Michaela watched Clark pack up their few belongings in the cabin and wondered, for the millionth time, if she should just steal his car and leave him behind. But the truth was, she kind of liked his company. He was certainly interesting enough.

Clark’s jeans were the skinny, skin-tight version that looked as though they were more than a few years old and not once washed. He wore heavy worn motorcycle boots with the laces untied and duct tape holding the soles together. Dirt and grease covered his white shirt, and his pink Mohawk flopped into his eyes, but Michaela thought she liked him well enough to maybe even consider him a friend.

“Let’s hurry. I’m starved,” Clark said as he tossed their few bags into the car. Michaela stood with her arms crossed as she waited. She noticed Clark kept the whiskey tucked in the crook of his arm while he heaved the last bag in the car.

“What happened with the Descendants?”Michaela asked.

Clark’s body radiated energy; he barely stood still. She didn’t know if he was excited to start their little adventure, or if he was excited to leave one behind.

“With what?” Clark asked. Michaela never responded. He looked over his shoulder. “What?”

“Stop avoiding my question by asking another question. It’s annoying.”

Clark leaned against the car. “My father kicked me out.”

“Why?”

“Why do you need to know so badly?” Clark smirked. He raised the bottle to his lips for another shot. Instead of going down his throat, it went across his face as Michaela yanked the bottle from his grasp. He opened his mouth to protest.

“I think you’ve had enough. You are a fugitive, and the Descendants are probably hunting you down as we speak. So yeah, I need to know why your father kicked you out.”

“Oh, that’s ripe coming from the actual fugitive who killed an angel,” Clark shot back.

Michaela’s face went blank. Behind her flat, empty eyes staring off toward the woods, she only saw Molloch’s face. Her insides clenched violently. For a moment, she’d forgotten she had killed someone.

“Come on, let’s go,” Clark said, looking at the ground.

Michaela took a long drink from the bottle as Clark walked to the car. He pretended not to notice. A moment later, she settled quietly into the seat next to him as he eased the engine over.

“So what ab—” Clark cut off abruptly when Michaela reached toward his stereo dials.

His hand jerked out and clasped hers. The hairs on his arm stood on end before he quickly released her. She stared at him, eyebrow cocked.

“Okay, we need to go over the rules. First rule: never touch a man’s radio. That’s a 322 watt, thirteen speaker surround sound with a twelve inch subwoofer in the trunk. Second rule: there’s no—hey!”

Michaela hit the power then started twisting different knobs, looking for the radio tuner. There were too many buttons to know what to do with. “Calm down. How do I change the station?” she asked.

Michaela met his glare. Their stare down lasted until the car wrenched into a pothole. Clark cursed and straightened the wheel.

“Use this knob. Just don’t touch any of the settings, okay?”

Clark navigated the twisting service road while Michaela floated from station to station until she finally settled on a local classic rock channel. After twisting the volume down, she settled back into her seat. He reached over and turned it back up.

“I don’t like silence,” he said at her questioning glance.

“Fine. Where are we?”

Michaela rolled down her window so the warm breeze cooled her face as they drove. If she looked close enough, she caught glimpses of a stream through the dense trees. The air smelled clean and fresh beneath the warm summer sun.

“Near Olympia State Forest in Kentucky. It’s close to Lexington. And it’s way outside your fall radius.”

Michaela refused to think about her fall even as the fresh wounds on her back tingled at the memory. She tilted her head back to watch the patches of sky flash through the treetops. A few minutes passed until she realized she daydreamed of flying. With a jerk, she sat upright.

“So what’s your problem with the Descendants?” she asked quickly.

“What makes you think I have a problem with them?”

“Your eyes get hard when you talk about them even though you try to cover it up with a misplaced bad boy attitude.”

“Misplaced? What?” Michaela raised her eyebrows at him, clearly indicating he had not convinced her. Clark stammered on. “Well, uh, I guess it’s just not for me.”

“What is the motto? Duty, honor, and…?”

“Blood. Duty, honor, and blood.” Clark coughed and shifted in his seat.

“It doesn’t sound that bad,” Michaela said.

“You know, it’s not easy being a human in an angel’s war. We try to fly below the fallen’s radar. We don’t interfere or engage them. We just clean up the messes. But it’s still a war. People die. My mom died in a car accident. She was driving my dad’s car when a fallen mistook her for him and ran her off a bridge. The car burned to just a smudge of metal. They didn’t have enough left of her to identify. They had to use her teeth.”

