Passion (30 page)

She carried a bouquet of white lilies. When she reached the riverbank, she plucked a few petals and scat ered them over the water, stil singing softly under her breath. Then she turned to walk north along the bank, toward a huge old carob tree with branches that drooped into the river.

A boy sat beneath it, staring into the current. His long legs were propped up close to his chest, with one arm draped over them. The other arm was skipping stones into the water. His green eyes sparkled against his tan skin. His jet-black hair was a lit le shaggy, and damp from a recent swim.

“Oh my god, that’s—” Shelby’s cry was cut of by Daniel’s hand clamping over her mouth.

This was the moment he’d been afraid of. “Yes, it’s Cam, but it’s not the Cam you know. This is an earlier Cam. We are thousands of years in the past.”

Miles narrowed his eyes. “But he’s stil evil.”

“No,” Daniel said. “He’s not.”

“Huh?” Shelby asked.

“There was a time when we were al part of one family. Cam was my brother. He was not evil, not yet. Maybe not even now.” Physical y, the only di erence between this Cam and the one Shelby and Miles knew was that his neck was bare of the sunburst tat oo he’d got en from Satan when he’d thrown in his lot with Hel . Otherwise, Cam looked exactly as he did now.

Except that this long-ago Cam’s face was sti with worry. It was an expression Daniel hadn’t seen on Cam in mil ennia. Probably not since this very moment.

Lilith stopped behind Cam and wrapped her arms around his neck so that her hands rested just over his heart. Without turning or saying a word, Cam reached up and cupped her hands in his. Both of them closed their eyes, content.

“This seems real y private,” Shelby said. “Should we be—I mean, I feel weird.”

“Then leave,” Daniel said slowly. “Don’t make a scene on your way out—”

Daniel broke of . Someone was walking toward Cam and Lilith.

The young man was tal and tanned, dressed in a long white robe, and carrying a thick scrol of parchment. His blond head was down, but it was obviously Daniel.

“I’m not leaving.” Miles’s eyes locked on Daniel’s past self.

“Wait, I thought we just sent that guy back into the Announcers,” Shelby said, confused.

“That was a later early version of myself,” Daniel said.

“A later early version of myself, he says!” Shelby snorted. “Exactly how many Daniels are there?”

“He came from two thousand years in the future beyond the moment where we are right now, which is stil one thousand years in the true past. That Daniel shouldn’t have been here.”

“We’re three thousand years in the past right now?” Miles asked.

“Yes, and you real y shouldn’t be.” Daniel stared Miles down. “But that past version of me”—he pointed at the boy who had stopped next to Cam and Lilith—“belongs here.”

Across the river, Lilith smiled. “How are you, Dani?”

They watched as Dani knelt down next to the couple and unrol ed the scrol of parchment. Daniel remembered: It was their marriage license. He’d inscribed the whole thing himself in Aramaic. He was supposed to perform the ceremony. Cam had asked him months before.

Lilith and Cam read over the document. They were good together, Daniel remembered. She wrote songs for him and spent hours picking wild owers, weaving them into his clothes. He gave al of himself to her. He listened to her dreams and made her laugh when she was sad.

wild owers, weaving them into his clothes. He gave al of himself to her. He listened to her dreams and made her laugh when she was sad.

Both of them had their volatile sides, and when they argued, the whole tribe heard about it—but neither one of them was yet the dark thing they would become after they split up.

“This part right here,” Lilith said, pointing to a line in the text. “It says we wil be married by the river. But you know I want to be married in the temple, Cam.”

Cam and Daniel shared a look. Cam reached for Lilith’s hand. “My love. I’ve already told you I cannot.” Something hot rose in Lilith’s voice. “You refuse to marry me under the eyes of God? In the only place where my family wil approve of our union! Why?”

“Whoa,” Shelby whispered on the other side of the stream. “I see what’s happening. Cam can’t get married in the temple … he can’t even set foot in the temple, because—”

Miles began to whisper, too: “If a fal en angel enters the sanctuary of God—”

“The whole thing bursts into flames,” Shelby finished.

