I shook my head again. “No. I can’t be swayed either. I have grown to love these humans and all life on Earth. If you would put your hatred aside for just a moment, spend any time at all among them, you’ll see how incredible life is. There aren’t enough words in any language—human or angelic—to describe how amazing the feel of sunlight is on your skin, or how soft is the velvet of flower petals, or what it’s like to jump into a river. You hate too much to ever know what it’s really like on Earth, what it’s like to love and to feel love and to be happy. That’s why I feel sorry for you.”
“None of that should ever have been—”
“But it is!” I cried. “Sammael, you’ve been asleep for eons. Life has thrived and become something truly great. I love being human. Why can’t you try to understand that?”
Flames raged in those golden eyes. “You can’t be saved.”
“No, Sammael,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s you who can’t be saved.”
He huffed—not quite a laugh—and grimaced. “Azrael can’t fight for you. In the end, it’ll be you and me.”
“I’m counting on it.”
He smiled, a hideous thing, like pulling apart a spider’s web, and the world started to fade. I was glad to see him go and to return to the waking world.
The hotel room was dark, but the window boasted a halo of daylight threatening to shine through the dark shade. We’d gone to bed at dawn and now it was nearly noon. Will still slumbered next to me, breathing softly. I reached over to the nightstand and touched my winged necklace. It felt warm to the touch as always. I relaxed as I felt grounded to the real world instead of the nightmare-hijacking I’d gotten from the Lord of Souls.
As soon as I thought about him, the memory of something Sammael had said jolted me fully awake: “You can still reclaim your grace….”
My grace.
I looked at the winged pendant and pulled it into my palm. “Oh my God,” I murmured, turning the pendant over in my hand, examining it.
Will stirred, rustling the sheets. “Are you up?” he asked groggily. He hadn’t even opened his eyes yet.
“My grace!”
He peeked one confused eye open at me. “What?”
“It was never gone,” I said as the excitement of the revelation welled up in me. “The night Sammael was awakened, he said that he couldn’t sense my grace. Kelaeno had broken my necklace and it fell—that’s why he couldn’t sense my grace. I’ve always had this pendant and it has always felt warm only to me. I feel lost, and like a piece of me is missing, when I’m not wearing this. That’s because a piece of me is missing when I’m not wearing it. The necklace—Will, my angelic grace is inside it.”
24
WITH THE PENTALPHA IN MY POSSESSION AND THE iron certainty that my grace had never left me, I felt fueled to get up and move. If I was able to somehow tap into the power contained within my necklace, I might even be able perhaps to uncover a new strength, or one that had been long lost to me.
I dived into the shower before Will so I could tame my hair and get ready, since he always seemed to take only five minutes before he was suited up to walk out the door. Boys were freaks, really.
Speaking of freaks…I grabbed my phone to text Cadan and see if he was up.
R u ration yet?
It was at least a minute before he texted back. What language is that?
R U AWAKE
Much to my extreme dismay. The sun is no friend to my fragile complexion.
I rolled my eyes, entirely unsympathetic. Poor baby. Come to my room asap.
It’s too early to proposition me, Ellie.
GET OVER HERE.
So frisky. Give me a minute to get some clothes on. Or should I not…?
I let out a grumble and didn’t reply to that. Boys were freaks. Next I gave Ava a call since she had never caught on to the texting thing. She wasn’t quite as gung-ho about the twenty-first century as Cadan was. At least she had a phone at all. She and Marcus were already up and about, so they headed to our room right away. They arrived just as Will emerged from the bathroom, showered and dressed in fresh clothes.
“Have you figured out how to work the ring?” Marcus asked. He examined the relic between his fingers before letting it fall back against my skin.
“I don’t think I need to do anything,” I replied. “It’s my own relic and it should obey me. I can make it do whatever I want.”
“Well, it’s great that you’re feeling confident,” Marcus said. “Let’s hope that you’re right.”
Will stepped forward and crossed his arms. His game face was already on. “We should summon Azrael at the castle. We don’t need an angel showing up where humans may see him. our world has been exposed enough already. So, let’s get a good meal first, get some energy, and head out.”
Madeleine was waiting for us just beyond the threshold of Kasteel van Mesen. The reapers and I entered, but her gaze was glued only to Cadan’s face. He, in return, was just as shocked.
“You,” she exhaled. “They told me that they had a demonic reaper with them, but…you?”
“Whoa, wait,” I interrupted. “You two know each other?”
Cadan opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. At last he was able to tear his eyes away from Madeleine to then gape at Will. When Cadan looked back at Madeleine, he struggled to get the words past his lips. “You were pregnant?”
There was a lightning crack of anger in her toxic green eyes. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked him between clenched teeth. “You killed him. Part of me always knew you would.”
Cadan’s silence said more than words could. Cadan had done what he had to do, and if he hadn’t killed Bastian, then Will or I would’ve done it. I tried to read the expression on Will’s face, but he was a wall of ice beside me.
“Yes, Ellie,” he said finally, but didn’t look at me. “Madeleine and I know each other. I should have known that she was Will’s mother. Bastian didn’t exactly make a habit of courting angelic reapers. Mostly he just killed them.”
