Rapture

SIX FOUND WANTING

It was drizzling in Vienna.

Curtains of mist cloaked the city, making it possible for Daniel and the Outcasts to alight unseen on the eaves of a vast building before night had completely fallen.

Luce saw the splendid copper dome first, glowing sea green against the fog. Daniel set her down before it on a slanted section of the copper roof, puddled with rain-water, enclosed by a short marble balustrade.

“Where are we?” she asked, eyeing the dome adorned with gold brocaded tassels, its oval windows etched with floral designs too high for mortal eyes to see, unless they were in the arms of an angel.

“Hofburg Palace.” Daniel stepped over a stone rain gutter and stood at the edge of the roof. His wings brushed the white marble railing, making it look drab.

“Home of Viennese emperors, then kings, now presi-dents.”

“Is this where Arriane and the others are?”

“I doubt it,” Daniel said. “But it’s a pleasant place to get our bearings before we look for them.” A mazelike network of annexes extended beyond the dome to form the rest of the palace. Some of them squared off around shady courtyards ten stories below; others stretched long and formidably straight, farther than the fog would allow Luce’s eyes to see. Different portions of the copper roofs shone different shades of green—this one acid, that one almost teal—as if sections of the building had been added over a long period of time, as if they’d rusted during different eras’ rain.

The Outcasts spread out around the dome, leaning up against the squat chimneys darkened with soot that punctuated the palace roof, standing before the flagpole that rose from the center bearing the red-and-white-banded Austrian flag. Luce stood at Daniel’s side, finding herself between him and a marble statue. It depicted a warrior wearing a knight’s helmet and gripping a tall golden spear. They followed the statue’s gaze out at the city. Everything smelled like wood smoke and rain.

Beneath the mist and fog, Vienna glittered with the twinkle of a million Christmas lights. It teemed with strange cars and fast-walking pedestrians as accustomed to city life as Luce was not. Mountains stood in the distance and the Danube slung its strong arm around the outskirts of the town. Gazing down with Daniel, Luce felt as if she’d been here before. She couldn’t be sure when, but the ever-more-frequent sensation of déjà vu swelled inside her.

She focused on the faint bustle coming from a tented row of Christmas stalls in the circle below the palace, the way the candles flickered in their red and green globed glass lanterns, the way the children chased one another, pulling wooden dogs on wheels. Then it happened: She remembered with a wave of satisfaction that Daniel had once bought her crimson velvet hair ribbons right down there. The memory was simple, joyful, and hers.

Lucifer couldn’t have it. He could not take it—or any other memory—away. Not from Luce, not from the brilliant, surprising, imperfect world sprawling out below her.

Her body bristled with determination to defeat him, and with the rage from knowing that because of what he was doing, because she had rejected his wishes, all this might disappear.

“What is it?” Daniel laid a hand on her shoulder.

Luce didn’t want to say. She didn’t want Daniel to know that every time she thought of Lucifer she felt disgusted with herself.

The wind surged around them, parting the mist that lay over the city to reveal an ambling Ferris wheel on the other side of the river. People twirled in its circle as if the world would never end, as if the wheel would spin forever.

“Are you cold?” Daniel draped his white wing around her. The supernatural weight of it felt somehow over-bearing, reminding her that her shortcomings as a mortal—and Daniel’s concern for them—were slowing them down.

The truth was Luce was freezing, and hungry, and tired, but she didn’t want Daniel to coddle her. They had important things to do.

“I’m fine.”

“Luce, if you’re tired or afraid—”

“I said I’m fine, Daniel,” she snapped. She didn’t mean to and felt sorry immediately.

Through the blurring fog, she could make out horse-drawn carriages carting tourists and the hazy outlines of people tracing out their lives. Just like Luce was struggling to do.

“Have I complained too much since we left Sword & Cross?” she asked.

“No, you’ve been amazing—”

“I’m not going to die or faint just because it’s cold and rainy.”

