The Library of the Unwritten - A. J_ Hackwith Page 0,100

bounded off the stone and broke.

A shriveling feeling crept under Rami’s lungs. The collar of Uriel’s coat fluttered; a smear of dust flinched up one side of her cheek, stopping just short of the glow of fury-banked eyes. Uriel was fastidious. She would never have tolerated dirt on her face. But her hands came up not to wipe it away, but to knot in agony in her hair.

Uriel was the Face of God, to all. But to Rami, she’d become more: she’d become the face of home. The face of hope, the hope of returning. The hope of welcome. The hope of rest. She was shattering, bleeding violence at every jagged edge, and Rami’s hope bled with it. The cost was too high. He couldn’t follow this. An angel with a thirst for vengeance . . . no. Not again. He’d already seen the devastation that caused. He couldn’t go down that path again.

Even if that path was the only one that led him home.

He would say it was like a closing door, but the Gates of Heaven had never been open for him. Instead, a dull certainty welled in his chest, and with it a realization. Rami found himself reaching out a hand, but the tremors marked Uriel’s shoulders like delicate earthquakes. He dropped his hand. “Why do you really need the codex, Uriel?”

“For the Creator, you fool. For . . .” Uriel stopped, glaring sightlessly at the warded city through her tears. The archangel went quiet. “I can’t do it for much longer, Rami. None of the Host can. I don’t know why we ever thought we could. Running things . . . It’s all falling apart.”

Fear deepened Uriel’s flawless face, lines etched where none had been, not in the ages since the birth of the world. Shadows in a being of light were far, far out of his experience. All of this was. Rami was used to falling, to running, to wandering. Not this.

“I don’t know what else would bring Her home,” Uriel whispered.

There would be no answer that way. The Creator was a god, not a lost house cat. She would not be tempted back by a bit of warm milk left outside the door. Wherever She was, if She even was, She was exactly where She wanted to be.

The Creator was lost, and so was Ramiel’s way home. But he wasn’t as strong as the Creator; he couldn’t turn away, even now, not without another path presented to him. So instead, his mind numbly reached for what it knew best: duty. The codex was an obvious danger, and they couldn’t risk it in the hands of a demon like Andras, especially with the Creator absent. He sheathed his sword so as not to look at her. “What would you have of me now?”

Duty, service. It was an all-curing elixir, for angels. Especially angels like Uriel. The tracks on her face dried. She seemed to sew the broken edges of her mask together, piece by piece. She drew up straight, and her gaze came to rest on the spot where Andras had disappeared. “Our prey has split. The demon is intent on taking the pages to the Library, so I will make the necessary preparations for Hell. You will track the humans. It’s what you’re best at. The Hounds will leave a wide enough path; perhaps they will lead us to the codex.”

Rami strained to keep the uncertainty off his face. “And then?”

“And then . . .” Uriel paused to marshal her own sword. She stared at the blackened spot where it had been planted in the cobblestone. “Then all of Hell will have its reckoning.”

29

LETO

Earth is freckled with belief, positively pockmarked with it. No great idea fades from the planet without leaving a mark, and we dwell in the craters. We rely on these old lines and cracks to conduct our business. But watch out; belief changes, and so do the doorways. Walk through the wrong one and it won’t want to let you go.

Librarian Claire Hadley, 1994 CE

LETO WAS REMEMBERING THINGS about his life.

Mostly he was remembering that he hated running.

His side had stitched up, morphing into an angry, hot pinch that twisted his lungs every time he inhaled. His pulse thudded, fast and thick in his head. His feet were numb from slapping bare stone, and that made him clumsy as he clambered up and down the broken tunnel passage.

Catacombs, Beatrice had said, and Leto had imagined some stately mausoleum. Perhaps a