when he glared at her, as if he could fix her in place. He moved in a tight circle around her, his hands behind his back, his wings drawn tight, his head tilted toward the sky. Everything you see here is everything there is to see. From far away, yes, but it's all there--all the lives and worlds and more, far beyond the weak conception of mortals. Look at it.
She did, and it looked different than it had before. The veldt of stars was endless, the dark of night folded again and again over so many bright spots that the sky was more light than black. It's beautiful.
It's about to be a tabula rasa. His lips curled into a twisted smile. I've grown tired of this game.
This is all a game to you?
It's a game to him. He swept his hand across the sky and left a dark swath of night in his wake. And I refuse to concede it to that Other simply because of a cosmic scale. Simply because our sides are in balance.
Balance. You mean, the scale between the fallen angels who allied themselves with you, and those who allied themselves with--
Don't say it. But yes, that other. Right now there is a balance, and--
And one more angel has to side, Luce said, remembering the long talk Arriane had given her at the diner in Las Vegas.
Mmm-hmm. Except this time, I won't leave it to chance. It was a shortsighted goal of mine, the whole starshot bit, but I've seen the error of my ways. I've been plotting. I've been planning. Often while you and some past iteration of Grigori were preoccupied with your B-grade heavy petting. So, you see, no one will be able to sabotage what I have planned next.
I'm going to wipe the slate clean. Start over. I can skip the millennia that led up to you and your loophole of a life, Lucinda Price--he snorted--and begin again. And this time, I will play more wisely. This time I will win.
What does that mean, wipe the slate clean'?
All of time is like a grand slate, Lucinda. Nothing is written that can't be erased by one clever sort. It's a drastic move, yes, and it means that I'll be throwing away thousands of years. A big setback for everyone concerned--but hey, what's a handful of lost millennia in the yawning concept of eternity?
How can you do that? she said, knowing he could feel her tremble in his grasp. What does it mean?
It means I'm going back to the beginning. To the Fall. To all of us being cast out of Heaven because we dared to exercise free will. I'm talking about the first great injustice.
Reliving your greatest hits? she said, but he wasn't listening, lost in the details of his scheme.
You and the tiresome Daniel Grigori will make the trip with me. In fact, your soul mate is on his way there now.
Why would Daniel--
I showed him the way, of course. Now all I have to do is get there in time to see the angels cast out and begin their fall to Earth. What a beautiful moment that will be.
When they begin their fall? How long did it take?
Nine days by some accounts, he murmured, but it seemed an eternity to those of us cast out. You never asked your friends about it? Cam. Roland. Arriane. Your precious Daniel? All of us were there.
So you see it happen again. So what?
So then I do something unexpected. And do you know what that is? He snickered, and his red eyes gleamed. I don't know, she said softly. Kill Daniel?
Not kill. Catch. I'm going to catch every last one of us. I'll open up an Announcer like a great net, casting it to the forward edge of time. Then I'll cleave to my old self and spirit the full host of angels into the present with me. Even the ugly ones.
So what?
So what? We will be once more starting at the beginning. Because the Fall is the beginning. It isn't a part of history; it is when history begins. And all that has come before? It will no longer have happened.
No longer have hap--You mean, like that life in Egypt?
Never happened.
China? Versailles? Las Vegas?
Never, never, never. But it's more than just you and your boyfriend, selfish child. It's the Roman empire and the so-called Son of that Other. It is the long sad festering of humanity rising from the primordial murk of the earth and turning