Passion (29 page)

Cleaving with his past self had been a vast mistake.

The simplest way to split apart two entwined incarnations of a soul was to kil the body. Freed from the cage of the esh, the soul sorted itself out. But kil ing himself wasn’t real y an option for Daniel. Unless …

The starshot.

In Greenland, he had snatched it from where it lay nestled in the snow at the edge of the angels’ re. Gabbe had brought it along as symbolic protection, but she would never have expected Daniel to cleave and steal it.

Had he real y thought he could just drag the dul silver tip across his chest and split apart his soul, casting his past self back into time?

Stupid.

No. He was too likely to slip up, to fail, and then instead of split ing his soul, he might accidental y kil it. Soul ess, Daniel’s earthly guise, this dul body, would wander the earth in perpetuity, searching for its soul but set ling for the next best thing: Luce. It would haunt her until the day she died, and maybe after that.

What Daniel needed was a partner. What he needed was impossible.

He grunted and rol ed over onto his back, squinting into the bright sun directly overhead.

“See?” a voice above him said. “I told you we were in the right place.”

“I don’t see why this”—another voice, a boy’s this time—“is proof of us doing anything right.”

“Oh, come on, Miles. Don’t let your beef with Daniel keep us from finding Luce. He obviously knows where she is.” The voices drew closer. Daniel opened his eyes in a squint and saw an arm slice the light of the sun, extending toward him.

“Hey there. Need a hand?”

Shelby. Luce’s Nephilim friend from Shoreline.

And Miles. The one she’d kissed.

“What are you two doing here?” Daniel sat up sharply, rejecting Shelby’s o ered hand. He rubbed his forehead and glanced behind him—

the thing he’d col ided with was the gray trunk of an olive tree.

“What do you think we’re doing here? We’re looking for Luce.” Shelby gaped down at Daniel and wrinkled her nose. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Daniel tried to stand up, but he was so dizzy he quickly lay down again. Cleaving—especial y dragging his past body into another life—had made him sick. He fought his past from inside, slamming up against the edges, bruising his soul on bones and skin. He knew the Nephilim could sense that something unmentionable had happened to him. “Go home, trespassers. Whose Announcer did you use to get here? Do you know how much trouble you could get yourselves in?”

Al of a sudden, something silver gleamed under his nose.

“Take us to Luce.” Miles was pointing a starshot at Daniel’s neck. The brim of his basebal cap hid his eyes, but his mouth was screwed in a nervous grimace.

Daniel was dumbstruck. “You—you have a starshot.”

“Miles!” Shelby whispered fiercely. “What are you doing with that thing?” The dul tip of the arrow quaked. Miles was clearly nervous. “You left it in the yard after the Outcasts left,” he said to Daniel. “Cam grabbed one, and in the chaos, no one noticed when I picked up this one. You took o after Luce. And we took o after you.” He turned to Shelby. “I thought we might need it. Self-defense.”

“Don’t you dare kil him,” Shelby said to Miles. “You’re an idiot.”

“No,” Daniel said, very slowly sit ing up. “It’s okay.”

His mind was spinning. What were the odds? He had only seen this done once before. Daniel was no expert at cleaving. But his past writhed inside him—he couldn’t go on like this. There was only one solution. Miles was holding it in his hands.

But how could he get the boy to at ack him without explaining everything? And could he trust the Nephilim?

Daniel edged backward until his shoulders were against the tree trunk. He slid up it, holding both empty hands wide, showing Miles there was nothing to be afraid of. “You took fencing?”

“What?” Miles looked bewildered.

“At Shoreline. Did you take a fencing class or not?”

“We al did. It was kind of pointless and I wasn’t al that good, but—”

That was al Daniel needed to hear. “En garde!” he shouted, drawing out his concealed starshot like a sword.

Miles’s eyes grew wide. In an instant he’d raised his arrow as wel .

“Oh, crap,” Shelby said, scurrying out of the way. “You guys, seriously. Stop!” The starshots were shorter than fencing foils but a few inches longer than normal arrows. They were featherlight but as hard as diamonds, and if Daniel and Miles were very, very careful, the two of them might make it out of this alive. Somehow, with Miles’s help, Daniel might cleave free of his past.

He sliced through the air with his starshot, advancing a few steps toward the Nephilim.

