Passion

SIXTEEN BEST MAN

Daniel was not entirely himself.

He was still cloven to the body he had joined with on the dark fjords of Greenland. He tried to slow down as he left the Announcer, but his momentum was too great. Heavily off-balance, he spun out of the darkness and rolled across rocky earth until his head slammed into something hard. Then he was still.

Cleaving with his past self had been a vast mistake.

The simplest way to split apart two entwined incarnations of a soul was to kill the body. Freed from the cage of the flesh, the soul sorted itself out. But killing himself wasn’t really an option for Daniel. Unless …

The starshot.

In Greenland, he had snatched it from where it lay nestled in the snow at the edge of the angels’ fire. Gabbe had brought it along as symbolic protection, but she would never have expected Daniel to cleave and steal it.

Had he really thought he could just drag the dull silver tip across his chest and split apart his soul, casting his past self back into time?

Stupid.

No. He was too likely to slip up, to fail, and then instead of splitting his soul, he might accidentally kill it. Soulless, Daniel’s earthly guise, this dull body, would wander the earth in perpetuity, searching for its soul but settling for the next best thing: Luce. It would haunt her until the day she died, and maybe after that.

What Daniel needed was a partner. What he needed was impossible.

He grunted and rolled over onto his back, squinting into the bright sun directly overhead.

“See?” a voice above him said. “I told you we were in the right place.”

“I don’t see why this”—another voice, a boy’s this time—“is proof of us doing anything right.”

“Oh, come on, Miles. Don’t let your beef with Daniel keep us from finding Luce. He obviously knows where she is.”

The voices drew closer. Daniel opened his eyes in a squint and saw an arm slice the light of the sun, extending toward him.

“Hey there. Need a hand?”

Shelby. Luce’s Nephilim friend from Shoreline.

And Miles. The one she’d kissed.

“What are you two doing here?” Daniel sat up sharply, rejecting Shelby’s offered hand. He rubbed his forehead and glanced behind him—the thing he’d collided with was the gray trunk of an olive tree.

“What do you think we’re doing here? We’re looking for Luce.” Shelby gaped down at Daniel and wrinkled her nose. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Daniel tried to stand up, but he was so dizzy he quickly lay down again. Cleaving—especially dragging his past body into another life—had made him sick. He fought his past from inside, slamming up against the edges, bruising his soul on bones and skin. He knew the Nephilim could sense that something unmentionable had happened to him. “Go home, trespassers. Whose Announcer did you use to get here? Do you know how much trouble you could get yourselves in?”

All of a sudden, something silver gleamed under his nose.

“Take us to Luce.” Miles was pointing a starshot at Daniel’s neck. The brim of his baseball cap hid his eyes, but his mouth was screwed in a nervous grimace.

Daniel was dumbstruck. “You—you have a starshot.”

“Miles!” Shelby whispered fiercely. “What are you doing with that thing?”

The dull tip of the arrow quaked. Miles was clearly nervous. “You left it in the yard after the Outcasts left,” he said to Daniel. “Cam grabbed one, and in the chaos, no one noticed when I picked up this one. You took off after Luce. And we took off after you.” He turned to Shelby. “I thought we might need it. Self-defense.”

“Don’t you dare kill him,” Shelby said to Miles. “You’re an idiot.”

“No,” Daniel said, very slowly sitting up. “It’s okay.”

His mind was spinning. What were the odds? He had only seen this done once before. Daniel was no expert at cleaving. But his past writhed inside him—he couldn’t go on like this. There was only one solution. Miles was holding it in his hands.

But how could he get the boy to attack him without explaining everything? And could he trust the Nephilim?

Daniel edged backward until his shoulders were against the tree trunk. He slid up it, holding both empty hands wide, showing Miles there was nothing to be afraid of. “You took fencing?”

“What?” Miles looked bewildered.

“At Shoreline. Did you take a fencing class or not?”

“We all did. It was kind of pointless and I wasn’t all that good, but—”

That was all Daniel needed to hear. “En garde!” he shouted, drawing out his concealed starshot like a sword.

Miles’s eyes grew wide. In an instant he’d raised his arrow as well.

“Oh, crap,” Shelby said, scurrying out of the way. “You guys, seriously. Stop!”

The starshots were shorter than fencing foils but a few inches longer than normal arrows. They were featherlight but as hard as diamonds, and if Daniel and Miles were very, very careful, the two of them might make it out of this alive. Somehow, with Miles’s help, Daniel might cleave free of his past.

