ARAXIEL SET HIS alarm for five AM and was on the road by six, breakfast burrito in hand. It was more than thirty-one hundred miles from Miami to San Francisco. That equated to a little over fifty road-hours, or less since the Bugatti inspired him to disobey speed limits.
He had plenty of time to consider his options for approaching this abhadhon.
San Francisco, California
JOVIENNE SLEPT. DREAMING, she stood in a white, windowless room at the foot of a hospital bed, looking down on a frail unconscious girl. Tubes stuck in her arms and plugged her nose. A bandage padded her temple. Monitors gathered around the bed like expectant family, but there was no one to visit this girl or read her favorite books aloud.
Recognizing her small self in that unresponsive prison of flesh, the beeps of the machines faded away and a voice she did not recognize began calling her name.
“Jovienne…Jovienne…Jovienne.”
No different from any other time her father summoned her, she felt torn between the fear of answering and the consequences of not answering.
She’d spent thirteen weeks like this, incapable of waking, suffering with this maddening calling of her name.
All at once, she grabbed the bedframe. Shaking it with all her might, she shouted, “Answer! Answer, damn it! Go if you can. You don’t want this life!”
A cry escaped Jovienne’s lips as she lurched up from her slumber and scrambled to her feet, panting.
Leaning against the retracted edge of the elevator door, she wiped her sweat-drenched brow. Having removed her clothes to sleep nestled in her wings, the cold air from the open warehouse chilled the sweat on her skin.
The weak evening light was a reminder of inevitability. Somewhere, a cinder lurked beneath the surface, waiting for its release.
Even if the average San Franciscan couldn’t sense the distortions in their world, it was there, secretly beating on their flesh, churning in the streets, slinking into their renowned restaurants and swirling around Coit Tower. It existed in the rolling fog and it touched everything with damp fingers.
She glanced at the armor piled on the makeshift table. She should be getting her gear on, but she didn’t want to. The city wasn’t overrun with demons now, so someone must have done this before her transformation. Probably the scarlet winged angel she’d glimpsed last night.
That decided it: when the quintanumin impelled her, she wouldn’t go. Let things go back to how they were days ago.
But what if another innocent dies because I don’t go?
Jovienne backed into the darkness of the elevator.
Drops of rain pattered onto the floor underneath the hole in the roof. When the drums thudded against the sky, she shoved her fingers into her ears. It didn’t muffle the drums at all. Rocking back and forth and humming didn’t drown out the percussion, either. For once, she wished she had the pills her father used to give her.
When the thumping beat finally faded, it wasn’t long before the Call That Followed brought her to her feet.
A demon was arriving in San Francisco.
And I choose not to go. It took all of her willpower to make her body sit down.
At that, the quintanumin erupted.
Triggered, Jovienne came to her feet again and, led by the instinct to answer, she exited the elevator.
“No.” She locked her knees and glared at the sky.
Distant thunder growled and a chill, damp wind swirled through the warehouse as the rain increased to a downpour.
“No! I will not go.”
Disgrace jolted through her body. Like the red lightning that had remade her, this buzzed and trilled as it grew stronger. When it throbbed inside her head, burning at the scar on her temple, she crumbled to the floor, curling and squirming into the fetal position like she’d seen Andrei do so many times when the cringe hit.
“Don’t make me go!”
Nausea burned in her stomach. Her body convulsed. Muscles spasmed. Sweat crept from her pores. Her stomach cramped and she heaved, but to no avail. Though she sobbed, no tears came. When she thought that she could take no more, lightning flashed and the pain disappeared.
Thunder boomed in the distance, as foreboding as her father slamming a door.
Feeling as weak as the day she woke from the coma, Jovienne lay panting on the floor. A low-level humming in her temples told her the pain would begin again in moments.
“You’re just using me,” she shouted at the sky. “Using me to get what you want!” Like Andrei. “What about what I want?”
The second round of pain began. Her body became lead. This ultimatum threatened to crush her spirit into powder.
“You made angels. You made them obedient,” she whimpered. “But I was human first. You gave me free will!”
The pain and scolding was excruciating, but one thing was missing: the fear that it might kill her. As an immortal, this utter ache could go on forever.
If her resistance would only break her spirit, then her freedom would never be achieved by non-compliance. She had to be the monster’s monster.
For now.
She rolled onto her side and climbed to her knees, vowing to find a way. All the energy she once used for training, all her best efforts, would go into this one new focus.
