“Colt?” Then she shook her head. “He’s not real. I can’t do this again.”
“It’s me,” I croaked. “I’m here.”
“No,” she said. “Tattoos.”
I looked down at my chest. Nothing. No ink on my arm, either. No way to see my back, but I had a guess at what had happened.
“New body,” I said. “Heaven.”
She shook her head again. “Not real. You’re not real.”
The hell I’m not. I held my shaking arm out, putting my wrist under her nose. I didn’t know if my new body would smell like my old one, but it was worth a shot.
Tiffani inhaled.
“Colt?”
“Told you.”
She started to cry harder and reached for me. Her fingers skidded across my cheek like blacktop in a wreck, leaving my face feeling like a mass of ground beef and road rash. She winced and pulled her hand away.
I curled my arms under her legs and around the back of her neck, pulled her to my chest. Electricity fried my skin at the points of contact. The smell of ozone and burning meat filled the cell. Tiffani screamed and her muscles spasmed. I almost dropped her.
“I know,” I said, squeezing her tighter. “Know it hurts. You just have to—” My leg muscles strained and tendons seemed to rip away from my bones as I stood. “—to get through it.”
“Can’t. I can’t.”
I braced myself to take a breath and tell her that she could. Then I saw my skin against hers. That faint heavenly light was still glowing in mine, illuminating her skin where we touched.
Maybe she really couldn’t get through it. Maybe nobody could. Maybe the only reason I had made it so far was the light of Heaven in my skin, dulling the torture or fending off the majority of the pain. That would explain why none of the souls I’d come across so far had tried to leave—not even Mikal. They couldn’t.
Maybe that was the reason the Gatekeepers hadn’t finished me off. They couldn’t.
His mark was on you, their leader had said.
I swallowed back another wave of acid vomit and thanked God that I didn’t have to feel the full force of whatever Tiff was feeling. Then I gathered her up and started walking again.
Tempie
I followed Kathan as he led Ishtar and the rest of the envoys to the basement. A separate piece of his mind had already prepared answers to their inevitable questions, more of his pieces were swimming in info sheets on each of the alphas, enforcers, and foot soldiers, and still another piece was tending to me.
It’s been too long, Temperance, he whispered. If you don’t give your mind some rest, it will be destroyed.
It was true. I was so tired. I could feel it like drawing a compound bow and holding it and holding it and holding it—your arm starts to shake, the muscles under your boobs start to burn, and your fingertips go numb. I’d been in pieces too many times and for too long today. I needed to rest, but I couldn’t yet.
Just a little bit longer, I said.
Kathan didn’t argue with me. Information sheets on the Destroyer slipped through one of his consciousnesses. A broken mind, an unholy rage, a united cause, blood and bone and bane the same. Now wasn’t the time to rein me in for my own good, he decided. Now was the time to let me dictate the pace.
I heard Kathan discussing the prophecy of the Godkiller and his plans for Desty with the other alphas. It was as if he’d planned out everything with Molech in advance to get the most cinematic performance out of my twin. As soon as Kathan referred to her, she screamed.
As tired as I was, it took enormous effort to shift my focus from what the pieces of Kathan were processing to what my eyes were seeing. After a few seconds, the basement came in clearly. Desty was naked, bloody, sweaty, crying, strapped to that table Mikal used to use to play with her familiars. Desty’s dark hair—the same color as mine, but shorter and minus the tri-tone highlights—lay across her forehead in wet spikes like teeth.
I couldn’t tell if she saw me, but I didn’t think so. She was too busy trying to twist away from Molech’s hands and tools.
Kathan wasn’t trying to hide her from me. Even if I’d been able to feel anything at that point, he knew there was nothing I would do to oppose him. I had told him and the little voice inside my head that I would never betray him and I wouldn’t.
And isn’t that just like you? the little voice in my head chimed in. Let your sister suffer, then. Be with your beloved. But remember, pretty soon here Johnny’s going to go marching off to war, and there won’t be anybody left to hold his sweet Temperance together. You won’t even have separation or seeing through Kathan’s pieces to hide behind anymore. The veil will rip, the walls will come tumbling down, then it’ll be bloody Tempie, chewing on the scraps of everything she helped destroy.
I didn’t have the energy to argue. I’d been holding the bow at full draw for too long. My mind was shaking and numb at the edges. I needed to rest.
You think you’ll get to rest if you put yourself back together, bloody Tempie? the little voice taunted. The only thing that’s waiting for you back there is the full understanding of what you’re letting him do to your sister. You think your soul can survive that?
A piece of Kathan was watching me, waiting.
If I asked him to, he would block me off from all of this. The second I came back to myself, he would envelope me in those arms and