He sliced through the air with his starshot, advancing a few steps toward the Nephilim.

Miles responded, fighting off Daniel’s blow, his arrow glancing hard toward the right. When the starshots clashed, they did not make the tinny clanks that fencing foils made. They made a deep, echoing whooomp that reverberated off the mountains and shook the ground under their feet.

“Your fencing lesson wasn’t pointless,” Daniel said as his arrow crisscrossed with Miles’s in the air. “It was to prepare for a moment like this.”

“A moment”—Miles grunted as he lunged forward, sweeping his starshot up until it slid against Daniel’s in the air—“like what?”

Their arms strained. The starshots made a frozen X in the air.

“I need you to release me from an earlier incarnation that I’ve cloven to my soul,” Daniel said simply.

“What the…,” Shelby murmured from the sidelines.

Confusion flashed across Miles’s face, and his arm faltered. His blade fell away, and his starshot clattered to the ground. He gasped and fumbled for it, looking back at Daniel, terrified.

“I’m not coming after you,” Daniel said. “I need you to come after me.” He managed a competitive smirk. “Come on. You know you want to. You’ve wanted to for a long time.”

Miles charged, holding the starshot like an arrow instead of a sword. Daniel was ready for him, dipping to one side just in time and spinning around to clash his starshot against Miles’s.

They were locked in each other’s grip: Daniel with his starshot pointing past Miles’s shoulder, using his strength to hold the Nephilim boy back, and Miles with his starshot inches away from Daniel’s heart.

“Are you going to help me?” Daniel demanded.

“What’s in it for us?” Miles asked.

Daniel had to think about this for a moment. “Luce’s happiness,” he said at last.

Miles didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no.

“Now”—Daniel’s voice faltered as he gave the instructions—“very carefully, drag your blade in a straight line down the center of my chest. Do not pierce the skin or you will kill me.”

Miles was sweating. His face was white. He glanced over at Shelby.

“Do it, Miles,” she whispered.

The starshot trembled. Everything was in this boy’s hands. The blunt end of the starshot touched Daniel’s skin and traveled down.

“Omigod.” Shelby’s lips curled up in horror. “He’s molting.”

Daniel could feel it, like a layer of skin was lifting off his bones. His past self’s body was slowly cleaving from his own. The venom of separation coursed through him, threading deep into the fibers of his wings. The pain was so raw it was nauseating, roiling deep inside him with great tidal swells. His vision clouded; ringing filled his ears. The starshot in his hand tumbled to the ground. Then, all at once, he felt a great shove and a sharp, cold breath of air. There was a long grunt and two thuds, and then—

His vision cleared. The ringing ceased. He felt lightness, simplicity.

Free.

Miles lay on the ground below him, chest heaving. The starshot in Daniel’s hand had disappeared. Daniel spun around to find a specter of his past self standing behind him, his skin gray and his body wraithlike, his eyes and teeth coal-black, the starshot grasped in his hand. His profile wobbled in the hot wind, like the picture on a shorted-out television.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, reaching forward and clutching his past self at the base of his wings. When Daniel lifted the shadow of himself off the ground, his body felt scant and insufficient. His fingers found the graying portal of the Announcer through which both Daniels had traveled just before it fell apart. “Your day will come,” he said.

Then he pitched his past self back into the Announcer.

He watched the void fading in the hot sun. The body made a drawn-out whistling sound as it tumbled into time, as if it were falling off a cliff. The Announcer split into infinitesimal traces, and was gone.

“What the hell just happened?” Shelby asked, helping Miles to his feet.

The Nephilim was ghostly white, gaping down at his hands, flipping them over and examining them as if he’d never seen them before.

Daniel turned to Miles. “Thank you.”

The Nephilim boy’s blue eyes looked eager and terrified at the same time, as if he wanted to pump every detail out of Daniel about what had just happened but didn’t want to show his excitement. Shelby was speechless, which was an unprecedented event.

Daniel had despised Miles until then. He’d been annoyed by Shelby, who’d practically led the Outcasts straight toward Luce. But at that moment, under the olive tree, he could see why Luce had befriended both of them. And he was glad.

A horn whined in the distance. Miles and Shelby jumped.

It was a shofar, a sacred ram’s horn that made a long, nasal note—often used to announce religious services and festivals. Until then Daniel hadn’t looked around enough to realize where they were.

