The Fallen Sequence (150 page)

“Only it isn’t a sanctuary of God,” Dee said simply. “Quite the opposite. This is the place where Jesus suffered and died. Therefore it has never been a sanctuary as far as the Throne is concerned, and that’s the only opinion that really matters. A sanctuary is a safe haven, a refuge from harm. Mortals step within these walls to pray, in their infinitely morbid way, but as far as your curse is concerned, you will not be affected.” Dee paused. “Which is good, because Sophia and your friends are inside.”

“How do you know?” Luce asked.

She heard footsteps on stone on the east side of the courtyard. Dee squinted down the narrow street.

Daniel grabbed Luce’s waist so swiftly she fell into him. Turning a corner beneath a street sign that read
VIA DOLOROSA
, two elderly nuns strained under the weight of a large wooden cross. They wore simple navy habits, thick, sensible sandals, and beaded rosaries around their necks.

Luce relaxed at the sight of the old believers, whose
average age seemed to be eighty-five. She started to move toward the women, obeying an instinct to assist the elderly with a heavy load, but Daniel’s grasp on Luce’s waist did not loosen as the nuns approached the great doors of the church with excruciating slowness. It seemed impossible that the nuns would not have seen the group of angels twenty feet away—they were the only other souls in the plaza—but the struggling sisters never so much as glanced in the angels’ direction.

“A little early for the Sisters of the Stations of the Cross to be out, isn’t it?” Roland whispered to Daniel.

Dee straightened her skirt and pinned a rebellious strand of hair behind her ear. “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but we’ll simply have to kill them.”

“What?” Luce glanced at one of the feeble, sun-weathered women. Her gray eyes sat like pebbles in the deep folds of her face. “You want to kill those nuns?”

Dee frowned. “Those aren’t nuns, dear. They are Elders and they must be disposed of, or they will dispose of us.”

“I’m disposed to say they already look disposed of.” Arriane shifted her weight from side to side. “Apparently Jerusalem recycles.”

Maybe Arriane’s voice found the nuns and startled them, or maybe they were waiting to arrive at precisely the right location, but at that moment, as they reached
the church doors, they stopped and turned so that the long beam of their cross pointed across the plaza, toward the angels, like a cannon.

“Time, she is a-wasting, angels,” Dee said through tight lips.

The pebble-eyed nun bared veiny gums at the angels and fumbled with something on the base of the beam. Daniel shoved the satchel into Luce’s hands, then positioned her behind Dee. The older woman didn’t cover Luce exactly—the top of her head came only as high as Luce’s chin—but Luce got the idea and ducked. The angels unleashed their wings with brutish speed as they fanned out on both sides—Arriane and Annabelle veering left, Roland and Daniel diving right.

The giant cross was not a pilgrim’s penitential burden. It was an enormous crossbow, filled with starshots meant to kill everybody there.

There was no time for this to register with Luce. One of the nuns released the first shot; it sizzled through the air, heading for Luce’s face. The silver arrow grew larger in Luce’s vision as it swirled closer in the air.

Then Dee jumped.

The tiny woman spread her arms open wide. The starshot’s dull tip collided with the center of her chest. Dee grunted as the arrow—harmless to mortals, Luce knew—glanced off her tiny body and clattered to the ground, leaving the transeternal sore but unharmed.

“Presidia, you fool,” Dee shouted at the nun, dragging the arrow backward with her high heel. Luce leaned down to pick it up and slipped it inside the satchel. “You know that won’t hurt me! Now you’ve annoyed my friends.” She gestured broadly at the angels darting forward to disarm the costumed Elders.

“Stand down, defector!” Presidia replied. “We require the girl! Surrender her and we will—”

But Presidia never finished. Arriane was at the Elder’s back in a flash, brushing the veil from her head, taking her white hair in her fists.

“Because I respect my Elders,” Arriane hissed through her clenched teeth, “I feel I must prevent them from embarrassing themselves.” Then she lifted off the ground, still holding Presidia by the hair. The Elder kicked the air as if pedaling an invisible bicycle. Arriane pivoted and slammed the old woman’s body into the cornice of the church’s façade with such force it left an indentation when she collapsed in a twisted heap, hands and legs sticking out at grisly angles.

