Isaac grabs my arms in a bruising grip. The pain shocks me enough to focus on the anger in his dark eyes. “You’re not done for the day.”
“Let…go.” The words don’t sound like me. Tiny. Pleading. Panicked. “I need air.”
“You’ll get it after you finish with the book. After you find the spell to activate your power. We’re not leaving until your whisper reads every page.”
Every page? The grimoire has a hundred of them! It’ll take me weeks to get through them all.
I try to yank my arms away, but he shoves me toward the vault door. Hannah dials up the WCU, and with a wail, I’m sucked back into my whisper.
Her tears stain the ancient pages. But the ink is still as clear.
They have found me, and they will soon force me to steal the talents—the very lives—of those trapped in the dungeons with me. Witches and werewolves, vampires and fae. The wretched souls howl in pain, knowing what our captors have planned. An unbeatable army, powerful enough to rule the earthen realm. To fight the Almighty. To breach the gates of Heaven.
I cannot fight any longer. Weeks of torture have broken me. I must find a way to die so the world may live. I pray the next Whisper Keeper is strong enough to resist the call. Only then will our ancestors truly be able to rest.
My whisper covers her face with her hands. They’re almost solid now, but the haunting blue flames seep around the edges of her fingers.
“What do we do?”
I’d give anything to be able to talk to her. To know what she’s thinking beyond these waves of emotion.
Her hands snap back to the grimoire like they’re bound to it somehow. She tries to look away. I can feel her resistance. Perfumed air swirls around us. We sway as one, disoriented, until she turns the next page.
Another diary entry. This one from the late 1700s. Darker than the last. A third. A fourth. They all end with the Whisper Keeper taking her own life. With a warning for the future.
Sobs wrack her—our—shoulders. I can feel the finality in the air. The diary entries go all the way back to the 1100s. To the first Whisper Keeper and her coven. Towhythe Blade was created in the first place.
The next words we read…they’ll be the end. We’ll be bound to the Blade until we die. AURA doesn’t want to cure cancer. I know that now. Like a veil has been lifted from my eyes, I can see their true intentions. My only hope is to run.
The page turns. The ink seeps up from somewhere unknown, and the final words appear.
The Blade is mine and mine alone.
It calls me forth to find its home.
Magic has but one true course.
No truth is found in might and force.
I hold it high for all to see.
Let no one set this power free.
A wave of magic hits me—us—in the chest. It seeps into every part of me. Into my pores. My veins. My bones. My whisper throws her head back in a silent scream until her throat is raw.
Pain explodes across my cheek. I’m ripped from her with such force, it feels like I’m flying. Until I hit the very real, very rough wall of the antechamber. Isaac and Hannah stare down at me.
They know. The power is mine now. And I’m theirs.
Gabriel
The old cathedral is utterly silent this time of night. The dim lights do nothing to chase the shadows away. I did not want to come here. But as I lay in bed, staring up at the hotel ceiling, I felt Azrael’s call.
Letting him appear in my room would have caused a commotion. At least here, we are alone. I whisper his name, drawing him to me, and a moment later, a punch of power rattles the pews and almost sends me to my knees.
Fuck. I have spent too long in the earthen realm if I cannot withstand the jolt of a single angel appearing before me.
“Gabriel.”
