A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series) (10 page)

It grunted.

I left it at that.

“Rayna! Sweetie!”

Mom?

I twisted around. The blue room rippled with water. A giant tank. My mother slamming against the glass wall separating us. Air bubbles escaping from her lips too fast. Her face frozen in fear, the knowledge of her imminent death.

“Mom!” I threw myself against the bars. Some of them cracked.

Kade slid in front of me, his hands on either side of my hips. “It’s not her,” he said as calmly as if it were one of his
enemies
drowning.

“She’s in there, she’s drowning!” I leaped as far over him as I could get, pulling at the bars above us for leverage. Tricks. This level had tricked me once before, but not this realistically. Every angle of Mom was right; the scent of her floral perfume, the sound of her voice.

They hadn’t killed her. They had taken her down here and were torturing her.

Kade tightened his hold on me. “Get a hold of yourself.”

A dark figure swam toward her. “Mom, behind you!” I pointed wildly, stretching over, trying to reach the front of the human tank.

The figure slinked in, wiggling in the water like a seal or a snake. The figure ducked below her, swimming right up to the front of the tank. It was Lucien. He grinned at me around the small knife in his mouth. In the sunlit ripples his skin gleamed purple and gold, scales appearing and disappearing the same way they had in the graveyard in Arizona. The last place Kade and I had stood on Earth.

He slid the knife from between his teeth and slashed at the back of Mom’s ankle.

Mom screamed. Red began to cloud the tank.

“Mom, no!” I kicked Kade and tried to lunge over him again.

He turned to get a better grip on me. He said something, words that didn’t matter, that couldn’t when my mom was being attacked.

Lucien swam up behind Mom, running the blade along her shoulder crease, the way he used to do to me. The sensitive skin there puckered, releasing another bright gush of red into the water.

Hate and heat crept up inside me. The urge to kill him right this time. To keep him from hurting anyone else ever again.

Mom’s eyes rolled back in her head before the red clouded the water so I could no longer see her.

“MOM!” I pushed Kade and lunged again, the white-hot need to escape and end everything in a half-mile radius vibrating through me. Including Kade. But it didn’t matter. I had to save Mom.

Chapter Twelve

Kade

I held fast to Ray with all the strength I had left. But she was damn stronger than she looked.

“Ray, you have to calm down!”

Screaming, especially in this elevator, on this floor, on any floor, was the worst-case scenario. Lucien wasn’t the only one that knew about this passageway.

But Ray wasn’t just losing it; she was already gone.

“Mom!” she shrieked again and again.

I didn’t take my eyes off her. She kicked me and tried to lunge over me. I held fast.

“No way I’m letting you out of here,” I told her, though there was no chance she heard me over her own screams.

“Can you move this thing any faster?” I grunted to the demon turning the medieval wheel.

The demon said nothing. Our pace remained the same.

I yanked Ray off me, pressing down on her shoulders to secure her feet to the floor. “Ray, stop, you have to stop. You’re attracting attention—”

She lifted her knee into my gut and slammed her entire body into the bone cage, rattling and snapping more of the femurs.

I covered her mouth with my hand. She bit it and screamed louder, continuing to thrash, hurting herself to get around me. Cuts and bruises formed on her face, her hands.

I shoved her hard into the back wall of the cage and pinned her there with my body. Her screams only got fiercer.

There was no other choice. I had to shut her up.

It was easier than I thought it would be after my feeding frenzy to call to that part of myself again. I blinked, and shades of black and white lightened the elevator. I stared into Ray’s eyes, grabbed her shoulders, and commanded her to …

I blinked again, and she was quiet. Problem was I didn’t know what I’d said. It could have been anything. The last time I’d used my influence on her, Azriel found her in her dream and nearly killed her.

She remained anchored on her feet. Her eyes were blank. Not a sound escaped her except for her quiet breath. She was a slate wiped clean by the darkness inside me. My cursed heart had put her under some kind of spell of which I might never know the consequences for.

