Passion

NINETEEN THE MORTAL COIL

“You there,” a voice bellowed as Luce crossed the threshold of the Announcer. “I should like my wine. On a platter. And bring in my dogs. No—my lions. No—both.”

She’d stepped through into a vast white room with alabaster walls and thick columns holding up a lofty ceiling. A faint scent of roasting meat was in the air.

The room was empty except for a tall platform at the far end, which had been dressed with antelope hide. Atop it sat a colossal throne, carved from marble, padded with plush emerald-green pillows, and adorned along the back with a decorative crest of interlocking ivory tusks.

The man on the throne—with his kohl-rimmed eyes, bare muscular chest, gold-capped teeth, bejeweled fingers, and tower of ebony hair—was talking to her. He had turned away from a thin-lipped, blue-robed scribe holding a papyrus-reed script, and now both men stared at Luce.

She cleared her throat.

“Yes, Pharaoh,” Bill hissed into her ear. “Just say Yes, Pharaoh.”

“Yes, Pharaoh!” Luce shouted across the endless chamber.

“Good,” Bill said. “Now scram!”

Ducking backward through a shadowed doorway, Luce found herself in an interior courtyard surrounding a still pond. The air was cool, but the sun was fierce, scorching the rows of potted lotus flowers that lined the walkway. The courtyard was huge, but, eerily, Luce and Bill had the whole thing to themselves.

“There’s something strange about this place, isn’t there?” Luce stayed close to the walls. “The pharaoh didn’t even seem alarmed by seeing me step out of nowhere.”

“He’s too important to be bothered with actually noticing people. He saw movement in his peripheral vision and deduced that someone was there for him to boss around. That’s all. It explains why he also didn’t seem fazed by the fact that you’re wearing Chinese battle garb from two thousand years in the future,” Bill said, snapping his stone fingers. He pointed to a shadowed niche in the corner of the courtyard. “Hang tight right there and I’ll be back with something a little more à la mode for you to wear.”

Before Luce could strip off the Shang king’s cumbersome armor, Bill was back with a simple white Egyptian shift dress. He helped tug off her leather gear and slipped the dress over her head. It draped over one shoulder, tied around the waist, and tapered into a narrow skirt ending a few inches above her ankles.

“Forgetting anything?” Bill said with a strange intensity.

“Oh.” Luce reached back into the Shang armor for the dull-tipped starshot tucked inside. When she pulled it out, it felt so much heavier than she knew it really was.

“Don’t touch the point!” Bill said quickly, wrapping the tip in fabric and tying it off. “Not yet.”

“I thought it could only harm angels.” She tilted her head, remembering the battle against the Outcasts, remembering the arrow glancing off Callie’s arm without a scratch, remembering Daniel telling her to stay far out of the arrow’s range.

“Whoever told you that didn’t tell you the whole truth,” Bill said. “It only affects immortals. You have a part of you that is immortal—the cursed part, your soul. That’s the part you’re going to kill here, remember? So that your mortal self, Lucinda Price, can go on and live a normal life.”

“If I kill my soul,” Luce said, securing the starshot under her new dress. Even through the coarse cloth, it was warm to the touch. “I still haven’t decided—”

“I thought we were agreed.” Bill swallowed. “Starshots are very valuable. I would not have given it to you unless—”

“Let’s just find Layla.”

It wasn’t just the eerie silence of the palace that was unsettling—something seemed strange between Luce and Bill. Ever since he’d given her the silver arrow, they were edgy around each other.

Bill took a deep, raspy breath. “Okay. Ancient Egypt. This is the early dynastic period in the capital city of Memphis. We’re pretty far back now, about five thousand years before Luce Price graces the world with her magnificent presence.”

Luce rolled her eyes. “Where’s my past self?”

“Why do I even bother with the history lessons?” Bill said to a pretend audience. “All she ever wants to know is where her past self is. So self-centered it’s disgusting.”

Luce crossed her arms. “If you were going to kill your soul, I think you’d want to get it over with before you had a chance to change your mind.”

“So, you’ve decided now?” Bill sounded a little breathless. “Oh, come on, Luce. This is our last gig together. I figured you’d want to know the details, for old times’ sake? Your life here was really one of the most romantic of all.” He hunkered down on her shoulder, in storytelling mode. “You’re a slave named Layla. Sheltered, lonely—never been beyond the palace walls. Until, one day, in walks the handsome new commander of the army—guess who?”

Bill hovered at her side as Luce left the armor piled in the alcove and walked slowly along the pool’s edge.

