Page 71 of Angel's Enemy Omega

He’ll come back.

He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

He will.

Chapter 39

ARSENE

Arsene letsthe tent flap fall on Nur’s sleeping form. The tent is warm with his scent. His limbs are splayed invitingly and his face soft. Arsene longs to crawl inside and join him, hear his sleepy grumble and bear his weight as he rolls into Arsene’s arms.

But if he wakes next to Nur, he might tell Arsene to stay. Then, because of the thrall, Arsene will be bound to his side.

He has an important task. He has to leave like a coward, under cover of darkness and without saying a word.

The sentinel serum is under the city in a protected bunker, and the way into the bunker lies in the middle of the bowl: the crater at the epicenter of the city’s long-ago destruction. The caravan is camped on the ridge of the bowl. The slope lies just beyond the nearest building.

He makes his way carefully. Sand covers everything, making it look like smooth going, but the ground is treacherous. There are false entrances and sinkholes everywhere, piles of rubble that shift and clatter when his foot touches them.

It’s nearly dawn when he reaches the bottom cup of the crater and starts going uphill again. He doubles back and carefully tracks the size of the valley. The flat part of the crater is notvery wide, but the wreckage makes it difficult to traverse. Using a long metal girder he drags out of the sand, he probes the wreckage for anything that could be a door.

Searching is not easy. Soon his arms ache and his head pounds from the rising heat. The wind picks up, sweeping across the bowl and kicking up dust. He wets a piece of cloth and wraps it around his nose and mouth to keep the fine particles out. The water he brought with him tastes coppery, and after a while the air takes on the same taste.Blood and tissue, he realizes.Poison suffuses the air here. He has to hope his soul light is strong enough to heal him.

He searches until the high sun beating down on him becomes too much and he has to take shelter under a collapsed building. He drinks a third of his water and stares out at the unforgiving blue sky.

If he disappeared into the desert with Nur, would anyone from his home remember his name?

He reaches for the bond, seeking the comfort of its steady warmth. Nur’s heartbeat thrums with his, half a day’s travel away. Hewillfind what the Seraphim Council sent him for, and with it he’ll restore Nur’s corrupted soul and heal him of his dependence. Then he’ll bring the sentinel serum to New Yden so the Council can continue turning lonely nulls into obedient primus.

It’ll be so satisfying to refuse the Council when they offer him the promised spot in the sentinel house. He’ll relish the looks on their faces when he turns around and goes right back through the gate. The image gives him strength.

The entrance eludes him.Day turns to night. Night turns to day. He must have turned over every brick and crawled into every shadowy crevasse. Nur will be frantic with worry.

He’ll be angry, his primus corrects.

If Arsene is lucky.

The other option is that Nur will be exhausted from his heat and the long trek. That he’ll be going out of his mind with the need to be fed. Arsene pushes the thought away. Focus. He needs focus.

He works methodically across the floor of the valley, shoving sand off any likely structures to examine them. It seems like he’s searched every inch of the place twice. But finally, he comes across a hump in the sand he doesn’t recognize. He sweeps the sand off it vigorously, ignoring how his eyes burn from the dust. His heart thumps as the sand falls away to reveal a door. It’s stamped with a familiar symbol, one they drilled into his head when he was briefed—a bird of prey holding an arrow in its talons.

The door is locked, of course, and reinforced. Even his considerable strength does nothing to budge it.

He clears sand from the rest of the structure, revealing a crumpled steel form with jagged edges. Perhaps it was once a room inside another building. Though the door has stood the test of time, the walls have not. Arsene retrieves the girder and jams it into the crumpled walls until one spot gives way.

The sun crawls across the sky as he pries it open. The heat almost sends him into hiding again, but anticipation of victory drives him to fight the little hole fiercely until it’s big enough for an angel to fit through—one who doesn’t mind his clothes getting torn up. By the end he’s sweating and exhausted, but he can’t rest. He’s too eager to go on.

Inside the hole, the room is cool and dark. The air is stale and metallic, untouched for years—maybe even centuries. Faintdaylight illuminates the crumpled walls from the inside, but he has to wait for his eyes to adjust before the size of it becomes clear.

At first it looks like nothing but an empty room. The roof is caved in, hiding half of it from his view. He ducks down and tries to make out what’s on the other side, but it’s shadow. He’ll have to crawl.

Fine particulate dust covers the floors and sticks to his hands and knees. Arsene swings his pack around to his front and bellies toward his target.

The shadowy corner clarifies as he draws near. The dark spot is a hole. He digs the torch out of his pack and lights it, and the sudden flare of fire makes him wince. He sticks the torch into the hole.

The hole is bigger than it looks, a jagged-edged opening in the floor that’s wider than he is tall. He’s lucky: it’s not a straight drop, but a set of stairs. The top stairs have crumbled to almost nothing, but as far down as he can see the rest are in good shape. An orderly march into the dark.

Maybe it’s not just luck. Someone before him could have found the door unlocked. They could have cleared the debris out of this room and opened up the stairwell. But why lock it afterward?

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