A Touch Menacing (31 page)

He kicked something that bounced against the trim with a hollow thunk. When he stooped down to pick it up, he was surprised to find a phone.
Light,
he thought, pressing the buttons so that the display illuminated in a pale glow. He swept it out in front of him. Just around the turn of the stairs, a heeled shoe hung over the edge of a step. Gabriel jumped toward it. The light found a face, eyes open and staring blindly.

“Madeline!” he cried out in surprise. He fell to her, swiping curls from her face. The skin under his finger was slick. She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. “Oh no,” he whispered. “Madel—” A choked gasp caught in his throat. The middle of her chest was caved in, a jagged hole where her breastbone had been. Gabriel stared in horror.
But she’s not ash.

“Come on, Madeline. We have to go.” Sliding an arm underneath her neck, he tried to move her, to lift her. Her head lolled. The blood that had pooled in her mouth spilled onto his legs. “Oh no, sweetheart.”

He tried to wipe her cheek clean, but his own bloody fingers only made things worse.
They took her heart out. They took her soul.
She couldn’t be alive.
But why is her body still here?
When Siders ended, they disintegrated. Above him, he could hear the thump of water spraying the roof, the hiss as it hit hot coals.

He had to go.

Tucking the phone into his pocket with a shaking hand, Gabriel closed his eyes and pictured Kristen’s room. Madeline’s fingers were still laced in his when he phased out. He came back a second later alone and leaning against Kristen’s bed. “Hello?” he whispered.

“She’s not here.” The voice startled him. He turned toward the angel behind him. The face he knew so well, had once delighted in seeing, now sent sorrow coiling through him.

“Were you with them, Michael?” Gabriel collapsed onto the bed. The blood on his hands, Madeline’s blood, smeared onto the comforter. “Did you kill my friends?”

Michael hissed a warning as he arched his neck toward the closed door. “Careful words, Gabriel. There are others about. You’re being foolish.”

When Michael took a step toward him, Gabriel bolted off the bed and stumbled against the dresser. “Raphael sent me after Eden. Because you didn’t want me to stop you here!” He wiped his hand across his cheek and nose without thinking. His sticky fingers skipped across the skin. “Madeline risked everything to help me when I was Fallen. She’s the reason I knew everything I told Raphael about Downstairs. You killed her, didn’t you?” Gabriel’s eyes flicked down to Michael’s hands. They were still covered in blood.

Michael’s own gaze fell to Gabe’s fingers. “You, too.” A thrill of what seemed like hope trilled in his voice as he asked, “Is the death breather finished?”

Gabe flexed his hands. The drying maroon near his knuckles cracked, showing clean skin underneath. Outside the door, fire crackled. He had a vision of Kristen in the very room in which they stood, painting her toenails at the vanity, her long dark hair running down her back.

“I thought I had done you a kindness by not allowing you to participate here. It seems you don’t see it as such,” Michael said, his voice awash in disappointment. “You look at me as a monster for doing pleasing works. For cleansing the Earth of a plague threatening the mortals. The Siders
will
be driven to extinction, Gabriel. They are not your friends.” Michael shook his head slowly. “Your part ceases with the completion of your task. End Eden. Come home. I can’t shelter you any more than I have.”

“Shelter me?” Gabe blurted in disgust. Anguish bubbled inside him, threatening to take over.
Gone,
he thought.
Madeline’s gone.
Kristen’s gone. How many others?
Michael had taken them away, just as he’d tried to take Az away so long ago. “Tell me if Kristen still exists,” he whispered.

“Shhh.”

Gabriel stilled. Michael would relish telling him she was gone.
So why isn’t he answering?

Hope tried to burrow in, but Gabe wouldn’t let it, wouldn’t be able to stand it if he was wrong.
Please let her be safe.
Gabe sent out a thought.
Please, tell me where she is.
He grabbed Michael by the neck. He smelled the same as he had centuries ago, like a fall breeze.
Did you spare her for me?

“The answer will only cause you pain,” Michael said, leaning in to brush a delicate kiss against Gabe’s cheek.

I thought you’d help her. I thought you’d do that for me.

“She did escape, Gabriel.”

Gabe jerked back.

“With Lucifer,” Michael finished.

Hope and horror left Gabe stricken. “At least she’s away from you,” he said.

“Gabriel, you are dimming. Is it not enough to act as if the Sider plague is somehow salvageable, now you endorse one who takes up with
Lucifer
?”

“This,” Gabe said quietly, “is not right.” He walked past Michael to the sounds of glass and wood breaking, the firefighters entering through the front of the house.

Michael snatched his arm. “Gabriel, you must let them go.”

The truth passed Gabe’s lips before he thought to stop it. “I can’t.”

He closed his eyes, smoke passing through him as he transferred to the backyard, near the bushes. Red, blue, and white lights burst across the burning house. Flames crackled through holes burned in the roof. He took the thin path through the ivy covering the lawn. Behind him, a window in the attic shattered from a burst of fire. In the sudden brightness, Gabe saw a glimmer of pink tangled in the bushes. It trailed into the shadows, trimmed in lace. A dress.

He crouched, hoping against hope that Michael wouldn’t come after him. He’d seen no other Bound. “I’m not going to hurt you, but they will. Run,” he whispered.

A sob of relief came from the bushes. “Gabe?”

He pushed aside the branches. The girl tucked inside had a deep scratch across her cheek. Her thoughts were scattered terror. “Erin? You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, but she shook her head, grasping his arm.

“Everyone’s still inside. Help them!”

“They’re ash, Erin. I got here too late.” His voice broke.

“Oh God. Maddy.” She let out a staggered sob, the last hope draining from her. “Sebastian, he . . . he lowered me out of the window, and I ran. I thought he’d be right behind me, but he went after Kristen.”

