Rapture (Fallen 4)

“Go ahead.” Cam’s voice came for the first time, low and even. Luce nearly cried out when she heard him mutter: “I never asked for a happy ending.” Luce had watched Sophia kill Penn with her bare hands and no remorse. It would not happen again. “No!” Luce shouted, struggling to break free from Daniel’s grip and dragging him with her into the chapel.

Slowly Miss Sophia craned her body around toward Luce and Daniel, clutching her fistful of starshots. Her eyes gleamed silver and her thin lips curled in a ghastly smile as Luce tugged Daniel forward, pulling against his relentless grip.

“We have to stop her, Daniel!”

“No, Luce, it’s too dangerous.”

“Oh, there you are, dear.” Miss Sophia beamed. “And Daniel Grigori! How nice. I’ve been waiting for you.” Then she winked and whipped the starshots over her head in a dense cluster straight at Daniel and Luce.

TWELVE

UNHOLY WATER

It happened in the broken fraction of a second: Roland tackled Miss Sophia, knocking her to the ground. But he was half a heartbeat too late.

Five silver starshots sailed silently across the empty space of the chapel. The cluster of them loosened as they flew, seeming to hang in midair for a moment on their path toward Luce and Daniel.

Daniel.

Luce pressed herself back against Daniel’s chest. He had the opposite instinct: His arms pulled tight against her and dragged her down hard against the floor.

Two great pairs of wings crossed the space in front of Luce, erupting from left and right. One was a radiant coppery gold, the other the purest silvery white. They filled the air before her and Daniel like enormous feathered screens—and then were gone in the blink of an eye.

Something whizzed by her left ear. She turned and saw a single starshot ricochet off the gray stone wall and clatter to the floor. The other starshots were gone.

A fine iridescent grit settled around Luce.

Squinting through the mist of dust, she took in the room: Daniel crouching beside her. A roused Dee struggling atop a writhing Miss Sophia. Annabelle standing above the other Elders, who lay lifeless on the floor. Arriane holding an empty length of rope and her Swiss Army knife in trembling hands. Cam, still bound on the altar, stunned.

Gabbe and Molly, just freed from their altars by Arriane—

Disappeared.

And Luce’s and Daniel’s bodies covered in a film of dust.

No.

“Gabbe . . . Molly—” Luce got to her knees. She held out her hands, examining them as if she’d never seen hands before. Candlelight played off her skin, turning the dust a soft, shimmery gold, then a bright glittering silver as she flipped her hands to gaze at her palms.

“No no no no no no no no.”

She looked back, locking eyes with Daniel. His face was ashen, his eyes burning with such a concentrated violet it was hard to hold their gaze.

That became harder still when her vision blurred with tears.

“Why did they—?”

For a moment, everything was still.

Then an animal’s roar rent the room.

Cam forced his right leg free from the ropes that bound it, ripping his ankle raw in the process. He strained to free his wrists, bellowed as he tore his right hand loose from his bonds, shredding the wing that had been pinned with the iron post and dislocating his shoulder. His arm swung in a gruesomely distended way from his shoulder, as if it had nearly been ripped off.

He leaped from the altar onto Sophia, pushing Dee aside. The force knocked all three of them to the ground.

Cam landed on top of Sophia, pinning her on her side, seeking to crush her with his weight. She let out a tortured howl, pulled her arms weakly before her face as Cam’s hands reached for her neck.

“Strangling is the most intimate way to kill someone,” Cam said, as if teaching Violence 101. “Now let’s see the beauty of your death.”

But Miss Sophia’s struggle was ugly. Gargles and grunts bubbled from her throat. Cam’s fingers tightened, slammed her head with brutal thumps against the floor, again and again and again. Blood began to trickle from the old woman’s mouth, darker than her lipstick.

Daniel’s hand touched Luce’s chin, turned her to face him. He gripped her shoulders. They locked eyes again, searching for a way to tune out Sophia’s wet groans.

“Gabbe and Molly knew what they were doing,” Daniel whispered.

“They knew they were going to be killed?” Luce said.

Behind them, Sophia whimpered, sounding almost like she’d accepted that this was how she’d die.

“They knew that stopping Lucifer is more important than an individual life,” Daniel said. “More than anything else that has happened, let this convince you of how urgent our task is here.”

The silence around them was loud. No more bloody coughs came from Miss Sophia. Luce didn’t have to look to know what it meant.

An arm encircled her waist. A familiar mop of black hair rested on her shoulder. “Come on,” Arriane said,

“let’s get you two cleaned up.”

Daniel handed Luce over to Arriane and Annabelle.

“You girls go ahead.”

Luce followed the angels numbly. They walked Luce to the back of the chapel, opening several closets until they found what they were looking for: a small black lacquered door that opened onto a circular, windowless room.

Annabelle lit a candelabra on a tiled table near the door, then lit another one in a stone alcove. The red-brick room was the size of a large pantry and had no furniture but a raised, eight-sided baptismal bath. Inside, the bath was made with green-and-blue mosaics; outside it was marble carved with a wraparound frieze of angels descending to Earth.