The other incognito Elder had dropped the cannon-cross and was trying to escape, running hard for an alley that opened into the opposite corner of the plaza. Annabelle took up the cross and became a javelin thrower, rearing back like a tightening coil, springing to release the heavy wooden
T
.

The cross arced through the air and speared the
fleeing Elder in her sloping spine. She fell forward and convulsed, impaled by the replica of an ancient instrument of execution.

The courtyard fell quiet. Instinctively, everyone turned to look at Luce.

“She’s okay!” Dee called, raising Luce’s hand in the air as if the two of them had just won a relay race.

“Daniel!” Luce pointed at a flash of white disappearing behind Daniel’s back, into the church. As the double doors slowly shut, an elderly monk they hadn’t noticed could be heard ascending the staircase inside.

“Follow him,” Dee shouted, stepping over Presidia’s mangled corpse.

Luce and Dee ran to catch up to the others. When they entered the church, it was dark and silent. Roland pointed toward a flight of stone steps in the corner. They opened into a small stone archway, which led to a longer staircase. The space was too cramped for the angels to spread their wings, so they picked their way up the steep steps as quickly as they could.

“The Elder will lead us to Sophia,” Daniel whispered as they ducked under the stone archway to the darkened staircase. “If she has the others—if she has the relic—”

Dee laid a firm hand on Daniel’s arm. “She must not know of Luce’s presence. You must prevent the Elder from reaching Sophia.”

Daniel’s eyes flickered back at Luce, then up to Roland,
who nodded swiftly, rocketing up the stairs as if he had run through old stone fortresses before.

Barely two minutes later, he was waiting for them at the top of the cramped staircase. The Elder lay dead on the floor, lips blue, eyes glassy and wet. Behind Roland, an open doorway curved sharply to the left. Someone on that landing was singing what sounded like a hymn.

Luce shivered.

Daniel motioned for them to stay back as he peered past the edge of the curved stairway. From where she stood, pressed against a stone wall, Luce could see a small portion of the chapel beyond the landing. The walls were painted with elaborate frescos, lit by dozens of small tin lamps suspended by beaded chains from the vaulted ceiling. There was a small room with a mosaic of the crucifixion spanning the entire western wall. Beyond this was a row of highly decorated vaulted columns several feet wide, portioning off a second, larger chapel that was hard to see from here. Between the two chapels, a large gilded shrine to Mary was covered in flower bouquets and half-burned sacramental candles.

Daniel cocked his head. A flash of red swished past one of the columns.

A woman in a long scarlet robe.

She was bending over an altar made from a great marble slab adorned with a white lace sheet. Something lay on that altar, but Luce could not tell what it was.

The woman was frail but attractive, with short gray hair cut in a fashionable bob. Her robe was cinched at the waist with a colorful woven belt. She lit a candle at the front of the altar. The flowing sleeves of her robe slipped up her arms as she genuflected, exposing wrists adorned with stacks and stacks of pearl bracelets.

Miss Sophia.

Luce pushed off Daniel to climb one step higher, desperate for a better view. The wide columns obstructed the majority of the chapel, but when Daniel helped her go just a little farther up the stairs, she could see more. There were not one but three altars in the room, not one but three scarlet-robed women ritually lighting candles all around them. Luce didn’t recognize the other two.

Sophia looked older, more tired than she had behind her librarian’s desk. Luce wondered briefly if it was because she had gone from surrounding herself with teenagers to running with beings who hadn’t been teenagers in several hundred years. That night, Sophia’s face was painted, lips like blood. The robe she wore was dusty and dark with rings of sweat. Hers had been the chanting voice. When she started up again in a language that sounded like Latin but wasn’t, Luce’s whole body clenched. She remembered it.

This was the ritual that Miss Sophia had performed on Luce the last night she’d been at Sword & Cross.
Miss Sophia had been just about to murder her when Daniel came crashing through the ceiling.

“Pass me the rope, Vivina,” Miss Sophia said. They were so consumed with their dark ritual that they did not sense the angels crouched along the stairs outside the chapel. “Gabrielle looks a little too comfy. I’d like to bind her throat.”

Gabbe
.

“There is no more,” Vivina said. “I had to double bind Cambriel here. He was squirming. Ooh, he still is.”

“Oh my God,” Luce whispered. Cam and Gabbe were there. She assumed the presence of a third robed lady meant Molly was there, too.

