Wings of the Wicked
Page 90

Nausea and helplessness swept over me. I began to feel terrified for myself and the girl now. My heart pounded so fiercely I worried it’d hammer right through my rib cage. I thought quickly.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Emma,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Ellie, and I’m going to get us out of here. How old are you, Emma?”
“Fifteen.”
I glanced at her. The clothes she wore, a junior varsity track hoodie over a T-shirt, were filthy and torn. “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up here?”
She shook her head and sagged heavily on her chains. “I was out jogging. I have a meet on Saturday. What day is it now? What was the last thing you remember doing?”
Watching Will and Nathaniel die. “Sitting there and doing nothing.”
She gave me a puzzled look and I let my eyes fall to the floor.
“The sleeping princess awakens,” came Kelaeno’s voice. “What a ruckus you make down here. Are you trying to wake the dead?”
I snapped my head up to see her descending the staircase. The demonic reaper’s laughter echoed off the walls as I thrashed against my chains again.
“Scream all you want. It’s music to my ears.”
“When I get out of here,” I snarled, “there won’t be words for what I do to you—you and that bastard Merodach.”
“You know them?” Emma asked, staring at us both.
A disgusting, sated smile slit across Kelaeno’s face. “We killed her boyfriend.”
“He’s not dead.” I pulled against my chains.
She licked her lips and stepped toward me. “So sure, aren’t you? Looked to me like you were out cold when we started tearing him apart. He was such a screamer—”
I shrieked and slammed my power in all directions. It pounded into an invisible wall in front of me and shook the ceiling, but the blast was nothing compared to what I had intended. That scared me. What happened? What was wrong with me?
Kelaeno lifted a finger, waggled it back and forth, and tsked. “Uh-uh.” Then she pointed to the floor beneath me.
I squinted to see something—writing of some kind—etched into the stone in white paint. It was faint, but the closer I looked, the more writing I saw. A pentagram surrounded me, and an Enochian prayer was written around the entire diameter of the circle. I knew what this was. I’d seen it before. It was a circle to bind my power—a trap.
The demonic reaper sneered. “No escape for you.”
“What are you?” Emma cried, staring at me wide-eyed. “Are you one of them? How are you doing that?”
I glared at Kelaeno. “What do you want with us?”
She laughed. “I’m not giving away the ending to the show just yet. We have a surprise for you, an old friend. Perhaps you will recognize her.”
Her? Footsteps scraped the staircase and Bastian descended, his handsome, disturbingly familiar face cool and calm, followed by Merodach and a couple of reapers I had never seen before. Hatred rushed through me like a torrential river, coursing and desperate for release. My power hummed, rising off the floor around me like heat waves, and the closer the demonic reapers approached, the harder my power pressed to the Enochian barrier trapping me.
“The Guardian?” Bastian asked, directing his question to either Merodach or Kelaeno.
Kelaeno made an ugly, triumphant noise at him and bared her teeth.
Bastian stopped abruptly and turned on her. “I ordered you to leave him alive. He is valuable to me. Is the rumor I heard about Rikken accompanying you accurate? You dare to defy me?”
Kelaeno hissed and snapped her jaws at Bastian. “I do as I please.”
“Kelaeno,” Merodach said in a warning tone.
Bastian’s cool gaze shifted from Merodach to Kelaeno. When he faced me, he wore a pleasant smile. “Nice to see you again, Preliator.”
I snarled, pulling on my chains. “I’ll say the same to you when you’re dead at my feet.”
“So valiant,” he noted, his voice rising with amusement. “But you have no way of escaping unless I free you, and that is not something likely to happen.”
“Are you afraid of me?” I taunted, careful to keep Merodach and Kelaeno in my peripheral vision.
He gazed at me thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose I am. I have no doubt that, after your friend and your Guardian are killed, you will try to avenge them. I haven’t forgotten about your human parents, either. You may not be strong enough to kill us, but I’m certain you could do a noticeable amount of damage. None of us wants to be the target of an archangel’s wrath. Those sorts of things never end well.”
Merodach straightened and looked me dead in the eye. “I do not fear her.”
“Nor do I,” Kelaeno chirped. “I say we turn her loose. I haven’t tasted enough blood this night.”
Bastian raised a hand to them both. “She is not ours to set free.”
Emma yanked on her chains. “What are you people talking about? Please, just let me go! Please!”
“Silence,” Bastian ordered the girl. She shivered and shrunk, her eyes pinned to the floor. “As I was saying, Kelaeno, the Preliator does not belong to us.”
“She’s mine,” crooned someone unseen through the basement, a low, sensual voice echoing off stone. It made me cold deep inside, sending ice into my soul.
Before my eyes, an outstretched hand shimmered into existence, followed shortly by the outline of a young woman. Her body was faint, ghostly, and long dark hair flowed as she stepped toward me, but her simple white gown faded to nothingness below the knee so that her feet were invisible. Her features were smooth and soft, her large eyes lovely, her smile elegant, refined—and cruel.