“I thought things with wings were supposed to have hollow bones!” I grumbled. He was so friggen heavy. Everything was heavy. My arms. My legs. My eyelids.
“Let’s just sleep, Max,” Kai said.
“Get stuffed! If I’m going to sleep for eternity, it wouldn’t be with you!” But my eyes were closing too.
“Sophie is coming soon.”
A fireball exploded in my mind. My eyes snapped open, the protective rage burning away the tips of the cold. I was going to rescue him, and then I was going to strangle him for even thinking it. Threading my arm over his chest, I struggled to get us towards the shore. A hand held on to me. What the hell? One of the others was trying to keep me there. Was it possible to kill someone twice? Because it was going to happen.
The thing was, if they could touch me, then I could touch them too. Shrugging off the hands in question, I started using the other bodies as floats. Bit by bit, I waddled to shore with Kai’s useless dead weight in my arms.
The bloody bastard did absolutely nothing to help me. When I finally dragged him out, I dropped him harder than was necessary. He didn’t even notice. Typical. Hooking my fingers into the collar of his T-shirt, I pulled him as far away from the edge of the water as I could before my legs collapsed.
I was kneeling and trying to take a breath when Azrael finally showed up. “Your timing isn’t great,” I said. I was too puffed and too pissed to care much about ceremony. Why did I still need to breathe after dying? Nothing made sense!
“A great deal is occurring in the dimension,” he said, his cloak swaying around him. “The malachim who are saved need sanctum.”
“You did a great job helping them the first time.”
Logically, I knew I should try and be a bit more respectful. But seeing him here really hit home that I was dead. That Kai was dead. And soon, Sophie might be dead too.
No.
Azrael sensed where my thoughts were. “Come,” he said. “There’s no need to be upset. You played your part–”
“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.”
He gave me a look then. The light rippled around him and my mind felt like it was cascading. Not quite sure how it happened, I found myself on my knees in front of him with my head bowed. “Be calm, Maximus. You will be safe and well now.”
His hand came down on the back of my head. Absolutely nothing happened. He tapped me again. Still no reaction. After the third time, he was just hitting me really.
“I don’t think it’s work–”
A burning pain shot through my chest at the site where Lex had given me that messed-up tattoo. Speak of the Devil’s scion, she appeared in a ripple of sapphire light behind Azrael.
The sight of her knocked me flat on my ass. Everything about her was the same. Same dark, wavy brown hair that was always a bit messy. Same sapphire-blue eyes that said she didn’t give a damn who you were if she wanted something. Same fake innocent smile that covered up the fact she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to do. And yet, everything was also different in subtle ways that hurt to see. She seemed...older. The light inside her no longer as bright.
I swallowed hard, trying to get a grip on the lion clawing at my gut. I should have gone after her, the beast said.
“Blue?” Kai sat up. Of course. I couldn’t get five seconds of effort pulling him out of the Sea of Souls, but he caught a whiff of her and suddenly Malachi bloody Pendragon was all ears. Served him right when she ignored him.
Azrael turned to her. He pulled his cowl down and his face was all kinds of disapproving. “You did this?”
Lex nodded. “Guilty.”
“Why?”
She strolled between us. “Felt like it.”
“Alessia.”
“Azrael.”
He sighed. With me he’d been nothing but commanding. With Lex, he was stern but also malleable. “We’ve had this conversation before.”
“Correction,” she said. “You talked at me before. The way I see it, I have too many daddies and none of them show up when it counts. So consider this my first act of rebellion.”
She whipped around, grabbed the demon blade by the hilt, and pulled it out of my chest. The squelch of metal through flesh made a disconcerting sound. “Tell Chuck thanks for looking after this for me,” Lex said.
“Alessia!” Azrael was no longer amused.
She smiled for the first time, her mask giving way and the old Lex shining through. “A mating link, huh?” Her eyes flicked to the tattoo. “I wouldn’t have given Sophie up for anything less. Tell her I’m so proud of her.”
“Come with us.” I made to grab her, but a ripple of black-and-silver magic encased her.
“Not this time,” she said. And then she placed her hand on my chest. “Hold on tight now.”
I grabbed Kai without thinking. “Blue!” he screamed. And then she spoke a single Angelical word that made my nose bleed and kicked us back through the dimensions.
53
Sophie
The sound of Apollyon’s laughter was the only thing I heard above my own sobs. Max was still warm. How could he still be warm and not wake up?
“Max,” I cried. “Please wake up. Please.”
And all I could think of was that I could have told him so long ago how I felt. I could have let the mating link take its natural course and we would have had more time together. The malachim in my chest tried to comfort me with a stroke of her light but I was inconsolable.
“Ah, Soph,” Charles said. I didn’t move. “Sophie!”
“What?” I snapped. I hated him. More than I hated Apollyon. If he hadn’t stabbed Max with the demon blade, maybe there was a chance I could have reached him. Maybe
