Chapter 23

I’d never seen Raphael before, but there was no doubt it was him as he walked in with the lithe grace of a big cat, his energy so potent that it sizzled over my skin in a near-painful way. I flinched back.

He was tall, glossy black hair falling to his shoulders, his porcelain-colored face almost too pretty to be classically masculine, yet his beauty was incredibly arresting. I tried to look away, but my eyes strayed back to him almost of their own accord. Those cheekbones of his could have cut glass. Slightly turned up at the corners, his light blue eyes were framed by thick, dark lashes.

Behind him, another angel came into the room as well, his power paling in comparison to Raphael’s.

The archangel regarded me with such coldness it frosted my veins. “So you are the traitor. You don’t look like much.”

“Your Highness,” I said in greeting and bowed forward from my sitting position until my forehead touched the floor.

Regardless of the already precarious place I was in, it was always a good idea to adhere to formalities. No use in antagonizing him further by not performing the appropriate greeting.

“I have a hard time believing you were able to free the demon on your own,” Raphael said.

I swallowed hard. “But I did, Your Highness. I worked alone. The only one who inadvertently helped me was Naamah, though she didn’t know what I was planning. When I told Ithuriel earlier that I was with Naamah while the demon escaped, it wasn’t entirely true. After we flew off together, I left Naamah and traveled to your estate to free the demon. Naamah had no idea. She thought I left to clandestinely meet with a supervisor for an illicit tryst. Being a good friend, she agreed to cover for me. She thought it was just a small lie and that it wouldn’t be a big deal. At no point did I tell her what I truly planned to do, and she didn’t suspect.”

This was the story we’d agreed I’d tell once I surrendered myself to the authorities, in order to explain why Naamah had pretended to have been with me while I had, in fact, been somewhere else.

Relationships between angels were forbidden if there was a direct chain of command between them so that any nepotism and favoritism when it came to promotions could be ruled out. It would make sense that I would have wanted to avoid detection if I had an affair going with a direct supervisor, and it would be just as logical that Naamah, who flaunted rules of propriety, would gladly help me conduct such an illicit meeting.

As long as Naamah stuck to the same story, they’d have no cause to suspect that she’d helped me with the demon escape. She likely wouldn’t even face any repercussions for trying to aid another angel in circumventing a small rule like that—it would just be shrugged off and swept under the rug.

“I know,” Raphael said.

I twitched in surprise. “You do?”

“Naamah told us as much.”

I sucked in a breath. So they had already interrogated her? Oh, God.

“Is she okay?” I strained against my chains. “Where is she?”

“On her way home, I presume.” His blue eyes glinted coldly. “She was very upset when she came to see me.”

Wait, what? She’d gone to Raphael?

He tilted his head, regarding me with a look that half quizzical and half satisfied. “You really thought she’d keep your secret, didn’t you?”

I opened my mouth, only to close it again with an audible click. Confusion churned in my stomach. “I…yeah. That’s what we agreed on.”

He studied me with cold fury for a moment. “Naamah is many things, but a traitor is not one of them. Lucky for us, you put your trust in the wrong person, and lucky for her, her sense of duty is far better than your own.”

“What?” I breathed. There was something here he wasn’t saying, something important I hadn’t yet grasped.

He bared his teeth. “Did you really expect her to stay silent in the face of treason? It is one thing to ask her to cover for an illegal tryst, but an entirely different thing to want to bind her to secrecy after you confessed to her that you freed the demon!”

I rocked back as if he’d slapped me. What? Naamah had said I’d confessed to her? That hadn’t been part of our plan.

A nauseating suspicion slunk through me. Raising my gaze to the archangel again, I asked in a whisper, “She came to see you? Unprompted?”

“Just so.” His power vibrated in the air. “After she’d returned with you from your flight together, she sought me out immediately. Told me all about how you’d come back from your supposed meeting with your supervisor distraught and covered in blood. When Naamah pressed you on what happened, you confessed to her that you’d just freed the demon prisoner.”

I made a small sound of distress, something in my chest twisting painfully.

“Apparently,” Raphael went on, “you entered a relationship with the demon while he was somehow masquerading as an angel, and by the time you found out his true nature, you had fallen in love with him, to the point where you discarded your duty for the treasonous act of helping him escape. You trusted Naamah to keep your secret, thinking her your friend. Unfortunately for you, Naamah’s loyalty is to Heaven first and foremost, and she couldn’t reconcile covering up a crime of this magnitude with her conscience.”

