lifted his head enough to see the people shift out of the way, their fear palpable again. Whispers threaded through the hall, spreading the news of who was entering. Clark seemed to be the last to know who the visitor was.

For a quick moment, he blindingly hoped the person was Michaela. His heart thundered with the notion, his skin tingling with excitement.

It wasn’t.

“Will someone please tell me why my son is chained to a chair?” An older woman with dazzling blond hair slashed through with tendrils of gray demanded. Her brilliantly blue eyes shimmered with a rage barely contained. The air around her shifted. All she needed was a pair of wings.

“Hey, Mom,” Clark said before passing out again.

Chapter Seven

C
amille didn’t stick around to watch the guards drag Clark back into the dungeon. With her spine straight as an arrow, she rose from the table and stalked out. Everyone’s attention was directed to Iris St. James’s arrival anyway, so no one spared Camille a glance. She didn’t stop walking until she was outside, the brisk evening air causing her eyes to water.

A tear slipped down her cheek.

The images of Clark’s pain from the holy water, the way his face had gone rigid with agony, kept playing themselves on repeat in Camille’s mind. She heard his whimpers, felt the fire spreading across his cheek as if it were her own. Her fists clenched, and she swayed slightly on her feet.

He didn’t deserve this. He was a good man. They would pay, those retched, judgmental humans. She would see to it.

The air was just so cold. Her eyes kept watering. She batted at the tears, blinking to force her eyes to adjust.

“I’m not crying,” she hissed to herself. She dug her fingernails into her cheeks and commanded herself to stop. But the tears kept coming, and her throat felt like it was in a vise, like it was collapsing onto itself. She hated herself for every wet drip on her cheek. She loathed the chink in her armor, the weakness in her.

Loving Clark like she did went against her very nature. She was tethered to him, and an angel should never be tethered by anything, but he’d captured her completely. She wanted both to be free of him and for him to hold on tighter. She was sick.

Hearing footsteps on the other side of the door, she swiped her hands under her eyes and spun around.

“There you are,” Zarachiel said, coming out of the side door just as the sun slipped into the horizon, leaving a streaking tail of purple and orange in its wake. Behind him came Maya and Iris. But only Zarachiel noticed Camille’s damp cheeks and the little halos of pink flesh caused by her nails. His sad eyes pissed her off more.

“Iris, you know Camille,” Zarachiel said.

Camille didn’t fully turn into the light from the compound because she didn’t dare show her face. But she liked Clark’s mother a lot, so she jerked her chin up at Iris in a brief greeting.

“Good to see you again, Camille,” Iris said briskly, giving Camille as much attention as she’d given Iris. The Nephil’s coat was wrapped tightly around her trim form. “Now, what the hell is going on?”

Zarachiel set about catching up Iris on Jenna and Wyatt’s murders. He went through everything, including Ezekiel’s defamation of Clark, the demon in the window, the vision of Sophia, and the knives on Isaac’s grave. If it upset Iris to think about her dead husband, it didn’t show, and Camille gave the Nephil points for fortitude. Zarachiel ended by explaining what happened that night in the woods, and how Clark had been forced to fight the demon inside Liam.

“But how did you know to come?” Maya asked.

“Gabriel,” Iris said simply. “He’d channeled Clark a few days ago. He came to me right after and told me I needed to come down right away.”

“Gabriel the
Archangel
?” Maya asked, eyes round. “As in the General of Hell?”

“But he didn’t tell you about the murders and the demon?” Zarachiel asked, getting straight to the point.

Iris held up her hands. “He didn’t want to scare me. But he told me I needed to get down here as quickly as possible.”

“It’s good that you’re here now,” Maya said.

“But why did you send Ezekiel instead of coming yourself in the first place? You knew Ezekiel wouldn’t make it easy for him, didn’t you?” Camille crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowing on the Nephil.

Iris nodded, not hiding the fact that she’d sent a snake to help her son. “I did. But I wanted Clark to make his own way with the Nephilim. He doesn’t exactly have a history of taking well to being told what to do. I knew Ezekiel would challenge him, and it would only make Clark a better leader.”

Everyone was quiet for moment, contemplating Iris’s rather cold approach to her son. She took the scrutiny well. Of course, seeing the future couldn’t hurt. Maybe she knew the outcome of her actions already, and Camille couldn’t help but feel a little envious.