Miles responded, ghting o Daniel’s blow, his arrow glancing hard toward the right. When the starshots clashed, they did not make the tinny clanks that fencing foils made. They made a deep, echoing whooomp that reverberated o the mountains and shook the ground under tinny clanks that fencing foils made. They made a deep, echoing whooomp that reverberated o the mountains and shook the ground under their feet.

“Your fencing lesson wasn’t pointless,” Daniel said as his arrow crisscrossed with Miles’s in the air. “It was to prepare for a moment like this.”

“A moment”—Miles grunted as he lunged forward, sweeping his starshot up until it slid against Daniel’s in the air—“like what?” Their arms strained. The starshots made a frozen X in the air.

“I need you to release me from an earlier incarnation that I’ve cloven to my soul,” Daniel said simply.

“What the…,” Shelby murmured from the sidelines.

Confusion ashed across Miles’s face, and his arm faltered. His blade fel away, and his starshot clat ered to the ground. He gasped and fumbled for it, looking back at Daniel, terrified.

“I’m not coming after you,” Daniel said. “I need you to come after me.” He managed a competitive smirk. “Come on. You know you want to. You’ve wanted to for a long time.”

Miles charged, holding the starshot like an arrow instead of a sword. Daniel was ready for him, dipping to one side just in time and spinning around to clash his starshot against Miles’s.

They were locked in each other’s grip: Daniel with his starshot pointing past Miles’s shoulder, using his strength to hold the Nephilim boy back, and Miles with his starshot inches away from Daniel’s heart.

“Are you going to help me?” Daniel demanded.

“What’s in it for us?” Miles asked.

Daniel had to think about this for a moment. “Luce’s happiness,” he said at last.

Miles didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no.

“Now”—Daniel’s voice faltered as he gave the instructions—“very careful y, drag your blade in a straight line down the center of my chest.

Do not pierce the skin or you wil kil me.”

Miles was sweating. His face was white. He glanced over at Shelby.

“Do it, Miles,” she whispered.

The starshot trembled. Everything was in this boy’s hands. The blunt end of the starshot touched Daniel’s skin and traveled down.

“Omigod.” Shelby’s lips curled up in horror. “He’s molting.”

Daniel could feel it, like a layer of skin was lifting o his bones. His past self’s body was slowly cleaving from his own. The venom of separation coursed through him, threading deep into the bers of his wings. The pain was so raw it was nauseating, roiling deep inside him with great tidal swel s. His vision clouded; ringing l ed his ears. The starshot in his hand tumbled to the ground. Then, al at once, he felt a great shove and a sharp, cold breath of air. There was a long grunt and two thuds, and then—

His vision cleared. The ringing ceased. He felt lightness, simplicity.

Free.

Miles lay on the ground below him, chest heaving. The starshot in Daniel’s hand had disappeared. Daniel spun around to nd a specter of his past self standing behind him, his skin gray and his body wraithlike, his eyes and teeth coal-black, the starshot grasped in his hand. His profile wobbled in the hot wind, like the picture on a shorted-out television.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, reaching forward and clutching his past self at the base of his wings. When Daniel lifted the shadow of himself o the ground, his body felt scant and insu cient. His ngers found the graying portal of the Announcer through which both Daniels had traveled just before it fel apart. “Your day wil come,” he said.

Then he pitched his past self back into the Announcer.

He watched the void fading in the hot sun. The body made a drawn-out whistling sound as it tumbled into time, as if it were fal ing o a clif . The Announcer split into infinitesimal traces, and was gone.

“What the hel just happened?” Shelby asked, helping Miles to his feet.

The Nephilim was ghostly white, gaping down at his hands, flipping them over and examining them as if he’d never seen them before.

Daniel turned to Miles. “Thank you.”

The Nephilim boy’s blue eyes looked eager and terri ed at the same time, as if he wanted to pump every detail out of Daniel about what had just happened but didn’t want to show his excitement. Shelby was speechless, which was an unprecedented event.

Daniel had despised Miles until then. He’d been annoyed by Shelby, who’d practical y led the Outcasts straight toward Luce. But at that moment, under the olive tree, he could see why Luce had befriended both of them. And he was glad.

A horn whined in the distance. Miles and Shelby jumped.

It was a shofar, a sacred ram’s horn that made a long, nasal note—often used to announce religious services and festivals. Until then Daniel hadn’t looked around enough to realize where they were.

