Days of New: The Complete Collection (Serials 1-5) (5 page)

The people in the room formed an odd sort of semi-circle around the bed, which played as a focal point to the evening’s proceedings. There, stretched out across the sheets, was Jenna. Her wrists were bound, tied tight against the frame so that her arms were spread out wide. It was very clear how she’d died, although Clark had never seen holy fire used on a human before.

The special fire wasn’t meant to be used on anything but angels. Holy fire was a wicked trick from the Watchers’ magic. It had proved useful in some cases from Clark’s adventurous past, but it was brutal, indelicate, and utterly lethal.

Only a holy sort of fire could have burned Jenna from the
inside
, charring her veins so that they stood out, black and singed, under her creamy skin, which was only slightly withered and dehydrated. The fire had burned slow, because her body was arched up, straining against the restraints, frozen in what could look like ecstasy. Except it wasn’t; her face was agonized, her mouth stretched open in a silent scream. Her eyes, once warm and lovely, were crispy with fright. Her legs were rigid with pain. She looked horrible and wretched, death having been unkind to her, as it most often was.

But, then, this wasn’t really death. This was murder. There wasn’t sense to it, and that made him the sickest. Clark turned and threw up again, luckily finding the trashcan beneath the little desk beside him.

“What the hell, Clark?” Liam, the current Keeper of the Descendants, said. “Keep it together, man.”

“He’s badly hungover,” Camille offered.

Clark looked up just in time to see Liam, who Clark actually liked, cringe in understanding. News of Sophia’s sister had spread quickly, it seemed. “Ah, well, do you need a minute, Clark?” Liam offered, his tone more understanding. “I know you and Jenna were close.”

Someone made a crude whispered comment about how well Clark knew Jenna. He turned to the right as some of the younger Descendants snickered. He instantly knew who’d made the comment. Dylan was a large, muscular guy with a brutish face and shit for brains. They’d never gotten along, ever since childhood, when they’d played on the playground in the Descendants’ elementary school. He winked at Clark, who opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Liam interjected.

“Dylan!” the Keeper barked. “Shut your bloody mouth, before I shut it permanently.”

“Sorry, boss,” Dylan said, sounding anything but.

“Get out of here and watch the front door.” Liam jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the front door.

“But I’m seated!”

Being ‘seated’ to Descendants meant being called up to represent a spot on the main council, who, as a whole, represented the interests of the entire society. The council was lead by a Keeper, normally an older Descendant, who spent many years on the council. Technically, Clark wasn’t a seated member, but since the Descendants and Nephilim had merged however awkwardly post-war, he, along with a chosen few Nephilim, took up another part of the council.

“I don’t give a damn what you are when you make despicable comments about a dead lady. Now get the hell out.”

Realizing that Liam was serious, Dylan shoved his way through to the door, giving Clark a particularly hard knock on the shoulder. Clark wanted to smart off, but he saw Jenna out of the corner of his eye. Carefully, he closed his mouth, swallowing his retort. Jenna didn’t deserve any of this, and if her soul was still inside her body, she certainly didn’t deserve hearing two assholes make dicks of themselves in front of her.

Thinking of her soul made Clark wonder if Michaela would show up soon to deliver it to judgment. He couldn’t help it; his eyes roamed to the windows, looking for her new golden wings. Hope, the worst betrayer, fluttered up his throat.

“Okay,” Liam said, getting everyone’s attention again once Dylan was gone. “Let’s get on with it.”

“It’s clearly murder,” a Descendant to Clark’s left said. He was younger, with narrow gray eyes and dark skin. A badge indicating he was on the special Descendants’ police force was pinned to his navy blue uniform. “There are signs of burns, although they’re internal, as well as a very obvious smell, to allude to the fact that Miss Jenna was set on fire.”

“Bailey, when you say she was burned internally, you mean this fire was set from the inside?” Liam asked.

