Chapter 35

Kill. Kill. Kill.

The word echoes in my mind like a grisly mantra.

At first, I thought it’s my own subconscious chanting the word. I did have lots of reasons for the vicious desire. Especially since that schedule amendment separated me from Sarah.

Two weeks ago, the faculty decided we were too many, and divided us into groups of three hundred for the applied subjects. I wasn’t allowed to be in Sarah’s, so many of our classes aren’t at the same time. It’s been particularly nerve-wracking leaving her alone in Azazel’s. Even if, to my stupefaction, she enjoys them the most. According to her, he’s the best teacher around so far.

But I soon discovered the droning word wasn’t originating from me.

Strangely enough, after four weeks at Celestial Academy, I no longer want to kill anyone. Including Godric.

Okay, okay, especially him.

Onlybecause it’s no longer in my best interests to kill him, I always assure myself.

This guy is a cosmic-level slave driver, but boy, is he effective. I live for our three-hour daily training, and I’m boggled by the progress I keep making every single day.

I leave the Lycurgus Arena he empties for our sessions feeling like I’ve been stretched through a pasta machine, and battered inside and out with a meat tenderizer—when he still hasn’t laid a hand on me. Yet I also feel so alive, so transformed, I’m on fire to do it again, and again. The one time he had to cancel our training four days ago, I felt I’d combust. I went running to discharge the unspent blaze licking through my blood. Yeah, I run willingly now. And I don’t feel I’m dying after two miles, when before I did after two hundred feet.

He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he’ll make me stronger than I ever imagined. I’m already ten times as strong in that short period.

It’s been making me wonder if there are other elements to my too-rapid progress beside his virtuoso coaching and my all-consuming commitment. Whether it’s exposure to him, or that thing inside me that might have been activated by the Divining. Not that it’s been showing itself beyond our Mindscape escapades. And we’re both still in the dark about what it is, or what it can do. If it can do anything beyond giving us psychogenic shows and exercises. Ones I barely remember after I exit said Mindscape.

Anyway, my rocketing physical progress is probably a mix of everything, each element boosting the other. And like he predicted, it’s all strengthening my ability where Angel Essence is concerned.

I no longer only see it when an angelic entity is angry or agitated. Other reasonably strong emotions will do. Also I can now harvest more of what I see, not just what clings to my hand. Lately, I’ve been able to yank and wrap it around up almost my whole arm. It’s a major pain scraping that much off, especially when I no longer keep any of it to myself.

Though I made sure my bottle can indeed compress and conceal far more than 10ml, I room with an archdemon, and can’t risk her sensing it on me. After I had a nightmare of her tearing my breasts apart and scooping my heart out with those talons to get to the bottle, I got rid of most of my stash, keeping only Lorcan’s portion of it. Losing that potential weapon because of her is yet another reason to hate lava-filled guts.

What really galls me, though, is that I still didn’t get any of Godric’s Essence. With the way he’s been hanging on my every move and counting my every breath, I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to pull any wool over his mesmerizing eyes. Especially if his Essence lashed out at me again when I tried to capture it.

So I continue to gather more and more of other angelic entities Essence for him. To say he’s been increasingly elated—in that swooningly scary way of his—at my progress, would be an understatement as massive as he is.

He’s been stockpiling it all, which confuses the hell out of me about what he really wants. Does he want to make me a weapon, or am I supposed to make him one? And how would Angelescence, even if I make him gallons of it, be a weapon anyway?

I constantly prod and probe him for an answer. I get none, of course.

At first, I kept hoping he’d tell me it’s the latter possibility. That if I can provide him with enough Angelescence to make that weapon of his, he might let me and Sarah go.

Not that I think Sarah would want to go. And maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to think sticking around isn’t so bad either.

To my shock, things have been sort of good on the Academy front.

For instance, Azazel hasn’t killed any of us yet. Injured most, and hospitalized some, but apart from the kid who lost half his hand during his initial incursion, and the one who now has a diagonal scar where his face was put back together, we’re all more or less intact. So far.

A good thing since my own healing factor is unreliable. Seems it depends on how soon I can be around Godric after my injury, and how bad it is. If I’m with him within an hour or two, something like contusions, floggings or Jinny’s wound would heal completely. I’d rather not pit my Godric-activated healing ability against the test of a worse injury. Not to mention that I hate depending on him for something like that. And I’m sick of running to the Sanatorium with every injury so everyone would think all my healing is their doing.

Hethinks it’s the Divining activating the latent Angel Essence in my system because of constant exposure. I keep him thinking that. It’s as good a theory as any, after all.

