Angel's Mark

Fourteen

I thought for a second that it was because of Carlisle, but then I remembered Cian didn't know about Carlisle yet. This made it all worse.

He was clearly disheveled. There were wrinkles in his graphic T-shirt that hadn't been there this morning, and his hair was messier than it usually was, the strands probably displaced by distressed hands running through them over and over again. Cheeks sunken, lips downturned, eyes red and bleary.

In other words, my older brother was currently a mess.

As soon as the door fell open, he slumped into Lucie's arms. She caught him with a surprised grunt, rubbing his shoulders affectionately, a stroke up, a stroke down. To the motionless lump that was Cian, she said, "Hey, it's okay, it's okay," and to Zev and me, she mouthed, "What the hell is wrong with him?"

I shrugged to make it obvious that I really didn't know. Zev just scowled.

"Cian, are you going to tell us what's wrong?" Lucie asked him, just barely distancing herself from him. Her hands still brushed his jawline tenderly enough that I felt like I was supposed to be looking away. "I thought you were at work..."

"I was," Cian murmured. He let out a breath and rubbed his eyes, which just made them redder. "Sorry, but I just—God. I thought we were done! I thought we were done."

It killed me to see him like this. The last him he'd been so distraught had been when I'd sacrificed myself for the balance, which felt like ages ago. Time was such a ruse, I realized. It made us all feel untouchable. We were everything weak.

I stepped forward, brushing Cian's arm. "CJ, you're not making sense."

"I know," he said. "I know."

"Then make sense," snapped Zev.

Both Lucie and I glared at him. He glared back.

"Look, it's Caprice, okay? It's always Caprice. But she called me, and—"

As if waiting on a cue, a horn blew outside. I cringed at the volume, lifting a hand to shield my eyes from the sunlight as I peered into the driveway. Sitting there, glistening like a dragon scale, was Caprice's racer-striped Camaro.

She hung halfway out of it, a sun-kissed, golden brown arm against shimmering, keen black metal. Her ruby red lips were brighter than the sun.

It all kind of hurt to look at.

"Get in the car, losers!" she shouted, and I grimaced, because it was obviously the most original insult anyone had ever called us. "We've got a dead body to see."

Lucie's face twisted in disgust. Her hand enclosed in Cian's, she hung on the doorjamb, craning her neck to see outside. "What separates this one from all the other ones I've seen in the past year?"

Caprice lifted her sunglasses. Underneath them, her eyes were dark and serious. "This one's liquid gold."

She took us to the shoreline.

The Camaro roared and roared upon the roadways until the roadways were just rocks and sand, and then Caprice parked it, and then she ordered us all out of her car. "You all made it smell like people," she said through gritted teeth, kicking at a stone and watching it tumble into the bay's calm waters. "I hate people."

So close to the water, the wind was rampant. It was a constant, thundering melody in my ears, a persistent hand flicking my sweatshirt this way and then that way. Caprice's voice, though she was shouting, was still gentle over the crescendo of the bay and the gulls. Water was a wild thing. I'd be a fool if I ever thought I could tame it.

Cian's hand was on my shoulder. "You don't have to look at it. Don't look at it."

And I thought he was talking about the body Caprice was leading us to, but then I looked up and met his eyes and realized it was something else. It was always something else.

I struggled for words. "I—I am not—you don't have to—"

"You are," Cian told me. "You're scared. It's okay to be. I would be, too."

"Cian."

He smiled at me. He showed no teeth. "Don't look at it."

If only it were that easy. If averted eyes could allay fear, it never would have existed anyway. Man would be all-powerful, and powerless at once.

We followed Caprice, and kept following her. Zev was right at her shoulder, begging her for explanations, of which she'd give none. Lucie and Cian stagger-stepped over the rocks together—a quick hand whipped out to steady him, arms offered to help balance her. And I just wandered somewhere in between.

Until, finally, Caprice halted. "Liquid gold," she said, but there was no wonder in her voice. Just mourning.

I saw the gold first. Thin rivulets of it, branching out across the water-weathered stones like highways on a map. It was sparkling, clean, too pure for such an ugly world. I reached a hand down to touch it. Zev swatted my hand away like he would a child's.

"Don't you see?" he said, and I saw.

The gold wasn't gold at all. It was blood, belonging to the slain angel at our feet.

He was splayed out among the rocks like a beached animal, shoulders caved in, wings bent and feathers scattered. Thin slices made lines and scabs all over his body: his arms, his bare chest, his neck, his face. A clean cut blinded already sightless eyes. The angel's mouth was twisted in a permanent howl of pain.

No one said anything. We just watched and we just listened.

Zev frowned at the angel's square jaw, golden hair. "It's Samuel," he said, and then he cursed, impassive towards the consequence. "Why would—who would—Samuel?"

"Angels retire," Cian said, his voice as tremulous as the breezes that swayed around him. "They don't die."

"I think what you mean, little one," Caprice corrected, "is that they don't get murdered."

"Was it the demons?" I offered, and knew it was wrong as soon as everyone looked at me sullenly. "I just...you said there's still some left over, so maybe it was an accident—"

Zev shook his head violently. "It was something demonic, sure. But to make cuts like that, it was something with a working and rather intelligent brain. It was something that wanted to make sure Samuel suffered until his last breath. It was premeditated."

Lucie, with a final, dismal exhale, turned away and watched the bay instead. "Jesus Christ. I can think of ten other things we could be doing rather than standing around a dead body. No, twenty. Thirty."

Cian frowned at her. "Is that number just going to keep increasing until we leave?"

She squinted at him. "Forty."

Cian rolled his eyes, but he said to Caprice, "Does the Order know about this?"

"If they don't, they certainly will," Caprice said, flipping her shades back on with a vigorous nod of her head. "And when they do, it's gonna be hell."

Zev pivoted and walked away, dragging me with him. "Trust me, Cap," he said. "It already is."