“Be careful,” Gabriel shouted. “You’re using too much of your own essence.”

“I don’t know how to control it,” I said desperately. I felt a little woozy, like my blood sugar was low. I shook my head to clear it. “It doesn’t matter. We have to get Ramuell away from here before he kills anyone else.”

Gabriel nodded. “I can use my magic to bind him if you can keep him distracted for a few more moments.”

I wasn’t sure how long my magic could hold Ramuell, but I knew I wasn’t about to let him go now that we had him in our sights. If I had to pour out every last drop of myself in order to defeat the monster who had eaten my mother’s soul, I would.

Gabriel eased away from me, pulling the nightfire back. I held Ramuell now. It was my magic alone that kept the nephilim from breaking free.

Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes. My hands were before me, and nightfire poured from my fingers in a continuous flow of magic. Deep inside, down under my ribs, the place where I felt the source of my magic flow twinged like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. Ramuell hadn’t moved. He still stood howling in the middle of the street, accepting my punishment without attempting to defend himself.

Gabriel hovered a few feet away, his lips moving, his eyes closed. He seemed to have drawn into himself, pulling up power from a well deep within.

I tried to concentrate on the source of magic inside me, tried to level off the flow of power so that I could sustain it long enough to help Gabriel bind Ramuell. But even as I struggled to control it, I felt something snap inside me, and the nightfire pouring from my fingers abruptly ceased, as if someone had shut off a spigot.

I gasped, and Gabriel’s eyes flew open. Ramuell smiled, even though the flesh of his chest and shoulders was burned through to the organs. I could see shiny, squishy things pulsing beneath a lacework of crisped and blackened skin. Then he blasted Gabriel with a ball of white fire. The force of the blast pushed Gabriel across the intersection and smashed him into the Dunkin’ Donuts sign. Sparks of electricity shot into the air as Gabriel’s limp body hit the sign with enough force to buckle it in the middle. He dropped to the ground and lay quite still.

I had no time to think or to respond. Ramuell leapt across the distance separating us and snatched me out of the air, landing lightly on his clawed feet. He held me by the shoulders as though I were a child, my feet dangling. I kicked out at his stomach and felt the toe of my boot connect with one of those soft and exposed organs. Ramuell grunted and gripped my shoulders tighter. I felt his claws cutting into me, and the familiar acidic burning that followed.

In a few minutes I would be dead, one way or another. Either Ramuell would eat me or the acid raging through my body would consume me. My blood pounded in my ears, but I dimly heard people screaming. The people from the El. The ones I had tried to protect, tried to keep from Ramuell. I had no magic left, and there was no one to help me. They would surely be eaten alive if they didn’t get away.

Ramuell chuckled, a hideous sound that started deep in his chest and rumbled to the surface. I tried to kick him again and he deftly held me away from him so that I was just as ineffectual as the child I felt like at that moment. I couldn’t punch or kick him. My magic was gone. My only weapon was my silver knife, and I couldn’t reach inside the shaft of my boot to get it. I’d thought I’d come here to gather a soul, not battle a nephilim.

“Nothing to say, little girl?” Ramuell sneered, his terrible face leaning close to mine. His teeth snapped very close to my nose and I flinched subconsciously, which made Ramuell laugh harder. “Not going to fight, or think up clever retorts? Not going to beg for your life, the way your mother did?”

The acid burned through me, making me feel weak and dizzy. I fought to stay awake. I didn’t want to be a comatose hors d’oeuvre during my last moments on Earth.

“My mother . . . never begged . . . for anything,” I said. My tongue felt thick in my mouth.

“Oh, yes, she did,” Ramuell said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “She begged for her life and the life of her mewling brat. She begs for it even now. I can hear her, inside me, with the others.”

And for a moment, I thought I could hear her, too, hear her soul crying out in anguish, trapped somewhere inside the nephilim’s body. The thought filled me with despair. I couldn’t even keep myself alive after my mother had sacrificed herself for me. Soon I would be one of the screaming souls imprisoned inside this monster.

But even as I smelled the sulfur-and-burnt-cinnamon stink of Ramuell’s breath, felt its heat on my face as he opened his mouth to consume me, something in me cried out. I wasn’t going to let the nephilim destroy me, and as I thought it, a blast of white heat exploded inside me and pushed out through every inch of skin. I felt scorched by the force of it and closed my eyes as light exploded all around me. Ramuell screamed, a scream of pain and horror like I had never heard before. The nephilim dropped me to the ground and I opened my eyes.

I saw it for only a second. The magic that blasted out of me had seared away the nephilim’s skin completely wherever he had touched me. His hands were little more than dangling slabs of meat, and when he locked eyes with me, I saw fear in the red depths.