“I know that.” Daniel’s directness surprised her. “I should have known you knew it, too. Generally, mortals are limited by their bodily needs and functions—food, sleep, warmth, shelter, oxygen, nagging fear of mortality, and so on. Because of that, most people wouldn’t be prepared to make this journey.”

“I’ve come a long way, Daniel. I want to be here. I wouldn’t have let you go without me. It was a mutual agreement.”

“Good, then listen to me: It is within your power to release yourself of mortal bonds. To be free of them.”

“What? I don’t need to worry about the cold?”

“Nope.”

“Right.” She stuffed icy hands into the pockets of her jeans. “And apple strudel?”

“Mind over matter.”

A reluctant smile found her face. “Well, we’ve already established that you can breathe for me.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself.” Daniel smiled back briefly. “This has to do more with you than me. Try it: Tell yourself that you are not cold, not hungry, not tired.”

“All right.” Luce sighed. “I am not . . .” She’d started to mumble, disbelieving, but then she caught Daniel’s eye. Daniel, who believed she could do things she never thought she was capable of, who believed that her will meant the difference between having the halo and letting it slip away. She was holding it in her hands. Proof.

Now he was telling her she had mortal needs only because she thought she did. She decided to give this crazy idea a try. She straightened her shoulders. She projected the words into the misty dusk. “I, Lucinda Price, am not cold, not hungry, not tired.” The wind blew, and the clock tower in the distance struck five—and something lifted off her so that she didn’t feel depleted anymore. She felt rested, equipped for whatever the night called for, determined to succeed.

“Nice touch, Lucinda Price,” Daniel said. “Five senses transcended at five o’clock.”

She reached for his wing, wrapped herself in it, let its warmth spread through her. This time, the weight of his wing welcomed her into a powerful new dimension. “I can do this.”

Daniel’s lips brushed the top of her head. “I know.” When Luce turned from Daniel, she was surprised to find the Outcasts were no longer hovering, no longer staring at her through dead eyes.

They were gone.

“They’ve left to seek the Scale,” Daniel explained.

“Daedalus gave us clues of their whereabouts, but I’ll need a better idea of where and how the others are being held so I can distract the Scale long enough for the Outcasts to rescue them.” He sat down on the ledge, his legs straddling a gold-painted statue of an eagle over-looking the city. Luce sank to his side.

“It shouldn’t take long, depending on how far away they are. Then maybe half an hour to go through the Scale protocol”—he tilted his head, calculating—“unless they decide to convene a tribunal, which happened the last time they harassed me. I’ll find a way to get out of it tonight, postpone it to some other date I won’t keep.” He took her hand, refocused. “I should be back here by seven at the latest. That’s two hours from now.” Luce’s hair was wet from the mist, but she followed Daniel’s advice and told herself it didn’t affect her, and just like that, she no longer noticed it. “Are you worried about the others?”

“The Scale won’t hurt them.”

“Then why did they hurt Daedalus?”

She pictured Arriane with bloated purple eyes, Roland with broken, bloody teeth. She didn’t want to see them looking anything like Daedalus.

“Oh,” Daniel said. “The Scale can be fearsome. They relish causing pain, and they may cause our friends some temporary discomfort. But they won’t hurt them in any permanent way. They don’t kill. That’s not their style.”

“What is their style, then?” Luce crossed her legs under her on the hard damp surface of the roof. “You still haven’t told me who they are or what we’re up against.”

“The Scale came into being after the Fall. They’re a small group of . . . lesser angels. They were the first to be asked in the Roll Call which side they would stand by, and they chose the Throne.”

“There was a roll call?” Luce asked, not sure she’d heard correctly. It sounded more like homeroom than Heaven.

“After the schism in Heaven, all of us were made to choose sides. So, starting with the angels with the small-est dominions, each of us was to be called upon to make an oath of fealty to the Throne.” He stared at the mist, and it was as though he could see it all again. “It took ages to call out the angels’ names, starting at the lowest ranked and working up. It probably took as long to say our names as it did for Rome to rise and fall. But they didn’t make it all the way through the Roll Call before—” Daniel took a ragged breath.

“Before what?”

“Before something happened to make the Throne lose faith in its host of angels . . .” By now Luce realized that when Daniel’s voice trailed off like that, it wasn’t because he didn’t trust her or because she wouldn’t understand, but because despite all the things she’d seen and learned, it still might be too soon for her to know the truth. So she didn’t ask—though she was desperate to—what had made the Throne abandon the Roll Call when its highest angels had not yet chosen sides. She let Daniel speak again when he was ready.

“Heaven cast out everyone who had not sided with it. Remember how I told you a few angels never got to choose? They were among the last in the Roll Call, the highest. After the Fall, Heaven was bereft of most of its Archangels.” He closed his eyes. “The Scale, who had lucked into seeming loyal, stepped into the breach.”

“So because the Scale swore fealty to Heaven first—” Luce said.

“They felt they had a superior amount of honor,” Daniel said, finishing her thought. “Since then, they have self-righteously claimed to serve Heaven by acting as celestial parole officers. But the position is self-invented, not ordained. With the Archangels gone after the Fall, the Scale took advantage of a vacuum of power. They carved out a role for themselves, and they convinced the Throne of their importance.”

“They lobbied God?”

“More or less. They pledged to restore the fallen to Heaven, to gather back those angels who had strayed, to return them to the fold. They spent a handful of millennia urging us to recommit ourselves to the ‘right’ side, but somewhere along the way, they gave up trying to change our points of view. Now they mostly just try to prevent us from accomplishing anything.” His steely gaze looked enraged and it made Luce wonder what could be so bad in Heaven that it kept Daniel in self-exile. Wasn’t the peace of Heaven prefer-able to where he was now, with everyone waiting for him to choose?

Daniel laughed bitterly. “But the angels worth their wings who have returned to Heaven don’t need the Scale to get there. Ask Gabbe, ask Arriane. The Scale is a joke.

Still, they’ve had one or two successes.”

“But not you?” she asked. “You haven’t chosen one side or the other. And so they’re after you, aren’t they?” A crowded red tram wound around the paved circle below, then forked up a narrow street.

“They’ve been after me for years,” Daniel said, “planting lies, manufacturing scandals.”

“And yet you haven’t declared for the Throne. Why haven’t you?”

“I’ve told you. It’s not as simple as that,” he said.

“But you’re clearly not going to side with Lucifer.”

“Right, but . . . I can’t explain thousands of years’

worth of argument in the space of a few minutes. It is complicated by factors beyond my control.” He looked away again, out over the city, then down at his hands.

“And it’s an insult to be asked to choose, an insult for your creator to demand that you reduce the vastness of your love to the tiny, petty confines of a gesture during a Roll Call.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too sincere.”

“No—” Luce started.

“Anyway, the Scale. They’re Heavenly bureaucrats. I think of them as high school principals. Pushing papers and punishing minor transgressions of rules no one cares about or believes in, all in the name of ‘morality.’” Again Luce stared out at the city, which was drawing a dark coat around its shoulders. She thought of the sour-breathed vice-principal at Dover, whose name she couldn’t remember, who never had any interest in her side of any story, who had signed her expulsion papers after the fire that killed Trevor. “I’ve been burned by people like that.”

“We all have. They’re sticklers for frivolous rules of their own invention, which they deem righteous. None of us like them, but unfortunately the Throne has given them the power to monitor us, to detain us without cause, to convict us of crimes by a jury of their choosing.”

Luce shuddered again, this time not because of the cold. “And you think they have Arriane and Roland and Annabelle? Why? Why hold them?”

Daniel sighed. “I know they have Arriane and Roland and Annabelle. Their hatred blinds them to the fact that delaying us helps Lucifer.” He swallowed hard. “What I fear most is that they also have the relic.” In the distance, four pairs of tattered wings material-ized in the fog. Outcasts. As they neared the palace roof, Luce and Daniel rose to greet them.

