Chapter 13

Thunder cracks over my nerves.

With a snort that scrapes my sinuses raw, I lurch awake.

Sand-lined eyes scratch open to the sight of my matted hair. Great. It has escaped my braid. Beyond the dark spaghetti-like mess, there are two black pillars. Powerful, jean-clad thighs.

Godric. Of course. Waking me up. Again.

Slowly, I realize I’m slumped on the backseat, face mashed into a pool of drool. In front of that paragon of perfection.

Lovely.

“Get up, White.”

So it’s White sans Ms. now. Guess I forfeited even contemptuous formality when I called him names to his family.

Good. Let the gloves come fully off. I have worse where Godawful came from.

Pushing up, I wince at the soreness of my ripening bruises and wounds. And at the missed opportunity, of sightseeing New York from the luxury and safety of this amazing vehicle.

But mainly at the big, wet patch at my jumpsuit’s neckline.

I groan as I prop myself up on my elbow. “We arrived already?”

“Thankfully. You’ve been snoring loud enough to peel the paint off passing cars. I feared human law enforcement would issue an emergency evacuation of the highway.”

He’s joking? Stick-in-the-cosmic-mud Godric?

Though I did get that glimpse of his wicked humor. But I’d rather think I misread him then, and my humor centers are malfunctioning now. They must be fried if I’m finding anything he says funny.

But snoring, too? Is there no end to the indignities a girl can suffer?

Wiping my mouth on my sleeve earns me another grunt of disgust.

I glare up at him. “What? It was either that, or your pants.”

His wings snap out behind him in their full glory. The wind they unleash pushes me face down in my drool again.

Struggling up with a shriek of fury, I grab his legs and furiously wipe my mouth over them. It feels like grabbing smoldering steel and mashing my lips against a lightning bolt.

My heart slams back into my spine as my gaze jerks up to collide with his. Time stutters as he broods down at me, eyes crackling like a sun-storm. And not with anger or disgust. With that vast, terrible hunger I thought I saw before.

Then his gaze slides to my lips, and how close they are to his crotch. Just like that, I see myself doing what my imagination stumbled over earlier—biting into his bulge as I frantically unzip his jeans and…

I snatch my hands away and scramble up to my knees.

With one last devastating look that has my core clenching on a rush of moist heat, he stands aside to let me get out.

Putting a shaking foot on the ground, I look beyond his barricade, and my breath backs up in my throat again.

Rising in the near distance is another mind-boggling building. It’s nothing as massive as the Court, but if there is any physical representation of a Heaven and Hell amalgam, this cathedral is it.

Now their unholy collaboration would somehow determine what I am, whatever that means. If it doesn’t kill me first.

Might as well get this over with.

As I step past Godric, I see the rest of the scene. It looks like one of those dystopian movies, where humans in drab uniforms trudge in despair, on their way to become processed meat for the elites or the invaders.

There’s just one difference. No one is trudging. And there isn’t a desperate face in sight.

Everyone around, seemingly around my age, looks nervous all right, but it’s with eagerness and excitement.

They want to be here?

That makes three or four thousand of them. That’s how many I estimate are milling around. And from everyone’s demeanor, this is a hugely anticipated event.

What do they know that I don’t?

Probably a lot. Since I know nothing.

As I start walking, my two demi-archangelic guards surround me, massive wings on full display, Lorcan’s for the first time. They’re also grey, if lighter, and streaked with an amazing pattern of subtle indigo, cobalt and emerald.

No one says anything as the duo cut the line ending at the top of another obscene amount of steps. I doubt anyone can say anything with their collective jaws on the ground.

It’s clear they never saw a nephilim up close before. But from their awed whispers and gasps as we pass them, they know what they are. To them, the Nephilim are a long-known fact. Seems they’re privy to knowledge all other humans consider rumors or myth.

Why? Why were they chosen to learn secrets kept from the rest of us?

This bodes well for the Divining not being as dangerous as I”ve heard. Surely angels and demons wouldn’t take them into their confidence, only to harm them. Or maybe they will only if they fail whatever this is. It might then become a matter of “I-told-you-now-I-have-to-kill-you.”

I look around at the eager, healthy faces, and sure hope not.

