Black Wings

The center of the circle opened, and the opening spread outward until it reached the flames that hung in the air. It looked like a portal, but it was not filled with swirling mist. Instead, there was a long road with a crack running down the center. In the distance were jagged peaks of gray mountains under flashes of silver lightning. I could see the silhouette of a giant leafless tree, white as bone, scraping thin claws to the dark sky.

“I’ve been here before,” I murmured. “This is the place where you found Lucifer, when you first walked to him from your village.”

It is the Forbidden Lands, Evangeline said. Lucifer kept his palace here, once.

Her face was full of sorrow. I realized that she had been his bride for only a few short months before she was forced to give him up. I felt pity for her, even though there was something monstrous about her, for she had willingly killed anyone who stood in her path to him. I grieved a little for this child who had destroyed everything and everyone in her village for the love of the Morningstar, only to lose him before their life really began.

“What happened to you, after you went to Michael?” I asked.

She hesitated, then said,Let us go. I will tell you as we walk.

Evangeline floated through the circle of flame. I stepped through after her. The circle closed behind us with a soft whoosh and she released my hand, beckoning me forward.

My boots scraped against the asphalt road as I walked. On either side of the road there was nothing except very fine, gray sand and the occasional boulder. The air was cold, much colder than an October morning in Chicago. I’d dressed in my usual uniform of jeans, a sweater and boots with a wool peacoat over it, and I was significantly underdressed for the Forbidden Lands.

I could see my breath puff out before me in white clouds. An icy wind kicked up, blowing sand in my eyes, and I narrowed them to slits. I stuffed my hands in my pockets so that my fingers wouldn’t freeze and fall off. I was a little worried about my ears, though, and pulled up the collar of my coat and hunched my shoulders. I succeeded only in keeping my earlobes covered and decided not to bother.

My teeth chattering, I called to Evangeline. “Where is this place? We can’t be anywhere on the Earth I know.”

She floated a few feet ahead of me, completely unaffected by the cold. Her voice drifted back, carried on the wind.It is a world that is brushed up next to your world, one of many. Is this not what you give to the souls that you bring to the Door? Their choice of all the worlds?

I grinned fiercely behind the collar of my coat. Score one for the Agent. “I don’t think you were supposed to tell me that.”

Evangeline looked back at me and shrugged delicately. She waited until I caught up to her and then floated along beside me.I have never understood why the celestial ones have insisted on keeping man ignorant.

I remembered something from the first vision she had sent me. “And this place in particular? There was a nuclear war here?”

Nuclear? She frowned. Yes. I suppose that is the word that you would use. There were once great cities here, and then there were flames and great clouds of ash, and when it was over this was all that remained.

I glanced around me, struck by another realization. “I’m not going to get radiation poisoning, am I?”

I suppose the Forbidden Lands could make you sick if you were human. But you are not entirely human, my granddaughter. The blood of two Grigori runs in your veins. That should be enough to protect you.

She looked serene and unruffled, but I wasn’t convinced. I’d gotten plenty of colds and flu in my time, and the blood of the Grigori hadn’t helped me any then.

“I guess there’s nothing to be done about it now,” I sighed. “You’re not going to take me home until we’ve found Ramuell, are you?”

No, I am not, Evangeline said.

Just as I’d suspected. Evangeline had her own agenda and I was along for the ride. The only thing I could do was make sure that my goals—capturing Ramuell and his puppet master, and freeing the souls inside the nephilim—took precedence over hers, whatever they might be.

We walked in silence for some time. My legs and feet felt like blocks of ice and the tip of my nose grew numb. I started to worry about frostbite. The great tree didn’t appear any closer than it had been when we’d started.

“Tell me about Michael,” I said.

She hesitated.He was kind to me. We did not live as man and wife—we could not, without his being cast out as Lucifer had been for mating with a human. But he was kind to me, and he taught my children the ways of their magic.

“Which served his own ends as well, seeing as he made them soul collectors,” I said.

Yes, Evangeline said. And in a way, they were taken from me because of that. They had no time for a mother who wanted to play with her children. They were taught from a young age that they had a duty to fulfill, and they spent their lives in pursuit of that duty.

Just like me, I thought. “How did Michael manage to explain you and the children to the other angels? Why was he allowed to keep you, so to speak?”

He said that I was a victim of the Morningstar’s, not a willing accomplice. The others saw that the children were not monsters like the nephilim. Then it was agreed upon that the children could take their father’s place as collectors of the dead. So they had a purpose in the hierarchy.

It was not easy, especially for me. The children had some magic. They belonged. But I was always looked on with suspicion. Any magic that I had was buried inside when I agreed to go with Michael. I had to give its use up lest Lucifer try to track me. So I was alone, and very human, in a world of perfection. She gave a wry smile. But I lived, lived until a very old age, and I was able to see my children grow into men, and have children of their own.

We are here, she said.

I stopped and looked up. The great tree was before me. I had been lulled by the sound of Evangeline’s voice and my preoccupation with the cold, and I hadn’t noticed our approach.

The tree was so large that it was almost hard to grasp its size. I had seen the forests of redwoods in California; this tree made redwoods look like dwarves. The trunk was nearly as wide as the base of the John Hancock building, and great gnarled roots as large as city buses twisted around it. It stretched high above me, so high that it disappeared into the low-hanging clouds that circled the mountains. The bark was white as starlight, and it gleamed in the dull gray that surrounded it.

“What now?” I asked.

Evangeline approached the base of the tree. I clambered after her, climbing over the roots, pulling myself over them with frozen hands and feet. It took me several minutes to reach her. She floated patiently next to a knot the size of my fist that marred the white face of the tree. I climbed over the last root and stood at her side, panting.

We must enter the tree, she said, and did that twirly thing again with her finger in the air. A circle of flame appeared on the bark of the tree. The inside of the circle opened to darkness.

“Where does this go?” I asked.

To the Valley of Sorrows, on the other side of the mountains, she said, and floated inside. Come, Granddaughter.

I stared after her into the darkness and felt all the misgivings I had been pushing aside come surging up. She could be leading me anywhere. Hell, for that matter, she might not be Evangeline at all but some kind of trick sent by Antares or Focalor or Ramuell’s master.

This is a great time to realize that, I thought sourly. But I had committed myself to this course of action, and there was no way home without Evangeline.

The circle of flame closed behind me as I stepped inside and plunged into blackness. I could barely make out the glitter of Evangeline’s form several feet in front of me. As my eyes adjusted I realized it wasn’t completely black. The walls sparkled with a kind of green luminescence, almost like algae on the ocean at night.

Evangeline called for me to follow her again, and I picked my way toward her, cautiously putting one foot in