What he hadn’t known was that dark skin could look so ashen. Gone was the glorious sheen that made the Pure’s features gleam like polished marble. Her eyes were dull and sunken-they almost looked human-and her structured clothing looked like it was holding her up instead of the reverse.
“You look terrible, Anne. And… blue.” He took a step back as she lifted her chin, but he struggled to see the vengeful Pure who’d knocked him cold before. “Have you taken a real breath since you hit this mudflat?”
Her jaw clenched, the bones underneath appearing brittle, like they would pierce the skin at any moment. “Air is for the weak.”
Grif watched the old disdain flash in her dark gaze, but it had no real heat this time and was banked an instant later. Besides, she might be a mighty, immortal Pure, but he was the expert here on the mud. “Yeah, well you have to breathe.”
“Breathe, eat, move-all these necessities and actions.” She jerked her head, and it swung back unnaturally, like it was on a spring. “I can’t even catch my thoughts anymore. They swirl and swirl and just when they’re about to coalesce into something of use, I’m attacked by a sensation-a scent or texture or sight… sometimes all at once. It’s overwhelming.”
She shook her head again, this time swaying with the movement, then stilled like she just remembered Grif was there. Grif might not be in danger of physical assault, but he wasn’t sure he liked this neutered, unhinged Pure any better. “Come here, Anne. Sit. You need to take a minute.”
Anne allowed herself to be led to the back of the building, where Grif upended a paint bucket. She plopped down with a jerk, and running long fingers over her smooth skull, sighed. “This is why He did it, of course. I never understood it before, but I do now.”
“Did what?” Grif asked, leaning against the wall.
She gazed up at Grif dazedly, like a child. “Made you. Mankind. Why he formed you in His image. It is the perfect vessel to experience life to its full-feelings, emotions, senses… all of it piled atop an everlasting soul. Being human… it’s incredible.”
Grif had never seen it that way, through an angel’s eyes, before. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
Lifting her hands in front of her face, Anne studied the backs of them, then the palms, and back again. “You know, angels were made in a state of grace. It’s not prideful to say that we are perfect-it merely is what it is. We are strong, powerful, fearsome, and good. Even those who followed Lucifer are still instruments of use to God, but… feeling things the way humans do, the way God does, that is not our nature or our right. Those that forgot that, the Third, were ever ruined.”
She looked up at Grif, then surprised him by taking one of his hands in hers. Swallowing hard, he felt her fingertips, curious and caressing, exploring his. It wasn’t like Kit’s caress… or any other person’s. Her alienness was palpable. Electricity, not blood, soared in her veins, and vibrated in her touch. She was a different breed even bound in flesh.
“And so,” she continued, stroking his palm, sliding her electric fingers along his wrist, “as magnificent as those of us in the Host are-as much as that should be enough-we are not His most beloved creation. How ironic that we have more power in a thought than humans have in their entire bodies, and yet we are not equal to even the lowest of you.”
Grif didn’t know what to say. To apologize for that would be an insult to God. To not apologize seemed heartless. Grif might be stubborn and broken, but he was not that. Yet just as he was about to speak, she rose, both of his hands in hers, and stepped so close that he could see the storm clouds roiling in her eyes. Grif swallowed hard.
“I did not give you enough credit,” Anne whispered, drawing even closer. Her foreign heart thrummed as she pressed it to his chest. “Wearing this flesh has taught me what you must endure while traversing the Surface. The Pure feel emotion, yet without donning the material of God’s exact image, nothing sentient can ever know true passion. I see this now. Even pain is impossibly exquisite.”
Grif tried to slide away.
Anne’s fingertips tightened like steel.
“You don’t look well,” he said, swallowing hard. The knobs in his back throbbed.
“Because I am being poisoned by the perfect impurity of the human condition. And yet…” Her storm eyes fluttered, unfocused. “I cannot help wanting more. Did you know that strawberries taste like they’ve been dipped in sunbeams? Did you know that a child’s sweat smells like an old oak’s strong, wet roots?”
Grif shook his head slowly, not daring to say a word.
“It’s your fault.” Her gaze refocused, hard upon him, and her grip tightened to the point of pain. Grif tried to jerk away, but he could have been chained in the electric chair itself, and Anne’s face was suddenly inches from his. Hissing, she leaned so close they were aligned and touching head to foot. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
Grif fought to keep his voice and heart steady. She would feel it if his body temperature were to spike, if he were to take even an extra shallow breath. She was, very suddenly, sensing everything. “You’ll leave soon,” he told her evenly, “and you’ll never have to touch the Surface again.”
Tears welled-relief or regret, he couldn’t tell-and her already stricken face crumbled. Then her legs gave out, and Grif had to embrace her just to keep her standing. “Why won’t He call me back?” she cried, body sagging, voice breaking. “My mind is cracking. The impurity is profane.”
“I know,” Grif said, stroking her head, wiping the tears from her face.
“And yet…” Steeling herself, Anne pulled away, then licked her lips while she stared at his. “I can’t help…”
And suddenly Grif’s back was against the brick wall, the overwrought angel pressed against him, her lips probing and bruising. Her tongue flicked out like a snake’s, and her nostrils flared to take in his scent. Her eyes rolled, not with pleasure but like a machine cataloguing knowledge, and her tongue clicking rhythmically in his mouth, like she was counting moment after moment. Repulsed, he shuddered and had a horrifying thought. Was that what he’d looked like to Kit?
Grif managed to turn his face away, then pushed at her hands, which seemed everywhere at once. “Stop it! Anne!”
Yet his head hit the brick with a crack that made him wince and Anne seized the opportunity, mouth fastening over his, tongue probing, taking more. “Stop it!”
Using all his strength, he pushed, and Anne rocketed back, body skittering on the jagged asphalt of the alley. She was up again, standing in front of him, in the blink of an eye. “So the bull hasn’t been castrated,” she said. “It was a good try, though. I almost believed it.”
“Believed what?”
“You, trying to fit in on this mudflat. Ignoring your celestial nature. But now you see… you’re still a freak. Like mine, your celestial nature is bound in flesh. It’s like an A-bomb wrapped in rose petals. Feel it, touch it, taste it…”
And again, she was there, mouth fastened on his, arms wrapped around his back, and this time he couldn’t shake her loose. The power to call thunderheads from the sky filled Grif’s mouth, and his veins bulged with ozone. The earth’s lava flowed through her lips, and color streamed in sharp blades behind his eyes. Then Anne grabbed his shoulder blades right where they ached, right where his wings should have been, and raked them until he bled.
Screaming, Grif tried to pull away, but her nails were deep inside his flesh, ripping and probing, searching and…
“What is that?” Grif staggered away, suddenly free. Yet he felt chained, bound, too heavy in his flesh, and he reached for his back, and found…
“Feathers. One each, from my wings.” Anne giggled, too girlish and high, and she gave him a lopsided grin. “You can’t fight your angelic nature now, can you? Now you have to go back. Now you are also Pure.”
She cackled again.
“No.” Grif clawed at his back. The phantom pain that’d been stalking him was gone, but the feathers were burrowing under his skin like centipedes, like snakes. Like a pure angel’s wings.
“But first,” she said, in front of him again, “you are going to kiss me. And then you will move inside me. And then I will know what it really is to be alive.”
She lunged again, but this time Grif used her own power-
