She was implying that the angels were behind my arrival here. In fact, it sounded like she was directly crediting Silas.
If that was the case…
No, no, no,I thought.She’s insane. She’s a liar. There’s no way he was behind this. But if he was…was that why the angels didn’t intervene the moment his clock was up? Is that why he…
My stomach roiled at the line of thinking. It was impossible. And if my mother didn’t stop monologuing, I was going to be sick all over again.
“I raised someone who would do something wonderful for the Kingdom of Heaven. I just didn’t realize she’d accomplish it by showing everyone the Lord was real because she was on the wrong side of history. But God works in mysterious ways. He uses sinners all the time to accomplish His Will.”
“God did not orchestrate this,” I said. “I did.”
There were no shadows on her face as she slowly closed her eyes and got to her knees. She clasped her hands together and began to pray.
Oh, fuck.
My breathing became rapid and shallow. A high ringing in my ears drowned out her faithful murmurs. I didn’t have a phone. Even if I did, who could I call? It wasn’t like Azrames had a cell. It wasn’t like Caliban…
The cave.
Fine, then. I’d do some praying of my own.
I balled my hands into fists, holding my breath as I closed my eyes, struggling to relax enough to picture a cave. I envisioned the void with as much detail as possible, willing myself to see the wet limestone, the stalactites, and the gaping maw. I stared into the dark end of possibility as I shouted into my mind that I needed him. That I was at my mother’s. That she’d lost her mind. That if he didn’t come soon, someone else would.
I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me, but it was all I had.
A crack of thunder shook the house, yanking me out of my attempt at meditation. The building’s foundation trembled. The windows rattled. My ears rang with the high, piercing sound that enveloped the home. My mother fell sideways onto her hip, catching herself with one hand.
“They’re here.” She smiled.
I looked over my shoulder out the glass panels at theburst of glitter in the backyard. Two intense patches of light, one rose gold and one silvery blue contrasted with the brown-green grass of early fall. Two men emerged from the shimmering clouds against the rows of pines and tall privacy fence that lined the property, each in the white and beige leathers I’d come to know so well, weapons on their hips.
I recognized them immediately.
The Michelangelo painting and the Spanish saint.
I sucked in a painful breath as I stumbled away from the door. I winced away from my mother, shoving myself into the corner of the dining room while she whispered her gratitude to her god. The men advanced toward the house looking like twin linebackers too beautiful to exist among mortals. They’d step through the door itself in five seconds. They’d have their hands through my chest and on my heart in ten. It was the most horrible sight I’d ever seen in my life.
I was a child, begging for my soul.
I was in the bathroom mirror, gasping for air.
I was inDaily Devilsall over again, golden goo dripping off its surfaces as Fauna snarled at Azrames.“This isn’t just the end of her cycle. They came to smite her.”
Caliban had looked up helplessly from his place on the floor.“…I can work with the body, but if it’s an angel who ended the soul…”
This was it.
Three seconds.
Two.
A sonic boom sent us both to the floor as the earth itself split, cracking the very bedrock of the home as it trembled. Three times louder than the angelic thud, this was a true, otherworldly explosion. My mother grunted from the kitchen floor. I cried out as my hands and knees hit the ground, looking up with a gasp just in time to see the cloud of shimmering darkness, and within the shadow, the murderous face of the man I loved.
“Caliban!”
“No!” Lisbeth screeched.
My twitching smile of relief was reflexive. He was here. He’d come for me.