Luce felt miserable and dead inside. Even the baptismal pool seemed to mock her. Here she was—the girl whose cursed soul was somehow important, up for grabs because she’d never been baptized as a child—about to wash away the dust of two dead angels. Was saving Luce and Daniel worth their souls? How could it be? This

“baptism” broke Luce’s already broken heart a little more.

“Don’t worry,” Arriane said, reading her mind. “This won’t count.”

Annabelle found a sink in the corner of the room, behind the baptismal font. She poured bucket after large wooden bucket of steaming hot water into the tub. Arriane stood next to Luce, not looking at her, just holding her hand. When the bath was full and refracting a deep blue-green from the tiles, Annabelle and Arriane hoisted Luce above the surface of the water. She was still wearing her sweater and jeans. They hadn’t thought to un-dress her, but then they noticed her boots.

“Whoops,” Annabelle said softly, unzipping them one at a time and tossing them aside. Arriane lifted the silver locket over Luce’s head and slipped it inside a boot. Their wings fluttered as they lifted off the ground to lower Luce into the warm water.

Luce closed her eyes, slipped her head beneath the water, stayed a while. If she shed a tear, she wouldn’t feel it if she stayed submerged. She didn’t want to feel. It was like Penn had died all over again, fresh pain exposing old pain that still felt fresh to Luce.

After what seemed like a long time, she felt hands slip under her arms to pull her up. The surface of the water was a film of gray dust. It didn’t shimmer anymore.

Luce didn’t take her eyes off it until Annabelle started tugging her sweater up over her head. She felt it lift off her, followed by the T-shirt she’d been wearing underneath. She fumbled with the button on her jeans. How many days had she worn these clothes? It was strange to be free of them, like slipping off a layer of skin and looking at it on the floor.

She ran a hand through her wet hair to wipe it from her face. She hadn’t realized how grimy it was. Then she sat on the bench at the back of the tub, leaned against the side, and started shivering. Annabelle added more hot water to the pool, but it did nothing to stop Luce’s tremors.

“If I’d just stayed out in the hallway like Dee told me to—”

“Then Cam would be dead,” Arriane said. “Or someone else. Sophia and her clan were going to make dust one way or another tonight. The rest of us knew that going into this, but you didn’t.” She sighed. “So coming out and trying to save Cam? That took serious guts, Luce.”

“But Gabbe—”

“Knew what she was doing.”

“That’s what Daniel said. But why would she sacrifice herself to save—”

“Because she’s gambling on Daniel and you and the rest of us succeeding.” Arriane rested her chin on her arm on the edge of the tub. She trailed a finger into the water, breaking up the dust. “But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. We all loved her very much.”

“She can’t really be gone.”

“She is gone. Gone from the highest altar in creation.”

“What?” That wasn’t what Luce meant. She meant that Gabbe was her friend.

Arriane’s brow furrowed. “Gabbe was the highest of the Archangels—you didn’t know? Her soul was worth . . . I don’t even know how many others. It was worth a lot.”

Luce had never before considered how her friends were ranked in Heaven, but now she thought about the times Gabbe had looked out for her, taken care of her, brought her food or clothes or advice. She’d been Luce’s kind, celestial mother. “What does her death mean?”

“Way back when, Lucifer was ranked first,” Annabelle said. After a pause, she glanced at Luce, registered her shock. “He was right there, next to all the action.

Then he rebelled and Gabbe moved up.”

“Though being ranked next to the Throne is a mixed blessing,” Arriane murmured. “Ask your buddy ol’ pal Bill.”

Luce wanted to ask who came after Gabbe, but something stopped her. Maybe it had once been Daniel, but his place in Heaven was in jeopardy because he kept on choosing Luce.

“What about Molly?” Luce finally asked. “Does her death . . . cancel out Gabbe’s? In terms of the balance between Heaven and Hell?” She felt callous talking about her friends as commodities—but she also knew, right now, the answer mattered.

“Molly was important, too, though a little lower in the ranks,” Annabelle said. “This was before the Fall, of course, when she sided with Lucifer’s host. I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dusted, but Molly really used to bug me. So much negativity.”

Luce nodded guiltily.

“But something changed in her recently. It’s like she woke up.” She glanced at Luce. “To answer your question, the balance between Heaven and Hell can still be struck. We’ll just have to see how things play out. A lot of things that matter now become irrelevant if Lucifer succeeds.”

Luce looked toward Arriane, who’d disappeared behind the door and sneezed three times in a row. “Hello, mothballs!” When she emerged, she was holding a white towel and an oversized checked bathrobe. “It’ll have to do for now. We’ll find you a change of clothes before we leave Jerusalem.”

When Luce didn’t move from the tub, Arriane clucked her tongue like she was coaxing a horse out of its stable, and held the towel out for Luce to step into.