The three of them stood under the mottled shade of the olive tree at the crest of a low hill. In front of them, the hill sloped down to a wide, flat valley, tawny with the tall native grasses that had never been cut by man. In the middle of the valley was a narrow strip of green, where wildflowers grew alongside a narrow river.

Just east of the riverbed, a small group of tents stood clustered together, facing a larger square structure made of white stones, with a latticed wooden roof. The blast of the shofar must have come from that temple.

A line of women in colorful cloaks that fell to their ankles moved in and out of the temple. They carried clay jugs and bronze trays of food, as if in preparation for a feast.

“Oh,” Daniel said aloud, feeling a profound melancholy settle over him.

“Oh what?” Shelby asked.

Daniel gripped the hood of Shelby’s camouflage sweatshirt. “If you’re looking for Luce here, you won’t find her. She’s dead. She died a month ago.”

Miles nearly choked.

“You mean the Luce from this lifetime,” Shelby said. “Not our Luce. Right?”

“Our Luce—my Luce—isn’t here, either. She never knew this place existed, so her Announcers wouldn’t bring her here. Yours wouldn’t have, either.”

Shelby and Miles shared a glance. “You say you’re looking for Luce,” Shelby said, “but if you know she isn’t here, why are you still hanging around?”

Daniel stared past them, at the valley below. “Unfinished business.”

“Who is that?” Miles asked, pointing at a woman in a long white dress. She was tall and willowy, with red hair that shimmered in the sunlight. Her dress was cut low, showing off a lot of golden skin. She was singing something soft and lovely, a tease of a song they could barely hear.

“That’s Lilith,” Daniel said slowly. “She’s supposed to be married today.”

Miles took a few steps along a path leading down from the olive tree toward the valley where the temple stood, about a hundred feet below them, as if to get a better look.

“Miles, wait!” Shelby scrambled after him. “This isn’t like when we were in Vegas. This is some freaking … other time or whatever. You can’t just see a hot girl and go strolling in like you own the place.” She turned to look at Daniel for help.

“Stay low,” Daniel instructed them. “Keep under the grass line. And stop when I say stop.”

Carefully, they wound down the path, stopping at last near the bank of the river, downstream from the temple. All the tents in the small community had been strewn with garlands of marigolds and cassis flowers. They were in earshot of the voices of Lilith and the girls who were helping prepare her for the wedding. The girls laughed and joined in Lilith’s song as they braided her long red hair into a wreath around her head.

Shelby turned to Miles. “Doesn’t she look kind of like Lilith from our class at Shoreline?”

“No,” Miles said instantly. He studied the bride for a moment. “Okay, maybe a little bit. Weird.”

“Luce probably never mentioned her,” Shelby explained to Daniel. “She’s a total bitch from Hell.”

“It makes sense,” Daniel said. “Your Lilith might come from the same long line of evil women. They’re all descendants of the original mother Lilith. She was Adam’s first wife.”

“Adam had more than one wife?” Shelby gaped. “What about Eve?”

“Before Eve.”

“Pre-Eve? No way.”

Daniel nodded. “They weren’t married very long when Lilith left him. It broke his heart. He waited for her a long time, but eventually, he met Eve. And Lilith never forgave Adam for getting over her. She spent the rest of her days wandering the earth and cursing the family Adam had with Eve. And her descendants—sometimes they start out all right, but eventually, well, the apple never really falls far from the tree.”

“That’s messed up,” Miles said, despite seeming hypnotized by Lilith’s beauty.

“You’re telling me that Lilith Clout, the girl who set my hair on fire in ninth grade, could be literally a bitch from Hell? That all my voodoo toward her might have been justified?”

“I guess so.” Daniel shrugged.

“I’ve never felt so vindicated.” Shelby laughed. “Why wasn’t this in any of our angelology books at Shoreline?”

“Shhh.” Miles pointed toward the temple. Lilith had left her maidens to complete the decorations for the wedding—strewing yellow and white poppies near the entrance to the temple, weaving ribbons and small chimes made of silver into the low branches of the oak trees—and walked away from them, west, toward the river, toward where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding.

She carried a bouquet of white lilies. When she reached the riverbank, she plucked a few petals and scattered them over the water, still singing softly under her breath. Then she turned to walk north along the bank, toward a huge old carob tree with branches that drooped into the river.