“You and the dashing Donkor—let’s just call him Don—fall in love, and all is rosy except for one cruel reality: Don is betrothed to the pharaoh’s bitchy daughter, Auset. Now, how dramatic is that?”

Luce sighed. There was always some complication. One more reason to put an end to all this. Daniel shouldn’t be shackled to some earthly body, getting caught up in useless mortal drama just so he could be with Luce. It wasn’t fair to him. Daniel had been suffering for too long. Maybe she really would end it. She could find Layla and join with her body. Then Bill would tell her how to kill her cursed soul, and she would give Daniel his freedom.

She’d been pacing the oblong courtyard, brooding. When she rounded the portion of the path nearest the pond, fingers clasped her wrist.

“Caught you!” The girl who’d seized Luce was lean and muscular, with sultry, dramatic features under layers of makeup. Her ears were pierced by at least ten gold hoops, and a heavy gold pendant hung from her neck, ornamented with a pound of precious jewels.

The pharaoh’s daughter.

“I—” Luce started to say.

“Don’t you dare say a word!” Auset barked. “The sound of your pathetic voice is like pumice on my eardrums. Guard!”

An enormous man appeared. He had a long black ponytail and forearms thicker than Luce’s legs. He carried a long wooden spear topped with a sharp copper blade.

“Arrest her,” Auset said.

“Yes, Highness,” the guard barked. “On what grounds, Highness?”

The question lit an angry fire inside the pharaoh’s daughter. “Theft. Of my personal property.”

“I will imprison her until the council rules on the matter.”

“We did that once before,” Auset said. “And yet here she is, like an asp, able to slither free of any bonds. We need to lock her away someplace she can never escape.”

“I will assign a continuous watch—”

“No, that won’t be good enough.” Something dark crossed Auset’s face. “I never want to see this girl again. Throw her into my grandfather’s tomb.”

“But, Your Highness, no one but the high priest is allowed—”

“Precisely, Kafele,” Auset said, smiling. “Throw her down the entryway stairs and bolt the door behind you. When the high priest goes to perform the tomb-sealing ceremony this evening, he will discover this tomb raider and will punish her as he sees fit.” She drew near Luce and scoffed. “You’ll find out what happens to those who try to steal from the royal family.”

Don. She meant that Layla was trying to steal Don.

Luce didn’t care if they locked her up and threw away the key as long as she got a chance to cleave with Layla first. Otherwise how could she set Daniel free? Bill paced the air, scheming, claws tapping against his stone lip.

The guard produced a pair of shackles from the satchel at his waist and fastened the iron chains over Luce’s wrists.

“I’ll see to it myself,” Kafele said, yanking her after him by a length of chain.

“Bill!” Luce whispered. “You have to help me!”

“We’ll think of something,” Bill whispered as Luce was dragged across the courtyard. They turned a corner into a dark hallway, where a larger-than-life stone sculpture of Auset stood, looking grimly beautiful.

When Kafele turned to squint at Luce because she was talking to herself, his long black hair swished across his face and gave Luce an idea.

He never saw it coming. She wrestled her shackled hands up and tugged down hard on his hair, clawing at his head with her fingernails. He yelped and stumbled backward, bleeding from a long scratch on his scalp. Then Luce elbowed him hard in the gut.

He grunted and doubled over. The spear slipped from his hands.

“Can you get these shackles off?” Luce hissed at Bill.

The gargoyle wagged his eyebrows. A short black bolt shot into the shackles, and they fizzled into nothingness. Luce’s skin felt hot where they had been, but she was free.

“Huh,” she said, glancing briefly down at her bare wrists. She grabbed the spear from the ground. She spun around to draw the blade to Kafele’s neck.

“One step ahead of you, Luce,” Bill called. When she turned, Kafele was sprawled flat on his back with his wrists shackled around the stone ankle of Auset’s likeness.

Bill dusted off his hands. “Teamwork.” He glanced down at the white-faced guard. “We’d better hurry. He’ll find his vocal cords again soon enough. Come with me.”

Bill led Luce quickly down the dark hallway, up a short flight of sandstone stairs, and across another hall lit by small tin lamps and lined with clay figures of hawks and hippopotamuses. A pair of guards turned into the hallway, but before they could see Luce, Bill pushed her through a doorway covered by a reed curtain.

She found herself in a bedroom. Stone columns carved to look like bundled papyrus stems rose to a low ceiling. A wooden sedan chair inlaid with ebony sat by an open window opposite a narrow bed, which was carved of wood and painted with so much gold leaf that it gleamed.

“What do I do now?” Luce pressed against the wall in case anyone walking by peered in. “Where are we?”

