Fallen Series 04 - Rapture (27 page)

Arriane stood away from the group, in a darkened corner of the enclosed plateau, kicking a pile of rocks as if trying to start a lawn mower. Luce walked over to her.

“Hey,” Luce said. “You okay?”

Arriane looked up, thumbing the straps of her overalls. A crazy smile flashed across her face. “Remember when we had detention together? They made us clean up the cemetery at Sword & Cross? We got paired together, scrubbing that angel?”

“Of course.” Luce had been miserable that day—

chewed out by Molly, anxious about and infatuated with Daniel, and, come to think of it, unsure whether Arriane liked her or was simply taking pity on her.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Arriane’s voice sounded distant. “I’m always going to remember that.”

“Arriane,” Luce said, “that’s not what you’re really thinking about right now, is it? What is it about this place that’s making you hide over here?”

Arriane stood with her feet balanced on her shovel and swayed back and forth. She watched the Outcasts and the other angels unearthing a tall interior column from the rocks.

Finally, Arriane closed her eyes and blurted out, “I’m the reason this sanctuary doesn’t exist anymore. I’m the reason it’s bad luck.”

“But—Dee said it wasn’t anyone’s fault. What happened?”

“After the Fall,” she said, “I was getting my strength back, looking for shelter, for a way to mend my wings. I hadn’t yet returned to the Throne. I didn’t even know how to do that. I didn’t remember what I was. I was alone and I saw this place and I—”

“You wandered into the sanctuary that used to be here,” Luce said, remembering what Daniel had told her about the reason fallen angels didn’t go near churches.

They had all been edgy at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They wouldn’t go near the chapel on Pont Saint Benezet.

“I didn’t know!” Arriane’s chest shuddered when she inhaled.

“Of course you didn’t.” Luce put her arm around Arriane’s side. She was skin and bones and wings. The angel rested her head on Luce’s shoulder. “Did it blow up?” Arriane nodded. “The way you do . . . no”—she corrected herself—“the way you
used
to in your other lives.

Poof. The whole thing up in flames. Only, this wasn’t—

sorry for saying this—like, all beautifully tragic or romantic. This was bleak and black and
absolute.
Like a door slamming in my face. That’s when I knew that I was really kicked out of Heaven.” She turned to Luce, her wide blue eyes more innocent than Luce could remember seeing them. “I never meant to leave. It was an accident, a lot of us just got swept up in . . . someone else’s battle.”

She shrugged and a corner of her mouth curved mis-chievously. “Maybe I got too used to being a reject.

Kinda suits me, though, don’t you think?” She made a pistol with her fingers and fired it in Cam’s direction. “I guess I don’t mind running around with this pack of out-laws.” Then Arriane’s face changed, any trace of whimsy disappearing. She gripped Luce by the shoulders and whispered, “That’s it.”

“What?” Luce spun around.

The angels and the Outcasts had cleared away several tons of stone. They were now standing where thepile of rocks had stood. It had taken until just before dawn.

Around them rose the inner sanctuary Dee had promised they would find. The old, elegant lady was as good as her word.

Only two frail walls were left, forming a right angle, but the gray tile border on the floor suggested an original design that spanned roughly twenty square feet.

Large solid marble bricks made up the bases of the walls, where smaller crumbling sandstone bricks had once held up a roof. Weathered friezes decorated portions of the structure—winged creatures so old and worn they almost blended back into the stone. An ancient fire had scorched portions of the flared decorative cornices near the tops of the walls.

The now completely uncovered fig and olive trees marked the barrier between Dee’s broom-swept Arrowhead Slab and the excavated sanctuary. The two missing walls left the rest of the structure exposed to Luce’s imagination, which pictured ancient pilgrims kneeling to pray here. It was clear where they would kneel: Four Ionic marble columns with fluted bases and scrolled caps had been built around a raised platform in the center of the tile. And on that platform stood a giant rectangular altar built of pale tan stone.

It looked familiar, but unlike anything Luce had ever seen before. It was caked with dirt and rocks and Luce could make out the shadow of a decoration carved on top: two stone angels facing each other, each the size of a large doll. They’d once been painted with gold, it seemed, but now only flecks of their former sheen remained. The carved angels kneeled in prayer, heads down, halo-free, with their beautifully detailed wings arched forward so that the tips of them were touching.

