Chapter 26

With a combination of agitation, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation, I finally drag myself inside Lycurgus Arena.

Lycurgus, as I found out yesterday, is an angel who taught humanity competitive sports, and is responsible for the creation of the Olympic Games. He was elevated to archangel status for his dedication to pushing the boundaries of human physical prowess, and the peaceful tournaments that supplied humanity with the best of internationalism.

Not that I give a fig about him or any of that. I sure didn’t research that info. The article appeared on the Magitech tablet issued by the Academy to every cadet. It kept beeping loudly until I finished reading it, and taking a quiz. And answering all questions right. Courtesy of Godawful, of course. He’s going in hot in his role as my personal tutor.

The Arena is much larger than the stadiums where lucky Regulars attend the frivolous sports that droned nonstop on some of Demonica’s TV screens. In the underbelly of the demon world, I only witnessed blood sports, where I expected to end my life.

While this makes my current situation seem like an upgrade, as Sarah said, I’ll probably have a worse ending here eventually. I just got another sample of the dangers I’ll be facing.

Justwhat was missing from the crap vortex that is my life. A mystery.

Focusing back on this Arena, I realize it’s enclosed, but the ceiling is so high it fools you about the fact. Another facility made for beings with wings.

Unbidden, the image of Godric soaring with those unique shades-of-grey, rune-encrypted wings flares in my mind. I have to shake my head like a wet dog to dislodge it.

That image is only replaced by an even worse one. The actual Godric, standing in the middle of the space, somehow undiminished by its vastness. Wingless now, he’s in black trainers and a matching sweatshirt.

He looks world-tilting.

But it doesn’t matter how supremely edible he physically is. I hate his guts with a numbing intensity.

Thankfully, as I approach him, any numbness doesn’t reach my tongue. “Thanks so much for waking me up at a time as atrocious as you are, Godawful.”

He raises a superb arch of haughtiness, a corner of his lethal lips lifting, as if against his will. “Anything for you, Nothing.” A beat, then he drawls, “You’re late.”

“Thank your lucky feathers I’m here at all.”

“I did wonder if you’d defy me. I’m almost surprised you didn’t.”

All the way as I trudged here, I debated telling him about my close encounter of the unknown kind. I decided against it. I don’t know if it was something after me in specific, if it decided to make a meal of me—or if I hallucinated the whole incident. From the way it disappeared, and the other hyper-real experiences I had, there’s a big chance I did.

Whatever, I’m not giving him more ammo in this duel of ours.

“I was about to come drag you from bed by that copious hair of yours.”

To my chagrin, I find myself grinning like a lunatic at the image of him as a caveman. “I thought you would—by my toe. Or neck.”

“Both would have been counterproductive to my purposes. I need your appendages and breathing intact from now on.”

“Yeah? What are these purposes? And what does it mean, you being my personal tutor? What are you going to tutor me in? And why?”

“What did I say about questions?”

“You’re getting nothing but from me, chum. I got nothing else on my mind. So why don’t you save yourself the hassle of dealing with a spaced out cadet, and answer them?”

His gaze lengthens, and heats. At first it’s nice, thawing me, then I feel I may start melting like a snow cone on a stove.

Before I buckle, he finally exhales. “One question.”

Is that a concession? Godric actually knows how to do that?

“Three questions,” I shoot back before he reconsiders this momentous precedent. “I have more than three thousand, so I’m being too considerate of your severe allergy to being questioned.” He starts to say something, and I drown his voice. “Don’t say two!”

“Two. Final offer. Take it or leave it.”

Gotcha.

I look down as I doodle a half-circle with my sneakered toe. Can’t have him see triumph in my eyes. He’d cancel the deal, and leash-slam me to the ground. “Any two?”

“Don’t ask about the Divining,” he grits.

Son of an archangel. That’s my most important question.

Still, I can work with this, if… “I can ask anything else?”

“Yes.”

“And you will answer? Cause you can be playing with words, allowing me to ask, but not committing to answer.”

“I will answer.”

Whoa. This is huge. Major. Gargantuan.

Now I gotta be very, very careful what I ask. This is a once-in-my-mortal-lifetime opportunity.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

My heart splotches in my empty stomach like a rock dropped in slime.

Whosaid that? It can’t be the Wen White I had the misfortune of being all my life!

But I did say it. I wasted an unrepeatable chance to find out the things that matter.

Retract it, idiot. Now!

“Wait, wait—don’t answer that! I’ll ask another one!”

The vicious, pseudo-smile he gives me makes me shiver all over as he shakes his head, triumph in his incredible eyes. “Too late. I pledged an answer, and you’ll get one. To this question.”

My shoulders slump in frustration, with myself mainly.

But maybe all isn’t lost yet. Maybe I’ll glean some info when he explains why he hates me.

“I don’t hate you.”

What?

“Oh, no!” I blurt. “I will not accept this answer. You do hate me, and it has nothing to do with me peddling Angelescence. There’s something else. And you said—pledged—you’d say why.”

He’s the very image of long-suffering as he exhales. “I wanted you here at five am so we’d have a solid two hours before you have to go prepare for your first day of real attendance at the Academy. You came fifteen minutes late, and I’m giving you fifteen more to answer your two questions. Will I get the chance to answer, or will you waste your allotted time blabbering?”

Clamping my lips, cheeks flaming, I gesture for him to go ahead.