“This is the commander’s chamber.”

Before Luce could piece together that Bill meant Daniel, a woman parted the reed curtain and stepped into the room.

Luce shivered.

Layla wore a white dress with the same narrow cut as the one Luce had on. Her hair was thick and straight and glossy. She had a white peony tucked behind one ear.

With a heavy feeling of sadness, Luce watched Layla glide to the wooden vanity and pour fresh oil into the lamp from a canister she carried on a black resin tray. This was the last life Luce would visit, the body where she would part ways with her soul so that all of this could end.

When Layla turned to refill the lamps beside the bed, she noticed Luce.

“Hello,” she said in a soft, husky voice. “Are you looking for someone?” The kohl rimming her eyes looked much more natural than Auset’s makeup.

“Yes, I am.” Luce wasted no time. Just as she reached forward to grab the girl’s wrist, Layla looked past her toward the doorway, and her face stiffened with alarm. “Who is that?”

Luce turned and saw only Bill. His eyes were wide.

“You can”—she gaped at Layla—“you can see him?”

“No!” Bill said. “She’s talking about the footsteps she hears running down the corridor outside. Better hurry, Luce.”

Luce swiveled back and took her past self’s warm hand, knocking the canister of oil to the ground. Layla gasped and tried to jerk away, but then it happened.

The feeling of the sinkhole opening in Luce’s stomach was almost familiar. The room swirled, and the only thing in focus was the girl standing before her. Her inky-black hair and gold-flecked eyes, the flush of love fresh on her cheeks. Foggily, Luce blinked, and Layla blinked, and on the other side of the blink—

The ground settled. Luce looked down at her hands. Layla’s hands. They were trembling.

Bill was gone. But he’d been right: There were footsteps in the hallway.

She dipped to pick up the canister and turned away from the door to start pouring oil into the lamp. Best not to be seen by anyone who passed doing anything but her job.

The footsteps behind her stopped. A warm brush of fingertips traveled up her arms as a firm chest pressed against her back. Daniel. She could sense his glow without even turning. She closed her eyes. His arms wrapped around her waist and his soft lips swept across her neck, stopping just below her ear.

“I found you,” he whispered.

She turned slowly in his arms. The sight of him took her breath away. He was still her Daniel, of course, but his skin was the color of rich hot chocolate, and his wavy black hair was cropped very short. He wore only a short linen loincloth, leather sandals, and a silver choker around his neck. His deep-set violet eyes swept over her, happy.

He and Layla were deeply in love.

She rested her cheek on his chest and counted the beats of his heart. Would this be the last time she did this, the last time he held her against his heart? She was about to do the right thing—the good thing for Daniel. But still it pained her to think about it. She loved him! If this journey had taught her anything, it was how much she truly loved Daniel Grigori. It hardly seemed fair that she was forced to make this decision.

Yet here she was.

In ancient Egypt.

With Daniel. For the very last time. She was about to set him free.

Her eyes blurred with tears as he kissed the part in the center of her hair.

“I wasn’t sure we’d have a chance to say goodbye,” he said. “I leave this afternoon for the war in Nubia.”

When Luce lifted her head, Daniel cupped her damp cheeks in his hands. “Layla, I’ll return before the harvest. Please don’t cry. In no time you’ll be sneaking back into my bedchamber in the dark of night with platters of pomegranates just like always. I promise.”

Luce took a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye for now.” His face grew serious. “Say it: Goodbye for now.”

She shook her head. “Goodbye, my love. Goodbye.”

The reed curtain parted. Layla and Don broke from their embrace as a cluster of guards with their spears drawn barreled into the room. Kafele led them, his face dark with rage. “Get the girl,” he said, pointing at Luce.

“What’s going on?” Daniel shouted as the guards surrounded Luce and reshackled her hands. “I order you to stop. Unhand her.”

“Sorry, Commander,” Kafele said. “Pharaoh’s orders. You should know by now—when Pharaoh’s daughter is not happy, Pharaoh is not happy.”

They marched Luce away as Daniel shouted, “I’ll come for you, Layla! I’ll find you!”

Luce knew he would. Wasn’t that how it always played out? They met, she got into trouble, and he showed up and saved the day—year in and year out across eternity, the angel swooping in at the last minute to rescue her. It was tiring to think about.

But this time when he got there, she would have the starshot waiting. The thought sent a raw pain through her gut. A well of tears rose up inside her again, but she swallowed them. At least she had gotten to say goodbye.

