Rapture

Her hair became bloody tendrils, enclosing her like mummy wrap, then like a caterpillar’s cocoon . . . until the body became a massive column of thick and dripping blood.

Through the mist, a golden light grew brighter. Cam’s wings sharpened in the space between Luce’s feet and the speck of land she had been watching.

“Is this it?” Cam shouted through the wind.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said.

“How will we know?”

“We just will.”

“Daniel. The time—”

“Don’t rush me. We have to get her to the right place.”

“Is she asleep?”

“She’s feverish. I don’t know. Shhh.”

A grunt of frustration accompanied the fading of Cam’s glow back into the mist.

Luce’s eyelids flickered. Was she asleep? The sky did seem to be raining nightmares. Now she saw Miss Sophia, her black eyes gleaming in the light reflected from the raindrops. She raised her dagger, and her pearl bracelets rattled as she brought the knife into Luce’s heart.

Her words— Trust is a careless pursuit—echoed again and again in Luce’s mind until she wanted to scream.

Then the vision of Miss Sophia flickered and swirled, darkening into the gargoyle who Luce had trusted, so carelessly.

Little Bill, who’d posed as a friend, all the while hiding something vast and terrifying. Maybe that was what friendship was to the devil: love always tinged with evil.

The gargoyle’s body was a husk for forces darkly powerful inside.

In her vision, Bill bared rotten black fangs and exhaled clouds of rust. He roared, but silently, a silence that was worse than anything he ever could have said, because her imagination filled the void. He consumed her plane of vision as Lucifer, as Evil, as the End.

She snapped open her eyes. She clasped her hands over Daniel’s arms around her as they flew through the endless storm.

You’re not afraid, she vowed silently in the rain. It was the hardest of the things she’d had to convince herself of on this journey.

When you face him again, you will not be afraid.

“Guys,” Arriane said, appearing on the right side of Daniel’s wings. “Look.”

The clouds thinned as they drove onward. Below them was a valley, a broad stretch of rocky farmland that met a narrow strait of sea on its west side. A huge wooden horse stood absurdly in the barren landscape, a monument to a shadowed past. Luce could make out stony ruins near the horse, a Roman theater, a contemporary parking lot.

The angels flew on. The valley spread out below, dark but for a single light in the distance: an electric lamp that shone through the window of a tiny hut in the center of the slope.

“Fly toward the house,” Daniel called to the others.

Luce had been watching a line of goats drift across the sodden fields, gathering in a grove of apricot trees.

Her stomach lurched as Daniel swooped suddenly down.

When they touched the ground, Luce and the angels were about a quarter of a mile from the white hut.

“Let’s go inside.” Daniel took her hand. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

Luce walked next to Daniel through the rain, her dark hair splayed across her face, her borrowed coat drenched with what felt like a thousand pounds of raindrops.

They were trudging up a winding muddy path when a large drop of water clung to Luce’s eyelashes and dripped inside her eye. When she rubbed it away and blinked, the Earth had utterly changed.

An image flashed before her eyes, a long-forgotten memory returning to life:

The wet ground beneath her feet had gone from green to singed black in one place, ashen gray in another.

The valley surrounding them was pocked with deep, smoking craters. Luce smelled carnage, roasted flesh and rot so thick and sharp it burned her nostrils and clung to the roof of her mouth. Craters sizzled, sounding like rattlesnakes, as she walked past. Dust—angel dust—was everywhere. It floated through the air, coated the ground and rocks, fell like snowflakes on her face.

Something silver was in her peripheral vision. It looked like broken pieces of a mirror, except that it was phosphorescent—shimmering, almost alive. Luce dropped Daniel’s hand, fell to her knees, and crawled along the muddy ground toward the broken silver glass.

She didn’t know why she did this. She only knew she had to touch it.

She reached for a large piece, groaning with the effort. She had her hand firmly around it—

And then she blinked and came up with nothing but a fistful of soft mud.

She looked up at Daniel, her eyes filled with tears.

“What’s happening?”

He glanced at Arriane. “Get Luce inside.” She felt her arms being lifted. “You’ll be okay, kiddo,” Arriane said. “Promise.”

The dark wood door of the hut opened and a warm light poured out from within. Peering out at the wet angels was the calm, collected face of Steven Filmore, Lu-ce’s favorite teacher from Shoreline.

“Glad you could make it,” Daniel said.

“Same to you.” Steven’s voice was steady and professorial, just as Luce remembered. Somehow it was reassuring.

“Is she all right?” Steven asked.

No. She was losing it.

“Yes.” Daniel’s confidence took Luce by surprise.

“What happened to her neck?”

“We ran into some Scale in Vienna.”

Luce was hallucinating. She was not all right. Trembling, she met Steven’s eyes. They were steady, comforting.

You are all right. You have to be. For Daniel.

Steven held open the door and led them inside. The small hut had a dirt floor and straw roof, a heap of blankets and rugs in one corner, a crude cooking stove near the fire, and a square of four rocking chairs in the center of the room.

Standing in front of the chairs was Francesca—

Steven’s wife and the other Nephilim teacher at Shoreline. Phil and the other three Outcasts stood alert along the opposite wall of the hut. Annabelle, Roland, Arriane, Daniel, and Luce all crammed into the firelit warmth of the house.

“What now, Daniel?” Francesca asked, all business.

“Nothing,” Daniel said quickly. “Nothing yet.” Why not? Here they were on the fields of Troy, near the place where Lucifer was expected to land. They’d raced here to stop him. Why go through everything they’d gone through this week just to sit around a cabin and wait?

“Daniel,” Luce said. “I could use some explanation.” But Daniel only looked to Steven.

“Please have a seat.” Steven steered Luce to one of the rocking chairs. She sank into it, and nodded thanks when he handed her a metal cup of spicy Turkish apple tea. He gestured around at the hut. “It isn’t much, but it keeps the rain and most of the wind out, and you know what they say—”

“Location, location, location,” Roland finished, leaning on the arm of the rocking chair where Arriane had curled up across from Luce.

Annabelle looked around at the rain wailing on the window, at the cramped room. “So this is the Fall site? I mean, I can kind of feel it, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m trying so hard. This is weird. ” Steven was polishing his glasses on his fisherman’s sweater. He slipped them back onto his nose, resuming his professorial tone. “The Fall site is very large, Annabelle.