Chapter 47

“You’ve got to be kidding me!This can’t be a…”

The rest of Jinny’s shout gets swallowed by the sudden roar of wind.

I haven’t felt any air before. I knew it exists, since we’re breathing, but that’s been the only indication it does. Now, between one breath and the next, it has become a storm. One that’s getting worse by the second. It reminds me of Azazel’s sigh.

“It does look like a black hole,” Aela shouts, voice raised an octave against the wind. “And it’s sucking the air into it. That’s why it’s suddenly raging.”

I feel nothing as I stare at that new horror. It’s probably shock. While Aela looks unruffled. And I mean literally. She has sprouted her wings, and they’re arched behind her in serene stillness. This must be some sort of celestial forcefield. Either she always had it, like her cousins, or she manifested it here. Whichever, it’s really neat. And it will come in handy.

Seems it will be Aela to the rescue again.

I grab Sarah as she sways with the force of the wind and shout, “So why isn’t it sucking us in too...?”

No sooner have the words left my mouth than we start stumbling toward it, as if pulled by an inexorable gravity. Which, if this really is a black hole, is exactly what’s happening.

“You just had to open your big mouth,” Cara yells as she clings to Aela’s legs as she rises in the air, her feathers now rioting.

So, no celestial forcefield? Or is it simply no match for that thing’s gravity?

I cling to Sarah tighter and yell back at Cara, “Yeah, the black hole decided to work only because I reminded it!”

Our spat is cut short when Jinny barrels into us. She’s almost swept away before Sarah and I each catch a hand and pull her back.

“Wen,” Sarah shouts over the howling wind. “I think the pull isn’t the same on all of us. It seems most powerful on Jinny, and least on Aela.”

It’s only then that I notice it. Clever Sarah.

So is the pull directly proportional to Angel Grace concentration? With the one who doesn’t have it most affected, and vice versa?

Then I notice something else.

Idon’t feel the pull. At all. I’m stumbling only because I’m holding onto Sarah. She’s the one being dragged.

So what does this mean?

If I have no Grace, like Jinny, shouldn’t it be strongest on me, too? Or is it that thing inside me? Is it neutralizing the black hole’s effect on me?

It seems so. But how can I use that to help the others? My strength and weight are not enough to hold them back. Even if I do manage it, for how long?

“I’ll try to break free,” Aela shouts. “If it works, you hold onto me and each other, and I’ll fly us away until we’re out of this thing’s range.”

“Thanks for including us in your decision making, nephilim,” Jinny shouts back. “When we don’t need you to!”

“I don’t even know if it’s possible to escape a black hole’s gravity well, no matter how far I fly, but considering it must have a supernatural component…”

“Stop explaining, Aela!” Cara yells. “Just do it!”

Clamping her lips in a thin line, Aela beats her wings powerfully. But the best she can do is fly for a few dozen feet before being dragged back.

As for me, holding on to Jinny is becoming harder by the second. And is this thing getting larger? Or have we been dragged that much nearer?

“Let me go,” Jinny hisses. “You said you won’t do it again.”

“I won’t—after this time,” I hiss back.

Sarah’s frantic gaze darts between us in confusion, before she yells, “Everyone, lie flat on the ground, or whatever we’re standing on. This’ll give that thing less surface area to work on!”

I immediately do it, dragging her with me, and forcing Jinny’s body beneath me. The other two follow, Aela retracting her now useless wings. Good thing they didn’t argue.

Once we’re lying as flat as we can, Cara’s voice trembles against the wind. “What do you think this is? What is this testing us for?”

“Maybe it’s about how we deal with the problem, until we get sucked in,” Sarah pants. “Since there’s no way we won’t eventually be.”

“You’re suggesting that once we are, we won’t find ourselves in another realm, or even in outer space?” Aela’s voice betrays a crack in her immaculate facade. Seems she’s uncertain if she would survive either scenario. It’s also amazing she’s referring to Sarah for answers. “You think there’s no real danger here?”

