Shadows in the Silence
Page 93

I stared at the door thoughtfully. “I should demand that the door open for one of their gods, for the Left Hand.”
“I would guess that you need only tell the door who you are,” Stone suggested. “And prove it with blood.”
That sounded completely absurd. As if the door were a guard instead of just a door. What did one say to a door? I decided to take Ethan Stone’s advice and tell the door that a battle among gods happened and I, leading my armies, won. Here went nothing.
I opened the skin of my palm with a sharp stone and pressed my blood against the door. I cleared my throat and made a silent prayer that I wouldn’t trip over my words. Then I said: “Huullaanzais siúnaan tarsikemi kisaat. Lim dingerlim halziihhuun nu lukuran huullanuun.”
I held my breath, waiting for something to happen. A few seconds later, the door gave a stone-scraping-on-stone lurch, dust billowed, and the giant slabs of basalt heaved inward, revealing a staircase leading into a pitch-dark passageway. A second later, torches erupted with great flames that lit up a fifteen-foot-wide limestone staircase. We climbed. The steps were smooth and unworn through the ages, and the walls had been carved with more depictions of angels smiting enemies and the victorious winged ones standing over piles of the dead. As soon as we reached the top of the stairs, Rebekah let out a high-pitched whimper, visibly shaking with fear.
The body of a giant—sixteen feet in height—sagged against the far wall of the Sanctum. His torso rose and fell weakly as he breathed, but heavy iron chains draped across his wrists and ankles and around his neck. The carvings of angels at war continued on all four sides of the chamber, but where the images were within reach of the Naphil, they had been angrily clawed away until they were unidentifiable. Inside some of the jagged streaks were dried blood and broken fingernails. His head moved and his warm brown eyes—the only part of him that seemed human anymore—pierced mine from beneath long hair that had become twisted and matted into thick locks. He bared what was left of his broken, yellow teeth, blackened at the gums. His pale, dirt-caked skin had gouges cut deep and turned to black with rot that never healed, gouges that were elegant in the way they’d been cruelly carved. The marks were angelic script, a spell to keep his strength bound. If they healed, the spell would be undone, so another had been carved into his skin to keep the wounds from healing.
Tears ran down my cheeks and I covered my mouth with my hands to keep myself from breaking down sobbing. Ethan Stone had warned me of barbarity, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
“Do not weep for me, Gabriel,” the Naphil said in a raspy, deep voice thick with the accent of a long-extinct human language, making the walls shake. “I am but a casualty of war.”
I sniffed back my tears and forced out a response. “You know me?”
“You look different,” he replied. His chains rattled as his body shifted. “very different. But I would recognize your face anywhere, even when it is not streaked with blood. Have you finally come to finish me off? I have been waiting to die for thousands of years.”
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I regret what I’ve done to you.”
“There is no need to lie. Angels do not feel regret.”
“I do,” I told him. “I have a human soul.”
He dragged himself toward me like a spider, his chains and boney joints scraping across the stone floor. His body was deathly thin, all sharp angles and ghost-pale skin tight over bone, but somehow he had survived all this time. I could only imagine that it was his angelic side that kept him alive in agony. “You are a paradox, small Gabriel. You are not what you are, and you wish to lose what you have that makes you what you are not.”
It took me a few moments of blinking to say, “What?”
“You are human, you are angel, you are neither now,” the Naphil said. “Your humanity glows. Why would you wish to relinquish it?”
“I don’t!” I said. “I don’t want to be who I once was. I want to stay human, but I can’t. The world is in danger.”
He made an ugly noise. “Again? Who is your enemy this time?”
His words stung. “The demonic reapers, led by the Fallen Sammael and Lilith. They intend to take every human soul to Hell and destroy Heaven and Earth.”
“You say that you regret what you have done, but you stand before me now prepared to repeat your actions. one must kill to save a life. That is the foundation for war, is it not?”
“That is a terrible truth,” I admitted. “But seven billion human souls don’t deserve an eternity in Hell. Even you can’t deny that.”
He studied my face, his eyes wandering and curious. “Who is to say who is right and who is wrong on either side of a battle?”
“My only wish is to protect the lives and immortal souls of the people in this world,” I said. “The human race can’t defend themselves against the reapers. This planet will burn and there will be nothing left!”
“I cannot deny the crimes of my kind,” the Naphil said. “My own hands are permanently stained by innocent blood. But we never wanted to destroy everything. We only wanted more.”
“We all want more,” I said. “That’s the part of you that makes up your human side. I feel that too. I want more. I want to live, but my life isn’t as important as billions of lives.”
A distant look grew in his gaze. “I would not know what it means to live anymore.”