“What about you?” she countered. “Keeping the angelic for company instead of wading through their body parts? How you’ve changed.”
He glared at her. “Yes, I have changed—something my father could never do. We’ve all done some pretty messed-up things. Not even you can deny that.”
Without another word, she spun on her heel and stomped through the grass toward the dark hallway. I drew in a breath and took a step to follow her, but Will caught my arm. I looked up at him and he shook his head once. Ava and Marcus stood in silence behind Will, their faces grave.
“Why didn’t you tell him that you were with child?” Cadan called to her back. “He never knew. Not until recently.”
Madeleine stopped and, after a moment, she turned around. “Because I saw the way he treated you,” she confessed. “And I didn’t want that for my son. There was some goodness in your father, but he spared none of it for you.”
Cadan flinched, as if the words stung like an open cut. “He stopped feeling anything at all after you left. If there had been any goodness in him, it had gone with you.”
Madeleine looked over at Will before returning her gaze to Cadan’s. “I never meant to hurt anyone, but I did what I had to do. You must understand why I left him.”
He gave a miserable smile. “Better than anyone.”
“I warned him that I would go,” she said. “He did things that were unforgivable. When I realized that I would bear a son by a demonic sire, I had to get out and away from Bastian and the others. I loved Bastian, but he was dangerous. If he knew I was with child, then he would have tried to take William from me. You knew he wanted me to join his cause, and you know he would have raised my son to follow in his footsteps the way he raised you. Yes, Cadan, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but hiding William from Bastian isn’t among them.”
Cadan exhaled, deflating a little. “I wouldn’t wish what I lived through on anyone.”
“Look,” M
adeleine said. “This is neither the time nor the place to settle old conflicts—very old conflicts. Ellie needs to summon Azrael. She’s come a long way and we’re running out of time.”
“Yes,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got more important things to take care of.”
I touched his arm and offered him a supportive smile. “Thank you. Madeleine, we appreciate this.”
“Let’s go,” she said to all of us now. “I can take you to a part of the castle that’s big enough for the angel to come through. A lot of energy will be required to bring him to our world.”
Madeleine led us to the great hall whose ceiling had caved in long ago. The stars in the night sky glittered so clearly, and the moon was heavy, low, and gigantic.
I drew the leather cord from over my head and closed my fist around the Pentalpha, feeling the power of the relic flow through my veins as if it were an extension of me. “I am the Messenger, Gabriel, she who is set over all the powers,” I called out to the empty space above. “I evoke thee, Azrael, the Destroyer, lord of the shepherds of the dead.”
It took a single instant for the ring to light on fire around my finger. The white flames licked over my fist but they didn’t burn me. My heart slammed against my rib cage and the power erupted from the relic clenched around my lungs as it coursed through me, making me gasp for oxygen. The space seemed to shimmer and wave like air boiling over hot pavement, and something invisible tore a hole through the air, allowing for a single beam of light to blaze through. The light grew, forcing itself through the opening in the sky, and became so blindingly bright that I couldn’t look right at it. I squeezed my eyes shut against it, turning my face away. When the light dimmed and I could see once more, a figure had come through the seam in space and his wings spread wide and shining as his boots settled to the ground. His dark skin and silver armor gleamed in the moonlight, corporeal and wholly in our world. He held out his hand and examined his open palm.
“It has…,” he said softly to no one in particular, “been a long time. The air feels cool on my skin. I can smell the trees.”
I wondered if the last time he’d been corporeal on Earth was the day he cast Sammael out of Heaven. “Azrael,” I called to him. “We need your help.”
His gaze traveled across the faces of the reapers at my flanks. “I am at your service, Sister.”
“We need an angel to fight with us,” I explained. “What we are isn’t enough. You’ve beaten Sammael twice before. We need you.”
“When Sammael joined Lucifer and the other Fallen, he kept his archangel strength,” Azrael replied without missing a beat. “He is now more powerful than any angel below that rank. I would last only moments if I stood against him.”
I stared at him in shock. “You won’t fight?”
“I cannot.”
“You won’t even try?”
“Ellie,” Will said next to me in his soothing voice. “Just because he can’t fight doesn’t mean he won’t help.”
“I may be outcast and weakened,” Azrael said, wearing a gentle smile at Will, “but I never stopped serving. Michael chose well, Guardian. Faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he.”
Will watched the angel as his words sunk in. “How can you help us?”
Azrael held out a hand and a staff shimmered into being out of a flash of light and energy, much like the way our own weapons appeared when we called them. The staff was longer than Azrael was tall, and at the head of the staff was a triple-bladed weapon reminding me somewhat of a trident, but the two outer blades were crescent-shaped and double-edged like a partisan. The weapon was vicious, but elegant in its design.
“The hallowed glaive,” I murmured, recognizing it immediately. This was the weapon Cadan said Bastian had feared. This was the weapon I would use to kill Sammael and Lilith.