“Ray?” I whispered, giving her shoulders a soft shake.

Nothing roused in her, not her body, and definitely not her eyes.

Black eyes still improving my vision, I checked the demon. Tall, hunched forward into the ceiling. Muscular. Not the kind of creature you pissed off and lived to tell about it.

I blinked the black away, returning my sight to normal. “I think I’ve just fucked up again,” I said to him conversationally. “If I help you with that wheel, would it get us to the surface faster?”

The demon nodded his wide head once, a slow, purposeful motion.

I watched Ray while I put my hands opposite his on the wheel and focused my attention on nothing but getting us up as fast as we could.

Sweat poured down my face for the next six circles. The demon stopped once we cleared the first circle. It took me a while to catch on that we were no longer moving, the crank spinning with no catches. The demon unlatched the gate and shoved it open.

“Let’s go,” I told Ray, grabbing her hand.

She remained in place. Not even blinking.

What the hell had I done to her?

“We have to go.”

Still not so much as a hint of life in her face.

I turned to the demon, who really could have been worse—though I didn’t dare leave Ray alone with him. “Tell me you know how to get her out of here in once piece.”

The creature shoved Ray out of the elevator. She landed on her face. “That is more than I owe you, Fallen.” I lunged for her while he closed the gate and began squeaking down the track.

I pulled Ray up, but she kept falling, unable to hold herself up. Finally, I left her on the ground.

I couldn’t just sit here worrying about what irreversible curse I’d put on her. Right now, I had to get her out.

This level was empty, except for the gateway made up entirely of skulls—this place sure had a thing about human bones. No Fallen or other demons waited for us. News of our escape must not have reached up the circles yet. Our head start was our only advantage.

I had none of Lucien’s special powers, and there was no way I’d use my influence on Ray again to try and make her do it. With my luck she’d probably blow herself up in the process.

That left only one option. A risky one.

With one more glance at a very vacant Rayna, I shouted to the ceiling, “I command you open the portal. For it, I have a sacrifice.” I sucked in a few deep breaths, preparing myself, hoping my adrenaline would kick in with the extra strength I needed.

Reaching my right hand around my left shoulder, I grabbed the bend of my left wing in a vice grip, growled, and yanked for everything I was worth. I kept my back to Ray, hoping the pain on my face wouldn’t somehow penetrate her zen and horrify her. As I pulled, feathers flew, and I had to readjust my grip and try again. Flesh tore, very nearly bringing me to my knees. My fingers were slick with either sweat or blood. I didn’t bother to check. I tightened my grip and pulled again, freeing my body of one of its wings.

When the dead, discarded wing flopped to the ground, so did I. My nerves hummed with pain, every cell screaming for me to stop, but I had one more to go.

“This had better work.”

I grunted, reached around for the other wing, and pulled again. This time it took five tries before it even began pulling away from my skin, which was already raw from losing the other side. Another six tries and I was free of my wings, and more lightheaded than I’d ever been before.

And nothing happened.

Beside me, the wings lay dead. As useless as the last time I’d tried to use them to fly. Useless or not they had still been a part of me. Wings, white or black, had always been a part of who I was. Now they were gone.

I screamed, “I sacrifice these wings to open the portal to Earth!” Collapsing on my hands, I beat my head against the wall that led to the ceiling. “Open the hell up!”

The ground began to shake. Earth shifted above us.

Abandoning my wings, I grabbed Ray’s hand and tugged her to her feet. Elation should have showed on her face. Instead, she was empty. Soulless.

I carried her to the wall, stepped onto it, and stumbled us right out of Hell.

Chapter Thirteen

Rayna

The fire still burned my flesh. Each time the green demon touched me with the torch, my skin shed off, then grew back. My blisters disappeared. Flesh regrew. And it would stick me again in my gut, just as Azriel had. It had become impossible to keep from screaming.