The three of them stood under the mot led shade of the olive tree at the crest of a low hil . In front of them, the hil sloped down to a wide, at val ey, tawny with the tal native grasses that had never been cut by man. In the middle of the val ey was a narrow strip of green, where wildflowers grew alongside a narrow river.

Just east of the riverbed, a smal group of tents stood clustered together, facing a larger square structure made of white stones, with a lat iced wooden roof. The blast of the shofar must have come from that temple.

A line of women in colorful cloaks that fel to their ankles moved in and out of the temple. They carried clay jugs and bronze trays of food, as if in preparation for a feast.

“Oh,” Daniel said aloud, feeling a profound melancholy set le over him.

“Oh what?” Shelby asked.

Daniel gripped the hood of Shelby’s camou age sweatshirt. “If you’re looking for Luce here, you won’t nd her. She’s dead. She died a month ago.”

Miles nearly choked.

“You mean the Luce from this lifetime,” Shelby said. “Not our Luce. Right?”

“Our Luce—my Luce—isn’t here, either. She never knew this place existed, so her Announcers wouldn’t bring her here. Yours wouldn’t have, either.”

Shelby and Miles shared a glance. “You say you’re looking for Luce,” Shelby said, “but if you know she isn’t here, why are you stil hanging around?”

Daniel stared past them, at the val ey below. “Unfinished business.”

“Who is that?” Miles asked, pointing at a woman in a long white dress. She was tal and wil owy, with red hair that shimmered in the

“Who is that?” Miles asked, pointing at a woman in a long white dress. She was tal and wil owy, with red hair that shimmered in the sunlight. Her dress was cut low, showing o a lot of golden skin. She was singing something soft and lovely, a tease of a song they could barely hear.

“That’s Lilith,” Daniel said slowly. “She’s supposed to be married today.” Miles took a few steps along a path leading down from the olive tree toward the val ey where the temple stood, about a hundred feet below them, as if to get a bet er look.

“Miles, wait!” Shelby scrambled after him. “This isn’t like when we were in Vegas. This is some freaking … other time or whatever. You can’t just see a hot girl and go strol ing in like you own the place.” She turned to look at Daniel for help.

“Stay low,” Daniel instructed them. “Keep under the grass line. And stop when I say stop.” Careful y, they wound down the path, stopping at last near the bank of the river, downstream from the temple. Al the tents in the smal community had been strewn with garlands of marigolds and cassis owers. They were in earshot of the voices of Lilith and the girls who were helping prepare her for the wedding. The girls laughed and joined in Lilith’s song as they braided her long red hair into a wreath around her head.

Shelby turned to Miles. “Doesn’t she look kind of like Lilith from our class at Shoreline?”

“No,” Miles said instantly. He studied the bride for a moment. “Okay, maybe a lit le bit. Weird.”

“Luce probably never mentioned her,” Shelby explained to Daniel. “She’s a total bitch from Hel .”

“It makes sense,” Daniel said. “Your Lilith might come from the same long line of evil women. They’re al descendants of the original mother Lilith. She was Adam’s first wife.”

“Adam had more than one wife?” Shelby gaped. “What about Eve?”

“Before Eve.”

“Pre-Eve? No way.”

Daniel nodded. “They weren’t married very long when Lilith left him. It broke his heart. He waited for her a long time, but eventual y, he met Eve. And Lilith never forgave Adam for get ing over her. She spent the rest of her days wandering the earth and cursing the family Adam had with Eve. And her descendants—sometimes they start out al right, but eventual y, wel , the apple never real y fal s far from the tree.”

“That’s messed up,” Miles said, despite seeming hypnotized by Lilith’s beauty.

“You’re tel ing me that Lilith Clout, the girl who set my hair on re in ninth grade, could be literal y a bitch from Hel ? That al my voodoo toward her might have been justified?”

“I guess so.” Daniel shrugged.

“I’ve never felt so vindicated.” Shelby laughed. “Why wasn’t this in any of our angelology books at Shoreline?”

“Shhh.” Miles pointed toward the temple. Lilith had left her maidens to complete the decorations for the wedding—strewing yel ow and white poppies near the entrance to the temple, weaving ribbons and smal chimes made of silver into the low branches of the oak trees—and walked away from them, west, toward the river, toward where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding.