Rapture

TWELVE UNHOLY WATER

It happened in the broken fraction of a second: Roland tackled Miss Sophia, knocking her to the ground. But he was half a heartbeat too late.

Five silver starshots sailed silently across the empty space of the chapel. The cluster of them loosened as they flew, seeming to hang in midair for a moment on their path toward Luce and Daniel.

Daniel.

Luce pressed herself back against Daniel’s chest. He had the opposite instinct: His arms pulled tight against her and dragged her down hard against the floor.

Two great pairs of wings crossed the space in front of Luce, erupting from left and right. One was a radiant coppery gold, the other the purest silvery white. They filled the air before her and Daniel like enormous feathered screens—and then were gone in the blink of an eye.

Something whizzed by her left ear. She turned and saw a single starshot ricochet off the gray stone wall and clatter to the floor. The other starshots were gone.

A fine iridescent grit settled around Luce.

Squinting through the mist of dust, she took in the room: Daniel crouching beside her. A roused Dee struggling atop a writhing Miss Sophia. Annabelle standing above the other Elders, who lay lifeless on the floor. Arriane holding an empty length of rope and her Swiss Army knife in trembling hands. Cam, still bound on the altar, stunned.

Gabbe and Molly, just freed from their altars by Arriane—

Disappeared.

And Luce’s and Daniel’s bodies covered in a film of dust.

No.

“Gabbe . . . Molly—” Luce got to her knees. She held out her hands, examining them as if she’d never seen hands before. Candlelight played off her skin, turning the dust a soft, shimmery gold, then a bright glittering silver as she flipped her hands to gaze at her palms.

“No no no no no no no no.”

She looked back, locking eyes with Daniel. His face was ashen, his eyes burning with such a concentrated violet it was hard to hold their gaze.

That became harder still when her vision blurred with tears.

“Why did they—?”

For a moment, everything was still.

Then an animal’s roar rent the room.

Cam forced his right leg free from the ropes that bound it, ripping his ankle raw in the process. He strained to free his wrists, bellowed as he tore his right hand loose from his bonds, shredding the wing that had been pinned with the iron post and dislocating his shoulder. His arm swung in a gruesomely distended way from his shoulder, as if it had nearly been ripped off.

He leaped from the altar onto Sophia, pushing Dee aside. The force knocked all three of them to the ground.

Cam landed on top of Sophia, pinning her on her side, seeking to crush her with his weight. She let out a tortured howl, pulled her arms weakly before her face as Cam’s hands reached for her neck.

“Strangling is the most intimate way to kill someone,” Cam said, as if teaching Violence 101. “Now let’s see the beauty of your death.”

But Miss Sophia’s struggle was ugly. Gargles and grunts bubbled from her throat. Cam’s fingers tightened, slammed her head with brutal thumps against the floor, again and again and again. Blood began to trickle from the old woman’s mouth, darker than her lipstick.

Daniel’s hand touched Luce’s chin, turned her to face him. He gripped her shoulders. They locked eyes again, searching for a way to tune out Sophia’s wet groans.

“Gabbe and Molly knew what they were doing,” Daniel whispered.

“They knew they were going to be killed?” Luce said.

Behind them, Sophia whimpered, sounding almost like she’d accepted that this was how she’d die.

“They knew that stopping Lucifer is more important than an individual life,” Daniel said. “More than anything else that has happened, let this convince you of how urgent our task is here.”

The silence around them was loud. No more bloody coughs came from Miss Sophia. Luce didn’t have to look to know what it meant.

An arm encircled her waist. A familiar mop of black hair rested on her shoulder. “Come on,” Arriane said,

“let’s get you two cleaned up.”

Daniel handed Luce over to Arriane and Annabelle.

“You girls go ahead.”

Luce followed the angels numbly. They walked Luce to the back of the chapel, opening several closets until they found what they were looking for: a small black lacquered door that opened onto a circular, windowless room.

Annabelle lit a candelabra on a tiled table near the door, then lit another one in a stone alcove. The red-brick room was the size of a large pantry and had no furniture but a raised, eight-sided baptismal bath. Inside, the bath was made with green-and-blue mosaics; outside it was marble carved with a wraparound frieze of angels descending to Earth.

Luce felt miserable and dead inside. Even the baptismal pool seemed to mock her. Here she was—the girl whose cursed soul was somehow important, up for grabs because she’d never been baptized as a child—about to wash away the dust of two dead angels. Was saving Luce and Daniel worth their souls? How could it be? This

“baptism” broke Luce’s already broken heart a little more.

“Don’t worry,” Arriane said, reading her mind. “This won’t count.”

Annabelle found a sink in the corner of the room, behind the baptismal font. She poured bucket after large wooden bucket of steaming hot water into the tub. Arriane stood next to Luce, not looking at her, just holding her hand. When the bath was full and refracting a deep blue-green from the tiles, Annabelle and Arriane hoisted Luce above the surface of the water. She was still wearing her sweater and jeans. They hadn’t thought to un-dress her, but then they noticed her boots.

“Whoops,” Annabelle said softly, unzipping them one at a time and tossing them aside. Arriane lifted the silver locket over Luce’s head and slipped it inside a boot. Their wings fluttered as they lifted off the ground to lower Luce into the warm water.

Luce closed her eyes, slipped her head beneath the water, stayed a while. If she shed a tear, she wouldn’t feel it if she stayed submerged. She didn’t want to feel. It was like Penn had died all over again, fresh pain exposing old pain that still felt fresh to Luce.

After what seemed like a long time, she felt hands slip under her arms to pull her up. The surface of the water was a film of gray dust. It didn’t shimmer anymore.

Luce didn’t take her eyes off it until Annabelle started tugging her sweater up over her head. She felt it lift off her, followed by the T-shirt she’d been wearing underneath. She fumbled with the button on her jeans. How many days had she worn these clothes? It was strange to be free of them, like slipping off a layer of skin and looking at it on the floor.

She ran a hand through her wet hair to wipe it from her face. She hadn’t realized how grimy it was. Then she sat on the bench at the back of the tub, leaned against the side, and started shivering. Annabelle added more hot water to the pool, but it did nothing to stop Luce’s tremors.

“If I’d just stayed out in the hallway like Dee told me to—”

“Then Cam would be dead,” Arriane said. “Or someone else. Sophia and her clan were going to make dust one way or another tonight. The rest of us knew that going into this, but you didn’t.” She sighed. “So coming out and trying to save Cam? That took serious guts, Luce.”

“But Gabbe—”

“Knew what she was doing.”

“That’s what Daniel said. But why would she sacrifice herself to save—”

“Because she’s gambling on Daniel and you and the rest of us succeeding.” Arriane rested her chin on her arm on the edge of the tub. She trailed a finger into the water, breaking up the dust. “But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. We all loved her very much.”

“She can’t really be gone.”

“She is gone. Gone from the highest altar in creation.”

“What?” That wasn’t what Luce meant. She meant that Gabbe was her friend.

Arriane’s brow furrowed. “Gabbe was the highest of the Archangels—you didn’t know? Her soul was worth . . . I don’t even know how many others. It was worth a lot.”

Luce had never before considered how her friends were ranked in Heaven, but now she thought about the times Gabbe had looked out for her, taken care of her, brought her food or clothes or advice. She’d been Luce’s kind, celestial mother. “What does her death mean?”

“Way back when, Lucifer was ranked first,” Annabelle said. After a pause, she glanced at Luce, registered her shock. “He was right there, next to all the action.

Then he rebelled and Gabbe moved up.”

“Though being ranked next to the Throne is a mixed blessing,” Arriane murmured. “Ask your buddy ol’ pal Bill.”

Luce wanted to ask who came after Gabbe, but something stopped her. Maybe it had once been Daniel, but his place in Heaven was in jeopardy because he kept on choosing Luce.

“What about Molly?” Luce finally asked. “Does her death . . . cancel out Gabbe’s? In terms of the balance between Heaven and Hell?” She felt callous talking about her friends as commodities—but she also knew, right now, the answer mattered.

“Molly was important, too, though a little lower in the ranks,” Annabelle said. “This was before the Fall, of course, when she sided with Lucifer’s host. I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dusted, but Molly really used to bug me. So much negativity.”

Luce nodded guiltily.

“But something changed in her recently. It’s like she woke up.” She glanced at Luce. “To answer your question, the balance between Heaven and Hell can still be struck. We’ll just have to see how things play out. A lot of things that matter now become irrelevant if Lucifer succeeds.”

Luce looked toward Arriane, who’d disappeared behind the door and sneezed three times in a row. “Hello, mothballs!” When she emerged, she was holding a white towel and an oversized checked bathrobe. “It’ll have to do for now. We’ll find you a change of clothes before we leave Jerusalem.”

When Luce didn’t move from the tub, Arriane clucked her tongue like she was coaxing a horse out of its stable, and held the towel out for Luce to step into.

She stood up, feeling like a kid as Arriane engulfed her in the towel and dried her off. The towel was thin and coarse, but the robe that followed was thick and warm.

“We need to skedaddle before the tourist cavalry arrives,” said Arriane, gathering Luce’s boots.

By the time they left the baptismal room and walked back into the chapel, the sun had risen, and it cast colorful rays of light through the stained-glass depiction of the Ascension in the window.

Beneath the window lay the bodies of Miss Sophia and the two other Elders, bound together.

