The angels approached the heavy double doors that towered over them, forty feet high at least. They were painted green and flanked by three plain stone pillars on either side. Luce’s eye was drawn to the ornate frieze between the doors and the arches above them—and above that, the gleaming golden cross puncturing the sky. The building was quiet, somber, alive with spiritual electricity.
“In we go, then,” Dee said.
“We can’t go in there,” Roland said, moving away from the church.
“Oh, yes,” Dee said, “the incendiary business. You think you can’t go in because it’s a sanctuary of God —”
“It’s
“Only it isn’t a sanctuary of God,” Dee said simply.
“Quite the opposite. This is the place where Jesus suffered and died. Therefore it has never been a sanctuary as far as the Throne is concerned, and that’s the only opinion that really matters. A sanctuary is a safe haven, a refuge from harm. Mortals step within these walls to pray, in their infinitely morbid way, but as far as your curse is concerned, you will not be affected.” Dee paused.
“Which is good, because Sophia and your friends are inside.”
“How do you know?” Luce asked.
She heard footsteps on stone on the east side of the courtyard. Dee squinted down the narrow street.
Daniel grabbed Luce’s waist so swiftly she fell into him. Turning a corner beneath a street sign that read VIA DOLOROSA, two elderly nuns strained under the weight of a large wooden cross. They wore simple navy habits, thick sensible sandals, and beaded rosaries around their necks.
Luce relaxed at the sight of the old believers, whose average age seemed to be eighty-five. She started to move toward the women, obeying an instinct to assist the elderly with a heavy load, but Daniel’s grasp on Luce’s waist did not loosen as the nuns approached the great doors of the church with excruciating slow-ness. It seemed impossible that the nuns would not have seen the group of angels twenty feet away—they were the only other souls in the plaza—but the struggling sisters never so much as glanced in the angels’ direction.
“A little early for the Sisters of the Stations of the Cross to be out, isn’t it?” Roland whispered to Daniel.
Dee straightened her skirt and pinned a rebellious strand of hair behind her ear. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but we’ll simply have to kill them.”
“What?” Luce glanced at one of the feeble, sun-weathered women. Her gray eyes sat like pebbles in the deep folds of her face. “You want to kill those nuns?” Dee frowned. “Those aren’t nuns, dear. They are Elders and they must be disposed of, or they will dispose of us.”
“I’m disposed to say they already look disposed of.” Arriane shifted her weight from side to side. “Apparently Jerusalem recycles.”
Maybe Arriane’s voice found the nuns and startled them, or maybe they were waiting to arrive at precisely the right location, but at that moment, as they reached the church doors, they stopped and turned so that the long beam of their cross pointed across the plaza, toward the angels, like a cannon.
“Time she is a-wasting, angels,” Dee said through tight lips.
The pebble-eyed nun bared veiny gums at the angels and fumbled with something on the base of the beam.
Daniel shoved the satchel into Luce’s hands, then positioned her behind Dee. The older woman didn’t cover Luce exactly—the top of her head came only as high as Luce’s chin—but Luce got the idea and ducked. The angels unleashed their wings with brutish speed as they fanned out on both sides—Arriane and Annabelle veer-ing left, Roland and Daniel diving right.
The giant cross was not a pilgrim’s penitential bur-den. It was an enormous crossbow, filled with starshots meant to kill everybody there.
There was no time for this to register with Luce. One of the nuns released the first shot; it sizzled through the air, heading for Luce’s face. The silver arrow grew larger in Luce’s vision as it swirled closer in the air.
Then Dee jumped.
The tiny woman spread her arms open wide. The starshot’s dull tip collided with the center of her chest.
Dee grunted as the arrow—harmless to mortals, Luce knew—glanced off her tiny body and clattered to the ground, leaving the transeternal sore but unharmed.
“Presidia, you fool,” Dee shouted at the nun, dragging the arrow backward with her high heel. Luce leaned down to pick it up and slipped it inside the satchel. “You know that won’t hurt me! Now you’ve annoyed my friends.” She gestured broadly at the angels darting forward to disarm the costumed Elders.
“Stand down, defector!” Presidia replied. “We require the girl! Surrender her and we will—” But Presidia never finished. Arriane was at the Elder’s back in a flash, brushing the habit from her head, taking her white hair in each of the angel’s fists.
“Because I respect my Elders,” Arriane hissed through her clenched jaw, “I feel I must prevent them from embarrassing themselves.” Then she lifted off the ground, still holding Presidia by the hair. The Elder kicked the air as if pedaling an invisible bicycle. Arriane pivoted and slammed the old woman’s body into the cornice of the church’s façade with such force it left an indention when she collapsed in a twisted heap, hands and legs sticking out at grisly angles.
The other incognito Elder had dropped the cannon-cross and was trying to escape, running hard for an alley in the opposite corner of the plaza. Annabelle took up the cross and became a javelin thrower, rearing back like a tightening coil, springing to release the heavy wooden T.
The cross arced through the air and speared the fleeing Elder in her sloping spine. She fell forward and convulsed, impaled by the replica of an ancient instrument of execution.
The courtyard fell quiet. Instinctively, everyone turned to look at Luce.
“She’s okay!” Dee called, raising Luce’s hand in the air as if the two of them had just won a relay race.
“Daniel!” Luce pointed at a flash of white disappearing behind Daniel’s back, into the church. As the double doors slowly shut, an elderly monk they hadn’t noticed could be heard ascending the staircase inside.
“Follow him,” Dee shouted, stepping over Presidia’s mangled corpse.
Luce and Dee ran to catch up to the others. When they entered the church, it was dark and silent. Roland pointed toward a flight of stone steps in the corner. They opened into a small stone archway, which led to a longer staircase. The space was too cramped for the angels to spread their wings, so they picked their way up the steep steps as quickly as they could.
“The Elder will lead us to Sophia,” Daniel whispered as they ducked under the stone archway to the darkened staircase. “If she has the others—if she has the relic—” Dee laid a firm hand on Daniel’s arm. “She must not know of Luce’s presence. You must prevent the Elder from reaching Sophia.”
Daniel’s eyes flickered back at Luce, then up to Roland, who nodded swiftly, rocketing up the stairs as if he had run through old stone fortresses before.
Barely two minutes later, he was waiting for them at the top of the cramped staircase. The Elder lay dead on the floor, lips blue, eyes glassy and wet. Behind Roland, an open doorway curved sharply to the left. Someone on that landing was singing what sounded like a hymn.
Luce shivered.
Daniel motioned for them to stay back, peering past the edge of the curved stairway. From where she stood, pressed against a stone wall, Luce could see a small portion of the chapel beyond the landing. The walls were painted with elaborate frescos, lit by dozens of small tin lamps suspended by beaded chains from the vaulted ceiling. There was a small room with a mosaic of the cruci-fixion spanning the entire western wall. Beyond this was a row of highly decorated vaulted columns several feet wide, portioning off a second, larger chapel that was hard to see from here. Between the two chapels, a large gilded shrine to Mary was covered in flower bouquets and half- burned sacramental candles.
Daniel cocked his head. A flash of red swished past one of the columns.
A woman in a long scarlet robe.
She was bending over an altar made from a great marble slab adorned with a white lace sheet. Something lay on that altar, but Luce could not tell what it was.
The woman was frail but attractive, with short gray hair cut in a fashionable bob. Her robe was cinched at the waist with a colorful woven belt. She lit a candle at the front of the altar. The flowing sleeves of her robe