A boy sat beneath it, staring into the current. His long legs were propped up close to his chest, with one arm draped over them. The other arm was skipping stones into the water. His green eyes sparkled against his tan skin. His jet-black hair was a little shaggy, and damp from a recent swim.

“Oh my god, that’s—” Shelby’s cry was cut off by Daniel’s hand clamping over her mouth.

This was the moment he’d been afraid of. “Yes, it’s Cam, but it’s not the Cam you know. This is an earlier Cam. We are thousands of years in the past.”

Miles narrowed his eyes. “But he’s still evil.”

“No,” Daniel said. “He’s not.”

“Huh?” Shelby asked.

“There was a time when we were all part of one family. Cam was my brother. He was not evil, not yet. Maybe not even now.”

Physically, the only difference between this Cam and the one Shelby and Miles knew was that his neck was bare of the sunburst tattoo he’d gotten from Satan when he’d thrown in his lot with Hell. Otherwise, Cam looked exactly as he did now.

Except that this long-ago Cam’s face was stiff with worry. It was an expression Daniel hadn’t seen on Cam in millennia. Probably not since this very moment.

Lilith stopped behind Cam and wrapped her arms around his neck so that her hands rested just over his heart. Without turning or saying a word, Cam reached up and cupped her hands in his. Both of them closed their eyes, content.

“This seems really private,” Shelby said. “Should we be—I mean, I feel weird.”

“Then leave,” Daniel said slowly. “Don’t make a scene on your way out—”

Daniel broke off. Someone was walking toward Cam and Lilith.

The young man was tall and tanned, dressed in a long white robe, and carrying a thick scroll of parchment. His blond head was down, but it was obviously Daniel.

“I’m not leaving.” Miles’s eyes locked on Daniel’s past self.

“Wait, I thought we just sent that guy back into the Announcers,” Shelby said, confused.

“That was a later early version of myself,” Daniel said.

“A later early version of myself, he says!” Shelby snorted. “Exactly how many Daniels are there?”

“He came from two thousand years in the future beyond the moment where we are right now, which is still one thousand years in the true past. That Daniel shouldn’t have been here.”

“We’re three thousand years in the past right now?” Miles asked.

“Yes, and you really shouldn’t be.” Daniel stared Miles down. “But that past version of me”—he pointed at the boy who had stopped next to Cam and Lilith—“belongs here.”

Across the river, Lilith smiled. “How are you, Dani?”

They watched as Dani knelt down next to the couple and unrolled the scroll of parchment. Daniel remembered: It was their marriage license. He’d inscribed the whole thing himself in Aramaic. He was supposed to perform the ceremony. Cam had asked him months before.

Lilith and Cam read over the document. They were good together, Daniel remembered. She wrote songs for him and spent hours picking wildflowers, weaving them into his clothes. He gave all of himself to her. He listened to her dreams and made her laugh when she was sad. Both of them had their volatile sides, and when they argued, the whole tribe heard about it—but neither one of them was yet the dark thing they would become after they split up.

“This part right here,” Lilith said, pointing to a line in the text. “It says we will be married by the river. But you know I want to be married in the temple, Cam.”

Cam and Daniel shared a look. Cam reached for Lilith’s hand. “My love. I’ve already told you I cannot.”

Something hot rose in Lilith’s voice. “You refuse to marry me under the eyes of God? In the only place where my family will approve of our union! Why?”

“Whoa,” Shelby whispered on the other side of the stream. “I see what’s happening. Cam can’t get married in the temple … he can’t even set foot in the temple, because—”

Miles began to whisper, too: “If a fallen angel enters the sanctuary of God—”

“The whole thing bursts into flames,” Shelby finished.

The Nephilim were right, of course, but Daniel was surprised by his own frustration. Cam loved Lilith, and Lilith loved Cam. They had a chance to make their love work, and as far as Daniel was concerned, to Hell with everything else. Why was Lilith so insistent on being married in the temple? Why couldn’t Cam give her a good explanation for his refusal?

“I won’t set foot in there.” Cam pointed at the temple.

Lilith was close to tears. “Then you don’t love me.”

“I love you more than I ever thought possible, but it doesn’t change a thing.”

Lilith’s thin body seemed to swell with rage. Could she sense that there was more to Cam’s refusal than merely some wish to deny her? Daniel didn’t think so. She clenched her fists and let out a long, shrill scream.

It seemed to shake the earth. Lilith grabbed Cam’s wrists and pinned him against the tree. He didn’t even struggle.