The guards ushered her down an endless series of hallways and outside into the blistering sun. They marched her down streets made of uneven slabs of rock, through a monumental arched gate, and past small sandstone houses and shimmering silty farmland on the way out of the city. They were dragging her toward an enormous golden hill.

Only as they drew near did Luce realize it was a man-made structure. The necropolis, she realized at the same time that Layla’s mind became jumbled with fear. Every Egyptian knew this was the tomb of the last pharaoh, Meni. No one except a few of the holiest priests—and the dead—dared approach the place where the royal bodies were interred. It was locked with spells and incantations, some to guide the dead in their journey toward the next life, and some to ward off any living being who dared approach. Even the guards dragging her there seemed to grow nervous as they approached.

Soon they were entering a pyramid-shaped tomb made of baked mud bricks. All but two of the burliest guards remained outside the entrance. Kafele shoved Luce through a darkened doorway and down a darker flight of stairs. The other guard followed them, carrying a flaming torch to light their path.

The torchlight flickered on the stone walls. They were painted with hieroglyphics, and now and then Layla’s eyes caught bits of prayers to Tait, the goddess of weaving, asking for help to keep the pharaoh’s soul in one piece during his journey to the afterlife.

Every few steps they passed false doors—deep stone recesses in the walls. Some of them, Luce realized, had once been entryways leading to the final resting places of members of the royal family. They were now sealed off with stone and gravel so that no mortal could pass.

Their way grew cooler; it grew darker. The air became heavy with the faded must of death. When they neared the one open doorway at the end of the hallway, the guard with the torch would go no farther—“I will not be cursed by the gods for this girl’s insolence”—so Kafele did it himself. He wrestled aside the stone bolt that pinned the door, and a harsh, vinegary smell flooded out, poisoning the air.

“Think you have any hope of escape now?” he asked, releasing her wrists from the shackles and shoving her inside.

“Yes,” Luce whispered to herself as the heavy stone door shut behind her and the bolt thudded back into place. “Only one.”

She was alone in utter darkness, and the cold clawed at her skin.

Then something snapped—stone on stone, so recognizable—and a small golden light bloomed in the center of the room. It was cupped between the two stone hands of Bill.

“Hello, hello.” He floated to the side of the room and poured the ball of fire out of his hands and into an opulently painted purple-and-green stone lamp. “We meet again.”

As Luce’s eyes adjusted, the first thing she saw was the writing on the walls: They were painted with the same hieroglyphics as in the hallway, only this time they were prayers to the pharaoh—“Do not decay. Do not rot. Stride into the Imperishable Stars.” There were chests that wouldn’t close because they overflowed with gold coins and sparkling orange gems. An enormous collection of obelisks spread out before her. At least ten embalmed dogs and cats seemed to eye her.

The chamber was huge. She circled a set of bedroom furniture, complete with a vanity stacked with cosmetics. There was a votive palette with a two-headed serpent chiseled on its face. The interlocking necks formed a recess in the black stone, which held a circle of bright blue eye shadow.

Bill watched Luce pick it up. “Gotta look one’s best in the afterlife.”

He was sitting atop the head of a startlingly lifelike sculpture of the former pharaoh. Layla’s mind told Luce that this sculpture represented the pharaoh’s ka, his soul, and it would watch over the tomb—the real pharaoh lay mummified behind it. Inside the limestone sarcophagus would be nested wooden coffins; inside the smallest one of them: the embalmed pharaoh.

“Watch out,” Bill said. Luce hadn’t even realized she was resting her hands on a small wooden chest. “That contains the pharaoh’s entrails.”

Luce jerked away and slid the starshot out from her dress. When she picked it up, its shaft warmed her fingers. “Is this really going to work?”

“If you pay attention and do as I say,” Bill said. “Now, the soul resides directly in the center of your being. To reach it, you must draw the blade precisely down the middle of your chest, right at the critical moment, right when Daniel kisses you and you feel yourself start to cook. Then you, Lucinda Price, will be flung out of your past self, as usual, but your cursed soul will be trapped in Layla’s body, where it will burn up and be gone.”

“I’m—I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be. It’s like having your appendix out. You’re better off without it.” Bill looked at his empty gray wrist. “By my watch, Don will be here any moment.”

Luce held the silver arrow so that its blade pointed at her breast. The swirling etched designs tingled under her fingers. Her hands quaked with nerves.

“Steady now.” Bill’s earnest call sounded far away.

Luce was trying to pay attention, but her heart was pounding in her ears. She had to do this. She had to. For Daniel. To free him from a punishment he’d taken on only because of her.

