Wings of the Wicked - By Courtney Allison Moulton Page 0,154
gets suspicious and wonders where you and Will are. The less she knows, the better.”
I nodded and chewed on my bottom lip as it trembled against another sob building in my throat. Marcus disappeared, and a quiver of despair shot through me. My face was sticky with tears and smeared makeup, but I didn’t care that I looked like a train wreck. Sabina and Ava turned back to the table and began removing Will’s jacket. He shuddered with every breath, and his eyes were closed tightly with pain. I didn’t know if he was conscious.
Ava held out her hand and summoned her sword. She leaned over Will and touched the blade to his chest.
I was there in a flash, my sword in my hand, the tip pressed into Ava’s jugular. She froze in place and looked at me out the corner of her eye. “What are you doing?” I snarled hoarsely through my tears.
“I need to see how badly it has spread,” she responded in a calm voice.
For a moment, I felt absurd pointing a sword at Ava’s throat while wearing my prom dress. It was ripped and bloodied—completely destroyed. I looked from Ava to Will and back again.
“Ellie?”
I startled, letting my weapon disappear and nodding numbly. She eyed me for a few more seconds before drawing her blade across Will’s sleeve, carefully cutting it open to reveal the terrible wound on his arm. She removed the cloth of his shirt until he was naked from the waist up. When I saw his skin, my heart lodged in my throat. Black spiderweblike lines extended up his wounded arm and across his chest, pooling thickly over his heart. The black lines traced every vein and artery beneath his skin, and a powerful memory struck me hard: The day of my seventeenth birthday, in the girls’ room, the same spidery lines had covered my face the way they covered Will’s body. Had I foreseen the same event that Kelaeno had prophesied? Had the darkness I originally saw in myself really been a warning?
Your strength in heart and hand will fall….
Ava was saying something to Sabina and possibly to me, but I couldn’t hear a word. I was shaking, staring at Will as his body trembled and his head thrashed from side to side in agony.
“Ellie. Ellie!”
I was brought back to my senses at Ava’s sharp voice barking my name.
“Sabina, get her out of here,” Ava growled. “She can’t handle this.”
“No!” I flailed against Sabina as she turned me around. “Let go of me!” I shoved Sabina in the chest and she lost her balance. Stepping back, I slammed into Marcus’s body as he appeared in the doorway. His hands grabbed a firm hold of my shoulders.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his voice and expression filled with concern.
I shoved him off me. “Nothing! I’ll just go.”
Marcus blinked at me and exchanged glances with Ava. “Why? We need you here.”
“No, you don’t,” I snarled back. “I’m going to do something about this. Give me your keys.”
“To my car?”
“Yes!” I held out my hand. “Give them to me before I take them from you!”
He dropped the keys into my palm. “I don’t know where you’re going, but please, for the love of God, don’t scratch my car.”
I made an ugly noise and stomped past him. I yanked open the door of Marcus’s Maserati and threw myself into the seat. I wasn’t even sure I remembered how to drive a stick like this. My dad had taught me how, but that was so long ago. My knees curled up to my chest, and I buried my face in my hands. I let myself cry for just a minute, just long enough to clear my thoughts for an instant, just long enough to remember something that Will had said to me months ago, something I already knew.
The Maserati’s tires squealed as I peeled out of the driveway. The car had a voice-recognition satellite phone built into it. I instructed the car to dial a number.
After one ring at the other end of the line, a slightly surprised voice answered, “This had better be a booty call.”
“Cadan.” I was exhausted and irritated, my voice barely able to work. “Where are you?”
“So it is a booty call.”
“Cadan!” I shouted, half sobbing. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “This is serious. Where are you?”
A hesitation. “My apartment. In Troy.”
“What’s the address?”
I barged through the door of his apartment and moved through the entry into the living area. He stood in the center of the room, one hand holding a glass of deep gold liquid, the other in his pocket. His fiery opal eyes opened wide as he registered my terrible appearance, my ripped and bloodied dress, my makeup smeared with tears down my cheeks.
A look of horror and sadness overcame him. “Ellie?”
I was sick of everyone saying my name but Will. His voice was the only one I wanted to hear, calm and serene as he always was, not moaning in pain trapped within some internal Hell.
“Are you okay?” His voice was gentle, as if he were speaking to a frightened, cornered animal. He set down his glass. “What can I do?”
I lifted my arm and willed a single Khopesh sword into my hand. Angelfire blazed, lighting up his surprised face, and my power spiraled around me, lifting my tangled hair and the shredded folds of my dress.
He stared at me, fearing what might come from my threat. “You don’t ever need to raise your sword to me.”
“Will is dying,” I said, my voice withering. “Did you speak the truth when you said you know a Grigori?”
He hesitated before he nodded. “Yes.”
I swallowed hard, shaking. “You have to take me to the Grigori. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll do anything. You have to help me save him.”
About the Author
COURTNEY ALLISON MOULTON lives in Michigan, where she is a photographer and spends all her free time riding and showing horses. She is the author of ANGELFIRE and WINGS OF THE WICKED, and she is hard at work on her next novel. For more information about Courtney, visit her online at www.courtneyallisonmoulton.com.
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Other Works
Also by Courtney Allison Moulton
Angelfire
Credits
Cover photo © 2012 by Amber Gray
Cover art and design by Joel Tippie
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
WINGS OF THE WICKED
Copyright © 2012 by Courtney Allison Moulton
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Moulton, Courtney Allison, date
Wings of the wicked: an Angelfire re novel / Courtney Allison Moulton. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ellie, who has the reincarnated soul of an ancient reaper-slayer, falls in love with her immortal guardian angel, Will, while fighting monstrous creatures who devour humans and send their souls to Hell.
ISBN 978-0-06-200236-5 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062102157
[1. Reincarnation—Fiction. 2. Soul—Fiction. 3. Angels—Fiction. 4. Monsters—Fiction. 5. Horror stories] I. Title.
PZ7.M85899Win 2012
2011009151
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
* * *
11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: The Hammer of Gabriel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Two: The Mortal Archangel
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Other Works
Credits
Copyright
Back Ad
About the Publisher
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: The Hammer of Gabriel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Two: The Mortal Archangel
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Other Works
Credits
Copyright
Back Ad
About the Publisher
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: The Hammer of Gabriel
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Two: The Mortal Archangel
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author
Other Works
Credits
Copyright
Back Ad
About the Publisher