Numb from shock, I shook my head. Betrayal raked bitter claws down my chest.

I’d thought we’d had an agreement. Hadn’t it been Naamah’s own suggestion that there should be some form of delay between the successful rescue and me turning myself in? Why would she now go ahead and sabotage that plan by throwing me under the bus?

She knew I wanted to find my mom first, I’d told her so myself, and she’d seemed so sympathetic and understanding. So why did she now deny me the time I needed to locate my mom’s soul, robbing me of the one chance I had at getting a peaceful, positive goodbye?

The hot burn of anger and disappointment crawled through me, and I clenched my hands into fists.

“What do you have to say to that?” Raphael asked, an edge to his voice.

I drew in a shuddering breath. “It’s all true.”

What use was it to deny anything? I was supposed to be tried for treason in order to fall and reunite with Azazel. It was just—the timing was all wrong!

“Who helped you with breaking the demon out?”

I lowered my eyes, my gaze falling to the gray stone floor. “No one.”

Raphael uttered a soft snort. “You couldn’t have done this on your own. You must have had an accomplice. Who was it?”

The betrayal I felt whispered the idea to give Naamah up like she’d done with me. Quid pro quo. Why should I protect her when she’d thrown me to the wolves?

With my mind’s eye, I saw the destruction in New York again, the wailing humans half-burned to a crisp, the slaughtered man in that convenience store, his guts spilled over the floor. I saw hounds roaming the streets, killing indiscriminately, men, women…children.

That was why.

As much as I wanted to lash out in my anger and resentment, as much as I felt the urge to hurt Naamah by snitching on her in turn, I wouldn’t risk the safety of Earth for my own petty revenge.

I shook my head. “I worked alone.”

Raphael made an unhappy sound, and he proceeded to grill me on different aspects of the escape, but I held firm and didn’t move from my story. I remained silent on things I couldn’t well explain without telling on Naamah, like how I’d been able to incapacitate all those guards—they’d found the darts but hadn’t been able to analyze what substance had been used, and I valiantly refused to enlighten the archangel.

His frustration at my obstinance and continued silence on important questions got so bad that his power slipped its leash more than once and charged the air to the point of pain. I flinched and gritted my teeth, suffering through it, until he finally saw the futility of this interrogation and stormed out. His angel subordinate left with him, and I was once more alone in the dimly lit room.

Maybe they’d keep me here for an indefinite period of time, continuing to question me in the hopes that one day I’d break. Or would that be considered torture, too, in some way? They could well have some leeway in how they interpreted that rule.

I didn’t know for how long I sat there, lost in the spiral of my own thoughts, until the door opened again, and Ithuriel stepped inside with three more angels and extra sets of chains.

Without a word, she unlocked my manacles from the restraint that bound me to the floor, brought my arms to my front, and relocked the shackles. Immediately, she fastened the new chains to the manacles around my wrists. Two angels grabbed a chain each and took position on my left and right.

“Get up,” Ithuriel barked at me, then turned on her heels and marched out.

The two guards flanking me yanked on the chains and pulled me up and forward, the third angel falling into step behind us.

I didn’t even ask where they were taking me, a weird numbness descending on my heart and mind.

Outside the soul stable, Ithuriel paused and turned to me. “All right, traitor. We’re going to fly now, and you’ll have to keep up unless you want to be dragged through the air. Those chains will stay on. If you try anything, we’re allowed to use brute force to get you back in line.” She flashed me a smile that was reminiscent of a shark. “On a personal note, please do try something.”

I gulped and shook my head.

She gave the command to move out and then extended her wings and launched into the air. My guards and the third angel did the same, and I hastened to magic my wings into place and take off as well.

I didn’t quite make it in time and ended up being dragged upward by the chains locked to my manacles, swinging wildly for a few seconds until I caught the breeze with my wings and leveled out in between the two angels holding on to the chains. My wrists and arms ached, the metal of the shackles biting into my skin.

We flew for what felt like hours, the muscles in my back screaming, until Ithuriel finally started a descent. I scanned the landscape underneath us and frowned. I knew this place. This was Gabriel’s estate.

My heart beat high into my throat as we made our way down to a courtyard that was, apparently, the typical choice of architecture to feature a gate. This portal stood on a dais within the square, its currently empty frame in the style of a gothic doorway, slender columns topped by a high-reaching, pointed arch.

Next to the gate, several angels were waiting, among them Raphael, as well as Gabriel himself. We landed in a flutter of wings, and Ithuriel and the others greeted the archangels with proper respect to their own ranks. I sank down on my knees and bowed my head to the floor, gritting my teeth at the habit.

