This was not what I’d expected. “The fallen are—”
She waved her stick at me. “I know. They are also right bastards and need to be stopped.”
Dinah wiggled. “Is this for real?”
That was my question, but again, I stayed where I was. “Yes. They are hunting abnormals to extinction.”
The fallen one looked at me. “Might as well be slaughtering their own children.”
Her words sent a whispered chill through me and I tensed, which brought Ruby to her feet. “What?”
“You think that abnormals are just an aberrant mutation of the human genome? Please. They are a product of the fallen fucking about with humans. I mean that in the most literal of senses.” She smiled, and her grin was one of unrepentance and fuckery. I really didn’t want to like her, yet her smile echoed something in me.
“I need to stop them,” I said. “I need to find a way to stop Gardreel and whatever plan he’s got going on.” I used his name because he was the one I figured might be at the top of the food chain.
She tapped her walking stick on the stone, the way I would sometimes tap my finger while thinking. “Yes, I realize that. You will need a powerful weapon to stop him.”
“She’s got two,” Diego said from my back, and the fallen smiled.
“Yes, special like those two you carry. You didn’t think they came into your possession for no reason, did you? This moment, you standing between the world of the abnormals and the fallen has been predestined since your birth. You are the Phoenix, the one that burns, the one that rises on wings of fire.” Her smile widened and her blue eyes locked on my own. “I should know. I helped name you.”
Sweat broke out along the back of my neck and trickled down my spine as the clouds above us rumbled and rain began to fall. “What do you mean?” I asked even though I was beginning to understand where the pieces slid together.
Her smile widened.
Her blue eyes twinkled. “I was a badass too, so I suppose you come by it honestly.” The pause between her words was long enough that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t hearing things.
“Granddaughter.”
20
The fallen stood across from me, bent and frail at the top of the Empire State Building with only a narrow walking stick to hold her up. And yet I was the one who wobbled and went to my knees. Granddaughter. Was she shitting me?
“You are . . .”
“The grand dame of you, the one whom all your abilities stem from and from whence you find your shitty attitude and ability to kill without truly feeling the deaths.” She laughed after she said that, flashing her teeth again.
“How do you not look like the other fallen? You know, the ones with the leathery wings and extra arms?” Dinah asked. It was a good question. Seeing as my head was struggling to wrap around the current information.
“I am fallen because I fell in love with the man I was hunting instead of killing him as was my job. We had a daughter, and she was an abnormal, a lovely girl who had terrible taste in men. And, of course, she passed her abilities on to you. This is the way of our line. I was . . . a killer always, though it was couched in terms of justice.” She waved her stick at the sky as if flipping it off. “Because of my service, I was allowed to remain here for the typical lifespan of a human, and I am very mortal and dying. That is my punishment. Better than being stuck with those self-righteous bastards.” Another flip of her stick to the sky.
Dinah spluttered, and Diego mumbled something in Spanish that might have been what the actual fuck is happening.
I stayed on my knees a moment longer before pushing back to my feet, using Ruby to steady me. I took note that she hadn’t growled at the fallen one once. “So I have the blood of the fallen in me?”
She nodded. “All abnormals have the blood of the fallen in them, granddaughter. All of them. No doubt it is why Gardreel wants to wipe you all out. Because you are proof of their sins that have helped to confine them to this world.” She shrugged as if it didn’t bother her one bit that she was one of those sinners. “That would be my guess if I were a guessing sort of woman.”
“I need to kill him,” I said.
“That you do.” She smiled and her blue eyes burned with a fire I understood completely. “But only another fallen can kill their own.”
The image of the fallen being turned from monster into beauty before he was sucked down into what could only be Hell rolled through my mind. “Not true.”
She waved a hand at me. “It was the power of a fallen you used on another fallen. They won’t make that mistake again. And you’re welcome for that.” She grinned at me and wiggled her fingers. The back of my skull twitched and it was though she were touching inside my brain. “They didn’t even notice me there in the clouds, undoing the bonds that Eligor put on your mind. Filthy, all that.” She spit to one side as if to make her point. “Filthy. They have no right to bind those that are our children.”
I drew in a slow breath, pushing down all the shock in me. The focus was on the task at hand. “How the hell am I going to convince another fallen to fight Gardreel? That is what you’re telling me, isn’t it?”
“How in the hell indeed?” she murmured and tapped her stick on the stone. “I am unable to tell you outright. That is against some stupid rule that a rather pretentious featherbrain came up with.” Another swing of her walking stick upward as she jabbed it toward the sky. “But what
