16

Rogue Angel

I woke to a slow, steady drip in my head. Water? Blood? Everything was blurry. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes. My whole body hurt, especially my head. Someone had hit me hard there. My balance was off, distorted. Sickness churned in my stomach, and I felt cold. My skin shivered against the icy breath of the rocks I was lying on. These thin clothes definitely weren’t suited to the cold darkness of the underground ruins.

I looked around, but my eyes could barely focus behind the throbbing swell of my head injury. Everything looked distorted, like the ground was moving, tipping like on a boat caught in a tempest. Sitting up made me feel like I was going to throw up.

I wasn’t alone. The angel was there, speaking to two men. He was wearing a dark brown leather suit. He wore a sword, a bow, and two guns—which was more than a little overkill, especially considering the deadly duo of the magic spells he’d been throwing around coupled with his enormous size. His hood was down, revealing a face framed by messy dark hair. The shadow of a beard covered his face, just enough to make him look rugged. I recognized the rogue angel from the picture in Nero’s office, the recently fallen angel.

“Osiris Wardbreaker,” I said, my voice croaking. “We’ve been looking for you.”

A smile twisted his lips. “And I’ve been looking for you, the one who can open the door.” He lifted his hand, and lights flared up across the chamber.

I blinked, shielding my eyes against the blinding twinkle of treasure. It was everywhere—sparkling, glistening, glittering. Gold. Tapestries. Weapons. Armor. Urns. Jewels. Treasure boxes. It was like a pirate’s dream. The treasure in this treasury must have been worth millions.

“If I’d known you were coming, I would have slammed the door in your face,” I said to the angel.

Osiris laughed and looked at the two minions beside him, men dressed in high-tech armor. “She’s cheeky, isn’t she?”

“Just get what we need from her,” one of the armored men said gruffly.

It seemed the balance of power wasn’t what I’d thought. This angel was working with them? Or for them? They sure weren’t his minions, and not only that, they weren’t even afraid of him. What was the matter with them? Even I had the sense to be afraid of him.

“All in good time,” the angel told him.

Osiris looked relaxed, unrushed. Immortality, and being one of the oldest angels in the world, must have done that to you. He was comfortably confident, like he always got what he wanted.

“We will get results,” he assured the two men. “And you’re going to help us, aren’t you, pretty?” His hand caught my face, clamping down on my jaw much as Colonel Fireswift had once done.

The relics of heaven and hell were too dangerous to be in the hands of a powerful, corrupt angel like this one. I was almost choking from the darkness dripping off of him. I had to escape from here. I had to stop these fiends.

In my delirium, I must have muttered some of that aloud because Osiris laughed and said, “You need to worry about helping yourself.”

I realized I was chained to the floor. The chains were long enough that I could stand, but I wouldn’t get far. And then there was the small matter of the very big bump on my head. I still couldn’t focus my eyes properly.

I squinted, looking in the mirror on the wall. My glamour had faded away. I looked like myself again, albeit a really awful version of myself. Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn’t see very well. The crimson stain on my head looked bad enough with blurry vision. I did not need to see it in crisp detail.

If I had my own face back, that meant Nero could no longer maintain the spell. I hoped he was ok. I could still sense him. Somewhere. The feeling was unfocused, muffled. Was he still unconscious? I wondered how long I’d been out.

“Your angel won’t be coming for you,” he told me in a cruel voice.

I was dizzy and a little delirious, but I definitely hadn’t spoken that time. Which meant he was reading my mind. Mind-reading, what was only mildly annoying when Nero did it, was about to get very problematic.

I tried to put up a mental barrier. I knew it had holes in it the size of New York City, but it was the best I could do right now. My headache was reaching epic proportions.

“Then I will come for Nero,” I told the angel defiantly.

He laughed. “Will you?”

“Yes. Right after I kick your ass.”

The angel laughed again. Apparently, I was really funny.

“I’m serious,” I said to him, glaring.

“Oh, I know you are, snowflake. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t panic. I’m rather busy at the moment. And so are you. I need your help to get us into the Treasury.”

I looked at the sizable pile of gold beside him. “You’re already in.”

My eyes panned past the gold, snagging on the pile of rocks. My stomach knotted up. Nero was buried under all of that. I didn’t see the way out of the house, so the gateway must have closed. There were two hundred Legion soldiers in the city, but they didn’t even know Nero and I were here. And even if they had, they couldn’t get into this chamber. Only I could open the gateway. My heart surged with hope. That meant the rogue angel and his allies couldn’t kill me, not if they wanted to ever get out of here again. That hope died as soon as it had come. One look into the angel’s cold eyes reminded me that there were fates far worse than death—and that he was intimately aware of all of them.

“We’re not in the real Treasury. This is just the foyer. These worthless trinkets are not the real treasure.” He gave the gold and gems a dismissive wave. “The real valuable things are beyond there.”

His hands clamped around my throat, and he lifted me up like I weighed nothing. He dragged me over to the gold-framed door, my chains scraping against the floor. The gateway had been sealed by a single angel symbol. A grid of thirty distinct symbols was etched into this door.

“Open it,” Osiris said, his voice snapping with a harsh strike of the command.

I tried to hide my hands behind my back.

“Putting your hands on the door is the first thing we tried,” he said, his voice almost bored. “It didn’t work. Your blood didn’t work either. I think this is a door that requires a spell.”

“Then cast away,” I snapped. “You’re an angel. I’m sure you can figure it out. You know a lot of spells.”

“Oh, but I can’t do that spell. Only a child of darkness and light can. You.”

I looked at the door. “I don’t know how to open it.”

He tapped his finger on my forehead. “It’s inside of you, that memory. Just waiting to be unlocked. And I’m going to help you remember.”

Black magic sparked on the angels’ hands, but it was the inhuman abyss of his dark eyes that chilled me to my core.