Then I saw—but I couldn’t have seen—a hole appear behind Ramuell, like the surface of reality had been rent open. The nephilim stepped back into the swirling darkness and was swallowed up, the hole closing neatly as if it had never been there.

I had a moment to wonder what had happened to James Takahashi, and then the burning in my blood consumed me, and I closed my eyes.

10

WHEN SHE AWOKE SHE WAS AGAIN IN DARKNESS, IN the trap that they had enclosed her within. The memory of that beautiful voice speaking of the death of her Morningstar, the death of her children, was almost enough to make her fall away again. But she hardened herself, for she would need all of her wit to escape with her life and her children.

She was not without power. When the Morningstar had planted his seed inside her, he had given her some of his own magic, to protect her and their children. Evangeline had not used this magic since she had blazed the path from her village to the Forbidden Lands and the arms of her lover. And the creatures that she would fight were not frail mortals, but angelic beings with powers of their own.

Still, she must fight. If she was to return to Lucifer, she must fight.

She lay in wait, tiny, still, like a mouse in a hole, until one of them came for her. She closed her eyes so that she would not be blinded by the creature’s light. She waited while it hauled her roughly through the door. Then she opened her eyes, and she saw its face, a face very lovely, a face very surprised when white flame burst from within her and burned it away.

Evangeline did not take in her surroundings longer than to determine the way out. There were no other creatures in the room, and she hurried forward to the only door, the wings in her belly fluttering in delight. She felt the magic of her children bubbling up inside her, wanting to break free, and she knew that she had not long before they would be born.

At the door she came to a long hallway, white and smooth and faced by a row of gilded windows, and there was only one way out and one way forward. Another of the creatures stepped into the hallway before her, and the white flame burst from her again, and not a trace of her captor remained.

The Morningstar’s children bounced and fluttered, and Evangeline felt a pain in her side, and a wetness between her legs. She knew she had but little time. She stepped through the door, and into a large and airy room.

A collection of the creatures was there, all gathered in perfect beauty, but Evangeline did not notice and she did not care. The Morningstar’s children were coming, and she had to return to him.

The creatures turned, and all but one froze in surprise. She looked at Evangeline with great green eyes, and Evangeline saw knowledge in them, and saw the creature alight on downy white wings a moment before the flames burst from her for the last time.

Evangeline’s captors and her prison blasted away in an instant, leaving her alone in the glare of the sun, her feet in the sand, the jagged peaks of mountains all around her. She fell to her knees, crying out, and placed her hand over her belly. Little wings pushed beneath her skin, as she lay on the sand, her face in the sun, and waited for her children to come forth.

I woke in my bed to find that for the second time in a week I had been cleaned and dressed in my pajamas. Again, Gabriel seemed partial to the only nightgown that I owned—a virginal white cotton lawn that made me look like a sacrifice about to be laid on an altar. I don’t know what had possessed me to buy it in the first place.

My long hair had been neatly braided down my back, and that, more than the fact that he had seen me na**d twice now while I slept, made me blush. I felt my face warm all the way to the tops of my ears. There was something disturbingly intimate about the thought of his hands carefully braiding my hair.

The room was almost fully dark. A thin shaft of light pushed through the curtains from the streetlamp in the alley behind my building. The digital clock on my bedside table read 3:18 A.M. The window was slightly open and I smelled the cold Chicago fall night—a mixture of car exhaust, fallen leaves and a lingering whiff of smoke from someone’s fireplace.

I saw Gabriel in the weak glare from the streetlamp, sitting in a hard-backed wooden chair pilfered from my kitchen. He’d moved the chair very close to my bed. I slept on my left side so when my eyes opened I faced him. I could brush his knees with my hand if I stretched my arm out. His head was tipped forward and rested on his chest, and he snored softly.

It hadn’t occurred to me that he could be tired. He seemed so unearthly to me most of the time, so obviously a supernatural creature, that I hadn’t thought that he could ever be weary. But now that I looked closely, I could see the dark shadows underneath his closed lids, and the pallor in his cheeks. It was more than just the play of light and shadow in a darkened room. He looked exhausted and ill.

And healing me time after time probably isn’t helping, I thought guiltily. I sat up, pulled my knees to my chest and watched the rise and fall of his chest for a few moments, wondering if I would be able to push his significantly taller form onto the bed without my waking him. He clearly needed to rest, and sleeping in a kitchen chair wasn’t going to do the trick. I wasn’t going to sleep any longer. Now that I was awake I felt jittery and slightly nauseous, like I’d had too much caffeine.