Torment

EPILOGUE PANDEMONIUM

“What just happened?”

“Where’d she go?”

“Who taught her how to do that?”

The frantic voices in the backyard sounded wobbly and distant to Daniel. He knew the other fallen angels were arguing, looking for Announcers in the shadows of the yard. Daniel was an island, closed off to everything but his own agony.

He had failed her. He had failed.

How could it be? For weeks he’d run himself ragged, his only goal to keep her safe until the moment when he could no longer offer her protection. Now that moment had come and gone—and so had Luce.

Anything could happen to her. And she could be anywhere. He had never felt so hollow and ashamed.

“Why can’t we just find the Announcer she stepped through, put it back together, and go after her?”

The Nephilim boy. Miles. He was on his knees, combing the grass with his fingers. Like a moron.

“They don’t work that way,” Daniel snarled at him. “When you step into time, you take the Announcer with you. That’s why you never do it unless …”

Cam looked at Miles, almost pityingly. “Please tell me Luce knows more about Announcer travel than you do.”

“Shut up,” Shelby said, standing over Miles protectively. “If he hadn’t thrown Luce’s reflection, Phil would have taken her.”

Shelby looked guarded and afraid, out of place among the fallen angels. Years ago, she’d had a crush on Daniel—one he’d never requited, of course. But until tonight, he’d always thought well of the girl. Now she was just in the way.

“You said yourself Luce would be better off dead than with the Outcasts,” she said, still defending Miles.

“The Outcasts you all but invited here.” Arriane stepped into the conversation, turning on Shelby, whose face reddened.

“Why would you assume some Nephilim child could detect the Outcast?” Molly challenged Arriane. “You were at that school. You should have noticed something.”

“All of you: Quiet.” Daniel couldn’t think straight. The yard was crammed with angels, but Luce’s absence made it feel utterly empty.

He could hardly stand to look at anyone else. Shelby, for walking straight into the Outcast’s easy trap. Miles, for thinking he had some stake in Luce’s future. Cam, for what he’d tried to do—

Oh, that moment when Daniel thought he’d lost her to Cam’s starshot! His wings had felt too heavy to lift. Colder than death. In that instant, he’d given up all hope.

But it was only a trick of the eye. A thrown reflection, nothing special under ordinary circumstances, but tonight the last thing Daniel had been expecting. It had given him a horrible shock. One that had nearly killed him. Until the joy of her resurrection.

There was still hope.

As long as he could find her.

He’d been stunned, watching Luce open up the shadow. Awed and impressed and painfully attracted to her—but more than all of that, stunned. How many times had she done it before without his even knowing?

“What do you think?” Cam asked, coming up beside him. Their wings drew toward each other, that old magnetic force, and Daniel was too drained to pull away.

“I’m going after her,” he said.

“Good plan.” Cam sneered. “Just ‘go after her.’ Anywhere in time and space across the several thousand years. Why should you need a strategy?”

His sarcasm made Daniel want to tackle him a second time.

“I’m not asking for your help or your advice, Cam.”

Only two starshots remained in the yard: the one he’d picked up from the Outcast Molly had killed, and the one Cam had found on the beach at the beginning of the truce. There would have been a nice symmetry if Cam and Daniel had been working as enemies right now—two bows, two starshots, two immortal foes.

But no. Not yet. They had to eliminate too many others before they could turn on each other again.

“What Cam means”—Roland stood between them, speaking to Daniel in a low voice—“is that this might take some team effort. I’ve seen the way these kids flop through the Announcers. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, Daniel. She’s going to get into trouble pretty quick.”

“I know.”

“It’s not a sign of weakness to let us help,” Roland said.

“I can help,” Shelby called. She’d been whispering with Miles. “I think I might know where she is.”

“You?” Daniel asked. “You’ve helped enough. Both of you.”

“Daniel—”

“I know Luce better than anyone in the world.” Daniel turned away from all of them, toward the dark, empty space in the yard where she’d stepped through. “Far better than any of you ever will. I don’t need your help.”

“You know her past,” Shelby said, walking in front of him so that he had to look at her. “You don’t know what she’s been through these past few weeks. I’m the one who’s been around while she glimpsed her past lives. I’m the one who saw her face when she found the sister she lost when you kissed her and she …” Shelby trailed off. “I know you all hate me right now. But I swear to—Oh, whatever it is you guys believe in. You can trust me from here on out. Miles, too. We want to help. We’re going to help. Please.” She reached for Daniel. “Trust us.”

Daniel wrested himself away from her. Trust as an activity had always made him uneasy. What he had with Luce was unshakable. There was never any need even to work on trust. Their love just was.

But for all eternity, Daniel had never been able to find faith in anyone or anything else. And he didn’t want to start now.

Down the street, a dog yipped. Then again, louder. Closer.

Luce’s parents, coming back from their walk.

In the dark yard, Daniel’s eyes found Gabbe’s. She was standing close to Callie, probably consoling her. She’d already retracted her wings.

“Just go,” Gabbe mouthed to him in the desolate, dust-filled backyard. What she meant was Go get her. She would handle Luce’s parents. She would see that Callie got home. She would cover all the bases so that Daniel could go after what mattered. We’ll find you and help you as soon as we can.

The moon drifted out from behind a mist of cloud. Daniel’s shadow lengthened on the grass at his feet. He watched it swell a little, then began to draw up the Announcer inside it. When the cool, damp darkness brushed against him, Daniel realized that he hadn’t stepped through time in ages. Looking back was not normally his style.

But the motions were still in him, buried in his wings or his soul or his heart. He moved quickly, peeling the Announcer off his own shadow, giving it a quick pinch to separate it from the ground. Then he threw it, like a piece of potter’s clay, onto the air directly in front of him.

It formed a clean, finite portal.

He had been a part of every one of Luce’s past lives. There was no reason he wouldn’t be able to find her.

He opened the door. No time to waste. His heart would take him to her.

He had an innate sense that something bad was just around the bend, but a hope that something incredible was waiting in the distance.

It had to be.

His burning love for her coursed through him until he felt so full he didn’t know whether he would fit through the portal. He wrapped his wings close against his body and bounded into the Announcer.

Behind him, in the yard, a distant commotion. Whispers and rustling and shouts.

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about any of them, really.

Only her.

He whooped as he broke through.

“Daniel.”

Voices. Behind him, following, getting closer. Calling his name as he tunneled deeper and deeper into the past.

Would he find her?

Without question.

Would he save her?

Always.