The Outcasts landed next to Luce, their wings crackling like paper umbrellas as they drew them to their sides. Their faces betrayed no emotion; nothing in their demeanor suggested that their trip had been suc-cessful.

“Well?” Daniel asked.

“The Scale has taken control of a place down the river,” Vincent announced, pointing in the direction of the Ferris wheel. “The neglected wing of a museum. It is under renovation, covered in scaffolding, so they stake it out unnoticed. It is not equipped with alarms.”

“You’re certain they’re Scale?” Daniel asked quickly.

One of the Outcasts nodded. “We perceived their brands, their gold insignias—the star with seven points for the seven holy virtues painted on their necks.”

“What about Roland and Arriane and Annabelle?” Luce asked.

“They are with the Scale. Their wings are bound,” Vincent said.

Luce turned away, biting down on her lower lip.

How awful it must be for an angel to have her wings restrained. She couldn’t bear to think of Arriane without the freedom to flutter her iridescent wings. She couldn’t imagine any substance strong enough to contain the power of Roland’s marbled wings.

“Well, if we know where they are, let’s go rescue them already,” she said.

“And the relic?” Daniel said lowly to Vincent.

Luce gaped at him. “Daniel, our friends are in danger.”

“Do they have it?” Daniel pressed. He glanced at Luce, put his hand around her waist. “Everything is in danger. We will save Arriane and the others, but we have to find that relic, too.”

“We do not know about the relic.” Vincent shook his head. “The warehouse is heavily guarded, Daniel Grigori. They await your arrival.”

Daniel faced the city, his violet eyes casting along the river as if seeking out the warehouse. His wings pulsed.

“They won’t be waiting long.”

“No!” Luce pleaded. “You’ll be walking into a trap.

What if they take you hostage, the way they’ve taken the others?”

“The others must have crossed them in some way. As long as I follow their protocol, appeal to their vanity, the Scale will not imprison me,” he said. “I’ll go alone.” He glanced at the Outcasts and added, “Unarmed.”

“But the Outcasts are charged with guarding you,” Vincent said in his even, monotone voice. “We will follow at a distance and—”

“No.” Daniel lifted a hand to stop Vincent. “You will take the warehouse roof. Did you sense Scale there?” Vincent nodded. “A few. The majority are near the main entrance.”

“Good.” Daniel nodded. “I’ll use their own procedure against them. Once I reach the front doors, the Scale will waste time identifying me, checking me for contraband, anything they can make appear illegal.

While I distract them near the entrance, the Outcasts will force your way through the warehouse roof and free Roland, Arriane, and Annabelle. And if you face a member of the Scale up there—”

In unison, the Outcasts held open their trench coats to reveal sheaths of dull silver starshots and compact matching bows.

“You cannot kill them,” Daniel warned.

“Please, Daniel Grigori,” Vincent pleaded. “We are all better off without them.”

“They are called Scale not only because of their small-minded obsession with rules. They also provide an essential counterbalance to Lucifer’s forces. You are quick enough to elude their cloaks. We only need to delay them, and for that a threat will suffice.”

“But they only seek to delay you, ” Vincent countered. “All of this delaying will lead to oblivion.” Luce was about to ask where this plan left her when Daniel drew her into his arms. “I need you to stay here and guard the relic.” They looked at the halo, resting against the base of the warrior statue. It was beaded with rain. “Please don’t argue. We can’t let the Scale near the relic. You and it will be safest here. Olianna will stay to protect you.”

Luce glanced at the Outcast girl, who stared back emptily, her eyes a depthless gray. “Okay, I’ll stay here.”

“Let us hope the second relic is still at large,” he said, arching back his wings. “Once the others have been freed, we can make a plan to find it together.” Luce clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and kissed Daniel, holding him tight for one last moment.

He was gone a second later, his regal wings growing smaller as he soared into the night, the three Outcasts flying alongside him. Soon they all seemed little more than flecks of dust in the clouds.