Other than Azazel’s ever-present threat, most of our professors, even the severe or outright cruel ones, have been great. I’ve grown to dote on Astaroth’s classes most. That guy is an artist at delivering complex information and making it stick. But I also enjoy most other classes and appreciate each professor’s methods. It’s been astonishing to discover the thrill of applying all my faculties in the uptake and practice of new knowledge and skills. Who knew?

On the social level, though, nothing has changed with my roommates.

When our schedules don’t separate us, we’re bound together in grudging coexistence, during meals, and during the Combat and Weaponry classes of our Cadet Basic Training. Thankfully, we’re not required to pair up or anything yet. Otherwise, my visits to the Sanatorium would have been all-too-real. In our dorm, cohabiting with three girls who despise my very existence, especially when needing to use our shared bathroom, isn’t fun.

Even in the presence of the demoness, I’m still the most unpopular one, the outcast no one tolerates. Except for Sarah of course. Sarah, who’s become the only binding agent of our ragtag team, the one who somehow keeps the peace.

Weirdly, outside of my Unitas—as each quintet in a dorm is called, ironically meaning unity—I’ve been making friends. Okay, okay, not friends, or even companions. But many of the archangelspawn and nephilim have been pawing and sniffing me, some literally, trying to figure out my deal with Godric. Tory has been treating me like a prized pet. Lorcan, well, he’s Lorcan, so I can’t tell if liking me is specific to me, or part of his open-for-business-with-anyone personality. But where I’m concerned, he’s my only other friend around here.

As for Gideon, I can’t figure this one out yet. He seems to actually enjoy my company, and he’s been seeking it whenever possible, but I can never discount his omnipresent motive of spiting and sabotaging Godric.

Not that I care about that, really. He’s fun to have around, and he thinks I’m hilarious, and keeps making all those jaunty advances and posh insinuations. It’s become a game between us, especially when Godric is around. We’re both united in our love of pissing him off.

All in all, everything has been going far, far better than I expected.

Only three things have been bothering me. Okay, driving me up the wall. More so because I haven’t been able to tell either Sarah or Godric about them.

Sarah, so I wouldn’t worry her and spoil her excitement at being here, and Godric…I don’t really know why I can’t tell him. Probably because he has enough worries, too, where I’m concerned. And because I don’t know what’s going on myself.

The first thing is that voice in my head, that isn’t a voice at all. It’s more—an emotion I’m picking up on. An obsession. It could be originating from anyone in the Academy.

So I guess I can cross out a few names apart from Sarah. Lorcan, Godric, and the archangels. Probably the archangelspawn, too. I don’t see any of them having the capacity and/or the need to obsess in secret about anyone. Strangely, Jinny, too, since she’s the impulsive not obsessive kind. Cara, and everyone else in the Academy I don’t know or don’t know enough to judge, can be a possible suspect.

Suspect of what, I have no idea. I don’t know what this word means. Is it an order to kill? Who? Or is it a threat? To me? To someone else, and I’m picking up on it? Or is it just a wish?

And why am I the only one hearing it? Am I the only one hearing it?

Again, I have nothing but questions where this insidious fixation is concerned.

The second thing is this—presence I’ve been feeling. An inhuman one. And not in the way the Academy denizens are, or like that putrid thing that followed me in the woods. It feels—primordial. That’s the best way I can describe it.

At first I thought it’s whatever Godric says is inside me rearing its head in my conscious mind. I had to discount this quickly, since it feels totally different. Yet, it’s familiar. In that maddening way so many things have been since I set foot here. Actually, way more.

It’s also almost always there. Sometimes like a white noise buzzing in my very cells, but mostly it’s that unnerving silence of someone listening in on you.

Apart from creeping the hell out of me, it really bugs me to feel I’m being bugged by some ancient entity.

To what end, from my record in resolving mysteries, I’ll probably never find out.

I still can’t dismiss the possibility that it could be all in my mind. All the inexplicable things I’ve been feeling could be misfiring neurons in my brain. After all, the poor thing has been through the supernatural wringer in the past weeks.

But I definitely didn’t imagine the missing things.

Initially, I wanted to think I was misplacing stuff. But even I am not that sloppy. During the past three weeks, I had over a dozen disappearances, from my brush to my map to my tablet.

Though I was furious, I didn’t want to kick up a fuss, especially since the Academy replaces anything we lose or destroy without question. But when I got a new tablet, I realized it was useless without a specific Magitech setup. In my case, only Godric can do it. Before I could bring myself to ask him, he was breathing down my neck because I stopped solving his incessant quizzes.

Once he realized why, he immediately thought it was another of my slobbish incidents. Lots of obsidian lightning ensued.

