of the fridge. I take one more deep breath and then I open the door and count. Fourteen blue-labeled bottles stare back at me. Laughing.
They’ve got my dad, and we all know it.
Indignation makes my muscles and bones ache. I let it take control, let it swipe my arm across the middle shelf. I press the trash can closer, catching every last bottle. Glass shatters, and the smell of misery fills the air.
“What are you doing?” Dad stands in the arched entryway between the kitchen and the living room. His mouth gapes. The television chatters behind him, making him look like a character in one of those foreign films whose words have been dubbed in. Unimportant. What is important is Dad’s face.
He’s mad. More than that, he looks disappointed.
In me.
That’s fine.
I hug the trash can to my chest and walk to the kitchen door.
“Gabrielle!” His face is red, his hand white around the neck of the half-empty bottle in his hand.
“That’s your last one today,” I say. My words are empty of conviction, but my legs aren’t. They take me away from him. Toward the door.
“Brielle!”
I fling the door open and step into the sunlight. I don’t check the skies. I don’t look around for Damien. If he’s there, I don’t want to know. Not now. Not until I’ve got this done. Twelve steps take me around the house and to the large garbage can pressed against its side. It’s awkward, but I lift the lid and heft the plastic trash can in. The whole thing.
Glass breaks, amber liquid sloshing like a choppy sea as the bottles collide, but I’m relieved.
Demons from without are one thing.
In my house—in my father’s hand—they’re impossible to fight.
Adrenaline shakes my body, but I close the lid on the wet, sopping mess and fling myself against the side of the house. A sob gurgles in my throat, but I refuse to let it free.
God, be my peace. There won’t be any inside after what I’ve done.
A soft breeze tugs at my hair, at the shirt hanging loose against my body. The wind rushes faster and faster, pushing past me, and then as quickly as it arrived it abandons me to the hot sun.
It leaves behind a song—high voices that whisper soft unintelligible things and low notes that rattle my chest.
The Sabres.
I step away from the smell of alcohol and toward the voices. The melody is louder here, coming from this direction, but though I squint and crane around I see nothing. Nothing but the decaying apple orchard in the distance. The music pulls me closer, and I step carefully with my bare feet, doing my best to avoid fallen pinecones and dry prickly weeds.
And then I see it.
Spiraling from the tops of the apple trees, I see worship. Like the pianist’s song on Christmas, the melody trills in loops of colored incense toward the heavens. Greens and blues. Shades I have trouble naming, but they’re thrilling and awe inspiring. My eyes follow the streaming tendrils higher and higher, my heart swelling with the sound. With the sight of it all.
I tip my chin up, wishing my fingers could touch the ribbons of worship high above.
And then fear smacks me in the chest. It wraps me tight and pulls me to my knees.
I gasp and gasp, my eyes glued to the heavens. Rocks and gravel bite at my bare legs, but the pain is nothing to the fear pressing down on me.
My eyes—celestial eyes that have just seen worship—now see a sky black with writhing bodies. A mass of twitching wings and claws, their swords of ice steaming in the hot celestial sky.
“The Palatine. They weren’t supposed to be here for two more days. And now we’re out of time.”
Damien’s voice is in my head again. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s here and that’s enough.
If the frigid cold climbing up my back is any indication, he’s close.
But I don’t turn. I don’t move. One monster is not nearly so frightening as a sky full of them. My gaze arches across the sky from horizon to horizon, but I see nothing beyond the army. Not to the east or to the west. I look north and south, panic coating my arms in chilling sweat. I thought there were more fighting for us, but I was wrong.
We’re hemmed in.
Stratus is surrounded.
34
Pearla
A Shield, Commander, approaching from the west.”
Loyal snorts and shakes his mane, melting into the celestial sky as Michael flies to Pearla’s side.