“So it would appear,” Bailey said, his voice crisp and business-like. He stepped closer to the body, finger pointing to the rope that bound Jenna’s left hand. “She was tied up first and then burned.”

“How do you know that?”

“The rope is solidly singed.” To illustrate his point, Bailey tapped on the twisted rope. It disintegrated into ash, fluttering down onto the bed. Jenna’s hand and arm stayed in the exact same position, even without the restraint holding her up. “There’s no way it could have been tied after she was burned.”

“Is there anything else?”

“There were no signs of struggle out in her apartment. The door wasn’t forcefully opened, and all her windows are still sealed tight,” Bailey said. “Nothing is knocked over or seemingly out of place. It seems she knew her killer, and maybe even voluntarily allowed herself to be tied up.”

“Thank you, Bailey. Clark?” Liam asked, sharply drawing Clark’s attention back to the moment. He’d been furiously fighting the urge to puke again.

“Yeah?” He croaked out.

“How many people know how to do this?”

Clark frowned. “You mean start holy fire?”

Liam nodded. Everyone was looking at Clark because he’d been the one to discover holy fire from the magic on his arms. It was an old Watcher trick that would gravely injure—but not kill—angels.

“Well,” Clark said, trying to think. “Me, Michaela, Gabriel, Zarachiel, Uriel, Simiel, Ophaniel, and my mom.”

Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably. Clark had just named eight of the most powerful beings in the entire world. While the names weren’t outright condemnations like they once had been, they still caused an air of discomfort for everyone trying to make it in this new world.

“Anyone else?” Liam prompted.

“The handful of fallen angels Gabriel used to finish off the hybrids that Lucifer created by stuffing human souls into fallen angels. And my dad knew.” Clark swallowed the lump in his throat, talking fast now. “And the group he took to Charleston to help Michaela, which included you obviously.”

Isaac St. James, Clark’s father, had been bitten by a hybrid in Charleston. The bite had become infected, and he’d died not long after.

The people in the room shifted uncomfortably again. When Michaela had been framed back in the beginning, the holy angels had used the Descendants to stand against her. Only Clark’s father and a few older Descendants, like Liam, had disobeyed, choosing to trust Michaela over the Aethere. They’d been right, everyone discovered after the war. But the Descendants’ error, after an eternity of blissful perfection in the eyes of the angels and themselves, had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths.

When it was all said and done, it sucked being wrong and looking like assholes

Liam nodded. He had been in the group Isaac had taken to Charleston. Isaac had trusted Liam enough to name him Keeper after that fateful journey; it was the only reason Clark trusted Liam now.

“Speaking for myself, I didn’t tell anyone else the incantation. Would any Nephilim know?”

“Iris did go to Charleston with a group to help Michaela, but I don’t…I don’t know who she told.”

Iris hadn’t come back to the compound to lead the Nephilim with Clark. Instead, she’d given over her title as ruler of Nephilim and stayed back in Pennsylvania on her Amish farm to rebuild with a handful of loyal Nephilim. She’d sent Ezekiel in her place to help Clark. So far, Ezekiel had proven pretty useless since this was the first time that Clark was actually in the same room with him.

“Okay. I want a list of every single name tied to Charleston and those hybrids,” Liam said. Clark nodded weakly. “I also want a list of everyone Jenna socialized and worked with on a daily basis.”

Clark felt sick again; he’d be on both of those lists. Camille’s eyes scorched into his skin, as if she was whispering the holy fire incantation against him, just to watch him burn.

“I want photographs of the room now, Bailey. And fingerprints, if we can.”

“It’ll be crude,” Bailey answered. “But we can use some of our old dusting supplies. We can only compare them to our internal database, but that will eliminate the Descendants as the ones responsible.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ezekiel snapped at the cop, his jaundice-colored eyes squinting beneath unkempt brows.

“Calm down, Ezekiel. He didn’t mean anything against the Nephilim,” Liam said carefully. He turned back to Bailey. “I understand. Do the best you can. I’ll leave you to it so we don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen.” He looked purposefully at Ezekiel when he said that last part. “Everyone else, let’s meet in the main hall in twenty. I want that list by then, Clark.”

