Black Wings
Page 40

“Tell me about Michael,” I said.
She hesitated. He was kind to me. We did not live as man and wife—we could not, without his being cast out as Lucifer had been for mating with a human. But he was kind to me, and he taught my children the ways of their magic.
“Which served his own ends as well, seeing as he made them soul collectors,” I said.
Yes, Evangeline said. And in a way, they were taken from me because of that. They had no time for a mother who wanted to play with her children. They were taught from a young age that they had a duty to fulfill, and they spent their lives in pursuit of that duty.
Just like me, I thought. “How did Michael manage to explain you and the children to the other angels? Why was he allowed to keep you, so to speak?”
He said that I was a victim of the Morningstar’s, not a willing accomplice. The others saw that the children were not monsters like the nephilim. Then it was agreed upon that the children could take their father’s place as collectors of the dead. So they had a purpose in the hierarchy.
It was not easy, especially for me. The children had some magic. They belonged. But I was always looked on with suspicion. Any magic that I had was buried inside when I agreed to go with Michael. I had to give its use up lest Lucifer try to track me. So I was alone, and very human, in a world of perfection. She gave a wry smile. But I lived, lived until a very old age, and I was able to see my children grow into men, and have children of their own.
We are here, she said.
I stopped and looked up. The great tree was before me. I had been lulled by the sound of Evangeline’s voice and my preoccupation with the cold, and I hadn’t noticed our approach.
The tree was so large that it was almost hard to grasp its size. I had seen the forests of redwoods in California; this tree made redwoods look like dwarves. The trunk was nearly as wide as the base of the John Hancock building, and great gnarled roots as large as city buses twisted around it. It stretched high above me, so high that it disappeared into the low-hanging clouds that circled the mountains. The bark was white as starlight, and it gleamed in the dull gray that surrounded it.
“What now?” I asked.
Evangeline approached the base of the tree. I clambered after her, climbing over the roots, pulling myself over them with frozen hands and feet. It took me several minutes to reach her. She floated patiently next to a knot the size of my fist that marred the white face of the tree. I climbed over the last root and stood at her side, panting.
We must enter the tree, she said, and did that twirly thing again with her finger in the air. A circle of flame appeared on the bark of the tree. The inside of the circle opened to darkness.
“Where does this go?” I asked.
To the Valley of Sorrows, on the other side of the mountains, she said, and floated inside. Come, Granddaughter.
I stared after her into the darkness and felt all the misgivings I had been pushing aside come surging up. She could be leading me anywhere. Hell, for that matter, she might not be Evangeline at all but some kind of trick sent by Antares or Focalor or Ramuell’s master.
This is a great time to realize that, I thought sourly. But I had committed myself to this course of action, and there was no way home without Evangeline.
The circle of flame closed behind me as I stepped inside and plunged into blackness. I could barely make out the glitter of Evangeline’s form several feet in front of me. As my eyes adjusted I realized it wasn’t completely black. The walls sparkled with a kind of green luminescence, almost like algae on the ocean at night.
Evangeline called for me to follow her again, and I picked my way toward her, cautiously putting one foot in front of the other. The tunnel was narrow enough that I could touch both sides with my arms outstretched. The walls felt like smooth rock beneath my fingers and the air inside the tree was surprisingly warm and humid. I felt all of my frozen parts thawing out rapidly. After several minutes of walking I unbuttoned my coat and folded it over my arm to carry.
The path was some kind of fine silt and felt slippery beneath my feet. It sloped downward for several feet, then leveled out. I didn’t encounter any roots or rocks to trip over, and after a while I picked up the pace. I’d lost all sense of time and wondered how long I’d been gone. I wondered if Beezle would be worried. I wondered if my father had saved Gabriel. A fist squeezed my heart when I thought of the half angel lying bloody and still. I wished that he was with me now.
Evangeline stayed several feet in front of me. She did not speak at all. There was a sense of urgency about her now that infected me. I walked more quickly even as I grew more anxious about what awaited me at the end of the tunnel.
After what felt like an hour, the path started to slope upward again. Unlike the beginning of the path, the incline wasn’t gradual. The grade steepened abruptly and I was forced to scramble for purchase several times, digging in the silt with my fingers. I fell flat on my face once and slid backward at least ten feet before I managed to dig the toes of my boots into the dirt and halt my progress downhill.
My coat fell from my arms and tumbled down to the bottom of the slope. I’d have to retrieve it on the way back. It was far too cold on the road for me to even consider going outside in nothing but a sweater.