“I didn’t say that, since Astaroth said the Trials can be dangerous, but...” Sarah yelps as she wrenches away, as if the tug on her has suddenly intensified.

I almost lose my grip on her before I snatch her back. This time I maneuver her beside Jinny and throw myself diagonally over both.

I’m still swallowing down my heart when Jinny starts fidgeting beneath me. “Stop wriggling, Lizard Brain! I’m the only thing stopping you from hurtling into that cosmic sinkhole!”

“That’s it!” Sarah exclaims, jerking beneath me. I pin her down more securely before pulling back to blink my surprise at her. Her eyes are round with fear—and a tinge of excitement. “You’re not being pulled! You only were when you held on to me.” So she noticed what I did. She isn’t the brains for nothing. “You’re only being dragged now because we are being dragged. This must be your power manifesting! Some gravity Grace, maybe?”

Since I haven’t told her about that thing inside me, that’s a very good explanation for what’s happening here. It may even turn out to be the truth. For what if I don’t have to pretend to have some elemental Grace? What if I do have one, just nothing Godric has ever encountered before, and it would explain everything?

“Now that you mention it, I always sensed something about you. Something totally—still,” Aela shouts, barely raising her head as we inexorably slide closer toward the vortex. “Even your hair is not moving in the wind. Maybe this is your test. If this is your Grace, and it activated to protect you, if you manage to cast it around us, you’d ground us all. Until this passes.”

“Assuming this passes!” Cara chokes in pain, grabbing onto my legs with her still healing hands.

“Try, Wen,” Sarah urges.

Godric’s ominous warning, about how dangerous whatever I have inside me can be, slams into me like a stinging slap.

What if I do try, only to rouse it, and worse, release it? What if it’s even more terrible than this thing that wants to swallow us?

I shake my head, desperate for an alternative. “What if you were right, Sar? That the first trial prepared us for this one, for trusting each other, and sticking together till the end, when this thing pulls us in? Maybe it’ll only spit us back into the Academy!”

“We can’t assume that, Wen,” Sarah gasps beneath me, my now-considerable weight, after Godric’s intensive nutritional bootcamp, hindering her breathing. “Astaroth avoided answering you when you asked if sometimes cadets didn’t make it out. This was as good as admitting some never did. If you don’t try, we might be among those who get lost forever!”

“What-what if I do...” I swallow the jagged lump of dread in my throat. “...and cause something even worse? If I have some kind of gravity powers, what if I end up crushing you instead?”

“We know one thing for certain, Wen,” Cara grunts as her weakened fingers begin to slip off my legs. “We’re going to be sucked in. Based on what happened before, it will prove fatal, if we don’t do something to stop it. Only your gravity powers have a shot at that now!”

“We don’t even know they’re anything like that!” I protest.

“You know how it pains me to say this...” Jinny cries out as she flips on her face, the vortex seemingly bent on snatching her from underneath me. “…but whatever your powers are, they’re our only hope now!”

I snatch a frantic look at the black hole. It’s bigger than ever. We’re getting closer to its event horizon or whatever. There’s no more than a few dozen miles between us and being siphoned into the unknown.

And as some cruel cosmic joke, only I can do something about it. It doesn’t matter to them what kind of worse evil I may unleash. They’d rather take their chances with me.

But I can’t risk it. I can’t.

If only Godric were here! Though he’s unsure how that thing inside me is related to my power, he’s been able to—touch it, towrestle it into submission, to make me aware of it. If he were here, he might have guided me in accessing it, using it, without waking it.

Only he can help me navigate my way out of this fatal situation!

But it shouldn’t be fatal! The archangels seem to really need me. Why would they let me participate in these Trials, if there’s a danger I’d never return?

But right now, I’m not in danger. Only the others. If I let go of them, I’ll stand right here and watch them get swept into oblivion.