“You’ll have to do it a lot faster than that during the real thing or Daniel will surely stop you. One quick slit on your soul. You will feel something loosen, a breath of coldness, and then—bam!”

“Layla!” Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from?

The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone. But Don was—Daniel was right where she wanted him to be.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him.

He didn’t seem to hear it. He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. “Saving your life.”

“How did you get in?”

“Don’t worry about that. No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you.”

In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce’s instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn’t right then. Her heart felt ragged and cold. This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life—they were torture to her now.

“Fear not,” he whispered. “Let me tell you, love, what happens after this life. You come back, you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real. You come back to me, again and again—”

The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle. His body was so warm against hers.

“But I die again and again.”

“What?” He tilted his head. Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well—that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn’t expected her to understand. “How do you—Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we will again be together. We will always find each other, always love each other, no matter what. I will never leave you.”

Luce fell to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Over and over again, the same sadness—”

He lifted her up. “The same ecstasy—”

“The same fire that kills everything—”

“The same passion that ignites it all again. You don’t know. You can’t remember how wonderful—”

“I’ve seen it. I do know.”

Now she had his attention. He didn’t seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening.

“What if there’s no hope of anything ever changing?” she asked.

“There is only hope. One day, you will live through it. That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I will never give up on you. Even if it takes forever.” He wiped away her tears with his thumb. “I’ll love you with all my heart, in every life, through every death. I will not be bound by anything but my love for you.”

“But it’s so hard. Isn’t it hard for you? Haven’t you ever thought, what if …”

“One day, our love will conquer this dark cycle. That’s worth everything to me.”

Luce looked up and saw the love glowing in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. He didn’t care if he suffered again and again; he’d forge on, losing her over and over, buoyed by the hope that one day this wouldn’t be their end. He knew it was doomed, but he tried over and over again anyway, and he always would.

His commitment to her, to them, touched a part of her that she’d thought she’d given up on.

She still wanted to argue: This Daniel didn’t know the challenges coming their way, the tears they would shed over the ages. He didn’t know that she’d seen him in his moments of deepest desperation. What the pain of her deaths would do to him.

But then—

Luce knew. And that made all the difference in the world.

Daniel’s lowest moments had terrified her, but things had changed. All along, she’d felt bound to their love, but now she knew how to protect it. Now she had seen their love from so many different angles. She understood it in a way she’d never thought she would. If Daniel ever faltered, she could raise him up.

She had learned how to do it from the best: from Daniel. Here she was, about to kill her soul, about to take away their love permanently, and five minutes alone with him brought her back to life.

Some people spent their entire lives looking for love like this.

Luce had had it all along.

The future held no starshot for her. Only Daniel. Her Daniel, the one she’d left in her parents’ backyard in Thunderbolt. She had to go.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

He was seated on the steps with his knees parted just enough to let her body slide between them. She sank to her knees and faced him. Their foreheads were touching. The tips of their noses.

Daniel took her hands. He seemed to want to tell her something, but he could not find the words.

“Please,” she begged, her lips edging toward his. “Kiss me and set me free.”

Daniel lunged for her, swooping her up and laying her sideways across his lap to cradle her in his arms. His lips found hers. They were as sweet as nectar. She moaned as a deep current of joy flowed through her, every inch of her. Layla’s death was near, she knew that, but she never felt safer or more alive than she did when Daniel held her.

Her hands locked around the back of his neck, feeling the firm sinews of his shoulders, feeling the tiny raised scars protecting his wings. His hands roved up her back, through her long, thick hair. Every touch was rapture, every kiss so wonderful and pure it left her dizzy.

“Stay with me,” he pleaded. The muscles in his face had grown tense, and his kisses had become hungrier, more desperate.

He must have sensed Luce’s body warming. The heat rising in her core, spreading through her chest and flushing her cheeks. Tears filled her eyes. She kissed him harder. She’d been through this so many times before, but for some reason this felt different.

With a loud whoosh he stretched his wings out, and then deftly wrapped them tight around her, a cradle of soft white holding the two of them fast.

“You really believe it?” she whispered. “That someday I’ll live through this?”

“With all my heart and soul,” he said, cupping her face in his hands, pulling his wings tighter around them both. “I will wait for you as long as it takes. I will love you every moment across time.”

By then, Luce was broiling hot. She cried out from the pain, thrashing in Daniel’s arms as the heat overwhelmed her. She was burning his skin, but he never let her go.

The moment had come. The starshot was tucked inside her dress, and this—right now—was when she would have used it. But she was never going to give up. Not on Daniel. Not when she knew, no matter how hard it got, that he would never give up on her.