Despite heavy legs, she gained her feet. She scooped up the abhadhim gear. As soon as she began putting it on, the pain faded. Her shaking fingers were stiff at the buckles, but she dressed. Stepping into the circle of rain pouring through the torn roof, she lifted her arms to welcome the knowledge of the demon’s location.
Leaping into the air, she headed south and earned the reward of grace, of being potent and fierce and utterly alive. Her body flooded with peremptory warmth and the strength of obedience. All traces of pain vanished. But the resentment in her soul redoubled. She’d thought herself a servant, but this was much worse. She had been beaten for not working.
She was a slave.
THE RAIN HAD passed by the time Jovienne’s feet touched down atop a crane. She studied the junkyard before her. Lined up to create wide aisles, cars sat in haggard pieces, their wounds exposed.
Activating the enhanced vision, she discovered that squinting could produce a color effect like night and heat vision combined. It made things in motion slightly blurry and easy to detect.
Like this, she detected a reddish-orange blob shaped like a four-armed demon. It darted along a row of the forgotten automobile shells. Because of the shape, she surmised it wasn’t harbored within a person and was therefore not a possessor. Not a changeling, either. It would have gone into ghost form and passed through the vehicles to escape her, or perhaps mask itself by having no substance to hold heat with. That left only one possibility: an imp.
She noticed a second, oval-shaped yellow blob closing in on the demon with abhadhon speed. The second shape included wings.
Her nosy neighbor.
Even without her super-hearing selected, the demon’s inhuman scream resonated intensely in Jovienne’s ears, as the creature’s flesh ripped under the blessed blade of this other abhadhon.
Shutting down the enhanced sight, she leapt to the air and glided closer to watch with normal vision. She did not beat her wings, concerned that sound would give her away. Below, the demon moved again, hobbling along the row of skeletal cars. The abhadhon followed, like a cruel cat playing with a wounded mouse.
Jovienne angled her wings to swoop in.
In a flash of lightning, the demon fell and this other abhadhon pounced, making the killing blow. Scarlet wings shot up for balance.
Landing on the hood of an ancient Cadillac, Jovienne’s boots made the slightest sound. The scarlet wings jerked defensively around the other abhadhon and a toss of her head forced a mass of straight auburn hair to resettle without obscuring her line of sight. She sneered at Jovienne, and then re-focused on her kill, spreading the red feathers wide.
The beast hissed and gave a death-shudder before lying still. Jovienne’s Call That Followed shut down.
The abhadhon kept her back to Jovienne. Red leather edged this one’s armor, if lingerie could be called armor. Jovienne felt embarrassed for her and realized the second round of armor Eitan tried to give her wasn’t so bad, but that still didn’t mean she would be wearing it. “You were in the alley last night.” She noticed the blunt end of this other abhadhon’s pike was pointed at her.
The abhadhon sidestepped from the creature. She yanked the spike from the inert body and Jovienne’s gaze fell to the hole left from the heart-bursting deathblow. Black liquid seeped from both the wound and the creature’s mouth. Its fire died and only coal-black ooze remained, instantly cooled and slick. It would seep into the ground in moments.
“Who are you?” Jovienne demanded.
Her painted lips curved in a sneering smile. “Damnzel.”
The scarlet-winged angel spun the long pike between her fingers as if twirling a baton. The motion flung droplets of black ooze across Jovienne’s face and jacket.
“What the Hell?” Wiping the goo from her face, Jovienne stared hard at Damnzel’s profile. Even from a side-view, this other’s sordid grin was obvious. “What’s your problem?”
“You being lazy or incompetent.” Damnzel spun and ran away down the row of disposed cars, denting the hoods.
Recognizing a challenge, Jovienne followed on the ground in front of the row.
Damnzel quickened and, defying gravity to tread upon the faces of the vehicles, smashed headlights with the heels of her boots. As Jovienne quickened to catch up, she rushed through the bursting fall of shattered glass.
Instant stinging made her look down. Thick shards protruded from the leather along her shins and atop her feet. Some struck deep enough to hit muscle. Every step tore the sinews more. Grumbling, Jovienne stopped and bent to free the shards from her gear.
She realized her blood smelled different from that of the woman in the alley. There was a hint of cinnamon in hers, which made her recall the overwhelming scent during her transformation. She thought back, to times she’d cut herself during training. Hadn’t she always smelled like this?
Feeling the prickle and itch of healing, she wiped her fingers over her shins to gather what blood had spilled, then lifted her hand to her nose, sniffing.
