End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days 3)

‘There is no risk. The sword will not allow me to lift it or to take it from you.’ He’s talking to me like I’m an idiot. ‘It’ll be perfectly safe for you.’

I envision myself being in a memory trance within easy reach of Beliel. ‘Thanks, but no.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Not stupid.’

‘You can tie my hands, chain me, bag me, put me in a cage. Do whatever you like to ensure your safety from an old demon who can’t even get up on his own anymore. Once you do that, you know the sword won’t allow me to take it, so you’ll be perfectly safe.’

I stare at him, trying to see through his game.

‘Are you really afraid of me harming you?’ he asks. ‘Or maybe you just don’t want to know the truth about your precious archangel? He’s not what he seems. He’s a liar and a betrayer, and I can prove it. The sword won’t let me lie – it doesn’t pass on pretty words. Just memories.’

I hesitate. I should be turning around to leave, and he knows it. I should be ignoring everything he says.

But instead, I stand rooted to the porch. ‘You have your own agenda that has nothing to do with showing me the truth.’

‘Of course I do. Maybe you’ll let me go after you realize that he’s really the bad guy, not me.’

‘You’re the good guy now?’

Beliel’s voice turns cold. ‘Do you want to see it or not?’

I stand in the sunshine, looking at the beautiful view of the bay and the green hills beyond it. The sky is blue with only a few puffy clouds.

I should explore more of the island to see if there’s something here we could use. I should be coming up with a plan to get my sister better. I should be making myself useful instead of flirting with disaster.

But my dream keeps coming back to me. Could Beliel have been one of Raffe’s Watchers?

‘Were you . . . did you used to work with Raffe?’

‘You could say that. He used to be my commanding officer. There was a time when I would have done anything for him. Anything. That was before he betrayed me. Just like he’s going to do to you. It’s in his nature.’

‘I know you lied to my sister just for sport. I’m not a lonely, scared seven-year-old, so drop the evil manipulation act.’

‘Suit yourself, little Daughter of Man. You wouldn’t have believed what you saw anyway. You’re too loyal to the archangel to believe that he was the source of so much misery.’

I turn around and walk into the house. I check to see that Paige is sleeping in her room. I check the cupboards in the kitchen to take stock of the few cans of soup left by the men who were camped here before us.

While wandering around, the desire to see what Beliel is offering nags at me. Maybe he’ll show me something that brings me to my senses about Raffe. Maybe I’ll snap out of it and move on with my life – my life with other human beings, where I belong.

I can’t even think about what happened earlier with Raffe without my face flaming in embarrassment. How am I supposed to look at him when he comes back?

If he comes back.

The thought twists my gut into a knot.

I kick a decorative pillow on the floor, getting no satisfaction out of seeing it bounce off the wall.

Okay. Enough.

It’s just peeking into Beliel’s memory. Obi’s men are risking their lives every day, trying to spy on the angels for tiny scraps of intel. And here I am with the best spying device in the world, plus an offer to go into an enemy’s memories. I’ll have my sword with me the whole time, and it’s true that he won’t be able to use it against me.

I’ll just get it out of my system and move on. I’ll be extra careful.

Regardless of what Beliel has to show me, Paige and I will leave the island afterward, and we’ll go back to the Resistance. We’ll find Mom and see if we can find Doc. Maybe he can help Paige eat normal food again.

And then, after that, we’ll . . . survive.

Alone.

I go upstairs to grab Pooky Bear, then walk outside to Beliel. He’s lying near the fence post, curled in the exact same position he was in when I left. I can see in his eyes that he was expecting me to come back.

‘So what do I do?’

‘I need to be touching your sword.’

I lift my sword, pointing it at him. It shines in the sunlight. I have the urge to ask it if it wants to do this. But I don’t want to sound stupid in front of Beliel.

‘Come closer.’ He holds out his hand to grab it.

I hesitate. ‘Do you need to hold it, or can you just touch it?’

‘Touch it.’

‘Okay. Turn around.’

He turns on the dirt without protest. His back is roped with strings of dried muscle. I don’t want to touch him with a ten-foot sword. But I press the tip of my blade into his back anyway.

‘One wrong move and I’ll stick you right through.’ I’m not sure if the connection is enough with only the tip touching his back, but he doesn’t seem concerned about it.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

I feel something opening in my head.