The healthy part makes me do double takes. I never saw fresh faces like these, not in real life. Even Regulars and Select in L.A. are sallow and sickly. As for the Demon-Owned, we all suffer from serious malnutrition and chronic fatigue.

But these people seem to have been brought up on a steady diet of nourishing meals and nurturing smiles. I have no doubt they’ve been cared for, pampered. Even groomed? For this?

That actually sounds sinister. It has the vibe of fattening sheep.

Gritting my teeth at the horrific idea, I avoid their curious gazes until we reach the towering bronze double-doors guarded by angels on one side and demons on the other.

Once we cross inside, Godric picks up the pace. As I run to keep up with him, I can’t take in much detail. I only get impressions of opulent spaces and soaring ceilings where light and shadow mingle like living things.

My head is spinning as we arrive at what looks like our welcoming committee. Like those at the doors, angels and demons are equally represented. Thirteen of each.

As usual, the angels look somewhat similar. I can still tell they’re from many Orders, even when they’re dressed in a uniform of white, gold-trimmed robes. Also as usual, the demons are totally different from one another, each representing one of the dominant species. Three are from the handsome-devil ones, with the others sporting horns or hooves, leathery red skin or yellow eyes with serpentine pupils. But they’re dressed the same, too, in black, silver-trimmed robes.

White team, black team. How literal.

As soon as we stop before them, one of the angels, a cherubim from the looks of him, comes forward. “This human is not on our list.”

How does he know that? When he doesn’t know who I am? Has he memorized entrants, or something?

The cherubim turns to the demons. “Is she one of yours?”

One of the scaly demons approaches, sniffs me, then pulls the top of my jumpsuit down, before looking back to the others. “She’s Demon-Owned.”

I feel Godric going rigid beside me. So he didn’t see my Mark. And if possible, the waves of antipathy radiating from him intensify.

The prejudiced jerk.

“Then she must be yours,” one of the other angels, a throne I’m sure, says.

“We will not know until the Divining decides,” a gorgeous demoness with black hair to her ankles answers.

The cherubim frowns up at Godric. “Why bring her before the Tribunal at all, and ahead of the others, too, nephilim?”

Nephilim, huh? I bet my right arm everyone knows who Godric is. So the angel doesn’t deem to say his name? Is there dissent within the ranks of the Army of Heaven?

Godric scowls down at the angel who dared question him. For a moment I think he might rearrange his anatomy.

Next moment you could have knocked me over with a feather. A hummingbird’s would have done it.

Godric is looking down at me, those viridian eyes blazing with such unbridled—possession.

Before my heart remembers that it’s made to beat, he releases my gaze and turns to the angel. “She’s mine.”

The way he says that, in that voice of his…

Heart blaring, body burning, I try not to gape at him like everyone does. Seems the idea of Godric claiming someone, let alone a human, defines the impossible to all present.

They must know him well.

Or maybe they can’t imagine him wanting someone the cosmic cat dragged in like me.

So. Godric is hiding the archangels’ interest in me, making it personal instead.

Clever. Not to mention almost lethal. This guy should come with all the warnings of a weapon of mass destruction.

Good thing he only looks at me in such aversion. I’ll take that over that sensuality that almost singed me down to my DNA. And that’s when it was totally fake.

Better pray I’m never exposed to the real thing.

Pffft. No danger of that, ever.

“It’s most irregular,” the cherubim still says, if halfheartedly.

Godric’s gaze drills down into him. “Are you suggesting I’m abusing my authority?” As the angel starts to splutter a denial, Godric raises a hand that can no doubt bring this whole place down in one strike. “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Don’t waste any more of my time.”

Wow. If I had any doubt, that blows it away. The power hierarchy is clear here. Godric is at the top, with those angels and demons, clearly big shots in their respective domains, way below him.

If he is that influential when he’s that young—assuming he is as young as he looks—what kind of sway will he wield when he’s a few centuries old? Or a few millennia?

Since I won’t be there to witness it, what do I care?

Next moment, I no longer care about anything as Godric steps away, and the others encircle me, hands reaching out.

Before I can form a protest, the dark floor juts beneath me. From one heartbeat to the next, it becomes a pillar, shooting me up a dozen feet above everyone.