Michaela studied him. She hadn’t expected that. Before, she thought of him as a spoiled Keeper’s kid, trying to prove a point. Clearly she was way off base. She warmed to him some more.

“It sounds like you should hate the fallen, not the Descendants,” she said.

Clark snorted. “I don’t care about the Descendants. I hate my father. He wasn’t even fazed when she died. I was twelve when I lost her, and he told me that many people had lost their lives for this cause. The asshole said it was an honorable way to die.”

“There is no such thing as an honorable death to a twelve-year-old kid.”

“Well, if my father thought it was such a good way to die then he should have been in that car,” Clark said.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Trust me. I do.” Clark took a deep breath.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Michaela said. She caught Clark’s confused glance, so she continued. “It doesn’t seem fair that you were forced to keep fighting for a cause you had lost faith in just because you were born into it.” She paused then said, “Even the angels get a choice.”

“Hand me the bottle?” He gestured toward the whiskey at Michaela’s feet.

“No, you don’t need it. Is she why you drink so much? I can always smell it in your blood. It never leaves.”

“Some things never do,” Clark answered. “What did you mean when you said there was a darkness in you now?” Clark turned his attention back to the road as he merged onto the highway. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

Michaela stared at her hands for a long moment before she spoke. “I see Molloch’s face every time I close my eyes. It’s like he’s always sitting right next to me. I can hear his voice in our conversations. His laughter rings in my ear. I can feel his breath on my skin. He’s a part of me now. A darkness settled in my soul the moment I killed him. I felt it…” Once again Michaela looked back out the window. Her mind was on the snake inside her, and it answered with a rattle of its tail. She shivered.

“Do you think his spirit is like ‘with’ you now?” Clark took a hand off of the wheel to make air quotes.

“Something from him settled in me. But it wasn’t his spirit. He’s gone.”

“To die and haunt the living seems like just another impossible burden,” Clark said mostly to himself.

They drove in silence for a long time. Clark pulled off only once to get food. Hours could have passed, but they didn’t pay attention to the time. The afternoon sun was hot and high in the sky when Clark hit traffic. The cars around him slowed, stop and go, for a few miles and then completely came to an idling halt.

“Wow, this sucks,” Clark said.

“What?” Michaela looked over at Clark.

“Car accident, maybe?” Clark rolled down his window and shouted at the next car over, “Hey, dude. What’s going on?”

A man with a handlebar mustache and a sasquatch hunter hat looked over at Clark. “Greyhound bus turned over. It’s pretty bad. Could be here a while.”

“Thanks, man.” Clark waved. “Gotta love southern hospitality,” he said to Michaela.

“Did he say a bus had overturned?” she asked, perking up. She stuck her head out the air and sniffed. Immediately, she recoiled.

“What did you smell?”

“Death.”

“Ugh,” Clark said, shifting away from his open window.

From what Michaela had smelled out the window, the accident was horrible. She imagined the number of souls that would be carried to their judgment.

“Well, doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere anytime soon.” Michaela ignored him. Her mind settled on one thought alone.

Souls.

A piece of the puzzle settled into place.

The humans will win this war. They will be my army.

Lucifer said it even though it was a preposterous thing to say. The war would be won as wars are won: with blood, apathy, bitter victories, brutal losses, and now—death. Clark was right, there was no place for humans among the angels’ war.

Yet Lucifer wouldn’t have spoken the words if they hadn’t meant something to him. His words had sat in Michaela’s mind, waiting for her to truly hear them. Finally, she did. Realizing Lucifer might be using the holy angel’s unrest to take advantage of the souls made Michaela instantly sick. He had said he would take Earth and Heaven from her. He was planning something. She struggled to breathe.

Lucifer had been baiting her. He knew if the fallen had involved the souls in one of their plans then she would have to do something. He was probably enjoying a good laugh thinking about her running around on holy angel errands when she clearly wasn’t holy anymore.

“How far away is it?” Michaela glanced at Clark, chewing her lip.

“The accident?” Michaela nodded. “It’s hard to say. Maybe a couple miles?”

“We need to go there.”

“Why?” Clark asked.

“To see Loki,” Michaela answered quietly.

Deciding to turn herself in hadn’t felt like betraying her promise to Gabe, but this did. He wouldn’t want her even going and talking to Loki. But Loki was the only angel who would know if Lucifer was taking advantage of the souls.

“So why are we going to see the Angel of Death?”