Olianna hadn’t moved. She stood like a trench-coated version of any of the other statues on the roof. She faced Luce with her hands clasped together over her chest, the blond hair along her forehead pulled back so tight into its ponytail it looked like it would snap. When she reached inside her trench coat, a harsh scent of sawdust wafted out. When she pulled out and nocked a silver starshot, Luce scrambled a few steps back.

“Do not be afraid, Lucinda Price,” Olianna said. “I only want to be prepared to defend you in case an enemy approaches.”

Luce tried not to imagine what enemies the blond girl envisioned. She lowered herself to the roof again and sheltered herself from the wind behind the warrior statue with the golden spear, more out of habit than need. She adjusted her body so that she could still see the tall brown brick clock tower with the golden face. Five-thirty. She was marking the minutes until Daniel and the other Outcasts came back.

“Do you want to sit down?” she asked Olianna, who lurked directly behind Luce with her arrow at the ready.

“I prefer to stand guard—”

“Yeah, I don’t guess you can really sit guard,” Luce mumbled. “Ha-ha.”

A siren wailed from below, a police car speeding through a roundabout. When it passed and the air grew quiet again, Luce didn’t know how to fill the silence.

She stared at the clock, squinting as if it would help her see through the fog. Had Daniel reached the warehouse by now? What would Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle do when they saw the Outcasts? Luce realized Daniel hadn’t given anyone but Phil a pennon of his wing. How would the angels know to trust the Outcasts?

Her shoulders were hunched up around her ears, and her whole body stiffened with the sense of futile frustration. Why was she sitting here, waiting, cracking stupid jokes? She should have had an active role in this. After all, it wasn’t Luce the Scale wanted. She should be helping rescue her friends or finding the relic instead of sitting here like a distressed damsel, waiting for her knight to return.

“Do you remember me, Lucinda Price?” the Outcast asked so quietly Luce almost didn’t hear.

“Why do the Outcasts call us by our full names all of a sudden?” She turned around to find the girl’s head tilted down at her, her bow and arrow listing against her shoulder.

“It is a sign of respect, Lucinda Price. We are your allies now. You and Daniel Grigori. Do you remember me?”

Luce thought for a second. “Were you one of the Outcasts fighting the angels in my parents’ backyard?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.” Luce shrugged. “I don’t remember everything about my past. Have we already met?” The Outcast lifted her head just a bit. “We knew one another before.”

“When?”

The girl shrugged, her shoulders rising delicately, and Luce suddenly realized she was pretty. “Just before. It is hard to explain.”

“What isn’t?” Luce swiveled back around, not in the mood to decode another cryptic conversation. She stuffed her freezing hands inside the sleeves of her white sweater and watched the traffic moving up and down the slick roads, the tiny cars wedged into slanted spaces on crooked alleys, people in long dark coats marching over illuminated bridges, carrying groceries home to their families.

Luce felt painfully lonely. Was her family thinking of her? Did they picture her in the cramped dorm room she’d slept in at Sword & Cross? Was Callie back at Dover by now? Would she be huddled in the cold window seat of her room, letting her dark red fingernails dry, chatting on the phone about her weird Thanksgiving trip to see some friend who wasn’t Luce?

A dark cloud drifted past the clock, rendering it visible as it struck six. Daniel had been gone an hour that felt like a year. Luce watched the church bells ringing, watched the hands of the great old clock, and she let her memory drift back to her lives spent before the invention of linear time, when time meant seasons, the planting and the harvest.

After the sixth gong of the clock came another—

closer, and Luce spun around just in time to see Olianna slump forward to her knees. She fell and landed heavily in Luce’s arms. Luce turned the ragged angel over and touched the Outcast’s face.

Olianna was unconscious. The sound Luce had heard was the Outcast being hit in the head.

Behind Luce stood an enormous black-cloaked figure. His face was craggy with wrinkles and looked impossibly old, layers of skin drooping under his dull blue eyes and below his protruding chin, beneath a mouthful of crooked black-and-yellow teeth. In his huge right hand was the flagpole he must have used as a weapon.

The Austrian flag hung limply from the end of the pole, fluttered softly against the surface of the roof.