“I want to go back to the church and look around some more,” Camille said, breaking the silence.

“We dissected that place the night Clark was arrested. Do you really think there’s anything to find?” Zarachiel asked.

“Maybe not, but it’s better than sitting on my ass while Clark waits for a noose around his neck.” Iris grimaced but at Camille’s words, but the angel didn’t apologize or even spare a sympathetic glance toward her.

“Okay,” Zarachiel said. “We should probably keep looking through the books from the monastery.”

“And I need to talk with the Nephilim,” Iris added.

“That’s a good—”

Camille didn’t wait around to hear the rest; she didn’t care. Crouching, she spread out her wings and jumped into the air. She sliced up through the sky, ascending fast enough to leave tiny beads of ice on the tips of her arm hairs. She just needed to get away, to run from her frustrations and fears.

Twisting her body, she leveled out and angled her wings towards the woods. She focused all her strength on pressing her wings downward, creating great currents of air beneath her. The muscles in her back pulled and pushed with the work, every beat slow and deliberate so that she undulated—up and down—in the sky. She’d always felt a great sense of freedom when she flew; she knew she could go anywhere, any place, no matter how far or how high or how low. But now she had a shackle around her ankle, yanking her back to the ground. Either it was her love for Clark or her fear for his life that tethered her. She didn’t know which one was worse.

The clearing appeared below her, the ridge sweeping up toward her chest and then dropping away into the overgrowth around the church. Camille didn’t bother with the ridge where Liam had died: she and Zarachiel had been over every blade of grass for a clue. Instead, she dropped down in front of the abandoned husk of a church. They, along with the Descendants’ police force, had searched the building thoroughly too, but Camille was looking for something different tonight.

She wasn’t searching for a body or a demon or Lucifer.

She was hunting a feeling, a sensation. She wanted to know what Lucifer had thought and did while he was here. Did he watch the compound? Or did he focus on rebuilding his fallen forces? Where did he sleep? What did he eat? These thoughts spiraled around in her mind until she was standing in a vortex of scents and sounds.

Something was blooming, drenching the air with an overbearing sweetness, like a perfume past its prime. Beneath that smell was a bitterness of wet leaves and dirt. The church’s dilapidated structure was made of pine, and it itched into her sinuses, wiggling a sneeze up her throat. Night creatures scurried about in the woods beyond, their skittering making leaves and limbs crunch and dance.

The time of night made Camille feel as if she was standing between worlds. The sun was gone, its fading colorful light blending in with the coming dark. The moon was caught up in the dance, chasing the sun and hiding behind the clouds. It was an odd sort of darkness that draped around Camille as she regarded the church. Halfway lit, halfway dark, she couldn’t see her hand at her side, but she saw the silver glow of the church, the dusty glint of its shattered windows.

“I’m here,” she growled. “Where are you?”

The question floated around the edges of the clearing. Camille didn’t know who she was talking to—the church, the night, Lucifer, or herself. But it went unanswered, aside from a chill creeping down her spine.

“Why are you doing this?”

She lifted into the air, her wings merely whispers as they took her over the church’s broken roof and lowered her inside. She settled on the floorboards just as the moon shifted through the clouds. Light trickled in through the natural skylight, illuminating her like a spotlight.

“Why don’t you just go home?” she asked the emptiness. The mice scuffling in the shadows paused at her question; she imagined their little pink noses twitching in the air, testing their answers on their whiskers. They found her unworthy for comment, so they scuttled away, toes scratching on the broken floor.

“No one wants you here. No one needs you.” Camille stepped forward. Her leg would’ve crashed through the rotten floorboard as it buckled beneath her weight if her wings hadn’t flicked out of their own accord, easing her into the air and over the new hole in the floor. Saved her. Righted her. “No one wants you,” she said to the floor.

There was a faded outline of a cross on the wall behind where a pulpit must have stood. The actual cross was long gone by now, but its shadow remained, the peeling wallpaper having long ago memorized its shape. “You’re not her,” Camille whispered. The dust particles floated around her mouth, her wings casting a wavelike roll of light around the structure. “You won’t save this world. You won’t save him. He won’t say your name late at night when he’s in his deepest of sleeps. She redeemed him. You only destroy. She’s the perfect one, and you’re a killer.”