“Chaya,” Raphael said as I got to my feet again. “You have been found guilty of the crime of treason. As punishment, you will be stripped of your wings and the God-given grace within you, and cast out onto Earth, to roam the mortal realm far from the blessed power of our Lord. May the eternal banishment be payment for your sins.”

I inhaled a trembling breath. Even though this had always been part of the plan, sudden dread about the process gripped me tight. We’d talked about it, I’d gone over it in my head a dozen times, and I knew it was the only way to resume my life with Azazel, and yet…it felt so weighty, so final, and a part of me—likely the one powered by divine energy—recoiled at the thought of being thrown out of this realm, my connection to the divine severed forever.

Commotion to my right made me look up. Next to Gabriel, someone moved to the front of the line of witnesses, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I recognized Naamah’s face. She angled her head toward Gabriel and murmured something that sounded like, “Allow me to say goodbye.”

He nodded, and she stepped up to me.

I stiffened when she leaned in, but she wrapped her arms around me, her power a soft buzz against my skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in my ear, so low only I could hear her.

“Why?” I choked out, equally quiet.

“I promised him,” was her soft answer, and it struck me like an electric shock. “I owe him that much.”

“Wha—” I was about to ask, but she’d already let me go and retreated back to her place next to Gabriel, her eyes downcast and her expression pained.

She’d promised him? But I’d thought she and Azazel had agreed to give me time! I’d thought I’d explained it to him. He’d said he understood. That I could take all the time I needed, that he’d wait for me.

Confusion and hurt churned within me, hot pokers of betrayal once more lancing my heart. My eyes burned, and the shapes of Naamah and Gabriel blurred.

Metal clinked as someone unlocked the manacles around my wrists, but I barely noticed. A shove between my shoulder blades pushed me toward the gate, now glowing with that telltale shimmer. Before I climbed the steps leading up the dais, Raphael approached me, his face mercilessly cold.

“Wings out,” he said with lethal quiet.

Trembling all over, I resisted the instinct to disobey and keep my wings hidden and protected. I remembered with crystal clarity how Azazel had forced Inachiel’s wings out when he’d refused to make them show. I had no doubt that Raphael would do the same and that it would hurt like hell.

They’d be taken from me anyway.

Tears spilling from my burning eyes, I extended my wings, casting one last look at the sparkly white that I’d never get to see again. I’d grow new ones in Hell, yes. It wasn’t like I was losing the ability to have wings entirely.

But these…these were the ones that had marked, more than anything, my transition from human to more. They’d defined my identity for the past years, the promise of immortality in those snow-white feathers, of strength and speed and power. They’d given me the means to fly, to soar through the sky like I’d always fantasized about when I’d been a human. They were mine, as much a part of me as my legs, my arms…my heart.

A sob racked my body as Raphael reached out, his hand glowing with power. “I hereby take from you, Chaya, the spark of divinity that binds you to the Lord. I excise from you the light of His love, His warmth, His protection. You are no longer welcome in His realm. I revoke your right to draw strength from His power, and I take from you, with His might, the wings with which He has blessed you.”

His hand glowed brighter and brighter, and then a flash of light shot out of his palm and directly into my chest. Pain seared through me, and I screamed, my back bowing. It felt like acid pouring through my veins, stealing all warmth, all light, every shred of happiness within me.

My lungs seized, my muscles spasming, and then my wings went up in flames.

My screams turned to shrieks, the pain so debilitating that I couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t feel anything but the horrible, corrosive burn scorching all the nerves in my wings and down into my back.

The acrid smell of seared flesh and smoldering feathers permeated the air, filling my lungs with every hurting breath. I fell to my knees and wept, the sudden lack of weight at my back like a knife to the heart.

Someone hoisted me up to my feet again, and my tear-blurred gaze swung around without focus. Horrifying pain still throbbed between my shoulders, echoed by an emptiness within me that hurt on a soul level.

I couldn’t feel this realm anymore. Before, there’d always been a subtle connection to this world, to every single part of this land, from the stones to the trees to the animals that wandered the plains, not to mention to the steady flow of divine energy underneath it all, but now I only felt a hollow distance.

It was as if someone I loved had just thrown me out into the cold, leaving me to watch them through a tightly sealed window, yearning for their warmth.

I shuddered, and my stomach turned over.

“Go now,” Raphael said, “and bear the penance for your crime.”

