Angelus (18 page)

The Cherubim stared at him vacantly. “
Of course, half-
Jinn. There are many, many others who have arrived in this ancient place.
” She looked up and around at the bluish spheres ducking in and out of thousands of bones.

“You know what I'm talking about,” Kim said, trying not to scream at her.

The Cherubim seemed to think. “
As I said, this place is outside of time. As I also said, my fate is unavoidable
.”

That was all he needed to hear.

“We have to get out of this place,” Kim muttered heatedly.

“But did we find out what we came for?” Troy shot back.

Kim shook his head. “We're not going to get any more information than what I saw just now. We can talk about it later. At the moment, we
have
to get out of these catacombs. I suppose we'll head for Luz's surface.”

Troy didn't seem ready to waste any more time. She turned with barely hidden disgust and after reaching the far wall began to scale the rocks so quickly she could have been sprinting. Kim ran after her to keep up, but something made him turn at the last second.

The Cherubim made no move to leave. Was she prepared to defend herself? There was little doubt she could with such intimidating size and teeth. Yet Kim couldn't shake his sense of danger. Maybe the shivers and foreboding he'd felt while still in Hell had more to do with whatever came next than the mysterious angel Troy had led them to visit.

Maybe entering Luz was going to be the real mistake. Kim thought again of Sophia walking some long hallway in the Westwood Academy uniform. She'd infiltrated the school once more. That meant Angela would probably be with her.

After what Raziel had shown him, Kim knew he had to speak with Angela, see her, clasp her tight. He was terrified for her.

“
Farewell, my final visitors,
” the angel said.

A strange mist began to fill the catacombs. The bluish spheres streaked through the air as if in a panic.

“Good-bye,” Kim muttered.

And then he took his chance and sprinted, following his fears toward the exit Troy had undoubtedly found. It wasn't until they'd found two angel statues and passed between them, stumbling into a colder underground passage that Kim thought of looking at his hourglass pendant.

Somehow, almost all the grains had fallen to its bottom.

LUZ
THE CATACOMBS
12 HOURS LATER

Angela felt riveted to the stone as Kim emerged from the mists of the catacombs they stood within. Her chest ached, and a painful fire shot through her. What could she say to him after leaving Hell under such horrible circumstances?

Her mind raced through all the terrible possibilities, lingering especially on how much she missed his touch, even his breath. Everything. His figure began to emerge more clearly. She could make out a long dark coat and the long hair near his neck.

She caught her breath.

At last the figure stepped into the bluish gleam of the souls lighting the darkness like fireflies.

It wasn't him. This was a different man wearing the long black coat of a novice—a priest in training. His hair was a deep brown and shorter than Kim's, and his eyes were also darker. He held a rosary in his left hand, and a faint azure aura outlined his body.

Angela froze. She instinctively moved to step backward but checked herself.

Juno stopped growling. She straightened and peered at the priest. “It's a human soul,” she said to Angela.

So he was merely one of the numerous souls filling the catacombs. Angela balled her hands into fists. She knew there would be little time to act—he was coming closer—but something told her to not behave too rashly. A sour smell hit her now. Her stomach turned. A sense of danger swept over her, summoning a wave of nausea in its wake. Then the priest paused in front of her, staring straight into her eyes. The enchanting music around them was even more melodious.

Leave this place.

Angela focused harder. Those thoughts weren't her own. He was speaking to her in her mind.

Why?
she demanded.

She wanted to explain it wasn't so simple. She and Juno had gone through a lot of trouble to find the angel supposedly living in this terrible place. Turning around and retracing their steps wasn't high on her list of priorities.

Because you are too late.

The priest pointed down at the pool of water beneath them. Angela hadn't looked at it since walking with Juno over the narrow rock bridge.

A pale shape could be seen at its bottom center. The corpse resembled a Hound but was pure white and absolutely immense. Its beautiful, well-shaped hands had curled in agony. Blood tainted the water around it, spreading like an inky cloud from its body. The angel's brilliant wings had been crushed. Angela couldn't look much longer. The being that was the sole reason she and Juno dared the canals now had the look of a winged mouse squeezed to death by a snake. She peered up at the stone bridges above them. What
Angela thought had been water dripping now was clearly blood. She fought another wave of nausea.

