Clark backed away, hands outstretched. Michaela snatched his arm before he turned and ran. The pain of her nails breaking through his skin had Clark’s eyes darting to hers.
“They are only familiars. They feed off your fear. Don’t look them in the eyes. Don’t even think about them. And definitely don’t be afraid.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Clark nearly shouted, eyes jumping from Michaela’s face to the dogs.
The familiars were within ten feet. Cold sweat spread across Clark’s forehead. His grip on her hand was painful. Michaela felt the spike in his pulse. He was terrified.
She yanked his arm, making Clark stumble closer to her. “Look at me!” Michaela hissed. “They are just in your mind,” she continued as the dogs snapped their massive teeth like they disagreed. “It’s just a trick,” she said calmly, almost bored.
Five feet away, the giant dogs stopped stalking and bounded from the slick, waxed floor. Clark squeezed his eyes shut, chanting, “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not—shit!”
One dog hurtled into him like a semi-truck. Clark’s feet lost contact with the ground as he flew backwards. His hand wrenched from Michaela’s.
Clark hit the floor hard with the weight of the dog pressing into his chest. Clark strained to keep the familiar’s snapping jaws from making contact with his flesh. Its fierce, ripping snarls filled the still air of the hall.
“Clark,” Michaela said. She crossed her arms. “You’re okay.”
Clark’s grip slipped. The familiar’s slimy teeth sank into Clark’s neck, pillaging for his jugular. He screamed with his eyes clenched close. Michaela heard a crunch.
Michaela stood over Clark as he kicked and struggled on the floor. His eyes were desperate and begging her to help him. She leaned over, her eyes soft and reassuring, and slapped him across the face.
“Ow!” Clark glared at her, his hand on his face. A second later he realized the dog was gone.
Michaela stretched out her hand. She pulled him to his feet, steadying him for a moment. Clark took a shaky breath.
“Just a trick, huh?” Clark said shakily, but he managed a slight, trembling chuckle. His hands went to his neck, feeling for the bite mark.
“There’s nothing there but red marks,” Michaela answered for him.
“Could they have killed me?”
“Yes.” Michaela shrugged. “It’s how the fallen influence the human’s behavior.”
“I certainly feel influenced.” Clark took a shaky breath. He studied Michaela. “Are you okay?”
Michaela stared at him blankly until Clark rolled his eyes. She said, “Come on, let’s keep going. We don’t have long before more familiars come back.”
They already saw one jail here, but as soon as they rounded the corner, they found another. Instead of bars and chains, this jail consisted of white walls and padded cells. Simple numbered doors with no handle and only a small square viewing window indicated the cell’s position. From where Michaela stood, she guessed there was close to a hundred doors spanning the length of the hall. The lights hummed quietly above their heads, but otherwise there was no sound.
Clark walked to the nearest door. Standing on his toes, he pressed his nose to the thick glass, straining to see inside. Michaela assumed they would find something different in this jail, and, confirming her suspicions, a pale, skinny hand slapped the glass inches from Clark’s face.
He leapt backwards. “Did you see that?” he sputtered, looking at Michaela with wide eyes.
Michaela approached the window slowly. She stood only as close as she needed to see into the room. Positioned in the middle, standing with its arms limp and hanging, was a creature. It returned Michaela’s stare with hollow eyes. It had no pupils, only dull colorless orbs. Its skin was nearly translucent although Michaela detected a subtle shimmer radiating from its body. Its head was pointed and bald; its face was sharp angles and hollow lines. A white gown hung loosely from its skinny frame.
The creature turned and shuffled away. On its back, in a cutout space in the nightgown, knobby, boney wings protruded. The wings were featherless, merely hollow bones tucked against a skeletal back. They had grown so contorted Michaela wondered if they even worked.
She withdrew from the window, running a hand over her face in thought.
“Well?” Clark stared at her. His arms were crossed over his body like he warded off a chill. “That’s no angel,” he added.
“No,” Michaela said quietly as she stared back toward the window, which remained empty. “It isn’t an angel.”
“So what was it?”
“I think it used to be an angel…” She allowed her eyes to close for a moment. She needed to keep moving, but her body was a lead weight. Her heart broke for the creature inside the cell even if it was a fallen. Her mind went back to the word Asz had used to describe Cassie’s work: monsters. She fought off a shudder and forced herself to move away from the door.
“That’s messed up,” Clark said behind her.
Michaela continued down the hall, checking each window as she went. In each cell was an angel like the one she had seen in the first cell. They all had varying degrees of decay. Some slumped on the floor, nothing but useless bones and flaky skin. Others surged against the door with a strength that strained the barrier.