“Correct,” Azrael said. “I will give you the weapon that banished Sammael from Heaven. However, you will not be able to wield the hallowed glaive in your human body. You must ascend to your archangel form in order to even touch the glaive.”
I tried not to look at Will, whose eyes were glued to me and keenly felt. I wasn’t ready to face the possibly of becoming the being again who was now a stranger to me, and to face what being an archangel meant. “But my angelfire doesn’t work with any weapon other than my Khopesh swords.”
“When you are an archangel, you will have no limits to your power. Any blade you conjure to vanquish the demonic will accept your angelfire. But you must wait to use the hallowed glaive until the moment you need it to conserve your archangel power. You must ascend, summon me at Armageddon, and I will give you the hallowed glaive. The armies of the Beast will await you there, and you will sing a requiem for a war.”
“At Armageddon?” I asked, confused at first, but then I remembered. Armageddon isn’t an event like people seem to think these days, it’s a location. “You mean, the site of the End of Days is Armageddon, which is the same place as Har Megiddo near Jerusalem.”
When I looked over at Will, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. “It’s the hill of Megiddo in Hebrew,” he said, his face lighting up. “Armageddon is the Greek name for this hill, not an event synonymous with the End of Days. It’s the site of the End of Days.”
“Correct,” Azrael said. “It has been long foretold that the final battle will begin on the hill of Armageddon. Sammael and his legion will meet you there, Gabriel.”
“Is there no other way for Ellie to use this weapon?” Will asked.
Azrael’s gaze was sympathetic. “She must be an archangel to use the hallowed glaive and it is the only weapon strong enough to destroy the Fallen.”
I tried not to let my sadness show as I understood what I must do, despite my fear of what would happen to me. “Then how do I ascend?”
“There is a spell that you and I wrote together when you were ordered to come to Earth in human form. I see you still have your necklace. You will need your grace. Along with the spell, you will need the fail-safe, which has been kept hidden in the event that one day you would need to shed your mortal bonds and become an archangel to fight on Earth.”
“I have no memory of Heaven. Do you know the spell? What is this fail-safe?”
He stepped toward me, his movements fluid and inhuman, and he pressed his hand to my forehead. I gasped; the ancient words rushed into my mind in a thousand different languages. Images flashed of great humanoid beasts, the Nephilim, carving a path of destruction through civilizations long turned to dust, and of winged warriors painting the soil with the blood of those giants. I witnessed Azrael’s memories through his eyes. I saw myself standing on a hill wearing armor made of a strange metal I didn’t recognize. It looked as if it was made of mother-of-pearl, much like my winged necklace, and was splashed with blood, as were my Khopesh swords. My hair blazed like fire. At the bottom of the hill were the bodies of Nephilim, massacred. Azrael’s memories whispered into my head, “We were sent to eradicate the abominations.” The Nephilim were the offspring of the Grigori and human beings, but they couldn’t be controlled or used like the reapers, who were bred from among the Grigori—the Fallen and Watcher alike. The flood that the world believed God had sent to destroy the Nephilim was not made of water; it was a flood of countless legions of angels, steel, and blood. Led by me. And then I was sent alone to destroy the demonic reapers. I was nothing more than an exterminator.
The angel of death drew his hand back and I stared up at him, feeling a tear run down my cheek. “We killed them all.”
“No,” he corrected. “You kept one of them.”
I shook my head in confusion. “Kept…?”
“For his heart.”
Nausea wormed through my gut. “The fail-safe. The last Naphil is alive, saved like a lamb for slaughter.” I was so disgusted with myself, at what kind of monster I had once been—and the monster I would become again.
Azrael put a hand on my shoulder. “We do what we must to protect this world.”
?
??Like murder?” I spit, anger boiling beneath my skin.
“Sacrifice,” he said. “The Nephilim tore Earth apart and nearly wiped out the human race. We did what we were ordered to do, and we weren’t supposed to feel shame. But you and I did.”
When I closed my eyes, I sank into Azrael’s memory again. I stood on the hill, my armor and white wings splashed with blood. My face flashed closer, soundless images clicking in sequence like an old silent movie, and I saw that my cheeks were stained with tears. My archangel self surveyed the battlefield littered with bodies of angel and Naphil alike, and I wept.
“God never again sent us in force,” Azrael continued. “The damage was too great. Ever since, it has been your task alone to destroy the demonic reapers. Though I feel the war with the Nephilim may need to repeat itself against the beasts of Hell.”
I reopened my eyes with a new determination. “Where is the last Naphil?”
“I’m sorry, Sister,” he replied regretfully. “But I do not know. only you do.”
That determination threatened to flicker out like a candle flame. “Yet another impossible thing to find. Thankfully, I’ve done several impossible things in the last few weeks.”
“I must warn you, Gabriel,” Azrael said, “that if you ascend, your unbound strength will be too unstable in this world. If you summon the power required to use the hallowed glaive, it will destroy your earthly form.”
“You’re certain?” Will demanded.
Azrael nodded. “There is no way her body could survive channeling all the power needed to destroy the Fallen. She will use the hallowed glaive and she will die.”