“Yes.” Dee took a deep breath. “That’s it.
Qayom
Malak.
It means ‘the Overseer of the Angels.’ Or, as I like to call it, ‘the Angels’ Aide.’ It holds a secret no soul has ever deciphered: the key to where the fallen fell to Earth.

Do you remember it, Arriane?”

“I think so.” Arriane seemed nervous as she stepped toward the sculpture. When she reached the platform, she stood still for a long time before the kneeling angels.

Then she kneeled herself. She touched their wing tips, the place where the two angels connected. She shivered.

“I only saw it for a second before—”

“Yes,” Dee said. “You were blasted out of the sanctuary. The force of the explosion caused the first avalanche that buried the
Qayom Malak,
but the fig and olive trees remained exposed, a beacon for the other sanctuaries that were built in the coming years. The Christians were here, the Greeks, the Jews, the Moors. Their sanctuaries fell, too, to avalanche, fire, to scandal or fear, creating an impenetrable wall around the
Qayom Malak.
You needed me to help you find it again. And you couldn’t find me until you
really
needed me.”

“What happens now?” Cam asked. “Don’t tell me we have to pray.”

Dee’s eyes never left the
Qayom Malak,
even as she tossed Cam the towel draped over her shoulder. “Oh, it’s far worse, Cam. Now you’ve got to clean. Polish the angels, especially their wings. Polish them until they shine. We are going to need the moonlight to shine on them in precisely the right way.”

Boom.

It sounded like thunder, the brewing of a dark tornado. Luce jumped awake inside the cave, where she’d fallen asleep on Daniel’s shoulder. She hadn’t meant to doze off, but Dee had insisted on resting before explain-ing the purpose of the
Qayom Malak.
Stirred from sleep now, Luce had the feeling that many precious hours had passed. She was sweating in her flannel sleeping bag. The silver locket felt hot against her chest.

Daniel was lying very still, his eyes fixed on the mouth of the cave. The rumbling stopped.

Luce propped herself up on her elbows, noticed Dee across from her, asleep in the fetal position, stirring slightly, her red hair loose and messy. To Dee’s left lay the Outcasts’ empty sleeping bags; the strange creatures stood alert, huddled at the back of the small space, their drab wings overlapping. To her right, Annabelle and Arriane were asleep, or at least resting, their silver wings entwined uninhibitedly, like sisters.

The cave was calm. Luce must have dreamed the rumbling. She was still tired.

When she rolled over, nestling her back into Daniel’s chest so that he was cradling her with his right wing, her eyelids fluttered shut. Then they flew open.

She was face to face with Cam.

He was inches away, on his side, head propped on his hand, green eyes holding hers as if they were both in a trance. He opened his mouth as if to say something—

BOOM.

The room trembled like a leaf. For an instant, the air seemed to take on a strange transparency. Cam’s body shimmered, both there and somehow
not
there, his very existence seeming to flicker.

“Timequake,” Daniel said.

“A big mother,” Cam agreed.

Luce sprang upright, gaping at her own body in the sleeping bag, at Daniel’s hand on her knee, at Arriane, whose muffled voice called out, “I’wuzznt me,” until Annabelle’s wing slapped her awake. All of them were
flickering
before each other’s eyes. Solidly present one moment, as insubstantial as ghosts the next.

The timequake had jarred loose a dimension in which they weren’t even
there.

The cave around them shuddered. Sand sifted down from the walls. But unlike those of Luce and her friends, the physical properties of the red rock remained fixed, as if to prove that only people—souls—were at risk of being erased.

“The Qayom Malak!”
Phil said. “A rockslide would bury it again.”

Luce watched, queasy, as the Outcast’s pale wings flickered when he scrambled wildly toward the mouth of the cave.

“This is a seismic shift in reality, Phillip, not an earthquake,” Dee called, stopping Phil. Her voice sounded like someone was turning her volume up and down. “I appreciate your concern, but we’ll just have to ride this one out.”

And then there was one last great boom, a long, terrible rumbling during which Luce couldn’t see
any
of them, and then they were back, solid,
real
again. There was a sudden hush around everything, so absolute that Luce heard her heart pounding in her chest.