Luce shot to her feet, feeling her fists rise even as she wondered what good they’d be against this enormous fiend.

His wings were a very pale blue, just a shade away from white. Even though his body towered over her, his wings were small and dense, spanning only a little farther than his arms could reach.

Something small and golden was pinned to the front of the man’s cloak: a feather—a marbled gold-black feather. Luce knew whose wings it had come from. But why would Roland have given this creature a pennon from his wings?

He wouldn’t have. This feather was bent and severed and missing some of its matter near the quill. Its point was maroon with blood, and instead of standing upright like the brilliant plume Daniel had given to Phil, this feather seemed to have withered and faded when it was attached to the gruesome angel’s black cloak.

A trick.

“Who are you?” Luce asked, falling to her knees.

“What do you want?”

“Show some respect.” The angel’s throat convulsed as if he meant to bark, but his voice came out warbled and faint and old.

“Earn my respect,” Luce said. “And I’ll give it to you.”

He gave her half an evil smirk and dropped his head low. Then he pulled down the cloak to expose the back of his neck. Luce blinked in the dim light. His neck bore a painted brand, which shimmered gold in the glow of streetlights mingled with the moon. She counted seven points on the star.

He was one of the Scale.

“Recognize me now?”

“Is this how the Throne’s enforcers work? Bludgeon-ing innocent angels?”

“No Outcast is innocent. Nor is anyone else, for that matter, until they are proven to be so.”

“You’ve proven yourself innocent of any honor, striking a girl from behind.”

“Insolence.” He wrinkled his nose at her. “Won’t get you far with me.”

“That’s exactly where I want to be.” Luce’s eyes darted to Olianna, to her pale hand and the starshot clenched in its grip.

“But it’s not where you will stay,” the Scale said haltingly, as if having to force himself to commit to their il-logical banter.

Luce snatched at the starshot as the Scale lurched for her. But the angel was much faster and stronger than he looked. He wrested the starshot from her hands, knocked her onto her back against the stone roof with one strong slap across the face. He held the arrow tip of the starshot up close to Luce’s heart.

They can’t kill mortals. They can’t kill mortals, she kept repeating in her head. But Luce remembered Bill’s bargain with her: She had one immortal part of her that could be killed. Her soul. And she would not part with that, not after everything she’d been through, not when the end was so near.

She raised her leg, preparing to kick him like she’d seen in kung fu movies, when suddenly he pitched the arrow and its bow straight over the edge of the roof.

Luce jerked her head to the side, her cheek pressing against the cold stone, and watched the weapon twirl in the air on its way into the twinkling Christmas lights of the Vienna streets.

The Scale angel rubbed his hands on his cloak. “Filthy things.” Then he grabbed Luce roughly by the shoulders and yanked her to her feet.

He kicked the Outcast aside—Olianna moaned but did not stir—and there, under her thin, trench-coated body, was the golden halo.

“Thought I might find this here,” the Scale angel said, snatching it up and thrusting it under the folds of his cloak.

“No!” She plunged her hands into the dark place where she’d seen the halo disappear, but the angel slapped her a second time across the face, sending her backward, her hair swinging over the edge of the roof.

She clutched her face. Her nose was bleeding.

“You are more dangerous than they think,” he croaked. “We were told you were a whiner, not courageous. I’d better bind you up before we fly.” The angel quickly slipped off his cloak and dropped it over her head like a curtain, blinding Luce for a long, horrible moment. Then the Vienna night—and the angel—were visible again. Luce noticed that beneath the cloak he’d been wearing, the Scale wore another, precisely like the one he’d removed and fastened around Luce. He bent down, and with the pull of a string, Luce’s cloak constricted around her like a straitjacket. When she kicked, convulsed, she felt the cloak become tighter.

She let out a scream. “Daniel!”

“He won’t hear you,” the angel chuckled mirthlessly as he stuffed her under one arm and moved toward the edge of the roof. “He wouldn’t hear you if you screamed forever.”