“My grandmother never liked you.” Her arms trembled as she held him down. “She always said the most terrible things, and I always defended you. Now I see it. In your eyes and your soul.” Her eyes bored into him. “Say it.”

“Say what?” Cam asked, horrified.

“You’re a bad man. You’re a—I know what you are.”

It was clear that Lilith didn’t know. She was grasping at the rumors that flew around the community—that he was evil, a wizard, a member of the occult. All she wanted was to hear the truth from Cam.

Daniel knew that Cam could tell Lilith, but he wouldn’t. He was afraid to.

“I am none of the bad things anyone says I am, Lilith,” Cam said.

It was the truth and Daniel knew it, but it sounded so much like a lie. Cam was on the brink of the worst decision he would ever make. This was it: the moment that broke Cam’s heart so that it rotted into something black.

“Lilith,” Dani pleaded with her, pulling her hands away from Cam’s throat. “He is not—”

“Dani,” Cam warned. “Nothing you can say will fix this.”

“That’s right. It’s broken.” Lilith let go, and Cam fell backward into the dirt. She picked up their marriage contract and flung it into the river. It spun slowly in the current and sank. “I hope I live a thousand years and have a thousand daughters so there will always be a woman who can curse your name.” She spat in his face, then turned and ran back to the temple, her white dress flowing behind her like a sail.

Cam’s face turned as white as Lilith’s wedding robe. He reached for Dani’s hand to help himself up. “Do you have a starshot, Dani?”

“No.” Dani’s voice shook. “Don’t talk like that. You’ll get her back, or else—”

“I was naïve to think I could have gotten away with loving a mortal woman.”

“If you’d only told her,” Dani said.

“Told her? What happened to me—to all of us? The Fall and everything since?” Cam leaned closer to Dani. “Maybe she’s right about me. You heard her: The whole village thinks I am a demon. Even if they won’t use the word.”

“They know nothing.”

Cam turned away. “All this time I’ve been trying to deny it, but love is impossible, Dani.”

“It is not.”

“It is. For souls like ours. You’ll see. You may hold out longer than I could, but you’ll see. Both of us will eventually have to choose.”

“No.”

“So quick to protest, brother.” Cam squeezed Dani’s shoulder. “It makes me wonder about you. Don’t you ever think about it … crossing over?”

Dani shrugged away. “I think about her and only her. I count the seconds until she’ll be with me again. I choose her, as she chooses me.”

“How lonely.”

“It’s not lonely,” Dani barked. “It’s love. The love you want for yourself, too—”

“I meant: I’m lonely. And far less noble than you are. Any day. I fear a change is coming on.”

“No.” Now Dani moved toward Cam. “You wouldn’t.”

Cam reared away and spat. “Not all of us are lucky enough to be bound to our lover by a curse.”

Daniel remembered this empty insult: It had made him furious. But still, he shouldn’t have said what came next:

“Go, then. You won’t be missed.”

He regretted it instantly, but it was too late.

Cam rolled back his shoulders and threw out his arms. When his wings bloomed at his sides, they sent a burst of hot wind rippling across the grass where Daniel, Shelby, and Miles were hiding. The three of them peered up. His wings were massive and glowing and—

“Wait a minute,” Shelby whispered. “They’re not gold!”

Miles blinked. “How can they not be gold?”

Of course the Nephilim would be confused. The division of wing color was as clear as night and day: gold for demons, silver or white for everyone else. And the Cam they knew was a demon. Daniel was in no mood to explain to Shelby why Cam’s wings were pure, bright white, as radiant as diamonds, glistening like sun-kissed snow.

This long-ago Cam had not crossed over yet. He was merely on the brink.

That day Lilith lost Cam as a lover, and Daniel lost him as a brother. From this day on, they would be enemies. Could Daniel have stopped him? What if he hadn’t spun away from Cam and unfurled his own wings like a shield—the way he watched Dani do now?

He should have. He burned to burst forth from the bushes and stop Cam now. How much could be different!

Cam’s and Dani’s wings did not yet have the tortured magnetic pull toward each other. All that repelled them in this moment was a stubborn difference of opinion, a philosophical sibling rivalry.

Both angels rose from the ground at the same time, each facing a different direction. So when Dani soared east across the sky and Cam soared west, the three Anachronisms hiding in the grass were the only ones to see the gleam of gold bite into Cam’s wings. Like a sparkling lightning bolt.