Michaela turned, peering behind her for Clark. He leaned into one of the doors like he was trying to pour himself through the metal. His fingers pressed against the window’s ledge, drawing him up so he could get a better view. Something akin to reverence clouded over his nearly neon blue eyes. The air warped around his body until Michaela blinked her eyes a few times.
“What is it?” she called to him.
“I don’t know.” He didn’t avert his gaze when he answered her in a quiet, awed voice.
Michaela had to push him aside when she reached the door. She took in the creature’s long, luminous strawberry blond hair. Beguiling eyes, a mixture between gray and green, stared back at Michaela. The skin along her body glowed under the intense lighting. And a simple smile graced the tiny bow of a mouth, like the creature recognized Michaela.
“What is she?” Clark asked feverishly. He pointed at the door. His eyes were impatient as always. “What is she?”
“She’s a Nephilim.”
Clark’s mouth popped open to form a little ‘o.’ His eyes were wide and comprehending. Michaela was glad to see the reverenced haze gave way to a slight sheen of fear.
“They weren’t all killed in the flood along with the Watchers?” he asked.
Nephilim were the Watchers’ bastard children born of human women. They were an angel of sorts, without wings but still powerful beyond measure. They bore the powers of their fathers—sorcery. They also had the beauty and perfection of the angels, only their bodies were of the weak, human variety with red blood. The Archangels, with Michaela leading, had sought to kill off the Nephilim with one great flood.
“We missed a few,” she answered. Every now and then she would hear rumors of one popping up. They were animals to be hunted, to be despised.
“But what is she doing here?”
“I’m wondering that too,” Michaela said. Her gaze leveled on the red marks on Clark’s arm. He saw the direction of her stare and hid his arms behind his back.
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” he volunteered hopefully.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” she said softly.
“That’s really reassuring.”
“Come on,” Michaela commanded.
They walked almost to the end of the hall. Michaela paused in front of a set of double doors. She saw bright laboratory lights shining inside a large room.
“What is it?” Clark asked, peering over her shoulder.
Michaela didn’t answer. Instead, she pushed through the doors and into a long, expansive laboratory. Machines of all sorts hummed and whirred above the noise of the lights clicking above their heads. Cabinets, sleek and clean, lined the white walls above neat metal counters. The frigid air smelled like alcohol. Nearly twenty metal gurneys lined the length of the room.
But that wasn’t what Michaela noticed first—it was what was on the gurneys.
Strapped down to each gurney was a fallen angel. Large leather bands encircled their shoulders, hips, and ankles. Each angel’s black powerful wings were tucked tightly against their back, flush with the table. The confinement had to be uncomfortable, yet none of the angels moved even as the double doors swung shut loudly behind Michaela and Clark.
Standing next to each angel was a pole containing a bag of red, thick liquid. It ran from the bag down a small tube and into the angels’ arms through a needle. Michaela sniffed the air to confirm her fear. The IV was full of human blood, which explained why the angels weren’t moving. Human blood was like a drug to angels. It was also toxic.
“This isn’t good is it?” Clark asked. He sounded nervous.
Michaela stepped closer, drawing between two gurneys. Now she noticed the angels’ jaws were pried open by a metal contraption wired around their heads. Above their mouths, like a little cloud, was a shifting, hazy bubble of air. It blurred the angels’ faces beneath it, contracting and expanding to match the angels’ breaths.
“What’s that in their mouths?” Clark’s voice was right over her shoulder. Michaela peered closer through the hazy air. Squinting, she managed to make out the blurry outline of a white, tiny object.
“Maybe we shouldn’t…” Clark started.
But Michaela was already reaching inside the wide, dry mouth of the fallen next to her. As her hand passed through the cloud of air above the fallen’s mouth, an electrical surge shocked her. She gritted her teeth and forced her hand to stay steady as the shock worked its way up her fingertips to her wrist and up into her forearm. Before the shock went any farther, she pinched the object off the angel’s tongue and withdrew her hand.
Clark and Michaela both looked, open mouthed, at the object on her palm. It was a single, tiny feather. Michaela gasped. She cursed and twitched her hand, shaking the feather free until it fell to the floor. She rubbed her hand where the electrical current had zapped her.
“What was that?” Clark asked, breathless.
She backed away, pulling Clark with her until they were pressed against the double doors leading out of the lab. “It was a soul.”
“A soul of what?” Clark sounded skeptical. “The angel’s soul?”
“No,” Michaela answered. “It was a human soul.”
Without the feather in its mouth, the hazy air above the angel’s mouth was gone, like a bubble burst. From where she stood, she could see the tiny, exposed form of the soul on the floor. She shivered.