Her skin began to blister. The heat was so brutal, she could do nothing but shiver.

And then she could only scream.

Layla combusted, and as the flames engulfed her body, Luce felt her own body and the soul they were sharing untwine, seeking the fastest escape from the unforgiving heat. The column of fire grew taller and wider until it filled the room and the world, until it was everything, and Layla was nothing at all.

Luce expected darkness and found light.

Where was the Announcer? Could she still be inside Layla?

The fire blazed on. It did not extinguish. It spread. The flames consumed more and more of the darkness, reaching into the sky as if the great night itself were flammable, until the hot blaze of red and gold was all that Luce could see.

Every other time one of her past selves had died, Luce’s release from the flames and into the Announcer had been simultaneous. Something was different, something that was making her see things that couldn’t possibly be real.

Wings on fire.

“Daniel!” she cried out. What looked like Daniel’s wings soared through waves of flames, catching fire but not smoldering, as if they were made of fire. All she could make out were white wings and violet eyes. “Daniel?”

The fire rolled across the darkness like a giant wave across an ocean. It crashed onto an invisible shore and washed furiously over Luce, rushing up her body, over her head, and far behind her.

Then, as if someone had pinched out a candle, there was a quick hiss and everything went black.

A cold wind crept up behind her. Goose bumps spread across her skin. She hugged her body closer, drawing up her knees and realizing with a jolt of surprise that no ground held up her feet. She wasn’t flying exactly, just hovering, directionless. This darkness was not an Announcer. She had not used the starshot, but had she somehow … died?

She was afraid. She didn’t know where she was, only that she was alone.

No. There was someone else. A scraping sound. A dim gray light.

“Bill!” Luce shouted at the sight of him, so relieved she began to laugh. “Oh, thank God. I thought I was lost—I thought—Oh, never mind.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my soul. I’ll find another way to break the curse. Daniel and I—we won’t give up on each other.”

Bill was far away, but floating toward her, making loops in the air. The nearer he got, the larger he appeared, swelling until he was two, then three, then ten times the size of the small stone gargoyle she had traveled with. Then the real metamorphosis began:

Behind his shoulders, a pair of thicker, fuller, jet-black wings burst forth, shattering his familiar small stone wings into a chaos of broken bits. The wrinkles on his forehead deepened and expanded across his entire body until he looked horrifically shriveled and old. The claws on his feet and hands grew longer, sharper, yellower.

They glinted in the darkness, razor-sharp. His chest swelled, sprouting thick, curly black hairs as he grew infinitely larger than he had been before.

Luce strained to suppress the wail climbing in her throat. And she managed—right up until Bill’s stony gray eyes, their irises dulled beneath layers of cataracts, glowed as red as fire.

Then she screamed.

“You always did make the wrong choice.” Bill’s voice had turned monstrous, deep and phlegm-filled and grating, not just on Luce’s ears but on her very soul. His breath punched her, reeking of death.

“You’re—” Luce could not finish her sentence. There was only one word for the evil creature before her, and the idea of saying it aloud was frightening.

“The bad guy?” Bill cackled. “Surprise!” He held out the I sound of the word so long that Luce was sure he would double over and cough, but he didn’t.

“But—you taught me so much. You helped me figure out—Why would you—How—The whole time?”

“I was deceiving you. It’s what I do, Lucinda.”

She had cared for Bill, roguish and disgusting as he was. She’d confided in him, listened to him, had almost killed her soul because he’d told her to. The thought cut her. She had almost lost Daniel because of Bill. She might lose Daniel still because of Bill. But he wasn’t Bill—

He was no mere demon, not like Steven, or even Cam at his worst.

He was Evil incarnate.

And he had been with Luce, breathing down her neck the whole time.

She tried to turn away from him, but his darkness was everywhere. It looked as if she were floating in a night sky, but all the stars were impossibly far away; there was no sign of Earth. Close by were patches of darker blackness, swirling abysses. And every now and then a shaft of light appeared, a beacon of hope, illumination. Then the light would vanish.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Satan sneered at the pointlessness of her question. “Neverwhere,” he said. His voice no longer had the familiar tone of her traveling companion. “The dark heart of nothing at the center of everything. Neither Heaven, nor Earth, nor Hell. A place of the darkest transits. Nothing your mind at this stage can fathom, so it probably just looks”—his red eyes bulged—“scary to you.”

“What about those flashes of light?” Luce asked, trying not to let on just how frightening the place did look to her. She’d seen at least four flashes of light already, brilliant conflagrations igniting out of nowhere, vanishing fast into darker regions in the sky.