Occasionally he would dunk me in a cold vat of ice water. The relief in my bones faded quickly when I realized he had sealed the top of the tank. The water running down the outside streaked the glass. I pushed through the icicles accumulating at the top. I beat my fists against the lid, kicked up, searching for a single breath. Running out of air, struggling, drowning, only to be reanimated again. To face the same fate.

When the demon pulled me from the drink, he started with the fire pokers again.

There was no end to his ruthlessness. No break for me. No hope for help.

Chapter Fourteen

Kade

Rayna had almost lucid moments where I swore she was coming around. I tried talking to her, reasoning with her, everything I could think of to get her back. In those short moments, hope welled inside me and I would start to believe maybe she wasn’t lost. Then she would start screaming.

It was like I’d left her mind in Hell when I brought her body to Earth. After trying to hide her for a week, I knew there was nothing else I could do for her. With her constant screaming, there was nowhere I could take her to keep her safe. Either the Fallen would catch wind of where we were, or the human authorities would step in.

I had no other choice but to seek out the one person I could trust with Ray’s life. The one person I trusted her with both completely and not at all. Camael.

I couldn’t very well stroll into San Francisco with Ray in my arms, especially with the rising tension in San Francisco when we left. He might not even be on Earth anymore.

But if he was here, I had a good idea where he’d be.

I pushed Ray’s hair back from her face. The yellow tint from the small tent we’d hunkered down in for the night discolored her skin in an awful way. “Do you remember Cam?”

She blinked, eventually, out of necessity, but nothing in her face changed.

“He was a friend of yours. More than a friend at one point. Any of that ring a bell? No, of course not.”

At least she was quiet.

“Another set of lifetimes ago, he and I had come across each other. As a Warrior with no demons left to vanquish, I’d been on my own and did what I wanted, to a point. I was still an angel then.”

Two more slow blinks. No recognition. As stupid as it was, I swore somewhere inside she could hear me, like how doctors said coma patients could sometimes hear when their loved ones talked to them.

“Cam was on a mission. Protecting some Middle Eastern foreign dignitary that had traveled to rural France. He was my brother at the time. Imagine that, he and I
not
trying to kill each other.”

If it was possible, her face looked more blank. I was losing her.

“Stay with me. You hear me, Ray, it’s about to get good. Cam and I spent the night in a barn, at the base of the Alps. Both of us spouting philosophical nonsense. Later he told me about this place, in the new world, that reminded him of the beauty of the Alps. It was surrounded by mountains, an area few men had been to. A place where he said he could see himself happy. That place was the Colorado Mountains.”

I forced a smile, my fingertips brushing her cheek. “How do you feel about a road trip?”

The glazed-over look to her eyes dissipated. She blinked again. Her pupils dilated, contracting, taking notice of her surroundings. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. She wriggled in her sleeping bag. Her lips parted. I held my breath. She took a breath, and screamed.

***

A lonely cabin that looked to have been standing for centuries was nestled in a hollowed-out clearing in the trees, butted up to the base of the Colorado Mountains. It was a familiar scene.

Camael stood and wiped his forehead with the back of a bandana tied to his wrist.

“To say this is a surprise is an understatement.” The plow in his hand dug into the ground as he leaned his arm over the handle.

“I need your help.” The words burned coming up.

Cam watched us, then raced to Ray, dangling in my arms, and took her from me before the handle of the plow reached the ground. “What happened?”

I followed him into the depilated cabin. “Haven’t you heard yet?” It had been over a week since our escape; this news should have been all over angel radar.

“I’m not exactly in the loop anymore.” He laid her down on the twin bed jammed into the corner.

“We were in Hell. I got her out. But I got the feeling not all of her made it.”

Cam spared me a glance. “Hell. That’s why we couldn’t find her.”

“Help her.” I gathered a handful of my jeans in my fist. Released. Repeated. Then, because I couldn’t stand the way I knew he was looking at her, I walked outside.

The clean country air would be good for her. Cam would help her get back to normal—as normal as she ever was. Then she’d forget about what we might have had and drive Cam as crazy as she’d driven me.