Yet, I’ll still be lost. I’ll remain here, staring at that black hole, or roaming this nothingness, till some new horror kills me. If not, till I die of dehydration.

There’s one last possibility. That once they’re gone, as the one left standing, literally, I’ll be transported back to the Academy. Maybe not all Unitas return together, and it would be an elimination after all.

It still doesn’t make sense. Why pair me with these girls, only to deprive me of their “complementing” influence? Before we really did anything together, or became a functional team? And if I don’t blink back into the Academy once they’re gone, why leave me stranded until I follow them in death, in a far slower, more agonizing way?

Unless there’s no sense here, and the archangels really have no jurisdiction or control whatsoever over the Trials.

But I can’t believe these trials are just random, as Astatroth implied. They have logic, purpose, like Sarah said. And like Jinny and I sensed, there’s some presence presiding over this realm. This indicates a sentient will, a premeditated intellect.

But if it’s not the archangels orchestrating them, then who? Who else could have designed those Trials for eons, and dictated their timing and inevitability? What entities could be so much more powerful than they are? And what else, besides Grace powers activation, are these calculating, ruthless Trials after? What are they really testing us for?

But none of this matters now. Only reaching Godric does. Through the connection between us. It does exist. It’s how he sensed Azazel about to squish me. I only hope it’s strong enough I can reach him through it now.

I scream for him, inside my mind.

Godric! Please, please...pick up!

Nothing happens. His presence is nowhere.

Of course it isn’t. It’s a crazy hope, thinking he can sense me across realms. If he could, he would have when I was about to be liquefied by alien maggots.

No. I didn’t reach out to him then. But our connection is real, and realms apart or not, if I call urgently enough, he will hear me.

I pour all my desperation into my voiceless screams.

Godawful—answer me, damn you!

Again, nothing. And something occurs to me. Why he might not be tuning in.

This time, when I scream, it’s fueled with more rage than despair.

If you can feel I’m not in danger, Angelhole, so you don’t have to intervene, I’m telling you now—if anything happens to Sarah, you lose the one thing you really have over me! The one person I value far more than life! If you let her, and the others, go down this cosmic drain, like the nothing you once claimed I am, you’ll get nothing from me. Do you hear me? Nothing!

Our connection remains dead silent. Or maybe it’s nonexistent and I imagined it all.

No. No, no, no. It exists. I feel it deep within the fibers of my being.

But maybe it cannot traverse the realms between us. I can’t waste more time on wishful thinking. I must do something—now.

I focus inward, probing the force neutralizing the black hole’s unstoppable might. I can see it, coiled over its own endlessness.

Before I attempt to unfurl it, something moves. Between my sealed concealments. A code to my destiny, a conflagration of my voracity, a cautery for my soul. It’s vast and ancient. It’s addictive and enslaving. It’s an eternity of torment and ecstasy, of ruin and rebirth.

It’s Godric.

Then he’s there. Standing in the middle of the still maelstrom within me.

He feels like the best thing to have ever existed. And he burns me to my recesses with the inferno of his beauty, his hunger.

What do you need?

He doesn’t move his lips, but I hear him. Not like I heard Jinny in my mind. His presence, his voice—that voice, fills my every cell, abrades my very essence.

I almost sob with relief.

Almost.

His infinite calm lights the fuse of my explosive resentment and despair.

I shriek at him at the top of my being

What do you think I fucking need? To petition for the removal of fucking kale from your fucking dietary dictates? I need to get the fucking hell out of this fucking nowhere we’ve been shoved into by your fucking Sinister Academy!

Where are you?

Argh. You see where I am, you fucking archangelspawn!

I can only see nothingness.

That’s exactly where we are—and we’re being sucked into some kind of black hole!

I don’t feel anything pulling at you.

It’s the others, okay? They think I have some gravity Grace. They want me to extend my ability to neutralize this thing’s pull to them. I don’t know how.

You know how.

Not the time to be cryptic, Godwretch!

