The Library of the Unwritten - A. J_ Hackwith Page 0,98

elbow. She twitched and turned to see Ramiel. She reached to throw him off, but a wave of chill passed through her. All the strength left her grip. Not just her grip, though—left her. Her shoulders dropped. Her mind momentarily blanked, and it took a hard scrabble to remember her present concern. It surely had been trivial, not worth her time. It’d been so long since she could rest. Her chin fell.

Andras moved forward and began gently digging through her pockets. She could not have fought him, even if she’d been able to form the compulsion to. Some part of the back of her mind began to snarl against it. Claire turned a horrified stare at the angel.

“I apologize for taking liberties, but it’s better this way.” Rami’s voice was reserved. “Mortal souls. It’s part of my gift.”

Hero made to move, but Claire shook her head dully. A gun would do no good against angels. She tried to maintain a steady thought, but it was difficult with the cloud of calm that Ramiel had wrapped around her brain.

Andras finished turning out her pockets. “It’s not here.” He met her eyes with a sudden anger Claire hadn’t seen before. “Where is it?”

“The other?” Ramiel nodded to Hero.

“She wouldn’t trust it with the pages.” Andras’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done, pup?”

“Between the Hounds and the angels and this peculiar feeling I got whenever you talked about the pages . . .” Her voice was airier than she liked. Claire shrugged with as much will as she could wrest from beneath Rami’s suppressing touch. “I’d hoped I was paranoid. You’re the one who taught me to be cautious.”

“You . . .” Andras’s eyes turned sharp, and he scrutinized her face. He jerked with a sudden certainty. “The stray.”

A grin twitched on her lips, a little wild and unhinged as she felt Ramiel’s grip ease. She glanced to Hero. “I’d say we distracted the Hounds long enough for him to get to the gate by now, haven’t we?”

Suspicion distorted Uriel’s marble features. Her hand shifted, straying back to the pommel of the sword buried in cobblestone behind her. “Is there a problem, demon?”

“Not for me.” Andras studied Claire’s face with something like admiration, which made her stomach churn. He patted her cheek, once. His fingertips were leaching heat. “But I’m afraid I have a stray to catch. Our business is at an end.”

“Andras . . .” Claire found her voice just as the demon stepped away. The sad smile on his face was the last thing to disappear as a ground spout of shadows swallowed him into the earth.

“Shit,” Hero said.

The Hellhounds bayed, distant in the silence that followed. Then Uriel’s face transformed. “Betrayal.”

“First rule of demons,” Ramiel said, unimpressed. “We might have anticipated this.” He released his grip on Claire, and she realized he was watching his partner with rising caution. “Uriel, what do we do now?”

“Now?” Uriel’s furious voice nearly cracked with a hysterical note. No—that wasn’t the only thing cracking. A flare shimmered over her face, like lightning under clouds. Claire blinked, sure she’d imagined it, but the angel’s blue eyes looked ignited. The shards of light on her back appeared to split and scissor into blades. Claire flinched despite herself. The angels presented themselves as mortals on Earth, but she remembered the stories of an angel’s true form, vast and wild enough to break human comprehension. That form played close to the surface now, and Claire’s heart stuttered. There was a reason the first words out of an angel’s mouth in the stories were Be not afraid.

“Now I will shred Hell itself, let every demon know that I will not—that the Creator will not—tolerate such insult. That worm dares—”

“But our . . . prisoners?” Rami pressed, having backed up a step himself.

Uriel frowned, turning to Hero and Claire as if she’d just noticed a buzzing gnat. She calmed. Her voice was distant and preoccupied. “They are of no import.”

And with that, Uriel reached for her sword.

“Uriel!” Rami suddenly had his blade out and was charging forward. Whether toward Uriel or the Hounds themselves, it was uncertain. Claire and Hero began backing up instinctively.

Uriel withdrew her sword. And the barrier fell.

The Hellhounds had faded to prowling ghosts when they could not cross Uriel’s ward. But with the barrier gone, shadows lurched from beneath the bridge, gobbling up the air. Hero raised his faltering gun at the nearest wraith. A gun, even a gun that started its life as an unwritten