“Oh, those.” Bill watched one as it blazed and disappeared over Luce’s shoulder. “Angel travel. Demon travel. Busy night, isn’t it? Everyone seems to be going somewhere.”

“Yes.” Luce had been waiting for another burst of light in the sky. When it came, it cast a shadow across her, and she clawed at it, desperate to shake out an Announcer before the light disappeared. “Including me.”

The Announcer expanded rapidly in her hands, so heavy and urgent and lithe that, for a moment, she thought she might make it.

Instead she felt a scabrous grip around her sides. Bill had her entire body nestled in his grimy claw. “I’m just not ready to say goodbye yet,” he whispered in a voice that made her shiver. “See, I’ve grown so fond of you. No, wait, that’s not it. I have always been … fond of you.”

Luce let the shadow in her fingers wisp away into nothing.

“And like all beloveds, I need you in my presence, especially now, so you don’t corrupt my designs. Again.”

“At least now you’ve given me a goal,” Luce said, straining against his grasp. It was no use. He gripped her tighter, squeezing her bones.

“You always did have an inner fire. I love that about you.” He smiled, and it was a terrible thing. “If only your spark stayed inside, hmm? Some people are just unlucky in love.”

“Don’t talk to me about love,” Luce spat. “I can’t believe I ever listened to a word that came out of your mouth. You don’t know a thing about love.”

“I’ve heard that one before. And I happen to know one important thing about love: You think yours is bigger than Heaven and Hell and the fate of all that rests between. But you’re wrong. Your love for Daniel Grigori is less than insignificant. It is nothing!”

His shout was like a shock wave that blew back Luce’s hair. She gasped and struggled for air. “Say whatever you want. I love Daniel. I always will. And it has nothing to do with you.”

Satan held her up to his red eyes, pinching her skin with his sharpest pointer claw. “I know you love him. You’re a fool for him. Just tell me why.”

“Why?”

“Why. Why him? Put it into words. Really make me feel it. I want to be moved.”

“A million reasons. I just do.”

His snaggletoothed smile deepened, and a sound like a thousand growling dogs came from deep inside him. “That was a test. You failed, but it isn’t your fault. Not really. That is an unfortunate side effect of the curse you bear. You don’t get to make choices anymore.”

“That’s not true. If you remember, I just made a big choice not to kill my soul.”

That angered him—she could see it in the way his nostrils flared, the way he reached up and balled his claw into a fist and made a patch of the starry sky go out like a light switch had been flicked somewhere. But he said nothing for the longest time. Just stared away into the night.

A horrible thought struck Luce. “Were you even telling the truth? What would really have happened if I’d used the starshot to—” She shuddered, sickened that she’d come so close. “What’s in all this for you? You want me out of the picture or something so you can get to Daniel? Is that why you would never show yourself in front of him? Because he would have gone after you and—”

Satan chuckled. His laughter dimmed the stars. “You think I’m scared of Daniel Grigori? You do think very highly of him. Tell me, what kind of wild lies has he been filling your head with about his grandiose place in Heaven?”

“You’re the liar,” Luce said. “You’ve done nothing but lie from the moment I met you. No wonder the whole universe despises you.”

“Fears. Not despises. There’s a difference. Fear has envy in it somewhere. You may not believe it, but there are many who wish to wield the power that I wield. Who … adore me.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

“You just don’t know enough. About anything. I’ve taken you on a tour of your past—shown you the futility of this existence, hoping to awaken you to the truth, and all I get from you is ‘Daniel! I want Daniel!’ ”

He flung her down and she fell into blackness, coming to a stop only when he glared at her, as if he could fix her in place. He moved in a tight circle around her, his hands behind his back, his wings drawn tight, his head tilted toward the sky. “Everything you see here is everything there is to see. From far away, yes, but it’s all there—all the lives and worlds and more, far beyond the weak conception of mortals. Look at it.”

She did, and it looked different than it had before. The veldt of stars was endless, the dark of night folded again and again over so many bright spots that the sky was more light than black. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s about to be a tabula rasa.” His lips curled into a twisted smile. “I’ve grown tired of this game.”

“This is all a game to you?”

“It’s a game to him.” He swept his hand across the sky and left a dark swath of night in his wake. “And I refuse to concede it to that Other simply because of a cosmic scale. Simply because our sides are in balance.”

“Balance. You mean, the scale between the fallen angels who allied themselves with you, and those who allied themselves with—”

“Don’t say it. But yes, that other. Right now there is a balance, and—”

“And one more angel has to side,” Luce said, remembering the long talk Arriane had given her at the diner in Las Vegas.