He gives a mock-grateful nod. “As I said, I don’t hate you. Hate implies emotional involvement.”

“Heh, yeah. And everyone knows you’re an emotionless bastard, Godawful. My bad.” I shake my head, still not convinced, and to dispel the heaviness settling in my chest. “But you do feel something very fierce and specific to me.”

His gaze all but shreds me to ribbons. “I do. You’re a conundrum I have to fathom, a misshapen piece of clay I have to mold, and I resent that only I can achieve these onerous tasks. I’m now forced to devote my focus and time and expertise to you, when you…” He stops, as if looking for the right word, and finding none. “You aggravate me. You…” He stops again, before gritting, “You vex and provoke and exasperate and frustrate me.”

“Whoa, easy on the synonyms, pal! I get it.”

“I doubt that you do. I myself don’t get it. You—stymie me. When no other being ever has.”

When he stops this time, I know he’s said his piece. He cocks his magnificent head at me, waiting for a response, something brazen and crass, I’m sure. I shake my own head.

I can’t talk. My jaw is on the floor and I may never be able to pick it up again. My heart is battering my ribs with—exhilaration.

I’m as unprecedented to him as he’s unprecedented to me!

It’s a way bigger deal because he’s older—no idea by how much—and, well, he’s “Him.” Godric the Great must have dealt with everything this universe, and any other, has to offer. But no friend or foe, even the eternal kind, ever yanked those responses from him. They’re all negative, sure, but explosive—and they’re mine.

All mine.

I have power over him that no one ever had.

Take that, you Semi-Celestial Bastard!

He raises one eyebrow. “Is that a comprehensive enough answer for you?”

That makes me find my voice. “No, it’s not. There’s more. I know there is.”

And it has, in part, something to do with the Divining.

If he says more, I might get a clue about what happened there. What he’d kill to keep secret, forever. And forever isn’t a figure of speech to his kind. Which means it was something that important. That dangerous.

I shudder to think what he considers dangerous.

His words, what feels like a lifetime ago, echo in my head all over again.

This makes you potentially one of the most dangerous entities who ever existed.

“Yes, there is more. You’re...” He stops, eyes raking my face, a searing emotion setting them on passionate fire. It’s even more hard-hitting than when he pretended I was his. Then he grinds out the rest, “...an abomination.”

Whoa. Whoa.

That sure came right out of left field. And it…hurts.

Why anything he says would is beyond me. But it does.

So. He has power over me in this way, too.

He now has a perfect score in all kinds of power over me.

Will I ever run out of reasons to hate that half-heavenly lout?

But there is something to be learned here. If he’s willing to elaborate.

I have to get it out of him without making it a question, or I’m certain he’ll consider it my second one.

I smirk up at him, struggling to feign nonchalance. “First I’m a Nothing, now I’m an Abomination. All this because I can see and collect Angel Essence.”

“I at first thought this ability terrible enough on its own. Now I suspect it’s a symptom of an even worse underlying disease.”

“Disease!” I dread illness way more than death. Forgetting my resolve, my exclamation comes out a question. “I’m sick?”

“I don’t know.” His wings tear out behind him, causing a mini gale that almost blows me off my feet.

As I catch myself, eyes watering, I seethe that I still didn’t see his wings sprouting from his back. And how they don’t tear his clothes.

Yeah, I’m known for such conveniently-timed musings.

Another one is about Azazel’s destructive demonstration. Since I feel Godric is more powerful, he could have destroyed half of L.A. when he crash landed that night, and blown my flesh off my bones. Which means he held back.

He held back just now. When he is agitated this time. Maybe I’m messing with his mind like he’s messing with mine. And if I ever make him lose control—I doubt Earth is ready for an out-of-control Godric.

Suddenly having power over him isn’t that exciting anymore.

He folds his wings, then in a flash, they’re gone.

I blink up at him in chagrin as his gaze sweeps over me from head to toe broodingly before he exhales. “That’s why you’re my shadow until I find out. It’s imperative that I discover how you do what you do. Right now, you do it instinctively, have no method, no understanding of what you do, or how to control or expand it.”

The last two words clang in my head. He said them in the same tone, but they rang differently somehow.

This might be the point of this whole thing.

“That’s what you’re going to train me to do,” I say, careful to make it a statement, not a question. “To control and expand my Angel Essence collection feature.”

“Yes.”

I know he’s done answering my first question. Along with all the non-questions I managed to slip in.

If I want to know more, I have to use my second question.

He raises one masterpiece eyebrow and looks pointedly down at his wrist.

I drool a little at the abundance of muscle and sinew in the forearm exposed by a pushed up sleeve, before I notice he’s wearing a watch. It resembles the activity trackers used by those who exercise for fun and want to lose weight voluntarily. Would a nephilim’s measure flight miles instead of steps? Those before he has to retract his wings?

What the hell am I thinking? My “allotted time” is running out.

He says as much, that voice of his a sweep of inflammation. “Ask your second question right this second, White, or forfeit it.”

Oh, who am I kidding. There’s only one question I have to ask.

“Why? Why do you want me to do what I do on a larger scale?”

His eyes flare emerald. And I know. I asked the right question. What he wished I wouldn’t ask.

I also know he’ll answer it. Because I just found the answer to something as important. His one weakness.

It’s his own commitment, his own word.

He finally exhales. “Because if I can understand how you gather and transform Angel Essence, and make you do it on a ‘larger scale,’ it might be the weapon to end the eternal battle.”