Before I hurtle off it headfirst, flaming runes well up all over my legs like molten lead. They solidify into what feels like a million scorpion stingers, hooking into my every nerve.

Thundering agony crashes in my head, my marrow. But I’m so used to withstanding pain without making a sound, keens back up in my chest.

Before I can choke on my next fractured breath, vines of lava and obsidian, what feel like scorching sin and drowning despair, emanate from the runes filleting me alive. They entwine into a cylinder of suffocation all around me.

Groping for escape, for reprieve, I look up through the one opening out of the shroud of horror entombing me. And I see it, through the tears needling my eyes. The dome two hundred feet above me, opening like a celestial camera lens, or some divine pupil.

Before I can hope it might offer a way out, a beam of blinding light, like a planet-destroying laser from one of those sci-fi movies, shoots down—and cleaves me in half.

I hear the scream.

I am the scream.

And it’s unending.

I never prayed before. Never thought it was worth the wasted breath. Now I pray, plead, beg. I screech and shriek and howl. For death. For oblivion.

No one and nothing hears my prayers. The anvil of the demonic rune-cage and the hammer of the celestial laser pulverize me in between their primordial ruthlessness and greed. They dissect me, recreate me, only to unravel me again—and again—and again. And again. Each time they do, they seem to be getting more forceful. More furious.

At one point in the unending torment, I realize each is trying to pull me to its side. But I remain suspended between them, ground zero for their eternal conflict.

And through it all, I’m aware. Of every spark of suffering, every tendril of invasion, and every shred of desecration.

Just as I think this is the fate worse than eternal damnation Lorcan warned me about, something pushes between the two forces pulling me apart. It forms a barrier around me, a buffer deflecting their destruction.

But it does something else. It pushes me within its confines. Upward, toward the light.

Suddenly, it’s over.

The rune talons retract from my marrow and flesh, and the beam that has been carving me to hair-thin slices buoys me up. It floats me above the seething runes until they melt back into an unblemished floor. Then, like a gentle breeze would a feather, it deposits me on my feet a second before it blinks out, and the dome above seals shut.

Breaking apart with sobs, every nerve charred, every cell shrieking, I crash to my knees, retching and heaving.

I’m not even granted the relief of throwing up this time. Everything inside me feels congealed. My tears have evaporated and no more would come, as if their glands have been seared off.

Rising up to numb feet, shaking as if in the throes of a seizure, my swollen eyes pan around.

It’s as if nothing happened.

The monsters that surround me are looking at me with absolute boredom in their inhuman eyes.

Boredom!

I want to rave and rant and storm around slapping and punching their immortal faces. They put me through this mini-Hell, and don’t even have the decency to look involved? Mildly interested? Entertained, even?

But I don’t think I’ll be able to do or say anything for a while. Lorcan’s warning to hold my tongue wasn’t needed after all.

“She’s definitely one of ours,” the cherubim who’s done most of the talking intones in the same apathy dulling his eyes. “She belongs at Celestial Academy.”

One of the male demons, the one almost on Godric’s gorgeousness level, tuts. “Shame. A…friend of Godric’s would be most valued at Pandemonium Academy.”

Godric turns to him, and I instantly see it. The history between them. Violent, bitter, complex. “If you ask nicely, Asmodeus, I’ll send her to you—when I’m done with her.”

The suave devil inclines his head in dismissal. “She’d be worthless then.”

Godric gives him, then me, a heart-fluttering yet terrifying semi-smile. “She is worthless now. All humans are. And they know it. Don’t you, my pet?”

I nod dumbly at him, and his satisfied expression turns at once knee-melting and blood-curdling.

Man. Did I ever think I’m a good actress? Godric is on a whole new level. Academy Award worthy. Celestial Academy. He must be their A-lister, in every sense.

No way Asmodeus didn’t buy that Godric would soon cast me aside. There’d be nothing to exploit then. I would have been thankful, if I didn’t know Godric is only protecting the archangels’ interest in me.

And then, he might have meant it, about sending me to that demon after they’re done with me. If he even means for me to survive whatever they have in store for me.