Someone had murdered Kheshmar, and her body had plummeted to the bottom of the pool.

Angela forced herself to speak. “When did this happen?” she asked the priest.

His face changed at her question. He didn't seem to understand.

Fear churned inside of her. She'd learned that Lucifel had been stealing human souls with the Vatican's permission. So why were so many sequestered beneath Luz? “Are you the souls that Lucifel took from Memorial Cemetery? Please answer me.”

The priest shook his head.
No, we're different. We've been trapped here for centuries.

“Why not leave now?”

His face became even graver.
The Devil will find us if we try to enter Luz . . . she will use us to destroy you . . . so . . . we cannot leave anymore. Please understand, time is different in this place. This is a point in existence that connects to every other Realm. It is Luz's firmest connection to the other worlds, and it existed before the city.

But Angela didn't understand. How could this place exist before Luz? “Are you saying this place is like the Netherworld?” Because that had also been connected to Luz when it existed.

The priest held out his hand, as if pleading with her.
No. This place is deeper and yet also higher than the Realm of the Dead—it is what angels call an “outer darkness.” A century ago, a few of my colleagues and I chose to come here to find the angel that had chosen to dwell in this timeless place. We shouldn't have been so proud and foolish. Now
I can never return. Now I too am one of those swallowed by time. Because, you see, the Cherubim that lived here ate time. That is how all Cherubim exist. They feed off space and ether, not flesh and blood. They helped balance what remains of the universe. Then, some of them were taken by higher-ranking angels and turned into Thrones. This Cherubim was the only one of her kind to exist on Earth by her own choice. Her twin, Azrael, dwelled in the Netherworld. They once belonged to the Supernal Raziel before his death.

Now they belong to death itself.

Leave before it is too late. I stayed and spoke to the angel like too many before me. By the time we had finished talking to each other, too much time had passed on Earth and we could not return. The Cherubim then devoured what had been left of our life spans . . . now our bones are all that remains of us. But though she is gone, some of her aura remains, and time continues to move . . .

The implications of what he said punched Angela in the gut.

She'd sensed something odd about the twin angel statues marking the threshold of the Cherubim's domain. Now she knew that by crossing that invisible barrier, they'd crossed beyond time. There was no telling what Luz would be like when they returned. How much time had passed in this place while they stood here?

She glanced down in horror at the Cherubim's teeth glistening below the water. She tried to imagine the angel eating someone's time—and couldn't. She tried to fathom how any place could exist where a passing second equaled an hour elsewhere.

“All these bones . . .” she whispered.

. . .
are the bones,
the priest finished for her,
of every
unfortunate who has wandered below Luz—or been thrown down here.

There were thousands. Men, women, and children. Too many to count.

“We have to go,” Angela managed to say in a hoarse voice. Horror had destroyed her sense of purpose. The Cherubim was dead. They'd come all this way only for someone to beat them and arrive first. Who? Why? Angela stared at the Cherubim one last time, and a reflection seemed to cross the water. Within it, she saw the angel locked in a bloody struggle with a gigantic black and violet serpent.

Oh no,
she thought. Angela's arms and legs shivered.
No . . . not Python. Please.

“How do we get back to Luz? There's no way to go back to our time?” she frantically asked the priest.

That is why you must leave. You have a chance . . . the Cherubim is dead. It cannot forcibly steal your remaining time if it wishes. You are still alive . . .

Go!

“But where will we go?”

Back the way you came.

“Hurry,” Angela said hoarsely to Juno. A sense of dread propelled her faster than she'd ever thought possible. Juno tried to call after her, but Angela didn't hear anything besides the song and her own heart slamming within the walls of her chest.

The souls were the source of the music. They chanted its sweet melody over and over, and Angela thought her brain would melt with it by the time she and Juno crossed over the threshold, and she stumbled past the angel statues and their uplifted lanterns. Angela skidded to a halt, nearly slipping on a half-thawed seam of ice in the floor.