When the girls crossed to the front of the larger chapel, Cam, Roland, and Daniel were sitting on the center altar, talking softly. Cam was drinking the last of the starshot colas from Phil’s black leather satchel. Luce could actually see his bloody ankle scab over and then the scab begin to flake away. He swallowed the last drop and rotated his shoulder back into its socket with a snap.

The boys looked up to see Luce standing between Annabelle and Arriane. All three of them hopped off the altar, but Cam stepped toward Luce first.

She stood very still as he approached. Her heart was beating fast.

His skin was pale, making the green of his eyes look like emeralds. There were sweat along his hairline and a small scratch near his left eye. His wing tips had stopped bleeding and had been bandaged with some kind of fancy gauze.

He smiled at her. Took her hands. His were warm and alive and there had been a moment when Luce thought she might never see him again, never see his eyes shine, never watch his golden wings unfurl, never hear the way his voice rose when he made a dark joke . . . and though she loved Daniel more than anything else, more than she ever thought possible, Luce could not bear to lose Cam. That was what had sent her bounding into the room. “Thank you,” he said.

Luce felt her lips quiver and her eyes burn. Before she knew what she was doing, she fell into Cam’s arms, felt his hands wrap around her back. When his chin rested on the top of her head, she began to weep.

He let her cry. Held her close. He whispered, “You’re so brave.”

Then Cam’s arms shifted and his chest pulled lightly away. For a second, she felt cold and exposed, but then another chest, another pair of arms replaced Cam’s. And she knew without opening her eyes that it was Daniel.

No other body in the universe fit hers so well.

“Mind if I cut in?” he asked softly.

“Daniel—” She clenched her fists and squeezed her arms around him, wanting to squeeze away the pain.

“Shhh.” He held her like that for what might have been hours, rocking her slightly, cradling her in his wings until her tears had tapered off and the weight in her heart had eased enough that she could breathe without sniffling.

“When an angel dies,” she said against his shoulder,

“does she go to Heaven?”

“No,” he said. “There is nothing for an angel after death.”

“How can that be?”

“The Throne never anticipated that any angel would rebel, much less that the fallen angel Azazel would spend centuries in a deep Greek cave over a fire, developing a weapon to kill angels.”

Her chest shuddered again. “But—”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Grief can choke you. It’s dangerous, something else you have to beat.” She took a deep breath and pulled back, enough to see his face. Her eyes felt swollen and exhausted, and Daniel’s shirt was soaked with her tears, like she’d baptized him with her sorrow.

Beyond Daniel’s shoulder, resting on the altar where Gabbe had been bound, something silver gleamed. It was an enormous goblet, as big around as a punch bowl, but oblong in shape and made of hammered silver.

“Is that it?” Was this the relic that had cost her friends their lives?

Cam walked over to it, picked it up. “We uncovered it at the base of the Pont Saint Bénézet right before the Elders overtook us.” He shook his head. “I do hope this spittoon is worth it.”

“Where’s Dee?” Luce looked around for the person most likely to know the significance of the relic.

“She’s downstairs.” Daniel explained, “The church opened to the public a little while ago, so Dee went down to build a small Patina to cloak the corpses of the Elders.

Now she’s at the base of the stairs with a sign that says this ‘wing’ is closed for reconstruction.”

“And it worked?” Annabelle asked, impressed.

“No one’s gotten past her yet. Religious tourists aren’t football hooligans,” Cam smirked. “Storm the prayer pillows!”

“How can you joke right now?” Luce asked.

“How can I not?” Cam countered darkly. “Would you prefer I cried?”

A rap sounded at the window on the other side of the chapel. The angels stiffened as Cam went to open the pane next to the stained glass. His jaw clenched. “Ready the starshots!”

“Cam, wait!” Daniel cried. “Don’t shoot.” Cam paused. A moment later, a boy in a tan trench coat slipped through the open window. As soon as he was on his feet, Phil raised his shaved blond head and fixed his dead white eyes on Cam.

Cam snarled. “You’re lost, Outcast.”

“They’re with us now, Cam.” Daniel pointed to the pennon from his own wing, tucked into Phil’s lapel.

Cam swallowed, crossed his arms over his chest.

“Apologies. I did not know that.” He cleared his throat, adding, “That explains why the Outcasts we saw on the bridge in Avignon were fighting the Elders when we arrived. They never had a chance to explain before all of them were—”

“Killed,” Phil said. “Yes. The Outcasts sacrificed themselves for your cause.”

“The universe is everyone’s cause,” Daniel said, and Phil gave a curt nod.

Luce hung her head. All that dust on the bridge. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could have been Outcasts.

She’d been too worried about Gabbe and Molly and Cam.

“These last few days have dealt a heavy blow to the Outcasts,” Phil said. His voice betrayed a shade of sorrow. “Many were captured in Vienna at the hands of Scale. Many more fell to Elders in Avignon. Four of us remain. May I show them in?”

“Of course,” Daniel said.