Maybe I actually have a better chance with the demon. I survived so far among his kind. Maybe I won’t among Godric’s.

With that thought worming its way in my battered brain, I watch Godric turn and walk out of the hall. His leash appears in his hand and around my neck, glittering brighter than ever. So everyone can see it?

He tugs, none too gently, making me stumble in his wake.

Yeah, this is a literally heavy-handed show for their benefit.

I can’t even spare any energy to dagger the acres of his back and wings with my hatred. All I can dois re-learn how to walk.

At one point, I raise my eyes to find Lorcan walking beside him. I don’t know if he attended the Divining. I was busy being dissected alive at the time.

Thankfully, Godric lets his leash dissolve before we exit that unholy cathedral. The buzzing crowd stills and falls dead silent at his sight. Seems he has this effect on any sentient being. Wonder why he has the opposite effect on me.

As he descends two steps ahead of Lorcan, demonstrating his position as his superior, he parts the crowd like he did the Court’s barriers. Everyone scurries out of his path, looking up at him with the same awe and dread they’d gape at a tidal wave. I don’t blame them. They must know he’s an equivalent force of destruction.

The moment he and Lorcan clear the crowd, it congeals again like the crashing waves of a sundered sea. Over me.

Feeling like some accused swarmed by the paparazzi, I shakily push through their rabid eagerness and curiosity.

“Who are you?” a girl yells.

Another one drowns her question. “Are you someone important? Or dangerous? Is that why you have two nephilim escorting you?”

Yeah. According to Godawful, I’m the latter. When I feel like the most endangered creature to walk the earth.

“And those nephilim, too, the superstars. Especially Him!”

Yeah. I heard that capitalization as loud and clear as the exclamations expanding through the crowd. Just mentioning Him is causing them a bout of acute hero-worship—or just plain worship. He is a god to these people.

The interrogation continues in an overlap of shrill voices.

“You got Celestial Academy?”

“She must have, dude. She walked out with the nephilim.”

“She walked in with Him, too!”

“Oh, my Heavens, I wish I were you!”

That last exclamation chafes against the imprint of his leash. I wish I could tell the swooning girl she’s welcome to change places with me at its end. That I wish I could throw him to her fellow rabid females to tear apart, so each could have a bloody piece of him.

But all I can do is keep pushing through this endless tunnel of bodies, as more breathless cries inundate me.

“How do you know Him?”

“What’s He like?”

“Are all the stories true?”

“They can’t be true, man. No being is that powerful!”

“They are, too. He’s a level nine.”

“No one is a level nine. Not even the Seraphim in the Codex Caelestia.”

“Well, he is. I got the info from reliable sources!”

“Reddit isn’t a reliable source, moron!”

“It’s not only Reddit!”

“Your gaming community isn’t a reliable source either.”

The two young men’s debate ebbs as I’m carried away from them, and more exclamations yawn into my ringing ears.

“I so wish I get Celestial Academy, too.”

“I trained all my life for this!”

“I’ll die if I get Pandemonium Academy!”

“What was the test?”

“Is it a test?”

“How did it feel?”

“Did it hurt?”

I want to scream at them to stop being such lemmings, to run, to save themselves.

But if the angels and demons want to “conscript” them, too, there’s no place on Earth they can hide.

So I put my head down and stumble in silence until I clear their lapping mass, and let them cling to their illusions. They’ll face the terrible reality soon enough.

Or maybe their experience won’t be as horrific as mine.

Who am I kidding? Some will not walk out of there at all.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Still, keeping silent is one of the hardest things I ever did.

I end up not speaking at all throughout the flight. To Godric’s delight, I’m sure. And it isn’t only because I shredded my vocal cords screaming at that Divining. I’m just too overwhelmed, can’t begin to process what happened.

I black out again during the ride back to the Court, come to only when we pull up outside, and Godric tersely orders me to get out.

As I scramble up, something finally surfaces to my lips. The question that has been revolving in my mind all through.

I shoot a hand to his shoulder before he exits the car, rasping, “What the hell happened back there?”

After a long moment when he freezes under my touch, he rounds on me, eyes bleeding black lightning, voice a deadly snarl. “Nothing happened, White. That’s what you are. Nothing.”