A trickling trail of blood slowly made its way down Clark’s forehead. Michaela had one hand braced on the dash with her gaze narrowed on the angels in front of them. The car stopped spinning. Burnt rubber singed Clark’s nose as he listened to the car click and wheeze.

The angels’ narrow wings tipped in red stretched out to a span of nearly ten feet. Their faces were a harsh kind of beautiful with long chins and pointed noses. They glared at Michaela and Clark with light gray eyes. The angels walked toward the car, their shadows passing over the gravestones standing sentinel in the cemetery on both sides of the road. With a shaking hand, Clark locked the doors.

“Who is that?” he asked in a crackling whisper.

“Seraphim,” Michaela answered. Clark glanced over his shoulder as the Descendants got out of their car. They were trapped. Unless they wanted to run through a cemetery, which Clark did not.

“The good kind?” Clark asked. He wiped the blood dripping into his eye.

“Help me out,” she said. Confused, Clark watched as she undid her seatbelt, moving slowly and wincing in pain.

“Out? As in out there? You were unconscious like two seconds ago,” Clark said. “Let me talk to them.”

Michaela shook her head, breathing heavy from the exertion.

“Those are Descendants back there—”

“I know,” Michaela snapped.

“Well, they are probably going to take me back for deserting, so you need to stay in the car and leave as soon as I distract everyone.”

Michaela’s hand clutched the door handle. She looked back at Clark with an eyebrow cocked and an are-you-so-stupid expression, which Clark noted she had learned from him. “That’s your big plan? Distract the Seraphim before you turn yourself over to the Descendants while I make a getaway?”

“Your plan it is,” he said under his breath as Michaela weakly opened her door.

The Seraphim and the Descendants drew within twenty feet of the car. He limped around to Michaela’s side and helped ease her out, his arm wrapped low on her hips to support her weight. The moon lit a path on the potholed pavement in front of Clark.

A seraph stepped forward, distinguishing him as their leader. He wore no shirt, only filmy black pants that floated around his ankles. He was slender, but every muscle on his body stood out. His hair was stiff and unnatural, slicked back from the wind. He pointed a long finger at Clark and Michaela.

“You both will be coming with us,” he commanded. The angel’s voice sounded too alien to come from the shape of a human mouth. The pauses between its words were clipped and awkward.

“Where are we going?” Clark whispered to Michaela.

“Heaven, he thinks,” she answered. Her eyes locked on the Seraphim, who clearly heard her because they returned her gaze with hated glares.

“How would they take me to Heaven?” Clark asked. His eyes shifted from Michaela to the Seraphim. His sweaty palms were leaving wet spots on Michaela’s shirt.

“Your soul,” Michaela answered.

“You are not needed. Leave now,” the seraph said to the Descendants. Clark looked over his shoulder. The Descendants looked more nervous than he felt, which made him feel slightly better.

“Sir, the human is a deserter. Our orders are to bring him back for trial,” one managed to say. Clark flipped him off.

“No. You aren’t.” The seraph’s words were final.

“Yes, sir,” the Descendants said, speaking over each other. They nodded briskly and retreated to their cars. Clark looked back at the angels as the Descendants drove away. The night breeze flopped a lock of hair into his eyes.

“You have been summoned,” the leader spoke to Michaela. She snorted.

“Oh sure, I bet that will be a fair judgment, just like Gabriel’s.” Her hand clenched Clark’s arm weakly.

“The Aethere have sent us to bring you back.”

“I won’t go back as a traitor,” Michaela said.

The Seraphim saw Michaela’s injury, and Clark knew they calculated the fight would be easy, almost laughable. But Michaela leaned forward as if she was ready to spring into action. Clark’s grip on her tightened, worried she would actually try it.

“You have no shame? Betraying Heaven, and you stand here proud? You have no honor.”

“And what do you have, seraph? You fight for a leader who bargains human souls with the devil.” She spat the words out.

A seraph to the left looked toward their leader with confusion written on his face. “Jehoel? What does she say?”

Jehoel shook his head violently with his fists clenched tight against his sides. “Don’t listen to the lies of a fallen.”

“Call me what you will, Jehoel,” Michaela began. “But think about how your precious Aethere weaseled their way into the Archangels’ position.”

“From the serpent’s tongue!” another seraph exclaimed.

When Michaela made no move other than a defiant shrug of her shoulders, Jehoel signaled the other Seraphim to circle around them. They closed in, and Clark held Michaela tighter mainly for his own comfort.

“You will see me for what I am,” Michaela said before the angels came any closer. She stepped away from him and tugged at the frayed hem until inches of her flat, white stomach was exposed. “Help me with my shirt,” she said when Clark didn’t move.

“Excuse me?” Clark asked, watching as Michaela struggled.