It’s not like the other times when I suddenly found myself somewhere else. This one is weaker, lighter, as if I could choose not to go there if I wanted, as if the sword isn’t so sure about this particular voyage.

I take a deep breath too. I make sure my feet are in proper fighting position and brace myself for an attack.

And then I close my eyes.

7

I feel a moment of dizziness, then I land on firm ground.

The first thing that hits me is the overwhelming heat. Then the stench of rotten eggs.

Under a black-purple sky, a chariot is drawn by six angels harnessed like horses. Blood and sweat stream down their shoulders and chests where the harness cuts into them. They strain to drag the chariot and the giant demon who drives it.

The demon has wings of course. He could just fly to his destination if he wanted. Instead, he rolls slowly through his domain.

The demon is so big he makes Beliel look like a child. His wings flame with what looks like real fire reflecting off his sweaty skin.

He carries a stick with a circle of shriveled heads at the top. On the heads, the eyes blink and the mouths try to scream. Or maybe they’re drowning and gasping for air. I’m not sure, because no sound comes out. Each has long blond hair that flows up and around the heads like seaweed waving in a current.

Once I get past the horror of the heads, I realize that the eyes are all the same shade of green. How many heads would you have to choose from to be able to collect a group with the exact same shade of eyes and hair?

The ground is covered in broken glass and shards of bone. Each wheel is draped with two angels as if the monster demon didn’t want his shiny wheels marred by the rough ground. The Fallen angels are chained to the wheels and are stuck through with all kinds of shards sticking out of their skin.

Beliel is one of these Fallen chained to a wheel.

His wings are the color of a dying sunset. They must be his original angel wings. They’re half stretched out like he hopes to be able to keep them from being crushed. But many of the feathers are already scorched and broken.

I hadn’t thought about how demons become the way they are. Maybe there’s a transition time between being an angel and becoming a demon. Since Beliel still has feathers, I’m guessing this probably means that it hasn’t been long since his fall.

His face is recognizable, although somehow smoother, more innocent. His eyes lack that stinging, harsh quality that I’ve come to know. He looks almost handsome without his usual smirk and bitterness, though there’s pain.

A lot of pain.

But he bears it without a whimper.

The wheel rolls, crushing his body against the bone shards covering the ground, making him endure the weight of both the vehicle and the monster riding on it. His face is focused and det

ermined, looking like he’s clenching his jaw to keep from screaming.

His wings tremble with the effort to hover above the ground. That protects them from the worst of the damage, but they still drag along the field of sharp bone and glass.

As the wheels roll, the angels who are chained to them are getting their wings slowly crushed and splintered. They still carry their empty scabbards, which clank and drag against the rough ground, reminders of what they’ve lost.

The giant demon cracks his stick above his head, and it unspools, whipping through the air. The shrunken heads begin shrieking as soon as they’re let loose. They shoot toward the harnessed angels with hair streaking through the air in front of them like snaky spears.

When they hit the angels pulling the chariot, the sharp hair begins to shred their skin.

The heads open their mouths wide and frantically gnaw on the Fallen. One of them manages to burrow halfway into the back of an angel before the whip gets pulled back.

These Fallen angels look starved and are covered in festering wounds. I suspect even angels need their nourishment to fuel their speed healing.

Then, in the middle of all this, a pack of hellions with their bat faces and shadowy wings slink toward them. They’re bigger than the ones I saw in my sword’s memories. Beefier and with spotted wings, as if they had disease blooming on them.

These hellions have a crafty gleam in their eyes that make them look more dangerous than the ones I’ve seen before. They look around, aware, moving with purpose. The modern hellions seem to have devolved into smaller, weaker, dimmer versions of these.

Still, these hellions are nothing compared with the demon lord. They’re shadow creatures against the towering thing riding the chariot, and they’re clearly afraid of him.

Maybe they’re not the same species. They don’t look anything like him. The hellions look like toothy bat-winged animals with squashed faces while the giant looks like an angel gone ugly.

The hellions are dragging someone behind them. She was probably once pretty, with mahogany hair and gray eyes, but now she looks like a used-up doll. Her eyes are empty, her face blank, like she’s sent her inner self away somewhere.

They pull her along the rough ground by her ankles. Her arms drag behind her head, and her tangled hair gets snagged on the spiky bones that tug at her. Her dress is torn into rags, and every bit of her is filthy and bloody. I want to help her up, to kick the hellions off her, but I am just a shadow here in Beliel’s memory.