Page 79 of The Fallen
“I won’t let you have her,” I say in answer to his non-question.
“Why?” Michael demands in a rough bark, appearing genuinely flummoxed, which is part of the problem. “You don’t care about Angels, Lilith. Do you pretend to be taking on the role of saviour now? For what purpose?”
Many millennia ago, when we stood on either side of the battlefield that would later become our lives, in constant static flux between revolution and oppression, I watched Michael destroy his family and then blame that destruction on his brother, on me, on the humans, on his father—on anyone but himself.
And yet I felt for him then because for all his faults and fucking hubris, there was a time when we saw each other as kin. Such ties are harder to break than we believe them to be, almost as hard as they are to repair once damaged.
I stuff my hands into my jacket pockets and exhale slowly, regarding him with more empathetic understanding than he will be able to stomach for long.
“Leave her be, Michael,” I say, darting a glance over at Azrael. She hasn’t moved from where I left her, standing at the top of the gangway with her bare, scarred arms crossed over her chest as she watches us with an expression too blank to be anything other than a wall for her fear to hide behind. “She’s served her time.”
“If you insist on this foolishness, I will be forced to consider you an obstacle,” Michael says, stiff and overbearingly formal to cover up the severe discomfort I know he feels at the sight of Azrael, ghostly pale and hunched in and stripped of any sense of self. For all his talk, Michael was as opposed to the creation of lesser Angels as Lucifer was at the start.
It was only when things came to a head that he dug his heels in, and now he’s stuck with nowhere to go without cutting his own legs out from under him.
“Michael, don’t do this,” I try again even though I know in my heart that it’s futile.
Michael’s white eyes narrow, and his jaw hardens, stubborn as a childhood nightmare. “We will take her back.” He takes another step towards me. Big mistake.
I smirk up at him, vague disappointment warring with impending satisfaction. I snatch one hand out of my pocket, brandishing the bronze dagger I have with me in the likely occasion that I will need to use it.
“You’ll have to find us first, Mikey,” I say, and Michael has a half second to be surprised before I slam the blade into his chest. A blinding-white light emits from the stab wound, and Michael’s mortal form explodes into celestial atoms, sending him right back to Heaven.
Whipping around with the bronze dagger still clenched in my hand, I start running full pelt away from where Michael once stood, grabbing hold of Azrael’s hand and yanking her along with me. I send a silent thank you to the universe for Michael’s arrogance, which led him to not bring any reinforcements.
“What are we doing?” Azrael asks as we sprint through the docks, our hands locked together, her fingers digging into my skin and barely avoiding crushing bone with her Angelic strength.
I flash a quicksilver grin at her over my shoulder. “Now, Az, we enter a chapter of our relationship called: ‘Thelma and Louise, the Reboot.’”
Azrael grips my hand just that little bit tighter.
CHAPTER 4
AZRAEL
Michael is a name I’ve heard before, spoken about by the other Angels in tones of shimmering reverence, passages of myth and legend revealed in between hunts, like silver glinting off the ocean’s surface.
I’d gleaned enough from their stories to fear the possibility of a confrontation with him, but Lilith seemed almost entirely unconcerned by the threat he presents, even when she stood before him on the docks. I had seen Lilith pick up the bronze dagger before we left her flat, but it still took me aback when she plunged it into Michael’s chest while mocking him.
Afterwards, Lilith hurries us back into her car and takes off. She calls Adam and Eve on the road, telling them in brief, well-practised terms to go to ground. It is clear by how easily they both accept the warning that this isn’t the first time they’ve been in a similar situation, exchanging promises to meet in the usual place.
Lilith doesn’t take us back to her flat, and I don’t ask where we’re going. It doesn’t matter to me. I have nowhere else to runother than in the direction Lilith is leading. When matters are filed down to that sharp a point, cutting through any residual uncertainty is easily done.
One question that gets the better of my newly reborn sense of curiosity—one that is equally unimportant, but which I cannot put aside—is why Lilith is agreeing to do this at all. When Michael asked, sounding as baffled by the prospect as I feel, Lilith did not answer him. There’s no good reason why she would give me the truth when she would not even offer a lie to Michael.
I ask for it anyway.
“Why are you protecting me?”
As the world blurs by outside the car, I turn my head to stare at Lilith from the passenger seat of her blue Mini Cooper.
In daylight, Lilith appears no less fierce than she did when lit up by the moon. But watching her with her family, as they joked and argued over breakfast, softened her edges in my mind if not in reality, and although her obsidian eyes burn with the same fervour as they did last night, they seem less angry, filled with a heat ignited by compassion rather than fury.
Lilith rolls her shoulder back like she’s shrugging off a coat at the beginning of summer, like she’s resetting and recalibrating for the sudden change in temperature. She doesn’t take her attention off the road ahead when she answers.
“You don’t know this about me,” she says in a low murmur, deceptively genial if the dig of her eyebrows is anything to go by. “But I’m a real believer in finishing what you start.”
If I expected more elaboration, I’m apparently destined to be disappointed because Lilith stops there and does not seem inclined to accept any requests for further reasoning behind this objectively absurd choice she’s just made.