The gravel rustled under Damnzel’s stiletto heels. Jovienne glanced up to see the scarlet angel returning, crisscrossing her steps like a model on a runway. “What’s your problem?” she asked. “Aside from the obvious, anyway.”
Jovienne plucked glass from the other shin. “You’re out of your zone.”
“The demon was nearing my territory, and you were nowhere to be seen, sweetie,” Damnzel snapped. “I’m not one to sit around and let demons into my zone. Or out of it.”
“I don’t need your help.” That, if anything, was her problem. She knew she could do this horrifying job. She just didn’t want to know what she would turn into after doing this job for forever.
“Yeah, right. Bloody Savior, look at you! He’ll give wings to anybody these days.” Her gaze lifted heavenward. “I don’t need a lazy neighbor.”
Jovienne stood straight. Before she could speak, Damnzel looked her up and down and laughed.
“San-Fran’s a rough zone,” Damnzel continued. “And you’re so not ready for it. What’s with the jacket? You cold or something?”
“You’re the one who should be cold,” Jovienne said.
Damnzel ran her hand over her breasts. “Aww, are you shy?” She dragged the last word out. “Shyness is one step away from cowardice in my book. It’ll get you killed. And then I’ll be stuck pulling double duty again.”
Moonlight shone through a break in the clouds, spotlighting Damnzel’s stunningly beautiful face. But for all the make-up enhancing her lashes and shape of her eyes, they were hard eyes seasoned to abhadhon life. They belied the withering going on underneath.
Seeing it reconfirmed Jovienne’s concern for herself long-term.
“I really hate double duty,” Damnzel continued. “Do us both a favor, sweetie. Stop making stupid mistakes.” Shel turned away.
Jovienne grabbed her arm. “Wait. Last night—”
“I know what you did.” Damnzel jerked out of her grasp. “You’ve got a lot to learn, missy.”
Fists at her sides, she followed. “My name is Jovienne.”
“I know,” Damnzel barked. “I know more about you and your witch wings than I want too.”
“What the Hell are you babbling about?”
Damnzel halted and raised her weapon. “I don’t babble.”
Jovienne stopped too, but ignored the weapon. “Witch wings?” The words squeezed between clenched teeth.
Damnzel’s wing flexed forward and Jovienne ducked under the intended swipe and threw out her own dark wing to knock the red one away. She didn’t think of the wings as weapons before.
They traded a few blows, until lightning flashed and the sky grumbled like an angry parent warning the children to hush.
The red-winged abhadhon backed up quickly, but looked down her Barbie-doll nose at Jovienne. “No matter what the Big Guy wants the rest of us to think, you’re not one of us. You never will be.” Leaping upward, Damnzel flew across the bay and back to her zone, south of San Francisco.
Jovienne hoped a strong gale blew behind Damnzel, one that would send her so far away she could never get back.
Wait.
Send her.
Sender.
Cinder.
Jovienne’s spine stiffened. The air left her lungs.
Gramma called them cinders, but as a child, Jovienne equated the word with the burnt quality of those things’ bodies. Gramma could have meant sender.
If she did, that meant Gramma knew much more than Jovienne ever considered.
The rain resumed.
Leaping and twisting in the air, Jovienne landed on the crane and raced up the steep incline of the single, mighty arm. Nearing the uppermost tip, she extended her wings and flapped into a better wind that pushed her to the northeast.
She tried the in-flight quickening and dropped it. The saturated air obscured her vision and the drops pelted her face and exposed skin like needle tips. At regular speed, though, rain streamed down her head and onto her face like tears.
Drenched wings could fly, but it was more tiresome and she hadn’t gotten the energy perk of making the kill. Jovienne scanned for immediate shelter. The parking garage below would do.
After shaking water from her wings, she walked, invisible, to the underground level. The lights were dim. Only a few cars remained parked. The sound of water trickling through the drainage system was soothing.
Wings wrapped tight to block the cold wind, she huddled into a corner.
She could do this job, but she didn’t want to be a slave, forced to wither inside like Damnzel. Andrei was right: she didn’t belong in the normal world, the world I can’t have, because she saw the creatures and possessed quintanumin. Yet she didn’t feel like she belonged in this world, the world I can’t escape, either.
God may have told everyone she’d used weaving in her test, but He hadn’t told her anything about everyone else. He wanted His enslaved monster’s monster isolated and alone.
If she remembered her history lessons, when slaves rebelled they armed themselves with their bare hands or the tools given them for their labor. The quintanumin were her tools. They were used against her, as the means for God to control and punish His slave.
So how could she use the quintanumin to fight back?