Always the charmer, even while facing a black hole.

And I roar loud enough his image wavers like a TV about to blip out.

Just. Tell. Me. How!

You know how to access your—void in the Mindscape. That’s how.

We’re calling it a void now?

Whatever it is, I taught you to navigate it already. Now focus, and cast it over them.

That’s all?

Yes.

What if I can’t?

You must, White. I can’t afford for you to lose them, either.

Really?

Yes. If you lose your Unitas, you will be lost, too.

So it’s an all or none rule?

I suddenly wonder who Godric’s other quartet are. Come to think of it, he never said anything about undergoing these Trials.

Cast your void, White.

What if this void, that terrible slumbering thing you keep talking about, swallows them instead? Or worse? Can you rein it in if necessary?

You won”t make it necessary.

I don’t have time for your reverse coaching strategies, Godawful!

Then it’s fortunate that I stopped time since we connected.

You can do that?

Not for long. Time always slows down for us in the Mindscape anyway, but I put my back into it and halted it completely, while we figure this out.

I feel my proverbial knees going weak with reprieve.

That’s good. Great. Phew. Okay, I like you again.

You never liked me, White. And I never want you to like me.

What does he mean by that? What does he want me to feel about him? Is it what I think, or at least hope?

I can assure him I certainly don’t like him, or anything else that’s tame or sane. I lust after him with a violent passion to fill even that void inside me. I would swallow him whole if I could.

On our channel, I only say, Yeah, you’re right. You’re impossible to like. So—we have time.

I already explained, there’s no time right now. Literally.

Don’t you be a literal Angelhole. You know what I meant.

Do I ever know what you mean, you confounding creature? Now—enough. Let me feel and see what you feel and see. All of it.

I open myself to him, like he taught me. And I see him frown.

What?

Even though we’re not wasting time, I can see you’re almost out of it in the realm where your friends are. This black hole is so close it will soon start tearing them apart.

Oh, hell no, no!

The only reason they’re not already scattered cells is because of you. You have been accessing that void unconsciously, and it’s been protecting them. But that won’t be enough for much longer. You need to do it consciously, to lash it into doing your bidding, and holding its reins. I suggest you get on with it.

Yeah, sure. Get on with harnessing a bottomless void, to take on a black hole, and snatch its meal from the maw that eats stars. Easy peasy.

Focus, human.

Human again, huh?

Or whatever you are. Now, like I showed you when you’re fighting me in there. Let it out, let it expand, blanket them in it. Get it done.

And I try. I can feel that—void clearer than ever now, with him nudging it and provoking it into unfurling. But no matter what I do, or what he does, it doesn’t do what I want it to do.

It’s resisting me, Godric. It doesn’t want to cast its protection over them!

I can sense that. Odd. I thought it would be eager to…

Not the time to ponder the whims of whatever this thing inside me is. How do I get it to cooperate? Quick, spout something wise—and useful.

I’m on it. Keep your hair, your masses of it, on.

What the fuck! Was that a joke? Now? I swear, if I get back, I’ll find a way to kill you!

Such a violent creature.

That’s it! You’re dead, Godawful! Dead!

Shut up, White. I’m trying to lend you Grace Energy.

Huh? How? Why?

Bloody Hell, there’s no end to your questions, even now. Fine, just so you’ll let me focus on what I’m trying to do. Using my power from this plane didn’t work, so I’m trying to transfuse it into you through our connection. It should bolster your ability to control that thing.

That shuts me up as I struggle to grasp what he’s trying to do. I wait, certain my heart is no longer beating, until he nods.

I try again—and nothing. He shakes his head in resignation.

As I feared. There’s no other way then. Brace yourself. I’ll buffer it as much as I can, but the transfer will be a terrible shock this time, since I’m giving it all to you.

All your Grace Energy? Godric, you’re practically a god!

The magnificent bastard has the nerve to flash me a dimple.

Indeed. Good to see you finally made peace with the fact.