Just then, a terrible cold blast gusted from the living room, tunneling down the hall like a giant locomotive. Clark heard the howl of it, like a scream of a dying woman, before the bedroom’s door slammed closed hard enough to rattle the entire apartment and quake the bed’s wrought iron frame. Horrified, everyone looked to Jenna’s trembling body. A puff of smoke escaped her open mouth, like she was breathing one last time, and then her body fell apart. Limb after limb fell to the bed and disintegrated into a pile of ashes. Only her head, with milky, dried eyes and gaping mouth, remained whole, perched atop a mound of dust.

Clark didn’t know what the hell had caused it, but the hairs on his arms stood on end.

Particles filled the room, and everyone coughed, swatting at the air in front of their faces.

No one wanted bits o’ Jenna going down their esophagus.

Chapter Four

T
he meeting in the main hall commenced a bit later than everyone expected. Apparently people wanted a quick shower before settling in for what would likely be a bitching fest that lasted well into the early morning hours. Clark only had time for a change of clothes—he’d waited outside Jenna’s room for Michaela.

She hadn’t shown. Or else she hadn’t shown herself to Clark. He didn’t know which was worse, but he’d swallowed his pride and gone to the meeting, knowing he couldn’t wait any longer.

The meeting hall was huge, the stone walls emitting a perpetual damp chill. Twelve sweeping stained glass windows lined the western wall. Each one depicted an Archangel, with Michaela in the middle. She wore silver armor, her black hair whipping in the wind. Her white wings were stretched wide, her sword lofted high. Given her battle stance, her face looked too peaceful and serene. Clark had never seen Michaela at peace. Her duties and responsibilities had tortured her; sometimes she’d cracked in very human ways. But Clark knew her. If she were in a battle like that window depicted, she would be snarling viciously, her entire heart and soul thrown into doing her job.

Which was exactly what she did now, Clark told himself. She was busy. Not seeing her today didn’t mean that she didn’t care about him anymore.

At least, Clark was happy to notice, the windows had been recently cleaned and polished. When it was believed the Archangels were all traitors, Clark had wondered if the windows would have to be torn out and new ones installed that depicted the Aethere choir’s likenesses. Thankfully, peace had been restored—however tenuous it might be—because the Aethere angels were ugly bastards.

The long meeting table was cramped with the Descendants’ seated members, the Nephilim council, and Camille, who acted as a liaison between the Descendants and the angels. Honestly, Camille did an even worse job liaising than Clark had done as a Descendant, and that was saying something. It was obviously karma that the only seat left when Clark arrived to the meeting was next to Camille.

Karma or the fact that everyone was terrified of her.

She hadn’t showered either. Ash lightly coated her shoulders and hair, the smell of fire tickling up Clark’s nose. She seemed entirely at ease with parts of Jenna’s body on her; Clark leaned away from her ever-so-slightly in his chair.

Liam banged his gavel onto the table, which reminded Clark instantly of his father. Actually, this entire room reminded him of his father. Clark swallowed a quick drink from his flask, feeling Camille’s judgment bearing down on him from six inches away. Turning his head in her direction, he sneezed without covering his mouth. She recoiled.

“My apologies,” he said, trying to hide his satisfied smirk.

“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath.

“Attention!” Liam shouted, eyes cutting to Clark and Camille. His voice echoed through the empty hall. Normally the entire second-floor loft was filled with the unseated Descendants, but this meeting had been called in secrecy. The silence made the hall feel like an empty cathedral. “Let’s get started. Clark, do you have my list?”

“Uh,” Clark fumbled in his jeans pocket, pulling out a dirty napkin with hastily scribbled names on it. “Sure.”

The napkin was passed up to Liam, who took it with a disgusted look on his face. “Really?” he asked, trying to smooth it down. “Are things so bad off that you can’t even find a piece of paper?”