path maybe six feet high and a few feet wide, and it was a tight squeeze for anyone not pocket-sized.
“We’ve passed beyond Azazel’s property line,” Nathaniel said.
“So we can make a portal?” I asked.
He stepped close to me, put his hand on the dirt in front of me and said the words of the spell in an undertone. I was caged between his body and the dirt wall in front of me, and could feel the heat that emanated from him. I stood as still as possible and tried not to think about how close he was.
A portal opened before us, and I turned around, giving Nathaniel a little nudge in the shoulder with my hand so that he would give me some space.
“The Agents go through first,” I shouted.
The noise from the portal was deafening in the small space, like being closed up in an elevator with a running vacuum cleaner.
Samiel signed to me before scooping up Chloe. I’ll go through with her. You push the others through one by one and I’ll catch them.
“At twenty-second intervals?” I said, trying to mentally calculate the time it would take for him to catch someone, lay them on the ground and turn around for the next Agent.
He nodded and squeezed past Nathaniel. I pressed up against the side of the tunnel, and he went through the portal.
“Jude, start passing them up to Nathaniel,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”
Beezle flew up and landed on my shoulder as I pressed past Jude, looking anxiously back the way we had come. Jude and Nathaniel started passing the sedated Agents through the portal.
“What are you worried about?” Beezle asked. “Your earthworm plan worked. As unlikely as it seemed.”
“Yeah,” I said, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been too easy. Someone had to have figured out by now that we’d gone underground.
“This is the last one,” Jude called. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starting to feel like a badger.”
He went through the portal with the last Agent in his arms, and Nathaniel turned back to me, his hand outstretched.
That was when the roof of the tunnel blasted open.
18
IT WAS LIKE BEING INSIDE A TORNADO. NATHANIEL, Beezle and I were scooped up by a howling wind, spun in circles and slammed to the ground in the blazing sunshine.
We were in a little clearing in the woods surrounded by leafless maples. Snow had melted in patches and revealed green moss underneath.
I pushed to my feet, dizzy from being twirled like a top, and stared across the open chasm at my father.
He’d always appeared young and handsome, but while he hadn’t aged at all, his face was changed. He was pale as death, and long lines of grief were etched in his face. I’d have expected him to be surrounded by flunkies, but he stood alone. His dark eyes, the mirror of my own, were lit with flame.
“You killed my son,” he said.
“You killed my husband,” I replied, my fingers curled at my sides. I had desired this from the moment Gabriel had fallen into the snow, his lifeblood running from his body.
“I curse the day that I met your mother, that I allowed myself to be seduced by her,” Azazel spat.
“Oh, fuck you,” I said. “You were no damned innocent.”
Nathaniel had warily come to his feet beside me and was slowly backing away. At least he had the sense not to get between us. Beezle had flown up to a branch high above and watched us with bright eyes.
“You will suffer like none other,” Azazel said, and he flew toward me.
I didn’t bother to banter with him. I blasted him with nightfire.
He knocked my spell away easily, like he was batting away a softball, and landed on the ground in front of me. I slashed out at him with the sword and he shot me with a bolt of lightning that knocked the sword from my hand.
“Now you can no longer use Lucifer’s shield,” Azazel said, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, lifting me from the ground.
His hands were covered in flame, and I screamed as the heat burned through my skin like I was being branded. I kicked Azazel in the ribs with all my strength and he squeezed harder. I could smell my own flesh cooking, and my baby beat its wings in distress.
Azazel’s eyes went wide and he dropped me to the ground. I knew he’d felt the presence of the baby. I didn’t wait for him to get over the shock. I shot him in the face with electricity, aiming for his eyes.
He screamed, covering his face with his hands, and stumbled backward toward the pit. I struggled to my feet, my shoulders still burning. I could feel Azazel’s spell working through the layers of muscle down to my bones.
I blasted him again, and he fell backward into the tunnel.
“Madeline!” Nathaniel cried, and he tossed me the sword.
I barely caught it with my crippled left hand as Azazel flew up out of the hole again. I pushed out my own wings and rose to meet him.
He conjured a blue sword from nightfire and met my strike with his own. He slashed at me furiously, his anger seeming greater than ever now that he knew I was carrying Gabriel’s baby.
It was strange. The angrier Azazel became, the calmer I felt. I knew from long experience that when I was angry, I made mistakes. And I didn’t want to make a mistake. I wanted to see Azazel staked by my sword.
Maybe then my heart would be at peace.
I shot nightfire at him with my left hand while hacking with the sword in my right. He parried me easily, but his movements were becoming more frantic. I managed to slash open his forearm, and blood dripped on the hilt of the sword.
Another thing that I knew was that if your hands were slippery, it was harder to hold on to your sword. Azazel’s fingers slipped, and the nightfire sword tumbled away, disintegrating once it was disconnected from the source of its magic.
I thrust forward, thinking I had him.
But I’d never been that good at seeing all the angles. That was why Lucifer was always outsmarting me.
Azazel closed his hand over the blade—heedless of the fact that it laid open the skin there—and sent a pulse of magic through it.
It slipped under my palm, raced through my body in time with the frantic thrumming of my blood and covered my heartstone with a suffocating clutch.
I gasped for breath as Azazel grinned maliciously and let go of the sword.
“And so goes the least wanted child of my line.”
The blade fell away as I covered my chest with my hand. I couldn’t breathe. I could feel my heartstone being squeezed by an invisible grasp, and soon, very soon, it would burst.
And when it burst, I would die. And so would my child. The magic was an invader under my skin, and I rejected it with everything I had. I’d done this once before, when I’d thrown Evangeline from my body and undid her possession of me. I drew on that now.
“No,” I said, and grabbed Azazel’s bleeding palm, pulling him to me in one swift motion. “This you can have back.”
I summoned all my will, all the strength that I had remaining. No light of the Morningstar lit in my blood, but I didn’t need it.
I pushed the spell back at Azazel and poured it into his open wound.
His eyes went wide, and purple veins stood out in relief all over his face.
And still, he smiled at me. “It’s too late. It’s already begun. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