“There, now,” Dee said. “The worst of it is over.”

“Is everyone okay?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, dear, we’re fine,” Dee said. “Though that was most unpleasant.” She rose and walked, her voice trailing behind her. “At least it was one of the last seismic shifts anyone ever has to experience.” Sharing glances, the others followed her outside.

“What do you mean?” Luce asked. “Is Lucifer that close already?” Her brain scrambled to count sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset. They blurred together, one long stream of frenzy and panic and wings across the sky.

It had been morning when Luce fell asleep. . . .

They stopped in front of the
Qayom Malak.
Luce stood on the Arrowhead Slab, facing the two angels in the sculpture. Roland and Cam soared into the sky and hovered about fifty feet in the air. They gazed across the horizon, dipped close together to speak quietly. Their enormous wings blocked the sun—which Luce noticed sat troublingly low on the horizon.

“It is now the evening of the sixth day since Lucifer began his solitary Fall,” Dee said softly.

“We slept all day?” Luce asked, horrified. “We wasted so much time—”

“Nothing was wasted,” Dee said. “I have a very big night tonight. Come to think of it, you do, too. You’ll soon be glad you had your rest.”

“Let’s get it on before another shift hits, before we have to fight off any Scale,” Cam said as he and Roland touched down on the ground again. Their wings jostled lightly from the force of their landings.

“Cam is right. We don’t have any time to waste.” Daniel produced the black satchel, which contained the halo Luce had stolen from the sunken church in Venice.

Then he slung over the duffel bag, which bulged at the center, where he’d zipped the round cup of the Silver Pennon. He placed both bags, unzipped, before Dee, so that all three artifacts sat in a row.

Dee didn’t move.

“Dee?” Daniel asked. “What do we have to do?” Dee didn’t answer.

Roland stepped forward, touching her back. “Cam and I saw signs of more Scale on the horizon. They don’t know our location yet, but they aren’t far away. It would be best if we hurried.”

Dee frowned. “I’m afraid that is impossible.”

“But you said—” Luce broke off as Dee stared at her placidly. “The tattoo. The symbol on the ground—”

“I would be happy to
explain,
” Dee said, “but there will be no hurrying the deed itself.”

She glanced around the circle of angels, Outcasts, and Luce. When she was sure she had all their attention, she began. “As we know, the early history of the fallen was never written down. Although you may not remember very clearly”—her gaze swept over the angels—“you recorded your first days on Earth in
things.
To this day, the essential elements of your prehistoric lore are encoded in the fabric of different artifacts. Artifacts that are, to the naked eye, something else altogether.” Dee reached for the halo and held it up to the sunlight. “You see”—she ran her finger along a series of cracks in the glass that Luce hadn’t noticed before—“this glass halo is also a lens.” She held it up for them to look through. Behind it, her face was slightly distorted by the convex curve of the glass, making her golden eyes look huge.

She put the halo down, moved to the duffel bag, and removed the Silver Pennon. It shone in the day’s last rays of sunlight as she ran her hand softly across its interior.

“And this goblet”—she pointed to the illustration hammered into the silver, the wings Luce had noticed in —

Jerusalem—“bears a record of the exodus from the Fall site, the first diaspora of angels. To return to your first home on Earth, you first must fill this goblet.” She paused, staring deeply inside the Silver Pennon. “When it is filled, we will empty it on the Slab’s intricate tiled floor, which contains imagery of how the world once was.”

“When the goblet is filled?” Luce repeated. “Filled with what?”

“First things first.” Dee walked to the edge of the stone platform and brushed away a bit of grit. Then she bowed to place the goblet directly on top of the yellow symbol in the stone. “I believe this goes here.” Luce stood rapt beside Daniel as they watched Dee pace slowly up and down the platform. Finally, she picked up the halo again and carried it to the
Qayom
Malak.
At some point, she had changed out of her hiking boots, back into her stilettos, and her heels clicked on the marble. Her unkempt hair swished down to her waist. She took a deep, luxurious breath and let it out.

With both hands, she raised the halo over her head, whispered a few words of prayer, and then, very carefully, lowered the halo directly into the circle of air carved out by the sculpture of the praying angels’ wing tips. It fit like a ring on a finger.