Avi Marie's Arc

Chapter 21 of 30

The horse had dropped through the tear in the clouds with the stone. Avi Marie stood in the weeping garden and turned to face the light above. The trapped angels were breaking free. She could hear their wings again, close now. Her hands felt weak. This high up, her power ran thin, the way it drained in the low places long ago. She reached for the old warmth inside her chest and found only a flicker. They came fast. Three angels dropped through the rift, then two more behind them. Their robes were white and clean. Their faces held no anger, only purpose. The first raised a hand toward her. A cold pressure pressed against her eyes, the same blindness that had stolen her memory the night her mortal died. She threw up her arms and stumbled back against the fountain. "Give it here," the lead angel said. "The stone. Where is it?" "Gone," Avi Marie said. "You're too late." The pressure grew. Her sight narrowed to a gray tunnel. She groped along the fountain's rim for anything, a stone shard, a weapon. Her fingers found the carved base of the weeping angel. There was no crystal here to trap them. There was no ally at her side. Azrael had spent his scepter at the pass. She was alone, and she was losing. Then a shape rose through the rift below her. It was not the horse. It was Petra Lund, climbing hand over hand up a rope of knotted cloud, her charcoal suit smudged, her jaw set. She had never flown in her life. She came anyway. "Stop," Petra called up. Her voice was flat and clear. "The stone is on the ground. Petra Lund saw it. The ledger names your masters. So does the plate." She reached the garden edge and stood. "Blind her and it changes nothing. Everyone below already knows." The lead angel turned toward Petra. The pressure on Avi Marie's eyes broke. Her sight rushed back. She saw the angels hesitate, glancing at one another. Their secret was no longer buried in a cathedral of gold scripture. It was down in the world, in a locked archive, in the hands of a woman who kept records for a living. "You cannot silence a whole ledger," Petra said. "You would have to kill the city." The lead angel lowered his hand. "Then we answer for it," he said, "or we run." He looked at the others. As one, they turned and fled back through the rift, upward, toward whatever masters would hear the news first. Avi Marie sank against the fountain, breathing hard. She had not beaten them with power. Petra had beaten them with proof. The threat above was broken. But the angels had not surrendered. They had run to warn the ones who gave the order. "They're going to their masters," Avi Marie said. "Yes," Petra said. "Then we go too. Before they hide."