The Nephilim were right, of course, but Daniel was surprised by his own frustration. Cam loved Lilith, and Lilith loved Cam. They had a chance to make their love work, and as far as Daniel was concerned, to Hel with everything else. Why was Lilith so insistent on being married in the temple? Why couldn’t Cam give her a good explanation for his refusal?

“I won’t set foot in there.” Cam pointed at the temple.

Lilith was close to tears. “Then you don’t love me.”

“I love you more than I ever thought possible, but it doesn’t change a thing.” Lilith’s thin body seemed to swel with rage. Could she sense that there was more to Cam’s refusal than merely some wish to deny her?

Daniel didn’t think so. She clenched her fists and let out a long, shril scream.

It seemed to shake the earth. Lilith grabbed Cam’s wrists and pinned him against the tree. He didn’t even struggle.

“My grandmother never liked you.” Her arms trembled as she held him down. “She always said the most terrible things, and I always defended you. Now I see it. In your eyes and your soul.” Her eyes bored into him. “Say it.”

“Say what?” Cam asked, horrified.

“You’re a bad man. You’re a—I know what you are.”

It was clear that Lilith didn’t know. She was grasping at the rumors that ew around the community—that he was evil, a wizard, a member of the occult. Al she wanted was to hear the truth from Cam.

Daniel knew that Cam could tel Lilith, but he wouldn’t. He was afraid to.

“I am none of the bad things anyone says I am, Lilith,” Cam said.

It was the truth and Daniel knew it, but it sounded so much like a lie. Cam was on the brink of the worst decision he would ever make.

This was it: the moment that broke Cam’s heart so that it rot ed into something black.

“Lilith,” Dani pleaded with her, pul ing her hands away from Cam’s throat. “He is not—”

“Dani,” Cam warned. “Nothing you can say wil fix this.”

“That’s right. It’s broken.” Lilith let go, and Cam fel backward into the dirt. She picked up their marriage contract and ung it into the river. It spun slowly in the current and sank. “I hope I live a thousand years and have a thousand daughters so there wil always be a woman who can curse your name.” She spat in his face, then turned and ran back to the temple, her white dress flowing behind her like a sail.

Cam’s face turned as white as Lilith’s wedding robe. He reached for Dani’s hand to help himself up. “Do you have a starshot, Dani?”

“No.” Dani’s voice shook. “Don’t talk like that. You’l get her back, or else—”

“I was naïve to think I could have got en away with loving a mortal woman.”

“If you’d only told her,” Dani said.

“Told her? What happened to me—to al of us? The Fal and everything since?” Cam leaned closer to Dani. “Maybe she’s right about me.

You heard her: The whole vil age thinks I am a demon. Even if they won’t use the word.”

“They know nothing.”

Cam turned away. “Al this time I’ve been trying to deny it, but love is impossible, Dani.”

“It is not.”

“It is. For souls like ours. You’l see. You may hold out longer than I could, but you’l see. Both of us wil eventual y have to choose.”

“No.”

“So quick to protest, brother.” Cam squeezed Dani’s shoulder. “It makes me wonder about you. Don’t you ever think about it … crossing over?”

Dani shrugged away. “I think about her and only her. I count the seconds until she’l be with me again. I choose her, as she chooses me.”

“How lonely.”

“It’s not lonely,” Dani barked. “It’s love. The love you want for yourself, too—”

“I meant: I’m lonely. And far less noble than you are. Any day. I fear a change is coming on.”

“No.” Now Dani moved toward Cam. “You wouldn’t.”

Cam reared away and spat. “Not al of us are lucky enough to be bound to our lover by a curse.” Daniel remembered this empty insult: It had made him furious. But stil , he shouldn’t have said what came next:

“Go, then. You won’t be missed.”

He regret ed it instantly, but it was too late.

Cam rol ed back his shoulders and threw out his arms. When his wings bloomed at his sides, they sent a burst of hot wind rippling across the grass where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding. The three of them peered up. His wings were massive and glowing and—

“Wait a minute,” Shelby whispered. “They’re not gold!”