And before I could take another breath, the angel behind me shoved me through the gate.

Cold darkness rushed in from all sides, along with pressure so intense I screamed again, yet no sound came out of my mouth. A second later, light flashed, and I hurtled out of the gate—though not to stumble onto the ground on the other side, no.

I fell.

Because there was no ground.

A startled cry escaped my throat as I whirled through the air without any sense of direction, glimpsing high above me the shimmer of the gate that got smaller and smaller as I plummeted.

What the fuck?!

That gate hung in the sky! None of the other portals I’d seen had ever been like this, all of them anchored to the floor in some way, like a regular door.

This gate opened directly into the air hundreds of feet above the ground.

The ground that was rapidly coming closer.

My heart stumbled in panic. The earth rushed toward me with terrifying speed, and there was fuck all I could do about it. My wings were gone. I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t break my fall.

Tears streamed out of my eyes, the wind whipping them away in a millisecond, and I flailed uselessly.

Seconds later, I slammed into the ground with the force of a small missile.

A deafening boom rent the air, and the earth quaked. Pain exploded in every part of my body, my mind blanking for a moment. Rocks and debris fell around me, dust whirling up in huge billows, and I wheezed and coughed.

For a long, long time, all I could do was lie there in the rubble, my broken body plastered on the ground. All I knew was pain. Even the heave of my chest to draw in air sent spikes of terrible hurt into every nerve ending. My vision kept flashing white with the waves of agony rolling through me.

Oh, fuck.

Even the worst of my crashes while I’d learned to fly hadn’t been this painful.

With a groan, I tried to move—only to scream at the pain shooting through my mangled limbs. Sobbing, I flopped back onto the ground, weeping while my body burned with agony, my tear-blurred gaze on the immaculate deep blue of the sky above me.

“Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?” a male voice said from somewhere to my right.

I jerked, grunting at the new arrows of pain, but I managed to haul myself to a half-sitting position in order to glance around. The scorched spots on my back where my wings had been ached sharply at the movement, and my arms and legs seemed nauseatingly broken.

I was blinking furiously to clear my eyes of the dust swirling around when my gaze snagged on the shape of someone leaning against one of the huge rocks thrown up by my crater-inducing impact on the ground. I sucked in a breath as I recognized the taste of the male’s energy. Demon.

“Who are you?” I croaked, flinching at the sound of my own voice. God, I might as well have taken a cheese grater to my vocal cords, as the effect would have been the same.

“Haniel,” he replied, tilting his head, his ice-blond hair falling into his face. “And you must be Zoe.”

I frowned at him, then my eyes widened. “You’re here to take me to Hell.”

“Just so.”

I exhaled a growling breath, irritation swooping through me. It took several tries to scramble to my feet, but I gritted my teeth, grabbed the rock next to me with bloody fingers, and breathed through the pain of balancing on broken legs.

I glared at him. “So he can’t even be bothered to show up and claim me himself?”

Considering that Azazel and Naamah had gone against our agreement and my express wish to find my mom before initiating my fall from grace, the least he could have done was be here in person to take me to Hell. The fact that he’d sent someone else to collect me galled me, my blood heating with anger.

Haniel gave me a look one would send a bumbling idiot. “Has your mind been damaged in the fall? Or have you always been stupid? Any demon or angel with two brain cells knows he can’t come here.”

“What?” I shook my head in confusion. “Wait—who do you work for?”

He smirked. “Who do you think I work for, sweetheart?”

I gulped, a horrible suspicion creeping up on me. “Azazel,” I said in a small voice.

Haniel laughed. “Oh, adorable. No, honey, he’s not who sent me.”

Oh, no. Fear twisted my gut.

He straightened from his perch against the rock, hopped down into the crater to where I stood, and paused right in front of me. Giving me a smile so sharp it could slit throats, he leaned in and said, “I hereby claim you in the name of Lucifer.”

* * *

Dear reader,

I know, I know! Another cliffie! And a mean one! Please don’t throw tomatoes at me! Kittens are okay, but I’d ask to please gently toss them.

On a serious note, you won’t have to wait that long for the next book, thankfully. Book 4 in the Infernal Covenant series will be titled All’s Hell That Ends Well, and I promise that it will, indeed, end well. Zoe and Azazel will get their deserved happy end, and the series will find its conclusion.

You can already preorder the final book (the release date is set out farther than the true publishing date will be; I’ll pull the release forward when the book is done, probably sometime in October).

Many hugs and my apologies for being a mean author once again. ^.^

Nadine