When the storm abated, I reminded him I wouldn’t deny it if I lost the tablet. Since when did I care about looking bad, or about his opinion? It was stolen, and it had to be one of my roommates.

After brooding down at me with enough heat to ignite a star, he said it wasn’t.

From the thousands of crimes he studied during his training, and the hundreds he’d solved in his Praefectus Praesidium role—which literally means Chief Protection—it was never the too-obvious suspects.

Yeah, I finally found out what he does around here.

He’s the Praetor, or commander of the Praetorian Guard, a unit of the Army of Heaven serving as the guardians of Celestial Academy, and the secret service agents—and assassins—of the Celestial Court. He has more subtitles under that lofty Designation than the Mother of Dragons.

As if he needs to be more impressive.

But his assertion made it even worse. I have someone else who hates me enough to steal my stuff, and has such access to me?

Then he traced the missing tablet, and found it in the woods, in a conflagration. The fire has already spread to dozens of trees, and might have raged into a full-blown forest fire if Godric didn’t find the tablet then. It was spectacular the way he used his elemental Graces to put out the raging blaze. Spec. Ta. Cu. Lar.

In the aftermath, we found an almost-burned backpack containing all my missing articles. But since I didn’t tell him they were all mine, Godric had no reason to think I was singled out. He assumed the thief was a prankster or a kleptomaniac, since none of the things were valuable, and every cadet had them anyway.

He reasoned the perpetrator must have worried someone would report a theft eventually, and the Pax Vis would be involved. The thief must have panicked and decided to get rid of the incriminating evidence.

Only I knew this wasn’t the case. From the echoes I felt around the bonfire site, this was no desperate act. This was premeditated. Ritualistic even. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

What made it even more disturbing is that the thefts stopped. It means that whatever the thief wanted, it’s been accomplished. What that was, I can’t begin to imagine.

The questions only keep piling up. And there’s no answer to any of them in sight.

“Penny for your thoughts, Wen.”

Sarah swings our clasped hands, drawing my attention back to her.

I look down into her eyes with a grin. “Just a penny, huh? How the mighty have fallen, when we have a million dollars.”

She clears her throat, making a serious face. “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.” She laughs, and I do, too, at her perfect British accent, so much like Godric’s. “And isn’t it wonderful we don’t need money anymore?”

“Yeah, but I still want our money, Spock.”

“What will we do with it, Jim?” She elbows me affectionately. “Though that was a Picard quote.”

“Gah! I can’t believe I mixed them up,” I groan. “But it’s our money, and I toiled over a year for it, and we should have it. And that damn archangelspawn won’t let us get it.”

Sarah, as always, looks uneasy when I call Godric, and all who deserve it, names. It’s not like I owe anyone politeness when I’m a glorified hostage here!

But I know she wishes I was nicer to everyone. I have been trying. But they really provoke me, and I was never a Miss Congeniality candidate to start with. Still I wince a silent apology as I promise myself I’ll try to be better at holding my tongue. I hate making her uncomfortable.

Never one to make me feel bad either, she smiles encouragingly at me. “At least no one will find it when they re-rent the apartment.”

That’s the only reason I’m not going batshit crazy worrying about our hard-earned mil. Sarah hid it in the wall and painted over it, and made an undetectable opening in the baseboard where we added more. No one will find it, unless they tear the whole place down. So I guess the money is safe until I can find a way to retrieve it.

Sarah suddenly jumps, squealing in excitement, swinging my hand harder. “I still can’t believe Jophiel herself is teaching us a class!”

I skip with her as I laugh. “Tell me about it. It’s amazing there’s a female archangel at all. I always thought it strictly a Boy’s Club.”

“She’s literally one-of-a-kind,” Sarah gushes, azure eyes glittering in the afternoon light of that permanently overcast sky. We’ve come to realize the sun never shines over the Celestial Region. “I was blown away when I read about her history in educating and inspiring humanity in arts and philosophy. And that’s from the internet. I bet when they finally let us into the Metatron Library and we get our hands on his Codex, we’ll find out way more accomplishments.”

“Maybe we can get the definitive rundown right out of the archangel’s mouth, now we have her as a teacher.”

“Yes, we do! At least for as long as she remains here.” She leans into me, voice lowering. “I heard Aela telling Tory that she never met her aunt, as she hasn’t been on earth since long before the Apocalypse.”

Aela, as in Ms. Archangelspawn. Yeah, you guessed it. Raphaela, Raphael’s daughter.

This seems to validate she’s as young as she looks. But still, every time Sarah even mentions her, her voice hushes and she seems to shrink. I hate seeing her intimidated.