That’s it. When and if I’m back, I’m petitioning the archangels to take you off my case.

There’s no getting rid of me, White.

I thought you can’t wait to shake me off your hands!

It’s amazing you’ve survived that long, being this oblivious.

You mean you don’t want to anymore? Because you’re now invested in fulfilling your mission of weaponizing me? Or whatever it is you want to do with me?

He doesn’t respond for a while, then he shakes his head.

You’re never escaping me, White. That’s another fact. Live with it.

We’ll see about that. I bet the archangels value me more than you, at least for now. I bet I can make them transfer me to Lorcan. Or better still, Gideon.

I didn’t know you hated these two.

I don’t hate them. I hate you.

Try to transfer to either of them, and he dies.

You—bastard!

If you mean that my parents never married, or had any form of holy union, then yes, I am a literal bastard. I’m also one in every other sense.

Seriously? Now you tell me stuff about yourself? When I’m about to get sucked into space, or lost in another realm?

You never asked. And you’re going nowhere but back to the Academy.

I do nothing but ask, dickwad. And you don’t know that.

You don’t ask the right questions. And I do know. I’m not losing you. Now shut your foul mouth. Divesting myself of all my Energy isn’t something I’ve ever done. You’ll understand if it’s tricky.

Just give me some of it, that should be enough.

I already tried that. By the time it reached you, it was too weak to force that void into submitting to you. Actually, the texture of my power only managed to enrage it, and made it retract farther. Now it needs a major blow to shock it into letting you harness it.

Surely giving it a kick in the pants doesn’t require all your Energy!

You forget I’ve been dealing with it on a regular basis. It takes a considerable portion of my Grace Energy to control it in the Mindscape. With you on a different plane of existence, I estimate said kick in the pants needs either the shockwave of a few nuclear warheads—or all my power. Guess which I have access to.

You really think you can transfuse it all into me?

I don’t think. I will.

Then you must be out of your fucking birdbrain! I can’t handle all your power!Just give me a little more and let’s see.

We can’t afford experiments. I’m not giving you too little again, and risking it imploding on itself altogether. If it does, you won’t be able to access any of it to shield your friends. You’re protected by default by its very existence within you. But they will disintegrate in seconds.

The horror of that vision makes me almost shudder apart.

But if he gives me that much power and I explode, I will still fail them.

White, you can handle all my power. You can handle anything.

He really thinks so?Or is this a coach’s pep talk to his underdog fighter? What he hopes will incite a miracle a la Rocky?

But just what is Grace Energy? Is it like Essence? If so, I have to tell him about my previous experience with his. If his expended Essence zapped me, the whole unadulterated reservoir will detonate me.

Listen, Godric, if your Energy and your Essence are alike…

They’re not. Energy is the fount of powers in any supernatural being, while Essence is their life force itself. The younger and weaker the being is, the more connected they are. They become more separate as a being ages or their power grows. Mine are completely separate.

Whoa. Why am I hearing about this for the first time?

I didn’t find a reason to inform you before. Even more so lately, when you started tapping into Energy.

What the hell? How do you know that?

His sigh of exasperation fills non-existence around me.

Because some of the samples you collected recently were Essence tinged with Energy, and far more potent for it.

But isn’t that what you want? Why didn’t you train me to recognize it? Why keep me in the dark, when it doesn’t serve your purpose of strengthening my power?

I ‘kept you in the dark’ because I didn’t want to strengthen your Energy siphoning. I wanted it to remain at that minor, accidental level until I knew how to regulate it, or eliminate it. It’s far more dangerous than Essence harvesting since Energy rarely regenerates, and reports of Energy loss would have no doubt ensued. I had enough you-originated conflicts on my hands.

Sounds fair, I guess. But was this Energy what I saw around Azazel? Did I actually see the fount of his power? Hell, I now wish I’d sunk my talons into it. I would have loved to bring that monster’s power-level down a peg or two.

