Wings of the Wicked - By Courtney Allison Moulton Page 0,31
lip, she brushed her thumb across stone lips and a square jaw, all that remained of his face. Her shoulders slumped, and she drew a long breath before tucking the piece into the inside of her jacket. She was still and silent for several moments until she rose and stared at Will.
“I’m sure the relic is gone,” she said. “But I know where he kept it in every location he stayed in. I’ll check anyway.”
Will nodded and she passed us both, heading for the kitchen. She pulled open the drawer beneath the stove and slipped her hand inside, feeling left and right across the ceiling of the drawer. With a cry of rage she ripped her hand back out and punched the front of the stove, her fist tearing right through the steel with an agonizing metallic groan. She straightened and ignored the blood running down her arm and pooling at her feet. “It’s not here. They took it. They killed him and took it.”
“I’m so sorry, Ava,” I said, watching her carefully.
Her eyes snapped to mine. “Do not weep for me or for the relic guardian. He did his duty. The only thing of value that we lost today was the relic.”
My heart broke for her and for Zane. I didn’t understand why the angelic reapers valued their lives so little. All life was too precious to just throw away.
A flash of power behind us made Will and me spin around. A blond-haired girl—no, a vir reaper—had appeared in the doorway. I willed my swords into my hands and lit them up just as her large eyes, dark and glossy as obsidian, fell to them, widening in surprise.
“You,” she breathed, gaping at my swords.
Before I could attack, Ava blurred past me and grabbed the girl by the throat and crushed her back into the wall across the hallway. To my shock, the girl knocked Ava’s arm away, freeing herself, and threw a punch. Ava ducked and kicked high, striking the side of the girl’s head. The girl hit the ground, blond hair flying, and rolled right back up to her feet.
“Wait!” she cried, but Ava kept coming. Ava jumped up, kicked into the wall, and propelled herself higher, wheeling through the air to strike the girl again, but the girl leaned back and avoided the blow. “Stop!”
Ava landed and launched herself at the girl again with her foot-long talons springing free.
“Ava, wait!” Will shouted, darting past me to the battling reapers. He grabbed Ava’s shoulder and wrenched her back, throwing her into the wall and putting himself between the two. He called his sword into his free hand and poised it at the unknown reaper in warning. Ava struggled against his grip, blind with rage.
“Identify yourself,” he ordered the girl, who flinched at his voice. “Or I let this one go. She seems to like you.”
The girl straightened up, smoothing out her disheveled hair and touching her jaw, momentarily squeezing her eyes shut with pain. “I’m Sabina,” she said. “I work with Zane. However, judging by the damage here, I assume he’s dead. Is that true?”
He ignored her question. “You’re angelic?”
“Of course I am.”
“Ellie,” Will said, meeting my eyes and then looking pointedly at Sabina.
I knew what he wanted me to do: test her the way I’d tested him the day we met, so many lifetimes ago. The unknown reaper’s black eyes, eyes that reminded me of Ragnuk’s demonic glare, were fixed on my swords again. Eyes that made me doubt her angelic heritage.
She looked back up to my face. “I know who you are, though I never thought I’d ever see you myself. You’re real.”
“Sure am,” I said, a little embarrassed by her invasive staring. Occasionally I met a reaper like her, one who had heard about me for hundreds of years but had never come across any of my incarnations. To most reapers, I was like Bigfoot, just a ridiculous story with a few questionable pieces of evidence left behind. I stepped up carefully to Sabina, who held out her arm, opening her palm. I raised my sword.
“Do what you must, Preliator,” she said.
I cut her hand, angelfire covering her skin. I lowered my sword, and she held up her palm so we could see the wound healing to perfection. Sabina was an angelic vir, just as she claimed.
Ava shook herself away from Will’s grip and their gazes clashed, her anger with him deadly clear. He’d done the right thing and she knew it, and I guessed