Evangeline turned with an impatient huff. Granddaughter, hurry, please. We have no time for this.
I pushed to my knees and glared at her. “I’m not enjoying this, you know. Some of us can’t just float along.”
No, but you could fly, she snapped.
“Flying. Right,” I said, feeling amazingly stupid. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe because I was still unaccustomed to using my wings for any purpose other than in my role as an Agent. I was used to acting like a human, not a supernatural being.
As soon as I thought of it my wings pushed out my back. I brushed the dirt from my face and sweater and then flew to Evangeline. She turned without another word, moving faster now, and I stayed easily at her side.
We continued upward for a few more minutes; then the path abruptly leveled out again. We were in a small, round anteroom, just a few feet across. I realized that as we’d traveled, the luminescence in the walls had increased gradually. The room was not as shadowed as the rest of the path, and I could see a door with an arched top and a squared bottom in front of us.
The door gleamed in the faint light. It looked like heavy metal, warm and yellow like gold. There was no knob, but there was a series of bolts—seven in all. I fluttered to the ground and folded my wings to my back. Evangeline hovered impatiently beside me.
Open it, she said. What you seek is behind that door.
“What I seek, or what you seek?” I asked, but I was already pulling the first bolt free. It didn’t really matter anymore if it was my wishes or hers that had brought me here. I still had a duty to fulfill, and Evangeline was part of it.
I pulled the last bolt free and felt acid on the back of my tongue. I stepped back so that the door could swing inward. Beyond the door was an empty cavern, high and wide. The rock was gray and white and veined with silver so the walls glittered even in shadow. There was something that looked like firelight flickering around the bend just past the main room.
And there were noises. Horrible noises—squelching, grunting, screeching, metal clanging against metal.
“What is that?” I asked, suddenly afraid.
Evangeline shook her head and drifted forward, beckoning me. I wanted to turn around and run the hell down that hill and out into the desert and take my damn chances with hypothermia and radiation poisoning. Anything would be better than facing whatever was around the corner. Instead, I followed slowly, my heart pounding, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I rounded the corner, wondering if she was leading me to my death, and stopped dead.
We were in a giant cavern. It was like being inside Soldier Field and looking all the way up to the nosebleed seats. But this place wasn’t filled with beer-drinking, brat-chewing football fans. It was filled with nephilim.
The nephilim hung from metal cages in the ceiling and the walls like so many grotesque birds. Even though they were caged, their wrists were shackled and attached to chains that were bolted to the floors of their prisons. As I stood there, gaping, a nephilim brushed against the bars of its cage and shrieked in pain. It seemed that the bars were enchanted with some kind of magic. It also seemed that the cages were just small enough so that the nephilim would be unable to sit, lie down or relax in any way without touching the bars. All of the creatures moved restlessly within their prisons, seeking repose and unable to find it.
Most of the nephilim looked like Ramuell—taller than any man, red and raw-looking skin, black claws. Some of them had wings, and some didn’t. Some looked . . . squishier than others. Their forms had less substance, like the glob demon that had visited my front lawn. And two of them had yellow skin covered in green and bulging sores. When one of these nephilim would brush the bars of their cage, the sores would burst, spraying a jet of foul-smelling pus and causing the nephilim to writhe in agony.
“This is the mercy that the Grigori showed their children?” I muttered, sickened. “Why didn’t they just kill them rather than force them to suffer like this?”
Evangeline did not answer. I glanced around and realized that she had disappeared.
“Oh, wonderful,” I said. “Great-grandma abandons me just when we get to the scary part of the story.”
I wasn’t sure what else to do so I started across the cavern floor, skirting close to the wall and trying to go unnoticed by the monsters suspended high above me. That didn’t really work out. I don’t know what gave me away—the scrape of a shoe, my terrified breath, the unusual movement at the bottom of the cave. But I wasn’t incognito for long.
The first one that saw me gave a roar that nearly shattered my eardrums. It echoed throughout the cavern and the other nephilim ceased their restless pacing, growing still and silent.
“Meeeeeeaaat,” the first one crooned, and it closed its clawed fingers around the bars of the cage. It seemed unaware that its hands were smoking. The air filled with the scent of burning sulfur. Its yellow eyes were fixed on me and I just barely suppressed the urge to cover myself with my arms. I had a feeling that the nephilim was sizing me up for something a lot worse than lunch.