Superficially, nothing had changed. The water churned and foamed at the shore. The boat they'd climbed out of back onto land waited, bobbing in the water.

Even so, Angela felt like her stomach had bottomed out.

“What's a good way out of here?” Angela turned to Juno.

Juno's ears flipped back into her hair. She sniffed the air and then listened. “This way,” she said.

Angela followed her in a daze. What could have happened to Sophia? To Kim and Troy? To Nina, Fury, and Israfel? How much time could possibly have passed in those brief minutes they'd spent in the cavern?

“I should have never come here,” Angela whispered to herself.

The answers she'd been searching for had eluded her in the end anyway. Or so it seemed at the moment. Angela had believed that her only chance at survival had been to enter the canals, far from people who wanted to kill her. But it appeared at least one of them had caught up with her already. Where was Python? The thought of him in Luz haunted her.

“We're going back to the surface,” Angela said to Juno.

Juno didn't argue with her this time, but she didn't seem thrilled, either. Her ears flattened. “I don't think it's a good idea, but I understand why you want to return now,” Juno said. The young Jinn paused and turned to look at Angela. Then they entered a long low tunnel that seemed to form part of Luz's sewers.

Rats chittered from holes in the walls, but the dampness was receding. They climbed higher in a strikingly short amount of time. At first, Angela had been too upset to note the path Juno led them on. Now she realized the air had grown colder again. Within the Cherubim's domain it had
been so much warmer. Angela wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering. Her breath left her in frosty plumes.

She didn't even want to know how pathetic and disheveled she probably looked.

“Wait here,” Juno said softly. She slunk ahead into the darkness and returned so speedily, Angela jumped with surprise. “There's something up here you should look at,” the Jinn said breathlessly. Her eyes were like flashlights in the blackness.

Angela followed Juno until a square shape loomed before them. Its metal body gleamed beneath a strange shaft of light peeking through a grate in the ceiling.

“Is that . . .” Angela whispered to herself.

She approached the rusted body of a carriage car. She'd heard the Vatican had an underground system of transportation in Luz. By now it had been out of use for over a century, but they'd never bothered to dismantle the tracks or get rid of the old cars. Angela walked up to the carriage car and slid her hand against its ice-cold body. The paint had worn away long ago, and her fingers rubbed against a pockmarked surface.

The vehicle probably linked to another one in the darkness ahead of them, and after that yet another. She couldn't feel the tracks, but when Angela moved to the left her heel hit something hard sticking up from the ground. There they were.

The holes that used to be windows set in the carriage car's back stared at her like empty eye sockets.

Angela looked away quickly and then examined the strip of light in the ceiling again.

She and Juno must have been very close to the surface already.

“What do you think?” she said to Juno and pointed at the opening responsible for the light.

Juno's nails screeched across metal as she scrambled up the side of the car and stood on its roof, getting a better view. Her silhouette blended almost entirely into the shadows. She returned just as quickly.

“This is our best chance to leave,” Juno whispered.

Angela noticed the Jinn's hushed tone. “Wait—what's wrong? Why are you talking like that?”

Juno folded her wings against her back. “I don't know. I can sense something is different, but . . . I'm not sure what.” She licked her upper teeth nervously. “It might be best to speak quietly.”

Angela took a deep breath. Her nerves felt frayed to threads. She had no idea what kind of Luz waited for them up there. Maybe too much time hadn't passed. They were all still in existence anyway. That meant the Realms hadn't collided yet like the angel in Hell had warned her. “Is that grate an opening into Luz?” Angela asked Juno.

“I would say so,” Juno said. “Although it's hard to tell for certain.”

“Why?”

“The light,” the Jinn said with a cool hiss. Her wings shivered slightly. “It hurts my eyes.”

That was odd. Luz had been wrapped in celestial darkness for so long, and Angela deeply doubted that a lantern of some kind would hurt Juno's eyes. Her insides began to tie into a fearful knot. Yet she also had to make a choice. “Let's go,” she said.