“Mmm-hmm. Except this time, I won’t leave it to chance. It was a shortsighted goal of mine, the whole starshot bit, but I’ve seen the error of my ways. I’ve been plotting. I’ve been planning. Often while you and some past iteration of Grigori were preoccupied with your B-grade heavy petting. So, you see, no one will be able to sabotage what I have planned next.

“I’m going to wipe the slate clean. Start over. I can skip the millennia that led up to you and your loophole of a life, Lucinda Price”—he snorted—“and begin again. And this time, I will play more wisely. This time I will win.”

“What does that mean, ‘wipe the slate clean’?”

“All of time is like a grand slate, Lucinda. Nothing is written that can’t be erased by one clever sort. It’s a drastic move, yes, and it means that I’ll be throwing away thousands of years. A big setback for everyone concerned—but hey, what’s a handful of lost millennia in the yawning concept of eternity?”

“How can you do that?” she said, knowing he could feel her tremble in his grasp. “What does it mean?”

“It means I’m going back to the beginning. To the Fall. To all of us being cast out of Heaven because we dared to exercise free will. I’m talking about the first great injustice.”

“Reliving your greatest hits?” she said, but he wasn’t listening, lost in the details of his scheme.

“You and the tiresome Daniel Grigori will make the trip with me. In fact, your soul mate is on his way there now.”

“Why would Daniel—”

“I showed him the way, of course. Now all I have to do is get there in time to see the angels cast out and begin their fall to Earth. What a beautiful moment that will be.”

“When they begin their fall? How long did it take?”

“Nine days by some accounts,” he murmured, “but it seemed an eternity to those of us cast out. You never asked your friends about it? Cam. Roland. Arriane. Your precious Daniel? All of us were there.”

“So you see it happen again. So what?”

“So then I do something unexpected. And do you know what that is?” He snickered, and his red eyes gleamed.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Kill Daniel?”

“Not kill. Catch. I’m going to catch every last one of us. I’ll open up an Announcer like a great net, casting it to the forward edge of time. Then I’ll cleave to my old self and spirit the full host of angels into the present with me. Even the ugly ones.”

“So what?”

“So what? We will be once more starting at the beginning. Because the Fall is the beginning. It isn’t a part of history; it is when history begins. And all that has come before? It will no longer have happened.”

“No longer have hap—You mean, like that life in Egypt?”

“Never happened.”

“China? Versailles? Las Vegas?”

“Never, never, never. But it’s more than just you and your boyfriend, selfish child. It’s the Roman empire and the so-called Son of that Other. It is the long sad festering of humanity rising from the primordial murk of the earth and turning its world into a cesspool. It is everything that has ever taken place, taken away by a tiny little skip across time, like a stone skipping across water.”

“But you can’t just … erase all of the past!”

“Sure I can. Like shortening a skirt’s waistband. Just remove the excess fabric and draw the two parts together and it’s like that middle part never existed. We start fresh. The whole cycle will repeat itself, and I’ll have another shot at luring in the important souls. Souls like—”

“You will never get him. He will never join your side.”

Daniel hadn’t given in once across the five thousand years she’d witnessed. No matter that they killed her again and again and denied him his one true love, he would not give in and choose a side. And even if he did somehow lose his resolve, she would be there to support him: She knew now that she was strong enough to carry Daniel if he faltered. Just as he’d carried her.

“No matter how many times you wipe the slate clean,” she said, “it won’t change a thing.”

“Oh.” He laughed as if he were embarrassed for Luce—a thick, scary guffaw. “Of course it will. It will change everything. Shall I count the ways?” He stuck out a spiky, yellowed claw. “First of all, Daniel and Cam will be brothers again, just as they were in the early days after the Fall. Won’t that be fun for you? Worse still: no Nephilim. No time will have passed for angels to walk the earth and copulate with the mortals, so say goodbye to your little friends from school.”

“No—”

He snapped his claws. “Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention: Your history with Daniel? That gets erased. So everything you’ve discovered on your little quest, all those things you so earnestly told me you’d learned in between our jaunts in the past? You can kiss them goodbye.”

“No! You can’t do this!”

He swept her into his cold grasp once more. “Oh, darling—it’s practically done.” He cackled, and his laughter sounded like an avalanche as time and space folded around the two of them. Luce shuddered and cringed and fought to loosen his grip, but he had her tucked too tightly, too deeply under his vile wing. She could see nothing, could only feel a rush of wind rip into them and a burst of heat, and then an unshakable chill settling over her soul.