Phil held out a hand toward the window and three more tan trench coats slipped through the open pane: a girl Luce didn’t recognize, who Phil introduced as Phresia; Vincent, one of the Outcasts who’d stood guard for Luce and Daniel at Mount Sinai; and Olianna, the pale girl from the palace rooftop in Vienna. Luce flashed her a smile she knew the Outcast girl could not see. But Luce hoped Olianna could sense it, because Luce was glad to see her recovered. All the Outcasts looked like siblings, modest and attractive, alarmingly pale.

Phil pointed at the dead Elders under the window. “It looks as if you need some assistance with the disposal of these corpses. May the Outcasts take them off your hands?”

Daniel let out a surprised laugh. “Please.”

“Just make sure you don’t pay this geriatric roadkill any respect,” Cam added.

“Phresia.” Phil nodded at the girl, who dropped to her knees before the bodies, slung them over her shoulders, unfurled her mud-brown wings, and shot through the window. Luce watched her cross the sky, carrying away the last of Miss Sophia Luce would ever see.

“What’s in the duffel bag?” Cam pointed to the navy blue canvas bag strapped over Vincent’s shoulders.

Phil motioned for Vincent to drop the duffel bag on the center altar. It landed with a heavy thwump. “In Venice, Daniel Grigori asked me whether I had any food for Lucinda Price. I have been regretting that all I had to offer was cheap unhealthful snacks, the kind of foods my Italian model friends prefer. This time, I asked a mortal Israeli girl what sort of things she liked to eat. She led me to a something called a falafel stand.” Phil shrugged and his voice lilted in a question at the end.

“Are you saying I’m looking at a solid brick of falafel?” Roland raised a doubtful eyebrow at Vincent’s bulging bag.

“Oh no,” Vincent said. “The Outcasts also purchased hummus, pita, pickles, a container of something called tabbouleh, cucumber salad, and fresh pomegranate juice.

Are you hungry, Lucinda Price?”

It was an absurd amount of delicious food. Somehow it felt wrong to eat on the altars, so they spread out a smorgasbord on the floor and everyone—Outcast, angel, mortal—tucked in. The mood was somber, but the food was filling and hot and exactly what all of them seemed to need. Luce showed Olianna and Vincent how to make a falafel sandwich; Cam even asked Phil to pass him the hummus. At some point, Arriane flew out the window to find Luce some new clothes. She returned with a faded pair of jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and a cool Israeli army flak jacket with a patch depicting an orange-and-yellow flame.

“Had to kiss a soldier for this,” she said, but her voice didn’t have the same showy lightness it would have if she’d been performing for Gabbe and Molly, too.

When none of them could eat any more, Dee appeared in the doorway. She greeted the Outcasts politely and rested a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Do you have the relic, dear?”

Before Daniel could answer, Dee’s eyes found the goblet. She lifted it and twirled it in her hands, examining it carefully from all sides. “The Silver Pennon,” she whispered. “Hello, old friend.”

“I take it she knows what to do with that thing,” Cam said.

“She knows,” Luce answered.

Dee pointed to a brass plate that had been welded into one of the broad sides of the goblet, and muttered something under her breath, as if she were reading. She ran her fingers across a hammered image depicted there.

Luce inched forward for a better look. The illustration looked like angel wings in free fall.

At last, Dee looked up to face them with a strange expression on her face. “Well, now it all makes sense.”

“What makes sense?” Luce asked.

“My life. My purpose. Where we need to go. What we need to do. It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Luce asked. They’d gathered all the artifacts now, but she didn’t understand any better what they had left to do.

“Time for my final act, dear,” Dee said warmly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it, step by step.”

“To Mount Sinai?” Daniel rose from the floor and helped Luce to her feet.

“Close.” Dee shut her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to draw the memory from within her lungs. “There’s a pair of trees in the mountains about a mile above Saint Catherine’s Monastery. I’d like for us to convene there.

It is called the Qayom Malak. ”

“Qayom Malak . . . Qayom Malak,” Daniel repeated.

The word sounded like kayome malaka. “That’s in my book.” He unzipped the satchel and flipped through some pages, muttering under his breath. At last, he held it out for Dee to see. Luce stepped forward to take a look. At the bottom of the page, about a hundred pages in, Daniel’s finger pointed at a faded note scribbled in a language Luce didn’t recognize. Next to the note he had written the same group of letters three times: QYWM’ ML’K’. QYWM’ ML’K’. QYWM’ ML’K’.

“Well done, Daniel.” Dee smiled. “You knew it all along. Though Qayom Malak is much easier for modern tongues to pronounce than—” She made a string of complicated guttural noises Luce couldn’t have replicated.

“I never knew what it meant,” Daniel said.

Dee looked out the open window, at the holy city’s afternoon sky. “Soon you will, my boy. Very soon you will.”