Miles blinked. “How can they not be gold?”

Of course the Nephilim would be confused. The division of wing color was as clear as night and day: gold for demons, silver or white for everyone else. And the Cam they knew was a demon. Daniel was in no mood to explain to Shelby why Cam’s wings were pure, bright white, as radiant as diamonds, glistening like sun-kissed snow.

This long-ago Cam had not crossed over yet. He was merely on the brink.

That day Lilith lost Cam as a lover, and Daniel lost him as a brother. From this day on, they would be enemies. Could Daniel have stopped him? What if he hadn’t spun away from Cam and unfurled his own wings like a shield—the way he watched Dani do now?

He should have. He burned to burst forth from the bushes and stop Cam now. How much could be dif erent!

Cam’s and Dani’s wings did not yet have the tortured magnetic pul toward each other. Al that repel ed them in this moment was a Cam’s and Dani’s wings did not yet have the tortured magnetic pul toward each other. Al that repel ed them in this moment was a stubborn dif erence of opinion, a philosophical sibling rivalry.

Both angels rose from the ground at the same time, each facing a di erent direction. So when Dani soared east across the sky and Cam soared west, the three Anachronisms hiding in the grass were the only ones to see the gleam of gold bite into Cam’s wings. Like a sparkling lightning bolt.

SEVENTEEN

SEVENTEEN

WRITTEN IN BONE

YIN, CHINA • QING MING

(APPROXIMATELY APRIL 4, 1046 BCE)

At the far end of the Announcer’s tunnel was an engul ng brightness. It kissed her skin like a summer morning at her parents’ house in Georgia.

Luce plunged toward it.

Unbridled glory. That was what Bil had cal ed the burning light of Daniel’s true soul. Merely looking upon Daniel’s pure angelic self had made an entire community of people at the Mayan sacrifice spontaneously combust—including Ix Cuat, Luce’s past self.

But there had been a moment.

A moment of pure wonder just before she died, when Luce had felt closer to Daniel than she ever had before. She didn’t care what Bil said: She recognized the glow of Daniel’s soul. She had to see it again. Maybe there was some way she could live through it. She had to at least try.

She burst out of the Announcer into the cold emptiness of a colossal bedroom.

The chamber was at least ten times bigger than any room Luce had ever seen, and everything about it was lavish. The floors were crafted of smoothest marble and covered by enormous rugs made of whole animal skins, one of which had an intact tiger’s head. Four timber pil ars held up a nely thatched gabled ceiling. The wal s were made of woven bamboo. Near the open window was an enormous canopy bed with sheets of green-gold silk.

A tiny telescope rested on the window’s ledge. Luce picked it up, parting the gold silk curtain to peer outside. The telescope was heavy and cold when she held it up to her eye.

She was in the center of a great wal ed city, looking down from a second story. A maze of stone roadways connected crammed, ancient-looking wat le-and-daub structures. The air was warm and smel ed softly of cherry blossoms. A pair of orioles crossed the blue sky.

Luce turned to Bil . “Where are we?” This place seemed as foreign as the world of the Mayans, and just as far back in time.

He shrugged and opened his mouth to speak, but then—

“Shhh,” Luce whispered.

Snif ling.

Someone was crying soft, hushed tears. Luce turned toward the noise. There, through an archway on the far side of the room, she heard the sound again.

Luce moved toward the archway, sliding along the stone oor in her bare feet. The sobbing echoed, beckoning her. A narrow walkway opened up into another cavernous chamber. This one was windowless, with low ceilings, dimly lit by the glow of a dozen smal bronze lamps.

She could make out a large stone basin, and a smal lacquered table stocked with black pot ery vials of aromatic oils that gave the whole room a warm and spicy smel . A gigantic carved jade wardrobe stood in the corner of the room. Thin green dragons etched into its face sneered at Luce, as if they knew everything she didn’t.

And in the center of the chamber, a dead man lay sprawled on the floor.

Before Luce could see anything more, she was blinded by a bright light moving toward her. It was the same glow she’d sensed from the other side of the Announcer.