Though I guess it isn’t Aela’s fault, since she treats Sarah the best of us all.

That isn’t saying much, since when she deems to interact with us at all, she treats me like an animated curse, Jinny like a nasty growth, and Cara like a pitiful upstart. Yet it’s Sarah she gazes at in bewilderment, as if she’s never seen a warmhearted innocent before. Which she no doubt hasn’t. But she does reserve softened tones and expressions for her.

That might only be because Sarah abides by her rules of non-encroachment to the letter. I don’t think Sarah ever addressed her or even talked in her presence. She’s too awed by her.

I don’t really blame her. I avoid that paragon as much as possible. There’s something—unsettling about her. And not in the way of all the other archangelspawn.

Shaking my untimely musings away, I engage Sarah in her current subject of wonder. “Did you also hear why Jophiel dropped planetside now?”

Sarah nods excitedly. “Cara says she heard it’s because of the numbers of Angel-Graced this year. Celestial Academy never had more than a couple dozen per year. It’s the first time in history they have almost fifteen hundred. Seems it’s a momentous enough occasion to warrant her presence.”

The hairs on the back of my neck bristle seconds before she barges between us, disengaging our hands

“And since she’s teaching Angel Grace 101,” Jinny says as she grabs Sarah’s hand, the one she forced me to drop, her flaming red ponytail undulating like a contented cat’s tail. “It seems she doesn’t want those inept professors leading you fledgling pseudo-angels astray, and wants to set you on the right track from the get go.”

“That’s why I smelled brimstone!” I exclaim as she drags Sarah ahead. “You’re really Jinny the Jinni, aren’t you? You popped out of nowhere, you…”

Sarah looks back with that plea in her eyes, and I bite my tongue on the rest of the invective. Not that I needed to bother. Jinny pretends she didn’t hear me as she tows Sarah in a half-run, chattering a-mile-a-minute. I swear she does something demony to keep me from catching up with them all the way to Jophiel Hall.

I forget all my renewed plans to murder Jinny as soon as we enter the auditorium. It’s a shock to see it overflowing. Not only is every Angel-Graced here, but all the Nephilim, too. None of them was present in the previous Angel Grace 101 lectures when they were delivered by the Academy’s Senior angel-graced, Professor Zachary Caine.

It figures, though. The Nephilim all run at any archangel sighting, since they revere them. But it must be an extra draw with Jophiel being the unicorn of archangels.

But it’s not only First Years crowding every square inch of the auditorium from stage to exits. There are thousands here today. It’s probably everyone in the Academy, professors, administrators and all. The only ones visibly missing are the archangels, and Azazel.

Seems this Jophiel is a rockstar to everyone.

Something flares at my back, only to trickle like a lava stream of sensations down my spine.

I know what it is even before I turn my head around.

Godric. Standing at one of the exits, in his full Praetor regalia.

I almost have a heart attack. One worse than the first time I saw him in it.

He showed up for our Mindscape session a week ago, in that celestial super hero/otherworldly Roman emperor getup. He informed me he was leading a team escorting Michael on a diplomatic mission later. They were still trying to contain the fallout from Zinimar’s death, and conducting their own investigations. I was busy marveling at how he now told me stuff of his own accord, and drooling too copiously, to focus on the details he related.

Seems Jophiel’s presence is on par with such a weighty undertaking, warranting the pomp and ceremony of him donning his formal threads. They make him look more of a god of ruthless justice than ever, with or without his wings.

To make it worse, he’s looking straight at me. In his patented way of making me feel he sees no one else in existence.

As always, my heart hiccups violently in response. It’s always the same when I first lay eyes on him, when our gazes clash, and his delves into me.

This man is driving me crazy, with his nonstop jumble of signals.

When he’s training me, he’s my detached drill sergeant, and I’m a sexless subordinate he has to mercilessly rehabilitate and reshape.

But the moment our “official” time is over, whenever he sees me, he looks at me like that first day, or like that first time in the Arena. Even more, as if he’s slowly losing his prodigious control, his razor-sharp mind. As if he’s warning me that when they finally snap, there would be no stopping him from taking everything I have, everything I am. It both exhilarates and scares me out of my own messed-up mind.

I’m so engrossed in our hot, sweaty visual tussle, I don’t notice the hush that falls over the crowd, until I hear the blood hurtling in my ears.

It still takes Godric tearing his gaze away to make me crash back to reality, and snap mine ahead. It’s only then I see her.

Jophiel. The one female archangel. Walking onto the stage, alone, no accompanying entourage like the archangels’ Sentry, Azazel’s Cadre or Godric’s Praetorian Guard.

Oh. My. Archangel.