What matters here is that you can handle everything I give you, White. You’re the only one who can withstand me. You always did. And always will.

Suddenly, something devouring lashes out of him. That hunger I can swear he can’t contain at times. I freeze under its onslaught, as it besieges me in a cage of obsidian craving, tears the rage of my own desire from my probably endless depths.

He’s no longer thinking of giving me only his Energy. Neither am I. I’ve been craving it all from him, since that first day.

But in all my feverish scenarios, I certainly never dreamed he’d give me the fucking fount of his power. It’s something I can’t take.

What will happen to you—without all your Energy?

Why, White, I didn’t know you cared.

Answer me, you infuriating lout!

Hmm, lout. I didn’t realize you knew such words.

Godric!

Icy reluctance douses the inferno in his eyes. My mind almost fractures with alarm. It’s that bad.

A full drain will leave me comatose. Until my Energy returns to me.

H-how do you know it will return?

I know.

He sounds so certain. But that doesn’t reassure me in the least.

How long will that take?

I only have estimates from somewhat similar precedents. Maybe a year.

A year!

That’s the most optimistic outcome.

Everything inside me collides in dread. But I still have to ask.

A-and the worst case scenario?

A hundred years.

Do you mean I—I might never see you again?

Yes.

The very idea feels like an end to everything. A plummet into that void, for eternity.

Not see him again? I can’t even imagine it. I won’t.

Wouldn’t you just love that? You’ll be rid of me, after all.

I gape at him.

No, I won’t let him joke about that. I want to hurt the hell out of him for even suggesting it.

Yeah. I’ll throw a parade. And get assigned to Lorcan or Gideon asap.

Do that, and I will kill them, painfully, whenever I awaken. Now, shut the bloody hell up. I’m trying to focus.

On what? Planning your coma for the next century, followed by your only friend’s and brother’s murder?

I swear by all that’s unholy, White, I will find a way to strangle you into silence across the realms.

But it’s not his fury that finally shuts me up. It’s the reality of what he’s doing sinking in.

He’s tearing his Energy, which fuels his endless powers, and his very consciousness along with it, from his body and being, and giving them to me.

How will it feel to him? Will it hurt? Of course it will! It might be like tearing off his own skin, or scouring his every cell! And what if it leaves him comatose, forever? What if it kills him? It will leave him vulnerable, helpless. I bet to him that’s even worse than death.

I can’t even wrap my mind around such a concept.A powerless Godric. The universe would tilt on its axis in mourning.

I can’t let him do that. I can’t.

But what if this is the only way to save the others? Save Sarah?

No. I thought I’d do anything, sacrifice anything for her, but now I know.

I can’t sacrifice him. For her, or for anything else.

My only currency here is my own life. I would gamble it in heartbeat for theirs.

Godric, don’t do it. I’ll do it on my own. Whatever the cost.

You can’t, White. The only way for you to use that void now, while keeping it slumbering, is an energy injection of celestial magnitude.

Even so, half of your Energy is certainly that. And it will keep you awake!

You need it all because you’re in another realm. From what happened the first time, by the time it reaches you, it’ll be a mere fraction. But it should be enough.

Oh!

This is even worse! Most of his Energy will dissipate in the transfer. Even if it returns to him as he insisted, it might only be that fraction. And the unique force of nature that he is will be no more. That’s an outrageous waste of cosmic proportions.

That’s it, Godric. I forbid you to do it! I’ll deal with it. You just keep your back to time’s door as long as you can until I figure it out!

He doesn’t answer my frantic yelling for long moments. When his voice fills my being again, it almost ruptures my heart.

Make good use of my Energy, White. Save yourself and your Unitas. And whatever you do, don’t get transferred to Gideon, unless you want him dead, in a year, or a century.

Don’t—don’t say that. Don’t make it sound like goodbye.

There’s another long silence before he shakes his head.

It doesn’t sound like goodbye, White. It is.

Then his image disappears.