Sera raced for her father’s side, sliding on a pair of sunglasses as she went. “Dad… Pastor Littlejohn, it’s all right. Sit down now. Everything is fine.”
“The devils…” But the older man let her guide him to a chair. He glanced up. “Sera? What are you doing here?” He frowned and reached for her shades. “Is it a sunny day?”
She gentle diverted his hand. “I came to see you, Dad.”
“It’s Sunday. I have a sermon to write.”
“He better make it a good one,” Fane mumbled. He turned toward Bella.
The front door stood ajar and empty, with the reliquary above it blazing golden light.
She was gone. Fane bolted toward the door.
Ecco stepped into his path.
For all his momentum, Fane rebounded off the big talya’s bulk, although he managed to avoid puncturing himself on the gauntlets. “Get the hell out of my way,” he gasped.
Ecco blocked the door, his shoulders filling the frame. “I just let hell out. I’m not letting it back in.”
“Bella isn’t a demon. Not just a demon. No more so than you are.”
The talya half closed his eyes, dimming the violet sheen of his teshuva. “Why do you think I let her out? Let her fight, golden boy, so she knows she can.”
“Not alone,” Fane shouted.
Ecco grinned and stepped aside. “Since you asked so nicely… If you need pointers on the proper care and feeding of sexy demons, come see me.”
Fane shoved past him.
He almost went down on the icy steps. The scattering of salt added texture more than melting power. The tenebrae orb in the lighted manger was blown open like some obscene, oily, sharp-edged flower, and Bella stood over it in profile to him, a red pillar against the ice and glow of the Christmas lights. Her head was tipped back so her undone hair spilled down her stiff spine in wild curls tangled by the wind, but her face turned up toward the tenebrae was pale and still. In her hand, an extended box cutter gleamed. As if the tiny blade could have any effect against the tenebrae
The etheric emanations, which had been confined in the orbs, swirled around the nursing home in a half dozen separate waves of greasy black smoke shot through with sulfur-yellow lightning. The waves chased around the building, stretching toward one another. Their shrieks—only half heard but felt deep in his bones—escalated. When they met up, together they would be as big as a tsunami.
He thought he saw the familiar shapes of the animalistic malice and the more monstrous salambes resolving out of the smoke, but the silhouettes kept collapsing back into the chaos. It seemed the imprisonment in the orbs had permanently mashed the tenebrae subspecies together into something new and—wasn’t that always the case?—worse, combining the destructive power of the salambes with the preternatural quickness of the malice.
He dashed toward Bella as the demonic swirl sped faster. The grass crunched beneath his feet, each ice-rimed blade like a tiny silver sword.
For an instant, he thought of his abraxas, somewhere across the city in Thorne’s hands. But he might have another chance to confront the djinn-man someday and reclaim his sword; he would never have another chance with Bella.
He’d break off a thousand swords under his boots to get to her. “Wait!”
She turned and he halted in his tracks.
Even though the churning tenebrae cloud was behind her now, her eyes still reflected the pitch black and virulent yellow…
It wasn’t a reflection.
He took a slow step forward. “Bella.”
She opened her mouth and the wordless cry that emerged was pitched across multiple octaves, only one of them human. The tenebrae clouds slowed, as if their attention had been caught.
Shit. He didn’t want the tenebraeternum focused on her. Not now, not ever.
In two steps, he closed the distance between them. He framed her face in his hands. Her skin was cold, so cold.
He stared hard into her eyes, searching past the demonic overlay, past the haze of cataracts, looking for the one he knew inside. “Don’t let them in. Don’t.”
The box cutter slipped from her fingers and clinked on the icy grass. She wrapped her fingers around his wrists. Was she holding on to him, or about to push him away?
“You are not one of them,” he said roughly. “You are Bella now. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t believe that.” But even as he spoke, he despaired. Once before his love had not been enough. What made him think this time was different? Ah, but now he had an ace in the hole: the divine presence in his soul. “The angel believes in you too,” he added, urgency pounding through his veins. “You don’t think an angel would lie, do you?”
“Cyril?” Her raw whisper was almost inaudible, and her hands clenched his tendons hard against bone so he felt the shrieking roar of the tenebrae reverberating between them. “Cyril. I…”
“Yes,” he urged. “You. Not tenebrae.”
“Both,” she said raggedly. “I can’t escape…”
He wanted to deny her words, call out her lie, but what if he was wrong? Could any of them hope to escape the unbearable power of the angels and demons at work in their lives?
For a moment, he wavered. His hands slipped, slicked from the tears trickling over her cheekbones.
The tenebrae waves spun faster around the building. Half the waves had coalesced, swallowing one another.
As they would all be swallowed?
His numb hands caught in the tangles of red hair over her shoulders, and she gasped.
The small, human noise broke through his paralysis. He would not let her go.
He plunged his hands into her hair, cupping the back of her head and tilting her face up to his. “If you can’t escape,” he said roughly, “then I’m going with you.”
He brought his mouth down slanting over hers.
One hot mingled breath and two tangled tongues. The simple truth of longing. He pulled her close, leaving no room for error or lies or darkness.
She whimpered against his lips, then her hands linked at his nape, holding him fast.
He would gladly kiss her until the sun came up tomorrow, until the sun went down again forever. It wouldn’t matter because he had her flame inside him now.
Her fingers drifted down his jaw, touched the corner of his mouth, and eased him back. “Cyril,” she whispered. “I have to do this.”
He raised his head to look at her. Her lake ice eyes—a thin disguise for the vibrant woman beneath—reflected his angelic gold back at him. “Then we do it together.” He kissed her forehead.
She nodded against his lips, then turned within the circle of his arms to face the tenebrae waves.
Just one wave now, maggot-shaped and viscous as tar. Even bigger than a train he had feared, it poised like a suspended oil spill of evil. The sulfuric lightning had congealed, and the thick, snaking veins of yellow pulsed with a revolting, regurgitative rhythm. He did not want to see what it was about to discharge over the nursing home.
She shivered in his embrace.
“Banish it,” he murmured. “You’ve done it before. Every year when it came for you.”
“Never like this. And I had my artifacts.”
“The artifacts worked because you believed.” He leaned his cheek against her crown. “You don’t need the knucklebones to believe in yourself.”
He felt her shuddering breath as she craned her neck to look up at him. “Can I believe in you?”
He kissed her temple. “Always.”
She took a step forward out of his sheltering arms. He wanted to grab her back, but instead he followed, lending his presence and his angel’s light to her fight.