“No way. Human souls are feathers?” Clark watched her like she had gone crazy, but Michaela didn’t pay attention. Instead she thought about Cassie injecting herself with human blood and her wild talk of protecting souls by giving them a new, better place to hide. Michaela’s eyes flickered back to the IV’s positioned by each gurney.
“They are. When Loki takes the soul from the humans, he gives them to the carrier angels like Cassie. She puts the feather into her wings. It’s how she carries thousands of them back to Purgatory,” Michaela said. She couldn’t help but picture Molloch’s death and how his body had disintegrated into feathers.
“Okay,” Clark drew out the word like he still didn’t understand. “So why are these souls down here in angel’s mouths?”
Michaela turned to Clark. Her eyes were wide with the fear coursing through her body. “I think Gabriel was right,” she whispered. “It was never about the Archangels and Heaven or even me. I think Lucifer only cared about the souls from the beginning.”
“How do you know for sure?” Clark asked. His eyebrows rose as he regarded her.
“If it was really about disgracing me and ruining the Archangels, why hasn’t he come after us? He easily could have killed you a million times.” Clark snorted at her words, rolling his eyes. “And he hasn’t tried to invade Heaven again. His first try was half-hearted at best…This wasn’t about Heaven. It was always the souls.”
“Are these,” Clark pointed to the feather that still lay on the floor where Michaela had dropped it, “all the extra souls he got from the Purification?”
“I guess so,” Michaela answered quietly. She rubbed her arms for warmth. The air in the lab was cold, but a chill permeated her insides. It burgeoned out from the ball of fear lodged in her gut.
“Okay…we know whatever Asz saw Cassie doing has something to do with the souls, because she said she was trying to…”
“…keep the souls safe,” Michaela finished, losing herself in thought.
“By putting souls in the mouths of angels? That seems a little ridiculous,” Clark said.
“No, it’s much more than that,” Michaela said. She couldn’t turn away from the IV’s full of human blood. “I think Cassie discovered a secret about human souls and angels and blood.”
“In the Apocrypha?” Clark wondered. She caught him staring at his arms.
Michaela nodded, deep in thought. “Right. So Cassie found a secret in the Apocrypha and it involved souls, which Lucifer had plenty after the Purification.”Michaela frowned. “But the blood…”
“My dad told me something interesting about angels drinking blood. We have these angels in the detention center at the compound called the ruined fallen. They became addicted to human blood, and like, went crazy. A bunch of Descendants had to go after them. Their hunger for blood made them rabid. The scientists at the compound kept giving them more blood, because it was the only thing that calmed them down. But eventually, they were comatose. Like their bodies were just a live shell, but the angel inside had died.
“Dude, what?” he asked irritably when Michaela only stared at him blankly. But Michaela didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide, her mind faraway.
“Lucifer convinced Cassie that Heaven wasn’t safe for the souls anymore, which is why she fell. She was looking for a place to hide them. I think she found one.” Michaela stared at the angels laying listless on the cold metal gurneys. Never before would she have called fallen helpless, but she pitied these angels. “I think Cassie found a way to put the souls of dead humans in the bodies of live angels.”
“But how did she do that? You can’t just put someone’s soul inside another living body,” Clark argued.
“Blood,” Michaela answered. She pointed to the IV’s dripping a steady flow of human blood into the prone bodies of the angels. “The fallen angels are given human blood. That’s why the Siren needed so much of it back at the club. It’s the only way Cassie could have done it.” She spoke quietly, like she was worried someone would hear.
Clark opened his mouth to question, but Michaela went on.
“Those ruined fallen you talked about, they had died…sort of. Blood is toxic to angels and highly addictive. It would have killed their souls but not their bodies, since only bones from my wings can kill angels…” Michaela paused for a moment, frowning. Clark didn’t speak for once. “I think Cassie was using human blood to suspend an angel’s soul, to lower their ability to fight against the human soul when she put it inside them. These angels are still in the process of accepting the human soul,” she murmured. She glanced over her shoulder through the double doors and to the cells outside. “Those angels are the finished product. That’s why they are so different and aggressive, because they have souls inside them, and they crave human blood from their exposure to it. Cassie wasn’t protecting the human souls from anything. She didn’t know it, but she was building something for Lucifer.” Michaela breathed heavy with realization.
“What is she trying to make?”
Michaela didn’t hear. All she could think was that Lucifer was right about humans winning the war for him, especially when he built an entire army full of their souls. He could slaughter the whole legion of holy angels. And take Heaven and Earth for himself just like he wanted.