“Lift my shirt,” Michaela said through gritted teeth. Clark understood, and together they pulled the thin fabric up enough to expose her back, which Michaela turned toward Jehoel.

“Have you seen a fallen angel with scars like these before, Jehoel?” she asked.

The angry burns from the explosion oozed across her back and arms. They were red and bloody, but healing. Such simple wounds—enough to kill a human—were easy to tell apart from the other, more powerful sort.

Two long lines jagged down the middle of her back from beneath her shoulder blades to above the top of her jeans. The scars were raised and looked like a flaming whip had been thrashed across her skin. They were an unnatural black color. Dark bruises spanned across her shoulders where the wings had been yanked from a source deep within Michaela. Even her back looked slightly twisted as if Lucifer altered the alignment of her bones when he tore off her wings.

She let her shirt fall back down and she turned back around. “My wings were taken from me. If I were a fallen, do you really believe I would be treated with such disrespect?” Michaela was exhausted. She leaned heavily against Clark.

The Seraphim stood quietly for a long time as if Michaela had proved her point. For a moment, Clark thought they had convinced them. Finally, the Seraphim blinked awake from their trance and slowly winded back to life like an old toy.

Jehoel’s eyes settled on Michaela’s arm. He traced the dark scars that wove around her arm and spiraled toward the crook of her elbow. Clark watched the seraph closely, and he knew immediately when the angel decided not to listen to Michaela. The angel’s eerie eyes flicked to the other Seraphim.

They converged like a flock of vultures. The Seraphim yanked Michaela from Clark’s arms before he could even blink. Michaela struggled against Jehoel and three other angels. Fresh blood spread across the back of her shirt as her injuries ripped anew. “Listen to me!” Michaela screamed. “Just listen!”

“Let her go!” Clark shouted.

He cussed and spewed into the quiet night air outside the metal fence of the cemetery. A seraph kicked him hard in the chest. Michaela disappeared from his vision as Clark flew backwards. His back slammed into the concrete.

The air in his lungs jarred out, and his vision slanted drunkenly for a moment. Two Seraphim walked over to him. One held a long dagger with edges framed in gold. Clark’s eyes grew wide, and he kicked and punched at anything within reach.

The red words on his skin were alive as he flailed his arms through the air. One of the Seraphim clamped down on his forearm hard enough that Clark felt his bones bend. He didn’t register the pain or notice the second seraph holding the dagger crouch beside his throat. Instead, his eyes focused on the foreign, secret language inked onto his arms.

His eyes swept across the letters as they formed words, which he heard spoken aloud in his mind. He felt their power, their capabilities. They consumed him with their sheer beauty.

The dagger settled against his throat. In the next millisecond, the seraph would apply the faintest pressure and end his life—dashing it out with a thin, red line. It was almost that millisecond later when Clark spoke two words that stood out from the others on his arms.

The words weren’t English or human. They were the magic of the Watchers. For the tiniest of breaths, nothing happened except time seemed to pause, allowing the two Seraphim to recognize the distinct sound of a language the angels thought was long lost.

Time whirred back into motion, and everything was real again. The two Seraphim’s eyes ignited. They jerked back, dropping Clark and the dagger to the road. They opened their mouths and screamed.

The sound was a whistle, and it was complete torture. Clark forgot what he had just done. His body writhed against the pain of the sound. He clasped his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut. Horrified, the other Seraphim and Michaela stopped to look at the angels stumbling away from Clark.

The Seraphim didn’t stop shrieking as they looked at their outstretched hands. They were burnt, but not like Michaela’s back. The skin on their hands was black, charred. From the tips of their fingers, smoke rose into the air, stinking and putrid, and not like any burnt smell Clark had experienced before. A breeze started and blew against them all. The two Seraphim’s skin crumbled and joined the wind.

The seraph who restrained Clark was burnt the most. He had no skin covering his bones up to his biceps. Even his muscles and tendons and inner parts of his arm were singed and melted into dripping ooze. The seraph holding the dagger was burnt on his right hand. The tips of his fingers were bone poking through the tattered edges of peeling skin.

The injured Seraphim turned and ran from Clark without a backwards glance. They took to the air with frantic beats of their shivering wings. The other Seraphim stepped away from Michaela and retreated.

The only seraph remaining was their leader, Jehoel. He stared at Clark. If he had believed Michaela before, his eyes now said he assumed the worst of her. He finally looked at her before he stepped into the air and flew away, taking with him any hope of concealing Clark’s markings from the holy angels.

Clark propped up on his elbows with a shocked, slightly terrified expression. He watched the sky where the Seraphim disappeared. When he looked at Michaela, they both shifted their gaze to the marks on his arms.

For once, Clark couldn’t find an appropriate curse word.