I loved you,I thought to him.And I still do, Rafe. Tell me what I can do to save you. I’ll do it. Do you need my wings? My soul? Anything. I can’t bear to see you suffer.
His eyes widened, but just then, the Gate began… screaming? No, it wasn’t the gate. It was a Guide—Righteous Fervor, in fact—in the hallway nearest the entrance to the basement. Their hood had fallen back, their face and neck exposed. In an instant, another two Guides fell to the floor. Flickers of darkness moved in the hallway, speeding toward the fallen Guides. Covering them.
They were being consumed by shadows.
More shadows began to emerge from that hallway, and more unarmed Guides fell. Sanctuary was being overtaken. The Abyss had found a way inside after all.
Someone needed to find the point of entry and close it. I reached out mentally to anyone who could hear, but Perception was the only High Angelus besides me left, and so only he responded.
Where are you, Perception?
The Flight Hall,he responded immediately.Where do you need me?
At the Great Gate, but bring weapons. As many as you can carry. They’re attacking here.
I knew my duty; I had to help my people. But Arabella was still singing, and the control she was using to let only the smallest ribbon of power fly free was terrifying. I had no idea what might happen if the shadows reached her while she fortified the gate. She needed protection until she was done.
“Take care of her,” Rafe commanded, already moving toward the screaming Guides. I stepped toward her, trying to see a way to protect both her and the Guides who were being slaughtered. “I’ll handle those fuckers.”
“The shadows, or the Guides?”
“Fair question,” Rafe snarled. “Fine. I’ll save your festering, pustulant Guides.”
With what? I only had Mikhail’s soul knife, which was effective at close range, but nothing like the Celestial sword I’djust melted down.Fuck.“We need more weapons,” I called. “Perception is on the way to the Weapons Hall.”
“I’ll help him,” Hope shouted, shooting away.
“Weapons of war won’t be enough,” Rafe growled as shadows began to surge through that doorway. “Can anyone in this place play an instrument? Does anyone know the old songs?” His gaze fell on the frightened, shivering Protectors around us, realizing what I already knew. There were no High Angeli left. “Shit. None of you are even old enough to be able to sing in High Angelic.”
“M-my friends and I know the songs Feather taught us,” Truth called over the screams. “We’re the Maker’s children. We can sing it without much pain. What do we do?”
Rafe startled at Truth’s assertion, then clapped the young man on the back, almost knocking him over. “If you’re Mik’s, you’ll do. Stand close together, stay in front, and sing the songs of power as loudly as you can. The shadows can’t bear the sound of them.”
Truth muttered, “Oh shizz,” next to my side, as another Guide fell under a huge, razor-edged shadow, and a horde of smaller shadows swept toward us.
Rafe leaped to my side as a broad swath of coal-gray matter with thick, jagged edges loomed over me. “Get back,” he shouted, a pulse of power rushing out of him. The shadows fled from him, but as soon as the power surge waned, they came roaring back. “Guard the Sacrifice,” he told me, and I leaped to Arabella’s side, the soul knife in my hand. Never had I wanted or needed a sword as badly as now. But I knew I had other weapons, though I may not have kept up my practice with them as I had the sword. I opened my own mouth and began to sing a hymn of battle, one I thought the young Protectors might know.
They did. A group of eight, including Truth, stood in front of the largest crowd of kneeling Protectors and began to singalong. We sang in unison, aiming for power, not intricacy in our musical strikes.
I watched as the shadows quailed and retreated from that group, and went racing after Rafe. He was running toward the hallway—to the basement door.
They came through where you did?I asked, but I knew the answer.
A narrow shadow slipped past Truth’s octet, and I raised Mik’s knife, meeting the shadow’s hard edge with the smoky blade. Rafe was fighting as he pushed through the mass of shadows in the hall, using the carapace he wore as armor, and his claws as weapons. They were mostly ineffective until he reached down and drew lines of power from the ground of Sanctuary, wrapping them around his hands and using them as thread-like whips to dispel the monstrous gray beasts.
I sang louder as I sliced through the creature I was battling, pushing at the smaller remnants of shadow that remained on the ground, all of which were trying to get to Arabella. Of course they were. She shone like a beacon of purity. They would want to be near her, smother her.
As I took a breath to sing another refrain of the hymn, and noted a fresh wave of shadows pouring down the hallway, I thought they might succeed.
But only if my light, my life, was fully extinguished.
Chapter 11
Feather
There was a saying on Earth, or a bumper sticker at least, that naked was a state of mind. That was incomplete. Naked could also be a state of soul.
The kind of naked I was right now, as the gate to the Celestial Realm opened, and I felt hundreds—if not thousands—of pairs of Celestial eyes on me. Their thoughts about the strange gray swirls in my skin, coupled with the glittering prisms, made itclear I wasn’t just exposing my ass to the realm. I was exposing my innermost being.
