Clark was petrified of dying, which was ironic given his birthright to fight in a war of angels. He always drove the speed limit, overdosed on vitamins, and never ran with scissors. But no matter his precautions, he was going to die.

It was also inescapable, especially if one’s body was plummeting straight toward a face-to-face meeting with it. But Clark didn’t want to die.

His body hit a wall, but it wasn’t the wall he expected. The air seemed to gel around him, slowing his trajectory until he completely stopped and hovered above the rock floor of the cave. He looked down in confusion. He reached out a hand and brushed the rough stone two feet away. His hand resisted, like he was moving through water.

“What the hell?”

His voice broke the spell, and he was released. The rock smashed into him from its short distance away. It hurt like hell, and Clark bit his tongue…but he wasn’t dead.

Slowly, he pushed up from the floor.

His legs wobbled, but he managed to stay standing. He glanced around, confused. Then he looked up. It was a long fall from the hole above him; he barely managed to see it. Next, he studied the exact spot where he should be splattered.

How drunk was he?

He inspected himself, probing for bleeding of any kind. Dirt streaked his ancient Harley Davidson shirt, which he brushed at absently. After inspecting his jeans, he noted no new rips, which was another surprise. He hadn’t even broken his phone. His tongue seemed to be the only injury, and it smarted like a redheaded bitch.

“I need to cut back on the Jack,” Clark said shakily when he realized he made the nearly one hundred-foot fall from the cave’s roof completely unscathed. His insides turned mushy, and a cold, shivering chill overcame him.

And then he puked violently.

When he was done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Tears brimmed along his eyes and actually threatened to shed. Clark swiped them away, feeling immediately embarrassed. He imagined his father’s expression if he saw Clark crying.

“I almost freaking died. I can cry if I want to!” he told himself in his own defense.

His voice echoed, and Clark realized he stood in a cavern. He meant to figure out the real-life explanation for what had stopped his fall, but the sound of a waterfall brought him back to every night he’d woken drenched in sweat from the dream. The cold air condensed against his clammy skin—as it did in the dream. The pressure made his ears pop—as it did in the dream. He got a really bad feeling—as he did in the dream.

He was here.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Clark swore.

He didn’t want to step forward, but he was pulled. There was a shadow in the darkness that could have been anything; it didn’t have to be the body of an angel. His eyes roamed the space again until he was certain it was the cave from his dream.

He was.

Clark paused for only a second, because he knew what he would find. Then he took off, skidding across the slippery rocks and crashing into the small stream. When he reached Michaela, he crouched beside her, hesitating before touching her.

Her face was half submerged in the water. Long, pale arms splayed outwards at her sides. Blood no longer poured from her like it had, and he was thankful for that mercy; blood made him sick and weak in the knees. Instead, it was dried across her back, the ground, everywhere except in the stream that ran clear and pure beneath her. She was half drowned and half torn apart, yet she still lived. He knew that before he saw the water bubble by her lips.

And she was naked. He hadn’t remembered that part.

Clark yanked off his jacket. The whiskey didn’t lend his actions much care, but he drew her from the water and awkwardly tucked the jacket around her shriveled form. He avoided looking at her back, which had poured forth not only blood, but muscle and bone.

Michaela groaned in his arms. Her head lolled back, and fresh, gold blood trickled from between her cracked lips. Cuts covered her battered face, and bruises, shaped like fingers, stained the pale skin of her throat. Her arm flopped over, exposing the horrible black marks underneath her skin that stank of infection.

Clark wrapped his arms around her, avoiding the gaping hole in the middle of her back. He shifted his numb feet. Times like this made him wish he’d spent more time in the gym. He gritted his teeth and prepared to lift her from the water.

For the second time that night, “Welcome to the Jungle” blared into the cavern, echoing back and forth across the rocks. Clark jerked in surprise and nearly dropped Michaela back into the stream. She gurgled in pain. Propping Michaela against his shoulder, Clark ripped at the back pocket of his jeans to get his cell phone out.

“Hello?” he croaked.

He prayed he didn’t sound drunk. He focused hard on how he remembered himself talking when he was sober.

“Where the hell are you? Why did you answer your satellite phone instead of your cell phone?”

“Dad, I—” Clark began. He couldn’t help it, a surge of excitement went through him as he imagined what his father would say when Clark told him he had found the Archangel Michaela. Clark would be a hero for rescuing her.

“Come back now. A meeting has been called.”

“Okay, but I—” Clark started again.

“Now, Clark. Michaela betrayed Heaven,” his father snapped.

Clark paused, stunned. That wasn’t what he expected. He must have heard his father wrong. Michaela would never betray Heaven, and, at the moment, she looked like someone had betrayed her. His brain played catch up through the fog of Jack, near-death experiences, and near dead angels.

“What?” was all he managed, which was definitely not up to sober Clark’s standards.

His father sighed forcibly into the phone. Clark pictured him sitting in his ridiculously uncomfortable chair behind his much-too-large desk covered with way too much paperwork while he silently cursed his failure of a son.

“Michaela has been marked as a traitor. The holy angels consider her an active threat, so get your ass back here so you can be briefed.”

“No, dad—” Clark started to argue.

“Damnit, listen to me!”

“But, dad,” Clark continued like his father hadn’t spoken. “Michaela wouldn’t do that.” His heart clanged. “She wouldn’t. You always said she was the best of all the angels. She couldn’t fall. She wouldn’t. She—”

“Shut up, Clark!” Clark swore the phone vibrated from the sheer force of his father’s angst. “She organized an invasion of Heaven. She and the Archangels have fallen. Now stop asking questions and get back here.” His father paused, like he sniffed Clark’s breath over the phone. “Are you drunk?”

“No! No way,” Clark answered too quickly.

His father was silent for a long moment. Clark kept his mouth shut like he’d been told.

“Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she could see you now.”

His father’s words cut Clark only slightly. They weren’t anything he hadn’t heard a million times before, but this time they were literally heavy in his arms. He looked down at Michaela and knew, in that moment, that contrary to what his father claimed, his mother would be proud. In some way, Clark was sent here to find Michaela. And he had. For the first time in his life, Clark had done something right.

“What about you, Dad?”

Clark sensed his father’s anger through the phone like the lash of a whip. He had gone too far. His father drew in a deep breath, readying to launch into an epic ass chewing when Michaela groaned.

“What was that?” his father snapped into the heated silence.

“Nothing.”

Clark hung up. He looked down at Michaela. If things were different, he would report her to his father, who would report her to the holy angels to be dealt with. Being a Descendant of Enoch, the blood in Clark’s veins had sworn an oath that dictated Clark would obey the orders of the angels and, by extension, the Descendant’s leaders. He should turn her in, but he wasn’t going to. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. He would do anything in his power to help Michaela.

His mother had led him to this cave so he could save Michaela, and he wasn’t going to give up on either of them now.

With a grunt, he lifted Michaela. She stirred. Her eyes blinked open momentarily to reveal a shocking cobalt blue so rich she had to be from Heaven. He sighed knowingly. He’d always been a sucker for blue eyes.

“We are totally screwed, Michaela. Now, where the hell is the exit?”