At a sudden yell, Gabe spun around. A team of firefighters circled the side of the house.

Gabe charged into the bushes and grabbed Erin under the arms, dragging her out the other side into the neighbor’s yard. In the open, he could see her grotesquely swollen knee. “Can you walk?” he asked as he lifted her to her feet.

She limped a few steps and then shook her head. “Not without help,” she said. Her eyes searched his.

If the Bound catch me helping her, I’m done,
he thought.
If Michael tells the rest of the council what I just said to him, it’s over for me anyway.
“Okay,” he said, staring off down the street. “Okay, come here,” he said, scooping her up.

CHAPTER 19

S
ebastian was gone. Madeline, Vaughn, Erin. All the Siders she’d taken into her home. The Bound had destroyed them and burned down her house. Those should have been the things Kristen thought about as Luke pulled her down the street. But every time she tried to concentrate, the image that popped into her head was of the jar on her mantel, the tiny black monkey preserved in formaldehyde. “Petri. My monkey. They boiled him.”

Her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears. She’d been quiet in the town car Luke had summoned, but once it had dropped them off a block from his apartment, she couldn’t seem to stop talking. Luke’s grip tightened on her wrist at the words. “Yes. The dead monkey is gone, and we’re very sad. I got it the first ten fucking times you mentioned it,” he snapped.

“But they just burned him, and all my things, and they tore open that boy. He was on my lawn. And Petri. He was in a jar and— You told them about the ball, didn’t you?” He’d wanted to punish her. Have the Bound take out as many of her friends as possible in one fell swoop. “You bastard,” she said as she swung at him.

He hooked her wrist before her blow could connect. “The loss was great,” he said. “Take the grief inside you. It will make you stronger.”

“You did this to them!” she said.

His eyes caught the glare of a streetlight, red and burning. “Quite the opposite, my little orchid. All blame for this falls on the Bound
.
”

The fight ran out of her. “I don’t believe you.”

“No?” His laugh grated on her. “They aren’t fools. They’ve captured dozens of Siders and questioned them all as they learned how to turn them to ash. One spilled about your tinderbox. Fortunately, I, too, have my own sources. I just don’t torture Siders for information.”

Luke curled his fingers though hers. To any passersby they would look like a couple out for a stroll, but she winced at the tightness of his grip. When he spoke, she expected cruelty, for him to cut her deep while he knew she was fragile. Instead, he gently plucked a leaf from her sopping, tangled hair. “You
will
make the Bound pay, Kristen,” he promised.

He pressed her hand between his palms and rubbed. She could barely feel his touch, let alone any heat he generated. Her feet were numb in her heels, soaked with slush. She slipped her hand out of his without responding. They walked in silence, her heels crunching the salt scattered on the sidewalk.

Luke’s coat dropped over her shoulders. She looked up, surprised. “Put it on,” he said.

She slipped her arms into the sleeves. The thick leather wasn’t the best for warmth, but it cut the wind. Luke’s scent of spices filled her head.

As they walked the last feet to his apartment building, she watched him beside her. “There have to be others who survived. I need to go back.”

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring into the shadows of an alley. His head dipped.

“Luke?” She shivered. “What is it?”

A shadow behind the Dumpster lengthened up the wall. vzyl It broke off and skittered up to the gutter, slipping onto the roof. It was followed by a dozen more. Kristen stumbled backward. “What the hell?”

“I’ve sent them to check. Don’t expect much.”

The shadows were his . . . minions or demons. Dark things. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t.” He reached for her, but only to dig into the pocket of the coat for his keys.

She didn’t look at him as he pulled his hand out. “No,” she said. “Thank you for getting me out.”

Don’t thank him. He let the others be annihilated,
she thought.
I’m only here because of him,
her consciousness warred.
Don’t be stupid. He must have something to gain. You’re a toy to him.
She started to shake her head, but caught herself.
Hold it together
.

When they got up to his apartment, the usual draft of the penthouse had been banished, the heaters raging. Luke ran a hand through his wet curls and shook off the last of the snow melting into them.

“Stay here.” He headed down the hall to his bedroom without looking back.

She reached down, clawed open the straps holding on her shoes, and kicked them off. Stumbling toward the couch, she stripped the blanket off the back of it. A violent shiver made her teeth chatter.

They’re gone.
She dropped her head into her palms. She thought of the boy on her lawn, the desperate backward crawling. The crack of his bones. Somewhere in the house, the Bound had found Sebastian. A silent sob racked through her, then another as she felt herself finally breaking. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth to keep everything inside. It wasn’t until she heard the creak of the bedroom door a few minutes later that she reined herself in again.

Behind her, Luke cleared his throat. “You need to get out of that dress. It’s soaked.”

She sniffed hard and nodded, but kept her head down and her face hidden.

“Here.” He reached over her shoulder and handed her a thin sweater and a pair of leggings. “I bought these for you before you left.”

She stood and turned. He’d changed into charcoal grey sweatpants and a matching thermal top. It struck her how normal he could look when he wished, how human. “May I use your phone?” she asked.

He strolled to the island separating the living room from the kitchen and picked up the cell from the counter. “To call whom? I doubt many escaped, Kristen.”

“Sebastian,” she admitted. “I need to try.”

He tapped the screen and held it out to her. When she reached for it, he pulled it away at the last second. Her anger seemed to amuse him, though he hid it well. “Tell me why you left Aerie,” he said.

Kristen hit him with a level glare. “Tell me who told you about the ball. Was it really a Sider, or did Gabriel send you to get me out? Did he know what was going to happen?”

“That,” he said, “is not something I’m willing to share. Why did you leave Aerie?”

“I am not having this conversation with you, Luke.”