Page 79 of Vanish Into Light

He looked at Morgan – tiny, unassuming Morgan, with her too-long sleeves rolled up and her sword large enough to topple her – and said, “So, you’re Michael,” in a very flat voice.

If she – he? – was sorry for having deceived them, she showed no sign of that, blinking up at him a little tiredly. “Yes. I am the Archangel Michael.”

“Okay,” Gallo said, with the air of a man trying very hard to Remain Calm about all of this. “That’s…okay. That sure is…a thing.”

Gavin gave a low, angry hiss. “I knew that guy was the fucking devil! I told you all, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Lance rounded on him, fury spiking hot in his belly. “Shut up, Gavin, he isn’t thedevil.”

In a different situation, Gavin’s goggle-eyed expression would have been hilarious. Now, Lance just wanted to hit him. “No, no, fuck this,” he said, stabbing a finger through the air at Lance, one that trembled. “In case you didn’t get the gist of allthatbullshit, your new boyfriend is, in fact, theactualdevil.”

“Don’t–”

“He is Lucifer,” Morgan interrupted, calm as ever. “He is the one who challenged God, and who was punished for it. He is sin, and vice, and every fallible, mortal impulse of humanity.”

Lance’s chest hurt. “But–”

“But he is an angel,” Morgan continued. “He was then, and he is now, no matter how far he has fallen.”

Pain in his hands proved to be the harsh press of his own blunt nails biting into his palms, his fists clenched so tight the veins stood out in his forearms. He forced them open, but there was nothing to do for the rapid, staccato racing of his heart, nor the unhappy twist of his stomach. Gallo looked on him with open sympathy, and even Tris wore a version of it, tinged with harsh pity.

He glanced away from them, back toward Morgan – and even if her stare was cold, and inhuman, it was better than having the people he’d thought of as friends look at him like…like he was grieving. Or delusional.

“Why does it have to be so black and white?” he asked. “What, you’re good, and he’s evil, and that’s all there is? I’ve lived in this world – nothing is that simple.”

“I am,” she countered. “I am the sword arm of the Lord, as I have ever been.

“But you are right.” Her head tilted to a wondering angle, bright gaze narrowing a fraction. As if…as if he confused her. Or surprised her, maybe. “My brother is not evil. He is wayward. He wants too much – he could never be happy for all the wanting.” She turned to regard the still body that had only moments ago housed Raphael. “All of my brothers started to want.” This last touched with emotion – with regret. “Lucifer found a way to be reborn as a man of flesh and blood, his chance to try again. I had always thought that he should be given that chance; that I would watch, and wait, and intervene only if necessary.

“But Gabriel, and Raphael did not agree. They started a war.”

“The First Rift.”

“Yes. And they opened it using my sword.” She turned back to him. “They kept it from me. Broke it into bits and left me in this useless form.”

Thunder rolled overhead, the rippling cadence of a drumline.

“Now what?” he asked her. “What happens now?”

“I’ll leave that up to Lucifer – up to Beck.”

~*~

When Beck left the room, he didn’t fly. Rose was able to follow the line his tail had left in the dust on the floor, beyond the great hall, where fresh rain was just beginning to fall, down a long, uncleaned corridor where the doors sat crooked on their hinges, swollen from the humidity. One was open, though she passed it by, still on Beck’s trail, and glimpsed moldering furniture arranged around a cold, moss-slick hearth. The next flash of lightning struck a mirror, a flare like white fire in which she glimpsed her own shock-pale face, loose hair clinging to the sweat on her neck. She pressed on.

To the end of the hall, into a cobwebbed stairwell, where she found boot tracks, and the drag of a spade-tipped tail, and a clawed handprint on a banister, as though Beck had been made heavier, clumsier in the sharing of his truth. The stairs creaked, and groaned, and a few of the boards shifted beneath her feet – but they held, and she climbed four flights, to find an open door, and, beyond, the mansion’s rusting widow’s walk.

Beck sat perched on the rail like a bird, balanced on the balls of his feet, wings at the ready behind him, face tipped up to the first, fat drops of rain. His tail quirked an unmistakeable hello, but he didn’t turn to her; didn’t speak.

It took five strides to reach him, and in that distance, Rose felt that she walked back through the years, until she was the fascinated girl in the chair beside the library fire, and he the figure staring into the flames, inscrutable and lovely and ferocious.

But now, she knew every line of his face; loved every scar on his hands, and sheknewwhat he was. Who he was. It made sense, now, all the pieces finally fitted into place. It had only been an initial shock – one that had given way, immediately and wholly, toof course. Of course that’s who he was. It feltright.

As did the urge to keep silent. To wait. He would say something when he was ready.

The rain settled in: a steady, soaking rain, light against her skin, and cold where it seeped into her clothes. He lowered his gaze to the dark lawn below, all the sinister lines and curves of the mansion façade beneath them.

Droplets beaded on his lashes, and flicked away as he blinked. Slowly, he spread and lifted one wing, and Rose stepped in beneath its shelter, close enough to feel the heat he threw off, and smell the faint, ashy scent his skin carried, now.

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