“God has nothing to do with this,” Dee said under her breath. “And Sophia is too crazy to know it.”

“Why are the fallen being so quiet?” Luce whispered. “Why don’t they resist?”

“They must not realize that this place is
not
a sanctuary of God,” Daniel said. “They must be in shock—I know I would be—and Sophia must be using it to her advantage. She knows they’re worried that anything they do or say might make the church erupt into flames.”

“I know how they feel,” Luce whispered. “We have to stop her.” She started for the door, emboldened by the fresh memory of the Elders they’d destroyed outside, by the power of the angels behind her, by Daniel’s love, by
the knowledge of the two relics they had already discovered. But a hand clamped her shoulder, drawing her back into the corridor.

“All of you stay here,” Dee whispered, making eye contact with each of the angels to ensure they understood. “If they see you, they will know Luce is with you. Wait here.” She pointed to the columns, thick enough for three angels to hide behind. “I know how to handle my sister.”

Without another word, Dee strode into the chapel, her heels slapping the black-and-white tile floor.

“I’d say you’ve been given quite enough rope, Sophia,” Dee said.

“Who’s there?” Vivina yelped, startled in mid-genuflection.

Dee crossed her arms over her chest as she walked around the altars, clucking in mock disapproval of the Elders’ work. “Very shoddy dressing. Leave it to Sophia to bring her B game to a sacrifice with cosmic and eternal implications.”

Luce was desperate to study the reaction on Miss Sophia’s face, but Daniel held her back. There were a scraping sound, a melodramatic gasp, and a cruel soft cackle.

“Ah yes,” Miss Sophia said. “My tramp sister returns, just in time to witness my finest hour. This will trump your overrated piano recital!”

“You’re really very dumb.”

“Because I don’t have the recommended brand of rope?” Sophia snorted.

“Forget the rope, dope,” Dee said. “You’re dumb in many dozens of ways, not the least of which is thinking you might get away with this.”

“Do not condescend to her!” hissed the third Elder.

“There’s really no other way to approach her,” Dee instantly replied.

“Thank you, Lyrica, but I can handle Paulina,” Sophia said without looking away from Dee. “Or what do you have people call you now? Pee?”

“You know very well it is Dee. You only wish you knew why.”

“Ah yes,
Dee
. Biiiiiig difference. Well, let us enjoy our brief reunion as best we can.”

“Let them go, Sophia.”

“Let them go?” Sophia cackled. “But I want them dead.” Her voice rose and Luce pictured her hand sweeping over the angels bound upon the altars. “I want
her
dead most of all!”

Luce couldn’t even gasp. She knew whom the librarian meant.

“It won’t stop Lucifer from erasing your existence.” Dee’s voice sounded almost sad.

“Well, you know what Daddy always used to say: ‘We’re all Hell-bound, anyway.’ Might as well try to get
what we want while we’re on this Earth. Where is she, Dee?” Sophia spat. “Where is the mewling child Lucinda?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Dee’s voice was smooth. “But I have come to keep you from finding out.”

Now Daniel let Luce press a little closer to the first chapel’s entrance.

“I hate you!” Sophia shouted, pouncing on Dee. Roland turned to look at Daniel, asking with his eyes if they should interfere. Daniel seemed confident in the desideratum’s abilities. He shook his head once.

Sophia’s assistant Elders watched from their altars as the two sisters rolled across the floor, moving out of, then back into Luce’s view. Dee on top, then Sophia, then Dee on top again.

Dee’s hands found Sophia’s neck and squeezed. The old Sword & Cross librarian’s face glowed red as her hands strained against Dee’s chest and she struggled to survive.

Slowly, Sophia worked her knee up until it pressed deeply into her sister’s stomach to push her back. Dee’s arms were fully extended, reaching to keep their hold on Sophia’s neck. She gazed down at her sister’s rage-distorted face, her eyes on fire with hatred.

“Your heart turned black, Sophia,” Dee said, her voice soft with something like nostalgia. “It was like a light went off. No one could turn the light back on. We
could only try to stop you from running over us in the dark.” Then she released Sophia, allowed her to draw a huge and panicked breath into her lungs.

“You betrayed me,” Sophia gasped as Dee took her sister’s collar in her hands, closed her eyes, and moved to slam Sophia’s skull against the tiles of the mosaic floor.